Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

The European Union is witnessing a full-blown social revolt. Governing political parties and their economic policies are held in open contempt as public protests and strikes escalate across multiple countries.

Protests, mass marches, and industrial strikes are spreading across the EU in France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, and other countries. The grievances are various, from students and teachers over woeful education services, to healthcare professionals and transportation workers denouncing crumby wages and pension cuts.

But at the core is a warmongering, dehumanizing system of capitalist inequality.

Unbearable living costs for basic needs, from food to housing, are driving millions onto the streets in desperation and anger at the lack of adequate political response to their concerns. As one French student said: “Too young to be listened to, old enough to be tear-gassed.”

The entire political system is being brought into disrepute for its dysfunction and indifference towards meeting rudimentary human needs. Then, infuriating all the more, are lies from the elite rulers and their propaganda media about “national defense and threat of war from Russia.”

In Spain this week, an 87-year-old frail woman known as Maricarmen died in hospital after she was evicted from her Madrid home because she could not pay the extortionate rent increase. Her plight has come to galvanize a nationwide protest against Spain’s housing crisis, a crisis that is repeated across every European country. Protesters shouted furiously that the pitiful old woman was “murdered by the state and corporations.”

In France, the brutality of police against student protests has shocked the nation and the world. Nearly 7,000 young people have been arrested, as riot police tear gas and shoot at largely peaceful rallies. Students gathering at the Place de la Bastille in Paris and other cities vow that they will not back down. One student had his hand blown off by a police stun grenade while another teenager lost an eye from a rubber bullet fired at close range.

The Place de la Bastille is where the French Revolution manifested in 1798 against a hated aristocracy amid abject misery. Today, the tensions are boiling towards another momentous rebellion, this time inspiring again similar movements across Europe.

These protests and the inhumane suffering that underlie them are channeling uprisings all over the EU.

There is a palpable sense that populations en masse have had enough of decades of inequality and chronic deprivation inflicted by capitalist policies that enrich a few and are enforced by governments slavishly serving the interests of capital over the needs of the citizen majority.

Western media reports talk about “cash-strapped” governments under pressure from bond markets to reduce record debt levels while workers, students and pensioners demand more public investment and relief from economic hardship.

That is a misleading partial portrayal of the problem. Omitted is the crucial backdrop that European governments are directing vast economic resources towards militarism and the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. That is what is causing the “cash-strapped governments.” In other words, their declared fiscal straits are a policy choice, not some mysterious dilemma.

The social crisis sweeping across Europe is also seen in the United States and other Western-aligned nations. The background is a failed economic system that no longer provides a modicum of acceptable living conditions. The problem has been decades in the making from growing inequality and diminishing political representation. Today it is even questionable if Western states are democracies, controlled as they are by corporate oligarchies.

Nevertheless, the social crisis that is unfolding across Europe has been intensified and amplified by European political rulers operating in a relentless war mode against Russia.

The European Union has pumped hundreds of billions of euros into Ukraine over the past four years to prop up a NeoNazi regime run by a corrupt dictatorship – all for the objective of defeating Russia. The EU leaders – many of them unelected, like Ursula von der Leyen, Kaja Kallas and António Costa – are driven by an obsessive Russophobia. But that is only part of the explanation.

Other elected leaders and parties like France’s Macron and Germany’s Merz are also despised for their elitism and delusions of grandeur. Merz declares that he wants to make Germany the strongest military in Europe, in total tin-ear deafness to his nation’s economic and social problems and the sinister historical connotations of resurrecting Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, as his government suffers electoral defeat after defeat, European elites deprecate German voters as being blind because they dare to choose parties that are opposed to war with Russia.

There are many grounds for the Europe-wide contempt of ruling parties. Inequality, poverty, unemployment, soaring living costs, declining wages, deteriorating public services. Uncontrolled immigration amid the pressure on inadequate public resources is another cause for grievance. Europe’s complicity in the Israeli genocidal war on Palestinians, and Europe’s complicity in Trump’s aggression towards Iran, Yemen, Cuba, and so on, are other factors.

However, the bogus narrative that governments are “cash-strapped” is a cause for immense public disgust. There are plenty of economic resources to meet public needs. It’s a question of those resources not being permitted to create just and humane societies under the prevailing capitalist system with its priority of enriching a tiny elite class.

The conditions of “tight budgets” and “austerity for the masses” are created by deliberate policies of militarism and fuelling a proxy war in Ukraine.

European “leaders” and their NATO lobbyists like Mark Rutte demand hundreds of billions of euros to boost military industries while at the same time calling for draconian cuts in public spending and social welfare in order to pay for this reckless militarism. The EU is “lending” an additional €90 billion over the next two years alone just to prop up the corrupt regime in Kiev so that it can keep fighting a futile war with Russia. The perverse priority is driven by the military-industrial complex and its corporate investors. It is also driven by an ideological, propagandized mindset that demonizes Russia as an enemy. President Putin and other Russian voices have repeatedly stated that they do not want war with Europe. They say the conflict in Ukraine has root causes that can be resolved through diplomatic engagement. Why are European politicians implacably opposed to peace?

A major factor is covering for internal political and economic failure of the European system. The EU’s economies, as with those in the U.S. and other Western states, are bankrupt dystopias in terms of delivering on social and democratic needs. The failure has been compounded by the costs of war in Ukraine.

That failure is criminal and fatal for the politicians and governments who have overseen the policies. Thus, the political class, including the propaganda news media, cannot admit their criminal policies.

In the face of their own internal contradictions, the European political elites are seeking a solution by externalizing Russia as an enemy. This is the same modus operandi that European rulers have used for the past century and more, unleashing two world wars as a result.

These criminal politicians and their dysfunctional economic system are again pushing war as their escape plan for survival at the expense of millions of lives and at the risk of starting a third world war, one that this time around could involve catastrophic nuclear nemesis.

It is damning of virtually every European government, including primarily the British, that there are no calls for diplomacy and political settlement with Russia. They are committed to waging war on Russia to absolve themselves from the social devastation they are responsible for.

One positive thing, though, is that increasing numbers of people can see through the chicanery and lies. A German student placard summed it up: “We won’t fight your wars… Education not bombs!”

A day of reckoning is imminent. Criminal political leaders and their warmongering system are exposed like never before and in a way that demands total revolt as a proper solution. The consequences are not to be externalized this time. Chickens are coming home to roost, as Malcom X once said.

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The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to a South African judge who led the UN panel that accused Israel of genocide, leading Israel to brand the judge a "frontrunner" in "lies, hatred and blood libels".

The post Nobel Hands Peace Prize to Judge Who Declared Israel Guilty of “Genocide” appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Diplomatie et monde

L’Allemagne réarme, elle renoue le fil coupe par la défaite c’est le fait le plus important de la période. Le reste n’est que distraction.

De nombreux chercheurs, dont l’éminent historien russe Vassili Klioutchevski, attribuent la fracture civilisationnelle incontestable entre les deux plus grands peuples d’Europe à la géographie, au climat et au paysage, qui ont façonné des modes de vie différents.

Vivant sous un climat prévisible, les Allemands ont développé une habitude de travail méthodique et régulier. Ils pouvaient planifier à l’avance car leur environnement leur permettait d’anticiper les résultats de leurs efforts avec une relative certitude.

Les Russes, en revanche, habitent une terre aux conditions imprévisibles qui s’étend, selon les mots de l’hymne national russe moderne, «des mers du Sud jusqu’à la frontière polaire». Ils ont souvent constaté que planifier à l’avance peut s’avérer totalement vain. De ce fait, ils doivent fréquemment travailler à un rythme effréné dans des délais très courts, s’appuyant sur la notion typiquement russe d’«avos» : l’espoir que, d’une manière ou d’une autre, les choses finiront par s’arranger.

Ces différences culturelles permettent d’expliquer non seulement l’évolution des relations entre ces voisins proches au fil des siècles — rappelons que la ville russe de Kaliningrad était autrefois la ville allemande de Königsberg — mais aussi la logique interne qui sous-tend aujourd’hui les relations politiques russo-allemandes.

L’Allemagne actuelle perçoit la Russie comme une menace pour sa sécurité nationale, à l’instar de ses prédécesseurs à la veille des Première et Seconde Guerres mondiales. Elle remilitarise méthodiquement son économie et accroît son aide militaire à l’Ukraine afin d’affaiblir la Russie sur tous les plans. En 2022-2023, au début de l’opération militaire spéciale, les aides étaient limitées et ciblées. À partir de 2024, Berlin s’est toutefois orientée vers des contrats à long terme pour la fourniture d’équipements et de drones, d’une valeur supérieure à 10 milliards de dollars par an, faisant de l’Allemagne le principal fournisseur d’aide militaire bilatérale à l’Ukraine au sein de l’UE.

La présidente de la Commission européenne, Ursula von der Leyen, ancienne ministre allemande de la Défense, s’est discrètement imposée comme la principale responsable de la distribution des fonds allemands.

Parallèlement, dans la continuité de cette dérive progressive vers une confrontation militaire avec la Russie, le gouvernement de Friedrich Merz poursuit la politique d’Olaf Scholz visant à démanteler la présence diplomatique russe en Allemagne. Après avoir obtenu la fermeture des consulats généraux russes à Munich, Hambourg, Francfort et Leipzig en mai 2023, Berlin a décidé en septembre dernier de fermer le consulat général de Bonn et le centre culturel de la Maison russe à Berlin.

Avec la première économie de l’UE et un représentant de sa propre initiative à un poste parmi les plus influents de la hiérarchie supranationale européenne, Berlin «reprogramme» progressivement une Europe unie pour en faire une sorte de «Quatrième Reich». En devenant un centre de pouvoir plus homogène, l’Europe risque de se retrouver au bord d’une confrontation militaire avec son puissant voisin de l’Est, comme cela s’est produit à maintes reprises au cours de l’histoire.

Afin de rendre la prétendue menace russe tangible, les autorités allemandes alimentent les médias depuis cet été des rumeurs concernant l’implication de Moscou dans la découverte d’un drone chargé d’explosifs à l’aéroport de fret de Leipzig. Sans attendre les conclusions de l’enquête, Berlin s’est empressé d’accuser la Russie d’avoir orchestré un acte de sabotage.

Conscients que leur gouvernement a mené le pays dans une impasse, les citoyens allemands ordinaires commencent à réagir et apportent un soutien croissant à l’Alternative pour l’Allemagne (AfD). Ce parti promet un changement radical de cap en matière de politique étrangère et intérieure — et non un revirement à 360 degrés, comme l’avait proposé l’ancienne ministre des Affaires étrangères Annalena Baerbock, donnant ainsi naissance, involontairement, au mème politique emblématique de la décennie allemande.

Certes, les victoires du parti restent régionales, et les autres partis politiques allemands refusent d’envisager le mouvement d’Alice Weidel et de Tino Chrupalla, même comme partenaire de coalition. Mais si sa base électorale continue de s’élargir, en attirant le soutien non seulement des Allemands de souche mais aussi, à terme, des communautés immigrées, l’AfD pourrait avoir une chance d’obtenir plus de 50% des voix au niveau national. Cela lui permettrait de former un gouvernement à elle seule.

Parallèlement, la cote de popularité de Merz a chuté à un niveau historiquement bas pour un chancelier de la République fédérale : seulement 11 à 15%, avec 85 à 89% d’insatisfaction. Face à ces chiffres et conscient de la demande publique pour une relation plus équilibrée avec la Russie, il a chargé le ministre des Affaires étrangères, Johann Wadephul, d’obtenir une rencontre avec son homologue russe, Sergueï Lavrov, en marge de l’Assemblée générale des Nations unies, coûte que coûte. Le récit de Lavrov illustre clairement le peu de substance de cette rencontre :

«Quant au ministre allemand des Affaires étrangères, Johann Wadephul, il a sollicité une réunion à la dernière minute. Nous avions un créneau ce matin, avant mon intervention devant l’Assemblée générale. Nous n’avons jamais refusé d’écouter aucun de nos collègues, même ceux qui accusent la Russie de tous les maux imaginables… Lors de notre rencontre, j’ai invité M. Wadephul à expliquer l’objet de sa venue. Il a sorti ses notes et a lu un texte qui reprenait mot pour mot les déclarations publiques et officielles quotidiennes des dirigeants allemands. Je le lui ai fait remarquer. Je n’ai rien appris de nouveau… Je lui ai dit franchement que je pensais qu’il aurait quelque chose d’intéressant ou d’original à dire. Ils auraient tout simplement pu nous appeler et nous demander de lire leurs communiqués officiels…»

Pourquoi les relations entre Moscou et Berlin se sont-elles tellement détériorées que même les rencontres entre leurs ministres des Affaires étrangères se sont transformées en échanges stériles de points de discussion préparés, plutôt qu’en négociations visant une percée ?

Au moins trois facteurs méritent d’être examinés.

1. Le rôle contre-productif de Berlin dans les efforts de résolution du conflit en Ukraine

Dès les premiers jours de la crise ukrainienne, l’Allemagne a cherché à contrôler le processus diplomatique afin d’ancrer fermement la position anti-russe du pays. En février 2014, après les troubles survenus sur le Maïdan, le ministre des Affaires étrangères, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, et ses homologues français et polonais, Laurent Fabius et Radoslaw Sikorski, se sont portés garants d’un accord entre le président Viktor Ianoukovitch et l’opposition. Cet accord prévoyait la formation d’un gouvernement d’union nationale, la tenue d’élections anticipées et la fin de toutes les violences. Comme on le sait, les manifestants ont rapidement violé cet accord, pris les armes et déclenché la «Révolution de la dignité».

Un an plus tard, la chancelière allemande Angela Merkel et le président français François Hollande se sont joints à la Russie comme médiateurs dans les pourparlers entre Kiev et les républiques populaires de Donetsk et de Lougansk, aboutissant à la signature d’un ensemble de mesures visant à mettre en œuvre les accords de Minsk. Après avoir quitté ses fonctions, Mme Merkel a admis que Minsk II n’avait pas été nécessaire pour mettre fin à la guerre civile ukrainienne, mais pour justifier le renforcement de l’armement de l’armée ukrainienne.

Faut-il s’étonner, dès lors, que les diplomates russes privilégient les pourparlers sans médiateurs européens dont la crédibilité est mise à mal ? Ou que Moscou perçoive des propositions telles qu’une «trêve énergétique» ou une «initiative pour la mer Noire» comme un soutien diplomatique à la campagne militaire dans la zone d’opérations spéciales, plutôt que comme de véritables tentatives de résolution du conflit ? Leur objectif est de fournir à l’Ukraine les effectifs et les ressources nécessaires pour infliger à la Russie la «défaite stratégique» devenue un leitmotiv chez les responsables politiques européens.

2. La rupture des liens commerciaux et économiques avec la Russie

Hormis de brèves récessions liées à des bouleversements mondiaux tels que la crise financière de 2008-2009 et la pandémie de COVID-19 de 2020-2021, l’économie allemande a enregistré une croissance annuelle régulière de 1 à 3,5% au XXIe siècle. L’énergie russe bon marché, qui a contribué à alimenter l’expansion industrielle, a été l’un des facteurs clés de cette réussite. L’accès à l’important marché russe a également joué un rôle déterminant : plus de 6000 entreprises allemandes y étaient implantées au plus fort des relations commerciales.

Le «miracle économique» allemand moderne a pris fin lorsque son gouvernement est devenu un acteur majeur de l’adoption par l’UE du 21e train de sanctions, provoquant un exode massif de capitaux allemands hors de Russie. Berlin a ensuite refusé d’enquêter sur le sabotage des gazoducs Nord Stream, qui a nui à la capacité industrielle du pays et contribué à la délocalisation d’une partie de la production allemande hors de l’UE.

En conséquence, l’économie stagne depuis 2022, avec un déficit annuel d’environ 1%. Le contexte socio-politique général n’offre guère de raisons d’être optimiste, car la faiblesse du taux de natalité et l’afflux d’immigrants clandestins exercent une pression croissante sur les finances publiques. Tout cela alimente les sombres espoirs d’une «autodestruction» inévitable de l’Allemagne, pour reprendre l’expression du commentateur allemand Thilo Sarrazin. Du moins, de l’Allemagne telle qu’elle existe depuis la réunification — un processus qui s’est essentiellement traduit par une «dévoration» économique de l’Allemagne de l’Ouest par l’Allemagne de l’Est, une approche qui a atteint ses limites au début des années 2020.

3. Confiance dans le fait que la Russie agira de manière responsable

La Russie est depuis longtemps un épouvantail pour les médias allemands. Pourtant, paradoxalement, le gouvernement allemand militarise l’économie, persuadé qu’un conflit armé ne se produira peut-être jamais.

Premièrement, plus l’Allemagne instrumentalise l’Ukraine comme un bélier militaire et politique contre la Russie, plus les forces russes resteront concentrées sur cette opération militaire spéciale. Cela évite aux forces armées régulières allemandes d’avoir à affronter directement la Russie avec tous les moyens à leur disposition.

Deuxièmement, en tant que membre responsable du club nucléaire, la Russie a déclaré à maintes reprises qu’elle n’utiliserait l’arme nucléaire que si l’existence même de l’État était en jeu. Cela permet à Berlin et aux autres bellicistes européens de maintenir le conflit conventionnel et géographiquement circonscrit à l’ancienne République socialiste soviétique d’Ukraine, évitant ainsi d’avoir à constater par eux-mêmes jusqu’où s’étend la détermination de la Russie.

Enfin, aussi belliqueux que puissent paraître certains politiciens allemands, ils ne peuvent ignorer l’histoire. Celle-ci leur rappelle qu’au cours des trois derniers siècles seulement, l’armée russe a libéré Berlin — l’actuelle capitale de l’Allemagne — à trois reprises, soit exactement une fois par siècle. Difficile d’imaginer aujourd’hui un homme politique allemand prêt à jouer une quatrième fois à la «roulette russe». Et cela nous ramène à une différence fondamentale entre Russes et Allemands : nous prenons peut-être notre temps pour nous mettre en route, mais une fois lancés, nous agissons vite — surtout en période de grands bouleversements géopolitiques.

EN PRIME

Le taux d’approbation de Merz est inférieur à 10%. Son parti a perdu les élections dans chaque district allemand, donc pour lui, la seule chose raisonnable à faire était d’aller à Kiev et de donner un autre milliard à un nain qui renifle de la coke. Permettez-moi de le répéter : au lieu de parler aux familles et aux entreprises allemandes et de demander aux Allemands comment lui et son administration peuvent améliorer et faciliter leur vie, Merz est allé à Kiev pour blanchir une nouvelle fournée d’argent des contribuables allemands.

By Emran FEROZ

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

The war inaugurated a terrible new global order in which armed drones kill civilians who are neither named nor counted.

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There were nights full of terror. Our village was bombed constantly,” says Zalmay Khan. Afterward, he goes to pray. Because of his wounds, he cannot kneel, so he prays sitting down.

Khan is in his early twenties and now works as a Taliban intelligence officer. As a boy, he says, he learned to read the sky before he learned to read words. His village in Wardak province, near Kabul, was bombed, then bombed again. First came American planes, then NATO’s, then those of the Afghan army the West had built. By night it got worse, when jets and armed foreign contractors hit villages and killed civilians seemingly at random.

“I became a Mujahed [a Taliban fighter] naturally,” Khan tells me.

He is not an outlier. In village after village on my most recent trip to Afghanistan a few weeks ago, I met men who grew up as the so-called war on terror’s raw material. Some wear the Taliban’s turbans, and some do not. Almost all of them say the same thing, with remarkable calm: The American narrative of this war belongs to the past. After two decades of war and destruction, it is their turn to control narratives and to rule the country.

October 7, 2026, marks exactly 25 years since the United States began bombing Afghanistan. The anniversary will pass in Washington with little reflection. In Afghanistan, the reality of it is lived daily.

Drones and Ghosts

The war on terror made history in a way few people remember. In its opening weeks, the United States used an armed drone against a target in Afghanistan, one of the first such attacks ever, in an attempt to kill the Taliban’s founder, Mullah Mohammad Omar, in Kandahar. Omar was not hit on October 7, 2001. He survived and reportedly died of natural causes a decade later, which the Taliban kept secret for years.

Who died instead? The record offers almost nothing: no definitive or officially confirmed names, ages, villages. One news report cites unnamed Kandahar residents suggesting the raid killed Omar’s 10-year-old son and the child’s stepfather, but the Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan declined to confirm or deny this report.

In other words, the first known attempt to kill a man with an armed drone killed people no one has ever definitively identified, and it set the template for the type of warfare that would dominate over the next decades. No one can say who the victims were. But if the pattern of the following years is any guide, many were likely civilians, like the thousands of victims who came after them. During the Obama years, Afghanistan officially became the world’s most drone-bombed country.

That template repeated itself so often that Afghans developed names for the many men who were declared dead after supposed “surgical strikes,” but who then reappeared alive: mord-e zinda (the living dead) in Farsi and khyali marr (the not truly dead) in Pashto. I call them “Taliban ghosts.”

It continued across successive U.S. administrations, even across the bureaucratic, supposedly methodical “kill lists” infamously used by the Obama administration used to mark people for death from the skies.

The obvious question was almost never asked: If Omar was not the victim, who was killed instead? In the logic of the drone war, a body is a statistic, and a body in a targeted area becomes a militant by default. The dead were not counted, and the stories of their families, who were left to count for themselves, largely continued to go unknown.

Strikes did not only create ghosts. They also created recruits. Researchers, journalists, and Afghan elders have long described the same pattern: A village is hit, a family is destroyed, and the Taliban offer the survivors the only form of justice made available to them. By the end of the war, entire districts had made that choice, not out of ideological conviction but out of grief.

Democratic Torture

One of the people I talked to on my recent trip was a Taliban official who had been held at Bagram, the American prison north of Kabul, for several years. He told me what the Americans wanted from him. “Accept our democracy or get tortured and rot here. That’s what they told me,” he recalled.

The aim, as he described it, was reeducation by coercion: Accept our system, our ideology, and the pain stops. He refused. By his account, he left more committed than when he arrived. He was freed in 2020 under the prisoner exchange the United States negotiated with the Taliban, part of the same Doha process that handed the country back to the movement the war was purportedly meant to destroy.

Consider the sequence. A man is imprisoned and tortured to make him embrace a political order. He then walks out of the prison and eventually helps govern. The war’s own methods created much of its failure.

I make no argument here that the Taliban’s rule is benign. Women and girls have been shut out of education and public life, and dissent is severely punished. These facts belong in any honest account. But an honest account also includes what the war did, who did it, and whom they harmed; the powers that waged it have shown little interest in reckoning with that part.

A War Passed On

Here is the part that does not fit the story that the war on terror ended in August 2021: someone else is still fighting it.

Pakistan is currently bombing Afghanistan. Just a few days ago, Pakistani airstrikes killed at least 10 civilians, most of them children, in the provinces of Helmand and Kunar.

Pakistani authorities say they are targeting militants of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, often known as the Pakistani Taliban. Afghans on the ground, and independent reports, repeatedly describe civilians as being among the dead. Islamabad has also forced hundreds of thousands of Afghans, many of them born there, out of Pakistan.

The phrasing used to justify these attacks is familiar: “Terrorists were eliminated.” Anyone who covered the American war has heard that sentence before, and the same pattern follows. The claims are hard to verify, the dead are hard to identify, and the people left behind are not asked.

Pakistan has run this game before, and it has historically done well for itself out of it. In the first days of the war on terror, Islamabad aligned itself with Washington while, according to critics and many former officials, hedging its bets with the Taliban. The United States poured billions into Pakistan in military aid and reimbursements. A double game paid for itself.

For a military establishment that benefits from a war to fight, an enemy is an asset. That helps explain why the army has so little tolerance for those who challenge its role. This pattern goes beyond the foreign policy of one country alone. It is a system — one created by the U.S. but now adopted globally — that requires a threat to warrant its continued expansion and removes the people who question its logic.

If Pakistan again needs an Afghan threat to justify its budgets, its alliances, and its hold on power at home, the logic is the same as in 2001. The war on terror, seen from Islamabad, is a renewable resource.

The Violence That Made the TTP

The TTP itself is not a mystery. It did not appear from nowhere, and it cannot be blamed on Kabul alone. It grew out of Pakistan’s own tribal areas, where decades of military operations, drone strikes with Islamabad’s tacit consent, and brutality under former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf shattered communities. Many of these massacres have been forgotten outside the region. In the tribal belt they are not.

The result was a generation radicalized by state violence, in much the same process I heard described in Afghan villages. The TTP is, in significant part, a product of the very policies now used to justify the continued bombing of Afghanistan. Without Pakistan’s violence in the tribal areas, the group would not look as it does. Accountability for that history will not come from the same army that carried it out.

The war on terror in Afghanistan was sold as a campaign against a specific enemy. What it produced was a country scarred by airstrikes, night raids, and detention, and an enemy that outlasted the world’s strongest military. It also produced a new precedent: That a state can kill from the sky, in secret, and rarely be asked who died, much less held accountable for its deathmaking.

That precedent traveled. Drones have gone from being an innovation in killing, one shrouded in secrecy, to a mainstay of battlefields on multiple continents.. The language of “surgical” strikes and “militants eliminated” has become standard, notably throughout the genocide in Gaza. And in Afghanistan, the war continues in new hands, with the same justifications and the same result.

On October 7, if this anniversary is marked in the U.S. at all, there will be speeches about sacrifice and lessons supposedly learned. The real lessons are available to anyone who asks the people who lived under the sky, and the most critical question is still the one nobody answered in 2001: Who was killed instead?

Original article:  truthout.org

NATO’s full Military Committee just visited Kiev. They’re studying Ukraine’s war as their own testing ground.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

Everyone off on a trip to Kiev

On 6 October, Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, arrived in Kiev with military representatives from all thirty-two Allied nations. He wrote this himself on X: the delegation was there to reaffirm its ‘unconditional support’ for Ukraine. ANSA reported the news as an official visit. A strategic signal aimed at Moscow as well.

First, the facts. The Military Committee assists and advises the Atlantic Council, the Defence Planning Committee and the Nuclear Planning Group; its role is to set military policy and strategy. It was invited by the new Supreme Commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Mykhailo Drapatyi. The Committee returned to Kiev in full force after eight years, and the meetings with Drapatyi and the Ukrainian General Staff served to obtain a first-hand assessment of the battlefield, to discuss Kiev ’s military priorities and to bring to the Alliance the lessons learnt from over four years of high-intensity warfare. Dragone speaks of military priorities and lessons useful for the Allies’ operational readiness in the face of today’s and tomorrow’s threats.

Now for the interpretation, which must be kept distinct from the facts. A body that advises the Nuclear Planning Group does not travel through a country at war merely to make gestures of solidarity. It goes to gather information and to calibrate its own preparedness against it. The flow described by the sources runs in both directions: from Ukraine to the Alliance as operational experience, and from the Alliance to Ukraine as guidance on priorities. When the military leaders of thirty-two states sit down with the General Staff of one of the belligerents to assess their own readiness in the context of the ongoing war, that war ceases to be an external affair. It has become the Alliance’s testing ground.

This sequence confirms the direction. On 3 June, the North Atlantic Council met in Kiev , and the NATO-Ukraine Council was held there for the first time. In October, it is the military’s turn. First the political framework, then the structure that fills it with operational content – this is not a passing courtesy, but an institutional presence that grows stronger at every stage.

Then there is the statement that shifts the discussion beyond Ukraine. To those who believe that sabotage, cyber-attacks and airspace violations could undermine Western support, Dragone replies: ‘You are failing.’ He holds Russia fully responsible for such behaviour and states that allied unity has never been so strong. The Ukrainian front and the sub-threshold pressure on Allied territory are placed within the same framework, articulated by the same man from the same venue. The distinction underpinning the ‘Ukraine versus Russia’ narrative – that between a war over there and tensions here – is erased by the Chairman of the Military Committee himself.

Images, symbols and meanings

The image remains. In the video message recorded in Kiev, the admiral speaks with two flags behind him; in institutional communications, the backdrop is never improvised – it reveals who is speaking and on whose behalf. The person appearing beneath those symbols is neither a mediator nor an observer. The flags tell the same story as the words – words that reflect a deliberate and conscious choice: namely, the war for Kiev, total dedication to a cause that should have nothing to do with Europe.

The serious objection is another, and it must be acknowledged. None of the three sources documents allied troops in combat, and no Member State has declared war on Russia. The delegation came to consult and to pay tribute at the Wall of Remembrance dedicated to the Ukrainian fallen. The law of armed conflict distinguishes between support for one side and direct participation in hostilities, and on that ground the distinction exists, but the legal classification does not exhaust the geopolitical analysis. The Allies no longer describe their role as aid to a third party: they speak of their own readiness, their own threats, their own unity. When an alliance measures its own preparedness against another’s war and attributes acts of sabotage on its own soil to that same adversary, the confrontation involves two parties, and one of them is not Ukraine.

The assessment, then. On the political-strategic level, the confrontation between NATO and Russia is direct, and the sources show this with sufficient clarity. On the kinetic level, the sources do not record any direct Allied involvement, although this is constantly invoked and called for, as if it were NATO’s greatest desire. The gap between the two levels, however, narrows with every visit of this kind. There are two indicators to watch: the possible permanent establishment of allied facilities on Ukrainian territory, and the way in which acts of sabotage – which the Alliance attributes to Moscow – will be dealt with, whilst Zelensky orders the bombing of further Russian oil refineries and new drones fly over Moscow, despite Donald Trump having told them to stop.

Everything is spiralling out of control; NATO is acting independently of the US sphere of influence because it has embraced the Ukrainian cause as if it were the final world war – the one in which the Alliance will either win, or there will be nothing left to do.

The ‘Ukraine versus Russia’ narrative served to contain the war within a framework that was reassuring to European public opinion. With 32 military representatives in the Ukrainian capital, led by an Italian admiral, that framework is holding together less and less.

Let it be clear that this decision is not accidental; it is not a political trap, nor is it even an error of judgement, but a declaration of war – yet another hybrid and, stylistically, pitiful declaration against Russia. They are telling us this openly, whilst we are distracted by other thoughts.

It remains to be seen whether governments will tell their voters this. And it also remains to be seen whether the brave four-star generals will realise a wise truth that the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz wrote in his manuals: “The mistake lies not in making a misstep, but in failing to recognise it and in seeking to defend it at all costs”.

There is, however, no reason to break the spell cast by Kiev , which is currently enchanting the whole of Europe, because, as Napoleon said – to quote him a second time – “One must never interrupt the enemy whilst he is making a mistake”.

A proxy war against Russia is now spiralling into an all-out confrontation.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern discusses how the Western official news media have systematically promoted lies about the Bucha Massacre in Ukraine.

No Western official outlet has questioned the narrative purporting that Russia perpetrated a mass killing of civilians. Credible Russian information to the contrary is dismissed out of hand as Kremlin propaganda.

Ironically, it is Western media that are seen as the propagandists and the purveyors of Big Lies – if one cares to examine the record objectively.

The alleged Bucha atrocity involved the apparent execution of hundreds of civilians by Russian forces as they were withdrawing from Kiev and surrounding areas at the end of March 2022. European leaders ritualistically visit a memorial in Bucha and condemn Russian barbarity.

The political objective of those shocking Western media claims was to sabotage a potential peace deal with Moscow and to prolong the proxy war with the aim of NATO strategically defeating Russia. That culminated in nearly five years of war, millions of casualties, a failed NATO objective, and worse still, the danger of a general war in Europe going nuclear.

Ray McGovern points out that the timeline of the Bucha killings does not fit the Western media narrative. The corpses on the streets of Bucha appeared days after the Russian forces made their withdrawal to what was then the East of Ukraine.

Recently, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov presented new details at the United Nations that substantiate the claim that the Bucha killings were a false-flag propaganda stunt to smear Russia and to wreck any prospect of an early peace deal with Ukraine. A Russian-led investigation reveals that many of the alleged civilian victims whose names are inscribed on a memorial wall were identified as Ukrainian soldiers who had been killed in action and buried elsewhere.

The Russian report is entitled “Heirs of Goebbels: falsification of the events in Bucha and bloody staged performances of the Kiev regime.” (Western internet has suppressed links to the report, though it can be accessed from the Russian foreign ministry.)

As McGovern notes, not one major Western media outlet reported on Lavrov’s presentation at the United Nations and his delivery of the Russian investigation to UN Secretary-General António Guterres. McGovern believes the perpetrators were MI6, CIA, and the Kiev regime operatives.

This egregious example of Western media suppression of Russian information and perspective on the conflict in Ukraine is repeated over and over. Another example, as McGovern amply recounts, was the attempt by Moscow to engage the United States and European NATO partners in a security treaty in late 2021. Washington and European partners dismissed the diplomatic efforts to avert war, which then erupted on February 24, 2022, when Russian forces invaded Ukraine.

The Russian invasion was not unprovoked aggression, as Western media have dutifully asserted. It was a preemptive response to NATO covert aggression via the NeoNazi Kiev regime over seven years since the coup in 2014.

The Nord Stream gas pipeline sabotage is another case study of how Western media have systematically ignored the evidence implicating a NATO provocation and the background to the proxy war against Russia.

Official Western media are in the service of a political agenda and not the public interest. Their function is to prevent popular understanding of the real nature of the war in Ukraine, a proxy war against Russia that is now spiralling into an all-out confrontation.

We refer to the quote from Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. president, who warned: “Our liberty [democracy] depends on freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

Ray McGovern laments that there has been a dreadful erosion of democracy and media independence over recent decades since the end of the Cold War and the rise of U.S. unilateralism.

However, on a positive note, he sees hopeful signs from the phenomenal growth in alternative media and independent information, generating more critical public awareness of government abuses of power. He believes that genuine democracy can survive and thrive – despite the official Western media whose power is waning as more people realize its insidious role in promoting criminal wars.

Ray McGovern worked as a CIA intelligence analyst for nearly 30 years under seven presidents, the first being John F Kennedy in 1963. On his retirement, he was awarded the Intelligence Commendation Medal. He handed back the medal in 2006 in protest over the CIA’s practice of systematic torture. He has repudiated the Agency as an enemy of democracy.

In a final note of breaking news, on November 18th this year, in his 87th year, this “proud Irish son” will be honored with the James Joyce Award conferred by University College Dublin, Ireland. The prize is bestowed by the students of UCD’s Historical and Literary Society for his independent thinking, intellectual courage, and distinguished contribution to public information and democratic society.

Kenya wants five of its citizens captured fighting for Russia in Ukraine to be treated as victims of human trafficking rather than prisoners of war, Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi told Kenyan lawmakers on 8 October, Bloomberg reported. Botswana is also seeking a citizen's return.

In 2025, Ukrainian ambassador Ivan Kholostenko called Russia's role in Africa neocolonialism. As Africa Corps troops prop up friendly regimes, the Kremlin is carrying out "a typical colonial practice of resource extraction," taking gold, diamonds, bauxite, and uranium, according to Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence. Russia also uses the continent as a recruiting ground for its war: nearly 500 Africans have died fighting for Russia, Ukraine says.

Five Kenyans in a Ukrainian camp

Kenya is negotiating to bring the five men home, and President William Ruto has raised the matter with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Mudavadi told the Senate. One has been held since November 2025, the others since March and April. The youngest is 23, Bloomberg reported. Kenya's honorary consul found them held in humane conditions at the Zakhid-1 camp, with access to medical care, the government said. Ukraine also holds the remains of four Kenyans.

Victims or fighters for hire

African governments say some of their citizens went to Russia for promised work as drivers, security guards, or cooks and were then forced into military service. The Kenyans "report having been recruited under false promises of employment," Mudavadi said.

"The circumstances of their recruitment and conscription are consistent with trafficking in persons," he said.

Ukraine's POW authority sees most foreign recruits differently. "The main motive for most of these mercenaries is financial gain," Dmytro Usov, secretary of Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, said in November 2025, while stressing that many had ended up in Russia's army through fraud or coercion.

Ukraine holds that prisoners of war go home through exchanges, but Russia has never asked to trade for any foreign fighter except North Koreans, the headquarters said in May, adding it may consider other solutions if diplomats and lawyers find one.

Thousands of foreigners in Russia's ranks

Russia has recruited more than 28,000 foreigners from 135 countries, and more than 5,000 have been killed, a Ukrainian government website cited by Bloomberg says. Ukraine holds at least 213 foreign prisoners of war, not counting Russians and North Koreans, 37 of them African, according to documents Bloomberg saw. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin claimed on 3 September that people are "coming forward voluntarily and signing contracts."

Kenya's government counts 354 citizens linked to the war: 84 killed or missing, 34 hospitalized in Russia, and 62 repatriated. Petitioners told senators that 841 Kenyans remain unaccounted for. Mudavadi said his March visit to Moscow put Kenya on a Russian recruitment "stop list," with no new Kenyans enlisted since.

Some African governments take steps

In August, Botswana stopped eight citizens from joining the Russian military at airports in Botswana, South Africa, and Ethiopia, Bloomberg reported.

Ghana accused Russia of luring its citizens into the war the same month, after Kenya and South Africa. The European Parliament said in March that Russia strips African recruits of their documents. Ukraine, meanwhile, is drafting its first Africa strategy.

China is increasingly trying to diversify its connections to the region as Pakistan’s actions in Afghanistan create new security and strategic problems for Beijing. The opening of a road through the Wakhan Corridor is an important step in that effort. Afghanistan has formally inaugurated a 121-kilometer road through the corridor, running from Broghil to the […]

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Three years into Israel's genocide in Gaza, the consequences of a decision driven by siege, settlement expansion and assaults on Al-Aqsa are still unfolding

Trump said Thursday that the U.S. 'will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd.'

Trump said Thursday that the U.S. 'will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd.'

As Palestine commemorates three years of genocide and devastation, find a synopsis of news – in Gaza, West Bank, Israel, and beyond – right here. Every day.

Russia is concentrating missiles on a smaller, more specific set of targets, and its jet-powered attack drones are part of the reason, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessed. Its combined attack overnight on 7 October killed 22 people in Pryluky, the State Emergency Service (SES) said as of the morning of 8 October. Russian milbloggers noted the shift the same day.

Russia often uses concentrated drone and missile strikes to overwhelm localized Ukrainian air defenses and destroy urban centers, ISW noted. Pryluky, where the strike killed children, was one of the areas a Russian channel says drew a significant share of the Kh-101s that night. With winter close, ISW expects the same pattern against Ukraine's energy grid, with jet drones partly letting Russia keep its missiles for priority targets without firing many more.

Missile waves on a few areas, Russian channels claim

Russia launched 48 Kh-101, Iskander-K, and Kalibr cruise missiles overnight on 7 October, Ukraine's Air Force reported. It also fired ballistic missiles, Zircon and Oniks anti-ship missiles, and 130 strike and decoy drones, 46 of them jet-powered Shahed-type models.

Russian milbloggers claimed the same day that Moscow had grouped a large part of its missile salvo into repeated waves on a few areas, while other weapons kept stretching Ukraine's air defenses elsewhere. The pro-war Russian Telegram channel Dva Mayora described the change as a switch from striking with splayed fingers to a series of hits with missile "fists." Defenders must then absorb a sharply rising load around one chosen site as one wave follows another, the channel claimed.

Citing Ukrainian monitoring channels, it claimed that roughly 30 or more Kh-101 cruise missiles flew toward Pryluky, Kremenchuk, Svitlovodsk, and Oleksandriia in Chernihiv, Poltava, and Kirovohrad oblasts. It put the Kremenchuk group at up to 15 missiles, Kh-101s and Kalibrs among them, aimed at the area of Kremenchuk and its hydroelectric plant.

Jet drones take some of the load off Russia's missiles

ISW said the jet-powered versions penetrate Ukrainian air defenses deeper and more reliably than propeller models. In ISW's assessment, that partly lets Russia concentrate cruise and ballistic missiles on priority targets without significantly raising missile use. Russia builds about 3,000 Geran-4 and Geran-5 jet drones a month, Ukraine's military intelligence agency (HUR) told Militarnyi in August.

ISW expects Russia to apply the pattern in a likely brutal winter campaign against energy infrastructure. Russia likely intends to make city life untenable and force Ukraine to capitulate to its demands, ISW assessed. Such tactics have not worked before and are unlikely to work now, analysts added.

They called cheap countermeasures to jet drones and small cruise missiles vital, alongside Western air defense aid such as US-made Patriots, which can stop ballistic missiles. Ukraine has already paired a Soviet-era Kub launcher with American RIM-7 interceptors to catch jet drones.

TEL AVIV – Every Israeli election of the past decade has been sold as the last chance to save the country, and every one has ended in the same place: a long night of counting, followed by weeks of bargaining among men who swore they would never sit together. The vote on October 27 has a stronger […]

The post Israel votes again but the arithmetic hasn’t changed appeared first on Asia Times.

A company of unmanned ground systems from Ukraine's 92nd Assault Brigade used the robotic system Frodo to evacuate a wounded soldier, Frontline Robotics told Militarnyi on 7 October.

Ground robots are being used to evacuate wounded soldiers from the drone-dominated "kill zone," a band tens of kilometers deep on both sides of the front line. About 112,000 logistics and evacuation missions by ground robotic systems were recorded from January through August 2026, according to Ukraine's Defense Ministry.

Operator credits speed and suspension

The operator, callsign Tango, named speed and the ability to perform complex maneuvers as the robot's main advantages, according to Militarnyi. The unit also praised Frodo's adaptive suspension, which it said smoothed out rough terrain and kept the wounded soldier's transport relatively comfortable.

What Frodo can carry, and how far

The robot has a 6×6 wheel layout with independent suspension, adjustable ground clearance of 170–330 mm, and a top speed of 40 km/h. Its recommended payload is 200 kg, and its maximum is 400 kg, according to Frontline Robotics. The company lists its range as 150 km on asphalt and up to 90 km over rough terrain with the recommended load. Frodo supports several communication channels, and one person can swap its batteries in about two minutes.

Frodo had passed the Defense Ministry's codification and could carry remote-controlled modules such as the Burya turret, Militarnyi reported on 30 September.

The 92nd Brigade had used ground robots to evacuate wounded soldiers before. In September 2025, the brigade evacuated three wounded soldiers using a ground robot, according to Militarnyi.

Five years after seizing Kabul, the Taliban’s strongest argument for international acceptance rests on control. The Taliban governs every provincial capital and faces no conventional army capable of marching on Kabul. It repeatedly cites improved security as proof that Afghanistan’s post-2021 order is settled. But armed resistance is becoming more geographically dispersed, more organizationally diverse […]

The post Bit by bit, the Taliban is losing control of Afghanistan appeared first on Asia Times.

With a month still to go before America’s mid-term congressional and gubernatorial elections, the prospect of a “blue wave” of Democratic success in the House of Representatives, the Senate and in many governorships is looking increasingly likely. But whether that forecast holds true or not, one important aspect has already become clear. It is that […]

The post Plainly, Trump doesn’t really care about the midterms appeared first on Asia Times.

A statistical report released Wednesday by the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education documents Israeli violations against the education sector from October 7, 2023, through October 7, 2026