After the breakdown of talks in Pakistan, the ceasefire between the US and Iran is more fragile than ever, and now seems likely to give way to a new phase of the war. The ceasefire and talks have failed to end Israel’s devastating attacks on Lebanon or to negotiate international access to the Strait of Hormuz, now under Iran’s control.
Více: counterpunch.org
An Interview with Jeffrey D. Sachs by Tucker Carlson On the war in Iran, the US—Israel alliance, and the choice of an off-ramp
Edited from the taped interview here: https://www.youtube.com/live/sFow6dOMfgQ
Tucker Carlson: Jeff, thanks a lot for doing this.
Jeffrey Sachs: Great to be with you.
Tucker Carlson: Where does it go from here? The war in Iran.
Jeffrey Sachs: We’re at a decisive moment, and there’s an off-ramp we should take. We should avoid a return to outright bombing—a very real possibility. The other possibility is uncontrolled escalation into full-blown war that becomes regional and could become a world war. We’re not in a stable situation where we can choose at our leisure. The world economy is reeling, because, as everybody has learned in their geography in the last few weeks, the Strait of Hormuz is closed1. As long as it’s closed, a worldwide economic crisis is building. We can’t say, well, we’ll decide in another month, we’ll see how things go, we’ll negotiate. Right now, there is a serious global economic crisis, because a narrow stretch of water through which an enormous strategic flow of resources passes—oil and gas, but also fertilizers, petrochemicals, and commodities like aluminum—is closed. Simply opening it would be fine. That’s basically what the off-ramp would allow. It would not solve any of the underlying issues, nor any of the stated objectives of the United States, much less Israel. I don’t believe those objectives were valid, so they shouldn’t be the basis for whether to take that exit ramp. But there’s a way out that avoids escalation to something quite different.
The US is simply unable to wage “simultaneous theater wars” as outlined in the Project of the New American Century (PNAC), which defined at the outset of the Bush Administration America’s “Global Warfare Agenda.”
Více: substack.com
Интересуясь историей России, я со временем стал симпатизировать СССР и коммунистическим идеям. В левое движение меня привёл телеграм-канал «Советский реванш», который спустя время репостнул заметку «Спички» о мигрантах. Так я узнал о «Спичке» и чуть позже в неё вступил. Через год взял интервью, которое ты читаешь прямо сейчас.
Více: spichka.media
“He who pays the piper calls the tune” is the proverb alluded to in the title of Gabriel Rockhill’s outstanding new book Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? subtitled “The Intellectual World War. Marxism Versus the Imperial Theory Industry.” [1] The title of Rockhill’s book calls to mind the British title of a well-known earlier book Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and The Cultural Cold War by Frances Stonor Saunders.[2] While rich in factual detail, the Saunders work rarely went beyond liberal outrage about CIA deceit, corruption, contempt for democracy, and brutal violence.
Europe has repeatedly rejected peace with Russia at moments when a negotiated settlement was available, and those rejections have proven profoundly self-defeating. From the nineteenth century to the present, Russia’s security concerns have been treated not as legitimate interests to be negotiated within a broader European order, but as moral transgressions to be resisted, contained, or overridden. This pattern has persisted across radically different Russian regimes—Tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet—suggesting that the problem lies not primarily in Russian ideology, but in Europe’s enduring refusal to recognize Russia as a legitimate and equal security actor.
Let us put this in a historical perspective: the commemoration of the War to End All Wars acknowledges that 15 million lives were lost in the course of World War I (1914-18).
The loss of life in the Second World War (1939-1945) was on a much large scale, when compared to World War I: 60 million lives both military and civilian were lost during World War II. (Four times those killed during World War I.)
The president’s latest National Security Strategy memorandum treats the freedom to coerce others as the essence of US sovereignty. It is an ominous document that will—if allowed to stand—come back to haunt the United States.
The 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) recently released by President Donald Trump presents itself as a blueprint for renewed American strength. It is dangerously misconceived in four ways.
More: commondreams.org
