TRUMP ASKED XI FOR THREE-WAY ARMS TALKS, ON TUESDAY THE WORLD MEETS ON NUCLEAR ABOLITION
There were three major statements about nuclear weapons on Friday, Sept. 25. In Washington, near the bottom of the White House fact sheet on the Xi visit, is a sentence that got less media attention than the pandas going to the Atlanta Zoo: “The President advocated for trilateral arms control negotiations between the United States, […]
ARE WE PSYCHOLOGICALLY READY?
On Saturday the BBC reported “War May Be Coming” and asked the British public: “Are We Psychologically Ready?” Readers were told the government wants them to stockpile canned food and water and “plan for the possibility of war”; the piece closed by explaining how Finland and Norway run conscription. The same day the U.S. Secretary […]
DECIDING WHAT FIVE HUNDRED YEARS WILL HAVE MEANT
On Sept. 6 the citizens of Saxony-Anhalt in Germany voted 43.8% for a party that wants the Nord Stream pipelines reopened and the Ukraine war ended, and halved the vote of the Chancellor’s party. Eleven days earlier in Kinshasa, President Félix Tshisekedi signed a thousand-kilometer railroad deal and laid out how he connects it to […]
MOSCOW CONFIRMS GALLAGHER MEETS LAVROV TUESDAY
The Russian Foreign Ministry has confirmed that Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States and International Organisations—i.e., the Vatican’s foreign minister—will make a working visit to Russia August 24-28, and will hold talks with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on August 25. Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova gave the dates at her Aug. 20 briefing. The […]
WHAT A SYSTEM CAN NO LONGER MAKE, IT CAN ONLY FORBID
This week the State Department sanctioned Cuba’s mining companies and its Construction Ministry. Brussels amended its refugee policies to prevent Ukrainians from escaping conscription. Fifteen Western governments answered Israel’s E1 settlement tenders by advising construction firms to consider their reputations. Washington announced an “economic D-Day” against Iran with little effect. And 170 Haitians were deported […]
DEVELOPMENT IS THE NEW NAME FOR PEACE: THE SUMMIT THAT SHOULD BE
In October 1965 Paul VI became the first pope to address the United Nations General Assembly. He quoted an American president murdered less than two years earlier: “Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.” He cited Isaiah on beating swords into plowshares. Two years later, in Populorum […]
CHINA PASSES FRANCE IN NUCLEAR POWER, APPROVES EIGHT MORE REACTORS
Two Chinese reactors reached start-up milestones four days apart, and with them China’s installed nuclear capacity reached 63.98 GWe, passing France’s 63 GW for the first time. China is now second in the world only to the United States, at 96.9 GWe—and it is the only one of the three that is expanding its capacity. […]
THE PHASE CHANGE
Heat water and nothing appears to happen—until it reaches its boiling point and becomes something else entirely. That is a phase change, and it is what Helga Zepp-LaRouche says the world is now facing: “A phase change has to occur one way or another, because the existing trajectory is coming to an end.” The Iran […]
TÜRKİYE DEMANDS SAFE NAVIGATION AFTER DRONES STRIKE TWO OF ITS SHIPS
Türkiye’s Foreign Ministry denounced attacks on two Turkish-owned civilian cargo vessels in the Black Sea and called on Russia and Ukraine both to guarantee the safety of commercial navigation, after drones struck the ships near the Russian port of Novorossiysk late on August 3rd. The Nadezhda was hit roughly 20 nautical miles off Novorossiysk while […]
THE SHADOWS OF AUGUST
At fifteen minutes past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, a human being sat on the stone steps of a bank in Hiroshima, waiting for it to open. Then came the flash. The heat of it—thousands of degrees in an instant—bleached the stone white around the place where they sat, and left behind […]
U.S.-IRAN WAR WIDENS: SEAFARER DEATHS AT HORMUZ, THE BLOCKADE REIMPOSED, AND A THREAT THAT POINTS TO A NUCLEAR WEAPON
The war over the Strait of Hormuz claimed the lives of commercial seafarers Tuesday, as the United States launched its fifth wave of strikes on Iran in a week and moved to reimpose a full naval blockade of Iranian ports at 4:00 p.m. ET today—an act of war in itself. The UAE said Iranian cruise […]
BEIJING PUSHES BACK ON ANTI-INDIA XENOPHOBIA
As China and India rebuild ties after years of estrangement, Chinese officialdom has moved to tamp down a nationalist online backlash against the reopening. A July 2 commentary in the state outlet The Paper (澎湃新闻)—written under “Xin Ping”—a collective byline used for pieces reflecting official positions, and republished in full on the Chinese Embassy in […]