Böcker utgivna av Clarity Press

"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

The freight train that is the conflict in Ukraine inexorably advances to its final destination. Each one of its passengers feels inextricably trapped onboard as the infernal machine acquires more speed and time runs out for an off-ramp. For years, the exit signs have succeeded one another so as to turn into an ever more indistinguishable blur: The Minsk Agreements, the late 2021 Russian proposal to Washington on security guarantees, the aborted peace negotiations held in Istanbul at the onset of the war. All that remains is the (increasing) background noise of random security experts, pundits and occasional reality-based politicians offering the notion that maybe Ukraine might just not be able to win the West's proxy war with Russia. Why won't sensible heads in Washington own up to the situation and call it a day? Why does the West keep sending Ukraine billions of dollars better spent at home while exhorting Ukraine to send countless young (and old and female) Ukrainians to certain death? What is it about Ukraine that seems to prevent the foreign policy Blob from finding a way out, as happened in Korea, Viet-Nam and Cambodia? Can it be because Ukraine remains to this day the exclusive playground of a concentration of interests which, taken all together, constitute a who's who of the Washington Establishment--including DARPA, DTRA, the EcoHealth Alliance, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to name but a few. For years, Kiev had served as a home away from home to US political figures and their offspring, furthering Ukraine's deserved reputation for being one of the most corrupt places on Earth. For years, Ukraine offered all of them opportunities to advance their respective projects and operate with total impunity. Arnaud Develay dives into the murky waters of Washington's "external management" of Ukraine dating back to the infamous Maidan coup d'état and extending forward to include the political weaponization of law and elections foibles, past and forthcoming, reflecting the fracturing of the American political class. It's one hell of an expose, full of the nitty-gritty on how America seems ready and willing to tear itself apart.

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.

"Seeking Truth in A Country of Lies is a collection of lyrical and critical essays offering keen insight into a very wide range of topics: from probing analyses related to work, the digital revolution, propaganda, the attacks of September 11, 2001, the CIA, government assassinations and wars, to spellbinding reflections on poetry, nature, time, and even silence. Following in the path of such earlier celebrated essayists as Thoreau and John Berger, Curtin's critique is at once political, social, cultural, and deeply personal. Constructed over a broad swath of time, these essays address some of the most significant events in recent history, shining shafts of brilliant light into the shadows."

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.

Donald Trump's epithet describing certain countries as "Shi*thole Countries" has captured the imagination of the global community. And while there is some dispute as to whether or not the President uttered those exact words, what is not disputed is that the U.S. President derided certain countries while discussing U.S. immigration policy reform, suggesting that the U.S. should have more immigrants from countries like Norway. How the U.S. Creates Sh*thole Countries seizes this unique moment of global focus on the world's most suffering countries to address the causative factors, and the extent to which their lamentable state is not of their doing. It addresses these questions: - What is the legitimacy of US interventions in other countries' domestic affairs in pursuit of its "interests", which it then regards as matters of national security? - Why and how does a country become a US target? - What socio-economic, political and military policies--overt and covert--does the US undertake to bring the victim country into line? - What are the results for the targeted countries? - What are the results for US citizens, who have little idea what is going on, but are footing the bill? The specific "sh*tholes" addressed herein were chosen because their desperate conditions reflect a malaise that didn't have to be. They are but sample instances of American foreign policies applied across the globe to comparable destructive effect: Haiti, El Salvador, Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and yes, our own Puerto Rico. How many, as a result, have fled to the United States from countries such as these, raising what the US regards as its "immigration" problem? This book presents fresh analyses of the old stereotypes and narratives that wither under scrutiny. Seasoned analysts include The Vineyard Saker, Catherine Austin Fitts, Paul Craig Roberts, Wayne Marsden, Don DeBar, Richard Falk, James Petras, Barrett Brown, Sara Flounders, Vernalia Randall, Scott Bennett, Èzili Dantò, Keith Harmon Snow, Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett, Maribel Aponte, Kevin Barrett. Christopher Black

Cynthia McKinney was the lone non-Gulf state Democratic voice on the House Committee investigating the federal government's lack of response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. This book tells the story of Cynthia McKinney. It's a story of justice pursued, a McKinney hallmark - from speaking truth to lawmakers and demanding it in return.

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.

How and why was Canada instrumental in Israel's history? Has that distorted Canada's own development as an independent nation? Excused Israel's? The Canada Israel Nexus is a comparative political history of these two settler nations, their colonial past, their relations with the indigenous peoples on whose territories they imposed their rule, and what that tells us about where they are headed. The Zionist project dominates the news with good reason. Jews are an energetic force in western society and Jewish influence is now embodied in a Jewish state, which is both feared and respected, while headed toward becoming an international pariah. Its 'best friend' is Canada, not just in former Conservative prime minister Harper's words, but from 1948 on, when a youthful Lester Pearson, then UN ambassador and future Canadian prime minister, pushed through the plan for a separate Jewish state, leading to Israel's creation and a Nobel Peace prize for Pearson due to the ensuing Suez crisis. The battle for justice in the Middle East involves treachery, terrorism, exile, apostasy, and, yes, conspiracy. It is the stuff of legend, of which Canada, Israel, and their relationship is a crucial part. The conflict of interests and rights between the colonizer and the colonized is central, as is the relationship between Jews and the state in history, and how that relationship was transformed by the creation of a Jewish state. The history of Israel-Palestine is like an accelerated version of Canadian-US history: the 'intifadas' of the settler-dominated indigenous peoples, the duplicity of the British, the development of the same colonial perfidy by the states it spawned, the parallel techniques of dispossession, and how they became the supporters of terrorism, both state and non-state, in the 21st century. Palestinians learn from Canadians (native and colonial) and seek support there, just as native peoples in Canada find inspiration in the struggle of Palestinians, and how to deal with the colonial master. There are vilified heroes in this story, both Jewish and non-Jewish. As the anti-semitism mantra has put any honest discussion of the good and bad of Jewishness off-bounds, there is little acknowledgment of the great extent to which western popular culture is a product of east European Jewish culture-a subtle but powerful factor in the success of the Zionist agenda though Yiddishkeit itself is the antithesis of Zionism.

Raises serious questions about America's role as a leading model for development, given its harsh domestic and foreign policies.

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.

"Many academics consider Obama to have been a master foreign policy strategist and shrewd practitioner of the art of realpolitik. This book demonstrates, however, that Obama in reality helped to institutionalize a permanent warfare state that resulted in gross human rights violations and contributed to America's strategic decline. His perpetuation of the War on Terror created more enemies and prompted the United States to lose influence in the Middle East. His Pivot to Asia policy intensified prospects for regional war while his unnecessary and willful military intervention destroyed Libya and drew the Russians in to protect Bashir al-Assad who won Syria's civil war. The Obama administration's heavy-handed interference in Ukraine led to effective Russian counter-moves, promoting a strategic alliance with China and regional integration that is moving the world towards multi-polarity. Obama's Unending Wars provides the first comprehensive critical history of the foreign policy of America's forty-fourth president - the drone king who ordered the bombing of seven Muslim countries, backtracked on a pledge to reduce America's nuclear arsenal, and helped fuel a new Cold War with Russia. Obama during his years in office provided billions of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia as it assisted in the crushing of pro-democracy demonstrators in Bahrain and invaded Yemen. He sanctioned a coup in Honduras which plunged that country into chaos, perpetuated a failed drug war policy and contributed to the recolonization of Africa. As many in the time of Trump now glance nostalgically back to the Obama presidency, this book will help them to see the continuity -- and continuous failure -- of American foreign policy irrespective of the party or figurehead representing it"--

"Viet Nam veteran S. Brian Willson was so shocked by the diabolical nature of the US war against Viet Nam -- irreversible knowledge, as he describes it -- and his own appalling ignorance from his cultural conditioning, that it sparked a lifetime of anti-war activism. This toxic jolt awakened him to the extent to which he and generations of American citizens had thoughtlessly succumbed to the relentless barrage of lies and propaganda that infest US American culture--from the military and political parties to religious institutions, academic and educational institutions, sports, fraternal and professional associations, the scientific community, the economic system, and all our entertainment--that seek to rationalize its otherwise inexplicable and morally repulsive behavior globally and at home. US American history reveals a unifying theme: prosperity for a few through expansion at any cost, to preserve the "exceptional" American Way of Life (AWOL). This has been structurally guided and facilitated by our nation's founding documents, including the US Constitution. From the beginning, the US was envisaged as a White male supremacist state serving to protect and advance the interests of private and commercial property, and this course has never been reversed, though the 1960s witnessed multiple aligned social movements. The US-waged war in Viet Nam was not an aberration, but one of hundreds of examples in a long pattern of brutal exploitation. A quick review of the empirical record reveals close to 600 overt military interventions by the US into dozens of countries since 1798, almost 400 since the end of World War II alone, and thousands of covert interventions since 1947"--

"Through interviews with leading participants on both sides, prominent Russian journalist Galina Sapozhnikova captures the political and human dimensions of betrayal and disillusionment that led to the collapse of the 20th century's greatest experiment in social engineering, and what happened to the men and women who struggled to destroy or save it. Termed "color" revolutions by the worldwide media, these various movements developed in several societies in the former Soviet Union and the Baltic states during the early 2000s. In reality, they were US intelligence operations which covertly instigated, supported and infiltrated protest movements with a view to triggering "regime change" under the banner of a pro-democracy uprising. The objective was to manipulate elections, initiate violence, foment social unrest and use the resulting protest movement to topple an existing government in order to install a compliant pro-US government. What were the many tactics deployed in Lithuania, only now recognized as one of the first, to galvanize the popular uprising? Was Gorbachev's role duplicitous and anti-USSR? What was the role of Eugene Sharp in this grand show of historic transformation? Is nationalism a force to be welcomed or feared? How did the political shape-shifters act - the former Komsomol and Communist Party executives, who took high posts in the new "democratic" governments? What happened to the pro-democracy forces and to those they defeated in the aftermath? How has all this worked out for Lithuania? This book not only exposes the process, but sheds light on how these events play out, post regime-change. It is key to grasping the template that today underlies similar events in Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, Iran and likely elsewhere, going forward"--

"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.

Existential malaise comes to America - are we approaching "peak America", where the Republic has failed, and the Empire which put paid to it cannot be achieved? Seasoned political analyst James Petras addresses in broad brush the major upheavals that loom.

Richard Westra argues that changes across the capitalist world at the turn of the 21st century put into play a global financial system which operates as a reincarnation of ancient usury. The book reexamines the historical record to show how activities of antediluvian money lending brought Western civilization to the brink of collapse. Usury corrupted princes and kings by indulging their conspicuous consumption. It forced them to bleed their populations to fuel their possessive lust. And it fomented vicious cycles of indebtedness in the wars it compelled. Money lending to merchants spread the commercial economy that intervened between producers and consumers driving populations into debt and dispossessing them of their land. What saved Western civilization was the rise of capitalism. Capitalism tamed the activities of money lending, and endowed them with socially redeeming value. The cost of borrowing was rationally set in money markets. Bank credit was offered in anticipation of incomes generated by its determinate use. All in all, capitalism tethered finance to expanding production of material goods and increased social wealth. But, as the 20th century drew to a close, with capital no longer scarce as exemplified by the aimless bloating of varying categories of funds, finance again turned to its dark side. With the disarticulating of production through globalization, there existed no possibility for bloating funds to ever be converted into real capital with determinate, socially redeeming use. Instead, systemic rule changes empowered big banks, big investment firms and finance wings of giant corporations to unleash vast oceans of funds in a global orgy of money games. However, the global financial system of casino play can only operate akin to ancient usury. Wealth for the few is expanded by expropriation and Himalayan levels of debt befalling the many! Like usurers of old the new Merchants of Venice are indifferent to how lent funds are used. And loan repayment is set arbitrarily, often exacting such a high cost that the borrower is ruined or forced to strive for the ruin of others. Big government becomes the handmaiden sweeping as much debt under the public rug as it can. Yet there is only so much in pounds of flesh left on the bones of humanity. Greece is really just the hors d'oeuvre.

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.