Martin Jay

Biden’s breathtaking stupidity in Ukraine is finally going to expose NATO for what it is: a paper tiger.

Are we all preparing for the inevitable? Trump returning to the White House? It would seem that certainly the Biden administration is doing just that given recent events. Moscow’s terror attack has taken center stage of world news in recent days yet not one western journalist seems able to call out the ISIS warning from the U.S. for what it was: sham.

And not only the warning was disingenuous but the sheer bad taste vitriol of Washington which was on a level only matched by the suspicious outright and swift rejection that Kyiv had no part in the attack.

Bad taste seems to be the hallmark of the Biden administration, with a failed foreign policy which trails in second place. If Americans didn’t know before that the U.S. could not control two proxy wars on two separate fronts, now they know. As the aid parcels which drop onto Palestinians – sometimes even killing them – makes a statement in itself, it’s interesting to see how Biden is always looking in the past in almost everything he does. Even Russia Gate has been dragged out of its dank grave and had new life breathed into it by Biden’s press people, who are now preparing the American public for a Biden failure in December. The biggest fear for Biden is the “hack and leak” attack, which pushed many democrats over a line with Hillary Clinton when her emails revealed what an utterly morose political figure she is. Who could forget that “there are terrorists there [in Syria] but they’re on our side” comment when talking about the early days of the Syrian crisis which started in 2011?

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Martin Jay

NATO’s 75th birthday is coming around soon, with celebrations planned for July of next year in Washington. Yet the organisation has a bit of a problem with the party and celebrations.

When people reach the ripe old age of 75, there is usually a tendency to slow down and take things easier; often there’s a lack of cohesion, sentences often aren’t completed, delusion and incompetence become more noticeable if not plain idiocy on a scale not previously seen. In some cases, relatives might even talk of assisted suicide to put the old bugger out of his misery, with some even as going as far to talk about being “brain-dead”.

NATO’s 75th birthday is coming around soon, with celebrations planned for July of next year in Washington. Yet, the organisation has a bit of a problem with the party and celebrations. What’s there to celebrate with Ukraine more or less, a war that even die-hard Republicans in America admit is a war which cannot be won? 75 years old, NATO is looking more and more like an outdated institution which, if anything, is going to fall on its sword at some point when the world wakes up and realises what a con it is.

But the old git has to be kept alive at all costs, largely to keep up appearances for new members and also to protect the reputations of western leaders who have staked theirs on the war in Ukraine being a righteous win.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen is a lucky man. The former NATO chief is fortunate enough to actually not look as stupid as he really is and is at a period in his so-called career where he can say patently idiotic things, and it doesn’t matter. But his latest idea – to give Ukraine some kind of token, half-cocked NATO membership – is braindead nonsense on a whole new scale which we haven’t seen before.

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Martin Jay

A Russian soldier guards the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power
plant in southern Ukraine, May 2022 ( © Getty)

The killing fields of Ukraine are the setting of an even greater war, one of propaganda, Martin Jay writes.

John Pilger was right. The killing fields of Ukraine are the setting of an even greater war, one of propaganda. It is quite extraordinary how so much of what we read in the UK press originates from a U.S.-funded propaganda bureau in Kiev so much so that it has become the norm for an event to be ‘reported’ based on what President Zelensky just merely says.

The contrast and hypocrisy are stunning. Consider the moronic ramblings of CNN reporters from all over the world asked to take us through the events of the so-called “attempted coup d’état.” They were based in the U.S., London and — of course — Ukraine, in the case of the dim-witted Ben Wedeman. All of them in chorus talking of Putin “on the edge” or staring “the abyss in the eye” but not one of them able to say “according to my sources” or “from people I’m speaking to in Russia”. No. That would be too close to a bygone era of reporting which left us long ago. All we have now is overweight buffoons like our Ben — who, despite being an Arabic speaker was so poor in Lebanon that he managed to falsely report the country’s debt as “mostly foreign” — who only “report” Russia though a Ukrainian prism which was probably written for him. This is how bad western media is. To be a journalist these days, you need two poignant skills. One, to have a great memory for the narrative that you have to replicate. And two, to have an almost morbid fear of nuance or detail. These CNN reporters were basically clueless and just made it up as they went along. They were, like most of us, nothing more than spectators, drowning in their own bigotry and blinded dogma.

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Stephen Lendman

Pinkerton guards escort strikebreakers in Buchtel, Ohio, 1884

It dates from America's 19th century industrial expansion when workers moved away from farms to factories, mines, and other urban environments, with harsh working conditions, low pay, and other exploitive abuses. As a result, labor movements emerged, organizing workers to lobby for better rights and safer conditions, pitting them against corporate bosses yielding nothing without a fight.

During unionism's formative years, workers were terrorized for organizing. In company-owned towns, they were thrown out of homes, beaten, shot, and hanged to leave management empowered.

The 1892 Homestead Steel Works strike culminated in a violent battle between Pinkerton agents and workers. As a result, seven were killed, dozens wounded, and, at the behest of Andrew Carnegie, owner of Carnegie Steel, Governor Robert Pattison sent National Guard troops to evict workers from company homes, make arrests, and help CEO Henry Clay Frick's union busting strategy. It worked, preventing organizing of the Works for the next 40 years.

The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions chose May 1, 1886 as the date for an eight-hour work day to become standard. As the date approached, unions across America prepared to strike. On May 1, national rallies were held, involving up to 500,000 workers.

On May 4, the landmark Haymarket Square riot protested police violence against strikers the previous day. Someone threw a bomb. Police opened fire. Deaths resulted. Seven so-called anarchists were convicted of murder. Four were executed.

Radicalized by the incident, Emma Goldman became a powerful social justice voice through writing, lecturing, being imprisoned for her activism, and finally emigrating to Russia after its revolution, then elsewhere in Europe. After her death, she was buried in Chicago near the graves of the Haymarket radicals she supported.

Led by American Railway Union's Eugene Debs, the 1894 Pullman strike was the first national one, involving 250,000 workers in 27 states and territories. America's entire rail labor force struck, paralyzing the nation's railway system. At the time, The New York Times called it "a struggle between the greatest and most important labor organization and the entire railroad capital."

At issue were unfair labor practices, including long hours, low pay, poor working conditions, and little sympathy from owner George Pullman. On his behalf, President Grover Cleveland sent federal troops. Hundreds of others were given police powers. At the time, unionists were seen threatening US prosperity.

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