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PATO: The Pacific and Atlantic Treaty Organization

Their cooperation is forcing NATO to build closer ties with like-minded countries in the Indo-Pacific. For the first time, senior officials from Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan took part in a meeting with NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Thursday.

They baddies are “forcing” NATO into this. The poor imperial core, being dragged around again. #AlwaysTheSameMap

Citations Needed podcast: The Always Stumbling US Empire: "Stumbling", "sliding", "drawn into" war––the media frequently assumes the US is bumbling its way around the world. The idea that the United States operates in “good faith” is taken for granted for most of the American press while war is always portrayed as something that happens to the US, not something it seeks out.

Also, doesn’t “CRINK” already have a name, the Axis of Resistance?

Anyway, death to POTATO.

• The Intercept, 2021: Meet NATO, the Dangerous “Defensive” Alliance Trying to Run the World
• CounterPunch, 2022: NATO is Not a Defensive Alliance
• Noam Chomsky, 2023: NATO “most violent, aggressive alliance in the world”
• Thomas Fazi, 2024: NATO: 75 years of war, unprovoked aggressions and state-sponsored terrorism

The Spectator interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_USzVCWzh10

But even the whole debate about how to solve the Nord Stream mystery (or thriller) — which reminiscent of a James Bond film, with all its military and technical details — perhaps draws too much attention away from the underlying field of interest. Storytelling, and especially the construction of a crime thriller, is very much about directing sympathy (preferably towards the real culprit and away from the false leads, so that the reader doesn’t get to the solution for as long as possible). Another very important point is to draw attention to the irrelevant aspects and away from the crucial information and analyses. As seen above, the extensive and detailed “yacht story” could serve to divert attention away from a completely different action, in which professional military actors used warships or submarines, for example, to plant the explosives.

And perhaps even the war, with all its horror and violence, is not the main story at all, but its tragedy, dynamism and violence only conceal the “hidden story”, the underlying structure of economic and financial interests and the geopolitical tug-of-war over energy markets and infrastructure.

Some geopolitical analysts argue that the Nord Stream blast and even the war in Ukraine and the preceding change of power in 2014 only served to displace Russia as a gas and oil supplier and to enable US and British companies and investors to take over the European energy market. In other words, the thesis is that the end of Russia’s role as the main energy supplier for Germany and Europe is not the result of the war in Ukraine, but rather its cause; or in other words: “It’s the energy market, stupid!”.

Of course, you could also look at the story in this [materialist] way. I generally have the impression that these realities and cold economic interests are often obscured by stories of cultural struggle (open society vs. traditional family/man-woman images) and political stories (democracies vs. autocracies) in order to keep the public busy with emotional discussions and distract them from what is really going on: a ruthless game of chess for money, power and, above all, resources.

Israel’s decision to assassinate Nasrallah, using some of the enormous bunker-busting bombs the United States has been arming it with, is beyond foolhardy. It is outright deranged. Israel has removed – and knows it has removed – a moderating influence on Hezbollah.

Israel’s action will achieve nothing apart from teaching his successor, and leaders of other groups and countries labelled as terrorist by western governments, several lessons:

• That Israel, and the West standing squarely behind it, do not play by any known rules of engagement, and that their opponents must do likewise. The current restraint from Hezbollah that has been so baffling western pundits will become a thing of the past.

• That Israel is not interested in compromise, only escalation, and that this is a fight to death – not just against Israel but against the West that sponsors Israel.

• That Israel's ideological extremism – its Jewish supremacism, and its endless craving for Lebensraum – must be met with even greater Shia-inspired extremism.

Decades of western terrorism in the Middle East unleashed a Sunni nihilism embodied first in al-Qaeda and then in ISIS. Now, the West, via Israel, is fomenting for the Shia resistance its own ISIS moment. The moderates in what the West dubs “terrorist organisations” have once again lost the argument. Why? Because the US imperial project known as “the West” has once again demonstrated it will not compromise. It demands full-spectrum, global dominance – nothing less.

Israel may make very short tactical gains in killing Nasrallah. But we will all soon feel the whirlwind.

I’ve known this for a while thanks to the Money & Macro YouTube channel: How Commercial Banks Really Create Money (the Money Multiplier is a MYTH)

“I don’t think there’s any question that it’s a form of terrorism,” [Leon] Panetta said on “CBS News Sunday morning.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) condemned Israel over the pager explosions, saying the incident “unequivocally violates international humanitarian law and undermines U.S. efforts to prevent a wider conflict.”

An Al Mayadeen investigation of July 19th laid bare the US Navy’s crushing defeat by Yemen’s AnsarAllah, in Washington’s initially-vaunted Operation Prosperity Guardian. Western media has finally acknowledged the Empire’s comprehensive trouncing by God’s Partisans, in an epic David vs Goliath triumph. Elsewhere, reporting on the much-hyped USS Eisenhower aircraft carrier strike group’s return to base after months of relentless bombardment by the Resistance amply underlines how aircraft carriers - the core component of US hegemony for decades - are quite literally dead in the water.

This stuff was posted on two sites:

• Ryan Grim & Jeremy Scahill’s new Drop Site
• Matt Taibbi’s Racket News

I haven’t gone through all the content yet, but over the last ~6 years I’ve come to take Jeffrey Sachs at his word, moreso than Naomi Klein. He’s been consistently what he appears at face value.

• Ryan Grim: Jeffrey Sachs: A Front Row Seat to the Cold War That Never Ended
• Matt Taibbi: What I Got Wrong About “Shock Therapy”
• Ryan Grim & Emily Jashinsky interview Matt Taibbi & Jeffery Sachs: A True Shock? Economist Jeffrey Sachs Reveals Secret at Heart of U.S.-Russian Relations (YouTube video)

It appears that Senator Elizabeth Warren was spot on in her assessment of the lack of a backbone for Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell when it comes to raising capital requirements on the powerful megabanks on Wall Street.

Powell doesn’t lack backbone. The private banking cartel largely runs the Fed, and he’s their elected capo. The Fed is a racket.