It’s been some while since we featured a compilation of readings dealing with what to all intents and purposes, feels like an inexorable slide towards world war. This was the last such compilation we posted way back in February: Moving closer to the tipping point… 16.2.23. As the slide towards war shows no sign of letting up, let alone being seriously opposed, in a bid to redress the balance, we’re featuring a selection of readings on the issues involved below.

You won’t find critical coverage like this in the mainstream media. Yet two of the writers featured below, John Pilger and Finian Cunningham, used to have a presence of sorts in the mainstream media. That was then, this is now and the mainstream media has pretty much morphed into a full on propaganda operation with no room for serious questioning. Which is why the writers below now feature on what has been loosely dubbed, ‘alternative’ or ‘fringe’ media.

These pieces don’t just look at the situation between Ukraine and Russia. They also consider the escalation of hostile rhetoric towards China. It should be stressed at this point that while we despise NATO, we equally have no time for the likes of Russia or China. Regardless of which side of the divide they’re on, all of the entities involved are pretty despotic in their own way. Our sympathies go out to the populations who will inevitably suffer as a result of conflict and war, whether cold or hot. For us, it’s ‘No War but the Class War’.

The last piece looks at the information war being waged to protect NATO’s ‘brand’ image. Unsurprisingly, that involves a massive amount of surveillance to check what’s being said about NATO across social media plus propaganda offensives aimed at protecting the ‘brand’. Again, no surprise there – we’ve seen and blocked a fair few of them! It may be futile but we’ll see if referring to the aforementioned military alliance as N*TO keeps us under the radar:)

Geopolitical analysis features heavily in the first two readings. In some circles, framing the conflict between Ukraine and Russia in geopolitical terms gets you branded as ‘Westplainers’. So be it. We’d rather be ‘Westplainers’ than unwittingly acting as a N*TO dupe.

The Coming War – Time to Speak Up – John Pilger | Consortium News | 1.5.23

Democracy is notional now; there is the all-powerful elite of the corporation merged with the state and the demands of “identity.” American admirals are paid thousands of dollars a day by the Australian tax payer for “advice.” Right across the West, our political imagination has been pacified by PR and distracted by the intrigues of corrupt, ultra low-rent politicians: a Boris Johnson or a Donald Trump or a Sleepy Joe or a Volodymyr Zelensky.

No writers’ congress in 2023 worries about “crumbling capitalism” and the lethal provocations of “our” leaders. The most infamous of these, Tony Blair, a prima facie criminal under the Nuremberg Standard, is free and rich. Julian Assange, who dared journalists to prove their readers had a right to know, is in his second decade of incarceration.

The proxy war in Ukraine is an imperialist adventure – Finian Cunningham | Information Clearing House | 1.5.23

This week saw the NATO powers deliver depleted uranium weapons to the Kiev regime, while the United States announced that it would be docking submarine nuclear warheads in South Korea, a move that infuriated China which pointed out that Washington was violating decades-old commitments to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. Of course, such perverse provocation is par for the course as far as Washington is concerned. It is done deliberately in a conscious effort to exacerbate tensions and escalate militarism. Peace and security are anathemas to the U.S. (and its minions) whose whole ideological raison d’être is to aggravate war to gratify corporate capitalist addiction – a system that is increasingly bankrupt and dysfunctional, and hence the insane desperation for craving “war-fixes”.

Army Info War Division Wants Social Media Surveillance to Protect “NATO Brand” – Sam Biddle | The Intercept | 27.4.23

The U.S. Army Cyber Command told defense contractors it planned to surveil global social media use to defend the “NATO brand,” according to a 2022 webinar recording reviewed by The Intercept.

The disclosure, made a month after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, follows years of international debate over online free expression and the influence of governmental security agencies over the web. The Army’s Cyber Command is tasked with both defending the country’s military networks as well as offensive operations, including propaganda campaigns.

The remarks came during a closed-door conference call hosted by the Cyber Fusion Innovation Center, a Pentagon-sponsored nonprofit that helps with military tech procurement, and provided an informal question-and-answer session for private-sector contractors interested in selling data to Army Cyber Command, commonly referred to as ARCYBER.