On the Transfiguration of Europe: From Nuland’s Dream to Nuland’s Nightmare

Batiushka for The Saker blog

The Saker | August 19, 2022

Introduction: Carpathian Rus

The geographical centre of Europe just happens to be in the post-1945 Ukraine, 15 km (10 miles) from Rakhovo (in the Ukrainian occupiers’ language, Rakhiv). This is in the far east of the Ukraine, in the province of ‘Zakarpattia’ or ‘Transcarpathia’, which is the imperialist name given by the Ukrainian centralisers to the area. In reality, it is Kiev that is across, ‘trans’, the Carpathians, not ‘Transcarpathia’.

Zakarpattia was before the Second World War the main part of Subcarpathian Rus, also called Carpathian Rus, Rusinia or, in medieval Latin, Ruthenia. Smaller parts of it are now in the corner of south-eastern Poland, where lived the Lemkos, and in far eastern Slovakia. The people there call themselves Rusins or Rusnaks and despite three generations of Ukrainian linguistic imperialism, many still speak Rusin, which, although related, is a separate language from standard Ukrainian or any of its dialects and is also far more ancient. The first Orthodox Christians in what is now the Ukraine lived here, and helped to convert Kiev.

Drought Pushes Millions in East Africa To Starvation

Countercurrents | August 19, 2022

In East Africa, millions of people are facing starvation due to drought.

The World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Wednesday that millions of people in East Africa face the threat of starvation.

Speaking at a media briefing in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that drought, climate change, rising prices and an ongoing civil war in northern Ethiopia are all contributing to worsening food insecurity.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus:

“Now to the Greater Horn of Africa, where millions of people are facing starvation and disease in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda.

“Drought, conflict, climate change and increasing prices for food, fuel and fertilizer are all contributing to lack of access to sufficient food.

“Hunger and malnutrition pose a direct threat to health, but they also weaken the body’s defenses, and open the door to diseases including pneumonia, measles and cholera.

Understanding Maduro’s successful socialist economic strategy

Francisco Dominguez

Morning Star | August 2022

CHAVISTAS TO THE CORE: The 23 de Enero working-class neighbourhood in western Caracas, commemorates on July 28 2022 what would have been Hugo Chavez’s 68th birthday. January 23 1958 was the day dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez was overthrown

IN ITS intensely biased coverage of Venezuela during the hard years of 2014-21 the mainstream media wheeled in every imaginable academic pundit to “demonstrate” that the country’s economic woes were the result of President Nicolas Maduro overseeing Venezuela’s slide “into authoritarianism and economic collapse” (the Guardian, January 24 2019) and not of cruel US sanctions.

In 2019, the Economist for instance, in line with US policy, published a front cover with a clench-fisted Juan Guaido titled “the battle for Venezuela’s future,” positing “the world democracies are right to seek change.” Very rarely, if at all, the mainstream media or the activated pundits gave any significant weight to the well over 500 illegal and criminal unilateral coercive measures (aka sanctions) inflicted on Venezuela and its people by the US and its European and Latin American accomplices.

US economic warfare — the almost total blockade of its economy — led to a shrinking of 99 per cent of its revenues, with Venezuela living on 1 per cent of its pre-sanctions income.

Why is Amnesty International FINALLY Reporting on Kiev’s War Crimes Months Later?

The New Atlas | August 16, 2022

The U.S. Government’s Frauds About Taiwan

Eric Zuesse

Current U.S. Government policy regarding Taiwan is directly violating prior commitments that the U.S. Government had made to the Chinese Government regarding Taiwan, which commitments will here be summarized by excerpts from the first of those previously made commitments:

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v17/d203
https://archive.ph/lvJX8
203. “Joint Statement Following Discussions With Leaders of the People’s Republic of China”
Shanghai, February 27, 1972. …
the two sides stated that:
—progress toward the normalization of relations between China and the United States is in the interests of all countries;
—both wish to reduce the danger of international military conflict;
—neither should seek hegemony in the Asia–Pacific region and each is opposed to efforts by any other country or group of countries to establish such hegemony; and
—neither is prepared to negotiate on behalf of any third party or to enter into agreements or understandings with the other directed at other states.
Both sides are of the view that it would be against the interests of the peoples of the world for any major country to collude with another against other countries, or for major countries to divide up the world into spheres of interest.