Riley Waggaman There was much rejoicing last month when Russia—together with its Multipolar friends and its Collective West arch nemesis—signed a declaration in support of “build[ing] on the success” of “digital COVID-19 certificates.” It was truly precious to witness two very, very distinct blocs, locked in mortal combat/pipeline preservation in Ukraine, taking time from their …
This year, Palestinians and their supporters mark the 100th anniversary of The Balfour Declaration, a written statement from the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, to Walter Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, in favour of the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.
Amidst an orgy of martial patriotism that is finally over, there was a sad irony.
A century ago, a Southern academic and racist emerged in Europe and the United States as a crusader to “make the world safe for democracy”.1 Wilson had been elected president in 1913, the year before Europe’s imperialists plunged the world into four years of mass murder. That war alone caused some four million direct battle casualties and untold millions of non-combatant deaths in the aftermath.
In 2014 I reviewed what was promoted as a significant revision in the interpretation of what in Britain and continental Europe is called “The Great War” and since 1945 has been popularly called the “First World War”.1 The revisionary aspect was the author’s contention — expressed in his title The Sleepwalkers — that the cause of the great slaughter between 1914 and 1918 was far less the intentions of the belligerents than their general incapacity to grasp
In Aotearoa (New Zealand) and in Australia we observe Anzac day, commemorating the first landings at Gallipoli in 1915 on April 25. The Dardanelles campaign that followed was eight months of futile slaughter. In the century since the sense of loss and the rightful condemnation of the vicious military folly were always muted and buried under tales of honour and national pride, but now we are forgetting altogether.
On May 19, 1916, representatives of Great Britain and France secretly reached an accord, known as the Sykes-Picot agreement, by which most of the Arab lands under the rule of the Ottoman Empire were to be divided into British and French spheres of influence upon the conclusion of World War 1. That this agreement was conducted in secrecy, reveals to what extent the voices of the inhabitants of this region were absent from negotiations. It was as if the voices of the ruling Colonial elites were the only ones that had credibility.
Trudeau “unveils most diverse Cabinet in Canada’s history”, was how one media outlet described the new Liberal cabinet. It includes a Muslim woman, four Sikhs, an indigenous woman, two differently abled individuals and an equal number of women and men. Half even refused any reference to God at Wednesday’s swearing in ceremony.
Since the demolition of the World Trade Center in New York City in 2001, the volume written about a so-called New World Order has been enormous. For those who mark the beginning of the New World Order in progress with the spectacle of Manhattan skyscrapers collapsing, this order of things or re-ordering of things is a relatively new phenomenon. It has become an obsession among those who for the first time seem to have noticed that something was not well with the world. But isn’t this really a matter of perspective?
Was Lawrence of Arabia the first Gladio B operative? In answering this question, today's episode presents a view of World War One from the perspective of British geostrategy in the Middle East. Using a fascinating lecture as the basis for our discussion I outline how Turkey got drawn into the war, at a time when the Ottoman Empire was crumbling. The British government adopted not just a double-dealing but a triple-dealing strategy to counter the Ottomans, which bears remarkable similarities to what is happening today.
