Month: June 2022

A teacher did shut the door after earlier propping it open, but somehow it did not lock, police say.

Eric Zuesse

A poll in 53 countries by the NATO-affiliated “Alliance of Democracies”

https://web.archive.org/web/20220531174728/https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gdjTHqM_O2kDNyFgvLWVsCn4lFWzFRoMRUdTelXxTM4/edit

finds that 83% of Chinese think that China is a “democracy.” That’s the highest percentage amongst all of the 53 countries surveyed.

Here are the others in the best 10:

#2 is Vietnam, at 77%.

Tied for #s 3&4 are Philippines and Taiwan (which latter is included because NATO wants to grab that part of China), at 75% each.

Tied for #s 5&6 are Norway and Switzerland, at 74% each.

#7 is Ukraine, at 73%.

Tied for #s 8&9 are Denmark and India, at 70% each.

#10 is Sweden, at 69%.

At the very bottom, last, #53, the worst, is Venezuela, at 24%.

#52 is Iran, at 25%.

#51 is Hungary, at 35%. 

#50 is Turkey, at 37%.

#49 is Nigeria, at 38%.

Tied for #s 47&48 are Algeria and Morocco, at 42% each.

#46 is Thailand, at 44%.

Tied for #s 44&45 are Peru and Russia, at 46% each.

Tied for #s 42&43 are France and Hong Kong (included because NATO wants to grab that part of China), at 47% each.

The average for all countries was 56%.

U.S. was worse than average, and was tied with Colombia, at 49%.

However, since this is a NATO-affiliated poll, its PR doesn’t focus on those findings. Instead, one of its plugs comes from the former NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen, whose firm did the poll. It’s headlined “The EU is viewed positively by countries all around the world — except Russia and China.”

The other plug is headlined “Largest global democracy study finds more in favour of cutting ties with Russia than against.” It reports that “The global perception of the US’s influence on democracy is generally more positive than negative. (+15)”

One can debate how accurate the perceptions are within any nation regarding whether or not it is a democracy, but these are the ratings that the residents give. Within a given nation, the rating might be largely due to misrepresentation in its press. However, also the views about that country which are held by people who don’t live in that country might be due to misrepresentations in that given foreign nation’s press. In any case, the views that the residents hold on this matter should generally be assumed to be better informed about whether the given nation is democratic than the views of foreigners are, since foreigners don’t know the country as well.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s next book (soon to be published) will be AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change. It’s about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

The toll from Hurricane Agatha climbed to at least ten dead and around 20 missing in southern Mexico, where heavy rains triggered landslides and flooding, local officials said Tuesday.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday confirmed the United States will send more advanced rocket systems to Ukraine with ability to strike what he called “key targets” of Russia’s invasion force.

Danish voters will on Wednesday decide whether to join the European Union’s defence policy, potentially becoming the final hold-out in the bloc to sign up as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forces countries to radically reassess their security.

China’s No 2 has kept a low profile for most of his time in office but his re-emergence could signal deeper schisms.

Vice-chancellors ask both sides to work together to save the UK’s role in a multi-billion-pound scheme.

Ten-year-old Maite Rodriguez wanted to be a marine biologist before she could say the words.

As a broken community tries to make sense of a massacre that took the lives of 19 young children and two teachers, authorities have offered shifting timelines of what happened inside the Uvalde, Texas, school.

Russia’s military action in Ukraine has allowed Germany to once again see “what an enemy could look like,” a senior German MP has said

A complex modernization of the German Armed Forces would require re-inventing “an image of an enemy,” Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, the head of the German Bundestag’s Defense Committee, has said. Now, as Russia continues its military operation in Ukraine, the Bundeswehr sees once again “what an enemy might look like,” the MP told the RND media group on Tuesday.

A whopping €100 billion ($107.35 billion)-worth military modernization fund announced by the German government on Tuesday is a major boost to the German Armed Forces, which marks “the first step” on a long road of the German military “meeting the expectations” of Berlin’s NATO partners, Strack-Zimmermann said. But it is not the only thing needed for the Bundeswehr to get on its feet once again, the senior MP and member of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) believes.

Read more

Germany reveals massive military expansion

“What we need – that may sound belligerent – what the Bundeswehr needs from its point of view to act is an image of an enemy,” the MP told RND. Strack-Zimmermann has argued that, over the years, the Bundeswehr has lost this image of a potential enemy, particularly since Russia was no longer perceived as such during the years of what she called an “appeasement policy.”

“Now we know what an enemy might look like; what it looks like in this case,” the MP has said, referring to Russia’s ongoing military operation in Ukraine. According to Strack-Zimmermann, the current developments also mean that NATO has to “adapt” to potential threats from China and Iran as well as to develop a strategy of “how we continue to deal with Russia.”

That means you need the image of a possible enemy who wants to take away our freedom and democracy. And that’s what we’re seeing right now.

The MP has, however, admitted that the German Armed Forces still have “a lot of catching up to do” in a whole number of fields, ranging from the soldiers’ personal equipment to army digitalization, as well as the modernization of medical services, the Navy, and cyber defense.

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Germany reveals military and economic strategy

According to the lawmaker, Germany is “the fourth biggest economy of the world but that cannot be said about our military.”

Strack-Zimmermann also said that the MPs were expected to set the €100 billion-worth modernization plan “in motion” on Friday. Last Sunday, the lawmakers agreed to a special exemption required to borrow the money and invest it in the military.

The ruling coalition needed the support of opposition lawmakers to secure two thirds of the votes to adopt the decision, which would require an amendment to Germany’s Basic Law.

Germany currently has the fourth-largest military force among NATO members, but the bloc’s biggest armies are fielded by non-European nations: the US and Turkey. Currently, the German army trails behind that of another European powerhouse – France – when it comes to military strength.

Russia attacked Ukraine in late February, following Kiev’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered Minsk Protocol was designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.

The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.