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Better Earth

Best of the Web: The new multipolar world system and the end of an era

Atilio A. Boron
Al Mayadeen
Tue, 27 Feb 2024 15:26 UTC
putin xi biden multipolar world
The irreversible decline of Western supremacy, under the leadership of the United States, will not be a peaceful process, and it would be naive to think so.

Current diagnoses assert that the international system is going through a period of epoch-making changes. The tectonic plates on which the world geopolitical chessboard rests have shifted, unleashing profound modifications in the structure of the system and in the nature of its main players. This is true, but only if it is recognized that this journey has already reached a point of no return and that the trends that have been operating in recent years have matured to the point of producing an irreversible result: the configuration of a global geopolitical chessboard marked by the emergence of multiple actors endowed with different power capacities that put an end to five centuries of Western supremacy over all nations. Multipolarism has arrived and it is here to stay.

Comment: Indeed the hegemon will not go quietly; as Pepe Escobar said in his recent article:
The fact is we are already immersed in a World War that is both existential and civilizational. As we stand at the crossroads, there is a bifurcation: either escalation towards overt "kinetic military action," or a multiplication of Hybrid Wars across several latitudes.
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Vader

Best of the Web: Bombshell NYT report confirms CIA built "12 secret spy bases" in Ukraine & waged a 'shadow war' on Russia for the last decade

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Mon, 26 Feb 2024 21:46 UTC
Ukrainian commandoes afu cia soldiers winter gear
© Efrem Lukatsky / Associated PressUkrainians such as these civilians shown taking part in resistance training in early February, 2022 in Kyiv have been bracing for a Russian invasion for months. The CIA has been preparing for years.
On Sunday The New York Times published an explosive and very belated full admission that US intelligence has not only been instrumental in Ukraine wartime decision-making, but has established and financed high tech command-and-control spy centers, and was doing so long prior to the Feb. 24 Russian invasion of two years ago.

Among the biggest revelations is that the program was established a decade ago and spans three different American presidents. The Times says the CIA program to modernize Ukraine's intelligence services has "transformed" the former Soviet state and its capabilities into "Washington's most important intelligence partners against the Kremlin today."

This has included the agency having secretly trained and equipped Ukrainian intelligence officers spanning back to just after the 2014 Maidan coup events, as well constructing a network of 12 secret bases along the Russian border — work which began eight years ago. These intelligence bases, from which Russian commanders' communications can be swept up and Russian spy satellites monitored, are being used launch and track cross-border drone and missile attacks on Russian territory.
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Yellow Vest

Best of the Web: Farmers' rebellion: 160 tons of Ukrainian grain dumped out of trains at station in Poland


Reuters
Sun, 25 Feb 2024 22:59 UTC
train poland grain ukraine
Police officers, customs officers, and railway workers stand next to piles of corn spilled from train cars in the Polish village of Kotomierz, near the Ukrainian border, on February 25.
Around 160 tons of Ukrainian grain was destroyed at a Polish railway station amid large-scale protests in what a senior Ukrainian official said on Sunday was an act of "impunity and irresponsibility".

Polish farmers protesting this month against what they say is unfair competition from Ukraine and European Union environment regulations have blocked border crossings with Ukraine and motorways, and spilled Ukrainian produce from train wagons.


Comment: Ukrainian grain has been shown to be contaminated with mold, GMO and unacceptable levels of chemicals. Notably American megacorporations have been increasingly buying vast tracts of Ukraine's top agricultural land. But the main reason European farmers are furious is that Ukrainian grain, heavily discounted to pay for NATO's war, is flooding the EU market and hitting European farmers hard.


"These pictures show 160 tons of destroyed Ukrainian grain. The grain was in transit to the port of Gdansk and then to other countries," Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov posted on X with photographs of mounds of grain spilled from train wagons.

Comment: It remains to be seen just who was responsible, however it is clear that farmers across Europe are becoming increasingly incensed with the 'deceptive' concessions their governments are promising them, and are resorting to taking direct action against the inferior products being shipped in to undercut their own: France's farmers storm agricultural fair amid Macron visit, demand his resignation

Footage:



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Eye 1

Best of the Web: How to Fight the Censorship Mindset

L.P. Koch
LucTalks
Sun, 18 Feb 2024 08:32 UTC
sky field sunshine
© L.P. Koch
There's currently lots of hoopla about some crybabies who want daddy to keep Substack clean and safe.

They talk about "Nazis" on the platform, conveniently forgetting to define what they even mean, which, of course, is a feature, not a bug. Seriously, I doubt those who scream "Nazi" the loudest have ever read a serious book about the Third Reich or about Mustache Man. Not that this matters.

But what drives these people? Beyond being crybullies, I mean? I think there is a deeper point to make here about discomfort and wishing death upon those with different opinions.
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Light Saber

Best of the Web: Pepe Escobar: The Axis of Asymmetry takes on the 'Rules-based Order'

Pepe Escobar
The Cradle
Fri, 23 Feb 2024 15:59 UTC
The Axis of Asymmetry takes on the Rules Based Order
© The CradleThe Axis of Asymmetry takes on the Rules Based Order
World War III is here, playing out asymmetrically in military, financial, and institutional battlefields, and the fight is an existential one. The western Hegemon, in truth, is at war against international law, and only 'kinetic military action' can bring it to heel.

The Axis of Asymmetry is in full swing. These are the state and non-state actors employing asymmetrical moves on the global chessboard to sideline the US-led western rules-based order. And its vanguard is the Yemeni resistance movement Ansarallah.

Ansarallah is absolutely relentless. They have downed a $30 million MQ-9 Reaper drone with just a $10k indigenous missile.

They are the first in the Global South ever to use anti-ship ballistic missiles against Israel-bound and/or -protecting commercial and US Navy ships.

For all practical purposes, Ansarallah is at war with no less than the US Navy.
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Bullseye

Best of the Web: China tells ICJ Palestinians have 'inalienable right to use armed force' against Israeli occupation


Middle East Eye
Fri, 23 Feb 2024 17:03 UTC
Zhang Jun
FILE PHOTO: Chinese ambassador to the UN, Zhang Jun Beijing’s UN ambassador has blasted arbitrary seizures of countries’ assets
China has backed the right of the Palestinian people to use armed force to combat Israel's occupation of their land, calling it an "an inalienable right well founded in international law".

The comments on Thursday were made by the Chinese ambassador to the UN, Zhang Jun, during the fourth day of public hearings held by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands.

Representatives of 52 countries are addressing the ICJ on Israel's decades-long occupation of Palestinian land.

Beijing's envoy said there were "various people (who) freed themselves from colonial rule" and they could use "all available means, including armed struggle".

Comment: It seems that the multipolar world are, increasingly, calling out the warmongers and genociders for who they are. And one wonders whether they'll, ultimately, follow up these statements with effective responses, considering that, increasingly, they are the drivers of the global economy:

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Putin

Best of the Web: 'Live as you want, just don't touch the kids,' Putin tells gays


RT
Tue, 20 Feb 2024 19:45 UTC
putin
© Sputnik/Kristina Kormilitsyna
Russia is actually tolerant of people with non-traditional sexual orientations, so long as they don't target children or flaunt their preferences, President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday.

The president made the remarks while addressing visitors to the 'Strong Ideas for a New Time' forum, a yearly event organized by Russia's state-backed Agency of Strategic Initiatives.

"We are quite tolerant towards people with non-traditional sexual orientations. We just don't flaunt it, and we don't believe it's right to flaunt it. Let everyone live - the adults - as they want. Nobody limits them in anything," Putin stated, explaining that, basically, there are only a handful of rules which limit the LGBTQ community in the country.
As for children, I have already said many times: 'Don't touch the children.' That's it. This is the first one. And the second one is, we are, first and foremost, a state that is guided by traditional values.

Comment: It's pretty simple for Putin and most rational-minded people around the world: Keep your sexual preferences to yourself and keep the acts private. Don't throw any of that into the public's face.

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Cassiopaea

Best of the Web: Earth's glaciation periods may be triggered by large asteroid impacts - Yale

Keith Cowing
Astrobiology
Tue, 20 Feb 2024 18:39 UTC
ice age earth glaciation
© NASA
A Yale-led research team has picked a side in the "Snowball Earth" debate over the possible cause of planet-wide deep freeze events that occurred in the distant past.

According to a new study, these so-called "Snowball" Earth periods, in which the planet's surface was covered in ice for thousands or even millions of years, could have been triggered abruptly by large asteroids that slammed into the Earth.

The findings, detailed in the journal Science Advances, may answer a question that has stumped scientists for decades about some of the most dramatic known climate shifts in Earth's history. In addition to Yale, the study included researchers from the University of Chicago and the University of Vienna.

Comment: As is increasingly the case, mainstream science is finally coming to conclusions that have long been put forth by authors and articles here on SOTT, but their finding has much more profound implications than they have yet to acknowledge: Also check out SOTT radio's:


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People 2

Best of the Web: Distinctly different brain organization patterns in women and men - Stanford Medicine

Stanford Medicine
Eureka Alert
Mon, 19 Feb 2024 12:00 UTC
spain lockdown party
© Reuters / Nacho DoceFILE:
A new study by Stanford Medicine investigators unveils a new artificial intelligence model that was more than 90% successful at determining whether scans of brain activity came from a woman or a man.

The findings, to be published Feb. 19 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, help resolve a long-term controversy about whether reliable sex differences exist in the human brain and suggest that understanding these differences may be critical to addressing neuropsychiatric conditions that affect women and men differently.

"A key motivation for this study is that sex plays a crucial role in human brain development, in aging, and in the manifestation of psychiatric and neurological disorders," said Vinod Menon, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and director of the Stanford Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience Laboratory. "Identifying consistent and replicable sex differences in the healthy adult brain is a critical step toward a deeper understanding of sex-specific vulnerabilities in psychiatric and neurological disorders."

Comment: Other research has shown that understanding the differences between the sexes, as well as between races, is crucial in order to be able to provide the best possible healthcare.

And research highlighting these differences isn't new, as this 2018 article notes: How genetics is proving that race is not necessarily a social construct:
The differences between the sexes are far more profound than those that exist among human populations, reflecting more than 100 million years of evolution and adaptation. Males and females differ by huge tracts of genetic material - a Y chromosome that males have and that females don't, and a second X chromosome that females have and males don't.

Most everyone accepts that the biological differences between males and females are profound. In addition to anatomical differences, men and women exhibit average differences in size and physical strength. (There are also average differences in temperament and behavior, though there are important unresolved questions about the extent to which these differences are influenced by social expectations and upbringing.)


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Headphones

Best of the Web: Caitlin Johnstone: Nobody who gets Gaza wrong is worth listening to

Caitlin Johnstone
caitlinjohnst.one
Mon, 19 Feb 2024 00:01 UTC
gaza protest
I saw a comment from an Israel defender saying "You just lack the intellect to comprehend the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict!"

Just in the last few days we learned that Israeli snipers have been deliberately picking off children in Gaza by shooting them in the head, that Israeli troops summarily executed a prisoner in handcuffs after sending him into a hospital to deliver a message to evacuate, and that Egypt has begun constructing refugee camps in the Sinai Desert to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Gazans.

"Complexities". This isn't complex.

Comment: Also, anyone who doesn't at least understand why the Houthis of Yemen are attacking American, British and Israeli shipping in the Red Sea, probably isn't worth listening to. Sure, it's destructive, but there's apparently no other way to apply counter-pressure to stop the genocide in Gaza.

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