By the standards of protests in the US, for example 2020, these are extremely peaceful and orderly protests. I even see people mocking how nerdy and bookish the protestors sound. Height of violence was breaking a glass to get to a door handle, as one does when leaving keys inside
But US authorities have been whipping themselves into a fever and a frenzy: “terrorists, Muslims, Hamas, monsters, inhumans”, they shout, cheering each other on in a kind of collective madness or witch-hunt
You see the poor policemen, always minorities, themselves the target of police brutality, arrive with their minds bubbling up in these notions, convinced they are fighting animals or worse, because they heard this from the politicians
US intelligence sources again blame Ukraine for the counteroffensive’s failure but this time they say Ukrainians were not willing to accept the necessary casualties washingtonpost.com/national-secur…
Officials envisioned “Kyiv accepting the casualties” “but Ukraine chose to stem the losses on the battlefield”
The article is overkill blaming Ukraine for several choices of different kinds but this one stands out for falseness and callousness
Everyone whose opinion I respect thinks the US does not want Ukraine to win the war. It’s a troubling conclusion but hard to avoid
And some of those people tell me there are ongoing, top secret exchanges between the US and Russia to begin shaping a peace agreement…
Even those with no privileged access might look at the facts and notice the military support is carefully designed to match Russia’s buildup but not more
Hope people realise the significance of the diplomatic game between the EU and China over the past few weeks
EU threatened to impose export restrictions on 8 companies registered in China and Hong Kong accused of circumventing EU sanctions. China desperately wanted to avoid this not only because of the restrictions but because a sanctions spiral could follow
In his interview with me Chinese ambassador to EU went so far as to offer to deal with those companies on its own, stopping the circumvention. It was a stunning move I thought newstatesman.com/world/asia/chi…
But:
“Export control analysts told Newsweek they did not know of any examples since the start of the war where a company based in the U.S. or in an allied nation knowingly sold critical technology directly to Russia for the express purpose of helping Moscow's war effort.”
The formulation seems to exclude US companies that sold components to Russia with the express purpose of … making money