Mereja.Forum

[Zmeselo]

At a recent UNHRC mtg, Burundi , Syria , Cuba , South Sudan , Iran , Russia , & China took an oppositional view to that of & concerning the human rights situation in Eritrea .

[Zmeselo]

THE STAR | NEWS
Ukraine advisor rejects Africa’s involvement in European affairs


Egypt's Prime Minister Mustafa Madbuly, Senegal's President Macky Sall, President of the Union of Comoros Azali Assoumani, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Zambia's President Hakainde Hichilema walk to attend a joint press conference, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine June 16, 2023. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

By Siyabonga Sithole

https://www.iol.co.za/the-star/news/ukr ... f1711884cd

Jun 20, 2023

Johannesburg - A Ukrainian presidential advisor and negotiator has rejected African leaders' involvement in European affairs.

This comes as an African delegation led by President Cyril Ramaphosa travelled to Ukraine and Russia to broker peace between the two countries.

Mykhailo Podolyak, said in an interview that Ramaphosa and his delegation of African leaders, had no business being in their country to negotiate a peace settlement between the two countries.

Podolyak is known as one of the advisers to the Chief of Staff of Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

He said African leaders had neither the capability nor the power to get involved in matters they knew nothing about, adding that this was beyond their understanding.

Ukrainian media quoted Podolyak as saying Africa and its leaders were using the failed trip to achieve their geopolitical goals in favour of Russia, which provides Africa with food supplies.

The African delegation had no goal of settling the conflict or finding a solution. Obviously, this is not their task. It is not at their level or competency. They just want to be on the misinformation agenda and resolve their own issues, like the increasing resources they receive from Russia, including food supplies,

he said.

Podolyak said the trip was a mere fishing expedition for information on behalf of Russia.

The most important thing that they had to do was win the information task in favour of Russia by saying they don’t see any missiles fired in the air,

he said.

This comes after a backlash to Ramaphosa's spokesperson Vincent Magwenya saying he had not heard any explosion denoting a missile attack in Kyiv while he was in the Ukrainian city with the African delegation.

According to the Kyiv Post, its reporters, including

every other media organisation present in the city – saw and heard the missiles in the skies over the capital and witnessed several loud explosions as they were intercepted.

Magwenya maintained that he had not denied there had been a missile attack:

I didn’t deny anything. All I said was that, and I still say it, despite the insults and vitriolic responses aimed at me. I did not hear any explosion, see any missile, or hear any siren.

Many South Africans have slammed Podolyak’s comments as yet another imperialistic and racial onslaught on the continent.

His comments come on the back of what President Cyril Ramaphosa head of presidential security, Wally Rhoode describing as “sabotage and racism” meted out to the South African team of advisers, security detail which included journalists who were prevented from leaving Polish capital of Warsaw on Thursday.

In videos released by the reporters on social media, Ramaphosa’s head of security, pointed to racism and sabotage as reasons for having been prevented from disembarking the aircraft.

Rhoode told journalists on Thursday that the Polish government was placing Ramaphosa’s life at risk, adding that this was the first time he had encountered such a situation while having a diplomatic passport. Rhoode said the Polish police had said their South African counterparts did not have permits for entry to the country.

They are delaying us. They are putting the life of our president in jeopardy because we could have been in Kyiv this afternoon already,

he said.

I want you guys to see this, how racist they are. When we started to open our packages, they wanted to confiscate our firearms, which is why we had to put them back,

he said.

On Sunday, the Economic Freedom Fighters called for the South African government downgrade the Poland embassy following the recent “racist” incident.

The party blamed the events on the non-aligned stance adopted by President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Russia-Ukraine war.

However, Magwenya who alog with the President were hosing joint working visit by Prime Minister Rutte of the Netherlands and Prime Minister Frederiksen of Denmark had not returned The Star’s enquiries on the recent comments by one of Zalenskyy’s adivisers.

Meanwhile, Ramaphosa has defended his trip to the two countries in spite of the fact that there has not been a peace deal yet.

Ramaphosa said both Russia and Ukraine's presidents had shown a willingness to listen to African leaders regarding the impact of the ongoing war between the two countries.

The African leaders concluded their peace mission on Saturday following engagements with the two heads of state.

[Zmeselo]

LATEST
Signs U.S. Secretly Organizing For Military Take-Over of Ukraine

By Eric Zuesse

https://theduran.com/signs-u-s-secretly ... f-ukraine/

June 20, 2023

I just happened to notice today, buried two-thirds of the way down in a lengthy (9,000-word) and extensively documented June 18th article by the highly respected Ukraine-War analyst Simplicius the Thinker, which article is titled

AFU Suffers Horror Breakdowns as Russian Forces Repel New Advance,

https://web.archive.org/web/20230619053 ... akdowns-as the following startling passage:

And on that topic of NATO possibly being activated. We spoke last time about NATO’s decision to increase its rapid response force from 40k to 300k. Now, there are persistent rumors that strange things are afoot in the U.S. as people all over the country claim to be witnessing ‘mass amounts’ of military gear being moved throughout many states/regions. I managed to compile a video of all the clips people are releasing, though there are even more than this: [VIDEOS FROM HIM ARE PRESENTED]

Not only many different types of vehicles (Strykers, Humvees, artillery, etc.) but B-2 Spirits flying around:

In the US, there is a massive movement of equipment.

Something is happening in the US. B-2 Spirit bombers have been sighted over Minnesota, and military sources say missile defense systems are moving to positions on the US West Coast.

Americans! What’s your take on this?

“US citizens are concerned about unusual military activity that’s been reported in 26 states.

The Secretary of Defense added to these concerns by stating that these were not training activities.”

Something is happening in the US. B-2 Spirit bombers have been sighted over Minnesota, and military sources say missile defense systems are moving to positions on the US West Coast.

Here’s another one:

And another in San Diego:

According to news reports, military transport movements are being seen in 27 US states, with large numbers of tanks, helicopters and drones.

While in 15 states, internet is also reported to be closed or slow.

Rumors are there are some claims that it’s just exercises, but the question is, why is the internet disturbing ?

Some claims are, these military moves related to conflict with Russia.

Air defense systems also seen

Is it only for exercisees?

This is all reportedly inside the U.S. Could it all be normal movements or some type of Army exercises? Could be, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.

Instead of “worth keeping an eye on,” I would say: This is credible evidence that President Biden is secretly planning to send U.S. forces directly into the war to fight against Russia in the battlefields of Ukraine, and that there would then be no scenario in which a global nuclear war (the end of the world) will likely be avoided, because whichever of the two sides wins pre-nuclear is then going to be nuked by the opposite side. The only alternative to that nuclear response to a conventional defeat would be surrender that is based SOLELY on non-nuclear weapons; and that outcome would be extremely unlikely, because the only thing that a warrior detests even more than losing is the shame of losing — at the outermost extremity, most will do as Hitler did, which is commit suicide rather than surrender. Neither Biden nor Putin would accept a military defeat that is based SOLELY on non-nuclear weapons. And whereas Putin would be doing his national-security duty to the Russian people, by protecting the sovereign independence of their nation, Biden is aiming SOLELY to preserve the U.S. Government’s title as being the world’s most powerful nation. Biden’s position is outrageous, demonstrably evil.

As an American, I think that Biden must be challenged on this matter in the U.S. Congress, and must be impeached and removed from office if he will not commit to NOT going nuclear against Russia UNLESS Congress itself FIRST declares war against Russia.

I think that Congress’s demanding that could well STOP this insanity on Biden’s part.

[Zmeselo]

Time
India Is Not a U.S. Ally—and Has Never Wanted to Be

Alyssa Ayres

https://www.yahoo.com/news/india-not-u- ... 03366.html

Wed, June 21, 2023


Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, during a news conference in Sydney, Australia, on May 24, 2023. Credit - Brent Lewin—Bloomberg/Getty Images

With Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi slated for a June 22 State Visit to Washington, India will, if briefly, be front-page news in the United States. Since President Clinton ended a chill in U.S.-India relations almost 25 years ago, successive American and Indian administrations across political parties have worked to strengthen ties. So it’s fair to ask: how robust is this relationship today? As with the blind men and the elephant, the answer varies. Is India a bad bet, or is it, as the White House senior Asia policy official said recently,

the most important bilateral relationship with the United States on the global stage

?

Despite careful nurturing by Washington over the years, many aspects of U.S. ties with India remain challenging. Bilateral trade has grown tenfold since 2000, to $191 billion in 2022, and India became the ninth-largest US trading partner in 2021. But longstanding economic gripes persist, meriting 13 pages in the 2023 Foreign Trade Barriers https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/20 ... Report.pdf report from the U.S. Trade Representative. Multilaterally, India’s role in the fast-consolidating “Quad” consultation (comprised of the United States, Australia, India, and Japan) has brought shared purpose to Washington and New Delhi, both of which harbor concerns about China. But New Delhi also champions alternative non-Western groupings like the BRICS, and it remains outside bodies central to U.S. diplomacy like the U.N. Security Council and the G7.

Today, U.S.-India cooperation spans defense, global health, sustainable development, climate, and technology, among other things. But deep differences remain, including concerns in Washington about India’s democratic backsliding under Modi, and India’s failure to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In other words, the U.S.-India relationship has been transformed over the past quarter-century, but that transformation has not delivered a partnership or alignment similar to the closest U.S. alliances.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. India is not a U.S. ally, and has not wanted to become one. To see relations with rising power India as on a pathway that culminates in a relationship like that the United States enjoys with Japan or the United Kingdom creates expectations that will not be met. Indian leaders across parties and over decades have long prioritized foreign policy independence as a central feature of India’s approach to the world. That remains the case even with Modi’s openness to the United States.

More from TIME

For India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, protecting his country’s hard-fought independence was a guiding principle for foreign policy. Speaking in the Indian Parliament in March 1951, Nehru noted that

By aligning ourselves with any one Power, you surrender your opinion, give up the policy you would normally pursue because somebody else wants you to pursue another policy.

Twelve years later, evaluating his country’s nonalignment policy in the pages of Foreign Affairs, Nehru went on to observe that it had not “fared badly,” and that

essentially, ‘non-alignment’ is freedom of action which is a part of independence.

American President Harry S. Truman shakes hands with Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on the tarmac as Nehru’s sister, diplomat Vijaya Pandit, and daughter, future Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, stand with them, in Washington D.C., on October 11, 1949. PhotoQuest/Getty Images)

For famously allied Washington, nonalignment in the 20th century was a bridge too far; in 1956 then-Secretary of State John Foster Dulles proclaimed that neutrality was

an obsolete conception…immoral and shortsighted.

It did not help matters that the United States had entered an alliance with India’s arch-rival Pakistan in 1954, and sided with the Pakistani military in the bloody civil war that gave birth to Bangladesh in 1971. Nor, too, when Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi signed a “Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation” with the USSR in 1971, definitively tilting India toward the Soviet Union even as the United States had tilted toward Pakistan.

Especially since the end of the Cold War, Indian leaders have sought to improve ties with Washington, but not by curtailing India’s independent approach to foreign policy. Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee proclaimed India and the United States “natural allies” in a landmark 1998 speech in New York. Yet this was perhaps more a term of art than a call for an alliance as it occurred against the backdrop of India’s nuclear tests, underscoring New Delhi’s willingness to upset global nuclear nonproliferation conventions, which it never joined. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, whose 10 years at the helm greatly improved Indo-U.S. relations, pursued a civil-nuclear agreement with Washington and ushered in new cooperation in high technology, defense, and clean energy. But his government too defended its principle of “strategic autonomy” as a redline for its foreign policy even as it moved closer to Washington than ever in the past. Defending the civil-nuclear deal with Washington before Parliament in 2008, Singh twice asserted https://archivepmo.nic.in/drmanmohansin ... nodeid=672 that

Our strategic autonomy will never be compromised.

In important ways, Prime Minister Modi represents a break with India’s past, most notably in his emphasis on India’s Hindu, rather than syncretic and secular, cultural heritage. But his approach to the United States remains consistent with the history of his country’s foreign policy independence.

Modi has deepened ties with the United States, now across three U.S. presidents, through increased partnership in defense, in advanced technology, and in energy, just to name a few, as well as through moments of high symbolism, like his 2015 Republic Day https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/bl ... o%20effect. invitation to former President Barack Obama, the first time an American president joined this day honoring India’s constitution. Even so, Modi has leaned into the United States while leaning into many other partners around the world. The Modi government invokes a Sanskrit saying, the “world is one family” (vasudhaiva kutumbakam), to frame Indian diplomacy. This approach has been termed “multialignment,” a theory of seeking positive ties as far and as widely as possible, without seeing contradictions in this approach.

In practice, New Delhi has carefully managed its relationships with Saudi Arabia as well as Iran; with Israel as well as the Palestinian Territories; with the United States as well as Russia. India’s G20 https://www.g20.org/en/ presidency this year encapsulates this orientation, with its Sanskritic theme of

One Earth, One Family, One Future,

and its twin efforts to lead the forum for the world’s 20 largest economies while self-consciously presenting itself as the

Voice of the Global South.

With this history in mind, it’s easier to perceive that momentum in the U.S.-India relationship does not necessarily imply a path to a formal alliance or mutual defense treaty. In the United States, the mental model for positive international cooperation defaults to seeing “ally” as the ultimate endpoint. For India, that suggests a curtailment of independence. And with India, even as cooperation becomes more extensive than ever in the past, consequential differences remain.

For many in Washington, the dramatic growth of coordination and joint activities under the Quad consultative group fills a growing need in light of China’s rise, encompassing subjects as far-flung as maritime security, infrastructure, climate and resilience, vaccines, technology standards, and higher education—all underlining Indian strategic convergence with the United States in the Indo-Pacific. Yet strategic convergence there does not mean everywhere: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its year-long war has elicited a tepid tut-tut from New Delhi, while India has escalated its purchases of cheap Russian oil at a time Washington seeks to isolate Moscow.

On closer examination this foreign policy independence and desire to define its own path so prized by India may offer lessons for U.S. foreign policy. The unipolar moment has passed; in its place we have more actors with their own perspectives, and a rising China with global ambitions and its own priorities increasingly shaping the priorities of others. The array of special relationships and alliances nurtured by the United States over decades are still in place, but many of these are now inflected by divergences with Washington. Take Turkey, or France, or Egypt, Pakistan, or Brazil. These U.S. allies do not always see their alliance relationship with Washington as barriers to taking decisions that contradict U.S. preferences. Indeed, President Emmanuel Macron too invokes “strategic autonomy.” https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/artic ... 45_23.html

It’s here that India’s ambivalence offers a lens onto the world Washington is likely to encounter on a growing scale. In this world of more diffused power—a world with more diverse actors taking more distinctive foreign policy steps—partnerships and even alliances marked by substantial disagreements might be the new normal. In fact, managing ambivalence may be the central skill for American foreign policy in the years ahead.





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$572,000,000,000 Added to US Debt in Two Weeks, Total Debt Now Exceeds China, Japan, Germany and UK’s Combined GDP
https://dailyhodl.com/2023/06/20/572000 ... bined-gdp/