EMOTIONAL PLAGUE 
U.S. records over 600 mass shootings for 3rd straight year

CGTN

According to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), the United States recorded 611 mass shootings in 2022 as of November 26, the third year in a row the country experienced at least 600 multiple shootings.

The archive, a non-profit independent data collection organization, calls mass shootings an "American phenomenon," and defines the incidents as any attack in which there are at least four victims shot, injured or killed by a gun, excluding the perpetrator.

The GVA recorded 610 multiple victim shootings in 2020 and 690 last year, when the COVID-19 pandemic abated.

Very recently, a massacre took place at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia, which left six people dead and four more with injuries. That was only three days after five people died in a shooting rampage in a Colorado Springs nightclub.

Following the Colorado shooting, President Joe Biden condemned the "senseless attack," and urged the country to "address the public health epidemic of gun violence in all of its forms."

Read more:

Graphics: A run on guns in the U.S.

US Navy Member Who Helped Stop Colorado Gunman ‘Wanted to Save the Family I Found'

“Your family is out there. You are loved and valued," Thomas James said in a statement urging young members of the LGBTQ community to be brave. “So when you come out of the closet, come out swinging.”

By The Associated Press 

U.S. Navy via AP
This photo provided by the U.S. Navy shows U.S. Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Thomas James in Centura Penrose Hospital on Saturday, Nov. 26, 2022, in Colorado Springs, Colo.

A member of the U.S. Navy who was injured while helping prevent further harm during a shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado last weekend said Sunday that he “simply wanted to save the family that I found.”

Petty Officer 2nd Class Thomas James made his first public comments on the shooting in a statement issued through Centura Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs, where James is recovering from undisclosed injuries suffered during the attack.

Colorado Springs Police Chief Adrian Vasquez said that James was one of two men who helped to stop the shooter who walked into Club Q late on Nov. 19 with multiple firearms, including a semiautomatic rifle, and killed five people. At least 17 others were injured when a drag queen's birthday celebration turned into a massacre.

1:17

WATCH: Army Veteran Recounts How He Disarmed Club Q Gunman

U.S. Army veteran Richard Fierro spoke during a news conference outside his Colorado home about his efforts to subdue the gunman in Saturday’s shooting at Club Q.

James reportedly pushed a rifle out of the shooter's reach while Army veteran Rich Fierro repeatedly struck the shooter with a handgun the shooter brought into the bar, officials have said.

“If I had my way, I would shield everyone I could from the nonsensical acts of hate in the world, but I am only one person," James said in a statement. “Thankfully, we are a family and family looks after one another."

Patrons of Club Q have said the bar offered them a community where they felt celebrated, but that the shooting shook their sense of safety.

“I want to support everyone who has known the pain and loss that have been all too common these past few years," James said. “My thoughts are with those we lost on Nov. 19, and those who are still recovering from their injuries.”

0:52

Gunman Kills 5 at Gay NightClub, Subdued by Patrons in Colorado

There have been 523 mass killings since 2006 resulting in 2,727 deaths as of Nov. 19

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, the first openly gay man elected governor in the United States, appeared on two Sunday morning TV shows saying he would support increasing licensing requirements for semiautomatic weapons, improving mental health services and better use of red flag laws that allow courts to remove weapons from people having mental health crises and who may be a danger to themselves and others. He also urged the toning down of anti-LGBTQ political rhetoric.

“We know that when people are saying incendiary things, somebody who’s not well-balanced can hear those things, and think that what they’re doing is heroic when it’s actually a horrific crime that kills innocent people,” Polis said on NBC's ‘Meet the Press.’

James ended the statement by urging young members of the LGBTQ community to be brave.

“Your family is out there. You are loved and valued," James said. “So when you come out of the closet, come out swinging.”

Anti-Defamation League CEO Makes Blistering Tweak To Trump's Campaign Slogan

ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt said Trump is "running the most unapologetic white nationalist campaign that we’ve ever seen."

Josephine Harvey
Nov 27, 2022, 09:21 PM EST

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said Donald Trump is “trying to make America hate again” after the former president admitted to having dinner with a prominent white supremacist days after announcing his 2024 presidential campaign.

“For Donald Trump to dine with notorious white supremacists and unrepentant bigots ― I think, at a minimum, it’s clarifying,” Greenblatt said on CNN. “He’s trying to make America hate again and running arguably the most unapologetic white nationalist presidential campaign that we’ve ever seen.”



Trump hosted a dinner on Tuesday at his Mar-a-Lago resort with white nationalist activist Nick Fuentes and Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, whose professional empire has been upended by a series of recent antisemitic tirades and subsequent allegations of workplace misconduct.

Amid furious backlash over the meeting, including from some Republicans, Trump has distanced himself from Ye and insisted he did not know who Fuentes was. According to Trump, the dinner was supposed to be with Ye, who brought Fuentes as his guest.

Greenblatt said it “makes no difference” that Trump claimed not to know Fuentes.

“It’s demonstrably unpresidential when you can’t demonstrate a basic knowledge of people in public life,” he said, noting that in 2016, Trump claimed not to know “anything about” David Duke and refused to condemn the former KKK leader after getting his endorsement.

Ye, who has been accused by former employees of praising Adolf Hitler and Nazis in business meetings, posted several videos on Thursday claiming that Trump was “really impressed” with Fuentes. Sources also told The New York Times and Axios that Trump praised Fuentes at the dinner and at one point said, “he gets me.”

Fuentes has ties to key allies of Trump, such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.). Both lawmakers attracted furious backlash earlier this year after they spoke at a white nationalist conference organized by Fuentes.

In January, Fuentes was subpoenaed by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters seeking to overturn the 2020 election. At least seven people with connections to Fuentes’ America First movement were charged with federal crimes relating to the insurrection.

Hyundai Motor, SK On sign EV battery supply pact for N. America

Heekyong Yang and Joyce Lee
Tue, November 29, 2022 


 Press day at the Los Angeles Auto Show

By Heekyong Yang and Joyce Lee

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's Hyundai Motor Group has signed an agreement to source electric vehicle (EV) batteries in North America from battery maker SK On, the companies said on Tuesday.

The partnership follows the signing in August of the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, which will require automakers to source a certain percentage of critical minerals for their EV batteries from the United States or a U.S. free-trade partner to qualify for new U.S. EV tax credits.

In a statement, SK Innovation Ltd's battery unit SK On said that under the terms of the memorandum of understanding (MOU), it will provide its batteries to the auto group's plants in the United States after 2025 for electric vehicle production.

It said the partnership will allow the two firms to better meet the U.S. tax credit qualifications required by the Inflation Reduction Act.

From next year at least 40% of the value of critical minerals for batteries will have to come from the United States or a U.S. free-trade partner in order to receive U.S. EV tax credits of up to $7,500 per vehicle, a threshold set to rise to 80% in 2027.

"We expect the stable supply of EV batteries from SK On will also enable us to contribute to emissions reduction and meet climate goals in the market," Hyundai said in a statement.

As the new law requires EVs to be assembled in North America to qualify for the tax credits, Hyundai Motor Co and its affiliate Kia Corp, as well as major European automakers, were excluded from the subsidies as they do not yet make the vehicles there.

South Korea's trade ministry said on Tuesday that Hyundai Motor was considering building EVs at its existing factories in the United States to qualify for U.S. federal EV tax credits.

In October the auto group broke ground on a new EV and battery plant in Georgia, aiming to begin commercial production in the first half of 2025 with an annual capacity of 300,000 units.

(Reporting by Heekyong Yang and Joyce Lee; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Jan Harvey)

ANTI-CHINA SPACE PROGRAM
U.S. to Launch Regional Space Force Command in Korea

By Roh Suk-jo
November 28, 2022 

The U.S. Space Force will set up a regional command at U.S. Forces Korea headquarters this year.

A USFK spokesman told the Chosun Ilbo on Sunday that the first regional command was launched under the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii on Nov. 22, and more regional commands will be established here and at U.S. Central Command this year.

The announcement comes after North Korea escalated missile provocations and launched an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland.

According to the South Korean Defense Ministry, the space command here will have about 20 staff.

"This suggests that the U.S. military regards the security situation on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia including the nuclear missile threat from the North as serious," a military source said. "The regional space command will have a small staff initially but will expand over time."

 
It will be tasked with detecting and track flying objects like North Korean missiles that pose a threat to the U.S. and its allies. In recent strategy documents, the U.S. military disclosed plans to launch regional space commands in all parts of the world.

/AFP-Yonhap

The regional command will also serve as a hub for sharing information between South Korea, the U.S. and Japan. At their summit on Nov. 13, President Yoon Suk-yeol, President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged to share missile information in real time.

Seoul and Washington are strengthening military cooperation in preparation for various kinds of provocations from the North, including possibilities of a fresh nuclear test.

South Korea is expected to send marine troops to take part in a drill with the U.S. Marines in San Diego, California next year for the first time.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force executed a B-2 Spirit "elephant walk" and fly-off to conclude annual exercises at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. "This routine training ensures our airmen are always ready to execute nuclear operations and global strike anytime, anywhere," according to the base in Missouri.

A researcher at the RAND Corporation told Voice of America the B-2 is a serious threat to the North Korean regime "in terms of its ability to get to targets and destroy them without the North Korean knowing it's coming."

© Digital Chosun Inc.

Belshazzar’s Feast


By Mark Tooley on November 27, 2022

Street protests are sweeping China against its disastrously draconian “zero COVID” policies that close cities rather than accept effective foreign vaccines. Protests in Iran against the ruling clerics also endure, provoked by the death of a woman in police custody for insufficiently wearing a mandatory headscarf. And Russia simmers as Putin’s failing and costly Ukraine invasion persuades hundreds of thousands to leave Russia to escape military conscription or the failing economy under Western sanctions.

These turmoils won’t likely of themselves topple these regimes, which have vast coercive resources to protect their rule. State propaganda will labor to deceive these populations into complicity and passivity. Police state apparatus will intimidate, arrest, torture, imprison or kill the most feared opponents. Economic revenge will be enacted against any perceived dissenters, who will lose jobs, business and livelihoods. The education system will brainwash students with regime mythology. Artificial intelligence, especially in China, will carefully surveil all protesters, with future repercussions.

And yet, with all their nearly unlimited powers, these despots cannot ever entirely sleep serenely at night. In societies and in governments where all must at least pretend to agree, there’s no way to know the real truth about who is friend or foe. Public opinion cannot be accurately measured. And there’s no way, behind countless placid facial masks, to know who will remain loyal in times of true challenge.

Police states, staffed by millions of obsequious collaborators, motivated more by self interest than conviction, can persist for decades if the regime remains feared. But if vulnerability appears, loyal minions can melt away quickly. This sudden collapse happened to the Shah’s regime that Iran’s mullahs replaced. It happened to Chiang Kai-shek whom the Chinese communists replaced. It happened to the Soviet Union, which Putin tries to recreate. During the last weeks of 1989, the Soviet client regimes of Eastern Europe suddenly dissolved. Romania’s dictator was one day addressing an initially compliant crowd from his balcony. A few days later, on Christmas Day (for Western Christianity), they faced a firing squad. Two years later the Soviet Union was quietly dissolved with barely a whimper.

Xi, Putin and Khamenei, despite their powers, can never be completely confident about their regimes or their personal futures. So they overreact against even minor challenges. And they will murder many thousands if deemed necessary. But downfalls can be sudden, often unfolding before strong defense can be organized.

Recently a talented musician friend shared his rendition of “The Handwriting On The Wall,” an old hymn about the abrupt downfall of Babylonian de facto King Belshazzar. As told in the Book of Daniel, he is blasphemously feasting with his decadent court upon the vessels stolen from the Jewish temple, when an inscription from a detached phantom hand ominously appears on the wall: “You have been weighed and found wanting.”

Belshazzar’s counselors cannot explain the inscription so the imprisoned Hebrew exile, Daniel, is summoned, who pronounces the doom of the king and his court, after which Belshazzar perishes and his kingdom falls to Darius, who honors Daniel. Great pride and self-indulgence precede the seemingly powerful regime’s collapse. The warning of impending implosion is not understood by the clueless ruler, who cannot construe how he could lose seemingly insurmountable control. He listens only to his lackeys who benefit from his corruption and must heed his pretensions. Only a discerning and persecuted outsider, who understands the foolishness of the ruler’s self-deception, can accurately interpret the inscriptive warning.



Here are part of the hymn’s lyrics:

At the feast of Belshazzar
And a thousand of his lords,
While they drank from golden vessels,
As the Book of Truth records,
In the night, as they reveled
In the royal palace hall,
They were seized with consternation—
’Twas the Hand upon the wall!

Refrain

’Tis the hand of God on the wall!
’Tis the hand of God on the wall!
Shall the record be “Found wanting!”
Or shall it be “Found trusting!”
While that hand is writing on the wall?

See the brave captive, Daniel,
As he stood before the throng,
And rebuked the haughty monarch
For his mighty deeds of wrong;
As he read out the writing—
’Twas the doom of one and all,
For the kingdom now was finished—
Said the Hand upon the wall!

And here’s a powerful rendition of another version from one vocalist.

It’s a warning that applies to all tyrants who blasphemously appropriate to themselves what rightly belongs only to God: “You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.” Every regime that claims an absolute power for its own self-aggrandizement offends God. Xi suppresses religion. Khameinei claims to serve God. Putin with the Russian Orthox Church’s compliance claims to serve Christianity. There is for each one a figurative hand inscribing his providential doom on the wall. But they do not understand, and they will not even summon a Daniel, whom they would ignore anyway.

Whether in days, months, years or decades, the regimes in China, Russia and Iran will tumble. Their successors may be more just, or even worse. But judgment will be rendered. The unfolding protests and tumults there may seemingly recede. But they evince a providential hand that is warning, however unheeded, that the scales of righteousness and justice will be balanced at their expense.



Mark Tooley is IRD’s president and editor of IRD’s foreign policy and national security journal, Providence. Prior to joining the IRD in 1994, Mark worked eight years for the Central Intelligence Agency. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and is a native of Arlington, Virginia. He is the author of Taking Back The United Methodist Church, published in 2008; Methodism and Politics in the 20th Century, published in 2012; and The Peace That Almost Was: The Forgotten Story of the 1861 Washington Peace Conference and the Final Attempt to Avert the Civil War, published in 2015.
Follow Mark on Twitter: @markdtooley

  

How scientists use wastewater to track the spread of COVID

U$A
A Brief But Spectacular take on saving lives with abortion services

Nov 27, 2022 

By —Elizabeth Burton
By —Melissa Williams
By —Ana Davila

Dr. Warren Hern runs a clinic in Boulder, Colorado, that has provided abortion services since 1973, the year Roe v. Wade was decided. He shares his Brief But Spectacular take on being on the front line of the fight over legalized abortion in the U.S. for nearly half a century.
Read the Full Transcript

John Yang:

At every pivotal moment of the fight over legalized abortion in the United States, Dr. Warren Hern has been on the frontline. He`s run a Boulder, Colorado clinic providing abortion services since 1973, the year Roe vs. Wade was decided. Tonight, we get Dr. Hern`s brief but spectacular take on his nearly half-century of specializing in abortion services.


Dr. Warren Hern, Boulder Abortion Clinic:

There was a particular case I remember quite well. She had red hair, she was in her early 30s, and she was shaking. And I said to her, "What`s wrong?" She said, "It`s so different. You`re a doctor. The lights are on. It`s clean. The windows are open." Then she told me about her illegal abortion that she had which was the most terrifying and humiliating experience of her life. Then she said, "Don`t ever stop doing this." And so, I didn`t.

In my third year of medical school, my first clinical rotation was on obstetrics. I was taught to deliver babies, and I loved it. It was a very joyous occasion for most of the women. On the other hand, we had women who were in a great deal of emotional pain. They were very much alone. My next rotation was on the gynecology ward taking care of women who were desperately sick and about to die, and I learned that it was because they`d had an illegal, unsafe abortion. This was in the early 60s before abortion was legal.

And one of the things that I learned about was that the death rate due to unsafe abortion for black women was nine times higher than it was for white women, and thousands of women were dying each year. So this was a public health issue, a social justice issue as a matter of great anguish and suffering for individual women.

The Roe vs. Wade case came down in 1973. I thought that implementing the Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade was very important. It didn`t mean anything if doctors weren`t doing the abortions.

I became convinced that performing abortions was the most important thing I could do in medicine. When I opened my practice, I wanted women to be able to know that they could walk in with their hat on and have a safe abortion and that was the purpose, that our commitment was to that.

Two weeks after the abortion clinic opened in Colorado in November of 1973, I started getting obscene death threats in the middle of the night and I started sleeping with a rifle by my bed. That was 49 years ago. And really nothing has changed.

There were five shots fired through the front of my office with a high power rifle, one of the bullets just missed a member of my staff. These people will stop at nothing and they will accept any level of violence to impose their views on other people. This is a violent fascist movement.

Overturning Roe versus Wade is a very significant decision in American judicial history because this is the first case where a right given to the women of this country has been taken away by the Supreme Court. A woman who is pregnant deserves the best medical care she can get, regardless of whether she wants to continue the pregnancy and have a baby, or she wants to end the pregnancy.

Women will have abortions whether they`re safe or not and whether they`re legal or not. There is no justification whatsoever for forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term against her will. None.

I am Dr. Warren Hern, and this is my brief but spectacular take on specializing in abortion services for 49 years.

Anthony Fauci says Republicans have ‘clearly politicized’ public health as he heads toward retirement next month

BYSTEVE MOLLMAN
November 27, 2022

Anthony Fauci delivers his last COVID briefing as White House chief medical advisor on Tuesday.
KEN CEDENO—UPI/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

Anthony Fauci is about to leave a post he’s held for decades. But the criticism he’s faced for his COVID-19 response is far from over—something he’s well aware of, he indicated Sunday.

Fauci will step down next month as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, having advised every president since Ronald Reagan as the White House’s chief medical adviser.

His departure from the job won’t mean a departure from the public eye, however, as House Republicans, who have accused him of lying and abusing his power during the pandemic, have vowed to examine his actions and ask him to testify under oath.

Kevin McCarthy, expected to be House speaker next year, tweeted in August:

“Dr. Fauci lost the trust of the American people when his guidance unnecessarily kept schools closed and businesses shut while obscuring questions about his knowledge on the origins of COVID. He owes the American people answers. A @HouseGOP majority will hold him accountable.”

The GOP, despite a “red wave” not materializing in the midterms, did win enough seats to seize control of the House. That will give Republican lawmakers the power to launch investigations focused on Fauci.

Speaking Sunday on CBS’ Face the Nation, Fauci said he would “absolutely” cooperate with an investigation into his handling of the pandemic and testify before Congress if asked.

“Oh, of course. I mean, I’m very much in favor of—of legitimate oversight. Absolutely. I mean, I’ve testified before Congress, given the 38 years that I’ve been director, literally hundreds of times, in many oversight hearings,” Fauci said.

While Fauci has most recently dealt with COVID and monkeypox, he’s also faced the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the West Nile virus, Ebola, and other threats over the decades.
Anti-Fauci campaigns

He said Sunday that Republicans have “clearly politicized” public health, adding, “It is very clear when people are running their campaigns with an anti-Fauci element to it. That’s ridiculous. I mean, this is a public health issue. So yeah, it’s going to keep going likely much more geared towards me.”


But, he said, “I didn’t get involved before in the politics and I’m not going to get involved now in the politics. I’d be more than happy to explain publicly or otherwise, everything that we’ve done.”

He also spoke on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday, saying he’s “very troubled” by the division in American politics.

“As a public health official, I don’t want to see anyone suffer and die from COVID. I don’t care if you’re a far-right Republican or a far-left Democrat, everybody deserves to have the safety of good public health, and that’s not happening.”

He noted that between 300 and 400 people are still dying daily from COVID, and that the uptake of the latest vaccine booster has been less than 15%. “I think the idea that, ‘Forget it, this is over’—it isn’t,” he said, warning that America is still “certainly” in the pandemic.

On Tuesday Fauci delivered what will likely be his final COVID briefing as White House chief medical advisor.

“My message…maybe the final message I get from this podium, is that please, for your own safety, for that of your family, get your updated COVID-19 shot as soon as you’re eligible to protect yourself, your family, and your community,” he said.

On Meet the Press, he described how he’d like to be remembered.

“I hope to be remembered for what I’ve tried to do, just bring science and medicine and public health principles to very serious crises we’ve had,” he said. “As I’ve said before, I’ve given it everything I have to do that.”

His critics hope he’ll be remembered in other ways, and sparks will likely fly in congressional hearings next year.

Pre-empting the coming world war

Despite Ukraine, Paul Mason writes, Europe is still not awake to the security threat it faces.

The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, (GREEN PARTY) condemning the Russian invasion days afterwards at the United Nations General Assembly emergency session—so did 140 other members states, but the war continues (lev radin / shutterstock.com)

PAUL MASON 21st November 2022

It must have been a shock in Britain to see a book entitled The Coming World War published in 1935. That after all was the year a ‘peace ballot’ took place, an informal referendum in which 11 million people—half the electorate—voted for peace, disarmament and active support for the League of Nations.

The book was vague about where the war might begin. But it warned that whole cities would be razed by bombers, with uncontrollable outbreaks of mental illness, starvation and social breakdown as a result.

Published by the Communist Party, the book was aimed squarely at the pacifist movement, an audience targeted so successfully as to require a second edition, in 1936. But within six months of its appearance its author, Tom Wintringham, was himself at war—in Spain, commanding the British battalion of the International Brigade. The pacifist moment was over.

That’s how quickly the world can turn. Today, too, we seem to be sleepwalking towards a global conflict whose shape is becoming all too clear.

Systemic incompatibility

There are justified grounds for believing the Ukraine conflict may soon become ‘frozen’. Back-channel negotiations are said to be happening between the United States and Russia. Behind the extreme gestures—the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline and the nightly threats of nuclear war on Russian television—some western analysts believe the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is seeking to de-escalate and freeze the invasion at its current territorial limits.

The contours of any future global conflict have however become sharper in 2022. The declaration on February 4th by Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping—20 days before the invasion began—was a formal assertion of systemic incompatibility. There is no longer a single, ‘rules-based’ order, said the two presidents, but a multipolar world in which universal definitions of democracy, freedom and human rights are dead. By implication we, the Chinese Communist Party and United Russia—state parties which do not allow of alternation—will decide what constitutes freedom and democracy.

If this were merely a ‘live and let live’ philosophy, the west might simply decouple its economies from China, wean itself off Russian gas and resign itself to the strategic paralysis of the United Nations Security Council. But the invasion of Ukraine, Chinese manoeuvres against Taiwan and the relentless propaganda against universal norms being waged by both powers inside western societies are signals that coexistence will be hard.

Economic deglobalisation is under way, as each of the global trading blocs scrambles to secure raw materials and energy supplies. Russia has diverted its oil and gas supplies to China; the US is exploring long-term energy agreements with Britain and Germany. Meanwhile the US president, Joe Biden, has banned the export of semiconductor tools to China while pouring $52 billion into semiconductor manufacturing and research, with the express aim of overtaking China in this critical field.
Unsustainable models

But what’s really undermining the rules-based order is the long-term unsustainability of the socio-economic model each of the world’s major powers has chosen.

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The Russian oligarchic elite lives off economic rents from oil and gas—impossible in a future of net-zero carbon emissions. The Chinese ‘communist’ elite thrives on the super-exploitation of a giant factory workforce which cannot bargain because it has no rights. And the US plutocratic elite tops a financialised capitalism reliant on dollar dominance and repeated central-bank largesse: high inequality and structural racism have turned it into the most fragile of the G7 democracies.

None of these models can endure long-term. They are pushing the national elites into confrontation with one another—even as they proclaim their desire for peace and co-operation.

Which leaves us with a world system built around an American hegemony for which its electorate no longer has the stomach, a Russian elite which feels compelled to lash out in the direction of its near neighbours and a China straining to move from regional dominance to matching the US in global power.

Into every crack surges any party prepared to use force. With Ukraine, Putin calculated correctly that the west would not directly intervene in its defence. Where he miscalculated was over the determination of the Ukrainian people to resist. With Hong Kong, China moved swiftly and decisively to crush the remnants of post-colonial democracy. Yemen has been turned into a perpetual battleground between Iran and Saudi Arabia. In Afghanistan, 20 years of liberal interventionism and nation-building were reversed over the course of a single summer.
Previously unthinkable

Over the past two years, then, previously unthinkable things have become thinkable: armed insurrection in the US, ejection of western forces at gunpoint from a country they occupied for two decades, the jailing of trade unionists and democracy activists in Hong Kong, war between China and Taiwan and large-scale conventional warfare on the soil of Europe.

Anyone who thinks this is the worst it’s going to get, and that everything will soon calm down, is deluding themselves. One of the few rational things Liz Truss did, during her brief tenure as UK prime minister, was to obsess daily about the wind direction over Ukraine, in case Putin made good his threats to explode a tactical nuclear weapon there.

Amid such clear and present dangers, much of our mainstream political discourse seems irrational. We ‘cling to the average day’ (as WH Auden put it at the start of World War II) of scandals, think-tank reports and minor injustices.

During my brief recent attempt to become an election candidate for the Labour Party it was clear that neither the party’s membership nor any of the other potential candidates wanted to talk about Ukraine, defence budgets or Britain’s diplomatic priorities. For most social democrats, the important part of Britain’s foreign office is still the part that dispenses development aid.

A Europe-wide Zeitenwende

So in this final Social Europe column of 2022 I want to make a plea for a more thorough and Europe-wide Zeitenwende.

Once the world turns in the direction of dictatorship, systematic criminality and opportunist wars, we have to make the kind of mental leaps Wintringham’s generation did. From now on everything in politics has to be framed by the defence of democracy, tolerance, universal rights and the promotion of social justice. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has to be transformed, from Realpolitik towards the practice of the values it claims to represent: individual liberty, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

The European Union and its member states need to rearm themselves—morally, diplomatically and militarily—to present a credible deterrent against Russian aggression. We need to be prepared for the eventuality that America walks away from NATO—either because of a second Donald Trump presidency or simply because it perceives the long-term threat from China as suddenly urgent and more important.

The architecture of the global system is failing. It can still deliver 141 votes at the UN General Assembly to condemn the invasion of Ukraine in its aftermath. But it cannot deliver justice for the thousands of Ukrainian citizens tortured, murdered and raped—at least not this side of the collapse of Putin’s regime.
New security architecture

The task is not simply to rearm and modernise Europe’s armed forces—difficult enough given the strong tradition of post-1945 pacifism—but to do so in a way that democratises them, making them look and behave more like the societies they are defending.

At the same time, we have to strive towards a new security architecture for the world, entailing—most likely—some dirty compromises with dictatorships. But we cannot assume that we will contain systemic conflict forever.

Wintringham’s The Coming World War was written as an anti-militarist tract. By 1940 the man himself was busy training British volunteers in the art of guerrilla warfare, his communism replaced by a kind of revolutionary-patriotic humanism.

As German social democracy has found since February 24th, it is possible to detest militarism and yet deliver rapid and effective renewal of the defence infrastructure and revived political commitment to deterrence. The whole progressive half of European politics is going to have to learn the same lessons, quickly.



Paul Mason is a journalist, writer and filmmaker. His forthcoming book is How To Stop Fascism: History, Ideology, Resistance (Allen Lane). His most recent films include R is For Rosa, with the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. He writes weekly for New Statesman and contributes to Der Freitag and Le Monde Diplomatique.