ANGLO-AMERICAN ALLIANCE

TONY KEVIN—It is hard to explain Australia to foreigners: a complicated former British colonial society that likes to think of itself as simple and honest, and sometimes persuades others that this may be true. The Australia of the “Dustyesky Russian Choir” that recently became a brief sensation on Russia’s mainstream Channel One is a reassuring image: one in which some Russians might still sentimentally like to believe.

LEONID SAVIN—Stories about bad guys tend to be the most effective. In general, the idea of the villain is used in the methodology of the political frame – the technique is always used in US elections, but it is also widely used in foreign policy. A test tube filled with washing powder can be waved around and Saddam Hussein can be accused of having chemical weapons. That was a story that did its job perfectly. Accusing Iran of preparing to develop nuclear weapons proved to be more complicated. Now, the volleys of an information war against China can be heard. While America’s top officials and bureaucrats do their thing, the country’s corporate media outlets are developing other avenues.

A report focusing on Moderna, a firm apparently created to profit from epidemics and vaccines. CDC director Dr Antony Fauci is major player in this operation.

RAMIN MAZAHERI—Increasing the concentration of power and money in the Western-led 1% is also the explanation for the US-Saudi petrodollar deal: what did the 1% care if consumer prices rose due to higher oil costs when the resulting hyper-financialisation created fabulous wealth for them?

When the dot-com bubble exploded a phony War on Islam was devised to redirect attention, and to solidly anchor the Pentagon’s collusion with the Western 1%, and to further concentrate the political and market power of the Western-led neo-aristocratic class.

SERGE HALIMI—When this tragedy is over, will everything just go back to the way it was? For 30 years each new crisis has raised unreasonable hopes that the world would return to reason, come to its senses, end the madness. We have dreamed of containing, then reversing, a sociopolitical dynamic whose deadlocks and dangers were finally understood (1). We hoped that the Black Monday stock market crash of 1987 would end runaway privatisation, and that the financial crises of 1997 and 2007-08 would halt happy globalisation. They didn’t.