H. Michiel 13 May 2022 (This English translation of Zweden en Finland bij de NATO … was published on Defend Democracy Press) Looking back over the last 30 years, since the end of the Soviet Union (December 1991), one sees the steady expansion of the Western military alliance eastwards, up to the border with Russia.…
Dangerous gas smell around Ukraine
Herman Michiel (*) 11 February 2022 “If Russia invades Ukraine, the pipeline between Russia and Germany will not become operational. There will be no more Nord Stream 2. We will put an end to that. Promise, we are able to do that.” Those were words of US President Joe Biden after his meeting on…
Human Rights Day?
10 December 2021 December 10th is ‘Human Rights Day’. On this day in 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted. It is very cynical that today of all days it was announced that Wikileaks whistleblower Julian Assange may be extradited to the United States, as the BBC just announced. Less than a…
The election defeat of Die Linke
Herman Michiel (*) 20 October 2021 In the Bundestag elections of 26 September, Germany’s left party Die Linke achieved a dire result. Some 2.3 million people voted for the party, 2 million fewer than in 2017. According to analysts, of these 2 million, 820,000 would have voted for the social-democratic SPD, 610,000 for the…
Die Wahlniederlage der Partei Die Linke
Herman Michiel (*) 20. Oktober 2021 Bei den Bundestagswahlen am 26. September hat Die Linke ein katastrophales Ergebnis erzielt. Nur 2,3 Millionen Menschen stimmten für die Partei, 2 Millionen weniger als 2017. Analysten zufolge hätten von diesen 2 Millionen 820.000 für die SPD gestimmt, 610.000 für die Grünen und 520.000 hätten nicht gewählt.…
Afghanistan: Drawing the lessons
by Herman Michiel 17 August 2021 We saw Taliban troops parade in the presidential palace in Kabul, from which President Ashraf Ghani fled abroad. The largely US-educated professor and former World Bank employee symbolises the puppet regime that the Americans installed in Kabul, just as they did in Vietnam in the 1960’s. Just like…
Fighter jets as a European project
by Herman Michiel (*) 23 June 2021 You can’t be blamed if the acronym FCAS doesn’t mean anything to you. FCAS stands for ‘Future Combat Air System’, and is a French-German-Spanish project to develop a ‘sixth generation’ fighter plane, as a successor of the ‘fifth generation’. Among the latter is the American F35, actually…
The selective indignation of the EU
Herman Michiel, 27 May 2021 – European leaders are outraged by the manoeuvre with which Lukashenko handcuffed an opponent. But the selectivity of their indignation shows that they are not concerned with human rights, but with an imperial power play.(Published in Defend Democracy Press, 31/5/2021, translation of De selectieve verontwaardiging van de EU.) If…