Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has accelerated a series of underlying trends in world politics that are leading us into a dangerous new world order. This new order is not arriving already formed, and there will be interruptions and reverses along the way, but four key features are coming into view:
David McBride, the former military lawyer who exposed Australian war crimes in Afghanistan, will face trial next year after Commonwealth lawyers intervened to suppress the use of crucial evidence that reportedly would have granted him whistleblower protection.
The revelation by ABC’s Four Corners program on 31 October that the US Air Force will base six B-52 bombers in the Northern Territory is the latest signal that the United States is preparing for war with China and confirms Australia’s bipartisan commitment to these murderous plans.
The decision by the Chinese Communist Party at its twentieth national congress to re-elect Xi Jinping as general secretary, setting him up for an unprecedented third term as Chinese president, takes place at a time of significant change in China.
In the years following World War Two, as numerous direct colonies won formal independence, there was a widespread belief, or at least a hope, that political independence would lead fairly rapidly to significant economic progress. No longer under the control of foreign exploiters, the ex-colonies would be free to undergo economic development like that which had occurred in the wealthy capitalist countries.
Ilya Budraitskis, author of Dissidents Among Dissidents: Ideology, Politics and the Left in Post-Soviet Russia, taught political philosophy at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences until he left Russia in March this year. He is now involved in the anti-war media project posle.media. Ilya spoke to Red Flag about the effect within Russia of the invasion of Ukraine.