Imagine yourself in school. You are 8 years old and it is recess time. You look for your friends, for the boys it is baseball or football, and the natural leaders set up teams and it begins. This is humanity, from its roots as hunter-gatherers so many hundreds of thousands of years ago, this is the natural order of things. Then, some would not survive. Guile and weakness was seldom rewarded. With the onset of…
Politics
USA in the World
12.06.2019
Panda Diplomacy Much Better than Mafia Extortion of Collapsing West
While the United States has been intimidating dozens of countries all over the world, two cuddly Chinese giant pandas – a three year old male called Ru Yi, and a female one year younger, named Ding Ding – were settling down in their new home, inside the legendary Moscow Zoo. Chewing bamboo shoots, and obviously enjoying…
Russia in the World
12.06.2019
Singapore hosted Shangri-La Dialogue 2019
From 31 May to 2 June of this year, the scheduled IISS Shangri-La Dialogue took place in Singapore. It has been hosted annually (since 2002) by London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies. The Forum is gradually turning into one of the most reputable events, well attended by high-ranking government officials. It was established to enable dialogue on…
Southeast Asia
11.06.2019
Tulsi Gabbard: Best Choice for US President?
The presidential candidacy of Tulsi Gabbard, a Representative from Hawaii, has begun to arouse a lot of interest. In the current climate of sleaze, the Democratic Party is seeking what might be called the “Great Blue Hope”. Gabbard be that, but she may be the neatest thing so far. Personally I don’t think she is the only choice. Whoever the Green Party nominates for President…
USA in the World
11.06.2019
US Propaganda Blitz Ahead of Idlib's Liberation
A concerted effort is being made to once again flood Western headlines with now familiar and long-since discredited war propaganda as Syrian forces and their Russian and Iranian allies move in on Idlib in northern Syria to liberate it from US-backed terrorists. A recent New York Times article titled, “Inside Syria’s Secret Torture Prisons: How Bashar al-Assad Crushed…
Middle East - Syria
11.06.2019
Trumps and the Ides of June
In Roman times, the Ides of March, which fall on March 15th, was the deadline for settling debts. Cesar was warned by a fortune-teller to “Beware the Ides of March” before being assassinated on that day. As 2019 approaches ‘the Ides of June”, the Empire is having not only ‘a constitutional crisis’ in which the President is challenging the ‘checks and balances’ written into the Constitution, it was plunged into…
USA in the World
10.06.2019
Sabah Dispute and Numerous Problems in Southern Philippines
The visit by the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Bin Mohamad, to the Philippines in March of this year once again raised the issue of ownership over Malaysia’s state of Sabah. Although during the visit itself this problem was not discussed, afterwards Mahathir Bin Mohamad told journalists during an interview that there were no…
Southeast Asia - Philippines
Economics
09.06.2019
What direction is China’s OBOR Initiative Moving in and How is it Progressing?
Discussions, meetings and banquets at the 2019 Belt and Road Forum in Beijing have finally come to an end. More than 150 delegates attended this event. What can we discern about this project at this stage? Have any new sceptics, opponents or proponents of China’s global initiative, which celebrated its 5-year anniversary last year, emerged?..
Eastern Asia - China
08.06.2019
The Geo-Port-Politics of Gwadar and Chabahar
In a highly surprising move, Iran’s foreign minister, on an unscheduled and unannounced visit to Pakistan on Thursday (May the 23rd), announced the proposal to link Pakistan’s port of Gwadar with Iran’s Chabahar port. This announcement signals tectonic geo-political shift taking place in the region in the wake of increasing tensions between the US and Iran. The US has…
Southern Asia - Pakistan
06.06.2019
Europe Has no Freedom But to Choose "Freedom Gas"
The US Department of Energy (DOE) recently renamed US liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports “freedom gas.” But freedom for who? For Europe who already has a cheap and reliable source of natural gas, but is being forced to switch over to more expensive US gas under the threat of sanctions? Certainly not. Or freedom for Russia who supplies Europe with much of its natural…
Europe
04.06.2019
US War on Huawei is a War on Tech Sovereignty
Unable to compete on equal terms with Chinese telecom giant Huawei, the United States and the corporations that influence its domestic and foreign policy have decided instead to simply cut Huawei off from its many monopolies including chip manufacturing and mobile phone operating systems. But US measures come at a time when Huawei is already well on its…
Eastern Asia - China
31.05.2019
Do We Face a Global Food Disaster?
No, this is not at all an endorsement of the apocalyptic scenarios of AOC or that famous young Swedish climate expert, Greta. It is, however, a look at unusual weather disasters in several key growing regions from the USA to Australia, the Philippines and beyond that could dramatically affect food availability and prices in the coming year. That in turn could have major…
Russia in the World
26.05.2019
Are Rare Earths China’s Ultimate Weapon?
In the dramatic escalation of tariff escalations and trade war tensions between China and the USA, China President Xi Jinping made a well-timed visit to see the JL Mag Rare-Earth Company Ltd., a state-owned complex in Ganzhou. Though he did not openly threaten, he sent a clear psychological message to Washington that China has more weapons in its arsenal to pressure…
Eastern Asia - China
24.05.2019
Does the EAEU Have a Future?
On 29 May Nur-Sultan, the capital of Kazakhstan, will host leaders of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) at a summit to mark the 5th anniversary of this organization. The fact that this meeting will take place in the capital of Kazakhstan is quite symbolic, as the treaty to establish this union was signed in this very city. The Eurasian Economic Union (EEU/EAEU) is an international organization aimed at regional…
Central Asia
Society
10.06.2019
ECHR Remains Happy to Do the Bidding of Western Special Interests
In recent years, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), just like the European Union and Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe have deviated from their initial principles, transforming in a tool for punishment of those disobedient states that would try to defy the so-called rules-based international order…
Europe
08.06.2019
YouTube and the War on Truth
As of June 2019, YouTube, owned by Google Corporation, with a long history of peddling “big data” to spy agencies and right-wing extremist groups, is going to “clean house.” Their claim, that they will remove all “hate speech” and unspecified other “objectionable material” is a huge threat against free speech around the world. You see, Google’s YouTube has actively molded a world of its own, financially partnering…
USA in the World
06.06.2019
North American, European Public: Finally Wake Up, Damn It!
Year after year, month after month, I see two sides of the world; two extremes which are getting more and more disconnected: I see great cities like Homs in Syria, reduced to horrifying ruins. I see Kabul and Jalalabad in Afghanistan, fragmented by enormous concrete walls intended to protect NATO occupation armies and their local puppets…
Europe
04.06.2019
How Lucky is Italy to Have Matteo Salvini?
The EU promise of equality in economics and justice for all is just not panning out. Nowhere is this more evident than in Italy, where new Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini is fighting back at a system of unequal democracy. Salvini’s La Lega Party just smashed the doors in on the European banker’s stronghold on politics in the zone by snatching…
Europe
03.06.2019
The Murdering of Julian Assange
Julian Assange is being slowly murdered by “Her Majesty’s Prison Service” at Belmarsh prison in the south-east of London. The prison is notorious for holding people who have never been charged with a crime indefinitely. It is also called the British version of Guantanamo, and, typically used to detain so-called terrorists, thus called by the British police and secret…
USA in the World
02.06.2019
Atmospherics and the Googling of Humanity
What can be done is being done. Moreover, those “doing it,” or “having it done” are products of a long disintegrating standard of humanity, morality and values. I will begin with an example, please be patient. Some 50 years ago, I was serving in South Vietnam as a Marine. Notwithstanding that the war itself was insanity, predicated on lies and broken treaties, serving…
USA in the World
31.05.2019
America: Between Social Democracy and a Shooting War
It really is true: the bastion of Liberalism is seeking a makeover. Not only have there been a slew of books about socialism and social-democracy of late, but a slew of social-democrats have actually broken the congressional glass ceiling. (I’ve been unable to establish exactly how many DSA members were elected in 2018, along with Alexandra Ocasio-Cortes, who became…
USA in the World
