James ONeill

The recent Iranian presidential election saw the Conservative Ebrahim Raisi elected to power, albeit from a small turnout of Iranian voters of less than 50% of the eligible electorate. Raisi is more conservative than his predecessor Hassan Rouhani, but there is unlikely to be significant changes to Iranian government policy, both foreign…

The Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov recently made a very important speech that, unsurprisingly, received very little attention from the western media. On June 9 Mr Lavrov addressed the Primakov Readings International Forum in Moscow. In his speech, Lavrov drew attention to what he persists in calling “our western…

Last week in Saint Petersburg, Russia, one of the most important economic forums of recent times was held. It was the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEFDahJTkfw. Although attended, in person or electronically, by representatives of more than 170 countries across the world, it barely attracted a mention in the western mainstream media…

A meeting between Russian president Vladimir Putin and United States president Joe Biden has been scheduled for June in the Swiss city of Geneva. It appears that the impetus for the meeting came from Biden who has displayed more enthusiasm for the meeting than his Russian counterpart. The Russian scepticism is well founded…

One of the world’s great enduring myths, persisted in by multiple political leaders, is the two-state solution in Israel – Palestine. The State of Israel was created in 1948, not least as a form of compensation for what had happened to the Jewish people in World War II. At the time of its creation, the bulk of the land in what became Israel…

The United States and its Western allies are very fond of quoting the importance of adherence to what they call “the rules based international order.” It is for example, central to Australia’s strategy, apparently first used by then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2008, and adopted by his multiple successors. It is a term that has been…

This week the United States secretary of state Anthony Blinken travels to Ukraine for meetings with the Ukrainian leadership. It is likely that he is taking a message that the Ukrainians do not want to hear: that they must cease the undeclared war against the two breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. Although it is not a message that Ukrainians…

This week the Australian government took its expected step and cancelled the Belt and Road Initiative agreement that the Australian State of Victoria had signed with the Chinese. The move was not unexpected and had been signalled by the government some time ago. The ostensible reason for the cancellation was that it was…

Two United States announcements this week have raised some interesting points and are worthy of further examination. The first was an announcement by United States president Joe Biden on Wednesday, 13 April that United States troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by the 11th of September this year. The choice of that date is significant…

One of the more tiresome aspects of the mainstream media is the way they ignore history and treats all modern systems as though they were devoid of historical context. Nowhere is this more obviously the case then in the presentation of the current situation in Crimea. Western politicians and reporters seem completely bereft of historical context when discussing the current…

The United States propaganda war against China took on an extra dimension recently when the New York Times published an article reflecting its ongoing war against the People’s Republic of China on 29 March 2021. The article was entitled “An Alliance of Autocracies? China wants to lead the new world order”. The article was written…

After several years of negotiation, the China-Iran agreement has finally been signed. It provides for a multi-billion-dollar investment in Iran by China over the next 25 years. In signing the agreement, China has unequivocally expressed to the world in general and the United States in particular that it is totally unimpressed by the current United States attitude towards Iran…