The recent visit of Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi to China is significant for many reasons. But the most important reason is the way China sees this relationship going in terms of its push for an emerging alliance for an alternative global order led by China (and Russia). At one level, China’s deepening ties with Iran reflect the former’s growing engagement...
Perhaps the most significant step in the recent changes within the G20 was the move to include the African Union as a permanent member of this global association. This step is significant because the G20 is inherently different from the G7, which has become a “club of selected supporters of the United States” thanks to Washington’s efforts. Members of the l...
On Tuesday, February 21st President Putin gave a speech that was expected to be very significant. After it was delivered, however, most pundits said he didn’t say anything we didn’t already know. Most of them focused on his announcement of the withdrawal from the START II treaty. However, he said something far more significant. What Mr. Putin said, when read...
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s much awaited address to the Russian Federal Assembly on Tuesday should be interpreted as a tour de force of sovereignty. The address, significantly, marked the first anniversary of Russia’s official recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, only a few hours before 22 February, 2022. In myriad ways, what hap...
The future of Ukraine is becoming clearer. The fighting is between the government in Kyiv, which refuses to honour its signature on the Minsk Agreements, and Russia, which intends to enforce Security Council Resolution 2202, which endorses the Agreements. On the one hand, a state that refuses international law and is supported by the West, on the other hand,...
After Mikhail Ulyanov, the Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to international organizations in Vienna, pointed out the creation of a new triangle in international diplomacy by China, Iran and Russia at the end of 2022, special attention was paid everywhere to this political formation. Interest in this circumstance has further increased follo...
A series of large earthquakes that devastated a vast area in southeastern Turkey and part of Syria have so far claimed the lives of about 30,000 people in Turkey and 5,000 in Syria, and injured dozens of thousands of victims. All these events, which at first glance do not concern politics, completely overturned the election plans of Turkey’s President Recep ...
Seymour Hersh’s bombshell report on how the United States government blew up the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea last September continues to generate rippling geopolitical waves all across the spectrum. Except, of course, in the parallel bubble of U.S. mainstream media, which has totally ignored it, or in a few select cases, decided to shoot ...
One of the most unexpected developments to emerge from the special operation that Russia was forced by the US-led West’s Golden Billion into commencing is India’s rapid rise as a globally significant Great Power over the past year. This South Asian state has masterfully balanced between that aforementioned de facto New Cold War bloc and the jointly BRICS- & ...
When it comes to the Global South, what the Hersh report imprints is Rogue Superpower, in giant blood red letters, as state sponsor of terrorism. Everyone with a brain already knew the Empire did it. Now Seymour Hersh’s bombshell report not only details how Nord Stream 1 and 2 were attacked, but also names names: from the toxic Straussian neoliberal-con trio...
The Order is running into more problems related to the international organizations that have been set up to manage and enforce the US-backed system. The UN Security Council is a case in point: who has the right to decide which countries can be permanent members? If Russia is one, then why not Japan? If China, then why not India? If Britain and France, then w...
Slightly over a year ago, in December 2021, Russia published a proposal for setting up a new security architecture for Europe. Russia also warned of unspecified serious consequences if this proposal was not acted upon. The United States and other Western countries either ignored the Russian offer, or more or less laughed at it. Russia wanted the line of NATO...
CEO of SpaceX Elon Musk explained in two tweeted responses to former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly why his company’s Starlink service decided to stop Kiev’s military exploitation of their wireless internet services for carrying out drone strikes against Russian forces. He was reacting to that pro-war activist’s plea to reconsider his decision, which Kelly claim...
This could be India’s decade if it plays its cards right. The subcontinental state is poised to be the next China, even if its path will likely be less straightforward than that of China and more of a Leninist two steps forward, one step backwards. Leaving aside the multiple domestic issues India will have to address to realise its full potential, it is alre...
The agreement between the Central Banks of Russia and Iran formally signed on 29 January connecting their interbank transfer systems is a game-changer in more ways than one. Technically, from now on 52 Iranian banks already using SEPAM, Iran’s interbank telecom system, are connecting with 106 banks using SPFS, Russia’s equivalent to the western banking messa...
In the 1990s, Mongolia created a new legal basis for the activities of foreign religious organizations: The law allowed free missionary and religious education activities of foreign organizations in the country. This step was not simply a decision to ensure genuine religious freedom for the citizens of a democratic state. It was a decision made to avoid pos...
As time goes on, American voters are turning away from President Joe Biden. Many of those who say they voted for him tell pollsters they regret it. Some say that if they had known about the Hunter Biden affair beforehand, they would never have trusted his father as president. During the presidential election campaign, the Republican Party filed a lawsuit wi...
Prediction is a dicey business. It’s high risk – unless certain singular conditions prevail. That is when there are clues as to outcomes visible to the discerning eye. One striking example is provided by the fabled ‘Washington Consensus.’ Its forecasts invariably get it wrong. Think of (A) elections: Hillary in 2008 and 2016; the certainty that the country’s...
Indian media revealed in mid-January that their country had been processing and re-exporting discounted Russian oil to the West, including the US, in a move that discredited the spirit of that de facto New Cold War bloc’s anti-Russian sanctions. Most observers brushed off those reports since they went against their worldview wherein it was taken for granted ...
Sit back, relax and enjoy a race to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The only question is who will get there first: the EU, NATO, or both. One may be excused to imagine all sorts of amusement games unrolling at the HQ of the Russian General Staff as The Empire and NATO go literally bonkers. What crazy stunt will they come up with next – short of WWIII? Here ...
Every conflict, including this one in Ukraine, always leads to refugees. Considering the size of Ukraine, it is not surprising that a large number of Ukrainian refugees are in Russia and in Europe. Ukrainian refugees were the topic of an interesting online conference, where you could hear very interesting information from experts about Ukrainian refugees in ...
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has put Israel’s closest allies and some of his key partners on the spot. So has a generation of Palestinian youth that has nothing to lose and no longer sees fruitless engagement with and acquiescence of the Jewish state as a means of realizing their national and socio-economic aspirations. It’s not that young Palestinians...
You would imagine the Russia-Ukraine conflict to be a political dispute. News coverage focuses on the political claims of both sides, and the military operations and economic and political sanctions resulting from these. But it is becoming ever more obvious that this is actually the Forth Crusade reborn. Under the radar, efforts are being made to divide Orth...
Iran, a member of the Axis of Evil, has been attacked by the Forces of Good. Will it come to the Third World War? We shall see. But now from the beginning. After the recent elections, Bibi Netanyahu had formed his sixth government after one-and-a-half-year break and Israelis opposing Bibi began a street revolt against the new government. They took a leaf...
The Republic of Indonesia does not actively participate in the present geopolitical game being played on the world stage and strives to maintain harmonious ties with both its immediate neighbours and powerful nations like China, the United States, and Russia. Meanwhile, the fact that Indonesia is a pretty large state with 275 million citizens and a gradually...
When Mohammed al-Jadaan told a gathering of the global political and business elite that Saudi Arabia would, in the future, attach conditions to its foreign aid, the finance minister was announcing the expansion of existing conditionality rather than a wholly new approach. Coined ‘Saudi First,’ the new conditionality ties aid to responsible economic policies...
The failed coup in Brazil is the latest CIA stunt, just as the country is forging stronger ties with the east. A former US intelligence official has confirmed that the shambolic Maidan remix staged in Brasilia on 8 January was a CIA operation, and linked it to the recent attempts at colour revolution in Iran. On Sunday [Jan 8-ed], alleged supporters of fo...
Sri Adi Shankaracharya founded the city where the holy Jyotirlinga is located, known as Joshimath (Jyotir Math), in the eighth century. Today, this math is at the brink of collapse. News of the sinking of Joshimath has shaken the whole country. Even though some steps have been taken, experts believe that the sinking of Joshimath cannot be stopped. That is, t...