While many eagerly await the day when China will finally reveal its latest official gold holdings, a number which when made public will be orders of magnitude higher than its last 2009 disclosure of just over 1,000 tons, or less even than Russia, China continues to plough ahead with agreements and arrangements to obtain even more gold in the coming years. Exhibit A: …
Kiev’s Repression of Anti-Fascism in Odessa – ERIC DRAITSER
There is a common misconception in the West that there is only one war in Ukraine: a war between the anti-Kiev rebels of the East, and the US-backed government in Kiev. While this conflict, with all its attendant geopolitical and strategic implications has stolen the majority of the headlines, there is another war raging in the country – a war …
Washington Blows Itself Up With Its Own Bomb. US Strategy Backfires – F. William Engdahl
These are sad days in Washington and Wall Street. The once unchallenged sole Superpower at the collapse of the Soviet Union some quarter century ago is losing its global influence so rapidly that most would not have predicted anything comparable six months ago. The key actor who has catalyzed a global defiance of Washington as Sole Superpower is Vladimir Putin, …
Why the US is Finally Talking to Russia – Pepe Escobar
So a woman walks into a room… That’s how quite a few jokes usually start. In our case, self-appointed Queen of Nulandistan Victoria “F**k the EU” walks into a room in Moscow to talk to Russian deputy foreign ministers Sergei Ryabkov and Grigory Karasin. A joke? Oh no; that really happened. Why? Let’s start with the official reactions. Karasin qualified …
UKRAINE MAKES AMNESIA THE LAW OF THE LAND – Jochen Hellbeck
Few Western observers took notice when Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko signed a package of laws last Friday. They should have. The laws, which were rushed through parliament without public debate, strive to provide the country with a “correct” and binding historical memory. Those holding alternative views of Ukraine’s past risk prison terms of up to ten years. Vedomosti, a liberal Russian newspaper generally …
McCain Appointed to Ukraine “Reform Advisory Team” Headed by Fugitive Georgian Leader Saakashvili
Georgia’s fugitive ex-president Mikhail Saakashvili and hawkish US Senator John McCain have been approved as members of the newly-formed International Advisory Group that will help Ukraine’s president in “conducting reforms.” Saakashvili has been appointed as head of the new advisory group, says the statement on Ukraine’s presidential website. The list of members included in the advisory group mostly includes current and former …
Suicide, A Worldwide Epidemic – GRAHAM PEEBLES
A friend recently asked to meet for coffee. ‘I’ve had some more bad news,’ his text said. A ‘fifty something’ year old friend had taken his own life the day before. Jack had hanged himself from a tree in a public park on the outskirts of London; it was his fourth attempt. He had four children. This was the second, …
Losing the American Republic – William R. Polk
In The Financial Times of April 23, Philip Stephens begins a perceptive article with the obvious statement that “It is easier to say that Obama never gets it right than to come up with an alternative strategy.” Of course it is. It was never easy to construct a coherent policy, but it was never impossible. The problem we face today is different. …
Over Reach of the Financial-Military Complex and the New Multi-Polar World Order – Jim Miles
From a perspective of continually searching for knowledge and relationships, for synthesizing information into a larger paradigm I have reached a point where the world – the human world and its cultural and physical geography – is reaching certain tipping or turning points. Several genres of interest – financial, military, and environmental – appear to be at a stage where …
Battlefield: Black Sea. US-NATO “Swimming in Troubled Waters” – Eric Draiser
While the war in Ukraine has raged on for more than a year, the growing conflict between the US-NATO and Russia has taken on new dimensions. From economic warfare waged by the West in the form of sanctions, to the diplomatic rows over the commemoration of Victory Day in Moscow, more and more it seems that relations between East and …