By Jimmy Moglia for The Saker Blog The godfathers of modern banking have a lively lexical imagination. They invented a brave new vocabulary that simultaneously informs and misinforms, leads and misleads, darkens and enlightens, depresses and amuses – while inevitably taxing and confusing the understanding of the uninitiated. Take ‘quantitative easing,’ for example. Scrambling for a meaning, the average mortal could possibly think of it as a sudden, massive, impetuous
by Aleksandar Sarovic for The Saker Blog Authorities have power over people, and they enjoy this power. They preserve their power in society primarily by imposing knowledge on people. Authorities have been teaching us everything we know. Nothing can come to us if it does not pass the filters of authorities. We are what the authorities made us become, and it is challenging to escape from it. If you love
By Paul Schmutz Schaller for The Saker Blog The world situation is changing very fast and one needs to make an effort in order to keep pace with the events. The end of a year is a welcome opportunity for an assessment of the current situation. I shall concentrate on two main subjects. 2019: The West has lost the supremacy in the Middle East I think that this was the
By Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog It’s certainly not worth the paper it is printed on – any allegedly ground-breaking story which relies solely on anonymous sources. There was a time in Western journalism when this was the accepted moral standard; there was a time when Western readers were smart enough to demand it. In order to launch Gulf War II The New York Times resorted to anonymous sources
By Laurent Schiaparelli for The Saker Blog How to keep the Empire’s subjects asking for more submission Much has been written about how Hollywood has demonised Arab Muslims, Russians, French or Chinese people, depending on the geopolitical wars fought by the US abroad. Much less has been said about how the prospects of a successful career in Hollywood or Las Vegas have been used as a dog treat thrown to
Eric Zuesse for The Saker Blog Craig Murray, a whistleblowing UK Ambassador who was then fired from UK’s Diplomatic Service and became instead a great independent investigative journalist specializing in foreign-policy issues, has one of the most-read blogs on the internet (if not the most-read of them) dealing with international relations, generally from a progressive political standpoint, but occasionally from a liberal standpoint (mixing progressivism with conservatism) instead. Even when
Mansoureh Tajik for The Saker Blog Humans are endowed with faculties for reason that enables them to learn through their own failures and successes, through others’ failures and successes; to learn the hard way and to learn the easy way; to learn in abstract and to learn by examples. How and what they learn are both important but what they do afterwards arbitrates their path to perdition or to liberation.
From Paul Craig Roberts – response to The Saker’s posting The Saker has posted President Trump’s letter to Nancy Pelosi with his commentary https://10.16.86.131/very-important-letter-from-donald-trump-to-nancy-pelosi-must-read/ . I agree with Saker that Trump’s impression of the good condition of the US economy is largely a mirage produced by official statistics that have long been unreliable. The bad data fed to Trump is not his fault. I also agree with The Saker that
By Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog (cross-posted with PressTV) Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of the books ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’ and the
By Pepe Escobar, Lake Issyk-Kul, Kyrgyzstan – posted with permission This journey into the past also reaches the heart of 21st century China’s New Silk Roads strategy t the start of the Tang dynasty, in the early 7th century, a young wandering monk embarked on a 16-year long voyage from the imperial capital Chang’an (today’s Xian) to India to collect Buddhist manuscripts. At the time Chang’an was six times bigger
Eric Zuesse for The Saker Blog Huffington Post headlined on December 21st “I Left Increasingly Right-Wing Britain And Now I Don’t Know If I Will Ever Return Home”, but the young woman who wrote it seems to have had no idea of the deep international forces that — as she sadly noted — are driving ever-larger numbers of young Brits, like herself, to relocate to continental Europe. This is part
By Unorthodox Black Sheep VN (aka A Vietnamese Reader) for The Saker Blog In my late article “What Wrong With Vietnam Today?”, I had underestimate the power of the pro-US faction in Vietnam. After my observing and investigating in the recent months, I found out they are in fact very powerful than I thought. Despite the fact that pro-China faction are very powerful because they are the corrupted officials
Eric Zuesse for The Saker Blog The readers at the international-news site South Front tend to be technologically far more knowledgeable about the internet than most people (including myself) are, and so their responses to a news-report that I did on December 17th, titled “Former NSA Tech Chief Says Mueller Report Was Based on CIA-Fabricated ‘Evidence’”, not only corrected a misspelling of a particular spoken acronym (my “PHAT” there should
By Ramin Mazaheri – for The Saker Blog Western economies have not colluded separately to devalue their currencies as in the past, but instead have collectively colluded in order devalue their economies. They have manipulated the Great Recession to devalue their economies in order to reduce labor costs back to 19th century standards – if it means reducing the quality of their infrastructure, commercial products and technological innovation to do
By Ramin Mazaheri – crossposted with PressTV with permission Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of the books ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’ and the upcoming
by Dean W. Arnold for The Saker Blog “No women allowed” was hand-painted on a small wooden sign as I approached the monastery in Axum, Ethiopia, just a few yards from the building that this African nation claims to contain the Ark of the Covenant. A diminutive monk, looking old but spry, helped me in the front door. The building was centuries-old, rather stark and plain. It resembled an old
By Pepe Escobar, On the Pamir Highway, Tajikistan – Posted with permission A privileged microcosm of what is evolving as the intersection between the New Silk Roads and Greater Eurasia This is the second of 2 parts. See part 1 here. Traveling the Pamir Highway, we’re not only facing a geological marvel and a magic trip into ancient history and customs. It’s also a privileged window on a trade revival
By Pepe Escobar, Pamir Highway, Tajikistan – Posted with permission These are the ancient Silk Roads the Taliban will never be able to reach Part 1 of a 2-part series This is arguably the ultimate road trip on earth. Marco Polo did it. All the legendary Silk Road explorers did it. Traveling the Pamir Highway back to back, as a harsh winter approaches, able to appreciate it in full, in
By Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of the books ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’ and the upcoming ‘Socialism’s Ignored
By Paul Schmutz Schaller for The Saker Blog In June 2016, Brexit was accepted by 51.9% against 48.1%. This was a political sensation and a huge blow against the arrogance and the omnipotence of money. Although the result was relatively clear (by Swiss standards), the losing side made every effort in order to undo it. In the general elections of December 12, the Brexit vote was however clearly confirmed. Under
