Guest Analyses
by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog (cross-posted with PressTV) There are many pieces of nonsense about Iran which are fervently believed in the West but which have zero credibility inside Iran. “Millionaire Mullahs” is a concept which has captivated the Western imagination, even though it has no basis in reality. The idea of “Millionaire Mullahs” was conceived in 2003 by the uber-capitalist magazine Forbes. What’s worse, it was created
by Pepe Escobar (cross-posted with Consortium News – by special agreement with the author) All bets are off in the geopolitical insanity stakes when we have the President of the United States (POTUS) glibly announcing he could launch a nuclear first strike to end the war in Afghanistan and wipe it “off the face of the earth” in one week. But he’d rather not, so he doesn’t have to kill
by Michael Hudson, posted by special permission on the Saker blog * Keynote Paper delivered at the 14th Forum of the World Association for Political Economy, July 21, 2019. Today’s world is at war on many fronts. The rules of international law and order put in place toward the end of World War II are being broken by U.S. foreign policy escalating its confrontation with countries that refrain from giving
by Ollie Richardson for The Saker Blog Dear reader, if you enjoy my Yellow Vests reporting and want it to continue, then please consider becoming my Patron and helping me give the movement the fair English-language coverage it deserves. More information can be found here. (Photo taken by me on June 29th in Paris during a Yellow Vests demonstration) I think by now most people who are interested in geopolitics
by postfataresurgo for The Saker Blog Anyone watching from outside Italy the unfolding of the news about the Italian government this summer may be left a little puzzled. On one side, we have the government of Italy –namely, the Ministry of the Interior headed by Salvini – timidly enforcing the rule of law and acting like a sovereign country, therefore trying to prevent foreign vessels operated by foreign NGOs to
By Ulrich von Kafkanien for The Saker Blog I guess this mini-essay, a homage to the late Dave McGowan (1960–2015), needs some captatio benevolentiae as introduction. First: Rest assured, I am not going to question the veracity of the moon landings, of which the first one was broadcasted 50 years ago, July 20 1969. Second: I need to apologise for my poor command of the English language, which would be
by Pepe Escobar : Posted with permission “We’re like policemen. We’re not fighting a war. If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in a week. But I don’t want to kill 10 million people. Afghanistan could be wiped off the face of the Earth. I don’t want to go that route.” Even considering the rolling annals of demented Trumpism, bolstered
by Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker Blog (cross-posted with PressTV by 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 “I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China.”) At a
by Peter Koenig for The Saker Blog The British-flagged tanker “Steno Impero”, heading for Saudi Arabia, was seized on Friday, 19 July 2019, by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in the Strait of Hormuz, after it rammed an Iranian fishing boat, whose distress call it ignored. The tanker was taken to an Iranian port, because it was not complying with “international maritime laws and regulations,” Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said.
by Pepe Escobar : Posted with permission China is South America’s top trading partner. Together, China’s policy banks – the China Development Bank and Export-Import Bank of China – are the top source of development finance for the whole of Latin America. Over the past few decades, the Brazilian government, leading national companies and multinational corporations have configured what Fernando Mires, already in 1990, defined as the “Amazon mode of production”:
by Jimmie Moglia for The Saker Blog Not knowing who-is-who in the Russian government, only recently I learned of Alexander Patrushev. He is reputed as “one of Putin’s closest and most trusted advisers,” who “has been the nerve center of most of Putin’s special operations,” and “was one of 24 Russians close to Putin subjected to sanctions by the United States.” But all the world well knows of Russia’s support
by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog Today I was flying back to New York from San Francisco on the “Job Creator’s Red Eye”, when I read a New York Times headline and sub-headline worthy of American feminism: “The Ridiculous Fantasy of a ‘No Drama’ Relationship: Online, that’s what men say they want from women. Do they know nothing about life?” It’s funny, because as I was reading this article
by Ollie Richardson for The Saker Blog As we come closer to August, when most of France (and Europe) is in holiday mode, I think that it is an apt moment to summarise what has happened in relation to the Yellow Vests movement since the last time I wrote about this topic, which happened to be part 2 of my “Inside the Yellow Vests” series (part 1 can be found
by Pepe Escobar : Posted with permission Western economists and intellectuals obsessed with demonization of China are never shy of shortcuts glaringly exposing their ignorance. The latest outburst posits that “we” – as in Western intellectuals – “are the modern version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” who electro-shocked a dead body (China) into a resurrected “murderous monster.” So, welcome to the Sino-Frankenstein school of international relations. What next? A black and
by Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker blog (cross-posted with PressTV by 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 “I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China.”) Christine Lagarde
by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog I’m not a huge Pink Floyd fan, but everyone else in the West apparently is – the album The Dark Side of the Moon spent 33 years (1,716 weeks) on the top-sellers charts. A lot of their early stuff is just noise, but they have enough of a blues foundation to get both really heavy and pretty funky often enough for such a
by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog (cross-posted with PressTV by permission) (Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV 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 “I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China”.) Reza Pahlavi, the
by Eric Zuesse for The Saker Blog The success of Turkey’s takeover of Syria’s most pro-jihadist province, Idlib, is making less and less likely that Syria will be able to continue maintaining Idlib as being a part of Syria. (This is something I had predicted, back on 14 September 2018, to be possible or even likely, and now it is actually happening.) On July 10th, Reuters headlined “Assad hits a
by Denis A. Conroy for The Saker Blog It appears that the information revolution is redefining cultural aspirations at a time when mass production has become a concave-convex supernova offering everybody (in theory) the right to ‘have everything’, regardless of the cost to fellow beings or to nature itself. In the West, free enterprise had become an object lesson in short-sightedness and purblind avarice, suggesting that it’s time to revisit
by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog cross posted by permission with PressTV (Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV 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 “I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China”.) Last month
