By Ollie Richardson for The Saker Blog We’re in the Middle East, and after a big explosion caused by an aerial bombing, a female child is stuck under all of the rubble, people come to remove the remaining rubble and pull the girl out. Then toxic gas is deployed. Does this description sound familiar? No, it’s not the contents of the latest script dispatched by the US State Department to
By Pepe Escobar – posted with permission Let’s start in mid-May, when Nur-Sultan, formerly Astana, hosted the third Russia-Kazakhstan Expert Forum, jointly organized by premier think tank Valdai Club and the Kazakhstan Council on International Relations. The ongoing, laborious and crucial interconnection of the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative and the Eurasia Economic Union was at the center of the debates. Kazakhstan is a pivotal member of
by Ollie Richardson for The Saker Blog Buzzfeed, whose reputation can hardly be described as trustworthy, reported on May 29th that a genuine document – the British Army’s guide for spotting the “Extreme Right Wing” – has been leaked online. According to Buzzfeed, the MOD told the agency that “the document was produced in late 2017 after the arrest of four soldiers who were accused of being affiliated with the banned neo-Nazi
by Ollie Richardson for The Saker Blog Background When the words “Yellow Vests”/“Yellow Jackets”/“Gilets Jaunes” are heard or read by someone who is more inclined to read sources of information that cannot be described as mainstream/corporate media, they most likely will say “Ah yes, I know who they are/what it is!” and recount what they heard or saw in the past when this topic was popular… for about a month.
by Ghassan Kadi for The Saker Blog Every time I write about how low the West has stooped, even make predictions as to how much further it is prepared to slump, I find that my wildest imaginations are surpassed in no time at all. The arrest of Julian Assange and the foray of charges he is suddenly facing is now reaching a point that should only be seen as a
by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog For years I have talked about “White Trash Revolutions”, and the emergence of the Yellow Vests proves that my finger is perfectly on the pulse of things: the only people publicly wearing “Yellow Vests” on the streets of Paris prior to November 17, 2018, were… garbage men. So, imagine me, with my love of Trash Revolutions of all hues (Iran’s 1979 “Revolution of
by Stephen Karganovic for The Saker blog [1] Our investigation of Srebrenica points to some very important insights concerning Jasenovac. Jasenovac, for those who are unfamiliar with it, was a death camp in the Nazi satellite “Independent State of Croatia” during World War II, also known as the “Auschwitz of the Balkans.” What is the link? It is that while the massacre in Srebrenica, arising from the conflict which took
By Pepe Escobar – posted with permission It’s geopolitical, geoeconomic war. Cold, so far, but now about to descend to deep freeze. The US National Security Strategy unmistakably spells it out. China is a strategic competitor and must be contained, no holds barred, on all fronts: economic, military and most of all, technological. Enter the current, concerted offensive across the spectrum, from 5G and AI to moves attempting to prevent the
by Ghassan Kadi for The Saker Blog As the American military build-up continues around the Strait of Hormuz, and as a potential American-Iranian war looms, many analysts are convinced that war is imminent. I beg to differ. Ever since the “War on Syria” started, I kept reiterating that America would never launch a full-on attack on Syria, and for very good reasons, and not long ago, I finally felt compelled
by Pepe Escobar : posted with permission Talk about a graphic display of soft power: Beijing this week hosted the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations. Organized under the direct supervision of President Xi Jinping it took place amid an “Asian Culture Carnival.” Sure, there were dubious, kitschy and syrupy overtones, but what really mattered was what Xi himself had to say to China and all of Asia. In his keynote
Note by The Saker: I normally don’t post open letters, but in this case I made an exception since this latter is also an analysis and because of the importance of this issue. by Peter Koenig for The Saker Blog To the Editor in CHIEF NYT – 18 May 2019 Venezuela’s Collapse Is the Worst Outside of War in Decades, Economists Say Subtitle: Butchers have stopped selling meat cuts in
By Aram Mirzaei for the Saker blog Tensions are reaching critical levels as Washington continues to threaten Iran while the madmen Bolton and Pompeo are growing bolder by the day. It seems as if the White House fool Trump has given up on foreign policy altogether and allowed Bolton and Pompeo to have free reigns on pushing Washington further into the abyss. Bolton has reportedly requested 120 000 troops to
by Denis A. Conroy for the Saker Blog America’s self-imagined custodianship of human rights and freedom epitomize problems associated with fake prophesies. That Americans now rally behind the latest battle-cry of the Republic, ‘Make America Great Again’, indicate that they are indifferent to the fact that their country has been barnstorming across the globe these past six decades killing vast numbers of innocent people with the objective of creating a
by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog Ever since the start of the Yellow Vest movement – which has been violently repressed for an entire half-year – many people have hoped that French police would put flowers in their rubber bullet guns and join the side of the righteous. To me… such a hope is not based on reality. It is certainly not based on history. But French thinkers like
by Pepe Escobar : Posted with permission Russia is uneasy over the destabilization of Tehran, and on other hotspots the powers’ positions are clear. Even veiled by thick layers of diplomatic fog, the overlapping meetings in Sochi between US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov still offer tantalizing geopolitical nuggets. Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov did his best to smooth the utterly intractable,
by George Eliason, Special Correspondent for the Saker Blog in Novorussia Victory Day 2019 in Lugansk People’s Republic For the last five years, I was given the opportunity to break a lot of news and human interest stories from Donbass. More specifically, I’ve lived in what became Lugansk People’s Republic since 2012 and I’ve been writing from there since the trouble started before the Ukrainian coup happened. The video from
By Pepe Escobar – with permission and cross posted with Consortium News The Trump administration unilaterally cheated on the 2015 multinational, UN-endorsed JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal. It has imposed an illegal, worldwide financial and energy blockade on all forms of trade with Iran — from oil and gas to exports of iron, steel, aluminum and copper. For all practical purposes, and in any geopolitical scenario, this is a declaration
by Marko Marjanović (author of the new Checkpoint Asia site) for The Saker blog For decades now China has kept its currency undervalued to the dollar and the US and China have both acted as if this was a boon to China. It is anything but. Yes, by keeping the yuan low China makes it easier for its good to compete on the American market, but only at the cost
by Pepe Escobar for the Saker Blog cross-posed with the Asia Times Let’s start with the “long” 16th Century – which, as with the 21st, also saw a turbulent process of marketization. At that time, the Jesuits and the Counter-Reformation were trying to rebound across Asia – but within a context where the rivalry between the Iberian superpowers of the age, Spain and Portugal, still lingered. The Reformation first attached itself to
by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog Well, you can end a Cultural Revolution without being a counter-revolutionary, I suppose, but not if you do what China did: reverse many of the progressive policies of the Cultural Revolution, and often without the People’s consent. This series has examined the ground-breaking investigative & scholarly work The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village, by Dongping Han, a former
