Guest Analyses
by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog In Part 3 of this 8-part series I answered the question raised by that part’s title: Why was a Cultural Revolution needed in already-Red China? To recap: China wanted something which the Eurozone has none of: participatory economic planning. China also wanted much more participatory democracy (political empowerment) at the local level and to move even further away from an all-controlling, imperious central
by Pepe Escobar (cross-posted with the Strategic Culture Foundation) by special agreement with the author) The Made by FBI indictment of Julian Assange does look like a dead man walking. No evidence. No documents. No surefire testimony. Just a crossfire of conditionals. But never underestimate the legalese contortionism of US government (USG) functionaries. As much as Assange may not be characterized as a journalist and publisher, the thrust of the affidavit is
By Le Saker Francophone for the Saker Blog This battle that the French people will win – we do not yet know when, but sure it will – is the vanguard battle of a Western world in full decline because their elites, no longer able to plunder the rest of the world as they did before, are beginning to plunder their own country in order to continue to accumulate a
By Aram Mirzaei for the Saker blog In the previous article, we examined the prevalence of US/Israeli backed terrorism in eastern Iran where Baluchi Salafists have received arms and funding from the CIA and Mossad. In this second part of the article series we will examine the US/Israeli support for terrorists and separatists in western Iran among the Kurdish ethnic group. The Kurdish situation in western Iran The Kurdish question
by Peter Koenig for The Saker Blog The silence is almost deafening. Is it the quiet before the storm? – Or is the US giving up on Venezuela? I don’t think so. It’s more like a regrouping after a first defeat, well, it’s a multiple defeat, if we start counting since the failed coup attempt against Hugo Chavez on 11 April 2002. However, Washington is not giving up. The first
by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog What is Mao’s Little Red Book, first published in 1964 at the start of the Cultural Revolution? In 2019, I think we have to look at it in three ways: The Little Red Book was a work of journalism. This means it sought to impart knowledge which was specific to its exact time, and as a response to the needs of its particular
by Marko Marjanović (author of the new Checkpoint Asia site) for The Saker blog Pushing for the US to start an air war against Syria in 2012 Hillary Clinton argued in her emails that Russia would not “stand in the way”, just as it had done “little more than complain” when the US and its satellites bombed Yugoslavia in 1999: The second step is to develop international support for a
by Pepe Escobar for The Saker Blog The Bamiyan Buddhas were destroyed by an intolerant sect pretending to follow Islam. Buddhism all across Asia grieved. The West hardly paid attention. The remaining ruins of Babylon, and the attached museum, were occupied, plundered and vandalized by a US Marine base during Shock and Awe in 2003. The West paid no attention. Vast tracts of Palmyra – a legendary Silk Road oasis
By Aram Mirzaei for the Saker blog On April 8, the Trump administration made yet another move against Iran in what has become an almost weekly thing these days. This time the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces was labelled terrorist in what can only be seen as another gift to Israel from Trump and his colleagues. Overnight, about 11 million Iranians (one seventh
by Le Saker Francophone for the Saker blog Macron, the French president, always eager to take the center stage to show his dynamism, has received the two outsiders of the presidential election of Ukraine, Zelenski and Poroshenko, on the same day with 3 hours interval. On april 12th Zelinski is convened at L’Elysée at 3 pm then Poroshenko at 6 pm. Le Monde, one of the few French newspaper to
by Pepe Escobar (cross-posted with the Asia Times) by special agreement with the author) The date – April 11, 2019 – will live in infamy in the annals of Western “values” and “freedom of expression.” The image is stark. A handcuffed journalist and publisher dragged out by force from the inside of an embassy, clutching a Gore Vidal book on the History of the US National Security State. The mechanism is
by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog You never read the word “denationalisation” in Western media anymore, only “privatisation”. That makes sense… “denationalisation” is so obviously negative; it’s lack of patriotism and concern for the public welfare isn’t being covered up. The New York Times seemed to stop using the word around the mid-1980s – which makes sense, because that’s when the propaganda of neoliberalism fully took hold. In 2019,
by Pepe Escobar (cross-posted with the Asia Times) by special agreement with the author) Sparks did fly in Brussels, but in the end the European Union and China managed to come up with an important joint statement at their summit this week, signed by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and head of the European Council, Donald Tusk. In theory, there’s agreement on three quite sensitive fronts:
by George Eliason, Special Correspondent for the Saker Blog in Novorussia The shame of post 2014 Ukraine is that the only equivalent situation that could exist is putting the Ukrainian SS death camp guards, their families, and officers’ in charge of Israel. Would giving death camp torturers and lever pullers free reign to do what they want to an entire people have been the thing to do during or after WWII? As you’ll soon
by Stephen Karganovic for The Saker Blog A hundred years ago, at the mention of Montenegro word association would most likely have linked it with Franz Lehar’s lighthearted operetta “The Merry Widow”. In the rather transparent libretto, an American millionairess arrives in a tiny, mountainous European statelet and begins flirting with the crown prince, suggestively named Danilo. Disrespectful allusions were strewn all over the otherwise delightful musical production, so much
by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog Why was a Cultural Revolution needed in already-Red China? (3/8) In every modern revolution the winners owed their victory to the poor, and China in 1949 was no exception. Iranians call 1979 the “Revolution of the Barefooted” for this same universal reason. (The reason is universal because any major political change not led by the poor cannot possibly be a “revolution”, but is
by Lynda Burstein Brayer for The Saker Blog In Israel today, April 9, 2019, out of a population of approximately 8,452,841 million people, 6.3 million people have the right to vote at one of the 10,000 voting stations prepared for their convenience. The voting is executed with paper votes with voting slips and envelopes already prepared in the private voting booths. After exiting the booth the envelope is slid into
By Aram Mirzaei for the Saker blog While terrorism is a phenomenon most of us have come in touch with during our lifetime, much of the coverage is shadowed by terrorism in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Iraq, where US backed terrorist groups have wreaked havoc in devastating the wars that have plagued these countries. Nonetheless, terrorism is widespread across the region, even in Iran. Due to Iran’s
by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog Actually talk to rural people in China and you can certainly learn of martyrs FOR the Cultural Revolution; talk to disgraced party elites, abusive factory bosses, tyrannical schoolteachers, smug technocrats, pagan witch doctors or parasitic monks, and you get stories of those martyred BY the Cultural Revolution. Welcome back to the first day of journalism school! “One person’s ‘terrorist’ is another person’s ‘freedom-fighter’”.
by the Francophone Saker for the Saker blog To try to hamper Acts 19 and 20, the government banned the demonstrators from entire neighbourhoods and perimeters. The Champs Elysées for Paris and the city centre for large cities. Any offender will receive a fine of 135 euros to be paid immediately or 190 euros to be paid later. For instance, a couple has been fined for simply wearing a sweater
