2020/10/24 22:00:02Welcome to the ‘Moveable Feast Cafe’. The ‘Moveable Feast’ is an open thread where readers can post wide ranging observations, articles, rants, off topic and have animate discussions of the issues of the day. The ‘Moveable Feast Cafe’ will have two new open threads each week. The Saker stated moderation policy will apply eg ‘no caps’, no obscenity … etc to all post. The Cafe is now open for
by Peter Koenig for the Saker Blog Brussels (EU and European NATO Headquarters) – On 21 October 2020, the German Press Agency (dpa) reports that Germany pledges NATO soldiers for possible Covid-19 operations: “German soldiers could be sent on crisis missions to other NATO and partner countries during the second wave of the Corona pandemic. As a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense confirmed, the German government has promised NATO
South Front The Armenian defense in the southern part of the Nagorno-Karabakh region seems to be collapsing as the advancing Azerbaijani forces are about to reach the strategic Lachin corridor. On October 23, Azerbaijani troops were filmed near the village of Muradxanlı, which is located in about 15 km from this strategic area. Even if this Azerbaijani unit was just a field recognizance patrol and the main forces of the
by Pepe Escobar with permission and first posted at Asia Times The whole planet has every reason to be terminally puzzled at how all those lofty Enlightenment ideals Thomas Jefferson embedded in the 1776 Declaration of Independence ended up with…Trump vs. Biden. Jefferson borrowed freely from Locke, Rousseau, Hume to come up with an eminently quotable Greatest Hits, featuring “self-evident” truths such as “all men are created equal”, “unalienable rights”,
By Godfree Roberts – selected from his extensive weekly newsletter : Here Comes China The Huawei complete Google alternative is being built out – You will hear about Petal again – Maps, Docs, Search, Browser and probably every app you use. Huawei solved its map problem with Petal Maps and has just unveiled Huawei Docs, which, supports document viewing and editing of 50 formats including PDF, PPT, and DOC. With real-time syncing enabled by cloud capabilities,
The Transcript follows. Update : October 24th The formal transcript is now complete Update : October 23rd Note that it is not quite complete and we are waiting for the Kremlin resources to complete (as usual correct and accurate) the complete transcript. Yet, most of it is here, and the most interesting details are in the Questions and Answers. (Settle in, it was a 3 hour session and nobody wanted
By Francis Lee for the Saker Blog There is a human tendency to cling on to cherished beliefs even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. There was a time, during the heady days of Jacques Delors and the Social Chapter, when the EU appeared to represent a social-democratic and neutral geopolitical bloc; a third force between the USSR as it then was and the US/NATO – this,
The cold, reptilian eyes of William Colby By Ken Leslie for the Saker Blog One of the persisting delusions of the modern liberal thought states that the humanity has succeeded in overcoming its worst primitive instincts and is happily sailing towards some kind of liberal utopia populated by reasonable, objectively-minded, educated technocrats who are capable of reducing any problem to a linear combination of variables to be modelled and
By A.B. Abrams for the Saker Blog Marking the 75th anniversary of the foundation of the Korean Workers’ Party, today the oldest ruling party in the world, a major military parade in Kim Il Sung Square, Central Pyongyang, sent a number of important messages regarding the state of North Korea’s ongoing conflict with the United States. The two countries has been officially at war for 70 years as of 2020,
by Pepe Escobar with permission and first posted at Asia Times Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister, is the world’s foremost diplomat. The son of an Armenian father and a Russian mother, he’s just on another level altogether. Here, once again, we may be able to see why. Let’s start with the annual meeting of the Valdai Club, Russia’s premier think tank. Here we may follow the must-watch presentation of the
South Front The Azerbaijani Armed Forces have been developing their advance on Armenian positions in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region. On October 19, they captured 13 more villages in the Jabrayil district. The capturing of Soltanli, Amirvarli, Mashanli, Hasanli, Alikeykhanli, Gumlag, Hajili, Goyarchinveysalli, Niyazgullar, Kechal Mammadli, Shahvalli, Haji Ismayilli and Isagli was personally announced by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Early on October 20, Azerbaijani forces also reached the town of Tumas
2020/10/21 10:30:02Welcome to the ‘Moveable Feast Cafe’. The ‘Moveable Feast’ is an open thread where readers can post wide ranging observations, articles, rants, off topic and have animate discussions of the issues of the day. The ‘Moveable Feast Cafe’ will have two new open threads each week. The Saker stated moderation policy will apply eg ‘no caps’, no obscenity … etc to all post. The Cafe is now open for
By Lilia Shumkova, a Moscow based independent journalist, for The Saker Blog A federal grand jury sitting in the Western District of the US state of Pennsylvania without citing any laws domestic or international, basing it’s decision purely on an opaque act of “violation of accepted norms” indited six Russian citizens. All six, as the FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich claims, are Russian military intelligence officers and their “crimes” go
By Matthew Ehret for the Saker Blog It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Vice President of the World Bank Carmen Reinhardt recently warned on October 15 that a new financial disaster looms ominously over the horizon with a vast sovereign default and a corporate debt default. Just in the past 6 months of bailouts unleashed by the blowout of the system induced by the Coronavirus lockdown, Reinhardt noted
By Ramin Mazaheri and cross posted with PressTV Watching the incredible bias of how the US media covers this presidential election assures the world of two things: 1. The largest divide in the United States is not urban/rural, White/Black, sexual, nor the male/female divide recently brought to the fore by #MeToo. It is not even a Democrat/Republican divide, because every outsider sees that these two groups are fundamentally united on
South Front The Armenian-Azerbaijani war, which started on September 27, continues in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region despite international diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the conflict. Offensive operations of Azerbaijani forces continue at the same time as the Azerbaijani government claims that it is committed to the ceasefire regime. The first humanitarian ceasefire entered force in Karabakh on October 10 and collapsed on the next day, while the second one started on
By Cynthia Chung for the Saker Blog Today we see the continuation of the over seven decade’s long ruse, the targeting of individuals as Russian agents without any basis, in order to remove them from the political arena. The present effort to declassify the Russiagate papers and exonerate Michael Flynn, so that he may freely speak of the intelligence he knows, is not a threat to national security, it is
By Katerina for the Saker Blog In this one, which I promise to be the very LAST of my essays, I would like, first of all, to do a short re-cap on the responses to my three previous ones – feedback so to speak. Always useful. Although in this essay the main subject will be the reflections on a rather unfortunate current relationship between Russia and USA, in the same
By Chris Faure for the Saker Blog Bolivia went to the polls yesterday for the first election since the coup d’état in November 2019, that removed Evo Morales from the leadership and from the country and put the country under a western backed right wing coup government. This coup was carried out for lithium, as Morales was developing the Lithium sector and had made agreements to start the long road
By Allen Yu for the Saker Blog Donald Trump was elected with a mandate to make deals and “drain the swamp.” I had my doubts he could make a difference in the geopolitical realm. But even on economic matters, he has not had a lot of success. His Tiktok saga reveals just how far he has left people down. Trump’s demand for a fire sale of Tiktok hit a legal
