As 2021 is approaching its end, efforts are being made to assess it and gain insight into what the New Year, 2022, holds in store for us. In 2021, the world has still been reeling under the consequences of COVID-19 pandemic, but it has turned out to be more hectic: the old conflicts have flared up again and the new ones have kept emerging while...
Vladimir Putin got straight to the point. At the opening of his one hour and fourteen minute video conversation with Xi Jinping on 15 December, he described Russia-China relations as “an example of genuine inter-state cooperation in the 21st century.” Their myriad levels of cooperation have been known for years now – from trade, oil and gas, finance, aerospa...
Long banned, Christmas has finally, at least tacitly, arrived in Saudi Arabia; just don’t use the name in marketing or be ostentatious about your tree. Coffee shops serving beverages in red cups with snowflakes on them are ok. So is the sale of soap bars named ‘Tis the Season and Vanilla Bean Noel. Christmas trees that sell at up to US$3,000 a piece are sli...
Amid the 2020 global Covid lockdowns and economic dislocations it has caused, Klaus Schwab, a previously low-profile founder of a Swiss-based business forum, emerged on the world stage calling for what he called a Great Reset of the entire world economy, using the pandemic as driver. He even published a book in July 2020 outlining his blueprint. It has been ...
The aspiration of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to become an essential independent geopolitical player in the Middle East is perceived with great wariness and jealousy in Washington and Tel Aviv, openly not wishing to release Abu Dhabi “from their ranks.” Of particular concern to the USA and Israel was the announcement on November 30 by Anwar Gargash, Di...
Afghanistan was at the heart of the 17th Extraordinary Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers representing 57 nations at the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). It was up to Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan to deliver the keynote address to the session, held on 19 December at the Parliament House in Islamabad. And he rose to the occasion: “If t...
The President of the United States, Joe Biden, has organised a virtual summit for democracy on December 9 and 10, 2021 [1]. It is clear that his objective was not only to improve democracies, but also and above all to divide the world into two: on the one hand, “democracies” that must be supported, and on the other, “authoritarian regimes” that must be fough...
Iranian support for Arab militias has long threatened Iran’s detractors, unable to develop an effective counterstrategy. Now, the tide may be turning. A string of events suggests that the usefulness of at least some of the militias in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Palestine is waning as their popularity diminishes and relations with Iran encounter headwinds. ...
The campaign for the election of the next president of the French Republic on April 24, 2022 is unleashing passions in a very confused atmosphere. Social tensions can no longer be expressed, except through violence, because the political vocabulary has lost its meaning. The same words are used by everyone with different, even diametrically opposed meanings. ...
Apart from making a defense deal – which came as a potential snub to the US’ dillydallying on the sale of the F-35s to Abu Dhabi – with France to purchase 80 state-of-the-art Rafael jets, the UAE is cosying up to Iran and Turkey as a means to place itself as a key player in the region, one that is capable of resetting regional balance of power through its mo...
It’s looking increasingly likely that the US Federal Reserve and the globalist powers that be will use the dramatic rising of inflation as their excuse to bring down the US financial markets and with it, crash the greatest financial bubble in history. The enormous inflation rise since the malicious political lockdowns and the trillions of dollars in emergenc...
Four months after the withdrawal of the US and NATO troops from Afghanistan, the Taliban (movement is banned in the Russian Federation) attempts to shape the country on their image, despite the lack of recognition. Nevertheless, they have complete freedom from their neighbors to do whatever they want. They do not officially interfere but try to be orientated...
Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin spent an hour and 14 minutes in a video conversation on Wednesday [December 15-Ed]. Geopolitically, paving the way for 2022, this is the one that really matters – much more than Putin-Biden a week ago. Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov, who generally carefully measures his words, had previously hinted that this exchange woul...
The most recent US decision to do a ‘diplomatic boycott’ of winter Olympics in Beijing has caused a new low in the US-China bilateral relations. The decision to boycott has firmly established the drastic failure of the US-China summit that Biden had only recently called to sort out some of the outstanding issues facing their bilateral ties since the start of...
Increasingly, compliance with US sanctions against Iran could emerge as a litmus test of the United Arab Emirates’ close ties to the United States. At the sharp edge of a potential rift between the allies is a reportedly recently concluded agreement by a private UAE company to build gas-fired thermal, solar, and wind power plants with a total capacity of 300...
Even though the recent meeting between the US and French presidents on the side-lines of G-20 meeting was said to have ‘restored’ the French-US ties after the AUKUS shock, some recent developments have clearly established that the cleavages caused by the AUKUS are too deep for a single meeting to bridge. In fact, the outcome of that meeting, which has begun ...
A shadow has fallen upon the European scene so lately lighted by the end of the Cold War. Nobody knows what America and its military organization NATO intend to do in the immediate future or what are the limits – if any – to their indefinite expansive and proselytizing tendencies. I have a strong admiration and regard for the valiant trans-Atlantic peoples. ...
So Russian President Vladimir Putin, by himself, and United States President Joe Biden, surrounded by aides, finally had their secret video link conference for two hours and two minutes – with translators placed in different rooms. That was their first serious exchange since they met in person in Geneva last June – the first Russia-US summit since 2018. For ...
Pakistani political and military leaders have vowed to eradicate ultra-conservative religious extremism that drove a mob to torture, brutally lynch a Sri Lankan national, and burn his body in the eastern city of Sialkot. Some 900 cases have been filed with police and 235 people arrested in connection with the killing. “Let me make this clear: I have decided...
Between the night of Saturday 2nd of October and Sunday 3rd October, in the southern part of the Kashmir valley nearby the village of Almore Mandal in Jammu district, the Indian police discovered a yellow polythene bag with a package containing weapons. Witnesses in the area said a drone had dropped the package, and the police suspect it came from the Pakist...
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa completed two years in office on Nov 17. The 72-year old veteran of the Sri Lanka Army was elected with an overwhelming majority by Sinhala voters, with the hope he would use his “terminator” magic to “achieve new heights as a nation” as brother and former president Mahinda Rajapaksa puts it. His election manifesto - “Vistas of P...
Mohammed Ali al-Husseini, one of Saudi Arabia’s newest naturalized citizens, ticks all the boxes needed to earn brownie points in the kingdom’s quest for religious soft power garnered by positioning itself as the beacon of ‘moderate,’ albeit autocratic, Islam. A resident of Saudi Arabia since he had a fallout with Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiit...
The first two weeks of December normally witness a lot of activity in the strategic domain across the Sub-continent as three countries go through the traditional reminiscence of the Indo-Pakistan War, 1971. The war led to the permanent dismemberment of Pakistan and creation of a new nation – Bangladesh. All three countries look at the War narrative from thei...
The West attempted, by all means possible, to silence anyone who exposed its real policy after September 11, 2001 and dared to stand up against it. In 2002, I published 9/11: The Big Lie, a political-science study that called into question the official version of the New York, Washington and Pennsylvania attacks, and moreover anticipated the new policy orien...
It’s called a Natural Asset Company. With it the New York Stock Exchange has unveiled the most radical and potentially most destructive plan yet to make literally trillions of dollars on something that is the natural right and heritage of the entire human race – nature itself, all nature, from air, fresh water to rainforests to even farmland. It is being pro...
At the end of the Second World War, Winston Churchill devised a system to ensure that Western Europe would not fall into the hands of the Soviet Union and that they would retain control. The idea was to create a European common market with the ruined countries that accepted the Marshall Plan [1]. The United States and the United Kingdom were moving forward...
Russia hopes to blow new life into a proposal for a multilateral security architecture in the Gulf, with the tacit approval of the Biden administration. If successful, the initiative would help stabilise the region, cement regional efforts to reduce tensions, and potentially prevent war-wracked Yemen from emerging as an Afghanistan on the southern border of ...
It’s a question which appears almost too basic a starting point, but not when we recall what a catastrophe the heart of Western Europe has been since 2017: What is to be done about France?
Emmanuel Macron: Marketed as Prince Charming but who quickly became Evil King Manu I of the neoliberal empire of the European Union.
The Yellow Vests: It’s as if France ...
The notable development of nuclear power came after the first oil shock in 1973 to reduce countries’ dependence on Middle Eastern oil. The current situation in Europe is similar: prices are rising. The share of electricity in consumption is also growing, further contributing to a diversification of energy sources and the development of renewable resources, e...
Marx. Lenin. Mao. Deng. Xi. Late last week in Beijing [Nov 11-Ed], the sixth plenum of the Chinese Communist Party adopted a historic resolution – only the third in its 100-year history – detailing major accomplishments and laying out a vision for the future. Essentially, the resolution poses three questions. How did we get here? How come we were so successf...
It has been a good week for United Arab Emirates Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed. Headline-grabbing, fast-paced moves reinforce the UAE’s position as a regional power. They highlight the UAE’s willingness to chart a course that increasingly competes with Saudi Arabia, the Gulf’s regional behemoth; is at times at odds with US policy; and scoffs at assertions ...