Leonid Savin
Oriental Review

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was visiting
Moscow on July 8-9 to co-chair the 22nd Russia-
India Annual Summit with President Vladimir Putin.

The 22nd annual Russia–India Summit took place in Moscow.

Arriving in Moscow on July 8, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called Russia India‘s “all-weather friend” and praised President Vladimir Putin‘s leading role in strengthening bilateral relations over the past two decades. The Prime minister also said that for a long time, the world had witnessed an “influence-oriented global order” “But, what the world needs right now is confluence not influence and no one can deliver this message better than India which has a strong tradition of worshipping confluences,” Modi said.

How can these words be interpreted? At first glance, the Indian Prime Minister calls for a kind of convergence. However, the East is a delicate matter, and this phrase can be interpreted both as a fusion of several streams and as a mutual influence.

At a meeting with the Indian diaspora in Moscow on July 9, Modi stressed that “Indians in Russia are strengthening bilateral ties by contributing to the development of Russian society... As soon as they hear the word ‘Russia’, every Indian thinks that it is a trustable friend; a friend in joy and sorrow…“

Alexey Kupriyanov
Russian Council (RIAC)

The last time Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Russia to meet President Vladimir Putin was almost five years ago, in September 2019. The following year, the pandemic broke out, and the Russian leader did not pay a return visit until December 2021. A few months later, the Ukraine crisis began, and since then the annual bilateral summits have been unofficially put on pause. Now, finally, Modi is coming to Russia again—and this meeting is likely to be quite different from all previous ones, because over the past two years, India–Russia relations have undergone a transformation that would have been hard to imagine even five years ago.

Still a Polycentric World — In the previous decade and a half, Russian and Indian political and expert circles have shaped consistent narratives describing the present and future of bilateral relations. While Russian experts nostalgically recalled the good times of Soviet–Indian friendship and deplored the stagnation of trade, Indian experts looked at the situation more pragmatically. Russia in their worldview was an important balancer, helping to escape an excessive bias of Indian policy toward the most promising non-regional partner—the United States. In addition, a further weakening of Moscow, which could push it toward an alliance with Beijing, was seen as a major risk. In the latter case, resource-rich Russia might turn into a multiplier of Chinese power, which was in direct conflict with India’s foreign policy interests. As a result, developing political dialogue with Russia and forming a new polycentric world in which Moscow, as one of the world centers, would be a reliable partner for New Delhi, fully met India’s strategic goals.

Alastair Crooke
Strategic Culture Foundation

We see clearly the collapse of the manipulation that has confined discourse to within the various Washington villages.

The Editor at Large for the Wall Street Journal, Gerry Baker, says: ‘We’ve been “gaslit’ and deceived” – for years – “all in the name of ‘democracy’”. That deceit “collapsed” with the Presidential debate, Thursday’.

💬 “Until the world saw the truth … [against] the ‘misinformation’ … the fiction of Mr. Biden’s competence … suggests they [the Democrats] evidently thought they could get away with promoting it. [Yet] by perpetuating that fiction they were also revealing their contempt for the voters and for democracy itself”.

Baker continues:

💬 “Biden succeeded because he made toeing the party line his life’s work. Like all politicians whose egos dwarf their talents, he ascended the greasy pole by slavishly following his party wherever it led … Finally—in the ultimate act of partisan servility, he became Barack Obama’s vice president, the summit of achievement for those incapable, yet loyal: the apex position for the consummate ‘yes man’”.

💬 “But then, just as he was ready to drift into a comfortable and well-deserved obscurity, his party needed a front man … They sought a loyal and reliable figurehead, a flag of convenience, under which they could sail the progressive vessel into the deepest reaches of American life — on a mission to advance statism, climate extremism and self-lacerating wokery. There was no more loyal and convenient vehicle than Joe”.

If so, then who actually has been ‘pulling America’s strings’ these past years?

Dr Vernon Coleman MB ChB DSc
VernonColeman.com

The drive towards Net Zero is fuelled by the climate change myth and is based on a delicately balanced raft of pseudoscientific evidence and fake news material which are used by professional propagandists and skilled conspirators to sustain the notion that fossil fuels are threatening our world and our very existence.

The myth they have created has been propagated with absurd enthusiasm by small but vocal teams of compliant and easily led enthusiasts, most of whom almost certainly believe that the lies they have been told are the truth and that if we do not make substantive changes to our way of life then we have no future. They’ve been taught that the seas will boil and rise up to engulf the land, life as we have known it will become impossible and the human race will be doomed.

As a result of this nonsensical belief (which is no better established in science than the equally absurd but far less dangerous and damaging theories that the earth is flat, there are no germs and that gravity does not exist) governments around the world now argue that they have no choice but to take drastic action to save us from doom. Aided and abetted by gullible, easily led, virtue-signalling leaders of charities, lobby groups, bankers, and investment groups, action is, therefore, being taken to halt the use of all fossil fuels and to change every aspect of the way we live.

The Supreme Court in the UK has ruled that a local council should have considered the climate impact of burning oil before allowing new wells. This will put all future oil and gas projects in doubt both in the UK and in the EU. A Swiss woman won a victory at the European Court of Human Rights to force Switzerland to do more to deal with the myth of climate change. This is all insanity.

Karine Bechet-Golovko
Russie politics

Surfant sur le slogan du "barrage à l'extrême droite", l'extrême gauche s'installe en France. Désormais ouvertement et sous la bannière de Mélenchon, dont le score personnel n'a pourtant pas bougé. Macron fait une remontée, qui laisse perplexe quant aux méthodes utilisées. Et le grand gagnant annoncé, le presque Premier ministre Bardella reste avec le RN en troisième position, bien loin du futur Gouvernement. Bref, rien ne change, seul le désordre s'amplifie. Car sortir un Gouvernement viable de ce marais va être une épreuve de force.

En période de crise socio-économique, il est normal que les Français attendent des dirigeants, qu'ils portent attention à ces questions. Mais la pseudo "gauche" qui s'avance, n'a rien de social. Les Français font la même erreur que les Britanniques, attendant de gauchos-bobos parfaitement globalistes et anti-systèmes, qu'ils reconstruisent la France et s'occupent de leur bien-être. Il est déjà annoncé que l'agenda intérieur et extérieur ne changera pas.

Ainsi, le Nouveau Front de Gauche, dont Mélenchon est la figure de proue, est en tête, mais n'aura pas de majorité suffisante avec ses 178 à 205 députés pour pouvoir constituer un Gouvernement.

Vivek Grover
Oriental Review

A profound rift has been opened between the dominating EU establishment consisting of centrist political groupings and the proponents of peace talks in Ukraine.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s visit to Moscow and his negotiations with President Putin have sent shockwaves around Europe. This is the first time that a Western leader has visited Russia since April 2022, and his visit comes just three days after he visited Ukraine and held talks with President Zelensky.

This is a surprise visit, as Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that it was arranged on Tuesday right after the Hungarian Prime Minister concluded his visit to Kyiv.

There has been speculation that Orban has a special message to President Putin from President Zelensky, as both parties to the conflict are becoming increasingly aware of the dangers of the war entering its third year. Following the visit to Kyiv, Orban said that he explored the possibility of a lasting ceasefire in Ukraine: “A ceasefire connected to a deadline would give a chance to speed up peace talks. I explored this possibility with the president and I am grateful for his honest answers and negotiation”, said the Hungarian PM. Zelensky did not respond to these comments publicly, but his foreign policy advisor Ihor Zhovkva stressed that Ukraine sees the only tool to bring peace to Ukraine, which is the peace summit recently held in Switzerland.

Editor thepeoplesvoice.org
The People's Voice

More people in America are waking up now, and are realizing that Biden is destroying their country. Sadly, he still has the support of some 30% of Americans. They believe the lies of CNN, MSNBC, and Google. Millions of Americans want a senile corrupt treasonous pathological liar to lead them. They like paying twice as much for food, gasoline, and rent. They want their children to be indoctrinated into transvestitism, homosexuality, and Marxism by extreme leftist public school teachers. They want tens of millions of illegals pouring into their country. Biden will be appointed to the office of president in yet another rigged election, with the globalist media talking heads singing his phony praises.

The Yellowstone eruption will be immediately followed by the meltdown of hundreds of nuclear power plants.

America was overthrown in 1913 by the global elite banking families and has been ruled by them and the criminal corporate elite since that time. A small group of trillionaires, generational criminals, see the American people as ignorant slaves to be culled, exploited, and euthanized. The wealthy feel only contempt and loathing toward the American people, exterminating them with war and poisonous vaccines. Their tools of repression are their propaganda media, big tech, and corrupt politicians and police.

The global elite will always use death-shot vaccines, poisoned food, cancer-causing fluoridated water, and endless war to kill off the American people. American farmland is constantly sprayed and poisoned with millions of tons of aluminum, barium, toxic heavy metals, polymers, and chemicals. American cities are chem trailed periodically with manufactured viruses to kill off the weak. Since Obama a process has been underway to kill off and replace the American people with the ignorant controllable illiterate masses of the third world.

Donald Trump will not be president of the United States again. The criminal global elite won't make that mistake a second time. They will take every measure necessary to ensure total control of the coming election and all future elections. There may not even be a presidential election in 2024. If the elite think there is a possibility that Trump could be elected to office, they will simply assassinate him, however, that may not be necessary as they have other options.

Dr Vernon Coleman MB ChB DSc
VernonColeman.com

To watch the video which is under 12 minutes long Click Here

Hello, it’s May 2024. Welcome to video 336. There is, to say the least, a lot going on. But no one is talking about the big problem. No one is talking about what is behind everything that is happening. And yet it’s actually all quite simple. It’s all about the money. And time is running out faster than you think.

The fake pandemic, the damaging lockdowns, the crazy obsession with a toxic vaccine that was never properly tested, doesn’t work and is now the cause of an epidemic of heart disease and a deluge of cancer cases, the insane social distancing, the absurd and dangerous mask wearing, faked statistics created with a deadly PCR test that never worked, the utterly unscientific global obsession with imaginary global warming, a collapsing global economy with soaring inflation that is now endemic, the drive towards World War III with NATO using Ukraine as the battleground for a proxy war with Russia and supplying Israel with bombs and bullets as its false flag attack and ethnic cleansing programme continue to appal the world, the taunting China over Taiwan and now a planned global euthanasia programme, heavily promoted by a compliant and unquestioning media, which is designed to encourage the poor, the sick and the mentally ill to sign up for doctor assisted suicide. All around the world people are being signed up to promote euthanasia, just as Greta was used by the media to promote climate change.

Martin Jay
Strategic Culture Foundation

It’s hard to predict that Le Pen will get the required 51% with another party, the conservatives, in a coalition.

An enormous amount of excitement is being created by the French parliamentary elections which had its first round firmly won outright by Marine Le Pen’s far-right party. This was nothing out of the ordinary and for once the polls were spot on in their predictions.

But the second round will be a completely different game as traditionally, French voters often use the first vote as a protest vote against the main parties. It’s hard to predict that Le Pen will get the required 51% with another party, the conservatives, in a coalition. Her victory though might be just what France needs as she has a number of radical policies which she believes will shake up the economy. But it’s not her domestic policies which the West should worry about. It’s her ideas about France’s role in the EU which should be a worry for Brussels as, if her party wins and holds a majority, it will be able to command a political dynamic which will eclipse Macron and cast a new dye for Paris’s relations with the European Union.

Although many in France believe that she might win an outright victory in the next round, analysts predict that she will be a contender in next Presidential elections in three years’ time. If either scenario gives her an edge in the decision-making in the Élysée, the European Union is in for a rough ride as her demands will lead to a crisis which will bring about two possibilities; one, that the EU is divided into two camps – a two-speed Europe – which would effectively scrap the present unanimity voting system which allows Hungary to veto the big issues; or secondly, it will lead to the demise of the EU as we know it, which, in a bid to survive, would streamline itself and give more power back to member states.

Emmanuel Hache
iris-france.org

Il y a quelques jours, 8,8 millions de tonnes de terres rares ont été découvertes au Sud-Est de la Norvège. Éléments chimiques essentiels dans la transition bas-carbone, écologique et numérique, cette découverte pourrait rebattre les cartes en termes d’autonomie et de sécurité minérale européenne alors que la Chine concentre près de 69 % de la production minière mondiale et que l’Union européenne reste par conséquent extrêmement dépendante d’approvisionnements extérieurs. Quelle peut-être l’influence de cette découverte sur le marché mondial des terres rares ? Comment le continent européen peut-il en bénéficier ? Éléments de réponse avec Emmanuel Hache, directeur de recherche à l’IRIS, spécialiste des questions relatives à la prospective énergétique et à l’économie des ressources naturelles (énergie et métaux).

La société minière norvégienne Rare Earths Norway (« REN ») a annoncé avoir découvert le plus grand gisement de terres rares d’Europe continentale en Norvège. Que sont
les terres rares et que vous inspire cette découverte ?

Les éléments de terres rares désignent un ensemble de 17 éléments chimiques (Scandium, Yttrium, Lanthane, Cérium, Praséodyme, Néodyme, Prométhium, Samarium, Europium, Gadolinium, Terbium, Dysprosium, Holmium, Erbium, Thulium, Ytterbium, et Lutécium) et contrairement à ce que leur appellation semble indiquer, elles ne sont pas plus rares que d’autres métaux plus usuels.

Ramananda Sengupta (Editor)
StratNews Global

Russia’s state nuclear agency Rosatom has signed a memorandum of understanding with a Chinese shipping company to establish a year-round container line between the two countries via the Arctic’s Northern Sea Route (NSR).

Russian President Vladimir Putin has talked up prospects for the Arctic corridor as Russia shifts its trade eastwards in response to Western sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine.

Rosatom said the agreement with China’s Hainan Yangpu Newnew Shipping Co. Ltd would establish a joint venture for the design and construction of container ships and the shared operation of the shipping line.

🇷🇺🌐 The world's balance of power is shifting in many ways. Here's an angle you might not have considered. Russia is building a class of nuclear-powered super icebreakers to keep their Arctic Route from the Atlantic to the Pacific open year round. This route goes through Russian… pic.twitter.com/Y8GchAilxL
— jamiemcintyre (@jamiemcintyre21) April 7, 2024

The agreement was signed on Thursday at Russia’s annual economic forum in St Petersburg. The event once drew top Western banks and executives, but now they largely hail from countries still friendly with Russia, including China.

Vladimir Panov, Rosatom’s special representative for Arctic development, said 12 voyages were planned for 2024 and the companies hope to ultimately ship up to 50 million tonnes of cargo each year. 💬 “Our main task is to build up to five Arctic-class vessels, which will allow the company to operate on the Northern Sea Route year-round,” Panov said.

Strategic Culture Foundation Editorial
Strategic Culture Foundation

Revenge served coldly and calmly is the best way. The Western criminal leaders have it coming.

The scenario is not hyperbole. Imagine a sunny beach in Florida crowded with families enjoying a holiday weekend. In a split second, mayhem and murder are unleashed as crowds flee in panic from a foreign missile exploding over the beach.

There is no doubt that the United States would go to war immediately against the perpetrator. Furious condemnations would ring out for days, weeks, and months among American politicians and their media.

But what is also obvious from this hypothetical scenario is the egregious double standard and hypocrisy of American and Western responses.

Last weekend, Russia was celebrating its annual Day of Remembrance and Sorrow. The day honors the dead of the Great Patriotic War instigated by Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. That weekend also combines Trinity Sunday, a prominent religious holiday in the Orthodox calendar.

As Russian families were enjoying the festive weekend, the Kiev regime fired five U.S.-supplied ATACMS missiles at the Crimean city of Sevastopol. It was a deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure. Four missiles were shot down by Russian air defenses, but a fifth exploded over a nearby beach, where hundreds of people were enjoying sun-splashed sand and the gentle lapping of waves.

In the ensuing horror, four people including two children were killed. Over 150 were injured, dozens of them seriously, from the explosions caused by cluster bomblets released by the missile. Video footage clearly shows explosions and not merely ordnance shrapnel falling from the sky.

Dmitry Medvedev (Дмитрий Медведев)
Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council
Дмитрий Медведев (Telegram)

Look who's here! — A wonderful trio at NATO and the European Commission. Mark Rutte, Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas. New and old leaders, each more handsome than the other.

Number one. Mark Rutte, former prime minister of the Netherlands and now NATO secretary general. Quite a peculiar guy. In a relatively short time, this moderate figure, whom I once met at summits, has turned into an inveterate Russophobe and a staunch Atlanticist. We will not speculate on what substances from Amsterdam coffeeshops caused such an abrupt change in his mood. The Dutch are peculiar people even against the background of the rest of free Europe. Ostentatious modesty in everyday life is combined with fury on the political podium. He has been hating our country fiercely for some time. An advocate of ever tougher sanctions. He will faithfully follow the course of the classics of paranoid Atlanticism.

Number two. A familiar old, haggard face - Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen. 65 years old. Bad Belgian-German political grandmother. Looks like a medium-sized Volga roach. During the pandemic, she made a good profit on overpriced Pfizer vaccines. Even the usual liberal "kind sort of men" in the European Commission are wary of her. Especially since her record includes her tenure as German Defense Minister, where she also became the heroine of a corruption scandal involving millions of dollars in contracts with "outside consultants".

Already in line for a disgraceful resignation, but the dried roach does not sink. Since 2019, Ursula has risen to the head of the European Commission, where she manically torments her commissioners with non-binary gender identities. At the same time, she is masochistically devoted to her overseas masters and ready to receive any form of approval offered by the gerontological playboys from Washington. She constantly spews malicious nonsense about Russia, without choosing her words.

Jean-Joseph Boillot
iris-france.org

With Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran joining the BRICS at the beginning of 2024, the group now embodies a group of influential states on the international stage, representing 46% of the world’s population and 29% of global GDP. While 2024 is synonymous with an important electoral year for several BRICS members, further enlargements could take place in the coming years. Are we heading for an alternative international order? What are the strategic advantages of the BRICS+? Can they embody the voice of the global South? Interview with Jean-Joseph Boillot, Associate Research Fellow at IRIS, specialised in the Indian economy and the emerging world.

A new mandate for Vladimir Putin in Russia, a historic setback for the African National Congress (ANC) in the South African elections, a narrow victory for Narendra Modi in India, new elections to come in Iran following the death of Ebrahim Raissi and in Ethiopia… 2024 is a pivotal electoral year for many BRICS+ countries. Should we expect any repercussions from these elections on the international agenda of the BRICS+ states?

Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
Life Site News

The following is a statement sent exclusively to LifeSiteNews by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò on Friday, June 21, 2024. It has since been published by Viganò himself on X.

'I therefore wish to make it clear that I did not go to the Vatican yesterday, and that I have no intention of going to the Holy Office on June 28, and that I have not delivered any statement or document in my defense to the Dicastery, whose authority I do not recognize,' Viganò wrote.

The reports spread by certain media outlets, stating that I presented myself yesterday, Thursday, June 20, at the Palace of the Holy Office, as intimated to me by the Decree of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, is devoid of any foundation. These reports are completely false.

The Jesuit magazine America, the media arm of the Society of Jesus in the United States and the megaphone of the “church of mercy” of the Jesuit Bergoglio, has rushed ahead, while Vatican News (here) was still totally unaware of the Decree sent to me on June 11, only by a simple email, without respecting those formalities necessary for the validity of the communication of a Decree, and which I myself published on X two hours before the meeting scheduled at the Dicastery. Although all the elements were clearly stated in my communiqué, inferences and speculations took precedence, in typical Jesuit style.

Haste is a bad counselor. Therefore, Gerard O’Connell’s article Archbishop Viganò charged with schism by the Vatican that appeared yesterday at America (here) seems to have been written even before I made the Vatican document public. This reveals the close contiguity between the Vatican apparatus and America magazine and confirms a very precise strategy, aimed at liquidating my trial with a condemnation that has already been decided by Bergoglio and his zealous collaborator Tucho Fernández, author of the scandalous pornographic pamphlet La Pasion mistica: Espiritualidad y Sensualidad, as well as Saname con tu boca: El arte de besar.

Dr Vernon Coleman MB ChB DSc
VernonColeman.com

1. I cannot, I fear, join in the eulogies for Dr Michael Mosley, who worked for the BBC and the Daily Mail. Mosley was a keen advocate of the proven toxic and proven useless covid-19 vaccine. And the diet he advocated, which involved fasting on two days a week was, to say, the least unnatural. Mosley might have been a good egg to those around him but I suspect that as a media doctor he did far more harm than good. And did the covid-19 vaccine contribute to his death, I wonder? The one certainty is that neither the BBC nor the Daily Mail will ever ask the question. Mosley is being remembered (in hagiographic obituaries) as a doctor who searched for truth. But sadly he didn’t do that – in part, I suspect, because the BBC would not have let him. The BBC, remember, is an organisation which refuses to allow airtime to be squandered on anyone who questioned the value or safety of the covid-19 vaccine.

2. Sunak, the war criminal, has apparently put forward Dimon, the boss of JP Morgan Chase and Schmidt the former chairman of Google for knighthoods. Is it not enough that we give these tawdry honours to creeps and confidence tricksters in the UK? Must we now start doling them out to Americans who have done massive damage to the lives of ordinary people and who represent the very worst of the world’s executives? Oh, and it is still possible for people to pay money to obtain an `honour’. What a stupid system it is. The entire honours system, and the House of Lords, should be abandoned immediately.

3. Both Sunak and Starmer plan to spend another £75 billion of taxpayers’ hard earned money on buying arms to send to Ukraine and Israel – two countries which seem to hate us and which never even bother to say thank you. I can think of ways that £75 billion would improve life a great deal for Britons who are in abject poverty and who cannot afford to eat properly or to keep themselves warm.

Uriel Araujo
InfoBrics

Inconvenient facts such as the significant presence of neo-Nazism amongst the ranks of Ukrainian military personnel especially within the Azov regiment), or, say, minority rights in Ukraine or NATO’s aggressive expansion, must be whitewashed or minimized or else “Russian propaganda!”.

Speaking to BBC’s “Panorama” on Friday evening, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage claimed the West provoked Russia into going into a full-scale military campaign against the Ukrainian government. This has triggered very strong-worded responses and has increased tensions in the British pre-election political climate. In Europe as well there is now a lot of alarmism about the rise of the “far-right” and supposed “Kremlin agents”.

In early 2022, Farage posted a comment on social media claiming the then-recent military campaign in Ukraine was “a consequence of EU and NATO expansion.” During the aforementioned Friday interview, the politician was asked whether he still held such views today, to which he replied that he had been warning about the risks of such an expansion for “decades”. He made the caveat that, “of course, it’s his [Putin’s] fault”, and added that “he’s used what we’ve done as an excuse.” Farage also said: “we have provoked this war.” The Eurosceptic politician and broadcaster claimed he dislikes Russian President Vladimir Putin personally, but admires him “as a political operator” only.

In addition, Farage summarized his view on the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict: “I stood up in the European parliament in 2014 and I said: ‘There will be a war in Ukraine.’ Why did I say that? It was obvious to me that the ever-eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union was giving this man [Putin] a reason … to say: ‘They’re coming for us again,’ and to go to war.”

So, basically he said NATO played into the Russian President’s hands by providing him with a justification to carry out a military campaign in Ukraine. Such remarks (albeit critical of eastward NATO’s expansion) can hardly be described as “pro-Putin” or anything like that. The British politician in fact accused Putin of having used such an expansion as an “excuse”.

Strategic Culture Foundation Editorial
Strategic Culture Foundation

The BRICS multipolar world order is a welcome alternative to the mayhem of the Western-dominated system. The principles of fairness and cooperation are laudable and necessary to implement.

For several years now, Russia, China and other members of the expanding BRICS alliance have been formulating progressive trade and financial relations of the emerging multipolar world order. That order is based on mutual respect and partnership grounded in international law and the UN Charter.

The BRICS concept is rightly the zeitgeist of our time. It is rallying more nations to its fold especially those of the so-called Global South which for decades have been subjected to the unilateralism of Western hegemony.

The trouble is that for a new world order based on equality and fairness to succeed in practice, it needs to be secure from arbitrary military aggression and imperialist tyranny. In other words, a new security architecture is required to underpin the development of a multipolar world.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been advocating for a new indivisible international security system. This week saw the plan for a new security arrangement put into action.

The state of the forests, deforestation, and what we can do about it
By Kersasp D. Shekhdar
The People's Voice

Amazon Forest: World watches wildfires lash through
'lungs of the earth'

Deforestation at warp speed

Up until about the Industrial Revolution, deforestation—if it could be called that—used to be a not unnatural consequence of man’s need for timber, the expansion of human settlements, and slash-and-burn agriculture which has been practised since the Neolithic Age and is still used by indigeous or nomadic peoples and settlers. Forests have been cleared “to make space for agriculture and animal grazing, and to obtain wood for fuel, manufacturing, and construction.” Further and other drivers of deforestation vary from one geographical region to another.

Fully a third of the planet’s forests, comprising two billion hectares, have been destroyed since the Great Ice Age but the pace of deforestation has not been even—far from it. The rate of deforestation has accelerated exponentially such that, according to the World Wildlife Fund, “the fastest rate of forest destruction has been in the past couple of centuries,” as “up to 15 billion trees are now being cut down every year.” While the first half of total deforestation took place over nearly 100 centuries (from 8,000 B.C. to 1900), the second half occurred in the blink of an eye within only the past one century, culminating in the 1980s with no let up (unless one is to fall for corporate-sponsored happy statistics).

So though only a few centuries ago an old man could take his grandchild for a walk in a nearby forestland or woodland, identifying tree species and small wildlife along the way, how many grandfathers can do so today? All too few, for how many human habitations are still blessed with nearby forestlands or woodlands? And when such is the reality in our time, what forests might a grandfather show his ten-year-old only a century from now?

Pepe Escobar
Strategic Culture Foundation

The Swiss “peace” kabuki came and went – and the winner was Vladimir Putin. He didn’t even have to show up.

The Swiss “peace” kabuki came and went – and the winner was Vladimir Putin. He didn’t even have to show up.

None of the Big Players did. Or in case they sent their emissaries, there was significant refusal to sign the vacuous final declaration – as in BRICS members Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia, UAE and South Africa.

Without BRICS, there’s absolutely nothing the collective West – as in The Hegemon and assorted vassals – can do to alter the proxy war chessboard in Ukraine.

In his carefully calibrated speech to diplomats and the leadership of Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Putin delineated an incredibly restrained and strategic approach to solve the Ukraine problem. In the context of the Hegemon’s escalatory green light – actually in practice for several months now – for Kiev to attack deeper into the Russian Federation, Putin’s offer was extremely generous.