By Pepe Escobar with permission from the author and first posted at Asia Times A Beijing-Brussels-Berlin special: that was quite the video-summit. From Beijing, we had President Xi Jinping. From Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel. And from Brussels, President of the European Council Charles Michel and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen. The Chinese billed it as the first summit “of its kind in history”. It was actually
By Pepe Escobar and cross-posted with Consortium News He is being punished not for stealing fire – but for exposing power under the light of truth and provoking the god of Exceptionalism. Police ejecting Julian Assange from Ecuadorian embassy in London, April 11, 2019. (YouTube) This is the tale of an Ancient Greek tragedy reenacted in AngloAmerica. Amid thundering silence and nearly universal indifference, chained, immobile, invisible, a squalid Prometheus
by Pepe Escobar with permission from the author and first posted at Asia Times There was a time when New Delhi was proudly selling the notion of establishing its own New Silk Road – from the Gulf of Oman to the intersection of Central and South Asia – to compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Now it looks like the Indians have stabbed themselves in the back. In
by Pepe Escobar with permission by the author and first posted at Asia Times We have seen how China is meticulously planning all its crucial geopolitical and geoeconomic moves all the way to 2030 and beyond. What you are about to read next comes from a series of private, multilateral discussions among intel analysts, and may helpfully design the contours of the Big Picture. In China, it’s clear the path
by Pepe Escobar with permission by the author and first posted at Asia Times Let’s start with the story of an incredibly disappearing summit. Every August, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) converges to the town of Beidaihe, a seaside resort some two hours away from Beijing, to discuss serious policies that then coalesce into key planning strategies to be approved at the CCP Central Committee plenary session
By Pepe Escobar – republished from Asia Times by permission of author As much as Covid-19 has been instrumentalized by the 0.001% to social engineer a Great Reset, the Beirut tragedy is already being instrumentalized by the usual suspects to keep Lebanon enslaved. Facing oh so timely color revolution-style “protests”, the current Lebanese government led by Prime Minister Diab has already resigned. Even before the port tragedy, Beirut had requested
by Pepe Escobar : Republished from Asia Times by permission of author The narrative that the Beirut explosion was an exclusive consequence of negligence and corruption by the current Lebanese government is now set in stone, at least in the Atlanticist sphere. And yet, digging deeper, we find that negligence and corruption may have been fully exploited, via sabotage, to engineer it. Lebanon is prime John Le Carré territory. A
by Pepe Escobar for The Saker Blog and originally posted at Asia Times When the Ronald Reagan and Nimitz carrier strike groups recently engaged in “operations” in the South China Sea, it did not escape to many a cynic that the US Pacific Fleet was doing its best to turn the infantile Thucydides Trap theory into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The pro forma official spin, via Rear Adm. Jim Kirk, commander
By Pepe Escobar – republished from Asia Times by permission of author Late afternoon in May 29, 1453, Sultan Mehmet, the third son of Murad, born of a slave-girl – probably Christian – in the harem, fluent in Turkish, Arabic, Greek, Latin, Persian and Hebrew, followed by his top ministers, his imams and his bodyguard of Janissaries, rides slowly towards the Great Church of St Sophia in Constantinople. It’s unlikely
China will invest $400 billion in Iran energy and infrastructure but nothing in strategic pact allows for a Chinese troop presence or island handover By Pepe Escobar – republished from Asia Times by permission of author Two of the US’s top “strategic threats” are getting closer and closer within the scope of the New Silk Roads – the leading 21st century project of economic integration across Eurasia. The Deep State
Submitted by Pepe Escobar – source Asia Times The no holds barred US-China strategic competition may be leading us to the complete fragmentation of the current “world-system” – as Wallerstein defined it. Yet compared to the South China Sea, the Korean peninsula, the Taiwan Straits, India-China’s Himalayan border, and selected latitudes of the Greater Middle East, Central Asia shines as a portrait of stability. That’s quite intriguing, when we consider
Submitted by Pepe Escobar – source Asia Times So what’s goin’ on in Iran? How did the Islamic Republic really respond to Covid-19? How is it coping with Washington’s relentless “maximum pressure”? These questions were the subject of a long phone call I placed to Prof. Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran – one of Iran’s premier, globally recognized analysts. As Marandi explains, “Iran after the revolution was all
by Pepe Escobar : crossposted with Strategic Culture Foundation Nixon 68 is back with a vengeance, with President Trump placing himself as the guarantor/enforcer of Law & Order. That slogan guaranteed Nixon’s election, and was coined by Kevin Phillips, then an expert in “ethnic voting patterns”. Philips makes for a very interesting case. In 1999, he became the author of a seminal book: The Cousins’ Wars: Religion, Politics, and the
By Pepe Escobar : crossposted with Strategic Culture Foundation The marriage of post-Lockdown and George Floyd protests has nurtured a rough beast that is still immune to any form of civilized debate in the U.S.: the Seattle Commune. So what really is the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone cum People’s Republic all about? Are the communards mere useful idiots? Is this a refined Occupy Wall Street experiment? Could it survive, logistically,
By Pepe Escobar – posted with permission The Russian role will be to balance the hegemonic powers, as a guarantor of a new union of non-aligned nations Professor Sergey Karaganov is informally known in influential foreign policy circles as the “Russian Kissinger” – with the extra bonus of not having to carry a “war criminal” tag from Vietnam and Cambodia to Chile and beyond. Karaganov is the dean of the
By Pepe Escobar – posted with permission Ukraine was supposed to prevent Russia from deepening energy ties with Germany; it didn’t work out that way Once upon a time in Pipelineistan, tales of woe were the norm. Shattered dreams littered the chessboard – from IPI vs. TAPI in the AfPak realm to the neck-twisting Nabucco opera in Europe. In sharp contrast, whenever China entered the picture, successful completion prevailed. Beijing financed a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan
by Pepe Escobar – posted with permission The so far purely emotional insurrection lacks political structure and a credible leader to articulate grievances The Revolution Won’t Be Televised because this is not a revolution. At least not yet. Burning and/or looting Target or Macy’s is a minor diversion. No one is aiming at the Pentagon (or even the shops at the Pentagon Mall). The FBI. The NY Federal Reserve. The
by Pepe Escobar – crossposted with Strategic Culture Foundation With the specter of a New Great Depression hovering over most of the planet, realpolitik perspectives for a radical change of the political economy framework we live in are not exactly encouraging. Western ruling elites will be deploying myriad tactics to perpetuate the passivity of populations barely emerging from de facto house arrest, including a massive disciplinary – in a Foucault
by Pepe Escobar – posted with permission With Sinophobic hysteria reaching new heights in US, China’s counter play is a massive new economic plan Stranger things have happened. Everyone was expecting US President Donald Trump to go nuclear by de facto sanctioning China to death over Hong Kong. In an environment where Twitter and the President of the United States are now engaged in open warfare, the rule is that
Both sides have sent reinforcements to disputed Ladakh line, as Beijing flexes its muscles around Asia by Pepe Escobar – posted with permission It would be counter-productive for BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organization members India and China to come to blows on account of some extremely remote – albeit strategically important – snowy mountain passes. But when one looks at the 3,488-kilometer-long Line of Actual Control, which India defines as
