Guest Analyses
By Batiushka for The Saker blog Decolonisation: The Western Withdrawal from Asia, Africa and Europe The Western European Empires have gone. The bankrupt Spanish Empire went first, in the century before last, the Germans lost their colonies in 1919 (at the same time as the Austro-Hungarians lost their European colonies), then the Italians lost their fantasies in Africa during the Second World War, the Germans got kicked out of their
by Jorge Vilches for the Saker blog the LNG click-bait The sitting US Secretary of State very recently declared in an official press conference that the NS1 and NS2 pipeline sabotage will have “no impact on European energy resilience”… We should assume that Secretary Antony Blinken was referring to the timely supply of US LNG substitute equivalent to pipeline nat-gas now theoretically available (not) which would save the European day.
by Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted Everything that matters in the complex process of Eurasia integration was once again at play in Astana, as the – renamed – Kazakh capital hosted the 6th Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA). The roll call was a Eurasian thing of beauty – featuring the leaders of Russia and Belarus (EAEU), West Asia (Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iraq,
by Jo Red for the Saker blog In war, as in life more generally, the concept of tempo is essential. In his masterpiece Philosophy and Real Politics, British “Leninist” philosopher Raymond Geuss emphasizes “priorities, preferences, timing” (p. 30) as defining differences between “real politics” and the abstract, universalistic philosophy that flattens everything in the unfathomable ignorance of timeless present and depthless surface. Be reminded of that while you celebrate Putin’s
By Batiushka for The Saker blog Introduction: Narcissists All One of the laziest but most effective forms of lying (propaganda/spin) is not simply to tell the opposite of the truth, but rather to lie by attributing to your enemy your own weaknesses. That way you do not have to invent anything, you just make a transfer. An example is how the Kiev regime, which at that time had lost 60,000
by Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted Let’s start with Pipelineistan. Nearly seven years ago, I showed how Syria was the ultimate Pipelineistan war. Damascus had rejected the – American – plan for a Qatar-Turkey gas pipeline, to the benefit of Iran-Iraq-Syria (for which a memorandum of understanding was signed). What followed was a vicious, concerted “Assad must go” campaign: proxy war as the road to
by Batko Milacic for the Saker blog One of the largest French maritime exercises in the Mediterranean, POLARIS 21 (Préparation Opérationnelle en Lutte Aéromaritime, Résilience, Innovation et Supériorité), took place from November 18 to December 3, 2021 in the area west of the island of Corsica, between France and Spain. The exercise also included a segment on the Atlantic coast of mainland France. POLARIS 21 was set up entirely in
By Walt Garlington for the Saker blog The desire for what is normal, for what God has established and ordained, is prominent in U.S. conservative discourse today: the desire for a normal approach to public health risks, for normal sexual development of children, for a normal home life with the husband as breadwinner and the wife who can stay at home with her children, and so on. But the death
By Batiushka for The Saker blog Some commentators on this site have always been impatient for more dramatic Russian military action in the Ukraine, a Red Army Blitzkrieg involving the flattening of Kiev and many other cities. I suspect that, unlike military men, they have no idea of the horrors of real war. Unlike warmongering politicians, who do not do the fighting and do not face getting splattered by the
by Eric Arthur Blair for the Saker blog There have been several excellent articles (none in the mainstream media however), forensically examining who was responsible for the sabotage of Nordstream 1 & 2. Pepe Escobar was first off the bat with his usual brilliant analysis https://thecradle.co/Article/Columns/16307 Ben Norton conducted meticulous research and employed flawless logic https://multipolarista.com/2022/10/06/sabotage-nord-stream-pipelines-us-russia-cia/ Bryce Greene described how the MSM, with virtually all their sewer outlets acting in
by Dmitri Orlov for the Saker blog I keep trying to write serious articles about serious issues, but current events keep injecting minutiae into my train of thought, which I then have to spend time on. If I didn’t, many of my readers would think I am ignoring them, and that would be bad (in their esteemed opinion) because these current events are sooo important! Several large-diameter pipes get blown
The western narrative of a ‘losing Russia’ has just been decimated by Moscow’s blitzkrieg against Ukraine and its foreign-backed terror operations by Pepe Escobar, first published at The Cradle and posted with the author’s permission The terror attack on Krymskiy Most – the Crimea Bridge – was the proverbial straw that broke the Eurasian camel’s back. Russian President Vladimir Putin neatly summarized it: “This is a terrorist attack aimed at
by Mansoureh Tajik for the Saker blog “Hitting, succeeding, and capturing, all these things, if they are not with a spiritually sacred dimension, they are nothing but defeat.”[1] – Imam Khomeini Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, a response to a larger compound war that had percolated for several years, has been the subject of much quasi analyses. A vast majority of the compositions involves ad hoc cursory descriptions that concentrate
by Batiushka for The Saker blog Speaking at a rally and concert on Red Square, held in support of the results of the referenda, President Putin recalled how the USSR was formed when Russia created the modern Ukraine. The President stressed that ‘it was Russia that had created the modern Ukraine, transferring significant territories, the historical territories of Russia itself, along with the population, whom no one had asked about
by Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted The sabotage of the Nord Stream (NS) and Nord Stream 2 (NS2) pipelines in the Baltic Sea has ominously propelled ‘Disaster Capitalism’ to a whole new, toxic level. This episode of Hybrid Industrial/Commercial War, in the form of a terror attack against energy infrastructure in international waters signals the absolute collapse of international law, drowned by a “our way or
By Batiushka for The Saker blog Introduction: America’s Death-Wish ‘Russian roulette’ is a most peculiar expression. At least for any Russian. For the simple reason that he has never heard of it. In fact, it does not exist in Russian, neither the expression, nor the reality. It is something we learn about with astonishment when we learn English. The expression is an American invention and only an American with a
by Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted It’s tempting to interpret the Italian electoral results this past Sunday as voters merrily hurling a bowl of lush papardelle with wild boar ragu over the collective bland faces of the toxic unelected Euro-oligarchy sitting in Brussels. Well, it’s complicated. Italy’s electoral system is all about coalitions. The center-right Meloni-Berlusconi-Salvini troika is bound to amass a substantial majority in
by Gav Don for the Saker blog We now await the results of the referenda in Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhiya and Kherson to request membership of the Russian Federation. In the first three regions the result is a foregone conclusion. In Kherson the vote is also likely to be for membership, in spite of the fact that Kherson’s pre-war population was a majority ethnic Ukrainian one, but the margin may be
by the Lookout for the Saker blog Reports came in late yesterday, (as reported in the German media) of a dramatic depressurisation of Nord Stream 2 (NS2), an undersea gas line connecting Russia and Germany. This was followed later by news that Nord Stream 1 (NS1) has also depressurised. The pressure in NS2 plummeted from 105 bars1 to just 7 bars. Leaking gas bubbles into the Baltic Sea have been
by James Tweedie for the Saker blog Back in August 2022 I wrote that NATO was ‘demilitarising’ itself, sending such huge amounts of arms to the Ukraine before and during the Russian special military operation (SMO) that its armies had nothing left to fight with. That process has continued, with Slovenia, the northernmost of the former federal republics of Yugoslavia, sending its entire armoured vehicle fleet to Kiev. The last
