(Se puede leer esta nota en español aquí.)
Russia has spent years trying to decrease its dependency on the US dollar. But especially since the escalation of the proxy war in Ukraine in 2022, Moscow has accelerated its drive toward de-dollarization.
Ukraine Open Thread 2022-237
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/12/ukraine-open-thread-2022-237.html
The Real Economy Seems to Be the Biggest Winner in 2022
https://strategic-culture.org/news/2022/12/31/the-real-economy-seems-to-be-the-biggest-winner-in-2022/
Declassified Intelligence Files Expose Inconvenient Truths of Bosnian War
https://strategic-culture.org/news/2022/12/30/declassified-intelligence-files-expose-inconvenient-truths-of-bosnian-war/
Turkish military convoy in border with Northern Syria (File photo)The curtain is coming down on the brutal 11-year old Syrian conflict, which former US President and Nobel Laureate Barack Obama initiated, as the Arab Spring swept through West Asia two decades ago. The United States has suffered yet another big setback in West Asia as the year 2022 draws to a close. The unfolding Turkish-Syrian reconciliation process under Russian mediation is to be seen as a saga of betrayal and vengeance.
It’s been an eventful 2022, and you’ve helped us generate crucial momentum as we look ahead to big things in 2023 to help #FreeAssang
We’ve got a rundown of 4 of the biggest positive developments of 2022. But first, an announcement…
Continue reading
What really hit me last year was the dearth of correct analyses in main stream media and in politics with regards to the war in Ukraine. Little if anything is based on facts. More than 90% of the published output is propaganda.
Caitlin Johnstone
Listen to a reading of this article:
❖
Western analysts spent years warning that western actions would provoke a war in Ukraine, westerners spent four years being propagandized into hating Russia, then Russia invades and now western imperialists say the war is advancing US interests. But remember: it was an “unprovoked invasion”.
Julian Assange’s father John Shipton joins Lee Camp to discuss his son’s condition, from his incarceration in London to the prospect of being extradited into the custody of the government he exposed and its Intelligence officers, who had planned to assassinate him.
Camp will also speak with journalist Kevin Gosztola about the implications of the U.S. persecution of Assange for revealing its war crimes.
CIA and NATO are waging sabotage attacks inside Russia
https://popularresistance.org/cia-and-nato-are-waging-sabotage-attacks-inside-russia/
Will the coming year 2023 be better than the outgoing one?
https://journal-neo.org/2022/12/29/will-the-coming-year-2023-be-better-than-the-outgoing-one/
2022’s Danger Signs
https://dissidentvoice.org/2022/12/2022s-danger-signs/
Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate discuss The Grayzone’s biggest stories of the year and the latest developments in the Ukraine proxy war, the US occupation of Syria, the ongoing release of the Twitter files showing FBI and CIA infiltration of the social media platform, and more.
Pathy Tshindele (Democratic Republic of the Congo), Untitled, 2016.Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
The United States government held the US-Africa Leaders Summit in mid-December, prompted in large part by its fears about Chinese and Russian influence on the African continent. Rather than routine diplomacy, Washington’s approach in the summit was guided by its broader New Cold War agenda, in which a growing focus of the US has been to disrupt relations that African nations hold with China and Russia. This hawkish stance is driven by US military planners, who view Africa as ‘NATO’s southern flank’ and consider China and Russia to be ‘near-peer threats’. At the summit, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin charged China and Russia with ‘destabilising’ Africa. Austin provided little evidence to support his accusations, apart from pointing to China’s substantial investments, trade, and infrastructure projects with many countries on the continent and maligning the presence in a handful of countries of several hundred mercenaries from the Russian private security firm, the Wagner Group.
It has not been a good year for our right to dissent. The vehemently resisted Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Act came into force in the summer, while the government continues to push through its Public Order Bill, aimed at criminalising our right to protest even further. The National Security Bill also includes even more measures to restrict the right to demonstrate.
At the end of every year, I attempt to make a forecast on what will happen in the world economy in the next year. Of course, forecasts are wrapped in error, given the many variables involved that drive economies. Weather forecasts are still difficult to make and here meteorologists are dealing with physical events and not (at least directly) with human actions. Nevertheless, weather forecasts up to three days ahead are now pretty accurate. And longer term climate change forecasts have been broadly borne out over the last few decades. So if we consider that economics is a science (albeit a social science), and I do, then making predictions is part of testing theories and evidence in economics too.
According to the Brussels-based daily Le Soir, Belgian investigators into the European Parliament corruption scandal have put under scritiny the Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought.
US Patriot Missiles in Ukraine: A Desperate & Dangerous Escalation
https://journal-neo.org/2022/12/28/us-patriot-missiles-in-ukraine-a-desperate-dangerous-escalation/
Will there be reconciliation between Iran and Saudi Arabia?
https://journal-neo.org/2022/12/28/will-there-be-reconciliation-between-iran-and-saudi-arabia/
Our future was canceled. Yet from this could come the most radical revolution in history.
https://seeyouin2020.blogspot.com/2022/12/our-future-was-canceled-yet-from-this.html
Middle East Eye – 23 December 2022
Faced with criticism on whether the United States should trumpet its “unbreakable bond” with an incoming Israeli government headed by fascist parties, lawbreakers and homophobes, the Biden administration has squirmed.
A ship passing passing through a gate on the Volga-Don Shipping Canal, Russia (File photo)Consequent upon the Ukraine war, as the Sea of Azov becomes an inland sea for Russia, bracketed by the Crimean Peninsula and the mouth of the River Don, the sea and rail networks of the region extend to Iranian hubs on the Caspian Sea and ultimately lead to the Indian Ocean. A feature article in Bloomberg last week titled Russia and Iran Are Building a Trade Route That Defies Sanctions brings to centre stage this “sanctions-busting” project in the region.
Since the mid of the year it has become clear that the war in Ukraine is one that is mainly fought by artillery.
Neither clean energy nor lower temperatures, the latest scientific breakthrough is about testing the condition of the nuclear stockpiles of the United States.
Image Courtesy: Science.OrgThe Lawrence Livermore Laboratory’s advance in achieving fusion energy using lasers has been splashed as a huge success worldwide. So what is the success all about? The joint press release of the United States Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration says this experiment “will pave the way for advancements in national defence and the future of clean power”. In other words, there is a weapons component to the fusion experiment. The Department of Defence is the Department of War.
The New Dark Age 