Wednesday, 19 February 2025 — Morning Star Online
THAMES WATER’S £3 billion bailout was approved by the High Court today, triggering outrage as campaigners warned of higher bills from sky-high interest payments.
Tuesday, 18 February 2025 – Dr Malcolm Kendrick
Part One (a): Are the facts, facts?
‘The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate and contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.’ John F. Kennedy.
I do not think that anyone can write about Covid without first recognising that the facts, may not actually be ‘the facts.’
Tuesday, 18 February 2025 — Danny Haiphong
Geopolitical analyst and journalist Pepe Escobar joins to discuss the chaos unleashed by the Trump administration as Russia-US talks kick off, Europe gets sidelined, and BRICS gears up as Trump’s declared war on the multipolar alliance begins.
Sunday, 16 February 2025 — Indian Punchline
Russian President Vladimir Putin (L ) and US President Donald Trump at their last meeting, Osaka, Japan, 28–29 June 2019 What emerges from the dramatic happenings of the past week is that the 3-year chronicle of US-Russia rivalry and the NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine was a crisis engineered with great deliberation by the Anglo-American nexus per a pernicious agenda conceived by the neocon liberals wedded to globalism ensconced in the Washington and London establishment to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.
Tuesday,18 February 2025 — No Cold War
VJ Prashad
US President Donald Trump called Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and told him that his government is committed to a peace process in Ukraine. As part of the deal, Trump’s administration made it clear that sections of eastern Ukraine and the Crimea would remain in Russian hands. Speaking at the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), Trump’s Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said that it was ‘unrealistic’ to assume that Ukraine would return to its pre-2014 borders, which means that Crimea would not be part of any negotiations with Russia. NATO membership for Ukraine, he said, was not going to be possible as far as the United States was concerned. The United States, Hegseth told NATO, was not ‘primarily focused’ on European security, but on putting its own national interests first and foremost. The best that the European leaders at NATO could do was to demand that Ukraine have a seat at the talks, but there was very little said against the US pressure that Russia be given concessions to come to the table. Ukraine and Europe can have their say, Hegseth said, but Trump would set the agenda. ‘What he decides to allow and not allow is at the purview of the leader of the free world, of President Trump’, Hegseth said with characteristic midwestern swagger. The cowboys, he said with his body language, are back in charge.
Tuesday, 18 February 2025 — karlof1’s Geopolitical Gymnasium
As you see, they’re all seated and at the ready. What’s available is the following Kremlin readout of the business that was conducted, which is what was anticipated—building bridges initially. I expect this phase to last only a few more days.
Tuesdday, 18 February 2025 — TASS
🇷🇺 Key takeaways from Russian Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov’s statements on the results on the Russia-US talks in Riyadh:
▪️The talks between Russia and the US went well
▪️The delegations held ‘very serious discussions on all issues’
▪️Russia and the US agreed to take into account each other’s interests
▪️A meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump is unlikely to take place next week; it is not yet possible to set the exact date
▪️Russia and the US are hardly getting closer to each other at the moment, but this is under discussion
▪️Separate teams of Russian, US negotiators on Ukraine will enter into contact
▪️It is still unclear who will be among Russia’s negotiators on Ukraine, the Russian president will decide on this
Tuesday, 18 February 2025 — Glenn Diesen’s Substack
To preserve the international system based on US hegemony, the US has to prevent the rise of other centres of power. The China-Russia partnership has become the key challenge to US hegemony. The strategy by the Biden administration was to use Ukraine in a proxy war against Russia to knock it out from the ranks of great powers, so the US could focus on China. As NATO lost the proxy war, the US began shifting toward a new strategy of winning Russia over to its side of the ledger and creating some divisions between Russia and China.
Tuesday, 18 February 2025 — Al Mayadeen English
Donald Trump’s threats of invading Gaza have forced Arab and Muslim leaders to react, exposing their vulnerability and the wider US-Israeli agenda for reshaping the region.
For 15 months, the majority of the Arab and Muslim World’s leaders sat back as the first live-streamed genocide took place inside the land of Palestine. Praying for a return to the status quo that once supported their rules, they have now been faced with an ultimatum. Now, it’s time to pick a side.
Monday, 17 February 2025 — Russia Observer
Patrick Armstrong
Well, “Fuck the EU” she said, and here we are.
Vance’s speech was a bombshell. Left them weeping, it did. Gotta say though, if Zelensky is where you find your “values and principals” these days, I think you should look somewhere else. We can only hope that Vance’s lecture has killed this sanctimonious and hypocritical values talk. Or reduced it a bit, anyway.
Tuesday, 18 February 2025 — MintPress News
There are many controversial characters inside Washington, but few have had a career quite as destructive as US government official, Victoria Nuland. From her earliest days helping to rip apart the Soviet Union and paving the way for gangster capitalism in Russia, to helping to oversee the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, to engineering a coup in Ukraine, Nuland has been at the forefront of aggressive US foreign policy for over three decades.
MintPress highlights some of her darkest moments.
Monday, 17 February 2025 — karlof1’s Geopolitical Gymnasium
Today in Moscow, FM Lavrov held talks with Serbian FM Marija Djuric followed by a joint press conference that lasted 45 minutes and consisted of lengthy remarks by Lavrov about the status of Russian-Serbian relations. However, when it came to the Q&A, the interest wasn’t about the state of relations but about Lavrov’s upcoming mission to Saudi Arabia and his appraisal of the Munich Security Conference, and that interest is clearly shared by many. What follows are selections related to those two items:
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Monday, 17 February 2025 — Global Delinquents
‘Operation Gladio’ is the collective name for a notorious Cold War-era program whereby Anglo-American intelligence services and NATO, in conjunction with mafia elements and fascist paramilitaries, constructed a pan-European nexus of clandestine “stay behind” armed resistance units. Their ostensible purpose was to remain ever-poised to respond to potential future Soviet invasion. In reality, these guerrilla factions carried out false flag attacks, assassinations, robberies, mass casualty bombings, and other incendiary acts to discredit the Western left, while fomenting a “strategy of tension”. Their objective was simple:
Monday, 17 February 2025 — Geopolitical Economy Report
Why has the price of gold been increasing so fast, breaking records? Economist Michael Hudson explains the politics of the precious metal, and the dynamics of the US dollar system. He is interviewed by Ben Norton.
Saturday, 15 February 2025 — The Grayzone
Sunday, 16 February 2025 — karlof1’s Geopolitical Gymnasium
The awaited phone conversation initiated by Rubio with Lavrov has occurred. Here’s the MFA’s readout:
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Saturday, 15 February 2024 — Ukraine Watch
🔘 Putin and Trump may meet in Saudi Arabia at the end of February, Bloomberg reports, citing sources
The publication states that senior officials from the US and Russia will meet next week in Saudi Arabia to lay the groundwork for a potential summit between the leaders at the end of the month to discuss ending the war in Ukraine, according to sources familiar with the situation.
Saturday, 15 February 2025 – Al Mayadeen English
The suspension of USAID funding to Ukraine by the new U.S. administration has exposed the extent of Western financial influence on Ukrainian media, government, and nationalist movements.
The New Dark Age 