Russo-Uzbek ties a factor of regional stability

23 November 2021 — Indian Punchline

Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev (L) met Russian President Vladimir Putin (R), Moscow, November 19, 2021

The visit of Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to Moscow on November 19 at the invitation of President Vladimir Putin resulted in a joint statement on information technology and a slew of documents on trade and economic cooperation but its strategic significance cannot be lost on the regional capitals.

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Reflections on Events in Afghanistan-34

13 November 2021 — Indian Punchline

The new railway bridge across Amur River connecting Nizhneleninskoye (Russia) with Tongjiang (China) commissioned in August, is a technology demonstrator for so-called dual-track system.

34. Central Asia hooking up to CPEC

The information war is so intense nowadays that unsung melodies are often more alluring that the sung ones. The lines from English poet Shelley’s famous ode To a Skylark come to mind — ‘In the broad day-light / Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight…’

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Egypt's Sisi banishes wild dogs By M K Bhadrakumar

20 August 2013 — Asia Times

Yves Jego, mayor of Montereau-Fault-Yonne, in the southeast suburb of Paris, announced on Monday that dog owners in his town with no sense of civic duty will be henceforth caught on closed-television cameras if they do not pick up their pet’s waste, and offenders will be fined 35 euros (US$46). 

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Pharaoh al-Sisi sits tight By M K Bhadrakumar

16 August 2013 — Asia Times

The highly opportunistic stance taken by the “big powers” who are veto-holding permanent members of the United Nations Security Council has prevented that august body from articulating an outright condemnation of the brutality with which the Egyptian military massacred more than 1,000 civilians in Cairo on Wednesday. 

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New at Strategic Culture Foundation 3-9 February 2013: Suyria / Turkey / CIA-Paraguay / USA-Russia / IMF / Israel / Cuba / UK-EU / Water

9 February 2013Strategic Culture Foundation

OIC Summit at Cairo and the Syrian Crisis

09.02.2013 | 11:03 | Aurobinda MAHAPATRA

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit at Cairo indicates that the 57-member Islamic body has endeavored to evolve a dialogue format to resolve the crisis in Syria. Continue reading

New at Strategic Culture Foundation 24-29 December 2012: USA / Afghanistan / Canada / Germany / CSTO / Gold

29 December 2012Strategic Culture Foundation

Zbigniew Brzezinski as a mirror of American devolution (I)

29.12.2012 | 00:00 | Dmitry MININ

The passing of 2012, among other things, was marked by a publication of fundamental importance, in terms of understanding the processes occurring in the world and the U.S., the book by Zbigniew Brzezinski «Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power» (1). Continue reading

Strategic Culture Foundation 26 August – 1 September 2012: Europe / APEC / Kosovo / Saudi Arabia / Assange-Ecuador / Uzbekistan

1 September 2012 — Strategic Culture Foundation

EU Drift – Destination Unknown (I)

01.09.2012 | 00:00 | Pyotr ISKENDEROV

At the moment, the EU is visibly divided at the face of the crisis. One of the camps comprises the embattled Mediterranean countries plus the predominantly agrarian Ireland, all of whom are sinking into a debt crisis which their populations begin to blame on secret global forces which allegedly engineered the crisis and massively benefit from bailout-linked speculations  rather than on their respective national governments. The other camp – Germany, the Netherlands, and Finland – slam their EU southern peers over reckless policies and spendings… Continue reading

Sirte – the Apotheosis of “Liberal Intervention” By Craig Murray

26 August 2011 — Craig Murray

There is no cause to doubt that, for whatever reason, the support of the people of Sirte for Gadaffi is genuine. That this means they deserve to be pounded into submission is less obvious to me. The disconnect between the UN mandate to protect civilians while facilitating negotiation, and NATO’s actual actions as the anti-Gadaffi forces’ air force and special forces, is startling.

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Strategic culture foundation online magazine latest publications from 15-21 August, 2010

21 August, 2010 — Strategic Culture Foundation

2010-08-15
Pyotr ISKENDEROV
Renaissance of Ethnic Separatism In “United Europe”
“New serious inter-ethnic conflicts are brewing in Europe as it battles the global economic crisis. Typically they are deeply rooted in history, but the very fact that the renaissance of ethnic separatism in Europe is taking place in the epoch of European integration is noteworthy. Obviously, the enlargement of NATO and the EU neither brought stability to the continent nor precluded the recurrence of the phenomena commonplace in the XIX century but totally unexpected in the united Europe boasting a common currency…”
http://en.fondsk.ru/article.php?id=3210

2010-08-18
Andrei ARESHEV
Russia-Armenia: improvement of relations amid information attacks
“Months before the official visit of President Dmitry Medvedev to Armenia scheduled for August 19-21, experts in both countries focused on bilateral relations between Moscow and Yerevan, a thing which proves the following: like the whole post-Soviet territory, the Caucasus remains a place where Russia, the West (U.S. and the EU), Turkey, Iran and some other countries are playing a complicated geopolitical game… The situation in Central Asia and the Caucasus shows that the West has been sequentially implementing its tasks in Russia’s geopolitical area, trying to weaken its authority there and separating it from its geopolitical partners…”
http://en.fondsk.ru/article.php?id=3212

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Former Soviet States: Battleground For Global Domination By Rick Rozoff

23 November, 2009 — Global ResearchStop NATO

A Europe united under the EU and especially NATO is to be strong enough to contain, isolate and increasingly confront Russia as the central component of U.S. plans for control of Eurasia and the world, but cannot be allowed to conduct an independent foreign policy, particularly in regard to Russia and the Middle East. European NATO allies are to assist Washington in preventing the emergence of “the most dangerous scenario…a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran” such as has been adumbrated since in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Four years after the publication of The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski’s recommended chess move was made: The U.S. and NATO invaded Afghanistan and expanded into Central Asia where Russian, Chinese and Iranian interests converge and where the basis for their regional cooperation existed, and Western military bases were established in the former Soviet republics of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, where they remain for the indefinite future.

As the United States escalates its joint war with NATO in Afghanistan and across the Pakistani border, expands military deployments and exercises throughout Africa under the new AFRICOM, and prepares to dispatch troops to newly acquired bases in Colombia as the spearhead for further penetration of that continent, it is simultaneously targeting Eurasia and the heart of that vast land mass, the countries of the former Soviet Union.

Within months of the formal breakup of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in December of 2001, leading American policy advisers and government officials went to work devising a strategy to insure that the fragmentation was final and irreversible. And to guarantee that the fifteen new nations emerging from the ruins of the Soviet Union would not be allied in even a loose association such as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) founded in the month of the Soviet Union’s dissolution.

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New Evidence: Jack Straw Guilty On Torture – A Smoking Gun By Craig Murray

16 November, 2009 — Craig Murray

Finally I have indisputable documentary evidence that the British government had a positive policy of using intelligence from torture in the War on Terror, and that the policy was personally directed by Jack Straw.

Here are the minutes of the meeting at which I was told this:

Download file

All references to the CIA and MI6 have been literally cut out, but the meaning is still perfectly unmistakable particularly given the heading of the minute.

And here is the absolute smoking gun of Jack Straw’s involvement:

Download file

Straw has been lying about this for five years. He dismissed my evidence on this to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights as “Entirely untrue”.

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/10/either_craig_mu.html#comments

Straw ruined my career over my opposition to torture intelligence, after I had been appointed Ambassador by his predecessor, Robin Cook, who was rather more well disposed towards human rights. It is wonderful that it is Robin Cook’s Freedom of Information Act which I have used to finally prove beyond any doubt that slippery Straw was up to his neck in approving intelligence from torture.

Minutes available as a JPEG here:
http://www.edavies.nildram.co.uk/2009/11/torture/

Following Afghan Election, NATO Intensifies Deployments, Carnage By Rick Rozoff

6 September, 2009 — stop NATO

After NATO pledged 5,000 more troops for the war in Afghanistan at its sixtieth anniversary summit In Strasbourg, France and Kehl, Germany this April, U.S. President Barack Obama hailed the commitment as representing ‘a strong down payment on the future of our mission in Afghanistan and on the future of NATO.’

The Alliance offer was in addition to Obama’s own vow to deploy 21,000 more American forces to the war-wracked nation where the U.S. is waging its longest war since that in Vietnam and NATO is fighting the first ground and first Asian war in its history. A conflict that will enter its ninth calendar year next month.

Not, never, willing to acknowledge that the Afghan war is in fact a war, Washington and Brussels from the time of the summit until now have attempted to justify their troop buildups in South Asia as motivated primarily by insuring that the second presidential election in Afghanistan since the joint U.S.-NATO invasion of 2001 proceeded uninterrupted. A ruthless counterinsurgency and bombing campaign was thus portrayed as another war for democracy.

The election occurred on August 20, seventeen days ago, and the results are to date inconclusive, with incumbent president Hamid Karzai in the lead with less than 50% of the vote and former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah with enough votes to force a run-off election.

A second round of elections will provide the pretext for NATO and the Pentagon to maintain current inflated troop numbers in the country, deployments that were announced by the contributing nations’ governments as short-term ones specifically designated for August’s election.

All that has occurred in the past two and a half weeks, however, belies claims by the U.S. and its NATO allies that anything other than an escalating, expanding and protracted war in South Asia is intended.

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NATO, SCO or PATO? By Eric Walberg

Conferences and suggestions about what to do in Afghanistan are chock-a-block, but the reality speaks for itself, says Eric Walberg

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s Special Conference on Afghanistan, held in Moscow on 27 March, marks a new stage in the international community’s relations with this beleaguered country. It reflected the growing clout of Russia and China, the founders of the SCO, which includes Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and four observers — India, Iran, Pakistan and Mongolia.

In attendance for the first time were top US and NATO officials, including US Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs Patrick Moon and NATO Deputy Secretary General Martin Howard, as well as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Secretary General of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe Mark Perrin de Brichambaut. Among the 36 countries participating were representatives from the G8, the European Union and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. The unanimously adopted Joint Action Plan underlined the SCO’s importance “for practical interaction between Afghanistan and its neighbouring states in combating terrorism, drug trafficking and organised crime.”

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Trying Again to Stop Torture: My Formal Statement for the Joint Committee on Human Rights By Craig Murray

13 March, 2009

WITNESS STATEMENT TO THE PARLIAMENTARY JOINT COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS

My name is Craig Murray. I was British Ambassador in Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004.

I had joined the Diplomatic Service in 1984 and became a member of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Senior Management Structure in 1998. I had held a variety of posts including Deputy High Commissioner, Accra (1998 to 2001) and First Secretary Political and Economic, Warsaw (1994 to 1997).

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The Eastern Partnership: The West's Final Assault On the Former Soviet Union By Rick Rozoff

13 February, 2009 Global Research

Stop NATO

At a meeting of the European Union’s General Affairs and External Relations Council in Brussels on May 26 of last year, Poland, seconded by Sweden, first proposed what has come to be known as the Eastern Partnership, a program to ‘integrate’ all the European and South Caucasus former Soviet nations – except for Russia – not already in the EU and NATO; that is, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

The above are half of the former Soviet republics in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) established as a sop to Russia immediately after the breakup of the Soviet Union in that year and in theory to be a post-Soviet equivalent of the then European Community, now European Union. (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania never joined and both were absorbed into the European Union and NATO in 2004.)

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