Russia has stated that it seeks to lessen its dependence on the US Dollar as well as the overall US controlled financial system. Russia seeks to do this by increasing bilateral trade with other nations in local currencies.
While the Trump administration continues to paint the Chinese and Russian position as one of either being with America or being with North Korea, this false dichotomy is not only insulting to two fellow superpowers, but it is deeply misguided.
In true Orwellian newspeak fashion wherein, “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength”, the western mainstream media often accuses Donald Trump of precisely the opposite of that which he is doing. It comes from an arrogant attitude that those who have studied the last 60+ years of American rhetoric in geo-politics will be highly familiar with.
Early this morning the viscerally anti-Trump news media especially in Europe filled with headlines following the ‘revelation’ that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has used a Grand Jury to issue subpoenas in the Russiagate inquiry.
No European state has anything similar to a Grand Jury – Britain did away with the device long ago – and Europeans in my experience have no understanding of it. That led to a rush of assumptions that Mueller was on the verge of bringing charges against someone.
The current border dispute between China and India centred around the tri-junction of the borders of India, Bhutan and China in an area India calls Doklam and China calls Donglang, is showing no signs of being resolved.
China has once again blasted India for literally refusing to budge on the issue.
Geng Shuang, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry has most recently stated,
It is becoming increasingly clear that the North Korea crisis has little to do with North Korea but that in reality it has everything to do with the United States testing South Korea in order to see how much power Washington can still manage to wield over Seoul, combined with the longer term goal of distracting China from its One Belt–One Road initiative through provocations on the Korean peninsula.
The latest round of US sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea are supposed to be a militant punitive measure designed to hurt three very different economies, though economies that in various ways have all learned to become increasingly self-sufficient over the years. Far from turning the economies of the aforementioned countries into 1990s Iraq, something very different is happening.
According to the reliable and well-informed Al-Masdar news agency, the Syrian military is now just 700 metres from the “city gates” of the key ISIS held town of Al-Sukhnah on the road from Palmyra to Deir Ezzor.
Here is Al-Masdar’s latest report
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has slammed North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Un in a speech before Filipino tax officials in Manila.
Duterte said of North Korea’s leader and his weapons programme,
China has joined a small club of nations with legal bases outside of its sovereign territory. Currently the US leads the world in foreign bases, both legal and illegal (such as those in Syria). Russia maintains two legal bases outside of Russian and former Soviet territory, one in Vietnam and one in Syria which is set to expand after Russia signed a 49 year agreement with Damascus to extend and expand a permanent Russian security presence in the country.
