In neocolonial rant, EU says Europe is ‘garden’ superior to rest of world’s barbaric ‘jungle’

Sunday, 16 October 2022 — Multipolarista

EU foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell showed the West’s neocolonial mentality claiming “the world needs Europe” as a “beacon” and beautiful “garden” to civilize the barbarous “jungle” in the Global South. He also called for regime change to create a “post-Putin Russia.”

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EU Josep Borrell Europe garden jungleEU foreign-policy chief Joseph Borrell says Europe is a superior “garden” and “beacon” that must civilize the violent “jungle” in the rest of the world

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US is recalibrating the power dynamic in East Mediterranean. Can South Asia be far behind?

Sunday, 2 October 2022  — Indian Punchline

by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR

Prime Minister Narendra Modi (L) met Turkiye President Recep Erdogan at Samarkand, Uzbekistan, September 16, 2022

A mild flutter ensued after External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s recent meeting with his Turkiye counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in New York on September 21 when it came to be known that Cyprus figured in their discussion. Jaishankar highlighted it in a tweet.

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Asia’s future takes shape in Vladivostok, the Russian Pacific

Thursday, 8 September 2022 — The Cradle

https://media.thecradle.co/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Putin-on-Vladiviostok.jpg

Sixty-eight countries gathered on Russia’s far eastern coast to listen to Moscow’s economic and political vision for the Asia-Pacific

By Pepe Escobar

Photo Credit: The Cradle

The Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Vladivostok is one of the indispensable annual milestones for keeping up not only with the complex development process of the Russian Far East but major plays for Eurasia integration.

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Ukraine’s ‘Great Game’ surfaces in Transcaucasia

Tuesday, 19 July 2022 — Indian Punchline

by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR

Presidents of Russia, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Iran and Kazakhstan (clockwise from left) took part in the 6th Caspian Summit, Ashgabat, June 29, 2022

If the metaphor of the “Great Game” can be applied to the Ukrainian crisis, with the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) at it core, it has begun causing reverberations across the entire Eurasian space. The great game lurking in the shade in the Caucasus and Central Asian regions in recent years is visibly accelerating.

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Creating cold war conditions in Asia isn’t easy

Thursday, 9 June 2022 — Indian Punchline 

by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR

Military equipment given by Japan to Ukraine being loaded in an aircraft at Yokota US Air Force Base, Japan (File photo)

Only three weeks remain for the summit meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in Madrid, which is expected to unveil a new Strategic Concept aimed at redefining “the security challenges facing the Alliance and outline the political and military tasks that NATO will carry out to address them.”

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Indo-Pacific power dynamic in radical shift

Thursday, 27 May 2022 — Indian Punchline

A Russian Tu-95 strategic bomber takes off during a 13-hour joint air patrol with China in Asia-Pacific region, at an unidentified location (image released by Russian MOD on May 24, 2022)

The joint air patrol over the waters of the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea on Monday by an air task force composed of Russian Tu-95MS capable of carrying nuclear weapons and Chinese H-6K strategic bombers couldn’t have been a knee-jerk reaction to US President Joe Biden’s Asia tour, leave alone his provocative remarks conjuring up an apocalyptic US-China war over Taiwan.

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NATO vs Russia: what happens next

Tuesday, 24 May, 2022 — The Saker

In Davos and beyond, NATO’s upbeat narrative plays like a broken record, while on the ground, Russia is stacking up wins that could sink the Atlantic order.

By Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and crossposted with The Cradle

Three months after the start of Russia’s Operation Z in Ukraine, the battle of The West (12 percent) against The Rest (88 percent) keeps metastasizing. Yet the narrative – oddly – remains the same.

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IPEF will be a hard sell in Indo-Pacific

Tuesday, 24 May 2022 — Indian Punchline

by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR

From L-R: Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, US President Joe Biden, and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the launch of Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity at Izumi Garden Gallery in Tokyo on May 23, 2022

A new economic bloc comprising twelve countries of the Indo-Pacific region and the United States was unveiled on Monday in Tokyo on the sidelines of President Joe Biden’s visit. Christened as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), it is conceived as the economic correlative of the US Indo-Pacific Strategy.

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CSTO won’t be drawn into Ukraine war

Sunday, 22 May 2022 — Indian Punchline

by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR

The leaders of the member states of Collective Security Treaty Organisation met in the Kremlin, Moscow, May 16, 2022

There should be no surprise that the summit meeting of the leaders of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) hosted by Russia at the Kremlin on May 16 fell short of articulating against the “collective West” over the Ukraine conflict. The same pattern as in the 2008 Russo-Georgian war is repeating. Russia is not dictating policies and is going along with the consensus opinion. The contrast with the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation couldn’t be sharper.

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How China’s 1942 Yan’an Forum Inspired the Culture of National Liberation in the Third World

Tuesday, 17 May 2022 — The Tricontinental

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact: Tings Chak
tings@thetricontinental.org

Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research releases a new dossier on the legacy of the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art eight decades later.

On 2 May 1942, hundreds of China’s top writers, artists, and communist leaders gathered to discuss the most urgent cultural questions of the time. Dossier no. 52, Go to Yan’an! Culture and National Liberation, explores the history and enduring legacy of the three-week forum as well as the text that Mao Zedong published the following year summarising the fruit that it bore, entitled Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art. Why did tens of thousands of artists and writers make the long journey to the remote city of Yan’an, what were the intellectual debates of the time, and how did the cultural developments help bring the Chinese people and nation to revolution?

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Indo-Pacific strategy adrift in an illusion

Friday, 13 May 2022 — Indian Punchline

M. K. BHADRAKUMAR

US President Joe Biden and leaders of Association of Southeast Asian Nations at a special summit, Washington, May 12, 2022

The Chinese daily Global Times featured a political cartoon marking the US-ASEAN summit meeting in Washington on May 12-13. It showed the US President Joe Biden seeking help from a bus load of ASEAN officials to give a push to his battle tank hopelessly stuck on slush and mud and is sinking.

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Asian fault lines of Biden’s war on Russia

Monday, 11 April 2022 — Indian Punchline

As relations with Tokyo sour, Moscow beefs up the coastal defence systems on the Kuril Islands that Japan claims as its own

The tremors of the United States’ tensions with Russia playing out in Europe are being felt in different ways already in Asia. The hypothesis of Ukraine being in Europe and the conflict being all about European security is delusional.

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India’s dilemma over West vs. Russia

Wednesday, 6 April 2022 — Indian Punchline

The information war over alleged killings in the town of Bucha near Kyiv underscores the high stakes in smearing the Russian operation in Ukraine. Pentagon has distanced itself saying it has no independent  information.

There is a notion among some mainstream Indian strategic analysts, including some who held top positions in the security establishment in past regimes that what is unfolding in Ukraine is quintessentially “a war between Europeans over the European security order.”

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The US Fights Asia, Not Just China

21 December 2021 — New Atlas

(Brian BerleticNEO) – US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken cut short his tour of Southeast Asia due to concerns over COVID-19, the New York Times would report. The aborted trip comes at a time when the US finds itself struggling for relevance in a region it had once held considerably more sway over. This most recent turn for the worse from America’s perspective is owed not only to the rise of China, but also the rise of Asia as a whole.

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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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US at ASEAN Summit Looks to Turn Region Against Itself

21 November, 2021 — New Atlas

(Brian BerleticNEO) – For the first time in four years a US President has attended the annual ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) summit. In a poorly disguised redux of the Obama-era “Pivot to Asia,” the US seeks to appear interested in contributing to ASEAN in a constructive manner while ultimately attempting to coerce the regional bloc into a confrontation with China on Washington’s behalf.

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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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