US ‘threatening’ Africa over ties with Russia – defense minister
RT | January 10, 2023
Relations between Washington and Pretoria have become strained after a Russian cargo ship visited South Africa’s largest naval base last month, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The country’s defense minister said the US had been pressuring African nations over any links with Moscow, according to the outlet.
Washington is “concerned by the support the South African Armed Forces provided to the ‘Lady R’,” a senior US official told the WSJ, referring to a Russian vessel that was sanctioned in May over its alleged involvement in arms shipments for Moscow.
In early December, the ship was allowed to enter Simon’s Town navy base with its transponders turned off and freely move cargo there, the report claimed. “There is no publicly available information on the source of the containers that were loaded onto the ‘Lady R’,” the official said.
The outlet cited comments made by South African Defense Minister Thandi Modise last month regarding the visit of ‘Lady R’. She declined to reveal what cargo the ship was carrying, only saying that “whatever contents this vessel was getting were ordered long before Covid,” which emerged in late 2019.
Washington “threatens Africa, not just South Africa, of having anything that is even smelling of Russia,” Modise said, as quoted by the WSJ.
The article noted that, under the US law, Washington can place sanctions on any entity that provides services to a black-listed ship.
Darren Olivier, who heads African Defense Review consulting company, told the outlet it was plausible that the ‘Lady R’ was bringing an old order of Russian ammunition to South Africa. Moscow and Pretoria agreed a shipment of 4.5 million rounds of Russian ammunition worth around $585,000 back in 2020, he said.
As for what was loaded on the ship, Olivier pointed out that “South Africa’s defense industry does not generally produce armaments and complete systems that are used by the Russian military.” However, he said Moscow could be interested in dual-use items, including guidance systems and optics for aerial drones.
According to the senior US official, who spoke to the WSJ, the US embassy warned Pretoria in November that a sanctioned vessel was about to arrive in the country, but the South African authorities did not respond. The events surrounding ‘Lady R’ demonstrate the “difficulty” of implementing sanctions on Russia for the US and its allies, the article noted.
Switzerland slated to destroy millions of mRNA vaccine doses in 2023
Even the oldfolk have stopped caring, and nobody in the developing world wants the surplus either
eugyppius: a plague chronicle | January 7, 2023
Switzerland, home to less than 9 million people, is one of the biggest mRNA vaccine customers in the world relative to population. The’ve already received a staggering 33 million Covid vaccine doses, only a little over half of which were ever administered.
The small country is now sitting on 13.5 million doses, nervously awaiting the delivery of a further 2 million in the coming weeks, and surely lamenting that 11.6 million more are scheduled to arrive by the end of 2023. The vast majority of these will sit for some months in freezers before the Swiss Confederation destroys them. The country already binned more than eleven million doses last year, the greater part of them after a deal to supply surplus snake oil to the third world via the failed Covax initiative fell through because nobody in Africa wants this stuff either.
Vaccine credulity may still be the mainstream, politically acceptable position, but revealed preferences show that enormous majorities everywhere are done with mass vaccination. Pharmaceutical executives can sing their doubtful hymns to the miraculous safety and efficacy of their jabs, but the quiet worldwide rejection of their garbage products is a stinging rebuke, suggesting that billions across the world harbour unexpressed scepticism towards the mRNA Covid vaccines.
From here, it is only downhill for the vaccinators.
Jane Goodall isn’t a kindly grandmother; she’s a promoter of eugenics and a global population of 450 million
By Rhoda Wiloson • The Exposé • December 29, 2022
Yesterday we published an article that highlighted that the United Nations’ (“UN’s”) “30×30” goal is the biggest land grab in the history of the world. It is the theft of land and natural resources on a grand scale. To convince the public the UN’s goal is a “good thing,” the World Economic Forum (“WEF”) and the World Wildlife Fund (“WWF”) have chosen three leading influencers – Greta Thunberg, Jane Goodall and David Attenborough – to market the ideology under the guise of a “new deal for nature.”
But these three marketeers aren’t just mis-selling the “new deal for nature,” at least two of them – Goodall and Attenborough – are openly marketing depopulation, the killing of billions of people, under the fraudulent “climate change” ideology. Perhaps Thunberg is their apprentice and will take over the reins when one of her mentors has been “depopulated.”
In this article, we take a brief look at Goodall who is portrayed as a kindly grandmother that wouldn’t hurt a fly and someone even our youngest can trust. However, as with the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, she is not as her public image or name suggests. After learning a little about Goodall’s underlying beliefs, wisdom would say that children should stay well clear. Children should only watch documentaries or films associated with these marketeers in the presence of responsible adults. Adults who can negate any nuances which have been deliberately included to “nudge” or manipulate beliefs towards ideologies that are harmful not only to us but also to our natural world.
Jane Goodall is best known for her work with primates – her image of kindness has given her enormous credibility. But do not be fooled by the public image the propaganda machine portrays. To demonstrate Goodall’s underlying beliefs, we look at some of the remarks she has made over the years.
Wikispooks has noted two quotes from Goodall. The first was made in 2007:
“It’s our population growth that underlies just about every single one of the problems that we’ve inflicted on the planet. If there were just a few of us, then the nasty things we do wouldn’t really matter and Mother Nature would take care of it — but there are so many of us.” – Jane Goodall, November 2007
And the second was made in 2020. Goodall was chosen to take the podium at the 2020 WEF annual meeting where she could help prepare business and government managers for the need for a drastic population reduction. Goodall was speaking at a panel discussion called ‘Securing a Sustainable Future for the Amazon’. She proclaimed:
“All these [environmental] things we talk about wouldn’t be a problem if there was the size of population that there was 500 years ago.”
World Economic Forum: Securing a Sustainable Future for the Amazon, Davos 2020, 22 January 2020
PolitiFact rushed to Goodall’s defence, albeit from a “Goodall’s population comments didn’t spark the pandemic” angle. “Goodall did make the human population growth comments seen in the video, but she has been making the same arguments for years,” the blogging site PolitiFact wrote. This is true. In the video below, Goodall admits that what she sees as a population problem “really hit” her in 1990, over 30 years ago. It was her perception of the “population problem” in Africa that convinced her.
Population Matters: Jane Goodall at Population Matters Conference 2019, 29 April 2019 (4 mins)
The Critic sums it up succinctly: “When eco-warriors talk of population control, they mean the world would be better off with fewer poor black people.” In other words, it is a eugenics programme hiding behind a purposefully manufactured “climate change” narrative. This is an appropriate conclusion in the context that this particular comment is raised and is bad enough on its own, but the implications are much larger than depopulating Africa.
Returning to her remarks in 2020, although Goodall doesn’t indicate what she believes the population of the world to be 500 years ago, according to Worldometer the global population in 1500 is estimated at 450 million. The current global population is estimated at a little over 8 billion. So, using simple mathematics, Goodall is promoting the death of more than 7.5 billion people. “This session was developed in partnership with the BBC,” WEF noted.
Repeatedly promoting depopulation increases Goodall’s guilt not diminishes it, a fact PolitiFact’s blogger doesn’t appear to be concerned with. Additionally, we can assume from the point of view of the blog’s publisher, PolitiFact, that advocating for the “depopulation” of over 7.5 billion people is all right as long as you’ve been at it for a long time.
As an article published by The Conversation quite rightly noted, “this remark might seem fairly innocuous, but it’s an argument that has grim implications … As these escalate, people must be prepared to challenge and reject the overpopulation argument.”
For those who struggle to translate what the term “depopulation” means in practical terms: It translates to enforcing a decline in birth rates – through infertility, miscarriages and abortions – and/or enforcing an increase in death rates – through mass murder and “nudging” people, including children, to commit suicide. Surely PolitiFact’s blogger understands that Goodall sees him and his loved ones as part of the “population problem” and so is in her sights to be “depopulated.”
If you’re wondering why PolitiFact would defend someone who promotes eugenics and genocide, looking at who provides the funds for their operations will give some clues. PolitiFact, unsurprisingly, receives large donations for “support of content and training” from all the usual propagandists such as Google News Initiative, Meta/Facebook, Microsoft, Omidyar Network/Luminate, WhatsApp and so on. PolitiFact is merely publishing blogs that conform with the ideologies of their funders. Their blogs should be read and understood within that context – that they are promoting an agenda and not presenting unbiased facts.
Never take anything at face value that has been developed or promoted by tools – such as WEF, BBC and PolitiFact – used by the propaganda machine. Things are not as they portray.
Biden Wants $8 Billion In Taxpayer Funds To Shut Down Coal Power In South Africa
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | December 16, 2022
With the UN and other interests already interfering in Africa’s energy development, Joe Biden announced at the US-Africa Business Forum a plan for American taxpayers to shell out at least $8 billion to shut down effective coal fired energy plants in South Africa so they can be replaced with far less effective and far less efficient green energy alternatives.
In other words, the goal of climate change cultists is to use $8 billion of America’s money to diminish South African infrastructure.
The green energy scam continues despite the fact that European nations are now admitting they need more oil and coal based energy, not green tech, after the loss of Russian natural gas resources.
The American taxpayer is now carrying the weight of $94 billion in 2022 for so called “clean energy” initiatives in other nations around the world.
DR Congo Invites Russian Companies to Develop Gas & Oil Fields
By Maria Konokhova – Samizdat – 15.12.2022
Energy is one of the main areas of cooperation between Russia and African countries with a great potential for growth. The head of the African Energy Chamber, Nj Ayuk, recently told Sputnik that Russia could play a leading role in implementing energy projects on the continent.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) welcomes the possible participation of Russian companies in the development of gas and oil fields in the country, said Joseph Kindundu Mukombo, adviser for economic affairs and communications at the DRC Embassy in Russia.
“The DRC has huge gas and oil reserves, but they are still poorly developed. In July this year, the government announced a tender for the development of 24 oil fields. We hope that Russian companies will participate in the tender. We know that Russia has great expertise and technology in this area,” he stated, speaking at the plenary session of the 20th international forum “Gas of Russia 2022: Turn to the East.”
According to him, Kinshasa hopes cooperation with Russia will eventually lead to the DRC exporting its gas and oil to other countries. However, he underlined that this requires infrastructure development, with which Russia could also help by providing investments and technical assistance.
“As for gas, we have great potential, but it must be developed first. We would like Russia to help us for the benefit of both sides. There is a large territory in the center of the country that needs to be explored, and the DRC is open to cooperation with Russian companies,” the adviser said.
Mukombo explained that the DRC wants experts in the oil and gas sectors who have expertise in transporting energy carriers, to provide assistance, as the country has “limited access” to the sea, while gas fields are located in the center of the continent.
He added that apart from the gas transportation infrastructure, the Central African country also needs gas storage facilities.
“We know that Russia is a powerful country that is competent in building gas pipelines and storage facilities. Our cooperation will allow us [the DRC] to produce, transport, store and export energy resources,” concluded the diplomat.
Earlier, Oleg Ozerov, ambassador at large of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stated that energy security will be raised at the second Russia-Africa summit scheduled for July 2023. According to him, the summit is expected to give a new impetus to Russian-African cooperation in areas of mutual interest, including energy, science, investment and trade.
Algeria’s growing influence is putting it in the US crosshairs
By Robert Inlakesh | RT | December 13, 2022
As Algiers continues to play a more prominent role in Middle Eastern and African affairs, will it face US pressure and even regime change attempts for its foreign policy stances that do not align with those of the West?
In September, US Congress members evoked the 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), to call for sanctions to be placed upon Algeria over weapons deals with Moscow. This plea came shortly after the same argument was made by Republican Senator Marco Rubio in a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Since the days of the Cold War, the Algerian state has been outside the orbit of the West, lending its favor instead to national liberation movements and pursuing a more tailor-made foreign policy platform. This pitted it against its western neighbor, Morocco, which opted to align itself with the West. Today, tensions are boiling again between the neighboring North African leaderships over a similar alignment of sorts, especially since Morocco decided to normalize ties with Israel owing to pressure from the administration of then-US President Donald Trump. An arms race has been developing between the two nations since 2015, as both governments find themselves further tied to their East-West allegiances.
Against the backdrop of tensions with its Western-aligned North African neighbor, Algiers has emerged in 2022 as a revived regional player. As the global energy crisis continues amid the West’s standoff with Russia in Ukraine, Algeria has come off well and with more wealth. In the first five months of this year alone, Algeria’s oil and gas earnings skyrocketed by more than 70%, amounting to a total of $21.5 billion. This has given Algiers greater freedom to work on its defense goals and infrastructure projects.
Algeria is making significant strides at building sustainable living and working on projects to provide more jobs to its citizens. One such project is the construction of a futuristic city called Boughezoul. The city will not only house 400 new residents as part of its strategy to eliminate slums and derelict housing, but also seeks to host the Algerian space agency, a new railway station, and a new international airport. Efforts such as these, combined with the revival of military displays on the nation’s independence day, seem to represent a real effort to reassure the population of the government’s intentions after years of mistrust and mass demonstrations.
Along with the ongoing attempts to make the best of the new economic advantages domestically, Algiers also seems fixated on having its own impact on regional affairs. As the nation has cut off ties with neighboring Morocco, due in part to Israel’s intelligence and military influence, as well as the alleged Moroccan backing of Kabylie separatist groups, it now seeks to align itself with Tunisia to a greater degree.
Algeria, the third largest gas supplier to Europe, has attracted significant interest this year, becoming the top supplier now for Italy, as military ties also seem to deepen. In the case of Tunisia, Algeria has granted recognition to the nation’s president, Kais Saied, who relies on Algerian gas and is receiving supplies at a discounted rate. Tunis is facing an acute economic crisis and has been accused of trading its historically cordial relations with Morocco for closer ties with Algeria. The Tunisian president invited Brahim Ghali, the leader of the Polisario Front – a movement that fights for the disputed territory of Western Sahara, against Morocco – to the eighth Tokyo International Conference on African Development that was hosted in Tunisia in August. Inviting the sworn enemy of Morocco to the country triggered the subsequen withdrawal of ambassadors between Tunisia and Morocco. Algeria supports the Polisario Front in its fight over Western Sahara.
For Algerian President Abdelmajid Tebboune, keeping Tunisia on its side is an important issue, as it fears the UAE-Saudi-Egyptian bloc will assert its own dominance over Tunis’ policies. Kais Saied, who seized power in October of 2019, is clearly within the UAE’s sphere of influence, as opposed to his opponents in the Ennahda party that align with Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood. Due to such a strong influence from Abu Dhabi in North Africa, Algeria is made to play a careful balancing game.
Another major issue that Algiers is now involving itself in is Palestinian reconciliation. It has hosted a number of meetings between rival parties Hamas and Fatah in order to bridge the gap and develop a stronger platform from which to argue for Palestinian statehood. The issue of achieving Palestinian statehood also played out as a central theme in the Arab League summit in November, as Algeria attempted to bolster its position regionally by hosting the meeting.
Despite having to play a careful balancing act, both regionally and internationally, Algeria has emerged this year as a key player in Africa, the Middle East, and beyond. It has even held strong against its former colonizing power, France, forcing President Emmanuel Macron to change his rhetoric about Algiers and has paved the way to dropping French in the education system and opting to adopt the English language instead, eroding France’s influence further.
All the moves being made by Algeria are signaling that it intends to continue along the lines of adopting policies that do not necessarily align with Western interests, sometimes coming into direct conflict with them. This is why threats from US congressmen and senators to impose sanctions on Algeria have begun to raise eyebrows. America’s ambassador to Algeria, Elizabeth Moore Aubin, has refused to answer questions on hypothetically imposing sanctions, opting to focus on what her job entails, which may indicate that such decisions may not be on the immediate minds of high-ranking US officials. However, Republican party officials have certainly stirred the pot. The question now becomes how far Washington will go to punish Algeria for refusing to ditch Moscow and whether the strategy going forward may be to use Morocco against Algeria.
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.
Xi Jinping ends landmark KSA visit by calling on Arab states to embrace multipolar world
The Cradle | December 10, 2022
Chinese President Xi Jinping left Saudi Arabia early on 10 December following a three-day visit that saw him attend three different summits with leaders from across West Asia and Africa.
On Friday night, Xi headed the first China-Arab States Summit, which saw a large majority of Arab League heads of state attend in a bid to strengthen bilateral ties with the Asian giant.
“As strategic partners, China and Arab states should … foster a closer China-Arab community with a shared future, so as to deliver greater benefits to their peoples and advance the cause of human progress,” the Chinese president said during his keynote speech.
Xi also called on Arab states to remain “independent and defend their common interests,” adding that China “supports Arab states in independently exploring development paths suited to their national conditions and holding their future firmly in their own hands.”
“China is ready to deepen strategic mutual trust with Arab states, and firmly support each other in safeguarding sovereignty, territorial integrity and national dignity,” Xi said, noting that the two sides should “jointly uphold the principle of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs, practice true multilateralism, and defend the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries.”
The Chinese leader also urged leaders from West Asia and Africa to embrace “synergy between their development strategies, and promote high-quality [cooperation in the Belt and Road Initiative].”
Launched nine years ago, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is considered the crown jewel of Xi’s long-term foreign policy agenda. The stated aim of the mega-infrastructure project is to bring capital and infrastructure to Global South countries while dramatically strengthening connectivity for commerce, finance, and culture.
The BRI also aims to secure markets for Chinese companies, stable supplies of inputs for Chinese factories, and productive outlets for China’s large foreign exchange holdings. Close to 150 nations across the globe have signed on to participate in the BRI.
For the first half of 2022, Saudi Arabia was the biggest recipient of China’s finance and investment spending in the BRI.
Ahead of the China-Arab Summit on Friday, the Chinese president met with leaders from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). During this summit, he urged the oil and gas giants to conduct energy sales in the Chinese yuan, potentially divorcing the US dollar from bilateral transactions.
He also vowed to import more oil and natural gas from Gulf Arab states while not interfering in their affairs, a departure from Washington’s long-standing policy of interference and domination.
Xi later took the opportunity to express China’s support for the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and voiced frustration over the “historical injustice” suffered by Palestinians.
“It is not possible to continue the historical injustice suffered by the Palestinians,” the Chinese president said on Friday.
He went on to call on the international community to grant Palestine “full membership in the United Nations” and said Beijing “supports the two-state solution and the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
Beijing’s emergence as a major superpower since the turn of the century has proven to be critically important for Arab states, prompting them to diversify their strategic objectives and balance themselves away from a decades-long Western dependency.
Nigerian Army Preformed Over 10,000 Forced Abortions
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | December 7, 2022
Nigerian soldiers fighting against a jihadist group regularly ordered women to be given abortions without their consent, according to a new Reuters investigation. The US has provided Nigeria with billions in military aid, weapons and training.
Victims and soldiers told Reuters that women and girls in the custody of Nigeria’s 7 Division were given injections to terminate their pregnancies. Some victims were killed by the abortions, and women who resisted were beaten. It is unclear when the program started,” but had existed since at least 2014.
One of the over thirty survivors that spoke with the outlet said victims – while undergoing abortions – were not provided medical treatment. “That woman was more pregnant than the rest of us, almost six or seven months. She was crying, yelling, rolling around, and at long last she stopped rolling and shouting. She became so weak and traumatized, and then she stopped breathing, she said. Adding, “they just dug a hole, and they put sand over it and buried her.”
The 7 Division operates in the country’s northeast, fighting against the Salafist group Boko Haram. According to the Quincy Institute’s Nick Turse, Nigeria’s military is heavily dependent on America. “Since 2000, the U.S. has provided, facilitated, or approved more than $2 billion in security assistance and military weapons and equipment sales to Nigeria and has conducted more than 41,000 training courses for Nigerian military personnel to support counterterrorism efforts aimed at defeating Boko Haram and the Islamic State,” he wrote in May.
While the Reuters report is shocking, Nigerian armed forces have a history of human rights abuses. “Impunity, exacerbated by corruption and a weak judiciary, remained a significant problem in the security forces, especially in police, military, and the Department of State Services,” the State Department wrote in its 2021 human rights report on Nigeria. Adding, “the military arbitrarily arrested and detained – often in unmonitored military detention facilities – persons in the context of the fight against Boko Haram and ISIS-WA in the North East.”
The abuses have not deterred several American presidents from supporting Abuja. Barack Obama authorized millions in funding to support the Sahel nations’ fight against Boko Haram. Under Donald Trump, American troops conducted multiple training courses for Nigerian soldiers fighting Salafists. President Joe Biden has already authorized a nearly $1 billion sale of attack helicopters to Abuja.
Nigeria denied the claims made by Reuters. The outlet said the 7 Division adopted the tactics out of a belief it would help eliminate Boko Haram. “Central to the abortion program is a notion widely held within the military and among some civilians in the northeast: that the children of insurgents are predestined, by the blood in their veins, to one day take up arms against the Nigerian government and society.” The report continued, “four soldiers and one guard said they were told by superiors that the program was needed to destroy insurgent fighters before they could be born.”
Pentagon exploits post 9/11 laws to wage ‘secret wars’ worldwide: Report
The Cradle | November 9, 2022
A report released last week by the New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice details how the US Department of Defense (DoD) has been allowed to covertly deploy troops and wage secret wars over the past two decades in dozens of countries across the globe.
Among the nations in West Asia affected by these so-called ‘security cooperation authorities’ are Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen; however, they also include many African and Latin American nations.
Known as ‘security cooperation authorities,’ they were passed by the US Congress in the years following the 11 September attacks, and are a continuation of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), a piece of legislation that has been stretched by four successive governments.
According to the report, the AUMF covers “a broad assortment of terrorist groups, the full list of which the executive branch long withheld from Congress and still withholds from the public.”
Following in this tradition, the ‘security cooperation authorities’ being abused by the Pentagon are Section 333 and Section 127e of Title 10 of the United States Code (USC).
Section 333 authorizes the US army to “train and equip foreign forces anywhere in the world,” while Section 127e authorizes the Pentagon to “provide support to foreign forces, paramilitaries, and private individuals who are in turn supporting US counterterrorism operations,” with a spending limit of $100,000,000 per fiscal year.
However, thanks to the vague definition of ‘support’ and ‘training’ in the text of these laws, both Section 333 and Section 127e programs have been abused to target “adversarial” groups under a strained interpretation of constitutional self-defense; they have also allowed the US army to develop and control proxy forces that fight on behalf of – and sometimes alongside – their own.
As a result of this, in dozens of countries, these programs have been used as a springboard for hostilities, with the Pentagon often declining to inform Congress or the US public about their secret operations under the reasoning that the incidents are “too minor to trigger statutory reporting requirements.”
“Researchers and reporters uncovered Section 127e programs not only in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also in Cameroon, Egypt, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen,” the report highlights.
Researchers also point out that defense authorities “have given little indication of how [they] interpret Section 333 and 127e.”
Even more concerning, and ignoring the damage caused by these ‘anti-terror’ laws, the US Congress recently expanded the Pentagon’s security cooperation authorities, particularly with Section 1202 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
Section 1202 allows the US army to allow “irregular warfare operations” against “rogue states” like Iran or North Korea, or “near-peers,” like Russia and China.
The report comes at a time when the US army and its proxy militias are accused of illegally occupying vast regions of Syria and Yemen, looting oil from the war-torn countries, just over a year after their brutal occupation of Afghanistan ended. Moreover, a former US official on Tuesday revealed that anti-Iran militias are being armed in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR), where both the CIA and the Mossad are known to operate.
Algeria Applies for BRICS Membership
Samizdat – 07.11.2022
“Algeria [has] made an official application to join BRICS,” media reported, citing Foreign Ministry special envoy Leila Zerrouki.
The president of the North African nation previously said that Algeria may be interested in joining the bloc, adding that it largely meets the conditions for entering BRICS.
This comes after Iran and Argentina earlier this year also announced they were seeking membership in the group. Moreover, BRICS International Forum President Purnima Anand noted that Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia may “very soon” follow them in applying.
BRICS is an informal association of major developing economies that was formed in 2006 to enhance cooperation between the member nations and elaborate common approaches to global economic challenges. The countries in the bloc represent around 40 percent of the global population and around a quarter of the world’s GDP.
UK-Aided Ukrainian Attempt at Sabotaging Grain Deal to Backfire, Expert Says
Samizdat – 31.10.2022
MOSCOW – Ukraine attacked Russian naval ships that escorted vital grain exports in an attempt to escalate the hunger crisis for the world and blame it on Russia, but the move will likely backfire to make Africa and the Middle East wary of the West and more trustful of Moscow, French political commentator Charles Gave told Sputnik.
Russia quit the UN- and Turkey-brokered grain shipping deal on Saturday after its Black Sea naval ships and civil vessels were attacked in a drone strike that it said was coordinated by the UK. Russia, a leading global grain producer, promised to supply up to 500,000 tonnes of grain to the poorest countries free of charge in the coming months to offset shortfalls from Ukrainian exports.
“The only reason for this drone attack, which is a provocation that really threatens to stop altogether the delivery of grain from Ukraine, is the will to sabotage the grain agreement and present Russia as the arch-villain in the conflict,” Gave said.
He believes, however, that the opposite will likely happen.
“In the end the boomerang effect will probably be that African and Middle East countries will be made much more aware that they can count on Russian grain and that the West, by disrupting the export of grain through the Black Sea, is to blame for this new negative development,” he said.
The attack caused wheat and corn to trade higher on the global stock markets on Monday after the July grain deal saw cereal and vegetable oil prices drop to pre-conflict levels.
Gave, the founder of TVLibertes news channel, said Russia only stood to benefit from the Ukrainian drone strike because it would inflate its grain revenues, while its offer of free grain to those in need would strengthen its image as a reliable partner among the developing countries.
He also called Ukraine’s behavior irresponsible because it risked a deal that had been painstakingly negotiated by Turkey to stage a “public relations exercise and a provocation to create the buzz.”
“I see Russia gaining more and more capacity to influence ‘the rest of the world’ and turn developing countries away from the West,” Gave said. “The consequences are very bad for the countries of destination of the grain export. The West should stop involving itself more and more as a co-belligerent in the conflict and actively support negotiations,” he cautioned.
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TV Drama Review
Japanese drama projects Japan’s wartime atrocities onto Chinese characters
Global Times | October 25, 2026
By portraying Chinese characters as perpetrators of ruthless violence while casting Japanese Self-Defense Forces (SDF) intelligence operatives as defenders, the season 2 of the Japanese drama Vivant has recently drawn criticism from Chinese netizens, who argue that its depiction turns historical reality on its head while ignoring Japan’s wartime atrocities.
The TBS drama series – a spy suspense story in which an alleged unofficial intelligence unit of the SDF operates across the globe — has attracted a passionate fanbase. Its currently airing season 2 opened with a household rating of 18.8 percent, the highest for a TV drama this year, according toa commentary article by Japanese media Toyo Keizai.
What draws attention is the portrayal of the enemies in the series, the article noted. Scenes in which the Chinese organization subjects kidnapped members of the SDF unit to brutal torture are repeated with unrelenting intensity.
It is rare for Japanese TV dramas to explicitly portray a real-life country as the enemy, the article noted.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi also made a reference to the drama, saying that she has been recording Vivant and hopes to binge-watch it over the year-end and New Year holidays, according to Japanese media outlets.
China’s CCTV News report on Sunday revealed that the drama features scenes in which Chinese personnel cut off the fingers of and stab Japanese intelligence operatives in the abdomen. Such acts bear striking similarities to the torture inflicted on Chinese nationals by invading Japanese troops during the World War II.
The drama distorts the truth by attributing these atrocities to modern Chinese characters. Beneath the surface, it subtly glorifies Japan’s cross-border overseas operations, blurs the functional boundaries of the SDF and implicitly promotes an expansionist narrative, per CCTV News. … continue
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- No Tricks Zone
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- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
