Posted by seumasach on August 11, 2008
It is crudely simplistic to cast Russia as the sole villain in the clashes over South Ossetia. The west would be wise to stay out
Mark Almond
9th August, 2008
For many people the sight of Russian tanks streaming across a border in August has uncanny echoes of Prague 1968. That cold war reflex is natural enough, but after two decades of Russian retreat from those bastions it is misleading. Not every development in the former Soviet Union is a replay of Soviet history.
Posted in Drive to Global War, Multipolar world | Tagged: Georgia, georgia south ossetia | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on August 10, 2008
Bill Van Auken
9th August, 2008
Long-escalating tensions between Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia erupted into full-scale war Friday, leaving hundreds if not thousands of civilians dead and turning thousands more into refugees, forced to flee for their lives.
The immediate focus of the fighting is the attempt by Georgia to militarily seize control of the enclave of South Ossetia, which has existed as a de facto independent entity for the past 16 years, and Russia’s armed intervention to counter this assault.
Underlying this military confrontation, however, are far broader conflicts. Feeding the bloody confrontation in South Ossetia is US imperialism’s drive to establish hegemony over the vast energy resources of Central Asia and the Caucasus through the assertion of American military power in the region. The Russian ruling elite, for its part, is seeking to reassert its grip over a region that was ruled by Moscow for two centuries before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Posted in Drive to Global War, Multipolar world | Tagged: Georgia, georgia south ossetia | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on August 10, 2008
10th August
Posted in Drive to Global War, Multipolar world | Tagged: Georgia, georgia south ossetia | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on August 9, 2008
(John Laughland, Director of Studies at the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation in Paris, for RIA Novosti)
7th August, 2008
Sir Halford Mackinder (1861-1947) – Reader in Geography at the University of Oxford, Director of the London School of Economics and long-serving Member of Parliament – is usually credited with being the founder of political geography. Deeply imbued with very British ideas about the need to maintain the balance of power on land to preserve hegemony at sea, Mackinder famously argued in 1904 that Eurasia was the geographical pivot of world history, and that control over Eastern Europe would lead to control of it and therefore of the whole world.
Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: Georgia, georgia south ossetia | 2 Comments »
Posted by seumasach on August 4, 2008
Venezuela’s Chavez says he’s beefing up military with Russian jets to resist US attack
3rd August, 2008
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says 24 Sukhoi fighter jets have been delivered to Venezuela — and are ready to defend his country from “imperialist” aggressions.
Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: Chavez-Russia, fourth fleet | 1 Comment »
Posted by seumasach on August 2, 2008
MOSCOW, August 1 (RIA Novosti) – Russia and Cuba are to make efforts to boost bilateral cooperation in all spheres, the Russian Security Council said on Friday.
Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: russia-cuba alliance | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on July 31, 2008
President urges developing states to fight un bias
Compiled by Daily Star staff
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad issued a verbal double-whammy against world powers on Tuesday, saying that global powerbrokers were in decline – making way for a larger role for developing nations to play in the international arena – and hitting out against what he labeled bias by the UN Security Council.
“The great powers are in the process of decline. Their influence is waning. They have reached the end of their era, we are at the threshold of a new era,” he told a ministerial meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Tehran.
“The major powers are on a descending course. The extent of their influence drops day by day. They are approaching the end of their era,” Ahmadinejad told the gathering. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Iran, Multipolar world | Tagged: Iran, Non Aligned Movement | 1 Comment »
Posted by seumasach on July 31, 2008
F. William Engdahl
30th July, 2008
Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe, presides over one of the world’s richest minerals treasures, the Great Dyke region, which cuts a geological swath across the entire land from northeast to southwest. The real background to the pious concerns of the Bush Administration for human rights in Zimbabwe in the past several years is not Mugabe’s possible election fraud or his expropriation of white settler farms. It is the fact that Mr. Mugabe has been quietly doing business, a lot of it, with the one country which has virtually unlimited need of strategic raw materials Zimbabwe can provide—China. Mugabe’s Zimbabwe is, along with Sudan, on the central stage of the new war over control of strategic minerals of Africa between Washington and Beijing, with Moscow playing a supporting role in the drama. The stakes are huge.
Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: Zimbabwe | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on July 30, 2008
The west can no longer impose its will on the increasingly powerful and self-confident nations of the developing world
Martin Jacques
We are but halfway through 2008 yet it has already born witness to a sizeable shift in global power. The default western mindset remains that the western writ rules. That is hardly surprising; it has been true for so long there has been little reason for anyone to question it, least of all the west. The assumption is that might and right are invariably on its side, that it always knows best and that if necessary it will enforce its political wisdom and moral rectitude on others. There is, however, a hitch: the authority of the self-appointed global sheriff is remorselessly eroding.
Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: Multipolar world | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on July 29, 2008
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By M K Bhadrakumar
30th July
From the details coming out of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan and Moscow over the weekend, it is apparent that the great game over Caspian energy has taken a dramatic turn. In the geopolitics of energy security, nothing like this has happened before. The United States has suffered a huge defeat in the race for Caspian gas. The question now is how much longer Washington could afford to keep Iran out of the energy market.
Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: russia gas cartel | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on July 28, 2008
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LONDON (Thomson Financial) – OPEC member Venezuela agreed Friday to sell Spain 10,000 barrels of oil per day at $100 a barrel in exchange for medicine and other goods, a Spanish government source told AFP.
Posted in Financial crisis, Multipolar world | Tagged: Chavez | Leave a Comment »
In These New Times 