The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is moving to bar every Chinese lab from testing electronics for the US market, a sector China dominates. And Chinese media and commentators say that Beijing, having already retaliated with three countermeasures, is ready to strike back again. The FCC said on October 7 that it will vote on […]
The post FCC product testing ban deepens US-China tech decoupling appeared first on Asia Times.
The EU adopted its largest-ever round of sanctions listings on 12 October, targeting the suppliers behind Russia’s war industry, the Council of the EU announced. The bloc acted as Russia keeps killing Ukrainian civilians every day, while US President Donald Trump eases sanctions on Russian diesel.
Russia’s planned winter campaign against Ukraine’s infrastructure depends on arms factories fed by a web of component suppliers and on oil revenue that still flows despite Ukraine’s refinery strikes, so every supplier cut off from that web raises the cost of waging it. As Washington eases off, Europe’s own pressure has a gap: its ports still take record volumes of Russian Arctic gas, and a full ban on long-term contracts starts only in 2027.
More than half of the new listings hit the supply chain for ballistic missiles that Russia “uses to kill Ukrainian civilians every day,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said in the statement. Russian attacks killed more than 150 people in the past week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 11 October.
The list names 826 Russian companies, mid-level firms the Council calls the “core” of Russia’s arms industry, with at least €20 billion in yearly turnover, and 743 people who run them. They make parts for missiles, drones, and military aircraft, from semiconductors and radars to explosives and navigation systems. Their assets are frozen, EU firms may not finance them, and the executives may not enter the EU.
Foreign ministers ratified a deal EU envoys reached on 7 October. Ukraine’s sanctions commissioner Vladyslav Vlasiuk said 60% of the listings came from Ukrainian proposals.
EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg vowed to keep the sanctions despite Trump’s diesel deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Euronews reported. Kallas addressed Washington directly as she arrived.
“The US is our biggest ally, but our message is clear: if we want to end this war, the only way we can do this is (by) putting more pressure on Russia,” Kallas said.
Irish Foreign Minister Helen McEntee called the deal “concerning,” and Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys said it was “not the European way.” Kallas warned that an energy truce covering only refineries would favor Russia, since Ukraine has one refinery and Russia “plenty.”
Trump announced the diesel deal on 9 October, and the US Treasury waived sanctions on Russian diesel until April 2027. Zelenskyy said the EU would provide about €3 billion more in military aid this week.
Trump expects Ukraine to stop hitting Russian refineries under his proposed energy ceasefire, a White House official told Axios. Zelenskyy said Kyiv would halt such strikes if Moscow did the same. On 10 October, Trump told reporters it was time for Ukraine to get a new president. Germany’s foreign minister, Britain’s defense secretary, and a senior lawmaker from Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s party backed Zelenskyy, while the Kremlin sided with Trump.
Zelenskyy offered to hold elections after a 60-day ceasefire, and Kallas said elections are impossible while the war goes on. The Institute for the Study of War assessed that Russia exploits Ukraine’s legal ban on wartime elections to drag out the war.
Press TV – October 12, 2026
Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), Major General Mohsen Rezaei, has dismissed the United States’ partial concessions regarding Tehran’s seven conditions for resolving the ongoing war as “inadequate.”
In a post on X, Rezaei acknowledged that Washington has agreed to some of the conditions outlined by the Islamic Republic, but stressed that the response falls far short of Tehran’s demands.
“Iranian diplomacy has changed, and there will be no return to the status quo ante,” he declared, signaling a fundamental and permanent shift in how Tehran engages with Washington, demanding full compliance rather than incremental or half-hearted concessions.
In a second post, Rezaei eviscerated the US administration’s strategic competence and the origins of the war.
He stated that US President Donald Trump, “deluded by the fantasy of conquering Iran, launched one of the most idiotic wars in human history after being duped by Netanyahu.”
Rezaei then highlighted the humiliating reality of the US military’s inability to achieve its objectives on the battlefield, referencing Washington’s recent attempts to bypass Iranian maritime controls.
“Now, after the US fleet failed to reopen the Hormuz, he has resorted to smuggling,” Rezaei wrote, adding that “the US military has never sunk to such a disgraceful low!”
This rebuke comes against the backdrop of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, which established the framework for halting the US-Israeli war of aggression.
Under the MoU, Washington committed to lifting its illegal naval blockade, releasing frozen Iranian assets, and ceasing all military operations in exchange for a phased normalization of maritime traffic.
Crucially, the agreement stipulated that any resumption of commercial transit through the strait must be coordinated with and approved by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
However, instead of adhering to the agreed-upon framework, US officials have reportedly attempted to force or sneak commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz without coordination with Iranian authorities.
The Iranian Armed Forces have responded decisively to these violations, intercepting unauthorized vessels and enforcing the defensive arrangements established during the war.
Tehran maintains that the Strait of Hormuz will remain under its firm control until the United States fully implements all seven of Iran’s conditions, proving that the era of US hegemonic dictates in the region is permanently over.
Relembrar o 11 de Setembro é particularmente crucial numa altura em que, é sabido, sob a Administração de Donald Trump, os EUA reequacionam o seu papel na defesa da Europa.
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No dia em que as torres foram atacadas, o então presidente dos EUA, George W. Bush, estava numa escola primária na Florida a ler um livro com crianças, quando o chefe de gabinete, Andrew Card, lhe sussurrou ao ouvido: “A América está sob ataque.”
Milhares de pessoas perderam a vida depois do embate dos aviões no World Trade Center em Nova Iorque e, num misto de choque, incredulidade e dor, todos percebemos que o mundo iria irremediavelmente mudar. Nos dias que se seguiram, e pela primeira vez na história, foi invocado o Artigo 5.º da NATO. Pelos Estados Unidos. “Os aliados da América na NATO responderam com solidariedade e ação, apoiando a defesa dos Estados Unidos e juntando-se aos norte-americanos no luto e na homenagem aos que perderam a vida”, pode ler-se no website da U.S. Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa.
“Para as Forças Aéreas dos EUA na Europa, os ataques assinalaram o início de uma mudança imediata na proteção da força, no estado de prontidão e no foco operacional — uma mudança que viria a moldar a missão do comando durante as décadas seguintes”, lembram numa publicação que assinala os 25 anos dos ataques terroristas.
É precisamente este espírito de união e solidariedade entre aliados que é evocado por Ursula von der Leyen no seu discurso. “O 11 de Setembro foi o acontecimento mais marcante da viragem do século. E veio reavivar a importância das alianças e da segurança coletiva”, refere. “A Europa soube imediatamente de que lado estava. Estivemos ao lado da América. Pela primeira e única vez na sua história, a NATO invocou o Artigo 5.º. Um ataque contra um era um ataque contra todos. Permanecemos unidos na defesa dos princípios que nos unem através do Atlântico: a liberdade e a democracia.”
Relembrar o 11 de Setembro — nunca esquecer quem perdeu a vida nos ataques e nos anos que se seguiram — é particularmente crucial numa altura em que, é sabido, sob a Administração de Donald Trump os EUA reequacionam o seu papel da NATO e a sua ação (ou não) na defesa da Europa.
Velhas alianças evidenciam sinais de elevado desgaste e a Europa já percebeu (ou deveria) que tem de se preparar para garantir a sua soberania de defesa. O objetivo é, até 2030, essa capacidade estar garantida, com a Bruxelas a avançar com investimento — o SAFE no qual Portugal garantiu 5,8 mil milhões é apenas um dos exemplos de mecanismos financeiros implementados — para dar um boost à indústria europeia de defesa. Em abono da verdade, muito tem sido feito, mas o recente relatório do Tribunal de Contas Europeu faz um retrato do muito que ainda falta fazer para agilizar o passo do Velho Continente. Tanto que chegar a 2030 preparado é “um desafio”, alerta o TdC Europeu de forma polida.
Relembrar o 11 de Setembro — nunca esquecer quem perdeu a vida nos ataques e nos anos que se seguiram — é particularmente crucial numa altura em que, é sabido, sob a Administração de Donald Trump os EUA reequacionam o seu papel da NATO e a sua ação (ou não) na defesa da Europa.
Um novo sinal de que as relações entre os dois lados do Atlântico já viveram dias melhores foi a Cimeira do Espaço, que se realizou esta semana em Paris, na qual foi notória a ausência de pesos pesados do setor norte-americano, como a SpaceX de Elon Musk, que cancelaram a sua participação devido a pressão da Casa Branca. Aparentemente, o encontro internacional organizado por Macron não tinha sido alinhado com os EUA e participar era dar sinal de apoio às políticas da UE não conformes com os interesses de Washington.
Não há dúvidas de que a soberania passa igualmente por esta ‘nova-velha’ fronteira. A Europa tem de se unir também aqui, apelou Von der Leyen. “Temos de agir como uma só Europa. A Comissão, a Agência Espacial Europeia e os governos nacionais — temos de conjugar as nossas forças”, apelou. “As nossas indústrias pedem uma procura clara e previsível, que lhes dê a segurança necessária para investir e crescer. Em nenhum outro domínio isso é mais evidente do que nos transportes espaciais”, afirma.
E o mesmo disse Macron. No encontro, que reuniu mais de 100 delegações, foram feitos 51 anúncios, representando um valor total de aproximadamente 20 mil milhões de euros, incluindo cerca de 5 mil milhões de euros em contratos e investimentos. Mas a fatia de leão foram os 15,7 mil milhões de euros para o programa IRIS 2, que já tinha sido anunciado pela Comissão Europeia.
Parece muito, mas há — também aqui — uma clara desproporção entre os blocos. Os números compilados pela Pitchbook sobre o investimento de capital de risco no setor até junho dão disso conta. Globalmente, as empresas do setor já captaram 11,3 mil milhões de dólares de investimento, valor que supera os 10,1 mil milhões de dólares investidos em todo o ano passado. Os EUA absorveram mais de metade (56,1%) deste montante. A Europa? Se olharmos numa perspetiva de copo meio cheio, aumentou a sua fatia. Copo meio vazio: mal superou os 20%.
Publié à l’origine par Reseau International
By Kevin Barrett | October 12, 2026
On October 7, 2026, a front-page New York Times headline vaunted “Trump’s Retreat.” It wasn’t referring to Mar-a-Lago or Epstein Island.
The full headline, complete with subhead, reads:
“Trump’s Retreat: From the Gulf to Britain, American Forces Pull Back. A war that was intended to demonstrate the reach of American power has now done the opposite. It is a lesson in unintended consequences.”
The “war that was intended to demonstration the reach of American power” was, of course, Trump’s ill-fated attack on Iran that began last February 28. But by publishing the story on October 7, the three-year anniversary of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, the Times insinuated, intentionally or not, a causal link between Hamas’s heroic 2023 concentration-camp breakout and the collapse of the American empire following Trump’s losing war on Iran.
What the Times did not come right out and say, of course, is that the US has bled itself dry fighting losing wars for Israel, and that the October 7, 2023 provocation set off Israel’s long-planned US war on the last of the “seven countries in five years” that 9/11 was designed to “take out.”
About a month after the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Gen. Wesley Clark got word that the whole purpose of 9/11 was the destruction of Israel’s region enemies:
So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”
Thanks to resistance from the people of the region, and from realists in the US national security sector, Clark’s “seven countries in five years” turned out be be “seven countries in twenty-five years.” And the seventh, Iran, is not being “taken out.” Instead, it is Iran that is “taking out” the US empire.
But it was the Palestinian Resistance, specifically its Al-Aqsa Flood concentration camp breakout, that gave Iran the opportunity to show what it could do. Absent Al-Aqsa Flood, we would be living in a very different world:
* “Normalization” with the abnormal Zionist entity would have continued apace, and the Palestinian cause marginalized.
* US military bases would have continued to permeate and surround the Middle East.
* US naval forces would have continued to swarm unimpeded through the Strait of Hormuz and all over the Persian Gulf.
* The illusion that the US could protect and control Middle Eastern energy supplies would have been maintained.
* Propped up by its Middle Eastern footprint, the US empire’s military juggernaut would have continued to intimidate the world, leading to a gradual drawdown of US political and economic power over the next few decades, rather than the rapid collapse taking place right now.
Robert Kagan, dean of the neocons, has pointed out that without Trump-n’-Yahu’s idiotic attack on Iran last February 28, the US would have continued to successfully deter Iran from taking advantage of its geography and establishing control of the Persian Gulf. That deterrence did not depend on America’s power to defeat Iran and/or keep the Strait open. America had no such power, as we are seeing now. Instead, deterrence worked by creating uncertainty in the minds of Iran’s leaders about what might happen if they aggressively moved to seize control of the Strait. It worked by convincing them that seizing the Strait might cost them their lives. Most importantly, it worked by virtue of the fact that Iran’s leaders, unlike American and Israeli ones, are morally upright and unwilling to engage in acts of aggression.
By attacking Iran, Netanyahu and his blackmailed pedo-slave Trump removed all of Iran’s incentives to remain deterred. First and most importantly, it handed Iran its right of self-defense on the proverbial silver platter. Seizing Hormuz suddenly became a defensive act, not an aggressive one.
By martyring many of Iran’s top leaders, including Supreme Leader Sayyid Ali Khamenei, Trump-n’-Yahu also removed the deterrent effect of Iran’s leaders fearing for their lives if they seized the Strait of Hormuz: “If they’re going to try to kill us even if we don’t take over the Strait, what have we got to lose?” Suddenly Iran’s perception of its best path to security radically shifted from “reason, moderation, and accommodation” to “hardline military moves aimed at transforming the regional security equation.”
Clearly, the February 28 attack on Iran was supremely irrational. Every serious analyst knew Iran would respond by seizing control of the Strait. That had been war-gamed thousands of times. And if the US lost hugely to Iran in 2003, according to the Millennium Challenge simulation, how was it going to win in 2026, after Iran had built up a powerful and impregnable drone and missile force?
How could a would-be global hegemon be so stupid? The answer, of course, is that Trump obeyed orders from Netanyahu to attack Iran. But that just passes the buck to Netanyahu. How could he be so stupid? After all, when the US is defeated and driven out of West Asia, Israel’s days will be numbered.
Netanyahu’s irrationality, like Trump’s, stems from narcissistic hubris. Both leaders are monstrously egotistical. Both see the world through the distorting prism of their own self-serving vanity.
Netanyahu’s personal project, for more than four decades, has been inciting the US to destroy Israel’s regional enemies. Often that incitement has taken the form of reckless acts of false flag terror, as FFWN co-host Wyatt Peterson observed in his recent article “Blood and Terror Flow Wherever Bibi Goes.”
Clearly Netanyahu, and his co-ethnic agents like Paul Wolfowitz, have been frustrated by the slow pace of the US march on Tehran, which should have been taken out “five years” after 9/11. Pushback from American realists, and presidents like Bush and especially Obama who listened to them, has been driving Bibi up the wall ever since 9/11, which Bibi famously said was “very good…for Israel” and should have incited a quick clean sweep of Israel’s regional enemies, most importantly the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Decades of frustration at Israel’s inability to unleash a huge regional war—as a cover for accelerating the genocide of Palestine, grabbing territory from neighboring countries, and destroying Iran—led to Netanyahu’s hubristic incitements of October 7, 2023 and February 28, 2026.
In October 2023 Netanyahu got the Hamas attack he wanted, slaughtered his own civilians to raise the body count, and charged madly into his long-desired regional Armageddon. But instead of paving the road to Greater Israel, it has set the stage for a world without Israel:
* Israel has failed to achieve all of its military objectives, including defeating Hamas, freeing hostages militarily, emptying Gaza, emptying the West bank, putting an end to Hezbollah, seizing and settling territory in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, and overthrowing the Islamic Republic of Iran and its allies including not just Hezbollah, but also AnsurAllah in Yemen and the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq.
* US withdrawal from the region leaves Israel naked, exposed to surrounding nations who view it as an illegitimate settler colony and recklessly expansionist threat, and who will seize every available opportunity to put an end to the genocidal Zionist experiment.
* Israel has been completely delegitimized on the world stage, as witnessed by the Nobel Committee’s decision to thumb their noses at Trump and give the prize to anti-genocide UN investigator Navi Pillay.
Netanyahu’s grotesquely irrational war, “a lesson in unintended consequences,” stems not just from Bibi’s individual psychopathy, but from the larger psychopathy of the hardline Zionist movement he leads. These people may or may not believe in Yahweh, their Bronze Age tribal god, but they certainly do believe that Yahweh gave them a real estate deed to everything between the Nile and Euphrates more than 2500 years ago, so they are going to try to steal all that land before somebody else does.
The drooling, demented Zionists aren’t thinking strategically. They’re emoting. They’re perpetually driven to hysterics by the thought that somebody somewhere might say something “antisemitic” (meaning critical of Jews or Zionism). They’re endlessly whining about real or imaginary ill-treatment from the goyim, who want them stuffed into gas chambers or driven into the sea, and who kicked them out of every country they’ve ever lived in for no reason at all.
So they feel they have a valid excuse to lie outrageously about Hamas supposedly roasting babies and raping Jewesses, and using such tall tales (along with all the other tall tales from the Torah to the Holocaust) as an excuse to hunt children for sport, train dogs to rape prisoners, and commit the world’s first-ever live streamed genocide.
It is that fundamental irrationality, the product of 2500 years of mental illness “from Yahweh to Zion,” that is driving the US empire to its destruction in West Asia. On the opposite side of the ledger, the sanity, decency, and heroism of the concentration camp prisoners who broke out of their death camp on October 7, 2023—and their brave backers in the Axis of Resistance—has brought down what used to be, just a few years ago, the world’s mightiest empire.
No fue la venta de ese diésel lo que le interesaba a Putin, pero no sabemos bien todavía qué.
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“Pero les diré que es raro tener conversaciones tan largas en las que ninguno de ellos quisiera terminar la conversación, ninguno de ellos quería colgar el teléfono si se puede decir así”
Yuri Ushakov. Asesor de la Presidencia rusa, 19 de mayo de 2025
“Fue una conversación muy intensa y amistosa. Nadie quería ser el primero en colgar”, reveló Ushakov, quien destacó el ambiente cordial del diálogo entre ambos mandatarios.
Yuri Ushakov. Asesor de la Presidencia rusa, 9 de octubre de 2026
El día 9 de octubre un desesperado Donald Trump -que no había extendido como gesto cordial y diplomático una felicitación por el cumpleaños de su homólogo ruso el 7 de octubre- llamó al Kremlin y entabló un acuerdo para nada modesto: habilitó la venta de petróleo y diésel rusos, mismo que había vetado apenas en septiembre con aranceles del 100% a quien comerciara con Moscú.
…acordaron que Rusia suministrará inmediatamente más de 300.000 toneladas de combustible diésel a los mercados estadounidense y mundial. Según detalló, Moscú entregará otras 500.000 toneladas durante el mes de noviembre y un millón de toneladas adicionales inmediatamente después, así como otros tres millones de toneladas en un corto período de tiempo, dependiendo del estado de las refinerías rusas.
La noticia cayó mal en Kiev y en Europa e incluso congeló la conversación que mantenían una comitiva ucraniana con Kushner y Witkoff en Miami, terminándola un día antes de lo previsto.
La Europa desconcertada empezó a tener comunicaciones con Zelensky para mostrar de nuevo el apoyo a esta demencial apuesta por la guerra en donde Ucrania pone los muertos y los europeos endeudan a los ucranianos que quedan vivos.
Sin embargo, los vaivenes del presidente estadounidense no son nuevos y mucho menos en lo que tiene que ver con suministro energético. Una breve cronología lo confirma: 1) tras el inicio de la guerra contra Irán el 28 de febrero de este año, Trump se vio obligado el 5 de marzo a dar una licencia temporal para que India comprara petróleo a Rusia; 2) el 12 de marzo se emitió otra licencia temporal por parte del Departamento del Tesoro estadounidense por treinta días para venta de crudo ruso, que estaba sancionado; 3) el 18 de septiembre, Donald Trump firma la Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, que le daba el poder de imponer aranceles de hasta 100% a los 5 mayores compradores de petróleo y gas rusos (principalmente China e India); 4) finalmente este 9 de septiembre suspendió Trump esa ley exhibida con toda la parafernalia propia del siniestro gobierno Trump, por parte del senador Richard Blumenthal, quien dijo: “Vladimir Putin, te tenemos fichado, tu economía se tambalea” … amenazó a China e India y hoy, Trump da las gracias al presidente Putin por salvarle el trasero en vísperas de elecciones.
Y así, como un Déjà vu, Yuri Ushakov volvió a decir las mismas palabras del año anterior: ninguno de los dos quería colgar. Y bueno esta vez colgaron a Zelensky y a la Unión Europea, la pregunta es: ¿cuándo volverá a dar otro bandazo Trump? ¿Cuándo volverá a ser amigo de von der Leyen, mentor de Zelensky y enemigo de Putin?
La Unión Europea, ridículo completo
Es sabido por ellos y por varios analistas esta cruda verdad: Trump no quiere a los europeos, a penas los soporta, siempre ha querido sacar las tropas de esa zona, siempre quiso salir de la OTAN, les puso en ridículo desde las primeras reuniones, les dijo que estaban muriendo las buenas costumbres con una Europa llena de migración desordenada y grupos LGBTI+Q por todo lado, hombres en competencias de mujeres y etc. etc. El propio J.D. Vance les dijo que había una caída moral de Europa y a eso se debía su crisis.
No siendo esto poco, Úrsula von der Leyen se comprometió en nombre de la UE a comprar 750.000 millones de dólares en energía a EE.UU. (gas natural licuado, petróleo y productos nucleares) hasta 2028. Además, se comprometió a realizar inversiones adicionales por 600.000 millones de dólares en Estados Unidos. Y a cambio, Estados Unidos fijó un arancel general del 15% sobre la mayoría de productos europeos, en lugar del 30%.
Y ahora, luego de tanto ir y venir, Estados Unidos le sigue comprando petróleo a Rusia, además de uranio y otros materiales que luego revende a Europa más caro. Ya los precios de gas están reventando al ciudadano común y mientras Trump viola las sanciones occidentales que pretenden asfixiar a Rusia, Europa tiene que pagar por tratos leoninos con EE.UU., invertir en la guerra en Ucrania y exprimir al poco Estado de Bienestar que les queda y del cual ya se ven revueltas nuevamente por vivienda, educación o empleo en Francia, España, Alemania, Portugal y Bélgica.
Este nuevo pacto comercial, que va hasta abril de 2027 ridiculiza a Europa, la pone en el lugar que le corresponde: el de una civilización – collage en decadencia. Europa anhela el regreso de los halcones demócratas para retornar a una presión unánime sobre Rusia y en franca escalada bélica como la llevaba ‘sleepy’ Biden. Esto no pasará. El nuevo rumbo estadounidense es Asia Oriental.
Rusia y sus socios, actores globales
Si bien esta venta es un golpe no sólo económico sino reputacional a favor del presidente Putin y Rusia, también deja abiertos otros aspectos no menos relevantes.
Por un lado, China mira con celo cualquier acercamiento entre Rusia y USA en este baile de tres potencias globales. Los chinos son los principales socios comerciales de los rusos y muy seguramente de mantenerse la restricción al diésel ruso, chinos e indios lo comprarían. Entonces, ¿qué ganó y condicionó Vladímir Putin en la llamada con Trump? Los rusos tienen acuerdos comerciales y han aprendido a maniobrar en medio de más de treinta mil sanciones así que este trato fue un guiño a Trump ante su SOS.
Es claro que no le cae mal esto a Rusia que ahora puede poner un precio no por debajo de los costos -de haberlo tenido que vender con restricciones por sanciones- pero quien marcó el teléfono fue Trump no Putin.
Por otro lado, Irán no creo que esté cómodo con esto. Con claridad Trump quiere no sólo estar bien con los precios y abastecimiento de combustible en su país, sino estar lo suficientemente seguro de que se mantiene un flujo nada modesto de diésel en el mercado mundial para atacar a Irán sin problemas o no tantos. Por cierto, hay que ser una potencia para decir sin duda alguna: ‘cuente señor Trump con tres millones de toneladas de diésel’. Sin lastimar su consumo interno, lo hace Rusia.
Además, la ruta por el Ártico plantea una alternativa a los cierres de Ormuz y Bab el-Mandeb que derivan de las resistencias al imperio y al sionismo por parte de Irán y Yemen. Lo que implica que como de costumbre EE.UU. celebra comerciar por Alaska con Rusia.
De tal suerte que, si Irán lleva a su manera una presión mediante la diplomacia y el cierre estratégico del flujo de petróleo, fertilizantes y mercancías con lo cual busca desgastar a los estadounidenses y una salida de la guerra en sus términos, el guiño del Kremlin a Trump no le favorece. Fortalece a su enemigo, quien gana tiempo y sin desesperar puede atacarlo de mejor manera. No implica una derrota de Irán, implica un cambio en los cálculos de presión, si en abril se extiende el plazo y si Trump decide atacar antes.
Finalmente, hay un socio que los propios rusos lo señalan como valioso. Cuba. La Isla, país que apoyó a millones de personas en el mundo de diversas formas y cuando sucedió en 1986 la catástrofe de Chernóbil en la URSS hace cuarenta años, en pleno Periodo Especial, Cuba recibió a 26 mil niños de Rusia, Bielorrusia, Moldavia y Ucrania para darles tratamiento y los adoptó como hijos propios. Esa Cuba amiga incondicional y solidaria no recibe petróleo desde hace un año largo y en septiembre la Guardia Costera de EE.UU. devolvió el buque Grace con combustible.
Sobre Cuba se teje un genocidio. No le llega combustibles ni mercancías. ¿Se habrá acordado el presidente Putin de la Isla, patria del más grande antiimperialista del siglo XX en todo occidente cuando negoció con Trump salvando el trasero a su enemigo, este republicano vetusto? Si Trump permitió liberar de sanciones el combustible para todo el mundo, ¿Ese ‘todo el mundo’ incluirá a Cuba?
Potencias: sin amigos y sin engaños
Es claro que cuando el asesor presidencial, Ushakov, señala que la conversación fue amable y llego a un punto de: ‘cuelga tú, ¡no!, ¡cuelga tú!’ entre los dos mandatarios, sólo desea crear una sobrecarga de cortisol en la UE y los ucronazis y seguro logró tal efecto. Esto no significa que crean que están tratando con la esperanza de una amistad. Por el contrario, sólo un pragmatismo puro y duro tiene las tripas para llegar a estos acuerdos.
Qué pasaría si el presidente Putin le dice a Trump: no te daré un gramo de diésel. No lo sabremos, pero seguro ofende a este tarado mental y lo pone del lado de Europa y Ucrania.
Es el mismo hombre que respaldó a Marco Rubio, su secretario de Estado, cuando hace unos meses celebraba los bombardeos sobre colegios de infantes en Rusia señalando que era válida la máxima presión. Es el mismo hombre que autoriza la entrega de datos de la CIA y el Pentágono a los ucronazis para atacar las mismas refinerías que condena que Zelensky ataque.
Esto también es claro, como nota al pie. El propio neonazi Volodómir Zelensky, presidente ilegítimo de Ucrania hace dos años y asesino de su pueblo, tiene razón al criticar la acción de Trump y hasta de tildarlo de débil. “La paz nunca llega gracias a la debilidad”, señaló. Trump salió a decir que era ya necesario cambiar de presidente por alguien que deseara negociar, que Zelensky perdió más de un millón de ciudadanos y 30% del territorio.
Y lo que diga la UE al respecto tiene su parte de verdad, así como de ingenuidad, como señaló el presidente eslovaco Robert Fico. Pero nadie está seguro con lo que se pacte con Trump ni con ningún gringo. Nunca han mantenido la palabra. Quizá la excepción es Kennedy en la crisis de los misiles.
Siempre los más pequeños saldrán lastimados en los acuerdos entre potencias, pero no aprenden no leen la historia. Le pasó a Cuba en 1962 en la crisis de los misiles. Le pasó a Libia, cuando decidió no tener armas nucleares y europeos y estadounidenses acordaron robarla. Europa todavía era algo fuerte. Hay más ejemplos.
Lo clave es que en este intempestivo acuerdo hay más de enemistad que de amistad. EE.UU. no desea salvar ni ayudar a Rusia. No le interesa la paz, se limpió el trasero con el acuerdo del Anchorage, sólo vela por su bienestar, el de su élite. Por su parte Putin sabe que le desean muerto, que, durante una llamada en 2025, mientras hablaba con Trump caían drones en una de sus residencias.
La diferencia sustancial radica en que Putin juega a largo aliento, tiene calculadas las contingencias. No fue la venta de ese diésel lo que le interesaba, pero no sabemos bien todavía qué. Mientras, Trump lleva una política de mentiras apalancada en el poder de los medios y el peso de la información salida de la boca del presidente de una potencia, con la cual improvisa, salva, ataja, corrige, omite y salta a otra cosa.
Lo cierto es que por ahora -y sin saber cómo despertará mañana, pensando o deseando el frustrado candidato auto propuesto a Nobel de paz- felizmente al terminar la llamada, los presidentes, además de colgar sus teléfonos, colgaron a Zelensky y a la Unión Europea.
Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su
Death rates for Americans between 25 and 44 years old jumped 71.2% in just eleven years, rising from about 140 deaths per 100,000 people in 2010 to 239 per 100,000 by 2021. No other age group came anywhere close to that surge. Overdoses, suicides, car crashes, and chronic diseases appearing at increasingly younger ages are now cutting down people in the prime of their lives.
Steven H. Woolf, a physician and researcher at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, published the analysis in The Milbank Quarterly. He combined data from the United Nations, the CDC, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and a U.S. mortality database to show how far American life expectancy has fallen behind the rest of the developed world, and increasingly, much of the developing world too.
By 2023, U.S. life expectancy ranked 38th among countries with populations over 1 million, trailing not just Western Europe, Canada, Japan, and Australia but also Chile, Costa Rica, Slovenia, Israel, South Korea, and several Persian Gulf nations. Sixty countries had a lower risk of a person dying before age 40 than the United States did. That gap didn’t open overnight. It has been widening since the 1990s, and it sped up sharply after 2010.
How Researchers Tracked the Rising Death Rates
Woolf built this analysis by comparing decades of death records rather than running a new clinical trial or survey. He pulled data from the United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the U.S. Mortality Database, the CDC’s death-records database known as WONDER, and OECD data covering 16 other wealthy countries, including Canada, Japan, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. He tracked age-specific death rates from 1999 through 2023, sorted into five groups: infants, youth ages 1 to 24, young adults 25 to 44, middle-aged adults 45 to 64, and adults 65 and older.
A separate part of the study looked at all 50 states from 1941 onward, matching each year of life expectancy data to the sitting governor’s political party to see whether state policy choices lined up with health outcomes over time.
What’s Driving the Rise in Death Rates Among Young Americans
Drug overdoses top the list. Among adults 25 to 44, the overdose death rate rose sevenfold after 1999, from about 7.7 per 100,000 to more than 54 per 100,000, and surpassed circulatory diseases (such as heart disease and stroke) in 2015 to become the leading cause of death in that age group. Suicide rates for this same group are higher than in any other age bracket and climbed more than 40% between 2000 and 2023. Homicides rose 75.5% between 2014 and 2021, and deaths from car crashes and other transportation accidents rose 43.5% over that same stretch.
What surprised even close followers of these trends is how much of the damage now comes from disease rather than injury. Deaths from diabetes and other metabolic and hormone-related illness rose nearly a quarter between 2010 and 2019 among young adults. Deaths tied to liver damage from drinking more than doubled between 2010 and 2023. Deaths from alcohol-related mental health disorders more than tripled in that same window. Even high blood pressure, historically a problem of later adulthood, saw its death rate more than double among 25- to 44-year-olds between 2000 and 2023.
Middle-aged adults, 45 to 64, saw many of the same patterns: rising deaths from drug overdoses, liver damage from drinking, and diseases of the brain and nervous system, along with a COVID-19 death rate that nearly doubled between 2020 and 2021 even after vaccines became available. Older adults largely avoided these steep increases, though deaths from brain and nerve diseases doubled between 2000 and 2023, and deaths from endocrine disorders and suicide also climbed.
Infographic by StudyFinds
Where U.S. Life Expectancy Has Fallen the Furthest
National averages hide some brutal local realities. Comparing individual states to countries with similar life expectancy, Woolf found that Hawaii, the top-performing state, matched life expectancy in Western European countries like Sweden and Ireland. Mississippi, by contrast, resembled Libya, Venezuela, Belarus, and Syria in 2019. Conditions worsened after the COVID-19 pandemic hit. By 2021, life expectancy in West Virginia and Mississippi matched Bulgaria, Bangladesh, and Iraq, and fell below North Korea and Syria. Life expectancy was higher in Palestine and Iran than in nine U.S. states, including Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and Mississippi.
Woolf’s review of state data going back to 1941 found that states led by Republican governors tended to see life expectancy stagnate or decline, a pattern that became especially visible after 2010 and turned into what Woolf calls a “natural experiment” during the COVID-19 pandemic. States’ sharply different decisions on masking, business closures, and vaccination, he writes, could be measured in death counts within weeks. Red states, the analysis notes, suffered the largest COVID-era drops in life expectancy, a pattern that held up even after researchers accounted for other factors like poverty rates and existing health conditions.
Other researchers cited in the review, who looked at generational patterns rather than state policy, found that Americans born after 1970 had higher death rates from heart disease, cancer, and injury-related causes than earlier generations. They concluded that the current stall in U.S. life expectancy stems from “multilayered social, biological, and generational forces.”
Why America’s Death Rates Keep Climbing
Woolf’s analysis lays out five broad categories behind America’s health disadvantage: a health care system without universal coverage, riskier individual behaviors like higher calorie consumption and firearm ownership, greater income inequality and poverty, a built environment that favors cars over walking and green space, and public policies that put less emphasis on collective welfare than peer nations do. None of these explanations are new, but the paper argues that treating overdoses, suicides, and chronic disease as separate problems misses the bigger picture: they are symptoms of the same underlying neglect.
That’s the sharpest point in the paper, and probably the one worth sitting with. Other wealthy countries didn’t stumble into longer lives by accident. They built universal health coverage, stronger safety nets, and tighter consumer and environmental protections decades ago, and it shows up in their citizens’ death certificates today. America’s problem was never a shortage of ideas for fixing this. It’s a shortage of political will to act on them, and until that changes, the gap between how long Americans live and how long people in dozens of other countries live looks likely to keep growing.
Original article: studyfinds.com
Quando si torna indietro e si osserva davvero la rappresentazione storica delle «realtà russe» nei media di lingua inglese, si nota che Putin è sull’orlo della destituzione dal 2000 e da allora anche l’economia russa è sull’orlo del collasso. Tutto ciò che viene scritto sulla Russia in inglese in Occidente è una menzogna.
Parleremo dei vari aspetti della presunta “epidemia” in Russia, ma emerge una tendenza più ampia quando si esamina l’interpretazione data dai media a questo evento, che sia reale, falso o una sorta di enigma. Chiunque abbia familiarità con il mio lavoro mi avrà sentito affermare qualcosa del tipo: «Tutto ciò che sapete sulla Russia, scritto in inglese, è una menzogna», e continuo a credere in questa affermazione. Quando i politici occidentali dichiarano che «la Russia ha il potenziale economico della Spagna» o che «la Russia è la Nigeria con la neve», o fanno altre affermazioni simili, non stanno mentendo in modo diretto e consapevole.
Sulla base di tutti i dati e le informazioni di cui dispongono «laggiù» riguardo all’economia russa, questa visione era logicamente «vera». Se si analizzano i numeri basandosi sui dati occidentali, immagino che la Russia sia semplicemente un’economia enigmatica avvolta nel mistero, delle dimensioni di una nazione dell’UE di secondo piano, ma ovviamente nella realtà non è così. La Russia è terribilmente draconiana e repressiva, perché ovunque si legge che è proprio così. I calcoli secondo cui la Russia avrebbe ceduto immediatamente e il «rublo sarebbe crollato» dopo l’inizio dell’Operazione Militare Speciale non erano falsi, erano semplicemente basati su dati errati. Se si esaminano le informazioni occidentali sulla Russia, sembrerebbe davvero che l’economia del Paese poggi esclusivamente sui prezzi del petrolio, che la popolazione attenda una sola scintilla per ribellarsi al tiranno e che, nel complesso, il castello di carte sia pronto a crollare da un momento all’altro. Ma, come hanno dimostrato gli anni di guerra, non è stato così; tuttavia, le stime iniziali erano «corrette» sulla base dei dati su cui si fondavano.
Persino la famosa citazione di Lenin secondo cui «una menzogna ripetuta abbastanza spesso diventa verità» – ironia della sorte – potrebbe non essere mai stata pronunciata da lui, ma questa pseudo-affermazione getta un’ombra negativa sulla Russia, per cui l’Occidente continua a ripeterla. In Russia, poiché alcune persone sono state arrestate per attività online dall’inizio dell’Operazione Militare Speciale – tra cui l’organizzazione di atti terroristici – ciò viene considerato «negativo»; tuttavia, il fatto che nel Regno Unito vi siano 70 volte più persone dietro le sbarre per ciò che hanno espresso online non viene preso in considerazione, poiché si tratta di una situazione diversa e non è mai stata nemmeno presa in esame da un giornalista britannico. Gli arresti per dichiarazioni e azioni online si applicano solo a coloro che sono considerati «cattivi», a riprova della loro cattiveria.
Se l’esercito russo è forte, si tratta di militarismo; se l’esercito russo è debole, è prova di corruzione e inettitudine. Se vi sono processi per corruzione, ciò dimostra che il regime autoritario di Putin sta eliminando i propri nemici; se invece non vi fossero processi per corruzione, ciò costituirebbe prova della corruzione e del controllo totalitario del regime. Non esiste alcuna possibilità di vittoria per la Russia nella stampa occidentale; persino durante il presunto trattamento mediatico favorevole riservato a Eltsin nei «bei vecchi tempi», l’intero establishment si è abbandonato a un’orgia di schadenfreude per la caduta dell’URSS e per lo stato di umiliazione della Russia degli anni ’90.
Per dirla senza mezzi termini: se accade qualcosa o si dice che sia accaduto qualcosa in relazione alla Russia:
– Se i media russi lo avallano, ciò è prova che la Russia è cattiva
– Se i media russi si oppongono, ciò è prova di un insabbiamento del misfatto che dimostra che la Russia è cattiva
– In definitiva, qualsiasi azione o inazione da parte della Russia è negativa e costituisce prova della sua malvagità.
La posizione della CNN su questa questione è la classica russofobia
E, puntuale come un orologio, ecco che la CNN interviene per sostenere questa narrativa sulla peste che sembra essere fondamentalmente falsa. Parleremo di ciò che sta realmente accadendo con questa «epidemia» un po’ più avanti, ma per ora concentriamoci sull’aspetto mediatico della questione. Già nel titolo dell’articolo della CNN in questione «Liste di controllo, mascherine e mistero: cosa sappiamo sull’allarme peste in Russia» si nota chiaramente come la propaganda stia prendendo piede.
«Le autorità russe hanno cercato di placare le preoccupazioni globali in merito alla morte di una giovane donna che lavorava in un laboratorio siberiano specializzato nella lotta alla peste. Tuttavia, le misure adottate per isolare i suoi contatti e introdurre nuove misure di controllo della malattia negli ospedali locali hanno suscitato preoccupazioni tra le persone che temono di non essere informate su tutta la verità.»
Per quanto riguarda il paragrafo precedente, come potete vedere, la parte russa è vista in modo negativo perché presenta una versione dei fatti diversa e ha l’audacia di condividerla con il mondo. Tuttavia, se i media russi avessero taciuto su questa vicenda, ciò sarebbe stato ugualmente negativo, in quanto avrebbe costituito una prova di colpevolezza per omissione. Il fatto che le autorità russe stiano adottando alcune misure per cercare di fermare un’epidemia è negativo perché tali misure generano paura o qualcosa del genere, ma quantomeno ciò è sufficiente per giustificare una condanna. Tuttavia, se il governo adottasse misure estreme, queste sarebbero «draconiane», mentre se non adottasse alcuna misura, ciò sarebbe «terribilmente irresponsabile». Pertanto, adottare misure di livello medio «induce paura» o qualcosa del genere e, naturalmente, ciò è negativo e assolutamente inaccettabile.
«Ulyana Gavryunina, una blogger ventinovenne di Angarsk, città della regione di Irkutsk, ha dichiarato alla CNN di aver dovuto cambiare ospedale ostetrico alla quarantesima settimana di gravidanza, poiché le restrizioni di quarantena appena imposte impedivano a suo marito di stare con lei durante il travaglio.»
Pertanto, poiché l’amministrazione locale dispone di strutture limitate, purtroppo questa donna ha dovuto partorire in condizioni tutt’altro che ideali. È una situazione spiacevole per lei e sono certo che sia stata piuttosto frustrante, ma ancora una volta la CNN sostiene che l’intervento delle autorità russe sia negativo perché ha avuto ripercussioni negative sulle persone; tuttavia, se non avessero fatto nulla, sarebbe stato altrettanto grave. Se le persone non fossero state messe in quarantena in quella struttura, ciò sarebbe stato «pericoloso e irresponsabile» o qualcosa del genere.
«Mercoledì l’autorità sanitaria russa ha affermato che non sussiste alcun rischio epidemico a seguito della morte della donna e che sta riducendo gradualmente l’intervento. Rospotrebnadzor ha dichiarato che il monitoraggio medico è stato completato per “oltre il 90%” dei contatti della ricercatrice deceduta e che non sono stati rilevati agenti patogeni “pericolosi”. Tuttavia, permangono alcune domande senza risposta».
L’espressione «ma rimangono domande senza risposta» è stata utilizzata in questo contesto per negare l’opinione del governo russo. Se questo paragrafo si fosse concluso senza queste parole, avrebbe fatto apparire pienamente legittime le opinioni delle autorità locali. Quando «rimangono domande», si allude a una cospirazione, al fatto che la versione ufficiale non corrisponda alla realtà. Ancora una volta, indipendentemente da ciò che le autorità russe avrebbero dichiarato pubblicamente, la reazione sarebbe stata negativa perché la CNN le considera nemiche. Il nemico non può fare nulla di giusto. E le azioni della Russia sono quelle di un nemico e, pertanto, sono universalmente negative agli occhi di qualsiasi giornalista che si rispetti.
“Secondo il proprio sito web, l’Istituto Antipeste impiega circa 95 ricercatori ed è un’importante struttura sanitaria pubblica responsabile del monitoraggio e della prevenzione dei focolai di infezioni batteriche e virali ad alto rischio in tutta la Siberia e nell’Estremo Oriente russo.
L’istituto è stato fondato nel 1934 per combattere la peste e continua a studiare la malattia poiché la Yersinia pestis, il batterio che causa la peste, circola ancora naturalmente nella fauna selvatica in alcune zone della Siberia e nelle regioni limitrofe».
Sorprendentemente, la CNN non ha definito la struttura di ricerca in cui lavorava la signora Shipilova come un «laboratorio biologico» né ha utilizzato altri termini infamanti. In realtà, si è limitata a «crederle sulla parola» e a riportare semplicemente le informazioni presenti sul sito web. Ciò è risultato veritiero e piacevole da leggere.
Cosa è realmente accaduto, quindi?
Passiamo ora ad analizzare la situazione reale relativa a una potenziale epidemia di peste e alla misteriosa morte della ricercatrice che stava lavorando per combatterla. Esiste un video realizzato da una donna americana anonima residente a Irkutsk (nome del canale: American in the Motherland) sull’intera vicenda che, in meno di 15 minuti, analizza l’intera storia con fonti, fatti e filmati provenienti direttamente dalla regione. Per brevità, condividerò i punti salienti delle sue argomentazioni. Come potete vedere, ancora una volta una sola giornalista cittadina smonta punto per punto la versione dei media mainstream. L’immagine qui sotto è tratta dal video e mostra la «genialità» della stampa internazionale e le sue reazioni affrettate su questo tema.
I punti chiave del video erano:
La signora Shipilova è stata ricoverata in un ospedale fuori da Irkutsk perché in quella sede era presente una struttura progettata per gestire questo tipo di focolai epidemici dell’era Covid, e non nell’ambito di una qualche cospirazione.
Non si è verificato nessun altro decesso per la stessa causa di quello della signora Shipilova.
La causa della morte di Daria Shipilova è stata una «polmonite di origine sconosciuta».
La storia della «provetta rotta» è un mito, poiché è stata inventata da un blogger russo. Quando si lavora con malattie gravi, non si va in giro in un ambiente simile a un ufficio con provette fragili. La Russia non opera secondo la stessa metodologia della Umbrella Corporation, agitando a casaccio fiale fragili contenenti agenti patogeni.
La parte russa non ha trovato alcuna prova di un incidente presso la struttura di ricerca.
La ricercatrice non si era recata in Buriazia prima della sua morte. Pertanto, non ha contratto la malattia da marmotte locali o da altri tipi di roditori.
Al momento della stesura di questo articolo o della realizzazione del video collegato sopra, non si sono verificati altri casi simili a quello che ha causato la morte della signora Shipilova.
La peste è curabile, poiché è causata da un batterio che continua a esistere in tutto il mondo. Ogni anno, negli Stati Uniti e in altri paesi, una manciata di persone la contrae ancora. Gli antibiotici rappresentano una contromisura efficace contro questa malattia; pertanto, ciò non sembra costituire motivo di panico internazionale.
Perché la peste si diffuse nella Russia medievale?
Un aspetto importante da sottolineare a questo proposito è che, storicamente, sebbene la peste bubbonica abbia mietuto vittime anche al di fuori dell’Europa occidentale, ha avuto effetti devastanti solo all’interno di quest’ultima. I russi continuano ancora oggi ad andare fieri di possedere un elevato livello di igiene culturale che risale al Medioevo. I russi del Medioevo e altri popoli al di fuori dell’Occidente sembravano aver «capito da soli» la necessità di lavarsi regolarmente e di lavarsi le mani. Si ritiene che questa cultura igienica sia la ragione per cui la Russia, nel XIX secolo, vantasse una popolazione così numerosa rispetto alle nazioni circostanti. Molti in Russia ritengono che, se non fosse stato per errori madornali quali la Prima guerra mondiale, la Rivoluzione, la Seconda guerra mondiale e gli anni ’90, la popolazione attuale sarebbe molto più vicina a quella della Cina o dell’India.
Pertanto, da un punto di vista culturale russo, ciò appare chiaramente come un’altra campagna di proiezione: un terzo della popolazione inglese morì a causa della peste, mentre in Russia ne morirono solo pochi. Di conseguenza, la peste nera non ebbe in realtà alcun impatto culturale sulla Russia e, a giudicare dagli scritti del XIX secolo, la tubercolosi sembra essere stata un problema molto più persistente e fastidioso per questa società, che ancora oggi riveste una certa rilevanza. In tutta la Russia esistono strutture antitubercolari e non è possibile immigrare nel Paese se si presentano sintomi della malattia. L’intera questione del «vivere con i parassiti» non era una realtà quotidiana per i russi né nel Medioevo né in epoca moderna; tale primato spetta all’Occidente liberale e illuminato.
I media sono il vero problema.Abbiamo esaminato solo un particolare articolo su questo tema, ma vi sono numerose riflessioni assurde da parte della stampa occidentale che seguono la formula «maledetti i russi se lo fanno, maledetti se non lo fanno». Titoli come questo del Daily Mail ne sono l’esempio perfetto:
«Trump offre a Putin un’ancora di salvezza mentre la Russia si affanna a contenere una mortale epidemia trasmessa per via aerea dopo la morte di un ricercatore di laboratorio».
Ancora una volta, se «Putin» non facesse nulla sarebbe cattivo, ma sta facendo qualcosa, quindi si sta «affannando» in preda al panico, il che è altrettanto negativo. Il fatto che Trump gli offra un «ancora di salvezza» implica che Putin non abbia altra scelta se non quella di accettare questo aiuto, qualunque esso sia, altrimenti sarebbe cattivo. Ma indovinate un po’? Se accetta l’ancora di salvezza, ciò significa sicuramente che è debole o qualcosa del genere, il che significa che è cattivo.
Quando si torna indietro e si osserva davvero la rappresentazione storica delle «realtà russe» nei media di lingua inglese, si nota ovunque questa manipolazione narrativa isterica e nietzschiana da «untermensch». Putin è sull’orlo della destituzione dal 2000 e da allora anche l’economia russa è sull’orlo del collasso. Tutto ciò che viene scritto sulla Russia in inglese in Occidente è una menzogna.
Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su
Where growth persists, and at what cost
Those who study economic crises tend to imagine them as sudden shocks: a collapse that triggers panic, a stock market that plummets in a single session, a border that closes. These are the events of 2008 and 2020, the storms that mark a before and after. But there is a second form of suffering, less photogenic and more insidious, which does not make the headlines: slow paralysis, the absence of growth, an economy spinning its wheels without ever sinking or regaining momentum. This condition was familiar to seafarers. The sailing ships crossing the Atlantic feared hurricanes, but they also feared the Sargasso Sea, that currentless expanse where the wind died down and the hull remained trapped in seaweed for weeks. In 2026, the global economy is facing this second threat above all, and it is like the Titanic, as Leonid Grigoryev brilliantly wrote.
The ocean liner, to stick with the metaphor, has not sunk: it is afloat, and still growing, but it is making slow progress and its hull is holed in several places. Lookouts scan a fog that shows no sign of lifting, and captains are banking on the iceberg staying at bay. In its July forecasts, the International Monetary Fund has revised its global growth forecast for 2026 downwards, bringing it to 3 per cent compared with 3.5 per cent the previous year. Translated into absolute terms, against a global GDP exceeding one hundred trillion dollars at purchasing power parity, that half-point loss amounts to hundreds of billions that will not be converted into wages, tax revenue or investment. The tariff war between Washington and Brussels is being absorbed by the main players, but it leaves in its wake realignments and collateral friction, from Ireland to Canada; and, for purely accounting rather than political reasons, the prospect of the United Kingdom’s economic fragmentation is resurfacing.
The post-pandemic expansionary phase has never followed a clear course, and continues to come up against the obstacles of geopolitics. One driver in particular has fuelled GDP growth in recent quarters: the rush to build data centres. This represents a massive and geographically concentrated demand for investment, which has driven exports from Asian suppliers of semiconductors and equipment — South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia and Thailand — but which relies on just a few companies and on expected returns that have yet to be realised. Such a cycle fuels GDP as long as construction work is under way; the crux of the matter arises later, when the installed capacity must generate revenues commensurate with the capital expended. Outside this framework, economies that grow do so for internal reasons: China on the strength of its own demand and manufacturing, India on its domestic market, and the United States on a combination of immigration, capital inflows and public spending.
The American case in particular warrants a clarification that debunks a common misconception. Every year, the United States imports goods worth around one trillion dollars more than it exports, and at the same time its leaders lament the loss of its industrial base. The two circumstances are not contradictory: they are the same equation viewed from two sides. A current account deficit of such proportions is, by accounting definition, nothing other than the counterpart to foreign savings flowing into the United States: the world supplies goods and, in return, accumulates assets in dollars, Treasury bonds and shares. As long as the greenback remains the reserve currency and the US securities market the most liquid pool available, this privilege finances the deficit on terms unattainable for anyone else. The same flow, however, props up the real exchange rate, penalises the export-oriented industry and is precisely what causes the deindustrialisation that is so often lamented. Tariffs strike at the trade side whilst leaving the financial root intact: they reshape the balance, they do not eliminate it.
The stranglehold of yields and the burden of debt
Towards the middle of the year, global inflation picked up again, driven largely by rising energy prices. A rise in prices stemming from costs, rather than excess demand, presents central banks with their most unpleasant choice: to rein in an economy already weakened by the shock, so as not to allow expectations to become unanchored. High energy prices act as a regressive tax, eroding disposable income and feeding through to price levels at the slow pace dictated by index-linked contracts and regulated prices.
On the debt front, the strain is even more evident. Yields on long-term government bonds are rising at an alarming rate: in the United States, the 10-year yield has hit 5 per cent, with other advanced economies following suit. It is not just the level that matters, but its structure. The long end of the curve is reflecting a rising term premium – that is, the compensation investors demand for tying up money over long horizons when inflation and the volume of new money entering the system remain uncertain. The stock of debt is already colossal, and the cheap bonds issued during the era of zero interest rates are being replaced, as they mature, with far more expensive issues: the average cost rises with a lag, but it does rise. Here, elementary and inflexible arithmetic prevails: the comparison between the real interest rate and the rate of real growth. When the economy grows faster than the cost of its debt, the burden eases of its own accord; when the relationship is reversed — and this is what is happening today in several wealthy countries — keeping the debt-to-GDP ratio stable requires budget surpluses that the electorate rarely allows.
A technical manoeuvre with political implications is helping to tighten the noose. The treasury departments of the major economies are seeking to return to the open market a portion of the long-term bonds hitherto held on central banks’ balance sheets, just as the latter are allowing the bonds accumulated during quantitative easing to mature and reducing their assets. The result is that the net supply of long-term bonds available to private investors increases the moment the lender of last resort steps aside; to absorb this supply, the market demands higher yields. At the same time, central banks are gradually raising interest rates to combat inflation, and the combination of these factors is pushing the system towards stagnation. It is the calm of the Sargasso Sea, not the storm. Against this backdrop, every additional unit of military spending, in budgets already stretched to the limit, becomes one unit less for healthcare, education and public works: the old choice between ‘guns and butter’, replayed on a continental scale.
Energy rents are changing hands
An entire region, the Middle East, has slipped into negative territory due to the fall in hydrocarbon production and exports. The rise in prices and margins — and, consequently, in dividends and share prices — has rewarded US energy companies, which control marginal production capacity and can turn on the taps when prices rise. This is a redistribution of rent: from the traditional supplier to the producer that has gained flexibility in recent years. The Middle East pays twice over – on its current export income and on its worn-out or damaged physical infrastructure – whilst profits migrate overseas.
Higher crude oil prices and diesel shortages do not merely weigh on factories, transport and the construction sector. Diesel powers logistics and mechanised agriculture, and a rise in its price ripples through the entire supply chain with a pervasiveness that petrol lacks. The most serious repercussions, however, lie beyond the statistics: uncertainty over energy prices raises the rate at which businesses discount long-term projects and discourages the accumulation of capital on which tomorrow’s growth depends. No prosperity can be sustained by data centres alone.
Europe in a lull
Against this backdrop, the world’s second-largest economic bloc — the European Union, including the United Kingdom, with over half a billion consumers — offers no counterbalance. Its GDP is, in practice, growing at the same rate as its population: measured per capita — the only way that truly reflects living standards — stagnation is almost total. It is weighed down by public debt and deficits, outdated industrial structures and infrastructure, and a demographic that even migration flows have failed to rejuvenate quickly enough. The underlying problem has a specific name: a productivity gap that has been widening for over a decade. Europe spends less on research and digital capital, fragments the capital market across twenty-seven legal systems, and has failed to produce technological leaders comparable to those in the US or China.
Capital is flowing out to the United States, drawn by higher returns and deeper markets; manufacturing is losing ground to Chinese production, which is now competitive not only on cost but also on technology; and politics, almost everywhere, is fragmented into fragile majorities that make any far-reaching reform a struggle. Energy costs are structurally much higher than in the United States — a legacy of dependence on imported gas and a transition launched without a stable supply bridge — and this gap is eroding energy-intensive industries. Productivity remains well below that of China in competitive sectors, and the mood of the electorate, as the polls show, is gloomier than one might expect in such a fortunate corner of the world. Meanwhile, the climate has also warmed too much, without waiting for the benefits of green programmes to materialise.
Sanctions and the tide turning
Almost everyone is aware of the dangers associated with the escalating sanctions spiral, but they dismiss them as a nuisance in day-to-day management. The point is that there is no orderly way out of the tangle of legal constraints, commercial interests and political calculations — determined by legislative and administrative bodies that fail to coordinate with one another. There remains the extreme measure that history associates with Solon: to wipe the slate clean in one go, as Athens did at the dawn of the 6th century BC with the seisachtheia, the debt relief that wiped out debts and re-established the civic pact. In the meantime, sanctions, the destruction of extraction and transport capacity, and the loss of export markets – factors that accumulate – behave like rogue waves: they plough through the oceans and return, often swelled in size, to those who generated them, in the form of imported inflation, disrupted supplies and exchange rate realignments.
There is a maxim of Clausewitz’s that can usefully be turned on its head here: if, for him, war was the continuation of politics by other means, sanctions are the continuation of war by means other than weapons. And the heaviest blows—as well as the most unjust ones—fall upon countries and social classes that are uninvolved in those conflicts and would prefer to remain so. After such experiences, it is hard not to yearn for less globalisation and less interdependence: systems theory teaches us that when the elements of a large network become unstable, the return to equilibrium is slower, because disturbances travel along the connections rather than dying out. It is the bitter flip-side of a global economy that had made integration its strength and is now discovering its vulnerability.
An inventory of imbalances
The likelihood of a recession depends, as always, on two factors: the accumulation of imbalances and a trigger which, by definition, cannot be predicted. The imbalances are the gunpowder — excessive leverage, inflated share valuations, risk concentrated among a few players, debt maturities clustered in the same months; the trigger is the event that ignites the fuse: a new pandemic, a stock market crash, a major collapse along the lines of 2008. Whether the gunpowder is accumulating is now a matter of debate amongst specialists. Added to this is a growing number of entities already sacrificed by geopolitical conflicts, by the slowdown and by the diversion of resources, diverted from development to stem the losses.
At the top of the list of forgotten costs lie global problems: poverty, development gaps and climate change. The Sustainable Development Goals set by the UN for 2030 will likely be achieved to around 17 per cent, with entire sections barely sketched out. A new-generation global project is needed, but this presupposes peace, compromise, coordination, stability and trust: all scarce resources, and trust more than any other. The ruling classes seem to have shifted their focus from long-term horizons to short-term clashes. International organisations have little impact; the major developed nations are preoccupied with their own troubles and sanctions; and no one is answering the question of who will take on the shared tasks — catch-up development, poverty reduction, and the management of global public goods. In almost every country, large sections of the population are grappling with one form of hardship or another, whether in healthcare, education or inequality of living standards.
Who will foot the bill
That burden will, by default, fall on the shoulders of the major emerging economies, whose interests largely coincide with global objectives and certainly do not run counter to them: the BRICS grouping and a number of like-minded countries. They have fewer resources than the West, but necessity compels them to coordinate their efforts. The Declaration from the latest summit, marking the group’s twentieth anniversary, rings out as a voice of reason in an era that uneasily evokes the so-called Thucydides’ Trap — that mechanism whereby mutual fear between a dominant power and an emerging one drives them towards conflict even when neither truly seeks it. There is no shortage of friction amongst the members, with divergent political systems and unequal levels of prosperity; yet the document points the way towards compromise – namely, the strengthening of the UN and the reform of the IMF – recognising that there are no radical shortcuts. In paragraph 49, it acknowledges that global challenges are intertwined and complex, hindering growth and exacerbating persistent disparities between countries and regions.
At an operational level, the Declaration outlines an industrial and energy policy tailored to the task of moving beyond the Fourth Industrial Revolution: completing infrastructure, boosting manufacturing, railways and innovation, ensuring access to technology and transitioning to home-grown technologies, whilst investing in human capital and social issues. It also defends free trade, open markets, freedom of movement and the security of global savings and finance, and puts forward an independent stance on the governance of artificial intelligence — already looking beyond the present. The fundamental demand is institutional: these countries have operated for decades within frameworks designed by the West, and are now calling for bodies that work for their own development. A review of IMF quotas to reflect actual economic weight, a broader role for institutions such as the New Development Bank, and payment channels less exposed to the geopolitical use of reserve currencies.
How much of this will translate into actual capacity remains the real unknown, to be measured in terms of probability rather than certainty. It is plausible, with moderate confidence, that over the coming years the group will consolidate settlement systems in national currencies and development financing; it is unlikely, for the time being, that it will supplant existing institutions or undermine the reserve currency – a goal that would require deep and liquid bond markets outside the dollar zone, which are not currently in evidence. The indicators to watch are tangible: the outcome of the IMF quota review, the volumes disbursed by the New Development Bank, and the share of intra-regional trade settled outside the dollar. However, those calling for institutions that serve their own development and the common good have a solid argument, because reform of the global architecture is the only arena in which partial compromises can still generate trust. Declarations of principle, repeated for years, only become part of the agenda when someone funds them.
And no inclusive governance can hold without respect for the cultural identities of peoples: that is where trust can be rebuilt – the commodity the world lacks most of all today.
Glenn Diesen – October 11, 2026
Prof. Seyed Mohammad Marandi is a professor at Tehran University and a former advisor to Iran’s nuclear negotiation team.
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Is Trump planning on using Putin to get him out of the mess of both his low polling and the Iran war? Seems far-fetched perhaps at first, but he is completely snared in Iran, with whatever option he looks at appearing to be a doomsday scenario. Could Putin help him out both with diesel prices back home but also to broker a deal with Iran which makes it appear to Americans that he, and America, are somehow the winners?
For the Russian president to sell close to 2 million tonnes of diesel oil to Western countries, including the U.S. of course, seems like a sticking plaster to a huge wound in the American and Western economies. Unless, that is, there is a second deal behind it which journalists and pundits are not aware of, or are simply choosing not to report. For the diesel initiative from Putin, the amount which is being offered isn’t huge, but there are a couple of precedents which it sets which are more important.
Firstly, it opens the doors for further lifting of sanctions (which could be bundled into Iran’s, given Moscow’s relations with Tehran), but perhaps even more importantly, it makes President Zelensky of Ukraine an even bigger target for Trump. Much will rest on the coming days and the decision that Zelensky will take to continue bombing Russia’s oil facilities. Will he take that suicide pill? Wars are often messy, and there are always grey areas where the two countries at war with one another find situations which are illogical and impractical. Perhaps the bombing of oil facilities within Russia in the Ukraine war has reached its tipping point, and regardless of how close EU leaders are with Zelensky – who at best we can call a caretaker leader – this will test this relationship to breaking point.
Do great numbers of citizens in France and Germany need to die this winter simply because of an energy crisis and/or an economic malaise in their own countries which have poured billions into keeping the war in Ukraine alive? Is Putin so confident that this winter will be the last one for his troops, as the defensive line between Ukraine’s forces and those of Russia’s looks like it is about to break at any moment? Are Ukrainians themselves ready to face a freezing winter in Kiev, unable to power or heat their own apartments? So many wars started over energy reserves, but not Ukraine. Yet it might end over them.
Trump’s threatening comments on social media about Zelensky should be taken seriously. If Trump’s own cabal of unqualified advisers can seriously convince him that a ground invasion of Iran is feasible, if not winnable, one could argue simply that regime change in Ukraine should be a children’s picnic and gives him a huge payday – politically, economically and geopolitically. Removing Zelensky would stop the war immediately, and Trump could claim victory for that, while he asks his friend Putin to quietly intervene in Iran and fix the Straits of Hormuz.
For Trump to actually respond to Zelensky’s outburst to reporters that the move to buy Russian diesel was “weak” by threatening Zelensky with being removed shows that his patience has reached a point where he is starting to think of the Ukrainian president as the source of the problems. To remove Zelensky through backing a rival will be hard and will pitch him against EU leaders, but one could argue relations couldn’t really get any worse, and that once Macron and Merz understand that peace is the only option and Zelensky is actually the only real obstacle to that, they will do what all EU leaders do and follow America’s lead.
We often hear analysts on YouTube talk about the game of “chicken”, but there has never been a more fleeting moment than now, as both Trump and Zelensky will be watching each other to see who blinks first. Zelensky, until now, has been playing a dangerous game of pretending to be servile to U.S. hegemony, while really just taking the cash and weapons and laughing at Trump among a coterie of weak European leaders in their palatial residences. The war has been complex since it began, as the U.S. and EU rarely saw eye to eye, but if Trump goes ahead with his threat of denying the Ukrainians shared intel, then this will be a very bad omen for the future of Zelensky, as he will put even more pressure on the British, French and Germans to come up with more weapons and money in an unwinnable war which they’ve bet the farm on and their entire political careers depend on.
The war, after this diesel decision, might have just become much simpler and more binary, and a collective narrative might emerge from the insanity of EU gibberish from countries who can’t even protect their own people on their own soil against an invasion of bogus asylum seekers. It will not only be the ultimate test for U.S.-Ukraine relations, but also one for U.S.-EU ones, and perhaps represent the end of NATO as we know it.
By Kurt Nimmo | Another Day in the Empire | October 11, 2026
Following the attack on the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the usual suspects emerged from the social media muck to condemn Ansarallah. “These reprehensible attacks demonstrate a blatant disregard for innocent civilian life. They must stop now,” demanded Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio.
Bibi Netanyahu, “on behalf of the people of Israel,” condemned the attack and declared the Zionist state “looks forward to a strong Middle East—one that stands united against threats, protects its people, and builds a future of security, cooperation, and prosperity for all the peoples of our region,” never mind the 200,000-680,000 people of the region he butchered over the last three years.
Kaja Kallas, the former president of Estonia and current High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, denounced the airport attack. “The Houthi attack on Riyadh’s international airport is an appalling act of terror. There can be no justification for indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure,” she said.
Kallas, like most European leaders, insists Israel has a “right to defend itself” against Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, and yet “self-defense” is not a legitimate response for the people of Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, all victims of Israeli and US aggression.
António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, is “deeply shocked” by the Yemeni retaliation, and criticized the attack on the Saudi airport as a violation of international law.
If Guterres is concerned about international law and the bombing of civilian infrastructure, why hasn’t the UN invoked Chapter VII of the UN Charter in regard to Gaza? “The UN’s member states collectively have a bad track record when it comes to preventing genocide,” writes Sean Matthews. “In the case of genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia, the UN only declared officially that genocides took place after the fact.”
G7 foreign ministers also weighed in on the attack, declaring the response to Saudi attacks poses an “unacceptable threat to regional stability and security, to global energy security,” as well as to security in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait.
In June, during a globalist conclave in Évian, the G7 issued a dilatory statement calling for an acceleration of “humanitarian and reconstruction efforts and the swift implementation of relevant political and security measures” in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, while knowing full well Zionist Israel will ignore international law and continue to murder and starve Palestinians while ethnically cleansing the Shi’a in southern Lebanon.
The official censure by the United States, the EU, UN, and G7, as well as the skewed reportage of the corporate media, overlooks the reason why Ansarallah is bombing Saudi airports and oil infrastructure.
Forgotten, or ignored, are the crimes of the Saudi coalition during and after the Yemen War of 2015. The coalition included the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Sudan.
The Sunni coalition attacked after President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi fled house arrest into exile in Saudi Arabia. Hadi, who died earlier this year, stood accused of secretly working with al-Islah, described as the Muslim Brotherhood’s Yemeni branch. The former president was also accused of being a Saudi puppet. Saudi Arabia views Ansarallah—followers of the Shi’a branch of Zaydism—as a threat to its national security.
A detailed United Nations report estimated approximately 377,000 deaths by the end of 2021 from the Saudi-led campaign. This total includes direct losses from combat and indirect deaths linked to malnutrition, disease, and the decline of health care and essential services.
The United States was involved in the Yemen humanitarian crisis. US personnel provided logistical support, information, training, and advisers after the Saudi-led intervention. US tankers refueled coalition aircraft, increasing their range over Yemen. Saudi forces relied heavily on US-supplied aircraft, munitions, spare parts, maintenance, and technical support.
Jeff Bachman, a professor and genocide scholar at the School of Information Services, said during an interview with the American University in Washington that the Saudi-led coalition has been able to engage violence against Yemenis thanks to the complicit material and political support of the United States.
UN Security Council Resolution 2216 established a UN arms embargo. The restrictions implemented delayed or curtailed commercial imports and humanitarian shipments of food, fuel, medicines, and medical supplies. Because Yemen is dependent on imports, disruptions to port and airport operations rapidly worsened hunger, health-system strain, water and sanitation breakdowns, and prices, according to Human Rights Watch.
“The Saudi-led coalition’s military strategy in Yemen has been increasingly built around preventing desperately needed aid and essential goods from reaching civilians, risking millions of lives,” said James Ross, legal and policy director at Human Rights Watch. “The Security Council should urgently sanction Saudi and other coalition leaders responsible for blocking food, fuel, and medicine, causing hunger, sickness, and death.”
During a full closure in November 2017, UN agencies noted that aircraft and ships delivering aid could not secure clearance, while commercial cargo encountered major hurdles. Human Rights Watch stated that the coalition had maintained a naval and air blockade since March 2015, with restrictions producing a disproportionate impact on civilians in direct violation of international law.
Yemen remains one of the world’s most serious humanitarian emergencies. As of 2026, more than 22 million people need assistance or protection and 18.3 million people are acutely food insecure. Malnutrition levels remain critically high, with over 2.2 million children under five acutely malnourished, including 516,157 suffering from malnutrition, according to the United Nations. “Even before the latest escalation, an estimated 12.2 million children in Yemen needed humanitarian assistance,” UNICEF reported in September.
Article 51 of the UN Charter is a determining provision that addresses the right of self-defense for member states. It represents an exception to the general prohibition on the use of force outlined in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which mandates that all member states refrain from using force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, as the Saudis did in 2015 in Yemen.
On October 10, following the Ansarallah attacks, Trump announced the US may rejoin the latest Saudi onslaught on Yemen. “We’re going to look at it,” he told reporters. “We just found out about the recent attack. We will make a decision. We move very quickly.”
Prior to Trump’s announcement, Democrat Ro Khanna, who was detained during a visit to Israel in July, introduced a joint Yemen War Powers Resolution along with Republican Representative Thomas Massie on October 9. The resolution directs “the President pursuant to section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Houthis in Yemen that have not been authorized by Congress.”
Congress is unable to decide whether to rejoin the Saudi effort to destroy Ansarallah and maintain the illegal war on the people of Yemen. In addition to debate on the constitutional legality of the Trump administration’s military assistance to the Saudis without a congressional consultation, members of Congress are concerned about the continued slaughter of civilians and the ongoing humanitarian crisis, considered one of the worst in the world, with around 24 million people, or nearly 80% of the population, needing assistance and protection.
Sete trans eleitas no Brasil com financiamento indireto de George Soros via ANTRA, ABGLT e Washington Brazil Office. Política identitária artificial.
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Sete políticos autodenominados “mulheres trans” foram eleitos para cargos legislativos nas eleições gerais ocorridas no último domingo (04) no Brasil.
Erika Hilton (PSOL) e Duda Salabert (PSOL) foram reeleitas, enquanto Thabatta Pimenta (PSOL) estreará na Câmara Federal. Por sua vez, nos estados foram reeleitas Linda Brasil (PSOL) em Sergipe e Dani Balbi (PCdoB) no Rio de Janeiro, enquanto Sofia Favero (PSOL) foi eleita pela primeira vez para a Assembleia Legislativa de São Paulo e Natasha Ferreira (PT) também estreará na Assembleia Legislativa do Rio Grande do Sul.
A principal pauta dessas candidaturas é o transativismo. É a típica política identitária: defender seus próprios interesses, interesses de um setor minúsculo da classe média, contra os interesses da maioria dos explorados e oprimidos. Os transativistas vêm se destacando no Brasil por sua oposição aos direitos básicos das mulheres e pela utilização do aparato repressivo do Estado (Judiciário e polícia) para perseguir os cidadãos comuns, geralmente trabalhadores humildes, tachados de “transfóbicos”.
Tal empreitada não é feita através de um trabalho de conscientização política, nem muito menos é fruto de esforços dos oprimidos que, organizados de forma independente, conseguem criar um movimento social contra os interesses dos poderosos. Não. É um movimento integralmente artificial e financiado pelos mais poderosos entre os poderosos.
As Open Society Foundations, do especulador financeiro multibilionário George Soros, admitem abertamentem há dez anos que “há muito tempo apoiam organizações trans e intersexo em todo o mundo”. Ainda em 2013, as OSF apresentavam seu ponto de vista sobre a transexualidade: “a identidade de gênero é o sentido interno de uma pessoa de ser um homem, uma mulher ou outro gênero.”
As OSF são a ponta de um guarda-chuva, pelo qual repassam fundos para organizações captadoras de forma hierárquica. Assim, a organização mãe originada da iniciativa de George Soros ainda na década de 1980 para derrubar a União Soviética e seus aliados consegue levar financiamento a um número incontável de ONGs.
No Brasil, a Associação Nacional de Travestis e Transexuais (ANTRA) recebe financiamento indireto das OSF. Estas repassaram 25,8 milhões de reais ao Fundo Brasil de Direitos Humanos entre 2016 e 2024. O Fundo Brasil, por sua vez, aportou 400 mil reais à ANTRA em 2024.
Além disso, Bruna Benevides, presidente da ANTRA, é integrante do conselho deliberativo da Conectas Direitos Humanos, ONG que é a maior receptora de fundos das OSF (34 milhões de reais até 2024).
Em relatório com mapeamento e lista de candidaturas para as eleições deste ano, a ANTRA assegura ter um “compromisso inegociável de eleger pessoas trans”. No total, foram 116 candidaturas registradas como “trans” pelo Brasil.
Após o resultado eleitoral, a organização comemorou a eleição das sete “mulheres trans” para cargos legislativos: “estávamos ansiosas por este resultado! Ampliamos nossas presenças com votações extremamente expressivas e demos uma bela resposta à transfobia!”
Quem também celebrou o resultado foi a Associação Brasileira de Lésbicas, Gays, Bissexuais, Travestis, Transexuais e Intersexos (ABGLT): “as pessoas LGBTQIA+ ampliaram sua participação política e demonstraram, nas urnas, a força que construímos”, destacando a eleição de “mulheres trans” para a Câmara Federal. A publicação foi feita nas redes sociais, em parceria com a ANTRA e Bruna Benevides.
A ABGLT é afiliada ao Washington Brazil Office, entidade de lobby sediada na capital dos Estados Unidos e que recebeu 300 mil dólares de financiamento das Open Society Foundations em 2023. Ela também é parceira institucional da Associação Brasileira de Organizações Não Governamentais (Abong), que recebeu R$ 4,3 milhões de financiamento das OSF entre 2016 e 2024.
A Abong também recebeu, no ano passado, R$ 1,5 milhão em recursos de emendas parlamentares de Erika Hilton, que é presidente da Frente Parlamentar Mista por Cidadania e Direitos LGBTI+ do Congresso Nacional. Esse montante era destinado a ações de “empoderamento e capacitação da comunidade LGBTQIA+”, “fortalecimento das paradas LGBTQIA+” e “advocacy e colaboração com a Frente Parlamentar LGBT+” da própria Hilton.
Hilton tem relações mais profundas com o guarda-chuva de George Soros. Um documentário biográfico de Hilton recebeu financiamento do William Greaves Research & Development Fund. Dirigido por Chica Andrade, que é um dos organizadores da Associação de Profissionais Audiovisuais Trans, o filme aparentemente ainda não foi concluído, ou ao menos ainda não foi lançado – embora a previsão de lançamento fosse para o início deste ano. O Fundo William Greaves contemplou o documentário em seu programa de financiamento de 2023-2024 com 25 mil dólares. O Fundo pertence à Firelight Media, uma organização sem fins lucrativos sediada em Nova Iorque que tem entre seus apoiadores as Open Society Foundations.
Hilton também é profundamente relacionada com a ANTRA e com Bruna Benevides. Em 2024, a deputada indicou Benevides para receber a Medalha do Mérito Legislativo da Câmara Federal e deu apoio institucional ao Guia para Migrantes Trans nos EUA, elaborado pela ANTRA. Em 2025, a associação enviou à deputada uma proposta legislativa para alterar o Código Penal e aumentar as penas por crimes cometidos contra “mulheres trans”. Em setembro deste ano, a ANTRA apresentou uma representação à Procuradoria-Geral Eleitoral pedindo apuração de “possíveis episódios de violência política de gênero” contra Hilton – Benevides foi quem apresentou publicamente a posição da entidade.
Duda Salabert também deu apoio institucional ao guia da ANTRA. Thabatta Pimenta participou, ao lado de Benevides, do XX Seminário LGBTQIA+ do Congresso Nacional em 2023, bem como do EleiTrans, encontro de transexuais famosos que se apresentam como lideranças que foi promovido pelo Projeto Pajubá e que contou com a colaboração da ANTRA, ABGLT e Abong.
Linda Brasil, por sua vez, participou de atividades institucionais da ANTRA. Em janeiro de 2025, por exemplo, esteve na cerimônia do acordo entre o Ministério das Mulheres e a ANTRA, ao lado de Benevides. A deputada estadual do PSOL foi uma das principais figuras políticas transexuais a participar da “Marsha Trans Brasil” deste ano, organizada pela ANTRA e pelo Instituto Brasileiro de Transmasculinidades (Ibrat).
Dani Balbi esteve junto com Linda na manifestação. Em 2023, Balbi apresentou na Assembleia Legislativa do Rio de Janeiro um projeto concedendo a Benevides o Prêmio Cidadania, Direito e Respeito à Diversidade
Natasha Ferreira também participou do EleiTrans e da “Marsha Trans Brasil”.
Press TV – October 11, 2026
Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Major General Mohsen Rezaei, says powers greater than the US have tried to conquer Iran but ultimately ended up in the “dustbin of history.”
During an exclusive interview with Press TV on Saturday, Rezaei said the “US suffered repeated defeats in its confrontation with Iran and has consequently turned to economic warfare out of desperation.”
Iran, rather than the US, would determine when the confrontation ends, he said, stressing that Tehran would continue its resistance until its rightful demands are met.
Addressing the presence of US forces in the region, Rezaei told Press TV that the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq reflected Washington’s failure to impose its military agenda on the region, describing it as a vindication of Iran’s resistance to American military presence in West Asia.
Rezaei further said that more than “30 million Iranians have registered in ‘Janfada’ (Sacrifice for Iran) Campaign to take up arms in the event of US aggression.”
On diplomacy, the official said “Tehran would not return to its previous diplomatic norms,” while stressing that “Iran would never abandon diplomacy altogether.”
The senior official warned that, if Washington launched another act of aggression against Iran, American assets could be targeted, including key data systems and artificial intelligence sensors.
Rezaei also identified Washington and its regional allies as the root of the problem surrounding the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in response to the latest round of US-Israeli aggression, preventing US and allied ships from navigating the strategic waterway.
The move resulted in a significant increase in oil and energy prices across the globe, especially in the US, forcing Washington and the International Energy Agency (IEA) to release their strategic resources several times.
Following the signing of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Iran and the US in June, Tehran opened the Strait of Hormuz, but after the US violated the MoU by blockading Iranian ports, Iran’s Armed Forces closed the maritime corridor once again.
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No one expected that Donald Trump, after a congratulatory birthday phone call to his Russian counterpart, would declare that Russian diesel fuel would prove to be the solution to America’s current fuel shortages. If the Trump presidency has yielded anything it is a lot of interesting headlines that seem to come out of nowhere, that can sadly, quite often, fade right back into the mist from whence they came. Sometimes Trump’s words can fill us with hope like this ‘Diesel Deal’, and others like his recent UN speech, where he threatened to potentially kill all Iranians, fill us with dread. This declaration by our enigmatic leader presents a very interesting media narrative and a potential end to ‘Project Ukraine’ that is worth taking a deeper dive into.
Trump has blamed Zelensky for the global energy shortages, especially those concerning diesel fuel. At the time, everyone thought this was just a cheap Twitter-style deflection from the failed war against Iran, which certainly caused a lot of fuel transport disruption. That is to say, the White House was projecting this crisis, that it allowed to happen, or actively caused, to be thrown onto the scapegoat Zelensky. However, this form of deflection or projection is no longer just words in a pre-election narrative, but has become action. Sanctions on Russian diesel have been lifted and the first shipment is already on its way as I write these words. Something tangible has occurred.
Zelensky was actually warned some six times to stop attacking Russian oil infrastructure. Blow up children in the Donbass and beyond ‘sure’, but attacking what the West wants from Russia more than anything is ‘totally unacceptable’. Zelensky, who as stated above was warned half-a-dozen times to back of strikes on oil/gas, upon hearing of Trump’s decision to purchase Russian diesel fuel did the following:
1) He quickly attacked Russian oil infrastructure again seemingly to spite the U.S. President
2) He immediately cut off peace talks in Miami with the Trump’s aides, the Kushner-Witkoff duo, which is yet another spitting in the face of Donald Trump.
The wildest thing of all is that the ‘narcissist’ Trump has already publically thanked President Putin twice for this deal. Appearing at a rally, Americans standing behind Trump wildly cheered in favor of the announcement of peace with Russia plus extra fuel for America. Russophobia is a hobby of the globalist bourgeoisie and Epstein Island, not American truckers and farmers.
It’s a great narrative, let’s hope it lasts
Trump has now put 100% of the blame for global energy/fuel problems directly onto Zelensky, and called him out personally for keeping the war going over the last two years. Thus, the narrative is forming into something like: If the war in Ukraine is the cause of the fuel shortages, and Zelensky is the cause of the war continuing, that means the U.S. can make a deal with Russia even if ‘they started it’, with the corollary that Zelensky logically needs to go as he is the source of the problem. But going even deeper into the narrative we can see the most interesting thing of all or as they like to say online ‘the quiet part’: Trump has essentially declared that Russian energy output is of vital strategic interest to the United States.
It is these kind of words that take the black pill out of my mouth and directly inject ‘hopium’ into my bloodstream. The idea of the American President declaring that NOT being at war with Russia is of vital strategic interest to the USA is something I have been dreaming of my entire adult life. This is exactly the logic that we need to finally and ultimately end the Cold War + Project for a New American Century mentality in politics and finally allow the USA to rebuild and invest into itself. This very well could be America’s mulitpolar awakening by using a logic trap similar to the other ones that have been used to do the exact opposite and keep the USA locked in eternal foreign wars of luxury for ‘national security’. This new logic trap could look something like this: “So you want war with Russia? That must mean you want to harm America, you dirty traitor! You’ll take the fuel from farmer Joe and our kids will starve, you monster! Russia being left alone to produce fuel is a national security interest of America, are you against our country’s national security? Do you want to weaken manly America for those gay Europeans?”.
But as we slam that hopium injection into our veins we have to remember that Donald Trump has said a lot of things, changed his mind many times, or was forced to change it, and perhaps isn’t quite the unilateral decider that he makes himself out to be on TV.
It takes two to tango, but one orange man to keep his word.
The transcripts from this now famous birthday phone chat look very different on the American and Russian sides, which is par for the course. Trump’s team tends to write discussed things as proven facts whereas the Russians are more noncommittal in their language. But the diesel sanctions are gone for now and the boats are moving, so this looks to be real… at least until the mid-term votes are cast.
The American side has since threatened to cut Zelensky off from intelligence sharing, which could be an instant deathblow to their military efforts as many experts believe that only U.S. intel has allowed them to survive this long. Without such targeting data they will be sent back to 20th century warfare instantly, and they would no longer be able to strike deep into Russia. RT wrote the following on this issue:
A Ukrainian official told Axios that Witkoff and Kushner threatened to cut off US intelligence sharing with Kiev if it continued to ignore Trump’s requests to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries, but the US official denied that any such threat had been made.
But here is where we have to hold our breath, for despite how nice this new narrative sounds, and how it is the perfect exit for the USA from its participation in Project Ukraine we should not forget the words of President Putin from some time ago when he talked about the true power of any U.S. President:
“So a person is elected — he comes with ideas… Then people with briefcases come visit him, well-dressed, in dark suits — kind of like mine.”
So the real question might be, will the Zionist Lobby, Epstein Elite, Three-Letter Organizations, Influential Billionaires, and all the other spooks on Capitol Hill actually let President Trump actually end this war? Will the POTUS be allowed to do this?
We should recall that after Zelensky acted disgracefully in the White House at the start of Trump’s second term everyone thought this conflict would be over. Trump the famous narcissist seemed visibly angry and offended on camera during their verbal spat. But the war went on. There was the Anchorage Summit, which had tons of hype and everyone thought then that the U.S. would pull support from Kiev. But it did not. Trump’s enemies including the Biden Clan are linked to massive corruption in Ukraine which has all been exposed. This would have been a great off ramp from the conflict, but Trump did not or could not take it. And in general, Trump’s rhetoric towards Zelensky and other European politicians has been overtly harsh and disrespectful. The man accused of being a ‘blowhard’ somehow always speaks quite politely behind the backs and to the faces of Putin and Xi.
Thus, although I want peace and mutually-respectful cooperation between the USA and Russia perhaps this deal will only last till the midterm elections, when all of a sudden Zelensky will go back to being “a bastard, but he’s our bastard”, and the conflict will go marching on. Perhaps this is our October Surprise from the Republican side of the aisle? And in December we can all be ‘surprised again’ when the war resumes full-force and thousands more Slavs die on the battlefield?
Now, Donald Trump with gritted teeth is slinging forth the idea that he thinks “it’s time for Ukraine to get a new President”. But after the votes are counted in America he may just go back to passively hating and tolerating Zelensky till the end of his term or till an Oreshnik finds the mark one day. We also cannot forget that the West has been lobbying for a major ceasefire from the Russians for a long time. Presumably this would be used to regroup, rest, rearm and then just go right back to fighting till the last Ukrainian. Now Trump wants elections in Kiev, which will probably demand a ceasefire to enact. But will he be pushing for a three-day ceasefire, or try to trick the Russians into agreeing to a month-long freeze or more?
One ‘good’ sign on this issue from a Russian standpoint is that there are now already calls for Zelensky to resign over this issue on Twitter/X coming from all sides even pro-Ukrainian ones:
“’Zelensky must resign’ – Ukrainian media. That was quick. Zelensky ignored Trump’s warnings not to attack Russian oil refineries SIX times. This morning, Zelensky has bombed another Russian oil refinery. Ukrainians are calling for Zelensky‘s resignation.
Former Ukrainian MP and Metinvest co-owner Vadym Novynskyi has called on Zelensky to resign and hand over all power to Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada following the Trump-Putin agreements.”
We have to remember that Ukraine in 2026 is already a police state where any dissent means you could get thrown into a bus and taken to the front to die or vanish into a prison as a Russian ‘spy’. Thus, when important people gang up against Zelensky openly it is much more of a potent statement than Hollywood actors safely making Tik-Toks against Trump from their luxurious bedrooms.
The rest of the world won’t sit around and do nothing.
Some moronic ‘Putin sold out the BRICS’ counter-narrative is sure to arise from Kiev’s bot accounts soon. Obviously someone is going to say that the Kremlin threw their Iranian brothers to the Zio-lobby machine! But in actuality, it looks like the Iranians are going to just ship their oil through Russia and sell it as ‘Russian’ and everyone will be happy. The Caspian Sea will be even more busy in the near future. If sanctioned accomplished anything they really increased trade between Russia and Iran.
No one in Moscow is planning on selling out Tehran; they want America to join the Multipolar World while still saving face and reduce the global threat level of nuclear war which is vastly too high at present. Iran and China were surely consulted on this issue before any Diesel Deal was finalized.
The real danger of Trump calling for the removal of Zelensky comes from Europe, where certain factions, politicians and their financiers may take radical action in response. And Trump’s reaction to this response could be even more radical now. Would it be possible that NATO might greenlight the Baltics to just open up another front to ‘see what happens’? Will France finally go through on its threat and just deploy troops openly en masse to save the Napoleon in Green from political or potentially physical death? So far the EU has only threatened even more sanctions. If the previous 20+ packages of sanctions failed, I wonder what is left to actually sanction. Ursula is promising the biggest and most expansive sanctions packet for Monday, October 12th, but I doubt it will change anything. The only thing that would change the situation is if the EU did something really aggressive, drastic and stupid militarily.
What about the rest of the sanctions?
The Russian media has done a disservice to the public by writing that “Trump will lift sanctions” over-and-over again when the only sanctions being lifted are on diesel exports for half a year. All of the rest of the sanctions are still there. You still cannot fly directly from Moscow to New York, and money transfers via SWIFT are still mostly blocked. We have to remember that at least in theory sanctions are a form of punishment for crimes committed against, in this case, international law and the United States. So how can relations between the USA and Russian Federation truly be normalized when one still accuses the other of crimes it believes it did not even commit?
After Project Ukraine ends things could change rapidly, but there can be no true friendship until Washington trusts Aeroflot enough to let them land on U.S. territory. We cannot be both under a sanctions war and normalized at the same time. But this new Trump narrative, if he can stick with it to its logical conclusion, is the perfect off-ramp for America and the way we can finally end this war and go back to some sense of normalcy with the apocalypse pushed far off into the future beyond all of our lifespans.
The story of infrastructure in capitalist vs. socialist systems
By Hua BIN
Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su
A friend visited Germany recently and told a story how a delayed train caused him to miss the flight home.
I was shocked since you could set your watch by the Deutsche Bahn when I was living in Germany back in 1997.
I was doing an internship at Mercedes Benz in Stuttgart in those days. I could time my walk from the apartment to the bus stop, then connect with a train to the office with less than 5 minutes in total waiting time.
The bus and train schedules were synced so perfectly that you could count on a two-minutes’ walk and exactly 2 minutes wait in between. Both buses and trains were on time to a fault.
I had a particular fondness for DB since I traveled around Germany almost every weekend with its 35 Mark Schones-Wochenende Ticket (happy weekend ticket). Unfortunately that service was discontinued in 2019.
In the winter of 1997, I got lost on a hike with several friends in the Black Forest near Baden-Baden.
We were only able to walk out of the cold night after stumbling upon a rail track that led us to a small rural train stop. I can still remember the warm platform light to this day.
I’ve held German rail in high regard ever since.
So you can imagine how incredulous I was about the delay and bad service my friend complained about.
This prompted me to read about what happened to Deutsche Bahn over the last 30 years. In a nutshell, things certainly have changed for the worse.
Deutsche Bahn today defines an on-time train as one arriving less than 6 minutes behind schedule – a long cry from the clock-setting punctuality of the late 90s.
Even by such a low bar, punctuality hovers around 50 to 60%, well below DB’s own target of 70%.
The official explanation is aging infrastructure, heavy construction, and overloaded tracks.
However, as I dig a bit deeper, the decline of the German rail efficiency seems to stem from a deeply flawed privatization in 1994 which led to decades of extreme infrastructure underinvestment.
The 1994 Bahnreform merged the old East and West state railways with a clear mandate: DB was supposed to operate as a profit-seeking private corporation to prepare for an eventual stock market IPO.
To attract investors, DB prioritized extreme cost-cutting over public service.
They aggressively cut staff, outsourced maintenance, and began divesting into global logistics companies (like DB Schenker) rather than focusing on domestic rail.
Under the guise of maximizing efficiency, DB severely downsized its physical network to save money.
Nearly 8,000 kilometers of secondary rail lines were completely dismantled. Thousands of track crossovers, passing loops, and spare sidetracks were removed.
In 1997, if a train broke down or was delayed, a dispatcher could easily reroute it around the problem using these spare tracks.
Today, the network is stripped of its buffers. If one commuter train stalls near Frankfurt, it acts like a broken-down car on a single-lane highway, causing immediate, cascading delays across the entire country.
The problem is compounded by a mixed-rail system where fast Intercity Express (ICE) trains share the same physical tracks with slow regional commuter trains and heavy freight cargo.
In comparison, Chinese high-speed rail or France’s TGV networks mostly operate on dedicated high-speed tracks.
As the DB physical network was drastically thinned out, annual passenger numbers went up from 1.5 billion passengers in 1994 to 2.4 billion today.
Back in the 90s, it was still very common to live near where you worked in Germany. Over the last 30 years, skyrocketing housing costs in major hubs like Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin, and Hamburg forced a massive portion of the workforce to move further out into surrounding suburban regions and smaller towns.
As a result, Germany experienced a commuter explosion, with millions of people traveling significantly longer distances back and forth every single day.
Now, the Deutsche Bahn system runs at 100% capacity nearly constantly. Any small delays can quickly snowball into network chaos.
To make things even harder, Germany’s strict structural debt limits have restricted state spending.
For years, Germany spends only a fraction of what its neighbors do on rail. For example, Switzerland invests over €400 per citizen annually into rail infrastructure. Germany routinely spends around €100.
DB’s disastrous experience with privatization mirrors what happened with other similar projects such as the Thames Water in the UK.
When Margaret Thatcher’s government privatized the UK water sector in 1989, Thames Water was handed to private investors with a clean slate and zero debt.
However, successive private owners treated the utility—which serves 16 million customers across London and southern England—as a corporate cash cow.
Private investors – Wall Street banks and hedge funds – loaded the utility with a mountain of debt and extracted hundreds of millions in management fees and dividends.
Instead of using revenue to upgrade Victorian-era pipes and treatment centers, money was funneled to shareholders and executive bonuses. By 2026, that debt has ballooned to roughly £20 billion.
While the financial engineering generated short-term returns for private equity, the physical infrastructure rotted.
Thames Water has become a national scandal as it has spilled billions of liters of raw sewage directly into the River Thames and local waterways.
Due to aging infrastructure, 25% of all treated water leaks straight out of the pipes before ever reaching customer homes.
Amid severe dry spells and record temperatures, Thames Water repeatedly implements prolonged hosepipe bans because the system lacks structural resilience to manage the region’s water security.
Most privatization projects of public utilities have witnessed a similar pattern of chronic underinvestment, extreme operational cost cutting, and unsustainable debt leverage while enriching financial investors.
Deutsche Bahn and Thames Water are symbols of public goods degradation for private investor gains in rentier capitalist economies.
In stark contrast, Chinese infrastructure remains firmly in the domain of public ownership.
While Europe and the US follow a policy of reactive, austerity-driven, rent-collecting management of their nations’ infrastructure, China has adopted a strategy of anticipatory, supply-led construction – often years ahead of demand.
Back in the 90s, China still was heavily reliant on decades-old, technically backward rail networks that suffered regular breakdowns.
I still remember sitting in rail cars with no air-conditioning in the height of summer for hours when the train from Beijing to Chongqing broke down due to an engine failure during a trip home from college.
The ride used to take 40 hours by scheduled timetable. Today the same trip takes less than 7 hours on highspeed rail.
When China started building its national highspeed rail network in 2004, there was an avalanche of negative press from the West.
Western “experts” eagerly called out how wasteful the project was and how the rail would never generate a positive return on investment.
Despite the nay-sayers, the country has built over 50,000 kilometers of highspeed rail in the last 20 years, over 70% of the world’s total capacity.
Just today, China announced the completion of 4 new highspeed rail lines in 4 provinces, adding another 1,142 kilometers to the network.
One of the lines is the 318-km Harbin–Yichun Line, which is now China’s northernmost highspeed rail traversing alpine permafrost.
The network now covers 97% of all cities with over 500,000 residents. It operates on dedicated rail lines and achieves 98% departure punctuality and 95% arrival punctuality.
Rather than aiming to achieve profitability and high return for every single line, the Chinese highspeed rail system serves as a public good that generate system-level benefits for the entire economy and the public.
Deutsche Bahn and China Rail represent two systems that operate on completely opposite philosophies, leading to radically different outcomes in rail performance and economic impact.
Building ahead of demand vs. Managing declining assets
China’s infrastructure strategy rests on the philosophy that building massive, high-capacity transport networks creates economic growth and future demand, rather than just responding to it.
By constructing the world’s largest highspeed rail network, largely ahead of full demand saturation, China bypassed the bottleneck phase entirely.
On the other hand, Germany operates on a strict “just-in-time” for-profit corporate framework.
Investments are only approved if existing capacity is mathematically proven to be completely exhausted.
This means that by the time a project is planned, funded, and built, the demand has already vastly outpaced the upgrade, leaving the network perpetually lagging behind.
China recognized early on that mixing slow freight and fast passenger trains limits a network’s ultimate capacity. Beijing built an entirely separate, dedicated network for the high-speed Fuxing and Hexie trains.
On the other side, because Germany tried to save money by avoiding the construction of entirely new corridors, they forced ultra-fast commuter trains to share the exact same physical tracks with heavy cargo trains.
When one slow freight train breaks down, the entire national express system grinds to a halt.
Economic Multiplier vs. Direct Profit
The Chinese state views high-speed rail as a public utility and an economic multiplier.
Even if individual rail lines operate at a financial loss or carry high debt, the investment is justified by the massive economic productivity, regional integration, and urban development it unlocks.
As part of the 1994 privatization, the German government treated Deutsche Bahn like a standard commercial enterprise.
Success was measured by cutting operational costs and generating a direct financial profit, which directly starved the physical tracks of preventative maintenance.
One would probably think the German model at least achieved higher ROI for investors even though China achieves higher total societal benefits.
Yet, reality has an ironic twist – the German model ultimately failed the investors, too.
Deutsche Bahn ended up in a financial worst-of-both-worlds scenario.
In a standard capitalist system, starving an asset of maintenance to boost short-term balance sheets usually generates high dividends for investors or pushes stock prices up.
But because DB’s privatization was half-baked, it achieved neither. The only investor in Deutsche Bahn is still the German Federal Government as its IPO plan was abandoned 2 decades ago.
Because the network was run into the ground to cut short-term corporate costs, the long-term liabilities eventually caught up.
Rather than paying rich dividends, DB has cost taxpayers billions in bailouts. The company recently reported a €2.3 billion net loss.
To manage its staggering debts, DB was forced to sell off its highly profitable global logistics subsidiary, DB Schenker, just to artificially steady its balance sheet.
By treating a core public monopoly like a private business, Germany didn’t create a highly profitable enterprise; they created an operational bottleneck that costs the broader German economy billions in lost corporate productivity every year.
China’s model operates on the opposite financial wavelength.
In a socialist market economy, critical infrastructure is heavily state directed through State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs).
While China Rail carries a massive debt load from building its expansive high-speed network, the losses are directly absorbed by the state.
From Beijing’s perspective, the direct financial return on investment of the railway itself is secondary. The real payoff is the societal and macroeconomic ROI.
By connecting far-flung cities, the state slashes shipping friction, drives real estate value, unlocks regional labor markets, and creates economic mobility.
The state effectively subsidizes the train ticket to capture a massive tax and economic growth harvest across the rest of society.
A prime example is the Greater Bay Area in Guangdong, where 7 metropolises, including Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong, are connected into an integrated web via highspeed rail, metro subways, and a network of highways.
The region enjoys unprecedented supply chain density and is ranked as the No. 1 most innovative cluster of cities in the world by the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), ahead of Silicon Valley.
The same formula is repeated in nearly every natural monopoly domain – telecom, electric and water utilities, national highway network, and banking.
Rather than allowing private capital to derive rentier-income from such assets, as what happens in capitalist societies, Beijing firmly controls these commanding-heights of the economy in the public hands.
The German capitalist model tries to draw a neat box around Deutsche Bahn and demand that the box itself be profitable. China’s state-led model views the railway as just one cog in a larger national engine.
Ultimately, Deutsche Bahn’s 30-year experiment has proved that for critical public monopolies like rail, trying to squeeze out the last penny of corporate micro-profits usually breaks the system entirely.
Original article: huabinoliver.substack.com
Europe’s “strategic autonomy” is a project through which Europe is rebuilding its own imperial and militarist capabilities.
Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su
We remember Nokia as the company behind some of the most popular mobile phones of the past, as well as its famous slogan, “Connecting people.”
Founded in Finland in 1865 and now operating as a multinational company in telecommunications and information technology, Nokia continues to work in the field of communications – that is, to “connect people.” But with its latest project, it appears that the company is now preparing to connect people in uniform.
Nokia has teamed up with ICEYE, another Finnish company specializing in the production of microsatellites that provide high-resolution Earth observation data day and night and in all weather conditions.
The two companies have partnered to develop secure and sovereign satellite communications systems for governments and defense customers, with the first communications satellites planned for launch in 2028.
Defense, border security, emergency response…
Announced on October 1, the project envisages satellite systems operating in low Earth orbit (LEO) for use in areas including defense, border security, emergency services and disaster response.
Under the project, governments will be able to own and control not only the satellites themselves, but also the ground infrastructure and user terminals.
Rafal Modrzewski, co-founder and CEO of ICEYE, said countries should not leave control over their communications infrastructure in the hands of foreign commercial satellite operators, emphasizing that the project is ultimately aimed at reducing external dependence.
As part of the partnership, Nokia will contribute its expertise in secure networking technologies and network management, while ICEYE will provide its experience in satellite platforms, satellite constellation operations and ground infrastructure.
The cooperation between Nokia and ICEYE is not entirely new. Nokia was among the companies that participated in an investment round announced by ICEYE in June 2026, through which the company secured more than €1 billion in financing.
First satellites planned for 2028
The first satellites are scheduled to be launched in 2028. If the project is implemented, ICEYE will expand its activities in government-controlled satellite intelligence into the communications sector, while Nokia will strengthen its presence in Europe’s rapidly growing defense and space communications market.
Europe’s “strategic autonomy”: the militarization of civilian technology
The new partnership between Nokia and ICEYE is a striking example of where the concepts of “strategic autonomy” and “technological sovereignty,” which Europe has increasingly embraced in recent years, are actually heading.
The satellite communications systems being developed by the two Finnish companies may initially appear to be nothing more than a technological investment. Yet the companies themselves explicitly list defense, border security and government operations among the project’s intended areas of use. With the first satellites planned for launch in 2028, the system is also designed to remain under government control, including its satellites, ground stations and terminals.
What is significant here is not simply that two companies are entering the defense sector. The boundary between civilian and military technology is increasingly disappearing in Europe.
Companies operating in telecommunications, artificial intelligence, satellite technology, data analysis and digital infrastructure are being turned into direct components of European states’ rearmament and security policies.
This transformation is being marketed under the rhetoric of “European independence.” Yet what is emerging is not a Europe moving away from militarism. On the contrary, Europe is building its own militarized infrastructure.
Reducing dependence on the U.S. does not eliminate militarism
Europe’s basic argument is that it should not remain dependent on U.S.-based companies for its security and communications infrastructure. That is why European states are seeking to develop their own satellite systems, defense technologies and secure communications networks.
But there is a serious contradiction here.
The infrastructure being developed to reduce dependence on U.S. companies is being used to expand the military capabilities of European states. In other words, the question of “militarism or peace?” is being reduced to a choice between “American militarism or European militarism.”
The EU’s IRIS² program is a larger-scale example of this transformation. Although the system was initially presented as a secure communications and digital infrastructure project, the program was expanded in August 2026 to include 66 additional LEO satellites for defense, security and emergency services, bringing the total planned core constellation to 348 satellites. The European Commission has also explicitly identified defense and security applications as among the main drivers behind the changes.
What we are therefore witnessing is not simply a European space program designed to “improve internet access.” Space infrastructure is being transformed into a component of Europe’s security and defense architecture.
Companies are becoming part of the war economy
More importantly, this transformation is not taking place solely through state institutions.
The European model places private companies at the center of this process. As in the case of Nokia and ICEYE, private technology companies are developing infrastructure designed to meet the defense and security needs of governments. Public-private partnerships are also at the heart of the IRIS² model.
The program’s total cost over 12 years has been set at €10.6 billion, with €6 billion expected to be provided by the EU and more than €4 billion by the private sector.
Thus, the expansion of Europe’s “defense capacity” does not simply mean larger state budgets. Private capital is becoming a direct partner in Europe’s emerging security economy.
This transformation is also changing the fields in which technology companies operate. Technologies once associated primarily with consumer communications, the internet, software or civilian infrastructure are now becoming integrated into border surveillance, military communications, intelligence and crisis-management systems.
This is not the neutralization of Europe’s technology sector. It is its militarization.
The technological infrastructure of “Fortress Europe”
All of these developments cannot be considered separately from the increasingly powerful concept of “Fortress Europe.”
Tighter border controls, the treatment of migration as a security issue, increased military spending and the expansion of Europe’s own defense industry are different components of the same political direction.
Satellite technology is no exception. Indeed, border surveillance is explicitly listed among the intended uses of IRIS² in EU documents.
In this way, seemingly positive concepts such as “digital sovereignty,” “technological independence” and “strategic autonomy” are, in practice, becoming technological instruments for building a stronger European security apparatus.
The fundamental issue here is not that Europe is reducing its dependence on the United States. There is nothing inherently wrong with any country developing its own technological capabilities. The question is what those capabilities are being developed for.
If the result of technological independence is more military satellites, more sophisticated border surveillance systems, stronger military communications networks and larger defense budgets, then what is being created is not simply independence. It is the expansion of the militarist capacity of European states and European capital.
From this perspective, the Nokia-ICEYE agreement represents more than a technological partnership.
As Europe seeks to create an alternative to the United States’ military and technological dominance, it is simultaneously building its own military-technological complex.
And perhaps the most important feature of this process is that the war economy is no longer built solely in arms factories.
Telecommunications companies, satellite companies, artificial intelligence firms and other high-tech corporations are becoming increasingly important actors in this economy.
Europe’s “strategic autonomy” therefore cannot be understood merely as a project to become independent from Washington. It is also a project through which Europe is rebuilding its own imperial and militarist capabilities.
Il titolo definitivo dell’intera vicenda, tuttavia, è che la Casa dei Saud sta attaccando Ansarallah per proteggere il culto della morte in Asia occidentale
Cominciamo con alcune informazioni esclusive. Giovedì, Yahya Ali al-Ra’i, presidente della Camera dei Rappresentanti con sede a Sana’a sotto il controllo di Ansarallah, ha consegnato una lettera a Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, presidente dell’Assemblea Nazionale del Pakistan, richiedendo la mediazione pakistana tra Ansarallah e Riyadh.
Ra’i, figura ampiamente rispettata, ricopre la carica di presidente a Sana’a dal 2008. Sadiq ha iniziato il suo attuale mandato come presidente a Islamabad nel marzo 2024. Questo canale parlamentare diretto riveste un’enorme importanza come apertura diplomatica – poiché il Pakistan si trova ad affrontare enormi pressioni, sia a livello interno che in tutto il mondo islamico, riguardo ai suoi reali impegni relativi allo scontro tra Arabia Saudita e Yemen, come stabilito dall’Alleanza per la Difesa della Mecca.
Per quanto l’intera situazione sia in realtà oscura, informazioni dirette provenienti sia da Islamabad che da Teheran, ai massimi livelli, come da me specificatamente richiesto, hanno stabilito quattro punti chiave: Sembra che sia così – per ora.
Islamabad è irremovibile nel sostenere che il Pakistan non attaccherà Ansarallah e non impiegherà truppe a tal fine. L’intesa raggiunta a Riyadh la scorsa settimana escludeva l’ingresso nel territorio yemenita. Le forze pakistane dovrebbero rimanere al di fuori di qualsiasi offensiva terrestre contro Ansarallah.
Il Pakistan stava già mediando tra Riyadh e Sana’a attraverso Teheran. Il feldmaresciallo Asim Munir ha personalmente richiesto al ministro degli Esteri iraniano Araghchi di esercitare l’influenza dell’Iran su Ansarallah, avvalendosi dei contatti di Araghchi sia con Islamabad che con Riyadh. Il Ministero degli Esteri pakistano non ha smentito l’esistenza di questo canale diplomatico.
Il Pakistan sarebbe tenuto a difendere il territorio saudita in virtù dei propri impegni nell’ambito dell’Alleanza per la Difesa della Mecca. I dispiegamenti finalizzati alla protezione dei confini e alla difesa contro droni e missili lanciati dalle Forze Armate yemenite rientrano in questo quadro. Il problema è se alcuni consiglieri pakistani siano già dispiegati in territorio yemenita. Se il Pakistan avesse anche solo pochi «consiglieri» ad Aden e truppe da qualche parte nel nord dello Yemen, al confine con l’Arabia Saudita, ciò costituirebbe già una violazione delle sue promesse.
Le forze pakistane dovrebbero essere in grado di difendersi da sole – è una conseguenza naturale del territorio. Si tratta di una contingenza dichiarata; non di una previsione di ritorsione. Almeno un ufficiale pakistano è stato ucciso in Arabia Saudita senza che il Pakistan reagisse con una ritorsione. Ciò denota moderazione – almeno per ora.
Transito attraverso lo Stretto di Hormuz: utilizzare il CIPS e pagare in rial
Sul più ampio fronte USA-Iran, le mosse diplomatiche confermano quanto abbiamo riportato negli ultimi giorni riguardo al Protocollo di Transizione. Il Pakistan, infatti, è determinato a mantenere i rapporti sia con Riyadh che con Teheran, parallelamente a un coordinamento costante con Pechino. Dopotutto, la Cina sostiene pienamente la mediazione pakistana; e Araghchi continua a dialogare con Munir, come ha fatto in seguito ai colloqui con Wang Yi a Pechino.
Nel frattempo, sul fronte di Washington, le speculazioni sono febbrili su tutta la linea riguardo ai preparativi per una ripresa della guerra da parte dell’amministrazione Trump – compresi potenziali attacchi alle infrastrutture energetiche iraniane e persino, cosa piuttosto preoccupante, a obiettivi nucleari. Non vi è ancora alcuna decisione definitiva da parte dello «psicopatico/sociopatico al comando», tanto meno una data di avvio.
I rischi immediati, in ogni caso, sono sbalorditivi.
La diplomazia – anche nella sua forma surrogata – è impantanata in un vicolo cieco. Teheran rimane – e continuerà a rimanere – ancorata alle proprie condizioni attuali, specificate nel memorandum d’intesa ormai privo di significato, ma ora con l’aggiunta della minaccia di bloccare le rotte di transito lungo la costa dell’Oman che considera illegali. Washington, dal canto suo, è ossessionata dall’ottenere vaste concessioni in materia nucleare. All’inizio di questa settimana, abbiamo confermato che il Consiglio Supremo di Sicurezza Nazionale (SNSC) di Teheran ha preso due decisioni di grande rilevanza.
Il punto fondamentale è che la spirale di escalation potrebbe sfuggire al controllo in un batter d’occhio.
La “Tempesta yemenita in arrivo 1.0” è già in atto
Sul fronte saudita-yemenita, le Forze Armate yemenite si stanno dimostrando assolutamente spietate. La “Tempesta yemenita in arrivo 1.0” è già in atto.
I danni alla raffineria di Jeddah, vicino a Yanbu, sono ingenti. Ansarallah sta colpendo contemporaneamente la costa orientale e quella occidentale dell’Arabia Saudita, oltre all’oleodotto est-ovest che le collega.
A tutti gli effetti, Sana’a sta prendendo di mira l’intera infrastruttura chiave di Riyadh. Il «paracadute» difensivo statunitense è una farsa: le batterie PAC-3 e Patriot rimaste sono inutili contro i missili balistici yemeniti.
Le truppe saudite potrebbero ammontare, nella migliore delle ipotesi, a 75.000 unità, più 125.000 della Guardia Nazionale. Le Forze Armate yemenite dispongono di almeno 350.000 uomini, che possono essere facilmente portati a 800.000. Aspettarsi un «aiuto» dai petrol-sceicchi del CCG non è nemmeno degno di essere definito uno scherzo.
Le Forze Armate yemenite hanno inoltre lanciato due missili balistici e droni esplosivi in direzione dell’aeroporto internazionale di Aden. Ansarallah ha dichiarato che l’obiettivo erano i rifornimenti militari sauditi appena giunti al Campo di Badr, il quartier generale dei mercenari adiacente all’aeroporto. È stato ucciso un numero non specificato di ufficiali e funzionari sauditi di alto rango – forse anche alcuni pakistani.
Da parte sua, anche la Turchia sta per schierare truppe, velivoli e sistemi di difesa aerea sul territorio saudita. Queste forze turche potrebbero, in teoria, proteggere Riyadh, le città sante e l’oleodotto Est-Ovest. Ankara, proprio come Islamabad, insiste nel sostenere di non avere alcuna intenzione di entrare in guerra nello Yemen.
La rapida liberazione da parte delle Forze Armate yemenite della costa occidentale vicino al Mar Rosso ha inoltre reso chiarissimo come la cosiddetta «coalizione» saudita – in realtà una banda di proxy e mercenari – stesse schierando di fatto dei terroristi fin dall’inizio.
Ansarallah ha recuperato una grande quantità di passaporti stranieri – in particolare provenienti dal Kuwait, dal Qatar, dalla Turchia e dalla Siria – appartenenti a sicari dell’ISIS e di Al-Qaeda. Chiamatela pure la Legione della Terror Inc.
È sempre la solita storia. Il Qatar e la Turchia, di comune accordo, hanno strumentalizzato il trasferimento di miliziani dell’ISIS e dei salafiti-jihadisti dalla Siria e dall’Iraq: questi sono stati accolti nello Yemen dal Partito Islah. La Turchia è stata la principale via di transito; almeno 2.100 di questi membri dell’ISIS sono turchi.
AQAP è tornata! Già nel lontano 2020, Ansarallah aveva sequestrato documenti, mappe e video che mostravano jihadisti dell’ISIS/Daesh e di Al-Qaeda, direttamente sostenuti da Riyadh, mentre vagavano per lo Yemen, con i miliziani catturati che confessavano di essere stati pagati, armati e sostenuti logisticamente dai sauditi.Ora è già in atto una nuova incarnazione dell’ex Al-Qaeda nella Penisola Arabica (AQAP) – attraverso almeno 20.000 mercenari terroristi del Daesh/takfiri “importati” dalla Siria. Essi saranno inviati nel governatorato di Aden – in seguito alla richiesta, anzi alla pretesa dello stesso MbS, pienamente approvata dall’amministrazione Trump e dal suo vassallo tagliagole diventato presidente a Damasco, l’ex membro dell’ISIS al-Jolani.
Il titolo definitivo dell’intera vicenda, tuttavia, è che la Casa dei Saud sta attaccando Ansarallah per proteggere il culto della morte in Asia occidentale. Controllando Bab al-Mandab, Ansarallah isola di fatto il porto israeliano di Eilat. Ciò era già accaduto in precedenza durante il genocidio di Gaza. Riyadh era furiosa perché aveva stretto accordi per il progetto NEOM – ora praticamente accantonato – che avrebbe collegato Eilat una volta che gli Accordi di Abramo trumpiani fossero entrati in vigore. Considerando il quadro d’insieme, una singola scintilla potrebbe ancora scatenare l’inferno. Tra le possibilità figurano: un attacco yemenita contro l’Arabia Saudita che causi ingenti perdite; un caos nella riscossione dei pedaggi nello Stretto di Ormuz; un attacco iraniano contro un obiettivo legato ai «petro-sceicchi» del CCG, a seguito di una provocazione americana; un attacco legato all’Iran contro una base statunitense, ancora una volta a seguito di una provocazione americana; e, soprattutto, una (dis)avventura del CENTCOM «via terra, aria e mare» imposta da un sociopatico.
Allacciate le cinture di sicurezza.
Strategic Culture Foundation | October 9, 2026
The European Union is witnessing a full-blown social revolt. Governing political parties and their economic policies are held in open contempt as public protests and strikes escalate across multiple countries.
Protests, mass marches, and industrial strikes are spreading across the EU in France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, and other countries. The grievances are various, from students and teachers over woeful education services, to healthcare professionals and transportation workers denouncing crumby wages and pension cuts.
But at the core is a warmongering, dehumanizing system of capitalist inequality.
Unbearable living costs for basic needs, from food to housing, are driving millions onto the streets in desperation and anger at the lack of adequate political response to their concerns. As one French student said: “Too young to be listened to, old enough to be tear-gassed.”
The entire political system is being brought into disrepute for its dysfunction and indifference towards meeting rudimentary human needs. Then, infuriating all the more, are lies from the elite rulers and their propaganda media about “national defense and threat of war from Russia.”
In Spain this week, an 87-year-old frail woman known as Maricarmen died in hospital after she was evicted from her Madrid home because she could not pay the extortionate rent increase. Her plight has come to galvanize a nationwide protest against Spain’s housing crisis, a crisis that is repeated across every European country. Protesters shouted furiously that the pitiful old woman was “murdered by the state and corporations.”
In France, the brutality of police against student protests has shocked the nation and the world. Nearly 7,000 young people have been arrested, as riot police tear gas and shoot at largely peaceful rallies. Students gathering at the Place de la Bastille in Paris and other cities vow that they will not back down. One student had his hand blown off by a police stun grenade while another teenager lost an eye from a rubber bullet fired at close range.
The Place de la Bastille is where the French Revolution manifested in 1798 against a hated aristocracy amid abject misery. Today, the tensions are boiling towards another momentous rebellion, this time inspiring again similar movements across Europe.
These protests and the inhumane suffering that underlie them are channeling uprisings all over the EU.
There is a palpable sense that populations en masse have had enough of decades of inequality and chronic deprivation inflicted by capitalist policies that enrich a few and are enforced by governments slavishly serving the interests of capital over the needs of the citizen majority.
Western media reports talk about “cash-strapped” governments under pressure from bond markets to reduce record debt levels while workers, students and pensioners demand more public investment and relief from economic hardship.
That is a misleading partial portrayal of the problem. Omitted is the crucial backdrop that European governments are directing vast economic resources towards militarism and the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. That is what is causing the “cash-strapped governments.” In other words, their declared fiscal straits are a policy choice, not some mysterious dilemma.
The social crisis sweeping across Europe is also seen in the United States and other Western-aligned nations. The background is a failed economic system that no longer provides a modicum of acceptable living conditions. The problem has been decades in the making from growing inequality and diminishing political representation. Today it is even questionable if Western states are democracies, controlled as they are by corporate oligarchies.
Nevertheless, the social crisis that is unfolding across Europe has been intensified and amplified by European political rulers operating in a relentless war mode against Russia.
The European Union has pumped hundreds of billions of euros into Ukraine over the past four years to prop up a NeoNazi regime run by a corrupt dictatorship – all for the objective of defeating Russia. The EU leaders – many of them unelected, like Ursula von der Leyen, Kaja Kallas and António Costa – are driven by an obsessive Russophobia. But that is only part of the explanation.
Other elected leaders and parties like France’s Macron and Germany’s Merz are also despised for their elitism and delusions of grandeur. Merz declares that he wants to make Germany the strongest military in Europe, in total tin-ear deafness to his nation’s economic and social problems and the sinister historical connotations of resurrecting Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, as his government suffers electoral defeat after defeat, European elites deprecate German voters as being blind because they dare to choose parties that are opposed to war with Russia.
There are many grounds for the Europe-wide contempt of ruling parties. Inequality, poverty, unemployment, soaring living costs, declining wages, deteriorating public services. Uncontrolled immigration amid the pressure on inadequate public resources is another cause for grievance. Europe’s complicity in the Israeli genocidal war on Palestinians, and Europe’s complicity in Trump’s aggression towards Iran, Yemen, Cuba, and so on, are other factors.
However, the bogus narrative that governments are “cash-strapped” is a cause for immense public disgust. There are plenty of economic resources to meet public needs. It’s a question of those resources not being permitted to create just and humane societies under the prevailing capitalist system with its priority of enriching a tiny elite class.
The conditions of “tight budgets” and “austerity for the masses” are created by deliberate policies of militarism and fuelling a proxy war in Ukraine.
European “leaders” and their NATO lobbyists like Mark Rutte demand hundreds of billions of euros to boost military industries while at the same time calling for draconian cuts in public spending and social welfare in order to pay for this reckless militarism. The EU is “lending” an additional €90 billion over the next two years alone just to prop up the corrupt regime in Kiev so that it can keep fighting a futile war with Russia. The perverse priority is driven by the military-industrial complex and its corporate investors. It is also driven by an ideological, propagandized mindset that demonizes Russia as an enemy. President Putin and other Russian voices have repeatedly stated that they do not want war with Europe. They say the conflict in Ukraine has root causes that can be resolved through diplomatic engagement. Why are European politicians implacably opposed to peace?
A major factor is covering for internal political and economic failure of the European system. The EU’s economies, as with those in the U.S. and other Western states, are bankrupt dystopias in terms of delivering on social and democratic needs. The failure has been compounded by the costs of war in Ukraine.
That failure is criminal and fatal for the politicians and governments who have overseen the policies. Thus, the political class, including the propaganda news media, cannot admit their criminal policies.
In the face of their own internal contradictions, the European political elites are seeking a solution by externalizing Russia as an enemy. This is the same modus operandi that European rulers have used for the past century and more, unleashing two world wars as a result.
These criminal politicians and their dysfunctional economic system are again pushing war as their escape plan for survival at the expense of millions of lives and at the risk of starting a third world war, one that this time around could involve catastrophic nuclear nemesis.
It is damning of virtually every European government, including primarily the British, that there are no calls for diplomacy and political settlement with Russia. They are committed to waging war on Russia to absolve themselves from the social devastation they are responsible for.
One positive thing, though, is that increasing numbers of people can see through the chicanery and lies. A German student placard summed it up: “We won’t fight your wars… Education not bombs!”
A day of reckoning is imminent. Criminal political leaders and their warmongering system are exposed like never before and in a way that demands total revolt as a proper solution. The consequences are not to be externalized this time. Chickens are coming home to roost, as Malcom X once said.
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