-
If The Wars Go On
I suppose my title could have been couched in the singular form, as Hermann Hesse, the Nobel Prize winning German/Swiss author, did with his collection of anti-war essays about World War I (the war to end all wars that didn’t), If The War Goes On . . . Or more appropriately, I might have […]
-
Putin and the Magic Multipolar Mountain
There was a whiff of Thomas Mann’s ‘The Magic Mountain’ at the 20th Valdai annual meeting this week at a hotel over the gorgeous heights of the Krasnaya Polyana, north-west of the picturesque resort Sochi. But instead of a deep dive into the lure and degeneracy of ideas in an introverted community in the Swiss […]
-
Syria and China: a New Pole in the Middle East
Peter Koenig – PressTV Interview – transcript 21 September 2023 Background Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is in China on his first visit since the war and foreign-backed insurgency gripped his country some 12 years ago. President al-Assad arrived in the eastern city of Hangzhou where he will attend the opening ceremony of the Asian Games […]
-
On 1 January 2024, the World’s Centre of Gravity Will Shift
Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar (Egypt), The Popular Chorus or Food or Comrades on the Theatre of Life, 1948 (post-dated 1951). On the last day of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, the five founding states (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) welcomed six new members: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United […]
-
BRICS: A New World Economic and Trading Force?
Peter Koenig (PressTV Interview – Transcript 23 August 2023 Background The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are holding arguably one of their most important Summits from 22 to 24 August 2023 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Several new countries – up to 40 it is said, including Iran – would like to join […]
-
The BRICS Have Changed the Balance of Forces, but They Will Not by Themselves Change the World
Mao Xuhui (China), ’92 Paternalism, 1992 In 2003, high officials from Brazil, India, and South Africa met in Mexico to discuss their mutual interests in the trade of pharmaceutical drugs. India was and is one of the world’s largest producers of various drugs, including those used to treat HIV-AIDS; Brazil and South Africa were both […]
-
There Are Enough Resources in the World to Fulfill Human Needs, But Not Enough Resources to Satisfy Capitalist Greed
Kurt Nahar (Suriname), Untitled 2369, 2008. On 20 July, the United Nations (UN) released a document called A New Agenda for Peace. In the opening section of the report, UN Secretary-General António Guterres made some remarks that bear close reflection: We are now at an inflection point. The post-Cold War period is over. A transition […]
-
Readouts Point to a Disjuncture between US and China
During the economic crisis in 2008, the United States sought China’s aid. US treasury secretary Hank Paulson conferred with Chinese officials, and China agreed to increase the value of the RMB and to stop selling US T-bills which it had been doing at that time. Paulson said, “It is clear that China accepts its responsibility […]
-
The Emergence of a New Non-Alignment
Sahej Rahal (India), Juggernaut, 2019. A new mood of defiance in the Global South has generated bewilderment in the capitals of the Triad (the United States, Europe, and Japan), where officials are struggling to answer why governments in the Global South have not accepted the Western view of the conflict in Ukraine or universally supported […]
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish