Articles by Pepe Escobar

We found 229 results.


Will a South African Victory Stop the Gaza Genocide?
Pepe Escobar | Strategic Culture Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Feb 2024

27 Jan 2024 – As much as the ICJ may be dismissed as a collective West farce, the fact is that the ruling explicitly calls for Israel to stop the killing. Let’s cut to the chase.

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Five Variables Defining Our Future
Pepe Escobar | Sputnik – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Feb 2024

25 Jan 2024 – For Germany it was a question of ‘organizing Europe’. The USA must ‘organize’ the world. Face to face with the volcanic eruption of US imperialism. Under some pretext, it will intervene in the clash to maintain its world dominion.

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Year of the Dragon: Silk Roads, BRICS Roads, Sino-Roads
Pepe Escobar | Strategic Culture Foundation - TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Jan 2024

12 Jan 2024 – China, Russia and Iran will take the fight towards a more equal and just system to the next level.

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Now More Than Ever We Need a True Philosopher of Civilization
Pepe Escobar | Strategic Culture Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2024

22 Dec 2023 – Abu Nasr al-Farabi (872-950), Islamic scientist, philosopher, mathematician and musical theorist, lived at the golden age of Islamic civilization. The medieval Latin world knew him as Magister Secundus: the second greatest teacher of philosophy after Aristotle. Al-Farabi should be heeded as the quintessential philosopher of civilization, built under the aegis of truth, virtue and compassion.

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Clash of Civilizations in Kazakhstan
Pepe Escobar | Sputnik – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2023

15 Dec 2023 – Several round tables set to examine the full spectrum of the “megacycle of turmoil” we’re all immersed in – generating massive challenges to an ever-integrating Eurasia, home to ¾ of the world’s population and over 60% of global GDP.

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Gaza: A Pause Before the Storm
Pepe Escobar | The Cradle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Dec 2023

23 Nov 2023 – The US and its allies will continue backing Israel’s war on Gaza after a brief truce. But as the case for ‘genocide’ grows stronger, the new multipolar powers will have to confront the old hegemons and their Rules-Based Chaos.

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Iran-Russia Set a Western Trap in Palestine
Pepe Escobar | The Cradle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Nov 2023

27 Oct 2023 – The only country that could possibly distract the West from Ukraine is Israel. But the US and its allies are walking into an existential trap if they think a West Asian victory will be more easily won than a European one.

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No Respite for France as a ‘New Africa’ Rises
Pepe Escobar | The Cradle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Sep 2023

1 Sep 2023 – Like dominos, African states are one by one falling outside the shackles of neocolonialism. Chad, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and now Gabon are saying ‘non’ to France’s longtime domination of African financial, political, economic, and security affairs.

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NATOstan Robots Versus the Heavenly Horses of Multipolarity
Pepe Escobar – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Sep 2023

29 Aug 2023 – We will all need plenty of time and introspection to analyze the full range of game-changing vectors unleashed by the unveiling of BRICS 11 last week in South Africa. Yet time waits for no one. The Empire will (italics mine) strike back in full force; in fact its multi-hydra Hybrid War tentacles are already on display.

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BRICS Summit Disappointments
Pepe Escobar, George Galloway, et al. | MOATS – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Aug 2023

25 Aug 2023 – The BRICS summit in Johannesburg that ended yesterday took on six new members but in other ways failed to live up to its billing.

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In Sicily, Top of the Mountain, Watching the New Barbarians
Pepe Escobar | TheAltWorld – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Jul 2023

18 Jul 2023 – NATO, already humiliated in Afghanistan, is now being demilitarized, a process running in parallel to the state of the economy prevailing amongst all NATOstan members. War? Against a nuclear, hypersonic superpower? Give us a – Thucydides – break.

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The Hegemon Will Go Full Hybrid War Against BRICS+
Pepe Escobar | Global Research – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Jun 2023

The Hybrid War 2.0 against the Global South has not even started. Swing states, you have all been warned.

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US Empire of Debt Headed for Collapse
Pepe Escobar | Sputnik International – TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 May 2023

15 May 2023 – To paraphrase Gramsci, the old geopolitical and geoeconomic order is dying and the new one is being born at breakneck speed. It’s no wonder “socialism with Chinese characteristics” spooks the Hegemon creditor oligarchy to the point they are even risking a Hot War.

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What China Is Really Playing at in Ukraine
Pepe Escobar | Strategic Culture Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 May 2023

30 Apr 2023 – Beijing is fully aware the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is the un-dissociable double of the U.S. war against its Belt and Road Initiative.

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All Roads Lead to Beijing
Pepe Escobar | Strategic Culture Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Apr 2023

15 Apr 2023 – This is the tale of two pilgrims following the road that really matters in the young 21st century; one coming from NATOstan and another one from BRICS. Let’s start with Le Petit Roi, Emmanuel Macron.

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The Capital of the Multipolar World: A Moscow Diary
Pepe Escobar – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Apr 2023

2 Apr 2023 – This global nomad now addressing you had the privilege of spending four astonishing weeks in Moscow at an historical crossroads, the Putin-Xi geopolitical game-changing summit at the Kremlin. In Moscow you feel no crisis. No effects of sanctions. No unemployment. No homeless people in the streets. Minimal inflation.

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Can You Smell What the Year of the Rabbit Is Cooking?
Pepe Escobar | Strategic Culture Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Jan 2023

24 Jan 2023 – The New Silk Roads, or BRI, as well as the integration efforts of BRICS+, the SCO and the EAEU will be on the forefront of Chinese policy.

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All Quiet (Panic) on the Western Front–The Davos Freak Show
Pepe Escobar | Global Research – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Jan 2023

17 Jan 2023 – How to Monetize the Whole World – The mainstream media spinning non-stop for a week all the “news” to extol new declinations of The Great Reset, re-baptized The Great Narrative, framed as a benign offer by “stakeholder capitalism”.

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Why China’s Belt and Road Initiative-BRI Is Back with a Bang in 2023
Pepe Escobar | The Cradle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Jan 2023

6 Jan 2023 – As Beijing’s BRI enters its 10th year, a strong Sino-Russian geostrategic partnership has revitalized the BRI across the Global South.

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Russia, India, China, Iran: The Quad That Really Matters
Pepe Escobar | PressTV – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Nov 2022

15 Nov 2022 – Southeast Asia is right at the center of international relations for a week with three consecutive summits: ASEAN in Phnom Penh, the G20 in Bali, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Bangkok.

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Everybody Wants to Hop On the BRICS Express
Pepe Escobar | The Cradle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 31 Oct 2022

28 Oct 2022 – Eurasia is about to get a whole lot larger as countries line up to join the Chinese and Russian-led BRICS and SCO, to the detriment of the West.

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The ‘War of Terror’ about to Hit Europe
Pepe Escobar | PressTV – TRANSCEND Media Service, 31 Oct 2022

24 Oct 2022 – Never underestimate a wounded and decaying Empire collapsing in real time. Imperial functionaries, even in a “diplomatic” capacity, continue to brazenly declare that their exceptionalist control over the world is mandatory. The blowing up of Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2, everybody knows who did it, but the perpetrator cannot be named.

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The Thin Red Line: NATO Can’t Afford to Lose Kabul and Kiev
Pepe Escobar | Strategic Culture Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Oct 2022

12 Oct 2022 – Russia will not allow the Empire to control Ukraine, whatever it takes. That’s intrinsically linked to the future of the Greater Eurasia Partnership.

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Pipeline Terror Is the 9/11 of the Raging Twenties
Pepe Escobar | PressTV – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Oct 2022

4 Oct 2022 – There’s no question that future unbiased historians will rank Russian President Vladimir Putin’s address on the Return of the Baby Bears – Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia – on 30 Sep as a landmark inflection point of the Raging Twenties.

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Germany and EU Have Been Handed Over a Declaration of War
Pepe Escobar | PressTV – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Oct 2022

28 Sep 2022 – The sabotage of the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea has ominously propelled ‘Disaster Capitalism’ to a whole new, toxic level.

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Asia’s Future Takes Shape in Vladivostok, the Russian Pacific
Pepe Escobar | The Cradle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Sep 2022

8 Sep 2022 – Sixty-eight countries gathered on Russia’s far eastern coast to listen to Moscow’s economic and political vision for the Asia-Pacific.

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All the Way to Odessa
Pepe Escobar – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Sep 2022

26 Aug 2022 – The leadership in Moscow is making it very clear, the new deal consists in slow cooking the Kiev racket inside a massive cauldron while polishing its status of financial black hole for the collective West. Until we reach boiling point – which will be a revolution or a putsch.

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Six Months into Ukraine’s Collapse, the World Has Changed Forever
Pepe Escobar | The Cradle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Sep 2022

24 Aug 2022 – The inevitable transfer of power away from the west is leading to a surge in state-sponsored terrorism, but this will do little to reverse the trend. To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, this is the way the (new) world begins, not with a whimper but a bang.

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How a Missile in Kabul Connects to a Speaker in Taipei
Pepe Escobar | The Cradle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Aug 2022

3 Aug 2022 – Washington’s hard power display of taking out Al-Qaeda’s Al-Zawahiri will not be reciprocated by Beijing over Pelosi’s provocative visit to Taiwan. It does however, definitively bury the decades-long era of cooperative US-Chinese relations.

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From Balkh to Konya: Discovering Rumi’s Spiritual Geopolitics
Pepe Escobar | The Cradle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Aug 2022

30 Jul 2022 – While the mystic poet, Sufi, theosophist and thinker Jalal al-Din Rumi is synonymous with Islamic mysticism, a deeper dig brings to light the West Asian political changes and upheavals that shaped his world and other-worldly view.

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For Those about to Rock, NAM 2.0 Salutes You
Pepe Escobar | Strategic Culture Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Aug 2022

22 Jul 2022 – Those were the days, in 1955, at the legendary Indonesia conference when the Global South started dreaming of building a new world via the Non-Aligned Movement. NAM 2.0 drive – of which China is a key player – stands in stark opposition to how the Empire of Chaos wove its toxic net since the start of the millennium.

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The Multipolar “Iran-Russia-Turkey Troika” Overshadows “Unipolar Joe Biden” in West Asia
Pepe Escobar | The Cradle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Jul 2022

20 Jul 2022 – The Tehran summit uniting Iran-Russia-Turkey was a fascinating affair in more ways than one. Their Presidents convened to discuss critical issues pertaining to West Asia, with the illegal US occupation of Syria and wholesale rejection of the “war on terror” exceptionalist unipolarity that once ruled West Asia, as key talking points.

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Exile on Main Street: The Sound of the Unipolar World Fading Away
Pepe Escobar | The Cradle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jul 2022

22 Jun 2022 – Let’s cut to the chase and roll in the Putin Top Ten of the New Era, announced by the Russian President live at the St. Petersburg forum for both the Global North and South. The future world order, already in progress, will be formed by strong sovereign states. The ship has sailed. There’s no turning back.

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Behind the Tin Curtain: BRICS+ vs NATO/G7
Pepe Escobar | The Cradle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jul 2022

28 Jun 2022 – The West is nostalgically caught up with outdated ‘containment’ policies, this time against Global South integration. Unfortunately for them, the rest of the world is moving on, together.

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St. Petersburg Sets the Stage for the War of Economic Corridors
Pepe Escobar | The Cradle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jun 2022

18 Jun 2022 – In St. Petersburg, the world’s new powers gather to upend the US-concocted “rules-based order” and reconnect the globe their way.

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Will the Global South Break Free from Dollarized Debt?
Pepe Escobar | The Cradle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2022

9 Jun 2022 – In his latest book, economist Michael Hudson pits socialism against finance capitalism and tears apart the ‘dream civilization’ imposed by the 1 percent.

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Bilderberg Meets in Washington: Bilderberg Does China–An Economic Hurricane Is Coming
Pepe Escobar | Global Research – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jun 2022

7 Jun 2022 – Discreetly, as under the radar as a looming virus, the 68th Bilderberg meeting is currently underway in Washington, D.C. Nothing to see here. No conspiracy theories about a “secret cabal”, please. This is just a docile, “diverse group of political leaders and experts” having a chat, a laugh, and a bubbly.

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Empire of Bioweapon Lies
Pepe Escobar – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2022

13 May 2022 – An ongoing U.S. bioweapons program in Ukraine was one of the Top Three reasons that led to Operation Z. So just when we thought we could enjoy the summer by watching Europe commit hara-kiri, it’s time to stock up on those Aperol Spritz. Get ready for a new hit series, season 1: Inside the American bioweapon racket.

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Russian Geoeconomics Tzar Sergey Glazyev Introduces the New Global Financial System
Pepe Escobar | The Cradle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Apr 2022

14 Apr 2022 – The world’s new monetary system, underpinned by a digital currency, will be backed by a basket of new foreign currencies and natural resources. And it will liberate the Global South from both western debt and IMF-induced austerity.

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Say Hello to Russian Gold and Chinese Petroyuan
Pepe Escobar | The Cradle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Mar 2022

15 Mar 2022 – It was a long time coming, but finally some key lineaments of the multipolar world’s new foundations are being revealed. The Russia-led Eurasia Economic Union and China just agreed to design the mechanism for an independent financial and monetary system that would bypass dollar transactions.

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Follow the Money: US Sanctions–Will Russia Be Able to Bypass Western Economic Warfare?
Pepe Escobar | The Cradle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Mar 2022

The US and EU are over-reaching on Russian sanctions. The end result could be the de-dollarization of the global economy and massive commodity shortages worldwide.

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“Do You Want a War Between Russia and NATO?”
Pepe Escobar – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Feb 2022

9 Feb 2022 – Mr. Macron went to Moscow to see Mr. Putin with a simple 4-stage plan in mind.

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Iran-Russia Hit Maximum Strategy
Pepe Escobar | The Cradle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 31 Jan 2022

21 Jan 2022 – Three ain’t a crowd: The Iran-Russia summit this week, concurrent with RIC military drills in the Sea of Oman, in advance of a Xi-Putin meeting in two weeks, suggests a rapidly-advancing strategic vision for the three Eurasian powers.

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Mr. Xi Plays Davos Man
Pepe Escobar – TRANSCEND Media Service, 31 Jan 2022

19 Jan 2022 – A collective West “led” by unspeakable mediocrities looks at the Russia-China strategic partnership as if it was something like a double-headed Anti-Christ. Xi, for his part, seems not to be impressed.

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Will the Islamic World Save Afghanistan?
Pepe Escobar | The Cradle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Dec 2021

21 Dec 2021 – Between the complex internal dynamics of the Taliban and the western trick of conditional aid, it is the Muslim world that must act to save Afghanistan.

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What Putin Really Told Biden
Pepe Escobar | Asia Times – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Dec 2021

8 Dec 2021 – So Russian President Vladimir Putin, by himself, and United States President Joe Biden, surrounded by aides, finally had their secret video link conference for two hours and two minutes – with translators placed in different rooms. Both leaders dropped their respective rhetorical gauntlets but nobody really expects Russia to invade Ukraine.

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Fauci as Darth Vader of the Covid Wars
Pepe Escobar | The Unz Review – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Nov 2021

25 Nov 2021 – A rollicking review of RF Kennedy Jr’s, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health

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The World According to Vladimir Putin
Pepe Escobar | Global Research – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Nov 2021

23 Oct 2021 – Russian president, in Sochi, lays down the law in favor of conservatism – says the woke West is in decline.

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From Russia, with (Taliban) Love
Pepe Escobar | The Cradle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Oct 2021

21 Oct 2021 – Asia’s powerbrokers dropped an Afghan bombshell in Moscow today: ‘The country’s reconstruction must be paid for by its military occupiers of 20 years.’

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What to Expect from Taliban 2.0
Pepe Escobar | Asia Times – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Sep 2021

8 Sep 2021 – A wiser, better-traveled and social media-savvy Taliban will strive to avoid the many dire mistakes of its 1996-2001 rule.

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Blowback: Taliban Target US Intel’s Shadow Army
Pepe Escobar | The Cradle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Sep 2021

27 Aug 2021 – The Kabul Airport bombing shows there are shadowy forces in Afghanistan, willing to disrupt a peaceful transition after US troops leave. But what about US intel’s own ‘shadow army,’ amassed over two decades of occupation? Who are they, and what is their agenda?

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Who Profits from the Kabul Suicide Bombing?
Pepe Escobar | Asia Times – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Aug 2021

27 Aug 2021 – The horrific Kabul suicide bombing by ISIS-Khorasan aims to introduce an extra vector in an already incandescent situation: to prove, to Afghans and to the outside world, that the nascent Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, Taliban, is incapable of securing the capital.

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The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Back with a Bang
Pepe Escobar | Asia Times – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Aug 2021

16 Aug 2021 – In the end, the Saigon moment happened faster than any Western intel “expert” expected. Four frantic days of the most astonishing guerrilla blitzkrieg of recent times, Afghan-style: lots of persuasion, lots of tribal deals, zero columns of tanks, minimal loss of blood. The US ‘loss’ of Afghanistan is a repositioning and the new mission is not a ‘war on terror,’ but Russia and China.

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How Myanmar Fits into China’s New Silk Roads
Pepe Escobar | InsideOver – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Aug 2021

4 Aug 2021 – How Beijing approaches the Myanmar maze is conditioned by four variables: natural gas; water; the drug trade; and the fractious clashes between the Tatmadaw and a dizzying patchwork of over 135 ethnic minorities.

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Shanghai Cooperation Organization New Great Game Gets Back to Basics in Afghanistan
Pepe Escobar | Asia Times – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Jul 2021

13 Jul 2021 – Russia-China-Iran Alliance Is Taking Afghanistan’s Bull by the Horns

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From History: Afghanistan and the CIA Heroin Ratline
Pepe Escobar | Sputnik - TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Jul 2021

27 Aug 2017 – Up to 93% of the world’s opium comes from Afghanistan. Near the top of the Persian Gulf’s array of extremely compromising secrets is the Afghan heroin ratline – with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) positioned as the golden node of a transnational, trillion dollar heroin money laundering operation.

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A Saigon Moment in the Hindu Kush
Pepe Escobar | Asia Times - TRANSCEND Media Service, 12 Jul 2021

7 Jul 2021 – The US is on the verge of its own second Vietnam repeated as farce in a haphazard retreat from Afghanistan. Let’s start with some stunning facts on the Afghan ground.

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The Chinese Miracle, Revisited
Pepe Escobar | Strategic Culture Foundation - TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Jul 2021

The Chinese Communist Party’s centennial takes place on 1 July at the heart of an incandescent geopolitical equation. China, the emerging superpower, is back to the global prominence it enjoyed throughout centuries of recorded history, while the declining Hegemon is paralyzed by the “existential challenge” posed to its fleeting, unilateral dominance.

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The Real B3W-NATO Agenda
Pepe Escobar | Global Research - TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Jun 2021

16 Jun 2021 – The NATO summit communiqué concise low down: Russia is an “acute threat” and China is a “systemic challenge”. NATO, of course, are just a bunch of innocent kids building castles in a sandbox. Those were the days when Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay, NATO’s first secretary-general, coined the trans-Atlantic purpose: to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”

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Lula in a Wilderness of Mirrors in Brazil
Pepe Escobar | Asia Times - TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Mar 2021

17 Mar 2021 – Still in the legal woods and not daring to project as a revolutionary leader, Lula should nonetheless never be underestimated. His best bet will be to hit the road, unleash the battered working masses in the streets, energize them, talk to them, listen to them. And act like the true leader of the Global South he never ceased to be.

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No Escape from Our Techno-Feudal World
Pepe Escobar | Global Research - TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Dec 2020

3 Dec 2020 – The Digital Age was crucially associated with right-wing ideology from the very start. The incubation was provided by the Progress and Freedom Foundation (PFF), active from 1993 to 2010 and conveniently funded, among others, by Microsoft, At&T, Disney, Sony, Oracle, Google and Yahoo. In 1994, PFF held a ground-breaking conference in Atlanta that eventually led to a seminal Magna Carta: literally, Cyberspace and the American Dream: a Magna Carta for the Knowledge Era, published in 1996, during the first Clinton term.

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First Comes a Rolling Civil War
Pepe Escobar | Asia Times/Global Research - TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Nov 2020

10 Nov 2020 – Biden is on a double precipice of the worst-ever economic depression coupled with imminent explosions of social rage. The massive psyops is ongoing. This is a live exercise. Yet no one knows exactly how it will end.

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Julian Assange, Prometheus Bound
Pepe Escobar | Consortium News - TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Sep 2020

8 Sep 2020 – This is the tale of an Ancient Greek tragedy reenacted in AngloAmerica. Amid thundering silence and nearly universal indifference, chained, immobile, invisible, a squalid Prometheus was transferred from the gallows for a show trial in a faux Gothic court built on the site of a medieval prison.

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Everything Going According to Plan in China
Pepe Escobar | The Transnational - TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Sep 2020

24 Aug 2020 – China plans not only in years, but in decades. Five year plans are complemented by ten and 15 year plans. The Belt and Road Initiative is in fact a nearly 40-year plan, designed in 2013 to be completed in 2049. And continuity is the name of the game. The contours of China’s long-term strategy for the new Cold War are quickly coming into view.

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Brazil’s Money Laundering Scandal from Hell
Pepe Escobar | Asia Times - TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Aug 2020

23 Jul 2020 – What is now termed “the Banestado leaks” and “CC5gate” is straight out of vintage WikiLeaks: a list, published for the first time in full, naming names and detailing one of the biggest corruption and money laundering cases in the world in the past three decades. With no one eager to talk about the revelations, the question is what will ex-president Lula do about it.

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The Heart of the Matter in the South China Sea
Pepe Escobar | Asia Times - TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Aug 2020

30 Jul 2020 – The battle for the contested maritime region is over before the shooting even begins and China has won.

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China Locked in Hybrid War with US
Pepe Escobar - Global Researcj, 23 Mar 2020

18 Mar 2020 – Among the myriad, earth-shattering geopolitical effects of coronavirus, one is already graphically evident. China has re-positioned itself. For the first time since the start of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1978, Beijing openly regards the US as a threat, as stated a month ago by Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Munich Security Conference during the peak of the fight against coronavirus. 

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Munich Conference Reveals East-West Divide
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times, 24 Feb 2020

19 Feb 2020 – Few postmodern political pantomimes have been more revealing than the hundreds of so-called “international decision-makers,” mostly Western, waxing lyrical, disgusted or nostalgic over “Westlessness” at the Munich Security Conference.

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China’s Virus Response Has Been ‘Breathtaking’
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times, 3 Feb 2020

30 Jan 2020 – Chinese scientists have already handed over to Russian counterparts the virus genome, with snap tests able to identify it in a human body within two hours. A Russia-China vaccine is under development.

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Pamir Highway: The Road on the Roof of the World (I)
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times, 23 Dec 2019

12 Dec 2019 – This is arguably the ultimate road trip on earth. Marco Polo did it. All the legendary Silk Road explorers did it. Traveling the Pamir Highway back to back, as a harsh winter approaches, able to appreciate it in full, in silence and solitude, offers not only a historical plunge into the intricacies of the ancient Silk Road but a glimpse of what the future may bring in the form of the New Silk Roads.

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Cruising Pamir Highway, the Heart of the Heartland (II)
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times, 23 Dec 2019

14 Dec 2019 – A privileged microcosm of what is evolving as the intersection between the New Silk Roads and Greater Eurasia.

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New Silk Roads in Action at China-Kazakh Border
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times, 9 Dec 2019

4 Dec 2019 – Central Asia, Between China and Europe, Is Bustling

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The RCEP Train Left the ASEAN Station Leaving India Behind
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times, 11 Nov 2019

5 Nov 2019 – Biggest story at the ASEAN Summit was convergence of moves for Asia integration through the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, leaving Delhi out for now.

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Caliph Closure: ‘He Died Like a Dog’
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times, 4 Nov 2019

28 Oct 2019 – The “died as a dog” movie can also be interpreted as the liquidation of a formerly useful asset that was a valued component of the gift that keeps on giving, the never-ending Global War on Terror. Other scarecrows, and other movies, await. Trump’s victory-lap movie version buries the embarrassing story of deploying tanks to ‘protect’ Syrian oilfields.

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Kurds Face Stark Options after US Pullback
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times, 21 Oct 2019

14 Oct 2019 – In the annals of bombastic Trump tweets, this one is simply astonishing: here we have a President of the United States, on the record, unmasking the whole $8-trillion intervention in the Middle East as an endless war based on a “false premise.” No wonder the Pentagon is not amused. Forget an independent Kurdistan: They may have to do a deal with Damascus on sharing their area with Sunni Arab refugees.

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BRICS Was Created as a Tool of Attack: Lula
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times, 9 Sep 2019

29 Aug 2019 – In a wide-ranging, two-hour-plus, exclusive interview from a prison room in Curitiba in southern Brazil, former Brazilian president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva re-emerged for the first time, after more than 500 days in jail, and sent a clear message to the world.

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Hong Kong, Kashmir: A Tale of Two Occupations
Pepe Escobar | Strategic Culture Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Aug 2019

Much to the distress of neocons and humanitarian imperialists, there won’t be a bloody mainland China crackdown on protesters in Hong Kong – a Tiananmen 2.0. Why? Because it’s not worth it. While China identified “Occupy Hong Kong” as a mere Western-instilled and instrumentalized plot, India, for its part, decided to go for Full Occupy in Kashmir. Welcome to the Kashmiri Intifada.

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The Dragon Lays out Its Road Map, Denies Seeking Hegemony
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times, 5 Aug 2019

27 Jul 2019 – China’s ‘National Defense in the New Era’ white paper shows where the country aims to be by 2049. The key merit of China’s National Defense in the New Era, a white paper released by the State Council in Beijing, is to clear any remaining doubts about where the Middle Kingdom is coming from, and where it’s going to.

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Debunking the Indo-Pacific Myth
Pepe Escobar | Strategic Culture Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Jul 2019

9 Jul 2019 – The Trump administration is obsessively spinning the concept of a “free and open Indo-Pacific”. Apart from a small coterie of scholars, very few people around the world, especially across the Global South, know what that means. Now everything one needs to know – and especially not know – about the Indo-Pacific is contained in a detailed Pentagon report.

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Iran Goes for “Maximum Counter-Pressure”
Pepe Escobar | Strategic Culture Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jul 2019

20 Jun 2019 – Sooner or later the US “maximum pressure” on Iran would inevitably be met by “maximum counter-pressure”. Sparks are ominously bound to fly. As I previously reported, shutting down the Strait of Hormuz would destroy the American economy by detonating the $1.2 quadrillion derivatives market; and that would collapse the world banking system, crushing the world’s $80 trillion GDP and causing an unprecedented depression.

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Where the Silk Roads Meet the Mighty Mekong
Pepe Escobar – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Apr 2019

26 Apr 2019 – Sleepy, landlocked Laos is undergoing rapid changes as China builds connections to mainland Southeast Asia… It’s this extremely complex, fragile, social and environmental system that from 2021 will have to learn to coexist with the era of the high-speed naga.

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The Inside Story of the Saudi Night of Long Knives
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times, 13 Nov 2017

6 Nov 2017 – Princes, ministers and a billionaire are ‘imprisoned’ in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton while the Saudi Arabian Army is said to be in an uproar.

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The BRICS Strike Back
Pepe Escobar – Russia Today, 11 Sep 2017

6 Sep 2017 – The wide-ranging Xiamen Declaration, issued in conjunction with the just wrapped-up annual BRICS summit, shows that Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, although facing internal challenges of their own, may be about to step up their collective game, big time.

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Afghanistan and the CIA Heroin Ratline
Pepe Escobar - Sputnik News, 4 Sep 2017

25 Aug 2017 – Afghanistan is infested by contractors; numbers vary from 10,000 to tens of thousands. Military and ex-military alike can be reasonably pinpointed as players in the heroin ratline — in many cases for personal profit. But the clincher concerns the financing of US intel black ops that should not by any means come under scrutiny by the US Congress.

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Imperial Folly Brings Russia and Germany Together
Pepe Escobar – Sputnik News, 31 Jul 2017

29 Jul 2017 – Economic war has been declared against Russia for at least three years now. The difference is this latest package also declares economic war against Europe, especially Germany. Make no mistake; the EU leadership will counterpunch. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, put it mildly when he said, “America first cannot mean that Europe’s interests come last.”

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Empire of Whiners
Pepe Escobar – Sputnik News, 31 Jul 2017

As a new report by the Army War College tracks the loss of “US primacy” around the world, it prescribes more of the same; propaganda, surveillance and war.

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House of Saudi Cards: The Inside Story
Pepe Escobar – Sputnik News, 26 Jun 2017

Just when geopolitical practitioners were betting on regime change in Qatar – orchestrated by a desperate House of Saud – regime change ended up happening in Riyadh, orchestrated by Warrior Prince, Destroyer of Yemen and Blockader of Qatar, Mohammad bin Salman.

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The West Can’t Smell What Eurasia is Cooking
Pepe Escobar – Sputnik News, 19 Jun 2017

A tectonic geopolitical shift happened in Astana, Kazakhstan, only a few days ago, and yet barely a ripple registered in Atlanticist circles.

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Trump’s Sword Dance Sets Off the War of the Wahhabis
Pepe Escobar – Sputnik News, 12 Jun 2017

7 Jun 2017 – The fact is the House of Saud went amok, in a flash, going after Qatar and bombing from the inside that glorious Arab NATO project – call it NATOGCC — sworn with pomp over a glowing orb. US President Donald Trump could not possibly have predicted the game-changing after-effects of his triumphal sword dance in Riyadh. Or could he?

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Putin Aligns with Xi in Crafting the New World (Trade) Order
Pepe Escobar – Russia Today, 22 May 2017

15 May 2017 – History will record the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing marked the juncture where the 21st century New Silk Roads assumed their full character of Globalization 2.0, or “inclusive globalization,” as defined by President Xi Jinping in Davos earlier this year.

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The Decline of the West Revisited
Pepe Escobar – Sputnik News, 15 May 2017

Europa, in Greek mythology, was a Phoenician princess abducted by Zeus and carried off to Crete. In time, Europe was meant to designate the western extreme of Eurasia. Europe, essentially, was the quite provincial Western seed that then sprouted an octopus: the global West.

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Why Washington is Terrified of Russia, China
Pepe Escobar – Sputnik News, 1 May 2017

The Russia-China strategic partnership, uniting the Pentagon’s avowed top two “existential” threats to America, does not come with a formal treaty signed with pomp, circumstance – and a military parade.

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Daesh, Creature of the West
Pepe Escobar - Sputnik News International, 27 Mar 2017

James Shea, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Emerging Threats at NATO – now that’s a lovely title – recently gave a talk at a private club in London on the Islamic State/Daesh. Shea, as many will remember, made his name as NATO’s spokesman during the NATO war on Yugoslavia in 1999. In the end, Shea frankly admitted that Gen David Petraeus, conductor of the much-lauded 2007 surge, had trained these Sunnis now part of Daesh in Anbar province in Iraq.

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The ‘Birth Pangs’ of a New Middle East, Remixed
Pepe Escobar – Sputnik News, 20 Mar 2017

You all remember former US Secretary of State Condi Rice’s notorious 2006 prediction about “birth pangs of a New Middle East.” True to the George “Dubya” Bush/Cheney regime, Condi got it all spectacularly wrong. By now it’s much clearer who’s configuring the birth pagans of a new Middle East. It’s not Israel. It’s not the House of Saud. And it’s not exactly Trump.

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Eurasia Integration: A Three-Speed Affair
Pepe Escobar – Sputnik News, 27 Feb 2017

Europe, relatively integrated, lives today in a de facto two-speed reality. Eurasia integration, a work in progress and with vastly more reach, is for the moment a three-speed process, as seen through the positioning of three Central Asian “stans”.

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The Pivot to China
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times, 13 Feb 2017

Trump may have already understood that a trade war is a lose-lose proposition. In the absence of an Asian economic version of NATO (the dead-in-the water Trans-Pacific Partnership), the emphasis will be on “vigilant” allies/semi-disguised vassals such as Japan, South Korea and Australia. Meantime, Beijing is delivering its strategic vision for a new Pax Sinica.

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China ‘Marco Polo’ Xi Jinping Starts Jockeying in Post-Obama World
Pepe Escobar - Russia Today, 28 Nov 2016

17 Nov 2016 – Beijing and Moscow have arrived at the conclusion that President-elect Donald Trump is not an ideologue in the neocon sense of the term; he’s a pragmatist. Therefore, resets are inevitable, as well as surprises.

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Welcome to the Brave New (Trumpolitical/Trumponomic) World
Pepe Escobar | Strategic Culture Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Nov 2016

17 Nov 2016 – We will be living among the myriad debris originated by the Trumpolitics IED. America invented the politically correct. Trump bombed politically correct. America is proud of corporate media. Trump bombed corporate media. These are already two important victories.

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Why the New Silk Roads Terrify Washington
Pepe Escobar – Russia Today, 10 Oct 2016

7 Oct 2016 – Almost six years ago, President Putin proposed to Germany ‘the creation of a harmonious economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok.’ Washington panicked. The record shows how Putin’s vision – although extremely seductive to German industrialists – was eventually derailed by Washington’s controlled demolition of Ukraine.

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Non-Aligned to… Nowhere?
Pepe Escobar | Strategic Culture Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Sep 2016

22 Sep 2016 – The summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) came and went in Isla Margarita, Venezuela, virtually invisible to Western corporate media. NAM nowadays congregates every African nation except South Sudan; most of Latin America – except Brazil, Argentina and Mexico (they are observers); and most of Asia and the Middle East (China is an observer).

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