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La réaction des marchés russes au 20ème paquet de sanctions

Par : Oleg Nesterenko

Dans un communiqué de presse du 23 avril 2026, la Commission européenne proclame l’adoption du « 20ème train de sanctions

L’article La réaction des marchés russes au 20ème paquet de sanctions est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.

Orban perd les législatives après 15 ans au pouvoir

Par : ActuStratpol

Viktor Orbán et son parti, le Fidesz, ont perdu les élections hongroises. Sans attendre le dépouillement définitif, le Premier ministre

L’article Orban perd les législatives après 15 ans au pouvoir est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.

Au cœur du tumulte, le silence administré

Par : STRATPOL

les démocraties libérales occidentales, et en particulier l’Union européenne, connaissent un glissement profond dans leur manière de gouverner l’expression politique. Ce glissement ne se manifeste ni par l’abolition formelle des libertés fondamentales ni par l’instauration assumée d’un régime autoritaire. Il se produit de manière subtile, plus sophistiquée et, par conséquent, plus effrayante : en remplaçant progressivement les procédures judiciaires publiques et les débats argumentés par des procédures administratives pour classer, restreindre et punir les discours perçus comme politiquement inacceptables.

L’article Au cœur du tumulte, le silence administré est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.

Zelensky impose des sanctions contre Loukachenko

Par : ActuStratpol

Volodymyr Zelensky a signé un décret imposant des sanctions au président biélorusse Alexandre Loukachenko. Selon le document, les sanctions comprennent

L’article Zelensky impose des sanctions contre Loukachenko est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.

All in the family. A new book for your consideration: ‘Nadine’s Story’

Par : gilbertdoctorow

Years ago, Luigi, one of my colleagues at work in the European headquarters of ITT, the world’s biggest ‘conglomerate’ at the time, shared some family wisdom over lunch in his home as we enjoyed the spaghetti that he jokingly claimed was the end result of a thousand years of Italian culinary development. Based on his own marital experience of a failed first marriage, he warned that two artists in a family are one too many. To that I would add today, that one artist in the family is just right for purposes of putting bread on the table and having thought provoking conversation between the partners in a marriage.

In our family, we are both historians.  As you probably know, I received a doctorate in history for which I produced a book that was published as separate articles in scholarly journals at the time. That is to say, I have an academic approach to history and employ the related investigative techniques in my essays, including parsing texts, on global politics today.

My wife, Larisa Vladimirovna Zalesova, is also interested in and writes about the historical past, both recent history and history going back to the start of the 20th century. But she practices a different craft as a novelist. Therein she is the ‘artist’ in our family.

Historical novels are especially attractive to the broad public because they are entertaining. The author enters the minds of the protagonists in a way that academic historians most often cannot do for lack of substantiating documentation, written and otherwise. The limitations of an academic historian in this regard became clear to me in my doctoral research when I entered the archival funds of the Russian legislators and statesmen responsible for the creation of Russia’s first parliament in 1905– and came up with dry dust, not living and breathing persons.

Historical novels like the one I am recommending here, the just published Nadine’s Story. Scenes from Life, draw on the author’s life experience with living and breathing people of today. There is no need to document every sentence with references, which can weigh down the writing of academic historians. And, as a bonus, the novelist can depict ‘scenes from life’ that your academic writer dares not touch such as the erotic and sexually explicit.

Nadine’s Story is a sophisticated piece of adult literature and I will say no more here on that issue.

Two weeks ago, Nadine’s Story was released as a paperback by Amazon into its worldwide distribution network of country websites, amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.fr, amazon.com.au, amazon.co.jp etc. It is now available through this same global network in ebook format at just under 10 dollars U.S. and the equivalent in local currencies outside the U.S.

Some of these websites already have a ‘look inside’ feature on the book’s web page that allows you to read the first 5 pages online to get a ‘feel’ for the writing style.  Regrettably this ‘look inside’ omits the Foreword which I think is especially useful for potential readers to appreciate the work they are about to acquire.  Accordingly, I reproduce that Foreword here below.

                                                                      *****

                                                                    Foreword

The novel Nadine’s Story was written over thirty years ago and is set in the time period of fifty years ago. In the meantime, almost all of our assumptions about life, about the “free world” and about the USSR have changed dramatically. This necessarily poses several questions which require an answer before the reader undertakes a journey into that world by opening the pages of this novel.

In the Soviet era, it was commonplace for authors to hold their manuscripts in a desk drawer for years before their eventual publication. The reason can be summed up in one word:  censorship. Many widely recognized novels and works of documentary literature from the whole opus of 20th century publications had that fate. Individual works saw print during periods of “thaw,” as for example under the stewardship of Nikita Khrushchev. Many more saw the light of day when the Soviet system of thought control began to crumble under Mikhail Gorbachev and his policy of “Glasnost” in the 1980s.  With the new freedoms which Russians enjoyed when the country closed the door on Communism in the 1990s, still more manuscripts were withdrawn from drawers and found publishers.  One such work, Other People’s Letters by the author Alexander Morozov even won the Russian Booker Prize in 1998, though it stirred up much debate over the practice of publishing works decades after they were written.

In the case of Nadine’s Story, its long resting period till now was due to another kind of ‘censorship’ as practiced in the West: the stranglehold on publishing enjoyed till recently by the established network of publishing houses with their own agendas or ‘programs’ as they call it, interlinked with an established network of literary agents. The match between art and commerce was always fragile. The system had and has limited ability to promote more than a tiny fraction of works of merit outside their own stable of authors.

When Nadine fell victim to the exclusionary policies of publishers in the 1990s, the author moved on to other literary challenges, eventually finding a publisher in 2010 for her second novel, Live as Before (in Russian Живи как прежде) within the St Petersburg literary journal Zvezda, which had long published her articles on cultural affairs in Western Europe.  In 2019, another well-established publisher in the same city, Liki Rossii, produced the Russian-language edition of the author’s next novel, Мозаика моей жизни.  Meanwhile, for the English language edition, The Mosaic of My Life, the author turned to the American specialist company in self-publishing and print-on-demand, Author House.

This last favorable experience, which was reconfirmed with the publication soon afterwards of Zalesova’s first venture into travel literature, Dacha Tales: Life in the Russian Hinterland, persuaded her to dust off and publish Nadine.

As they say, what goes around, comes around. There is a new timeliness to this thirty-year-old manuscript which comes from immigration having become headline news in Western Europe and the USA these past few years. Indeed, the author’s last published novel, The Mosaic of My Life (2020), though covering the broad sweep of Russian history from before the Revolution to the 1970s, in passing had as an issue the question that tormented so many Russians over three generations: whether to remain in their homeland or to leave for better shores at the earliest opportunity come what may. In Nadine, this question is foremost in the mind of the heroine from start to finish.

In the course of the 20th century, Russia lost millions of its citizens not only to political repression and the cruelty of wartime. It also saw repeated exoduses, both officially sanctioned and by stealth.  In the relative stable times under Leonid Brezhnev and his immediate successors, there were several high-profile defections that caught the imagination of the Western world, all the more so as those who fled were among the world’s most gifted artists who changed the perception of ballet the world over for several decades: Rudolf Nureyev, Alexander Baryshnikov, Natalya Makarova. 

Their daring escapes were explained by one motive only:  “I chose freedom.”  What was largely overlooked was that these stars also chose full-blooded careers and artistic development that was denied to them not just because of the constraints of a command economy and authoritarian regime but by the excess of talent around them.  Russia simply had too many of the world’s best talent on hand for the good of its star performers and their time on stage was much less ample than their ambition rightly demanded. With their departure, Russian performing arts obviously lost some of its best calling cards abroad, but did not implode.

In a broader sense, the emigration of countless talented people from Russia to Silicon Valley and to other employment niches in the West did not strip the country of its brains.  The phoenix-like recovery of Russian industry, agriculture and culture in the new millennium attests to the sufficient supply in Russia of world quality masters in a great variety of domains.

The novel Nadine explores the question of staying or leaving from a variety of angles, mostly personal and imbedded in the family life of the heroine. I am confident this story will find its place in the ongoing exploration of emigration worldwide.

gilbertdoctorow

Commission d’enquête sur l’audiovisuel public : un savoureux festival.

Par : Régis de Castelnau
Infractions pénales probables à tous les étages. Mais comme d’habitude il ne se passera rien. Coucou les amis magistrats, normalement il devrait y avoir un peu de travail en perspective pour vous. La Commission d’enquête parlementaire sur l’audiovisuel public, vous… Lire la suite →

Sanctions contre Xavier Moreau et Jacques Baud : chronique du fascisme déjà là.

Par : Régis de Castelnau
Les mesures qui frappent Jacques Baud et Xavier Moreau sont marquées du plus parfait arbitraire. Ce qui est une des marques du fascisme. Qui toujours et partout criminalise l’expression de l’opposition à un pouvoir d’État illégitime. Défendre des idées, des… Lire la suite →

Le Japon refuse de saisir les actifs russes

Par : ActuStratpol

japon saisie

Le plan de l’UE visant à utiliser les avoirs russes gelés pour soutenir l’Ukraine a subi un revers important, voire

Israel‘s Zionist Self-Destruction | Y. Rabkin, M. Ramos & J. Sachs

Par : amarynth

Euro-American Zionism (Jewish and Christian) has killed millions in West Asia, devastated the region, and it is the motor behind the Gaza Genocide. But Israel itself is under threat of falling pray to the deadly logic that birthed the state in the first place.

Today we are holding a panel discussion on what makes Zionism such a dangerous and ultimately even self-negating force.

I‘m joined by 3 world class academics: Professor Yakov Rabkin of Montreal University, Professor Manuel Ramos of the University Institut of Lisbon, and Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Colombia University.

A necessary change in perspective as a result of a shift in gravity (No Rules Commenting!)

Par : amarynth

All social media and many reliable media are in chaos.  The major issues:

  • Gen Z riots are breaking out in strange places.

 

  • China and Japan.  The discussion in China (formal segment) is whether they should let the diplomatic Wolf Warriors loose again.  I have never seen the Chinese commentary so heated.

  • There is utter hysteria in the US and western spheres as can be seen with the resignation of Taylor-Greene and Trump’s mocking of all.

 

  • – The EU and NATO are fully involved in changing any hope for peace for Russia.  They are insane in their pronouncements, and the crusades never ended.  This cockroach scattering mob used half of the G20 meeting for their meetings to create a different plan, and is continuing to fly across the western world having worthless meetings to attempt to prove their relevance

 

  • Russian society is in upheaval because of the so-called peace plan.  The small change that the Ukraine sneakily did on the draft, was revealed by Kirill Dmitriev

 

  • The LAC has to defend itself against military and 5th gen all vectors warfare, instead of productively building its societies.

 

  • Iran has to call out their readiness for war and attacks daily

 

  • Peace has been changed to resource grabs (Gaza and West Asia only to start the list)

 

  • Africa is walking through the desert with neo-colonial leaders and colonial warmongers and bright spots here and there, harshly suppressed by using the new African methodology consisting of newly woken up Islamist terror forces

 

  • The Arab countries are sweet-talking the Trump administration with bags full of money, which may or may not appear.

 

  • The G20 has fallen into a miserable hole where the EU and NATO cockroach mob  ignore Russian media questions.  Really!  They walk if they see a Russian as their words will give them away.

 

 

  • In the resistance, harsh cracks are appearing as well, courtesy of a few journalists who have taken it upon themselves to wage holy jihad against Russia and China, BRICS, and every initiative they can lay their hands on.  There is a complete cratering of trust, and these folks are not doing anyone any favors.  This is also a pretence, the pretence being that they are so above the rest that they see what is wrong with the whole world.  Never a good word will pass their lips.  First, this was because Russia did not fight for Syria, and now it is burning because Russia and China refuse to veto the Gaza peace plan.   It is, unfortunately, not a critique of an issue but a continual cry.

Even Sony Thăng started speaking out, only to be met with screeds and pages of justifications.  These journalists feel scorned because Russia, China, and BRICS are not taking the action they decided should be taken.    

  • The only certainty that there is, is that the Russian Defense Forces will continue fighting in Ukraine – you can set your alarm clock by their reports.

 

👊In addition, we have AI.  Here we have to change our perspective.  Whereas before we ‘trusted’ certain information from well-known and reliable journos, essayists, and commentators, our default position now has to change.  We cannot believe what our eyes see or what our ears hear.

Trust Nothing Unless Verified.  Everything is someone else’s opinion.  Use extreme informational filters on everything and everybody.  Don’t stop resisting!

The reality is that even the good can become crazy overnight, as this level of crazy is communicable.

Is the move to multipolarity fun enough for you yet?

This is the NO RULES commenting thread.  Say what you want.  I just did and have more.  Your karma is yours.

 

Venezuela Sit Rep: the reason for the struggle

Par : AHH

Verily, it is Victory or Martyrdom. 

Venezuelans have a “true sense of belonging to a project worth saving.. This is a project of collective self-emancipation. .. Those who are committed to the Bolivarian revolution assume themselves as subjects of transformation, not as victims. And this is something to be reckoned with.”

Video Description:
“I’m joined by Cira Pasqual Marquina, author and educator at the Pluriversidad Patria Grande and co-host with Chris Gilbert of the Marxist education program and podcast Escuela de Cuadros.
I ask her:

  • how are Venezuelans seeing this buildup?
  • What is the analysis of the regional context?
  • Why is the US doing this now?
  • What the Venezuelan revolution is really about
  • And some speculations for the “day after” the US attack happens”

≈≈≈


Cira Pascual Marquina interviews at Venezuelanalysis.

The Imperialist Offensive is Nothing New for the Bolivarian Revolution’: A Conversation with Ana Maldonado

A Chavista organizer examines the US militarization of the Caribbean and the Bolivarian Revolution’s enduring resistance to imperial aggression.

In recent months, Washington has stepped up its military presence in the Caribbean, sending warships, aircraft, and even a nuclear submarine to waters near Venezuela amid extrajudicial attacks on fishing vessels. For many, this new phase of aggression is all too familiar — part of a decades-long campaign of hybrid warfare designed to undermine Venezuela’s sovereignty.

In this context, Cira Pascual Marquina spoke with Ana Maldonado, a sociologist, international relations coordinator for the Francisco de Miranda Front—a national Chavista movement—and member of the Venezuelan chapter of ALBA Movements. In this interview, Maldonado offers her perspective on how Venezuelans are experiencing the latest imperialist escalation, reflects on the country’s long resistance to hybrid war, and situates the current threat within the broader struggle for sovereignty in Latin America and the Caribbean.

How are the Venezuelan people experiencing this new imperialist escalation?

President Nicolás Maduro has said that in this scenario of maximum pressure, our response must be maximum preparation. At the same time, he has called on us to combine vigilance with calm, to continue our daily lives, and to defend the peace with social justice that has cost us so much to build and preserve.

You can see this clearly in the fact that, even amid the current military escalation, the new school year began normally across the country. More than 20,000 educational institutions opened their doors without disruption, and over six million children and youth returned to class, as they do every year around this time.

While we are indeed facing a serious threat of war, people are also carrying on with their everyday lives and that, in itself, is a victory, since the enemy seeks precisely to disrupt our life.

People abroad are often surprised to learn that daily routines here continue undisturbed and that Venezuelans are not living in a state of panic. How do you explain this?

This is far from our first encounter with imperialist aggression. The tactics may shift, but the strategy remains unchanged: hybrid warfare. For years, US imperialism and its allies have waged a relentless campaign against Venezuela, beginning in earnest in April 2002 with the coup d’état and the people’s heroic counteroffensive that restored democracy. That was followed by the oil sabotage, mercenary incursions, and global media campaigns against our democracy.

After Comandante Chávez passed in 2013, a new and sustained period of aggression began. Initially, they bet that we would fail to hold peaceful elections or that President Maduro would never be elected. The dominant narrative was “Maduro is not Chávez.” With that simplistic argument, they sought to demoralize the Chavista social base, implying that the Bolivarian project would not withstand the loss of the Comandante. Yet we won the elections and, even as we mourned Chávez, the project continued.

But the US and their local agents were determined not to let us go on with our revolution. In 2014, the opposition launched a violent campaign called “La Salida” [The Exit], led by Voluntad Popular and María Corina Machado, the same factions now openly calling for foreign intervention. The following year, the United States took another war-like step: Obama’s 2015 executive order declaring Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat.”

That decree was followed by the 2016 economic strangulation, marked by deliberate shortages aimed at making everyday life unbearable. Ten years later, we remain under a blockade that has killed tens of thousands.

In 2017, the most extreme factions of the opposition returned to the streets with fascist violence, committing atrocities such as the burning alive of a young Black man, Orlando Figuera, targeted simply for looking like a Chavista. More than 100 people were killed during this period of intensified fascist terror.

President Maduro responded by calling for a National Constituent Assembly, once again raising the banner of peace and democracy in the face of fascist violence. People from all sectors, including residents of middle-class neighborhoods whose polling centers had been attacked, were able to vote in peace at the Poliedro de Caracas.

Since then, we’ve lived through multiple phases of hybrid war: Juan Guaidó’s self-proclamation as “interim president” in 2019 and the “Battle of the Bridges,” when the opposition attempted to stage a false-flag operation on the Colombian border under the guise of a humanitarian aid effort. That was followed by massive blackouts that left the country in darkness for days and the 2020 Operation Gideon, recently further exposed in a Max Blumenthal interview with its US organizer, Jordan Goudreau, a former Green Beret.

None of these were isolated incidents: they are coordinated fronts in a sustained hybrid war combining political, psychological, economic, and military aggression.

Yet, in each of these moments, the government and the organized pueblo have responded effectively. During the 2019 electrical sabotage, for example, communities mobilized to ensure access to water and basic needs, while Operation Gideon was defeated by the same fisherfolk who are now being attacked in the Southern Caribbean.

So, to return to your original question: yes, people are alert because the threat is real, but we are also seasoned and organized. We know we are capable of defending the Revolution with unity and discipline. We are in a phase of maximum preparation, with millions voluntarily enrolling in the militia and preparing for the defense of the Patria [homeland].

Indeed, people are not only enlisting in the Bolivarian Militia but also preparing collectively. You’ve given us a historical account of the attacks faced by the Bolivarian Revolution over the past 25 years. But as we know, the current military buildup in the Caribbean is not only against Venezuela: it is an attack on the continent. How do you understand its broader implications?

The imperialist onslaught on the Caribbean is nothing new. Haiti, still punished today for its revolution more than two centuries ago, remains under siege. Now, armed gangs tied to the Dominican Republic are also involved. Puerto Rico continues to endure capitalist dispossession, with five million Puerto Ricans now living in the US while barely three million remain on the island. All the while, revolutionary Cuba has faced a brutal blockade for many decades.

However, the recent imperialist military buildup should deeply concern the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, since it signals a shift in Washington’s military policy. Around 10,000 US troops are currently stationed in the Caribbean, mainly in Puerto Rico, to say nothing of the destroyers, nuclear submarine, and air force deployments.

They are not there only to threaten Venezuela; this is the revival of the Monroe Doctrine. As Trump once said, “Why pay for Venezuelan oil, if we can just take it?” That’s how they think about the resources of the continent.

When it comes to Venezuela, beyond seizing our resources, the US also aims to strip away our sovereignty and destroy the example that we represent. If our project succeeds, it will inspire the entire continent. From Canada to Patagonia, people are struggling for liberation, and the Bolivarian Revolution represents a living example of how that can be done.

Attacking Venezuela serves two purposes: to loot our resources and to extinguish the example of participatory democracy. Since 2021, Venezuela has experienced renewed economic growth and the strengthening of its communes and popular power.

That is precisely what Washington wants to halt: they fear that the peoples of Latin America, and even within the United States, will draw inspiration from our experience.

Why the military escalation at this particular moment?

Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” is itself an admission of decline. The US is no longer what it once was, and its elites are desperate to recover lost ground. Yet even within those elites, fractures abound between the neoconservatives, the Zionist zealots, and the MAGA bloc. Their internal contradictions often produce erratic foreign policy decisions.

However, on one point they all agree: war is profitable. The military-industrial complex remains central to sustaining the US economy. So even amid domestic tensions, there is a bipartisan consensus around war as business.

Before the recent attacks on Venezuelan vessels, President Maduro warned that they might attempt to recreate a Gulf of Tonkin incident, because their hunger for war is insatiable. He was right: this aggression is ultimately driven by the economic imperative of feeding the war machine. In a post-Cold War world, it survives through perpetual “hot wars”—and what better front than Venezuela, which is rich in resources and defiant of imperial domination?

Let’s close with Chávez. He declared the Bolivarian Revolution anti-imperialist in 2004, but in truth, it always had a sovereign and anti-imperialist character. Could you reflect on Chávez’s anti-imperialism?

Indeed. The formal declaration came during a historic rally at the Botanical Garden in 2004, but the Revolution was Bolivarian from the start, and Bolívar himself was profoundly anti-imperialist. He warned that the United States seemed “destined by Providence to plague the Americas with misery in the name of liberty.” That same spirit lives in our revolution since day one.

Chávez revived Bolívar’s anti-imperialist legacy as early as 1977, when he created the People’s Army for the Liberation of Venezuela, whose founding document enshrined Bolivarianism and anti-imperialism as guiding principles. Later, in The Blue Book [1991], he outlined the vision of sovereignty and dignity that still guides us. President Maduro calls that text a “historical compass” pointing us steadfastly, no matter how much we have to maneuver, toward our strategic goal: the defense of sovereignty and the rejection of imperial domination.

For us, being anti-imperialist means not only refusing to surrender our resources, but also defending our identity, our dignity, and our very being. The empire’s elites belong nowhere; they want the world to belong to them. We, by contrast, define ourselves by belonging to a land, to a pueblo, and to a history.

That is why even symbolic aggressions, such as the attempt to erase “Bolivarian” from the Republic’s name during the 2002 coup, or mocking us as “venecos” in an attempt to erase our identity, are part of the war.

Bolivarianism and anti-imperialism are also deeply rooted in your organization, the Frente Francisco de Miranda. Can you tell us about it? 

Indeed. In 2003, Fidel and Chávez founded the Frente Francisco de Miranda as a movement of Bolivarian, anti-imperialist social workers. However, anti-imperialism isn’t limited to my organization; it’s in the bloodstream of millions of Venezuelans who have resisted International Monetary Fund impositions since 1989 and continue defending the Bolivarian project today.

To be Chavista is to be anti-imperialist. Chávez was the first Latin American president to recognize Palestine, to support the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, and to speak of our historical debt to Haiti. His backing of these and other liberation struggles was not just a matter of words but also about material support. He also linked the defense of Haiti to a history that, for him, didn’t begin with Pétion and Dessalines, but with Hatuey, the first known hero of an anti-colonial Caribbean rebellion.

That is our Chávez—the anti-imperialist Chávez—whose legacy continues to guide us!

≈≈≈

Cira Pascual Marquina is a Political Science professor at the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela in Caracas. She is also co‐producer and co‐host (with Chris Gilbert) of the Marxist education program Escuela de Cuadros. She is actively engaged with grassroots organizations in Venezuela and abroad, and is dedicated, both as a militant and as an investigator, to communal initiatives.

Reflections on the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunals

Par : AHH

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov: The Anglo-Saxons resisted their creation. They wanted summary mass executions, not justice nor exploration of root causes.

≈≈≈

The fundamental root cause of conflict between the Anglo-American led West and the Rest of Humanity, especially the civilizational-states, is the hypocritical bifurcation in International Law, due to recent precedence of “rules-based order” imposed by the West. This was never agreed to by the others.

It was within artificially created spaces in international law (“one law for thee, one law for me”) that a singular supremacist civilization worked to rule all the others.

“Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi” the Latin for “What is permissible for Jupiter is not permissible for a cow” is the fundamentally unjust hierarchy of the law of the jungle, intolerable to the civilized. It largely worked until recently as they used to hold the incontestible combination of a monopoly on war of scale and economies and wealth accumulation and set the standards and management criteria on which supranational organizations function. But we are at a moment when these fundamental accumulated imbalances are being corrected. A key mechanism involves the return to the letter and spirit of universally agreed tenets of International Law by all.

Of note, Russia led similar efforts at the fair universal application of one law on all. Just prior to WW1, Russian Tsar Nicholas II was instrumental in the creation of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, establishing the first formal statements of the laws of war and war crimes in the body of secular international law. And it is not a coincidence, as just before 1914, that under the pressure of being coerced into comity and equal relations with Others, that yet again the western realm currently flees forward into more War in order to maintain their predatory way of life.

≈≈≈

Video description & excerpts:

Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said the Soviet Union was the driving force behind establishing the Nuremberg Tribunal, arguing that Western powers initially resisted the idea. He claimed the United States and Britain feared a full investigation would expose their pre-war dealings with Nazi Germany. Lavrov also said some Allied leaders preferred mass executions over legal trials, while Moscow pushed for a formal judicial process. He added that core Nuremberg principles remain under pressure in today’s geopolitical climate.

“Question: What do you consider the historical significance of the Nuremberg trials in the post-war years and how did they influence changes in the global order?

Answer: The Nuremberg Tribunal’s founding principles were first formulated during those trials and have become the foundation of modern international law.

  • They abolish the rule of force, enshrining the unacceptability of force and especially the violation of humanitarian principles in any conflict.
  • Perhaps most fundamentally, this is the principle of the inevitability of punishment for crimes of aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
  • All of this was formulated on an international universal scale during the Nuremberg trials and was subsequently organically reflected in the content of numerous conventions adopted by international organizations in other formats and reflected in the principles of international law that formed the basis of the work of the international law commission, the international organizations and the international court of justice.

They also largely take into account the achievements of Nuremberg in their work. The particular significance of the Nuremberg judgment lies in its establishment of no statute of limitations for crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes.

And to our great regret, this decree states that there is no statute of limitations for these crimes and that Nazi ideology, the Nazi party and Nazi structures such as the SS, SD, and others are forever banned. Regrettably, these parts of the decree are currently being seriously tested and are often simply violated.”

A special essay for WordPress readers

Par : gilbertdoctorow

As some of you may be aware, I use this WordPress platform to publish my video interviews and their transcripts. I maintain this platform mainly for the purpose of giving viewers access to my earliest archived essays going back more than a decade. All of my current essays are published elsewhere, on my Substack channel – Armageddon Newsletter. That is open to both free and paid subscribers, and I note that the numbers of subscribers and readers there are many times greater than here on WordPress.

I call this fact out in particular to my Japanese audience. I am very pleased that my latest book “War Diaries” has found a significant number of purchasers on Amazon.co.jp not only in ebook but also in paperback format. This is quite remarkable, because the Japanese market is very hard to crack for writers in English. Since I see Japan among the dozen leading countries watching this WordPress platform daily, may I suggest that you sign up for my Substack platform so that you can read my daily essays and not just see podcasts.

Today I make an exception to my rule against publishing essays on WordPress. The growing controversy in Alternative Media that I have precipitated has become bitter and ad hominem in nature. Accordingly I am obliged to respond, as I do in the essay below:

A riposte to Scott Ritter’s latest calumny

At the top of the profession, the world of geopolitical interview podcasts is fairly narrow. In terms of popularity as measured by viewer numbers on each and every broadcast, there is a cluster of names that come up again and again:  Scott Ritter, Larry Johnson, Jeffrey Sachs, John Mearsheimer. 

To my surprise, over the past 18 months since my first debut on ‘Judging Freedom’ hosted by Andrew Napolitano, I find myself among these leading names. I say ‘surprise’ because this kind of public activity was never in my plans or expectations. I have been in ‘public intellectual’ mode since 2010, when I began publishing analytical essays online and my audience over the years reached to hundreds, then thousands of readers. To be sure, in 2016, when I was the guest on mainstream Russian talk shows on all federal channels, I appeared on programs watched by very large audiences, but that ended in 2017 when Russian TV’s fascination with Americans in the Trump camp came to an end.

cThe idea of reaching 200,000 viewers with a single half-hour interview, as has happened repeatedly over the past year, was something I did not strive for and did not have the means to achieve until my good friend Ray McGovern put me together with Judge Napolitano.

 With respect to Napolitano’s program, where the host himself shares broadly the views of the aforementioned guests, I am an outlier who serves as a useful demonstration of the program’s openness to diversity of opinion, if nothing more, since none of his guests agrees with my positions on this or that as regards Russia. And why should they? Apart from Ray and me, not a single one of the guests on this channel is a Russia expert. Not a single one of them knows more than three words of Russian. We work from very different methodologies, which by itself predetermines outcomes of analysis.

 On another channel, one which came later to prominence and still has lower subscription numbers, that of Professor Glenn Diesen, my views are closer to those of the host and, presumably, to his target audience.

The end result of this process is that I am at the center of controversy in Alternative Media. In an ideal world, that would not be a problem. But in the real world, the controversy has too often been highly personalized and venomous.  There is no one more active in spreading venom than Scott Ritter, who has on air in recent months described me as ‘a moron’ and as ‘a piece of shit.’ So much for politesse.

 In his latest interview with The Judge, he is more careful in choosing his words though in his remark about my travels in Russia, ‘if they let Doctorow back in’ you get an inkling to what kind of skullduggery he is attempting in Moscow and Petersburg during his ongoing visit there.

I invite the Community to watch Ritter’s latest interview with The Judge.  He gratuitously attacks me three or four times over issues big and small. But that is NOT the reason I recommend viewing this interview. It is to see and consider Ritter’s thinking processes, because they are emblematic of how this very popular public figure in Alternative Media bases everything he says about Russia today on what he hears from front line military commanders including the director of a drone unit, from government officials in the energy sector, from intelligence officials. These are, for Ritter, the whole of Russian society, which is fully backing the war, the way it is being waged, the collegial government around President Putin, and Putin himself.  He is not being feted by RT, he says, but is on a book promotion tour.  Indeed! And one may ask who his publisher is and who actually is putting up the funds to host him. He is admittedly not paying his way, which should make the Buyer beware.   I pay for every visit to Petersburg out of my own pocket.

To be very kindly about it, there is a strange naivete in Ritter’s thinking about how Russia stands apart from the ways in which the rest of the world operates.  There can be no internal contradictions between different Russian government agencies! Everyone is pulling in the same direction! No personal ambitions seem to exist!

I have been criticized not only by Ritter for using anecdotal evidence in support of generalizations in my travel reports. I do not deny that because it would be impossible to take in everything happening in that vast country in a methodical, scientific manner in a three-week visit, or even in a three-year visit. A great deal rests on the judgment and prior experience of the observer.  My experience goes back to 1967.  I lived and worked as a head of corporate representations in Moscow and Petersburg from 1994 to 2000. None of my peers can say the same.  They bring different background experience to the table when they speak and so it is no wonder that we come to different conclusions.

To suggest that my dinner hosts on National Unity Day were Navalny supporters, meaning subversives, as Ritter does in this interview, is gratuitous calumny.

Enjoy the show. And think over carefully the mental processes you see the hero of the piece bringing to bear on the vital questions of our times.

gilbertdoctorow

Face aux sanctions, Lukoil vend ses actifs à l’étranger

Par : ActuStratpol

lukoil actifs

lukoil actifs« La vente de LUKOIL International GmbH est liée à l’introduction de mesures restrictives par certains États à l’encontre de

L’article Face aux sanctions, Lukoil vend ses actifs à l’étranger est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.

Think BRICS: Ex-VP of BRICS Bank Reveals Truth About Western Sanctions

Par : amarynth

Ex-VP Paulo Nogueira Batista Jr. exposes the untold truth about Western sanctions, IMF control, and dedollarization. Discover why the BRICS Bank, built to escape the dollar, remains trapped.

In this exclusive interview with Think BRICS, former vice president of the New Development Bank (NDB), Paulo Nogueira Batista Jr, takes us inside the creation and constraints of the BRICS Bank, a core institution designed to empower the global south and challenge U.S.-led financial dominance. Batista reveals how the NDB was meant to support dedollarization, facilitate alternative finance, and break dependence on the IMF, the dollar trap, and SWIFT. However, due to Western sanctions, credit rating agencies, and global market pressures, the bank struggles to maintain independence.

He explains how the BRICS founding vision is stifled by external limitations—such as the NDB’s inability to lend to Russia, despite its major shareholder status.

The video also covers China’s potential leadership in establishing a multipolar world through a new development bank under the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, using yuan-denominated bonds and avoiding Western capital markets. Batista discusses the urgent need for a new reserve currency, the geopolitical implications of bypassing the dollar, and how emerging nations are navigating complex geopolitics under financial pressure.

This interview does not dive into detailed case studies of BRICS-funded projects, technical mechanisms behind SWIFT alternatives, or specifics of the new BRICS Pay system. It also does not explore the individual economic strategies of each BRICS member beyond China and Russia, nor does it address opposition within BRICS to rapid dedollarization. Additionally, the discussion doesn’t explore public-facing fintech implications or private-sector alignment with the BRICS Bank’s evolving mission.

 

Slices of Nepal, #3

Par : AHH

“Suddenly, there were more cars, fewer shops, little foot traffic and no history. The car, television and, now, cellphone make being nowhere not just possible, but desirable.”

with gratitude to Linh Dinh at Postcards from the End.

Kathmandu, 10/22/25

Could Have Been, Can Be and Will Be Much Worse — Oct 22, 2025.

Should have rung one of those bells five or six times for divine protection! At least it happened near the end. Today, I walked many miles without having the faintest idea where I was going. Done this countless times in too many cities. You must trek through the most boring or, hell, even deadliest parts to understand any place. If all you see of Philly are Center City, Old City, Society Hill, University City and the Italian Market, you have no idea what locals must go through.

Having experienced spectacular temples, awe inspiring stupas, exhilarating street markets, quaint courtyards and tiny, picturesque shops, today I got a numbing taste of Kathmandu’s newer quarters. Suddenly, there were more cars, fewer shops, little foot traffic and no history. If not for those colorful mandalas on sidewalks and Nepalese scripts on some signs, I was hardly in Nepal. Wandering around such a neighborhood in Busan years ago, I nearly thought I was in California! The car, television and, now, cellphone make being nowhere not just possible, but desirable.

On one street, there were all these job placement agencies for Japan. One large sign had a three-tiered pagoda and a sweetly smiling babe in a kimono. Similar teases exist in Vietnam. Sent to Japan, you might never see such a chick. Still, a monthly salary of 250,000 rupees ($1,775) is inducement enough. In Kathmandu, a college graduate makes just $213 a month. For a general laborer, it’s $103. Renting a basic room in town is already $50. With wages so low, it’s even more incredible there are so many smiles, and so few crimes.

Employed at 4 Square, one 17-year-old must walk three hours daily, six days a week. Sometimes, he gets a ride on a motorbike. He can’t even afford a bicycle.

With English classes expensive, few can learn. Those who do try to work abroad.

I didn’t even know I was just north of Thamel. Seeing two goats outside a butcher’s shop was encouraging, though. Just above them through an open window were mostly defleshed skulls of their kind, plus a young female of my kind, smiling. Until it’s our turn to be decapitated, everything is hilarious, or at least interesting. Soon after, I saw my first temple in maybe an hour.

Kathmandu, 10/22/25

As hope returned, I suddenly pitched forward. On the ground, I looked back to see one of my cheap sandals flung many yards behind me.

“Sir, are you OK?”

“I’m fine! It could have been worse.”

“You scraped your knee!”

“I’m OK. Hey, you sound American!”

“I am.”

“Where are you from?”

“Utah.”

“I used to live in Philadelphia.”

“I actually live here! I’ve been here for 13 years.” She’s a white woman around 55-years-old.

“How do you like it?”

“I love it!”

“Do you have family here?”

“I’m my entire family!” She spread her arms out, palms up.

“Now, I know why I fell down.” I was getting mystical. “I fell down so I could meet you, an American, with your interesting story!”

“You’re such a nice man. You fell down because you were trying to get out of my way.”

I’m not sure I did that. I do try to walk on the traffic side when seeing a woman. Here as in Vietnam, people often stray onto streets. Today, I stepped into a gutter. Out of politeness, I gave her a wide berth, perhaps. It could have been much worse. There was some dark blood on my left big toe, but no real pain. In ruined Beirut, I stepped into a broken grate. My leg could have been sliced open.

Sitting in 4 Square at 2:15PM, I’ve been hearing for half an hour loud banging on drums and cymbals from youths on passing trucks, or just marching by. It’s the fourth day of Tihar. Tomorrow, maybe they’ll shoot rockets into hotel room windows. I must be ready for anything.

With no clear boundaries between spectators and participants, this is nearly a carnival. Before it got cleaned up, with its finale moved indoors, Philly’s Mummer Parade was also carnivalesque. Rulers prefer parades. You’re not supposed to do anything but watch. One nation even has “free speech zones” where the ignored are caged.

The best jobs here are government sinecures, as dispensed by a higher-up relative. Running your own business is also an attractive option, but there are so many of all kinds already. On this limited planet, mouths are still multiplying, so wars, riots, lootings and famines are baked in. Even among mild and dignified Nepalese, there’s trouble ahead. For now, they will still dress up, smile brightly and celebrate.

Today, Vimal has on a Celtics jersey, number 5. That’s Kevin Garnett. Looking for cheap apartments in Boston, Vimal was steered to Roxbury, but one quick look told him it was deadly, “I’d rather sleep at the train station.” As a teen, Malcolm X lived in Roxbury. Did you know that “Hold it, brother!” were Malcolm X’s last words?

Now, two girls no older than twelve are chanting, with one holding a bamboo tray with a burning incense stick jutting from a banana, marigold petals, a colorful piece of paper with magical writing and a sort of donut, but thinner and larger. They’re trick or treating, basically. Having given money to so many kids already, the barista ignores them, so they move on, perfectly cheerful.

Still fat enough despite everything, I, too, will move on.


Sacred Stones, Dogs, Mud and Even Men — Oct 23, 2025.

All that racket yesterday was also to celebrate the Newari New Year, Mha Puja (self worship) and Gai Puja (cow worship). Ratopati informs us, “The cow is revered as mata or mother by Hindus […] Modern science has also proved that indigenous breeds of cows absorb the energy from the sun and the moon in their hump which is transmitted through milk to humans.”

Only indigenous breeds, mind you. Hump on that for a while. Three days ago was Kukur Tihar, or Festival of Dogs. Surely, I qualify. Must come back next year to be honored, with a bindi, at least. To expect a marigold garland is already vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Shit, man, I’m getting my religions confused.

Petting that old black dog at KTM Burger, I couldn’t help but think of Nọng and Milk Cow back in Vũng Tàu. They’re washed with human shampoo by Mrs. Seven at least twice a week, then blasted with a hair dryer. I’ve warned her about parching their skin, but do you think anyone listens to anyone? We’d rather die stubbornly stupid and proud.

Speaking Vietnamese to KTM Burger’s dog, I murmured, “So pitiful! You’ve never been washed!” On his forehead, there was a red trace from the bindi applied days ago, during the Festival of Dogs, of course. Once a year, this filthy beast is dabbed with kumkum powder. That’s what it’s called, I swear.

Last week was Jazzmandu. My hipster days over, I wouldn’t have checked it out anyway. Once, I sat in bars to listen to Wynton Marsalis and Mickey Roker. I also caught Sun Ra, Sonny Rollins, Art Pepper, Charlie Rouse, Johnny Hodges, Benny Goodman and, most memorably, the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Lester Bowie was evil! Last time I gushed over jazz, a moron jumped in to protest, “What about great white music?”

White worship of Jewjerked Trump is too appropriate for a society too stupid, degenerate and ignorant to honor its own heritage or recognize what’s best about itself. They’re worshipping a rapist of white children as purveyed by a Jew! Just as bad, they’re fine with his destruction of the Heartland. Anti-Trumpers can’t wait to vote in another Jewjerked puppet.

Not even Germany is so hopeless. It still has enough cultural relics to remind Germans of who they are, and of their greatness. Nepal, too.

Americans are mostly indifferent. Twice, they voted in a culture wrecker.

Erecting his vanity project, Trump Tower, this philistine moron ordered the razing of the Bonwit Teller Building, an Art Deco masterpiece. At least René Chambellan’s bas reliefs and Otto J. Teegan’s entrance grille could be saved, it was hoped. After promising them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Trump simply destroyed them.

Teegan, “It’s odd that a person like Trump, who is spending $80 million or $100 million on this building, should squirm that it might cost as much as $32,000 to take down those panels.” It’s not odd at all. Destruction is how this eternally insecure fool flexes his power. Trumpers seethe at uppity, coastal liberal words like Art Deco, masterpieces or just “art,” so yes, tear it all down.

But what about great white music? Whiggers like Forgiato Blow and Stoney Dudebro are certainly carrying the torch. Dangling his noose, literally, is JJ Lawhorn. Sucking hardest, though, must be Kid Rock. As a yellow outsider, I can’t keep up with so much greatness. You tell me.

Spending two years in Certaldo, particularly its medieval section, I felt, viscerally, each day, the importance of cultural depths, and I’m feeling the same in Kathmandu, except for yesterday, when I strayed into its more modern, thus sterile, neighborhoods. The worst architectural school ever was the International Style, with offshoots like Brutalism or Soviet Modernism just as nasty. Art that isn’t rooted in the local displaces the soul. This is irrelevant if you don’t think art matters at all.

In 2018, the Met returned to Nepal a 10th century standing Buddha and a 12th century stele. In 1996, Britain repatriated 19 artifacts. Thousands of masterpieces were also looted by whites from India, Egypt, Iran, Iraq and Cambodia, etc. At least they never bombed Nepal. In Palestine, Jews have long used white bombs to destroy even churches, including some of the oldest ever built. MAGA Christians don’t give a fuck. They have freakish pastors like Paula White-Cain to fulfill their spiritual needs.

Those with means can also fly to the Jewjizzed Holy Land. Kevin Barrett, “In a bold move to resuscitate its genocide-battered tourism industry, Israel’s Ministry of Tourism announced a new initiative this week: ‘Get Baptized In Jewish Spit.’ The project aims at bringing American Christians to Israel so they can be rapturously soaked in the only fluid that’s holier than holy water: pure, fresh, kosher, locally-sourced 100% organic Jewish saliva.” That Satanic outrage will end soon.

Here a week, I haven’t even tried to reach Lalitpur, not five miles away. Hot chai, dirty dogs, radiant smiles and calming squares are more than enough. That’s because I’m bathed in collective memories, echoes and ghosts. Here ancient stones are so alive, they’re smeared with food.

Kathmandu, 10/23/25

Worried Looking Girl with Bills and Green Glow Worm — Oct 23, 2025.

On the fifth day of Tihar, you’re supposed to go home and have lunch with your family, so nearly all stores and restaurants were closed. Though those Chinese joints on Amrit and Jyatha were open, I just didn’t feel like wok fried dishes, yellow noodles or braised chicken skeleton. After a nap, I decided Bueno Burrito would be a great choice. Walking there, I thought about how quintessentially American is Tex-Mex, as is the Mission burrito, born in San Francisco. Jazz, too, is the best of the USA, and no narrowly defined black or white music.

At 4:30PM, Bueno was still closed, so I bought a short story collection by Anjan Adiga, a Nepalese-American writer. I want to write an American writer born in Nepal, but there’s no bio in Leech. Sitting on steps outside shuttered stores, I read. After just a few pages, I could tell Adiga is excellent.

Without his heritage, plus emotional and intellectual investment over many years, I’m just groping, obviously, but travel writing is like a drunken incel being shoved into a whorehouse. As long as he doesn’t run out immediately in terror, we have stories.

With almost nothing open, I decided to try Zaika Biryani Center on Gangalal. Entering a tiny, skanky room on the second floor, I shared a table with two guys. One was the only other foreigner. Not only that, he spoke a fluent American English. We chattered.

Fifty-nine-years old, Marcos is a Brazilian who’s been just about everywhere. This is his third time in Nepal. He’s also spent four months in Vietnam over two visits. We talked about Đà Lạt, Nha Trang and Vũng Tàu. His first time here was in 2005. Nepal was much poorer then, Marcos told me.

“That’s good to hear, so the country has improved.”

“All of Asia has gotten richer,” he chuckled.

As for the USA, where Marcos spent many years, we agree Trump is collapsing its economy on purpose. One motive, obviously, is for his oligarch buddies to buy up all the farm land from MAGA peasants. Those who haven’t committed suicide, that is. Survivors can keep their red hats. Trump and his pals are also raking it in through market manipulations. Then there’s his bitcoin racket. It’s too funny, really.

We laughed over Trump’s 40 billion dollar gift to Argentina, and over China buying soybeans from Brazil instead of the USA. We discussed the growing power of BRICS. Marcos knows what’s up.

Kathmandu, 10/23/25

My chicken biryani was only so-so, but at only $1.78, I can’t complain. It came with one boiled egg, and there was a pitcher at the table. Without cups, you’re supposed to just pour the cold water into your mouth, with the spout not even an inch from that unclean aperture. Though not quite correct, it sounds better than hole or orifice, God forbid.

Though Marcos had vowed just one week ago to never drink alcohol again, I said he must try the excellent Gorkha Beer. Perversely, he admitted to being fond of bia hơi. Brewed overnight by whoever felt like, it became popular in northern Vietnam during the worst years of Communism. Though without kick or character, it’s still being served.

Wandering around, I stumbled onto a Czech restaurant, and a Chinese owned hotel called Vienna!

In an Adiga story, “High Heels,” a young woman has reinvented herself by finishing high school against her mom’s wish, moving from her village to Kathmandu, getting a job at a bank, dabbing herself with Lakme Elegant perfume and wearing red high heels. Most radically, she has become a Christian. Nine pages in, her mentor, Father Matthew, is already betraying impure motives. She, though, has the hots for Binod, a handsome and confident coworker. On their first date, he admits to finding Christian women “bold.”

With six more days here, I have plenty of time to finish this story, or the whole book even, but when traveling, one should spend as much time as possible reading streets, landscapes, bodies and faces.

Just typing this, I’m not doing that, but that’s the paradox of trying to capture reality. Writing, you’re no longer living. Converting all this richness into words, I’m reducing, if not caricaturing, everything. Each second is modified, enriched, complicated or contradicted by the next.

Today, I photographed a small girl in a vermilion top with a neon green glow worm. Holding some bills, she looked worried. Behind her was a man and a boy, each with a disposable surgical mask, of the type made ubiquitous during the Covid hysteria. Why weren’t they caned for not keeping a social distance? Deprived of oxygen, their modest IQs approached zero. Their muffled conversation sputtered one syllable at a time, punctuated by pauses minutes long. Since a photograph is already a translation, I’m translating a translation.

Don’t curse me, though, for shrinking so much into so little, for a postage sized Kathmandu is still better than nothing.

Kathmandu, 10/24/25

No Plunging, Scoop, Halter or Sweetheart Necklines — Oct 24, 2025.

It didn’t take long, did it? Halfway through their first lunch date, Binod said to Sarita, “I have a lot of respect for you, for how far you’ve come in life.”

On the way back, they had to duck into an old temple to escape a heavy rain. Suddenly, this young Christian woman was trapped in a dark, “dismal place,” with even “the stench of uncollected garbage” wafting from an adjacent alley. The only other presence was a statue of Kali, that frightful blue faced goddess with her four arms, red tongue, sword and garland of decapitated heads. Still, Sarita felt safe.

Adiga describes her delusions:

In him there was a hidden capacity to care, she knew it. 
She wished she could take him to church. 
They would kneel and pray together. 
She was now completely sure that the church was the guiding force he needed to turn his life around.

Besides being a spoiled only son, Binod was a lost soul, a sinner. She was destined to save him. He interrupted her noble musing by putting his hands on her shoulders. Sarita’s wet cleavage made her irresistible. This detail indicated, further, her Western orientation. We already knew by her red high heels and tube of Fair and Lovely. Always in her purse, it made her whiter, though never white enough.

Before Sarita knew it, they were kissing, then his hand somehow slipped beneath her bra to squeeze her naked breast. Ignoring her protest, he kept going, but at least they didn’t copulate. In shock, Sarita asked to be dropped off before reaching the bank.

Clearly annoyed at being thwarted, Binod sneered, “Your mole is disgusting.” Patiently seducing her many days before, Binod said it looked like “a tiny juicy grape.” Even her mom thought it resembled a tumor. Sarita fancied it nearly a nipple. This mark of shame became her naked turn on, she desperately hoped. Binod spat at that notion. Born elsewhere, Sarita could just remove it.

Kathmandu, 10/24/25

I’ll read the rest later. Looking up, I see three young men. One wears a baseball cap with “MARQUETTE.” I’m sure he doesn’t know what it means. One is listening to his phone. With porn banned, there’s not much to look at. The last, in a hoodie and jean jacket, is staring at revelers just outside KTM Burger.

At another table is a black man focused on his magical screen. Perhaps 30, he’s alone. Besides TikTok recorded laughter, I can also hear extended dialogues in English. Unlike others, he didn’t go to the counter upon entering, but only ordered a can of Carlsberg and a chicken kathi roll when approached, finally, by an employee after about 20 minutes.

Elsewhere, more young men stare at phones. I’m sure all of them wouldn’t mind a bold, westernized woman, even without otherworldly cleavage throbbing or bobbing. It’s cool enough for a jacket or hoodie. In my short sleeved áo bà ba, I must ignore the weather.

One tallish man with long hair has a girlfriend. He’s wearing a fluffy white and gray fleece hoodie over a shockingly red long shirt, however. Even Sarita wouldn’t try to save this guy, much less a true Western woman. Of course, it’s presumptuous to think he’d even want one, just to see, taste and smell what it’s like, you know. I must disagree with Alberta Hunter. You can certainly tell the difference after dark.

Displaced, you can be so wrong even when you’re dressed perfectly. A female, though, is always welcome, if only for a hit and run. If willing to spend, even the most repulsive can get off. A five minute stroll down Pattaya’s Soi 6 will amply prove this. It’s bad enough in Vũng Tàu.

Quality of whores varies so much, though, with the richer, more prestigious countries offering the worst. Worse than selling one’s body for half an hour or an hour to endless creeps is to be chained to one. Melania often looks disgusted. Ivana wrote about being raped. Once permanent residency is gained, millions book.

In “High Heels,” silver-haired Father Matthew is creepy enough. Fleeing from Binod, Sarita took a taxi to Saint Mary’s Church. It didn’t sound like her ordeal was over.

Finishing this at 4 Square, my right leg went dead, so I hobble outside. At 10:15AM, it’s sunny and warm, with, as usual, a constant stream of pedestrians. There’s not a cleavage in sight. No plunging, scoop, halter or sweetheart necklines. One dips just enough to show collar bones. That’s it.

Around 4AM, I passed four drunken youths, including one woman. Pissed at somebody, she flipped the bird, the first I’ve seen in eight days, and I’m out constantly. Though dressed casually in the American style, she showed no cleavage either.

As a Kami, Sarita was elated to discover she could read the same bible as anybody else. There are 1.5 million of her kind in Nepal. Though caste-based discrimination was abolished in 1963, you can’t mold or regulate anyone’s heart.

10/25/25 (L): Kathmandu ; (R): Lalitpur

Why Not Hitler Fashion? — Oct 26, 2025.

A regular at 4 Square is Saroj, a shop owner in his late 40’s. Though his brother has lived in Boston for 20 years, Saroj hasn’t been able to visit him. Applying for a visa recently, he was rejected. Saroj worked eight years in India, so speaks good Engish, and he has traveled to Hong Kong and Bangkok. An avid bicyclist, he’s also in great shape, so looks every bit a successful and well fed middle class person. Still, Trump won’t let him in. After three months, Saroj will try again.

When told of my time in the USA and Europe, Saroj looked startled for a second. I was just sharing my experiences of NYC, London and Paris, to say those places aren’t like in the movies or popular imagination. “Everywhere I go, I want to see the regular neighborhoods, you know, the more boring ones, because that’s how normal people live.”

This was my response to a visit to the Buddha Stupa. Saroj hadn’t just insisted I see it, but phoned a motorbike guy to get me there. More interesting for me, though, were all the blasé streets I saw on the way. After that stupa, which was indeed spectacular, I had a better time checking out the area. There was Ramsterdam Café, “where hippies meet.” That fabled Kathmandu isn’t just mostly gone, it was hardly there in the first place.

Freak Street and Dharma Path, where Pico Iyer hung out, is as alien to most Nepalese as Phạm Ngũ Lão and Bùi Viện to Vietnamese. That Saigon pocket with its whores, pimps, weird cuisines and bars is known as Phố Tây, or Western Streets.

Even now, most residents of Kathmandu would find this passage incomprehensible:

I had the best enchilada of my life on Freak Street, and the chocolates in the stores seemed to have been sent special delivery from the heavens. As for the pies for which Nepal was famous, they exceeded even their reputation. Soon I established my own sacramental ritual: disappearing several times each day into the dark entrances of cafés—not just Mom’s Health Food Restaurant and Aunt Jane’s, but also Tibetan, Chinese and stateless restaurants—in order to devour extraordinary apple pies, almond layer pies, orange cakes, fruit cakes, lemon pies and more apple pies.

It’s telling that Iyer never mentions momos, choila, khaja, thukpa, sekuwa or even dal bhat, Nepal’s national dish. That’s what most people eat here, man, not lemon or apple pie! They have never heard of them, or enchiladas! Most wouldn’t dare walk into Mom’s Health Food Restaurant. Its name alone sounds expensive.

(L): Busan, 3/29/20 ; (R): Taiping, Malaysia on 7/19/19

The cheapest eateries here are dark, tiny places without a name. You enter through a curtain. Most have no English menus. Yesterday in Lilitpur, I noticed a barefoot girl about three flinging dirt outside Mo:Mo Cha and Stick Food Café. She had on a dirty pale pink top with two smiling cats. Catching me eyeing her daughter, this large woman came out, but not to chase me with a stick or knife. Smiling, she urged her kid to say hello. Her cheerfulness invited me in. If there was no menu, I would just ask to see what she had. I had done this in various countries. Point and you shall receive.

There was a menu, just one, with “Momo Magic and Stick Delights!” on the cover. Its plastic lamination was peeling off. Its wire binding was all awry. Without knowing what “Buff Khaja Set” was, I ordered it anyway. It turned out to be a buffalo stew, choila, with curried potato, peanuts, chickpeas, pickled vegetables and crunchy rice flakes, chiura. The last was most surprising. This delicious meal cost me just 170 rupees, or $1.21.

Arriving in Lilitpur, I emailed my buddy, Jonathan, “You shamed me into going to Patan, motherfucker! You think I give a shit about temples!!! I must admit, though, this place is orgasmically spectacular. Makes me even more ashamed to be Vietnamese. Just kill me now.” Tone is everything. That’s how friends talk. I used to do the same with Giang, whom I had known for more than four decades. After three Jewjabs, he seemed to change. His voting again for Trump hardened Giang further. Suddenly, I could no longer goof around with this guy.

Walking back to Kathmandu, I got seriously lost. Without a map or cellphone, I ended up in Kalanki, then Bafal. It didn’t help that I was lugging my bag with a camera and laptop, both heavy, and, most likely, I kept wandering in circles. I crossed streets and creeks that looked awfully familiar. This misadventure allowed me to enter a nearly dead mall, pass a bus depot with clearly rural folks waiting to go home, ramshackle dwellings abutting swanky developments and, mostly astoundingly, Hitler Fashion!

All I saw were jeans, hoodies, T-shirts and sneakers, typical American styled casual wear. Do Nepalese consider eternally adolescent Americans as Nazis?

Though swastikas are common in the East, this was just weird. Without my phone, I couldn’t speed dial my rabbi or the Anti-Defamation League. In Kukes, Albania, I had run into Bar and Restaurant Nazi, but that’s just the owner’s name, pronounced as Nor Zee.

(L): Skopje, North Macedonia on 9/26/20 ; (R): Vung Tau, 9/8/24

This morning, I read about a 33-year-old, Kenneth Morgan, who had entered Cutter’s Pub, an Athens, Georgia bar popular with college kids. Dressed as an SS officer, complete with a red armband with its black swastika on a white circle, Morgan was clearly asking for trouble. Immediately, he was cursed, then chased out by a crowd. When Grace Lang tried to yank off his armband, Morgan whacked her with his beer mug, breaking her nose. She relayed her account to The Red and Black, which aren’t just Nazi colors but those of the University of Georgia. Of course, many if not most of those outside the South and Midwest think those folks are Nazis anyway.

Though Mao and Stalin killed many more, Hitler is considered uniquely evil. Even most deaths in concentration camps were from starvation, and related diseases, resulting from American and British bombings. At least a million Vietnamese died from the same. Near the end of World War II, Vietnamese ports and rail system were destroyed.

Detailed or nuanced understanding of anything is beyond most people, with American college students among the worst. A little learning is already dangerous. When it’s mostly bullshit, you’re fucked for life.

Here’s how Grace Lang describes herself at Linked, “I capture angles that are rarely seen and humanity that is often overlooked. My photos give the audience a chance to see with my eyes, granting them a vivid, deep connection with my work.” Seeing with her eyes, you will be exposed to hidden truths about humanity.

About Linh Dinh (@linhdinh):

‘Before being canceled, I was an anthologized poet and fairly prolific author, with my last book Postcards from the End of America. Now, I write about our increasingly sick world for a tiny audience on SubStack. Drifting overly much, I’m in Cambodia.

Born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1963, I lived mostly in the US from 1975 until 2018, but have returned to Vietnam. I’ve also lived in Italy, England and Germany. I’m the author of a non-fiction book, Postcards from the End of America (2017), a novel, Love Like Hate (2010), two books of stories, Fake House (2000) and Blood and Soap (2004), and six collections of poems, with a Collected Poems cancelled by Chax Press from external pressure. I’ve been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, 2004, 2007, Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, Postmodern American Poetry: a Norton Anthology (vol. 2) and Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories From Around the World, etc. I’m also editor of Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam (1996) and The Deluge: New Vietnamese Poetry (2013). My writing has been translated into Japanese, Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Korean, Arabic, Icelandic, Serbian and Finnish, and I’ve been invited to read in Tokyo, London, Cambridge, Brighton, Paris, Berlin, Leipzig, Halle, Reykjavik, Toronto, Singapore and all over the US. I’ve also published widely in Vietnamese.’

AHH: Please support this wonderful writer on his Substack! Thanks

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