NATO’s “Strategy of Tension” Is Playing Out Right Now – Bondi Beach & Mossad’s Arrival

Are we watching NATO’s Strategy of Tension plan unfolding right before our eyes? Two potential false-flag attacks over the weekend. One on Bondi Beach in Australia killing 15 people one in Rhode Island at Brown University where 2 students were killed. Both reportedly targeting jews.

And

Bondi Shooting Reporting is a Mess!

– Shooters are Indian Nationals not Pakistani
– Younger shooter’s mother is Italian & father is Indian
– Pakistani man wrongly labeled shooter, social media fails to correct
– Netanyahu falsely claims Ahmad al Ahmad (Syrian Muslim) aka the… https://t.co/pIdyINQ9aC pic.twitter.com/9Nx5h9xett

— GenXGirl (@GenXGirl1994) December 15, 2025

Friends talking on Plan Asset Seizure Europe and Japan Militarization

This is what fell on the radar of friends quietly talking:

Financial implications of EU and UK emergency powers.

https://theduran.com/uk-banks-warn-starmer-asset-seizure-plan-illegal-kiev-energy-close-to-collapse-siversk-huiliapole/

11 Dec 2025. Mercouris. 1 hour, 9 mins.

https://www.ft.com/content/7e90d3be-687c-4348-a663-132576f98086

11 Dec 2025. UK Bankers’ warning to UK government. [Behind a paywall.]

https://tass.com/society/2057847

12 Dec 2025. Bank of Russia files a lawsuit against Euroclear in Moscow Arbitration Court

https://tass.com/politics/2057999

12 Dec 2025. EU to rue indefinite freezing of Russian assets — RDIF CEO

https://theduran.com/eu-crosses-rubicon-permanent-asset-freeze-falls-into-russias-trap/

12 Dec 2025. Christoforou & Mercouris. 31 mins.

Japan has opposed the EU seizure of Russian assets, and the move below may be related to this, because the seizure could  could lead to a wider war.

https://tass.com/economy/2058013

12 Dec 2025. Japan moves to allocate record $58 billion for defense in 2026 fiscal year — Kyodo

The 2025 US NSS’s “China Containment Playbook”—Every Sneaky Trick, Hypocritical Line, and Desperate Gamble Exposed!

StarBoySAR

Deep Dive: The 2025 US NSS’s “China Containment Playbook”—Every Sneaky Trick, Hypocritical Line, and Desperate Gamble Exposed!

After reading lots of interpretations of the latest National Security Strategy (NSS) from the White House, presenting it as a major readjustment of its global military presence towards the Western Hemisphere, downgrading its focus on China – let me share my 50 cents on what the NSS (not the PR fluff) truly signifies

First of all: The NSS primarily serves as an outline of the White House’s core principles and interests. This will eventually lead to an update from the DoD regarding the:

– The National Defense Strategy (NDS)
– Nuclear Posture Review (NPR)
– Global Posture Review (GPR)

That’s where the real $$$ sausages are made—specifically in determining troop and equipment deployment worldwide…

Having said that, let’s break down the actual strategy buried in the 33-page document: a hyper-focused, ally-exploiting, tech-stealing, war-prepping campaign to stop China’s rise. The US isn’t just “competing”—it’s doubling down on Cold War 2.0 and WW3 preparations, with a budget, a bloc, and a boatload of delusions. Let’s go line by line (with quotes from the NSS itself!):

1. Economic Containment: “Fair Trade” = Forcing China to Lose

The NSS’s Asia chapter leads with a jaw-dropping rewrite of history:

“President Trump single-handedly reversed more than three decades of mistaken American assumptions about China: namely, that by opening our markets to China, encouraging American business to invest in China, and outsourcing our manufacturing to China, we would facilitate China’s entry into the so-called ‘rules-based international order.’ This did not happen.”

Let’s unpack the lies:

→ This is Typical Western Victim Blaming—US corporations begged to outsource their pollution at poverty wages to China in the 90s/00s, they chose profit over American workers for maximum return—not “mistaken assumptions.” Apple, Nike, Walmart got rich off China’s factories; now the US blames China for “stealing” jobs it willingly gave away

1990s-2000s: “Globalization is win-win!” (When profits flowed West)
2020s: “We’re victims of our own business decisions!” (When competition got real)

→ The NSS demands “balanced trade” but defines it as China reducing exports to the US (China’s exports to the US fell from 4% to 2% of its GDP since 2017) while the US keeps blocking Chinese goods

The goal here isn’t “engagement,” it’s economic decoupling, supply chain purges, and tech blockade. Tariffs? Permanent. Trade? Only “reciprocal” (i.e., zero tolerance for surplus). China’s development isn’t seen as organic—it’s framed as theft, espionage, and U.S. elite betrayal

Worst part? The US is forcing allies to join the economic war:

“We will work to align the actions of our allies and partners with our joint interest in preventing domination by any single competitor nation.”

Translation: “Japan/SK/Australia—stop buying Chinese batteries, stop using Huawei 5G, stop trading with China on your own terms. If you don’t, we’ll yank access to our markets”

2. Military Buildup in Indo-Pacific: “Deterrence” = Prepping for War

The NSS’s most dangerous section is its Indo-Pacific military plan—buried under “Prevent Military Confrontation” rhetoric, but actually a blueprint for encircling China, preparing for war

The NSS fixates on Taiwan not for “democracy,” but for geostrategic control:

“Taiwan provides direct access to the Second Island Chain and splits Northeast and Southeast Asia into two distinct theaters. Given that one-third of global shipping passes annually through the South China Sea, this has major implications for the U.S. economy”

Translation: Taiwan is a military chokehold, not a “democracy” The NSS drops the “One China Policy” for a vague “declaratory policy” that “does not support any unilateral change to the status quo”—which is US-speak for: “We’ll arm Taiwan to the teeth, but blame China if it defends its own territory”

The strategy doubles down on arming Taiwan indirectly:

“Encourage our First Island Chain allies and partners to invest in capabilities aimed at deterring aggression.”

Which means the U.S. expect its allies Japan/SK/Australia to send weapons to Taiwan via “backchannels” (already happening with Japan’s “transferable defense equipment” laws)

First Island Chain: A “Distributed Deterrence” Prison for China

The NSS admits US bases in the First Island Chain are now within China’s missile range—so it’s shifting to a “distributed” model:

“Build a military capable of denying aggression anywhere in the First Island Chain… press our First Island Chain allies and partners to allow the U.S. military greater access to their ports and other facilities.”

What this means in practice:

Japan: US troops will expand access to Okinawa, Kyushu, and Amami Oshima (100km from Taiwan) + Japan’s defense budget hits 3% of GDP (up from 1%) to build “counterstrike missiles” targeting China

Australia: AUKUS subs (3 initial, up to 8) will patrol the South China Sea by 2035—costing Australia $2400B (more than its annual GDP) while US defense contractors cash in

Quad: India will get US drone tech and naval patrols in the Indian Ocean to block China’s Maritime Silk Road

The NSS even brags about low-cost weapons to “outcompete” China:

“Produce the most capable and modern systems and munitions at scale… low-cost weapons that can defeat most adversaries.”

Translation: The US will be flooding the Indo-Pacific with cheap drones/missiles—turning the region into a tinderbox

3. Ally Coercion: “Burden-Sharing” = Making Others Pay for US Interest and China Paranoia

The NSS’s “Burden-Sharing and Burden-Shifting” section is a masterclass in imperialist grifting:

“The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over… NATO countries to spend 5 percent of GDP on defense… our allies must assume primary responsibility for their regions.”

Let’s do the math:

Japan’s GDP is $5T—5% = $250B/year (triple its current defense budget). The Japanese public already opposes rearmament (62% against, per 2025 polls)—but the US is twisting arms

South Korea: The US wants Seoul to pay $10B/year for US troops (up from $1.2B) + build “anti-China” missile defense systems that threaten Pyongyang (and destabilize the peninsula)

Europe: Even though the NSS says Europe’s “civilizational erasure” is a bigger threat, it still demands Europe send weapons to Indo-Pacific allies (Germany’s already shipping tanks to Australia) and block Chinese tech

The kicker? The US offers “carrots” that are just traps:

“Potentially through more favorable treatment on commercial matters, technology sharing, and defense procurement—those countries that willingly take more responsibility for security in their neighborhoods.”

Translation: “If you spend your tax money on our weapons and block China, we’ll let you sell more cars to our market. If not, we’ll hit you with tariffs (looking at you, Germany’s auto industry)”

4. Tech War: “US Standards” = Stealing Innovation and Blocking Progress

The NSS obsesses over AI, biotech, and quantum computing—because it knows China’s tech rise is irreversible

“Ensure that U.S. technology and U.S. standards… drive the world forward… protect our intellectual property from foreign theft.”

The hypocrisy is staggering:

The U.S. vows to dominate AI, quantum, and biotech—not through competition, but choke points: export controls, forced tech repatriation, and weaponized finance. “Protect IP” = block Chinese access to global tech ecosystems. All while screaming “free markets”… unless China wins

The NSS calls for “deregulation to spur innovation”—but bans Chinese students from US STEM programs, blocks Chinese firms from accessing US chips, and sabotages Huawei

Meanwhile the NSS admits it’s losing:

“China’s state-led and state-backed companies excel in building physical and digital infrastructure… China has recycled perhaps $1.3 trillion of its trade surpluses into loans to its trading partners.”

Meet the “America-First Infrastructure” Smokescreen:

While mocking China’s $1.3T in global loans, the NSS offers nothing comparable—only vague promises of “U.S. quality, no strings attached.” Yet it demands sovereign nations choose: American-led sovereignty or “foreign influence” (read: Beijing). Funny—when the U.S. blocks ports or buys mines, it’s “security.” When China does it? It’s a “Debt trap”

After reading through the NSS, my conclusion is more of a question: Is the 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy a WW3 Playbook?

Cos it’s not about WW3—it’s for WW3… just with someone else’s blood

The US thinks rebranding containment as “fair competition” and hiding its military in Hawaii will stop China. The 2025 NSS describes a last-ditch effort to cling to dominance by weaponizing allies, blocking innovation, while preparing for WW3

This isn’t containment—it’s strategic divorce. The U.S. no longer pretends to lead a “liberal order.” It’s building a Fortress America bloc: militarily networked, economically protected, and ideologically nationalist. Allies are subcontractors. The Global South? A battleground for economic and military allegiance…

The NSS doesn’t explicitly say, “We’re in WW3, sacrifice allies to exhaust Russia/China,” but that’s the only logical conclusion from its policies. It’s a strategy of imperial self-preservation: the U.S. knows it can’t win a direct war with China/Russia, so it’s using allies as human shields and economic proxies to bleed its rivals dry. Then, just like in WW2, it will step in—richer, stronger, and unbloodied—to write the rules of the new world order

Venezuela’s Power Play: How Moscow’s Move Caught Washington Off Guard | John Mearsheimer

This is a really good geopolitical overview and not only about Venezuela, but describing how Venezuela became the fulcrum of change to multipolarity and the start of the end of the Monroe doctrine.

I am not sure if Mearsheimer’s face should be on there, but the content is accurate until one gets to the end, where the video proposes that the US still has the opportunity to rectify its strategic mistakes.  I don’t believe so, and so this video is for the good analysis of the process of the fall of empire in the first 3/4.

Venezuela just shattered the unwritten rules of the Western Hemisphere — and Russia made sure the world noticed. In this special geopolitical investigation, we unpack how Russian warships sailed into Venezuelan waters with calm precision — a symbolic strike at two centuries of U.S. dominance in the Caribbean. This wasn’t merely a naval visit. It was a challenge to the Monroe Doctrine itself — the old idea that Washington alone sets the boundaries of power in the Americas.

What the world witnessed wasn’t Russian aggression… It was Russian positioning — a strategic counter-move decades in the making. From NATO’s long eastward push to years of sanctions pressure on Venezuela, we trace how U.S. policies inadvertently drove Caracas deeper into Moscow’s orbit. The result: one of the most consequential geopolitical realignments in the Western Hemisphere since the Cold War.

Backed by verified research, foreign-policy scholarship, and historical context, this episode explores: • why Venezuela became a central arena of U.S. influence after the Cold War, • how sweeping American sanctions punished its economy — but failed to force political change, • how Russia built a slow, deliberate strategic lifeline to Caracas, • why the Caribbean can no longer be assumed to be an uncontested sphere of U.S. influence, • and why the quiet arrival of Russian destroyers signals a new era in hemispheric geopolitics. Told in the analytical spirit of John Mearsheimer, this long-form deep dive links realist theory to modern power struggles — revealing how the cracks in the unipolar world first appeared not in Europe… but in the Caribbean.

Reply by President Vladimir Putin on Donald Trump’s 28-point peace plan re Ukraine

Reply (http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/78524)by President Vladimir Putin to a question during the working session with the permanent members of Russia’s Security Council (November 21, 2025)

Question: Donald Trump’s 28-point peace plan on the Ukrainian crisis is now being actively discussed worldwide. May I ask to share your opinion on this plan and explain how it relates to your recent talks with President Trump in Alaska?

President Putin: It’s no secret: President Trump’s peace plan for Ukrainian crisis resolution was discussed even before the meeting in Alaska, and during that preliminary exchange the US Side asked us to make certain compromises – to show what they called “flexibility”.

The main point of the Alaska summit, its main purpose, was that during the talks in Anchorage we confirmed that, despite some difficult issues and complexities, we nevertheless agreed with these proposals and were prepared to demonstrate the requested flexibility.

We provided detailed information to all our friends and partners in the Global South on these matters – including China, India, the DPRK, South Africa, Brazil, many other countries, and, of course, the CSTO states. All our friends and partners, and I want to emphasise this – without exception – supported these potential arrangements.

However, after the negotiations in Alaska, we have seen a certain pause on the part of the US, and we know this is due to Ukraine’s de facto refusal to accept the peace plan proposed by President Trump. I believe this is precisely why a new version has emerged – essentially an updated plan consisting of 28 points.

We have the text. We received it through our existing channels of communication with the US Administration. I believe it too could form the basis of a final peace settlement, but this text is not being discussed with us in substance. And I can suggest why.

The reason, I believe, remains the same: the US Administration still cannot secure Ukraine’s consent – Ukraine rejects it.

Evidently, Ukraine and its European allies remain under illusions and still dream of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia on the battlefield. I think this position is rooted not so much in a lack of competence – I will leave this topic aside for now – but rather in the absence of objective information about the real situation on the ground.

And, all things considered, neither Ukraine nor Europe grasp the consequences of this path. Just one very recent example – Kupyansk. Not long ago, on 4 November – just two weeks ago – officials in Kiev publicly stated that no more than 60 Russian servicemen were present in the city, and that within the next few days, as they claimed, Ukrainian forces would fully unblock it.

But I would like to inform you that already at that moment, on 4 November, the city of Kupyansk was practically entirely secured by the Russian Armed Forces. Our guys were, as they say, simply finishing the job – clearing the remaining streets and neighbourhoods. The fate of the city had already been fully determined.

What does this tell us? Either the Kiev leaders do not have objective information about the situation at the front, or, having it, they are simply unable to assess it objectively.

If Kiev does not want to discuss President Trump’s proposals and rejects them, then they – and their European war-instigators – must understand that the situation in Kupyansk will inevitably be repeated on other key sectors of the front.

Perhaps not as quickly as we would like, but the outcome will be inevitably repeated .

And, on the whole, this is acceptable to us, as it leads to achieving the objectives of the special military operation by military means. But, as I have said many times before, we are also ready for peace negotiations and for resolving problems by peaceful means. However, this requires a substantive discussion of all details of the proposed plan. We are ready for that.

Ukraine Peace Plan: Its not gonna work sweety pie!

Trump’s full 28-point “peace plan” for Ukraine is out, and, much like Gaza, it’s not a peace plan but a cheap and obnoxious grasp to enslave Russia via pretending a position of strenth.

In reality I did not want to discuss this, because what’s the use of discussing something that may never be. If this ever reaches Russia on a professional basis, Russia will do what it does – consider it seriously and professionally, respond and continue the SMO as Russia is not for sale.

Yet again the tone of this is attempts to utilize dwindling economic rights as a wedge for military intervention to expand the hegemonic stake. This is the team; Steve Witkoff, with Marco Rubio and Jared Kushner, which is an insult in itself, that was behind drafting this draft? or set of negotiating points? I don’t even know what it is as it is messy, equal to the unworkable deal that is on the table for Gaza and the Palestinians. It is all about obnoxious hegemonic control and setting back organizations such as BRICS and SCO with multipolarity.

We saw Mr Putin’s response today, viscerally, when he visited the front, in camo. That is the answer. As we’ve known now forever, the end of the Ukraine SMO will be decided on the battle ground. https://sovereignista.com/2025/11/20/full-subbed-version-of-visit-of-vladimir-putin-to-the-command-post-of-the-west-group-of-forces/

• The plan was drafted by Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, with Marco Rubio and Jared Kushner.
• They coordinated directly with Kirill Dmitriev, Russia’s sanctioned envoy.
• Zelensky wasn’t a choice: the U.S. delivered the plan to him on an “aggressive timeline,” and he’s been told he must engage.

Trump’s Full 28-Point Ukraine–Russia Plan (Verbatim Structure)

1. Ukraine’s sovereignty will be confirmed.

2. A comprehensive non-aggression agreement will be concluded between Russia, Ukraine, and Europe; all ambiguities of the last 30 years will be considered settled.

3. Russia will not invade neighboring countries, and NATO will not expand further.

4. A U.S.-mediated Russia–NATO dialogue will be launched to resolve security issues and promote cooperation.
(Desperate attempt to maintain NATO).

5. Ukraine will receive “reliable security guarantees.”
Note: For the first time, the U.S. explicitly offers Ukraine a formal security guarantee, details unspecified.

6. Ukraine’s military will be capped at 600,000 personnel. (Current size: ~800–850k.)

7. Ukraine must enshrine permanent neutrality: it will never join NATO, and NATO will codify that.

8. NATO agrees not to station troops on Ukrainian territory.

9. European fighter jets will be stationed in Poland.

10. The U.S. security guarantee comes with conditions:
– The U.S. receives compensation
– If Ukraine invades Russia, the guarantee is void
– If Russia invades Ukraine, sanctions snap back and recognition of territory is withdrawn
– If Ukraine fires a missile at Moscow or St. Petersburg “without cause,” the guarantee is void

11. Ukraine becomes eligible for EU membership and receives temporary preferential access to EU markets.

12. A global reconstruction package is launched, including:
– A Ukraine Development Fund
– Joint U.S.–Ukraine energy projects
– Modernization of Ukrainian infrastructure
– Investment in mining and natural resources
– A World Bank financing package (Note: The World Bank is a dodo!)

13. Russia will be reintegrated into the global economy:
– Gradual lifting of sanctions
– Long-term U.S.–Russia economic cooperation
– Joint ventures in AI, energy, infrastructure, rare earths, and Arctic extraction
– Russia rejoins the G8
Note: And now one can only laugh at the attempted grab of resources and the overt attempt to step back to before BRICS and SCO)

14. Frozen Russian assets will be allocated as follows:
– $100B used to rebuild Ukraine (run by the U.S.)
– The U.S. receives 50% of profits from reconstruction investments
– Europe contributes another $100B
– Remaining frozen assets go into a U.S.–Russia joint investment vehicle to deepen economic ties
(Note: These ‘negotiators’ have gone bereft of their minds. See what this says. The US will use Russian money to rebuild Ukraine).

15. A joint U.S.–Russia security working group will monitor compliance.

16. Russia will codify in law a policy of non-aggression toward Europe and Ukraine. Note: one word! NATO. Russia needs to codify nothing much.

17. The U.S. and Russia will extend nuclear arms-control treaties, including New START.
Note: These folks are deaf. Russia told them in no uncertain terms that arms-control treaties will not be negotiated under the SMO

18. Ukraine reaffirms its non-nuclear status under the NPT.

19. The Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant will be operated under IAEA supervision, and electricity will be split 50/50 between Russia and Ukraine.

20. Education and social programs promoting multicultural tolerance will be mandated in both countries:
– Ukraine adopts EU standards for minority rights
– Both sides end discriminatory laws
– Equal media rights for Ukrainian and Russian outlets
– All Nazi ideology must be banned
Note: Very similar to provisions in Trump’s 2020 Israel–Palestine “Peace to Prosperity” plan.

21. Territorial arrangements:
– Crimea, Donetsk, and Lugansk are recognized as de facto Russian, including by the U.S.
– Parts of Kherson and Zaporozhye become frozen “contact line” zones (also de facto recognition)
– Russia gives up other agreed areas
– Ukraine withdraws from remaining parts of Donetsk; the zone becomes a Russian-recognized neutral buffer
– Russian forces cannot enter the buffer zone

22. Both sides agree not to alter future borders by force; security guarantees void if Ukraine violates this.

23. Russia guarantees Ukraine access to the Dnieper River and free Black Sea grain shipping.

24. A humanitarian committee is created to:
– Exchange all prisoners and bodies (“all for all”)
– Return detained civilians and children
– Implement family reunification
– Provide aid to victims of the conflict

25. Ukraine must hold national elections within 100 days of the agreement.

26. Full amnesty for all parties for all actions taken during the war: no prosecutions, no war-crimes claims.

27. The agreement will be legally binding and enforced by a Peace Council chaired by Donald J. Trump.
Note: This is the same governing structure Trump’s Gaza peace plan uses, a Trump-chaired oversight body empowered to impose sanctions. Yeah, Russia will agree to a Peace Council chaired by a buffoon when pigs fly!

28. A ceasefire begins as soon as both sides pull back to agreed positions.

—

There is one answer to this, and it is NO, because it is a set of provisions written by a now pretend hegemon that is losing its power and desperately extending itself from a position of old and hackneyed beliefs in its own superiority.

There is one solution and it is to be found in the salacious parts of the Epstein emails. SEND IN BUBBA TO RELIEVE THE DESPERATION as this is a sick joke made by the demented who cannot acknowledge that they’ve lost and will continue to lose!

There is a serious part though and this is that the assault on Russia and the free world will continue until the hegemon falls. On that note, just in is a briefing from the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation. Part of it reads as follows:

Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation (http://svr.gov.ru/smi/2025/11/potseluy-erevana.htm):

The Press Bureau of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) of Russia reports that, according to information received by the SVR, experts from the foreign-policy and defence agencies of leading European states are literally “sounding the alarm drums”, warning their national governments of the approaching collapse of the Western-engineered “Anti-Russia” project in Ukraine.

Reports sent to high-level offices directly state that the military defeat of the Kiev regime is inevitable.
Particular attention is paid to the all-consuming corruption in Ukraine, where the generous contributions of foreign donors simply disappear without a trace.

US planning Gaza ‘green zone’ under Israeli control

While we wait to see what the outcome is of Russia’s counter resolution at the UNSC on a plan for Gaza and the whole of Palestine, here is the US plan fleshed out.

https://russiaun.ru/en/news/comment_gaza_141125

From the Cradle

US planning Gaza ‘green zone’ under Israeli control
——
The Trump administration is reportedly planning a long-term division of Gaza into a “green zone” under Israeli and international military control and a “red zone” left in ruins, according to documents seen by The Guardian. Foreign troops would initially deploy alongside Israeli forces east of Gaza, divided by the current “yellow line.” Officials admit reunification is “aspirational,” raising doubts about Washington’s commitment to an enduring political settlement.

Plans for Gaza’s future have shifted rapidly: first promoting fenced “alternative safe communities” for Palestinians, then dropping the idea entirely. Humanitarian groups say they were not informed of the changes.

The evolving proposal centers on a so-called international stabilization force starting with a few hundred troops and potentially growing to 20,000, though many countries are unwilling to deploy forces to Gaza.

Reconstruction would begin only inside the “green zone,” with the US hoping improved conditions lure Palestinians across Israeli lines, a plan which echoes failed US strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

US Plans for China Blockade Continue Taking Shape

Richard D. Wolff & Michael Hudson: China Just REJECTED Trump’s ‘Surrender Plan’

Modest concessions from China that were not a sacrifice. Xi enabled Trump to get what he really wants, a public relations orchestration.

MI6 Plan to cut China into three countries

Nuri Vittachi tells this extraordinary story, aspects of which you no doubt are aware of.

Unearthed documents show that MI6, the British spy service, planned to cut China into three separate countries. The British plan was formulated as recently as the 1990s—and part of it is STILL RUNNING NOW.

This is an extraordinary story which researchers uncovered from historical documents, and which was presented at a university conference recently. Full details with sources are in the video report. Summary of 15 key points are below.

1.) In the early 1990s, agents at British spy agency MI6 consulted UK academic Gerald Segal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs on how to chop China into three countries.

2.) The UK’s key players would be Uyghur separatists. “Xinjiang has long been a target of British intelligence— with London hoping to manipulate the Uighur refugees from Xinjiang and Uighurs still there, into cannon fodder for London’s plans to break up China…” (Journal of Strategic Studies).

3.) Enter a real-life secret agent—a Turkish man named Catli of the Grey Wolves, who shared MI6 goals in Xinjiang. A book about a related CIA venture called Operation Gladio said Catli “helped the Uyghurs… mount insurrectionary attacks that killed 162 people”.

4.) To understand this story, it’s vital to know that the west falsely presents an image of Xinjiang as a place where one ethnic group are prisoners and the other are oppressive overlords. Not true. In Xinjiang, people with Uyghur background can commonly be found as police officers, army soldiers, and local officials, including the ones right at the top—chairman of the regional government.

5.) In March 1992, the chairman of the regional government, Tomur Dawamat, issued a warning: “Hostile forces, both at home and abroad, have stepped up their infiltration, subversion and sabotage.”

6.) At the time, the CIA was backing separatist Isa Yusef Alptekin, another backer of the Grey Wolves. In a 1992 speech he said: “The time for collapse and dissolution has arrived for the Chinese empire.”

7.) The Americans gave his son Erkin Alptekin a job in US anti-China propaganda. In the 1990s, he worked for Radio Liberty, a US media propaganda unit, part of the Radio Free Asia cluster.

8.) By 1994, academic Gerald Segal had finished the map showing how to cut China into three countries. The US had already circulated stories of a “Tibetan genocide” to prepare for this.

9.) As part of their Central Asian program, the US had devoted hundreds of millions of dollars to get the mujahideen rebels to train groups of guerilla fighters. They added hundreds of Xinjiang separatists to join the training. (This project eventually backfired for the Americans – the central Asian guerilla groups they were financing give birth to al-Qaeda, ISIS and the Taliban.)

10.) Western forces worked further with secret agent Catli, who created more trouble in Central Asia and China. But he made lots of enemies and was killed in a suspicious car crash in Turkey in 1996.

11.) From 1996 to 2002, other agents continued to train Uyghur separatists in China, who went on to make multiple terrorist attacks. FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds later wrote: “Between 1996 and 2002, we, the United States, planned, financed, and helped execute every single uprising and terror-related scheme in Xinjiang.” (This US government denies this.)

12.) Problems arose for the western agents: UN data showed that the Tibetan population was growing faster than other Chinese groups– the opposite of a genocide. Also, there was also growing public knowledge that the “Tibet exiles/ Dalai Lama” project in India had been set up and financed by the CIA. So the “cut-China-into-three” plan became “cut-China-into-two”.

13.) In 2004, the US hosted the founding of East Turkistan as “a country”. For convenience, they decided to have the prime minister in Washington DC instead of China, selecting a man named Anwar Jusuf Turani from Fairfax, Virginia. The new “country” did not get international recognition by anyone – not even the United States!

14.) Between 2007 and 2014, there were a large number of terrorist attacks in China by members of the East Turkistan project the west had encouraged into being.

In a 2009 operation, separatists used Facebook to co-ordinate a massive attack in which 197 people died. In another, a huge car bomb in Urumqi killed 43 people and wounded 94. At Kunming’s train station, an attack by eight knife-wielding terrorists killed 29 people and wounded 140.

Xinjiang’s leaders, with help from the central government, sent in police officers and soldiers to halt the carnage—and, against extraordinary odds, succeeded.

15.) In the 20-teens, it was time for the Americans to use their superpower – narrative control.

They needed to do three things:

i) Get journalists and academics to cut all mentions of MI6 or CIA involvement in Chinese Uyghur stories.

ii) Trick the public into seeing the terrorists who had killed so many innocent people as the oppressed victims.

iii) Mislead everyone into believing that the authorities trying to stop the murder of innocents were the root cause of the problem.

Creating this new, upside-down narrative may sound like a tall order – but, incredibly, they managed to attain all three goals.

They did this by relentless circulation of mainstream media news reports which painted a picture in which “oppression” by “the Chinese” had “created” the violence. (See the video for detailed examples.)

The US then organized a 2019 meeting in Washington to relaunch the debunked “Tibet genocide” narrative as a Uyghur genocide hoax. The story continues.

Michael Hudson & Radhika Desai: Geopolitical Economy, New Season

Who Plans the Economy?

RADHIKA DESAI: Hello and welcome to a new season of Geopolitical Economy Hour, the show that explores the fast-changing political and geopolitical economy of our time. We are beginning this new season with our 50th episode. I’m Radhika Desai, and joining me today is one of our regulars and favorites, indeed, the person with whom I inaugurated this show, Professor Michael Hudson. Welcome again, Michael.

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: Good to be back here.

⁣RADHIKA DESAI: Great. Now, as we record this, the Federal Open Markets Committee of the U.S. Federal Reserve, whose decision set interest rates, has just finished its six-weekly meeting. And as some of you may know, they have agreed to decrease interest rates, the first decrease this year, by 25 basis points.

Not a big move, but the fact is the Federal Reserve has been the focus of a lot of controversy recently. And much of the controversy comes from Donald Trump. Anyone paying the slightest attention to the news these days cannot have failed to notice that Trump has a thing about the Federal Reserve, an itch, shall we say, one that he can’t help scratching.

He’s called Powell a numbskull and too late – which is to say he’s, according to Trump, always too late to lower interest rates – while demanding that Powell reduce interest rates. He undertook a theatrical visit to the renovations of the Federal Reserve’s Marriner Eccles building, disputing a difference of $300 million in costs in front of TV cameras, as if this few million dollars were consequential in a country whose debt is shooting north of 150% and 37 trillion US dollars.

It’s long been clear that he’s not going to renew the tenure of the current chair Jerome Powell and has already used the early retirement of one governor to place a loyalist on the board. And while he has recently named four candidates that he is considering for the position of chair, speculation rages far wider.

So some people are talking about more than 10 candidates. In yet another salvo at the Federal Reserve, Trump has, of course, tried to fire one of its governors, Lisa Cook, for cause he says, but so far he’s been unsuccessful with the most recent legal ruling, leaving her in place for today’s critical Federal Open Markets Committee meeting. So many questions arise from this.

While economists loyal to Trump have been publishing papers and writing commentaries on the Federal Reserve’s problematic easy money policies, Trump actually demands that the Federal Reserve keep monetary policy easy. So is there a coherent Trump administration policy towards the Federal Reserve? Secondly, while Trump wants the dollar to remain the world’s currency, he also seems determined to undermine the much doubted independence of the Federal Reserve.

So even as the easy money he wants certainly ensures that the Federal Reserve will not be able to rein in inflation, a standing threat to the dollar system. Inflation raises yet another question. While general inflation remains high – and it has gone up ahead of this meeting despite low energy prices – driven by high food prices, undoubtedly a result of Trump’s own tariffs, and core inflation – that is inflation discounting volatile food and energy prices – also remains high, Trump, on the one hand, continues to insist that he has brought down living costs, meanwhile ensuring that nothing that the Federal Reserve does will reduce it.

And then there’s the matter of cryptocurrency. With the passage of the Genius Act, a whole new set of assets, very dodgy assets, namely cryptocurrency, which any sane analyst would consider highly volatile, risky, and inherently speculative, have been given the imprimatur of government regulation.

This means that one way or another, these assets will enter the financial system and become one more thing in the everything bubble, taking the fragility of the U.S. financial system, which is already at breaking points, even closer to it. Any crash that now occurs can only consign the dollar system to the dustbin of history, as we’ve discussed so many times, Michael. So Michael, what’s your favorite drive about this morass of contradictions in which Trump is only further muddying with his attacks on the Federal Reserve? Go with whatever is on the top of your head because there’s so much to discuss. We can start anywhere.

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: Trump’s head is full of junk economics. He wants to depreciate the dollar. He wants the dollar’s exchange rate to go down because he imagines that this will make U.S. exports more competitive. As the dollar goes down, its price against European currencies and foreign currencies gets cheaper. The problem is America has been deindustrialized over the last 30 years, and there’s not that much to export.

And by lowering interest rates, what he’s actually doing is the exact opposite of what his Secretary Treasurer Scott Bessent, has done. It’s as if he wants to go back to the zero interest rate policy of making money by debt leveraging, by inflating the prices of stocks and bonds because you can borrow inexpensively from the banks and you can buy a stock whose dividends are higher or a bond whose rates are higher. He wants to make the economy safe for speculators again because they’re his constituency, after all.

Well, here’s the problem. The sane people on Wall Street, I guess the 1%, or people like you and me, are criticizing him from the point of view of what’s the independence of the Federal Reserve. If you have Donald Trump intervening in Federal Reserve policy, micromanaging under his imagination of how the Federal Reserve affects policy, or his pretense or cover story for serving his campaign contributors, then you’re going to have instability and probably inflation.

And of course, Trump pretends that he’s against inflation. But as you’ve just pointed out, tariffs are increasing inflation. And his vast, wonderful budget cuts (budget deficit), by slashing taxes on the wealthiest 10% and raising them on the bottom 90%, are going to inflate the economy. So he’s sort of overseeing instability.

And the question for many years – there’s been this mantra for the last century: the central bank has to be independent because central banks are responsible. And we all know that governments are irresponsible because they’re elected and they’re democratic and they want to spend money for welfare into the economy, and that’s inflationary. And they want full employment, and that’ll push up wages.

Instead the Fed’s job, ever since Paul Volcker, is to create enough unemployment to prevent wages from going up. What’s wrong with this picture, again, as you and I have discussed, is the Federal Reserve serves its member banks, the commercial banks. And if there’s any sector of the economy that’s more irresponsible, it’s the banking sector, because that’s what’s led to the financialization of the economy and the deindustrialization and the incredible debt overhead that we have today.

So there’s no reason to believe that the Federal Reserve is more responsible than the government. I’m not saying the government’s responsible because the same Wall Street billionaires that control the banks control the government itself. So you’re going to lose either way around. So the problem is: the Federal Reserve has taken over from Congress the management of the whole economy.

And as you and I have discussed, and I think you will today, trying to manage the economy just by affecting interest rates by buying and selling securities by open market operations is only one sliver of the economy and it misses the whole big picture, which is all about industrialization. how you organize what corporations are going to do with the revenue they get, are they going to buy the stock back their stock and push up stock prices and pay out dividends, or are they going to invest long term.

That’s really what it’s all about, and the Federal Reserve is not concerned with that at all. It’s just concerned about providing money to the banks and banks don’t lend money into the real economy, they lend money for stocks and bonds for financial speculation and you could look at the Federal Reserve as the implementer of the Ponzi scheme into which the United States economy has degenerated.

⁣RADHIKA DESAI: Well, you’ve made so many different points so let’s just take them by turn. First of all, let’s take the whole issue of the so-called independence of the Federal Reserve. Now you know, at one level, in the post-Second World War period for the first several decades, it was actually assumed that monetary policy was just one of the instruments in the hands of governments, elected governments, to keep the economy going, etc., so it was not assumed that that central banks would have to be independent.

The independence of the central banks has become a mantra and has become this rule of thumb, this principle that cannot be violated, only in the age of financialization. So when you said, Michael, a couple of things that already suggested this, which is that what the Federal Reserve has done over the last several decades is essentially inflate asset bubbles.

It has essentially lent money primarily to financial institutions, not so that the financial institutions will invest in the real economy. That possibility has already been thrown out of the window by the Federal Reserve in its role as the regulator of the financial sector, essentially because for decades, going back to certainly the early 80s, if not earlier, every time there has been any kind of a regulatory problem, the default position has always been to deregulate, not to re-regulate.

We can discuss that further, but there has been deregulation. The Federal Reserve essentially lends money to banks, which then use it for asset price inflation and so on. The easy money policy, particularly since the early part of this century, has been instrumental; first in blowing the housing and credit bubbles, which burst in 2008, and now in blowing up this everything bubble we are in.

So essentially the independence of the Federal Reserve, what it actually amounts to, the so-called independence of the Federal Reserve effectively means regulatory capture. That is to say, the regulator becomes captured by those it is supposed to regulate. It’s like essentially asking the fox to defend the chicken coop. It’s not going to happen. So, essentially, that’s why financial interests have been in the lead.

You said something else that’s really interesting, and that is that in recent decades there has not been any serious fiscal policy. What there has been is only monetary policy posing as the only form of management of the government. And in my own writing, in my geopolitical economy, where I track the financial policies and the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve, particularly in relation to the dollar system but also in relation to the management of the U.S. economy, what I discovered is that, certainly by the Clinton administration, if not earlier, there was basically no serious fiscal policy. The only fiscal policy was that Republican administrations would always reduce taxes on big corporations.

Then Democratic administrations would come in; they would not touch it but they would engage in fiscal consolidation, essentially by cutting social services and so on, which Republican administrations also did. And then the next Republican administration comes in and reduces taxes further. So, essentially, what this has also done, of course, is vastly increase the debt mountain of the United States. Because while you are cutting social services to some extent, it’s not nearly enough to account for the revenue you are foregoing by giving corporations big tax cuts.

So for the last many decades, what we have had in terms of economic management was simply monetary policy. And this really began with Alan Greenspan, and that’s why Alan Greenspan was himself called the maestro, as though he was, as a kind of superstar conductor, conducting the orchestra that was the U.S. economy with the slightest movements of his little baton.

But of course, in reality, what you had was essentially a situation in which they gave up trying to manage the U.S. economy. They gave up trying to preserve the productive character of the U.S. economy. They, in fact, encouraged things like outsourcing, financialization, etc. So they have essentially destroyed the U.S. economy, made it an economy based on consumption, etc. So, in all of these ways, what you’ve seen is that monetary policy has displaced any fiscal policy and thereby hangs many other threads.

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: They’ve not only deregulated monetary policy, they’ve deregulated crime. President Obama appointed Eric Holder as Attorney General, and Holder said, it’s true that there was an enormous crime wave that’s led to the financial crisis; junk mortgage lending, the banks have falsified mortgage statements, the appraisers have falsified them, the brokers have falsified them, there have been billions of dollars, and we have a choice.

As a result of this financial fraud, the mortgages of about 8 million American families are way overpriced beyond the ability to pay. What are we going to do? Well, we have a choice: either we can write down the debts, as President Obama had promised, to the reasonable, realistic value of their houses and enable these families to be saved from the exploitation of the banks, or we can prosecute the bankers and throw them in jail.

But there’s a problem with that. These bankers, most of them, are married with children, and their children and wives are innocent. And it would be wrong to hurt their innocence because if you look at the value of the life and the family happiness of a multi-billionaire, 10 billionaires are worth the 8 million Hispanic and black and other families that we’re expropriating.

So we’re not going to punish anybody. In fact, what we’re going to do is turn to the Federal Reserve and say, make sure that, although the banks are insolvent because they’ve lent much more money than the debtors can pay, we’re going to create the largest financial boom in history, the largest bond market boom in history, by slashing interest rates from the current highs all the way down to less than 1%, which is going to enormously increase the capitalization of bonds and stocks.

And so Obama appointed Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as Fed chairman, and then Janet Yellen. And their job was to prevent the banks from writing down the debt to what could be paid and, say, our job is to not to stabilize consumer prices, but to make sure that we stabilize and prevent asset prices for stocks and bonds and real estate from going down. Because if the economy is so highly leveraged and banks have lent out so much money relative to their capital reserves, if prices go down even a little bit, one or two percent, you’ve wiped out the equity of the largest bank customers, the largest speculators, and the banks themselves will go under.

And so the head of the Federal Reserve Deposit Insurance Corporation said, you know there’s one really crooked, incompetent bank; that’s Citibank. It’s so reckless that we’ve got to foreclose on it. And Obama’s Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, said, no, no, my job is to save Citibank. You know, they’re the people who put me in power. And hey, Mr. Obama, they have put you in power through Clinton’s Treasury Secretary. So you have the banks running the justice system and the prosecution system, as well as the financial system.

And the common aim of all of them is to make sure that the banks will not lose money by writing down the debt that you’ve just described as growing. If you don’t write down the debt and it accrues interest and is growing and growing and growing, then you have to create more and more and more money at lower and lower interest rates to carry this higher debt. That’s what a Ponzi scheme is.

You need new entrants into the scheme to provide the money to bail out the early investors, or the whole scheme fails. That’s what the United States economy has turned into, and that’s what the independence of the Federal Reserve means. Don’t let anyone, or the prosecution system, or laws against fraud, or even common sense, interfere with creating an economy that makes money by financial speculation, not by industrial investment. We’re not an industrial economy anymore.

⁣RADHIKA DESAI: Well, exactly. And you know what, Michael, Look at this. We’ve shown this chart before, but this is the chart of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. As you know, it went from under a trillion dollars to about $2 trillion in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. And then, with a series of rounds of quantitative easing, it went up to above $4 trillion.

And then, with the pandemic, it went up to $9 trillion. So, what is all this? This is essentially the Federal Reserve itself entering the market of various speculative assets. The Federal Reserve itself has become essentially an agent to preserve the value of the speculative assets of the various bankers and what have you. And there’s another thing, what’s really interesting insofar as the stock market is supposed to be democratic and so on – allow everybody to make money.

Well, another thing that’s happening, in addition to what you were just saying, is that actually the number of publicly listed companies is shrinking. More and more companies are owned by private equity, which is essentially elite clubs of investors who have inside knowledge about what can turn a profit and what can’t turn a profit. Knowledge which they refuse to make public and so that they can privately, as members of this club, benefit from these lucrative investments and not allow the ordinary investor, the retail investor, to come in.

That’s another really fascinating thing that has been happening. And now, of course, the Trump administration is allowing even greater kinds of forms of club-like behavior. So, the few companies that remain publicly listed, Trump has recently suggested that their reporting responsibilities – they should no longer be held to quarterly reports. They can go down to semi-annual reports once in six months.

So this again restricts the amount of information that is available for the retail investor. In so many ways, the Ponzi character of this system, in which essentially there’s a pecking order in which the rich continue to get rich, while ordinary people have no purchase on the system. And as far as things like pension funds are concerned, they are typically the bodies whose enormous amounts of money that they have forms essential “throw weight” in the financial system. It is used as “throw weight.” But, of course, whenever there is any gain, they gain the least, and whenever there is any loss, they lose the most.

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: Could you put that chart up again? I want to show it actually shows a radical unprecedented development of the Federal Reserve. You see at the very beginning of the chart that flat line. Yes, that flat line goes back a century, just as flat as it is then. And that flat line is how central banks all over the world have acted for a century. They intervene to buy and sell government bonds overnight in the short term, simply to affect interest rates up and down.

There is no long-term accumulation. What happened when you had the jump in 2008 that you show, and the jump that continued all the way through that period, is for the first time, the Federal Reserve began to be a huge investor itself. It bought enough stocks and bonds, not only government bonds, but corporate bonds, not only corporate bonds, but junk bonds, to push up their prices.

And so you have an enormous inflow of money not to be spent on goods and services, as you’re taught in school, but to buy stocks and bonds. The Fed creates money to inflate asset prices. It creates money for stocks and bonds and real estate purchases, not for consumer spending at all. This whole idea of Fed money creation that affects consumer prices is just a fiction. When you look at that chart, you realize what they really create money for. And that was revolutionary.

⁣RADHIKA DESAI: Absolutely. Michael, one of the things we want to discuss, is exactly what the Trump administration wants out of the Federal Reserve. Trump himself has said such contradictory things. On the one hand, he says that he wants the dollar to be strong and the dollar system to work, etc. And of course, it was expected early on when Trump started announcing his tariffs, that tariffs were going to increase the value of the dollar.

But what you’ve seen here, from the time Trump has taken office, the value of the dollar has gone down consistently. Some say that it has lost some 10% of its value, and this is one chart which shows the ups and downs. And here’s another one, which just shows essentially the broad dollar index, which again reaches a peak in January 2025 and since then has been in decline.

So the dollar has just continued to decline. And of course, everybody who doesn’t like Trump says that it is Trump’s fault. But I think that the situation is much more complicated. Part of the reason the dollar is declining is because of inflation. Now, mind you, tariffs have contributed to inflation, but inflation was going up even before Trump took office. And at the same time, the Federal Reserve finds it very difficult to deal with this inflation because the only way in which the Federal Reserve will permit itself to deal with inflation is by raising interest rates. But if it raises interest rates much more than it has already done, then it is in serious danger of pricking all the asset bubbles, the so-called everything bubble. Again, here is the chart of the federal funds rate going back to 1955. This is the Volcker peak.

But the Federal Reserve can’t do a Volcker anymore because, back then, when Volcker increased interest rates, he didn’t have to worry about asset bubbles, which would burst. Whereas what we see here, for example, is a series of interest rate increases, which were essentially forced on the Federal Reserve because the dollar was going down. So it had to restore the value of the dollar.

So they started increasing interest rates and the moment they went slightly beyond 5%, that triggered all those processes that led to the crash of the North Atlantic financial bubble, so to speak. So it led to the North Atlantic financial crisis. And similarly, we see again here today that we are already at that point of just a little over 5%, which is why, although inflation remains high, the Federal Reserve daren’t raise interest rates more.

Indeed, now what they are doing, in fact, is they are bringing it down. Now, Trump says that the Federal Reserve doesn’t want to decrease interest rates, and that Trump is advocating for decreasing interest rates. But you know what? The Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, and most of the Federal Market Committee would like nothing more than to decrease interest rates because they want asset inflation to continue.

But they have been forced to at least keep interest rates as high as they are, at which they have come over the last two or three years, because inflation is not going away. The Federal Reserve is caught in a bind; that’s why they are keeping up this higher for longer. In a certain sense, I suppose what I’m trying to say is that Trump just wants to look like the person who caused interest rates to decrease and as though they care about the real economy. But, of course, what Jerome Powell, as well as Trump, what they all care about merely, is the continuing inflation of asset bubbles.

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: That’s right.

⁣RADHIKA DESAI: And then the other thing that I would add to that is that; the independence of the Federal Reserve, which is allegedly in question – Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, recently published this article, in which he criticizes the easy money policies of the past. Now he may want to criticize it, but the fact of the matter is Trump wants the continuation of these easy-money policies.

I think that the real effect, whether it’s intended or otherwise, of interventions like Scott Besant’s – this article is being much talked about – will be essentially to establish that the Federal Reserve has never been truly independent. And if today the Trump administration appears as though it is infringing on the independence of the Federal Reserve, this is no different from what happened in the past. In one sense, that’s true, because all monetary policy is political, and the independence of the Federal Reserve, as we’ve already said, is only to leave the regulation of the financial sector in the hands of the financial sector. So, and that’s a silver political action [Please clarify]. The point is that he is basically establishing a new norm where Federal Reserve policy is political. And I think the only purpose of making it political is to give Trump the credit for keeping interest rates low.

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: The article that Besson wrote is really – I’m very happy with it. It’s made wonderful, wonderful points, such as we’ve made for many years. And he called the title of the article: The Fed’s New Gain of Function Monetary Policy. Gain of function is the term that was used for the coronavirus that’s come out and a pandemic. And he’s treating Federal Reserve policy as a pandemic.

And the gain in function has been a mutation of Federal Reserve policy, which we’ve just discussed, in saving the financial debt overhead of the economy, not the economy itself. And he goes to a long discussion of how the effect of making money financially, as you pointed out earlier, the leading financial sector investors are multi-tens of billionaires, and their way of making money is to deindustrialize the economy, not to industrialize it. And I think we’ve shown before the growth of wealth in the economy.

Here’s the wealth of the bottom 50%. The bottom 20% has actually gone down. All of the growth in the wealth of the American economy, all this growth has been in the form of stock, bond, and real estate held by the 10%. It’s the 10% that hold the vast majority, over 75%, of the stock market and the bond market. The 90% people, except maybe via their retirement funds, don’t have bonds and stocks. Only a very minimum compared to the super wealthy. And the beneficiaries of this asset price inflation thus have been the very top of the economic pyramid. And they’ve used this increasing financial wealth to increase their control of the election process by contributing to campaigns.

Now that you’ve deregulated the political campaign contributions in America, as well as the banks, and they’ve essentially bought control. And so the Federal Reserve celebrates this as success. They said, we’ve created wealth, but almost all the wealth they’ve created, 90%, has been to the wealthiest 10%, not for the economy as a whole. And if most wealth takes the form of financial claims on debtors; mortgages, bank loans, corporate bonds, and government bonds, then the creation of wealth on the asset side of the balance sheet means the creation of debt on the liability side of the balance sheet.

And the wealthiest 10% have the assets; the 90% have the debt. And the effect has been to polarize the economy. And I think Besant deserves credit for pointing out that this has been the whole effect of the Federal Reserve asset price inflation. It’s been inequality and unemployment and deindustrialization, the exact opposite of what textbooks imagine; that the financial sector is only an intermediary, it doesn’t have any effect on the economy. It just reflects that it’s the driving shaper of the economy. And it’s been misshaping it all throughout the United States and Europe and the Western economies in general.

⁣RADHIKA DESAI: Let me say that all the truths that Scott Besant has spoken in his article are no different from the truths that Trump had to speak in order to get elected. Remember, it’s been my argument for a long time that Trump discovered one thing, which is that you can no longer win elections by telling people that their economy is doing very well.

He told them the truth; it’s not doing well. We agree with that, but, of course, Trump told them the truth only in order to get elected and, of course, he thenmixed that with lies, for example the fact that he said to them that the economy is not doing well because of trade and because of immigrants and so on. All of those things were, of course, lies, so Trump has just a different package of truth and lies.

In Scott Bessent’s new package of truth and lies, I think the key point you have to understand is that he is only telling the truth about the inequality generated by the Federal Reserve not so that this will put a stop to it, because of course he himself would favor, as his president would favor, lower interest rates. What is going to be the effect of lower interest rates? The effect of lower interest rates will be to further inflate asset bubbles and to postpone the moment of reckoning. Let me just share a really interesting chart that I found. This is a chart of the major asset markets in the United States. You can see here there are equities, residential real estate, treasury securities, commercial real estate, farmland, and so on.

Now, what you see here on this chart is the average annual growth from 1997 to 2004. They are not small but they are not huge. But then you look at the growth just between 2023 Q4 to 2024 Q4. Within just one year, these asset markets, some of them like the equity market and so on, have been growing massively. Whereas all the other asset markets have grown less. And the commercial real estate market has actually shrunk to some extent.

So what is really interesting here is that now, in a sense, a crash will be coming because all these markets are already slowing their growth. The equity market is going up without any support. It’s going up and up, but what is it climbing on? It’s getting high on something else because, as we know, the entire stock market is being taken up by the Magnificent 7 and a few other such stocks. And most of the Magnificent Seven inflation in the prices of the equities has been because of the hype around AI. And it is increasingly dawning on people that the astronomical investments being made in the name of AI are not going to be lucrative. They are already not yielding stuff.

So a crash will be coming. But the point is that, in the meantime, they want to continue to have low interest rates. So Besant might complain about the easy money policy. Maybe they will not engage in quantitative easing and so on. But they will keep interest rates low. The point is that he wants to say that Federal Reserve policy has always been political, and he wants to say, therefore, that we are going to politicize it. And once that happens, then Trump will do what has been done in the past, which is to justify low interest rates in the name of economic growth, when, in fact, he wants low interest rates in order to keep asset prices up.

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: I agree. That’s exactly what’s been happening. People act as if the growth of wealth and the growth of the 10% are what the economy is all about. And for the Federal Reserve, that’s what the economy is all about, because that’s its constituency, because the wealthiest 10% are the customers for the bank loans. And the Federal Reserve is created to be managed and run by its member banks. So you have a closed circle.

And as long as Congress remains inactive and is unwilling to do anything except to cut taxes even more, to run an even larger budget deficit that adds to the effect, you can have Trump make the argument that if we don’t lower the interest rate, imagine how much of the government debt’s interest rate – the budget is going to have to be spent on interest to the bondholders.

And this is already almost as large as our military spending. This is going to create a crisis. We’re going to have to cut social security and cut Medicare, but there’s a solution to that because we can privatize social security and put it all into the stock and bond market to keep the Ponzi scheme going.

⁣RADHIKA DESAI: I’m just showing exactly what you’re talking about Michael, which is that the yield on treasuries both one year and 30 years, so very short term and very long term, has been going up and they are now at fairly high rates. This is really, also quite interesting and they are adding to the debt, the deficit, etc., which will continue to grow because the Trump administration is committed to cutting taxes for rich people, etc.

Another point that I just wanted to make, but essentially what is happening now is that the idea that the Federal Reserve should be independent is being buried and now we will have a new type of rhetoric, which will continue the same policies of inflating asset bubbles. They were not going to revive the American economy, just as the tariffs are not going to revive it, nor will low interest rates revive the American economy, as I’ve already said at the beginning.

The insertion of cryptocurrency has simply added a new asset whose value can be inflated, on the basis of which a small number of rich people can make money while the rest of the economy suffers. And this is going to continue.

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, the real point you’re making: it’s the government that needs to be made independent from the financial sector. That’s the real independence we’re talking about. And that’s the problem. Under America’s two-party system, you can only have two parties. There’s such a tangle of laws that there’s no way of having an alternative to the Republican-Democratic duopoly. And so Congress itself is no more independent than the Federal Reserve is from Wall Street.

And the result has been to shift economic policy, meaning economic planning, to the financial sector. Out of Washington into the financial sectors, Wall Street, and also the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. And so the result of all that is the financialization of the economy and a loss of what used to be the whole dynamic of industrial capitalism and the whole idea of industrial democracy.

If Wall Street’s in control, this means not a market free of government planning and centralization. Financial planning is more centralized than government planning. That’s why Trump’s been firing all of the government regulatory agencies. With no regulatory agencies, there’s nothing to prevent the financial sector from becoming the economy’s central planner. And that’s what’s happened in a nutshell to the US economy

⁣RADHIKA DESAI: So what you’re saying is that we will have a centrally planned economy, except that it will not be planned in the interests of ordinary people, it will be planned in the interests of a small number of very rich people, the Elon Musks of this world. And this is so true. I suppose what we’ve really said is that the rhetoric about the independence of the Federal Reserve has always been a way of keeping Federal Reserve policy away from democratic influence.

The idea being that, of course, as long as you have some kind of democracy then at least you can elect a government which can politically try to control the Federal Reserve, to bend its policy in the direction that will help ordinary people, that will create a productive economy, etc. But, of course, what you’re adding to this is that, of course, the existing democratically elected governments of the last many decades, and still today, are simply themselves in the pockets of the financial sector.

So there’s no way the elected government is going to control the Federal Reserve in a way that will benefit ordinary people. The point is not that the Federal Reserve is not independent, it’s not factually independent anyway. The problem is that it is under the control of the wrong interests. And if ordinary people in the United States want to take control over the destiny of their country, they are going to have to elect a government that is not part of this duopoly, that will actually represent the interests of ordinary people.

And then, yes, there will be no need for an independent Federal Reserve. The government will essentially bend monetary policy. A popularly elected government acting in the popular interest will bend monetary policy in the direction that it needs to go in order to create a productive, equal, socially just economy. And, of course, an ecologically sustainable economy.

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: I think you’re quite right. A democracy, unlike an oligarchy, would centralize financial management in the hands of the Treasury, which is a public, elected political agency, not a central bank. The United States didn’t have a central bank until 1913. The problem is that the Treasury itself is mismanaging the economy because it was run by basically bullionists, by gold bugs. And whenever the Treasury would raise a surplus, like for tariffs, the tariffs had to be paid in bullion, gold and silver bullion, not by bank credit.

And there was such an antagonism towards banks in the United States from colonial times, from the beginning of the Republic to the 1880s, with the whole silver, gold crisis, crucified on a cross of gold, that Americans didn’t want the banks to create money. And there was such a shortage of actual credit that an economy needs that, in an act of desperation, the Republicans and Democrats got together and said, we need bank credit. We can’t have these libertarian nuts, bullionists, at the Treasury tie our hands. That was the story of how the Federal Reserve was created in the first place.

⁣RADHIKA DESAI: There was that, but I think there were also some other things. The fact of the matter is that the United States dollar was not acceptable around the world because it didn’t have a central bank, whose function it would be to stabilize the value of the dollar. And of course, in the recent years, in the post-Second World War period, partly because the United States government has been committed to keeping the dollar as the world’s money, what you’ve actually seen is a systematic overvaluation of the U.S. dollar, which has then been a disaster for American industry.

It has been central to the deindustrialization of the United States. But nevertheless, my point is that the Federal Reserve was also necessary because otherwise your currency would never be acceptable. Before the Federal Reserve was created, the international transactions of the American government and other corporations were being handled via JP Morgan and handled in pounds sterling, which was kind of interesting.

There was another thing, which is that when you had banking crises, and there was a big banking crisis in 1907, there was no lender of last resort. So they had to create one. So there were many reasons. But yes, the fact is that you had to create a Federal Reserve in order to perform these functions.

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: Yes, but at least at that time, the lender of resort, when it did lend money to banks to avoid insolvency, it charged a penalty rate. That was the essence of management. And now the Federal Reserve gives a subsidized rate, just the opposite of what happened over a century ago.

⁣RADHIKA DESAI: Exactly. Well, Michael, it’s been a wonderful conversation. Unless you have any further things to add, maybe we should wind it up for now. Okay, great. Thanks. Bye.

Pakistan Says Trump’s Gaza Plan Differs From What Arab and Muslim Leaders Approved

As reported …

Islamabad (QNN)- Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said on Tuesday that US President Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan is not the same that was approved by leaders of Arab and Muslim countries, including Pakistan.

“This is not our document,” Dar told reporters at a press conference in Islamabad. He explained that Pakistan and its allies had demanded several key points that were missing. “There are some key areas that we want covered … If they are not covered, they will be covered,” he added.

Dar said the immediate priorities remain a ceasefire, stopping the genocide, allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza, and ending forced displacement.

The minister described Trump’s announcement as “an announcement from their side.” He stressed that Pakistan stands by a joint statement signed with seven other Muslim-majority states. “We own this. If there is any difference anywhere, we would go by — we are committed to this,” he said.

Leaders of Türkiye, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Egypt, Jordan, and Indonesia met Trump during the UN General Assembly session in New York. Trump presented his 20-point plan at the meeting.

Dar later told Pakistan’s Geo News that the White House draft “does not include all of our proposals.”

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani also raised concerns. Speaking to Al Jazeera, he said Trump’s plan “achieves a key objective by ending the war, but there are some issues that require clarification and negotiation.”

On Monday, Trump unveiled the plan at the White House alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The proposal calls for the release of all Israeli soldier prisoners in exchange for dozens of Palestinian prisoners, the full disarmament of Hamas and resistance factions, a phased withdrawal of Israeli troops, and the creation of a technocratic, non-partisan Palestinian committee to run Gaza.

The plan mentions Palestinian self-determination as a “possibility,” but stops short of promising statehood.

Israel’s genocide in Gaza has already killed more than 66,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, since October 2023. Continuous Israeli airstrikes and ground assaults have destroyed homes, hospitals, and schools. Aid agencies warn that starvation and disease are spreading, making Gaza nearly uninhabitable.

The West’s Place in the World After the Loss of Hegemony

[Note: For most of this year, the Valdai Club seemed to be flailing around with very little direction and very little work of consequence, almost similar to the UN.  With the current annual meeting I find better content and crisper thinking.  I hope you like this one.  Mr Putin’s presentation will revolve around the Polycentric World).

Discussion: The Valdai Club

Western global hegemony and the rules-based international order are over.

The world is entering a post-Western era not only because of the rise of China, India, and other powers, but also because of the disintegration of the Western community itself, writes Gabor Stier for the 22nd Annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club.

President Donald Trump’s second term has accelerated the rift between the United States and its key allies, completely undermining the trust that has underpinned the international system of governance since World War II.

The global order, especially during periods of transition and before a new equilibrium is established, could become more chaotic and dangerous, opening the way to a multitude of disparate alliances and the inevitable growing uncertainty that follows.

Where can the Western bloc find its place in this world? Is the West ready for change?

During the Cold War, the West emerged as a coherent geopolitical entity, opposing the Soviet Union and its proxies. In this historical context, the doctrine of containment created the geopolitical West that exists to this day. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it increasingly felt without a rival, intoxicated by “victory,” and its decline accelerated. However, in the 1990s, this community had not yet fragmented into competing blocs and did not seek to undermine American hegemony. On the contrary, it was widely believed, albeit naively, that the community of market democracies—that is, the West—would expand uncontrollably. Instead of the universalisation of the West, other great powers and regional powers emerged, increasingly demanding not only a voice in global affairs but sometimes even questioning the very principles of the world order built around the West.

Meanwhile, the West became increasingly fragmented, trust in transatlantic and other alliances weakened, and this community noticeably shifted from geopolitical and ideological solidarity to a civilisational concept.

The question is becoming increasingly pressing: can we speak of a united or collective West today?

Periodic disagreements and tensions have tested Western solidarity from time to time, but none has posed such a serious challenge to Western unity as Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Trump’s return to power in the United States shocked America’s closest partners, and in the spring of 2025, only 28% of European respondents considered the United States a reliable ally, compared to more than 75% a year earlier.

“The West as we knew it no longer exists,” Ursula von der Leyen declared in April of this year, and the standpoint of the European Commission President is now widely shared. The liberal ideals that underpin the geopolitical West have been devalued, freedom is increasingly restricted, authoritarian tendencies have increased, censorship and the exclusion of dissent have become rampant, and even the integrity of elections is often in question. European Union leaders, grappling with an ever-deepening crisis, often fail to even create a semblance of democracy, and these trends will likely accelerate the rise of illiberal multilateralism.

The exploitative model of capitalism is also in crisis.

The West was able to maintain an exploitative structure for nearly five hundred years, but it was unprepared for what would happen if the prey chosen for exploitation refused to surrender. What would happen if the slave rebelled and went on the move? The pressure to grow requires violence, and wars require force, and the Western bloc, especially Europe, is becoming increasingly weak. Beyond external circumstances and the development of global power relations, the West’s internal transformation has also significantly contributed to the current state. One need only recall the ill-conceived “greening,” the “rainbow” model, or even generational degradation. There are fewer and fewer charismatic politicians and more and more vassals. It is therefore unsurprising that the lack of strategic vision is becoming increasingly noticeable in the Western political space.

Meanwhile, the escalating cultural war within the Western bloc, the contrast between the progressive ideology and conservatives rooted in traditional values, is not only eroding internal cohesion and forcing people to choose sides, but also weakening the “soft power” considered the West’s strength.

Technological superiority is also waning. For example, in artificial intelligence (AI), America and China are already neck and neck. Moreover, Chinese products are cheaper. However, dogmas such as the absolutisation of free competition and a reluctance to strengthen the role of the state more decisively also hinder the development of competitiveness. A striking example of this is the military-industrial complex, which is focused on profit and serves its own financial goals rather than national interests.

One could list other causes of the crisis in the West, but the essence is that the liberal internationalist world order, based on Washington’s global leadership, the spread of democracy, free trade, and the primacy of international institutions (the UN, WTO, NATO), is a thing of the past.

The strategic model it founded has become unsustainable and really counterproductive. Paradoxically, it has strengthened the main rivals to American hegemony, primarily China, while simultaneously ensuring Western Europe an exceptionally comfortable existence under American security guarantees. The comfortable post-Cold War era of hegemony has ended, and its place has been taken by a far more complex techno-industrial rivalry, in which the real measure of power is no longer military might, but production capacity and technological sovereignty.

The world will disintegrate into tightly knit technological and economic regions, but also different political and military ones.

As for the West, the current situation is such that it has itself split into two.

One cannot speak of a unified West. On one side are the sovereigntist realists, who prefer a policy based on national interests, led by Trump’s America. Israel and Argentina can be included in this group, and in Europe, Hungary, Serbia, and Georgia. On the other side are the globalists, stuck in their ideological worldview, who lost their main support after the defeat of the Democrats in the US and turned their attention to the European Union, awaiting Trump’s downfall.

The West’s place in the world after the loss of its hegemony will fundamentally be determined by how quickly it can come to terms with the loss of absolute dominance and how realistically it assesses the new balance of power, the driving forces driving the transformation of the world order.

Above all, a shift in consciousness and perspective is necessary. It is necessary to acknowledge that competition exists, and the West can no longer do what it pleases. It is necessary to end the lectures and demands for Western superiority and, taking reality into account, come back down to earth. A break with power, rationality and balance, and shared interests must be placed at the centre of thinking. The sooner the West recognises this fact, the less painful it will be to accept the new reality. It is not enough to simply transform foreign policy by prioritizing national interests, targeted alliances, and future technologies. The West must also rethink its image. However, it is not yet fully ready for this.

Donald Trump’s America has already realised that the world is changing and is trying to slow this process and turn this trend to its advantage. At the same time, the assumption that the United States president can ‘lead the free world’ is mistaken. Trump’s personality itself is an obstacle, but, more importantly, America’s internal divisions and indebtedness… The weakness of the United States manifests in its inability to rally even its allies around it—in the case of Ukraine, this pertains to the “coalition of the willing,” and in the case of Israel, it means the Middle East. America’s authority within the bloc has been undermined, despite the fact that Europe is in an even more vulnerable position than before.

Europe is in a worse position than the United States: its current ruling elite can’t shake the feeling that the world has revolved around it for centuries. Looking at recent decades, it’s also stuck in an old, now outdated worldview. As if all this weren’t enough, it’s also captive to the Ukrainian conflict, which holds it in its grip. While Europe can’t let go of this hopeless war, it’s also divided on the issue. It lacks power, but acting as a kind of substitute, its voice becomes even louder. It’s rushing forward, being hostage to previously unrealistic promises. The fact that it took on the financing of the conflict as Trump’s proxy only exacerbates the situation. Now, under pressure to deliver on its promises, it’s frantically rushing forward, towards escalation.

Europe as a whole, including on this issue, has misjudged the situation and is therefore moving in the wrong direction. For example, it sees the continent’s security not in cooperation, but in strength, despite its weak military potential. Its competitiveness has been destroyed by America’s effective participation, and it lacks the energy sources, raw materials, or labour force to restore its defences, making it extremely vulnerable and in need of Washington’s increasingly costly goodwill. Without America, Europe currently lacks a viable operating model, and its dependence—for example, on energy—is only growing. Despite this, it refuses to understand that Donald Trump’s return is, in essence, an opportunity for it to obtain strategic autonomy. Creating this autonomy is no longer a matter of choice, but a guarantee of survival in a world where America’s attention and resources are inevitably focused on Asia.

There is a serious danger that the European Union, if it escapes disintegration, will become irrelevant in this situation. It will only accelerate this process if it unites and finally takes on all of Ukraine’s problems. While the current over-ideologised EU is suited to escalating the military situation, it lacks the pragmatism needed after a settlement. However, sooner or later, rationality and self-interest will prevail, and in the future, a division will emerge within the European part of the Western bloc between the Anglo-Saxon line, with the Germans and British interfering in EU affairs from the outside; the abstainers—the Scandinavians and Mediterranean countries; and, somewhere in the counterpart to these two groups of interest —Central and Eastern Europe, with Polish leadership and strong American influence. The question is how well these three groups of forces can cooperate and how much influence America will exert on the EU.

The West, led by Washington, must first decide whether to isolate itself or acknowledge the impossibility of maintaining even partial hegemony in the long term and join a new world order alongside poles such as China, India, or even Russia. In the next stage, it will face two difficult paths: leading a narrower, interest-driven coalition and acting as a ruthless realist, or renewing its broader, rules-based alliance system. However, American hegemony has ended, or, more accurately, it will be limited to the Anglo-Saxon world and North America, and in this space, the dollar may remain the universal currency.

Trump’s Plan Now Includes Key Edits From Netanyahu

This has been the methodology for the past two years. As I said yesterday, these people are all non-agreement capable.

The Gaza deal unveiled Monday reflects major edits pushed through by Netanyahu, infuriating Arab mediators who thought they had a different agreement in place.

While Trump hosted Netanyahu at the White House, Qatari PM Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani was in Doha presenting the plan to Hamas. Hours earlier, Netanyahu had called him to apologize for Israel’s strike in Qatar, a condition for Doha to resume mediation.

Netanyahu secured edits tying IDF withdrawal to Hamas’ disarmament, giving Israel veto power. Even after three phases of withdrawal, Israeli troops will remain in a permanent security perimeter inside Gaza “until Gaza is secure,” which could be potentially indefinite.

Arab states including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Qatar were furious. Doha even urged Trump not to publish the updated text, but the White House released it anyway. To paper over divisions, 8 states issued a joint statement “welcoming” Trump’s role, while withholding full endorsement.

For Palestinians, the plan has some positive elements: no displacement from Gaza, no permanent Israeli occupation, no annexation of the West Bank, a surge in humanitarian aid, and a stated U.S. commitment to restart peace talks and support “a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination.”

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas cautiously welcomed Trump’s “efforts to end the war,” a shift from his rejection of Trump’s first-term peace plan.

The plan demands all hostages (alive or deceased) be returned within 72 hours of Israel’s acceptance. But it’s unclear if Netanyahu’s endorsement started that clock.

If Hamas rejects or stalls, the U.S. plan says aid will still flow to “terror-free areas” handed over by Israel to an interim security force.

The bottom line: Netanyahu won key concessions that harden Israel’s leverage, but Arab capitals and Hamas are bristling. Whether the plan holds depends on if regional mediators can pressure Hamas into swallowing terms that strip them of weapons and leverage while leaving Israeli forces dug in.

Elena Panina: Gaza — another “cunning plan” of Trump and Israel

Elena Panina from Russtrat.ru (translated with Telegram)  https://t.me/EvPanina/17424

[Note:  Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan is already morphing to a possible Ukraine solution.  The empirical entity is building a format that they hope to use over and over again.  “The pattern has shifted toward attempts to utilize dwindling economic rights as a wedge for military intervention to expand the hegemonic stake through unrestricted warfare across all domains.”]

There is active promotion of the US administration’s plan for settlement in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu verbally approved it, making a number of amendments.

The most important thing: Trump’s plan does not contain the thesis about the possibility of creating a Palestinian state. It has been replaced with “the Palestinian people’s aspiration” for self-determination. Hamas, by the way, has not yet agreed to the plan. But they will be pressured.

The second important point. After the release of all living hostages and the handing over of all bodies of deceased hostages, the IDF, according to the plan, only reduces the occupation zone of the sector, but does not completely withdraw from it. It is obvious that from this moment Israel, which has already not restrained itself in terms of using all forces and means in Gaza, will receive a full carte blanche for a military solution to the issue.

The third point — the demand for the complete demilitarization of Hamas. In addition, it and other groups must refuse to participate in the governance of Gaza, directly or indirectly. Hamas members who agree to disarmament and “peaceful coexistence” are promised amnesty. They will also have the opportunity to leave the sector through a safe corridor to host countries. Thus, Gaza will lose its armed instrument. And after its complete demilitarization, anything can be done with it.

It is also assumed that temporary governance of the Gaza Strip will be carried out by some technocratic authorities under the supervision of an international body personally headed by Trump. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will also join the council of this body. We are witnessing new forms of colonial governance.

By the way, Trump’s special envoy Stephen Witkoff has already stated the universality of the approach to settlement in Gaza and the potential possibility of its use worldwide:

“This is not only about the Gaza Strip, but also about how this [settlement] can spread to all other regions of the Middle East and what it will lead to. It may even spread to Russia and Ukraine.”

The motto “From directors of Gaza — to director of Ukraine” is directly suggested. And it seems that the council on Ukraine will also include the well-known Victoria Nuland.

It is obvious that Trump’s plan is designed to reduce international pressure on Israel in connection with its policy of genocide in Gaza. The Palestinians will ultimately get nothing. Over time, after disarming Gaza, Israel with the help of the US will carry out its final annexation.

Seven Stages of Grief in Seven Minutes: The Trump Plan for Gaza

Assessing this Trump plan yesterday, I literally went through the seven stages of grief in 7 minutes.  But I did not stay with the final stage, which is acceptance.  There is no acceptance for another naked attempt at managed colonialism after running a genocide to get to this point.  What I accepted is that we are at war. While world leaders have learned the Trump cycle and are furiously pumping the bellows of congratulating him to (please god) get a kind word from him, a meaningless babble, while the rest of the world, the people, understand that we are living through one of the most propagandized, psyop’ed times in history.  These, so sickeningly endorsing, completely forgot that only last week they all supported Statehood for Palestine.

The Trump plan is not an exception, but the cherry on the cake that is being baked with flour ground from the dead bones of the Palestinians, and for this cake, the blood of the Palestinians is being used as liquid, with Tony Blair as the seasoning.  Tony Blair has already formally announced that Gaza (under his watch) will be managed remotely.

As expected and in line with the previous pretend efforts at peace, in recent hours, and in light of a new ceasefire proposal, the IDF has escalated its bombings on the Gaza Strip in the dead of the night.

I will not discuss the plan, as it is here. It is doomed again and has already failed, for these reasons:

One)  Nobody trusts the US.  Trump has lied to us so many times that it would be insane to believe him once again.  We come from two years of false negotiations for peace plans.  This is a non-agreement capable entity that pretends there is agreement on their plan to own West Asia and build on bones.   The western media is ghoulishly dancing to the macabre plan.

Two) Netanyahu has no intention of sticking to it, as he has already announced, speaking in Hebrew at the White House. (Netanyahu has a different schtick when he addresses the US audience, and this changes when he speaks to a local audience.)  So, this plan is already falling apart, despite the desperate business being done in the background by people like the Saudis (a Trump Tower will be built as well as a $1-billion deal to construct a sprawling, “Central Park-inspired” project along the Saudi port city of Jeddah’s Red Sea coastline, signaling the deepening footprint of the US president’s family in the kingdom).
The hope is that Netanyahu could offer Gaza (and the West Bank and the other pieces of land that he has clawed out from Syria, for one) as a small gift to Trump  (He has no bigly airplane to offer, so he provides the Palestinians!).  Trump calls Netanyahu a soldier and a fighter, but neither is accurate.  He is only a killer of humankind, and Trump bakes the cake.

Three) This plan only reveals the real plan, which is to own West Asia, just like all the other places that the Trump administration wants to, and fails to, own.  It is yet again an empirical grab of resources that do not belong to them, under the guise of peace, with a massive land grab at its core.  This will not remain hidden for too long.

There was a joint statement by the Foreign Ministers of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt welcoming the leadership role of U.S. President Donald Trump and his sincere efforts to end the war in Gaza, and affirmed their confidence in his ability to find a path to peace.  There is no effective Arab role, and what is included in the “Trump plan” is merely executive roles for implementing the American-Israeli vision. The Arabs are expected only to pressure Hamas and push it toward surrender.

In short: Israel keeps a permanent security perimeter while a foreign body enforces compliance. The message is simple — everyone obeys Israel’s conditions, and then ‘peace’ will follow.

I’ll use this thread throughout the day to report relevant commentary as it comes in.

Qatar and Egypt have delivered the Trump-Gaza peace deal to Hamas, with Hamas currently reviewing it. A trilateral meeting between Qatar, Turkey and Hamas is scheduled for later today once Hamas finishes reviewing the [treachrous] peace plan.

In Hebrew, Netanyahu gave away the game:

The “Gaza Peace Initiative” was another deceptive ruse to paint Hamas as rejectionists

Israel has no intention of withdrawing troops from Gaza, and will not implement any part of the plan in good faith pic.twitter.com/trxMsurbJO

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) September 30, 2025

China is sticking by the law.  Bear in mind zionist-israel’s acceptance at the UN had conditions and so far, they have not implemented even one.

Trump’s Gaza Plan

Netanyahu apologized to Qatar.  He is being skewered in Israeli media, by both left-wing and right-wing commentators, for apologizing, which most Israelis today see as a Middle East agitator, if not an enemy state.

One commentator noted: “Either this is a very embarrassing act of forced backpedaling, or there is a very serious deal on the table that required this move.”

Deal:

President Donald Trump’s Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict

Gaza will be a de-radicalized terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors.
Gaza will be redeveloped for the benefit of the people of Gaza, who have suffered more than enough.

If both sides agree to this proposal, the war will immediately end. Israeli forces will withdraw to the agreed upon line to prepare for a hostage release. During this time, all military operations, including aerial and artillery bombardment, will be suspended, and battle lines will remain frozen until conditions are met for the complete staged withdrawal.

Within 72 hours of Israel publicly accepting this agreement, all hostages, alive and deceased, will be returned.

Once all hostages are released, Israel will release 250 life sentence prisoners plus 1700 Gazans who were detained after October 7th 2023, including all women and children detained in that context. For every Israeli hostage whose remains are released, Israel will release the remains of 15 deceased Gazans.

Once all hostages are returned, Hamas members who commit to peaceful co-existence and to decommission their weapons will be given amnesty. Members of Hamas who wish to leave Gaza will be provided safe passage to receiving countries.

Upon acceptance of this agreement, full aid will be immediately sent into the Gaza Strip. At a minimum, aid quantities will be consistent with what was included in the January 19, 2025, agreement regarding humanitarian aid, including rehabilitation of infrastructure (water, electricity, sewage), rehabilitation of hospitals and bakeries, and entry of necessary equipment to remove rubble and open roads.

Entry of distribution and aid in the Gaza Strip will proceed without interference from the two parties through the United Nations and its agencies, and the Red Crescent, in addition to other international institutions not associated in any manner with either party. Opening the Rafah crossing in both directions will be subject to the same mechanism implemented under the January 19, 2025 agreement.

Gaza will be governed under the temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee, responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people in Gaza. This committee will be made up of qualified Palestinians and international experts, with oversight and supervision by a new international transitional body, the “Board of Peace,” which will be headed and chaired by President Donald J. Trump, with other members and heads of State to be announced, including Former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

This body will set the framework and handle the funding for the redevelopment of Gaza until such time as the Palestinian Authority has completed its reform program, as outlined in various proposals, including President Trump’s peace plan in 2020 and the Saudi-French proposal, and can securely and effectively take back control of Gaza. This body will call on best international standards to create modern and efficient governance that serves the people of Gaza and is conducive to attracting investment.

A Trump economic development plan to rebuild and energize Gaza will be created by convening a panel of experts who have helped birth some of the thriving modern miracle cities in the Middle East. Many thoughtful investment proposals and exciting development ideas have been crafted by well-meaning international groups, and will be considered to synthesize the security and governance frameworks to attract and facilitate these investments that will create jobs, opportunity, and hope for future Gaza.

A special economic zone will be established with preferred tariff and access rates to be negotiated with participating countries.

No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return. We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza.

If Hamas rejects the proposal, or tries to significantly alter it, the plan will be implemented in areas already under IDF control, while Israeli forces continue to battle Hamas in areas still controlled by the terrorists.

All Palestinian Factions have agreed to not have any role in Governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly or in any form

Map of proposed IDF withdrawal from Gaza per the Trump plan.

Blue Line:

The current control line of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)

Yellow Line:

The first withdrawal upon the release of the hostages

Red Line:

The second withdrawal when the international Security Forces (ISF) are deployed according to the standards specified in the Trump plan

Shaded Area:

The third withdrawal, which creates a security buffer zone

Trump continued to say:   Trump hails support for his new Gaza peace plan

Says Arab, Muslim and European leaders called to confirm it’s real — ‘the BIGGEST THING they’ve ever heard’

He describes wide involvement of regional and global powers in backing the proposal

Trump praises Netanyahu as a ‘warrior’ but says Israelis now demand peace and hostage returns

Blasts European allies for ‘foolishly’ recognizing a Palestinian state out of fatigue

Insists no one wants peace more than him — and, he adds, ‘Bibi too’

Netanyahu accepted the plan

Trump: The Arab and Islamic countries, along with Israel, asked “a nice man named Donald Trump” to chair the Peace Council in Gaza, even though my schedule is very busy.

Trump CAN’T believe Israel gave up Gaza in 2005 – ‘They gave up the ocean! Who would do this deal?’ The Don switches seamlessly between real estate pitch and Israeli talking points

Trump says he hopes the US and Iran can “get along”, believes Tehran is open to it, and suggests Iran could eventually join the Abraham Accords.

Netanyahu: We are taking the first step toward ending the war in Gaza and advancing peace in the Middle East.
Netanyahu: We must have all our hostages back, Hamas must be disarmed, and Gaza must be demilitarized.

Netanyahu says if Hamas rejects Trump’s plan, Israel will “finish the job” on its own.

The formal plan has now been published on the White House website.

——

Please give me a moment before I respond. At this moment, this plan privatizes the occupation. There is a scriptural reference that beats in my head. Look at all these things – Bow before me and you can have it all. He failed to take Greenland, he failed to take Canada, he was unable to take the Panama Canal, he allowed Bibi Netanyahu to run a genocide, and now he wants to take the pieces of that and save Netanyahu’s genocidal arse.  We can no longer live with this. But Hamas must accept and fight another day.  This plan is not sustainable as it does not give the Palestinians what they deserve after land, life, and liberty were taken from them.

The Sirius Report: China Plays Hardball Against Trump’s Delusions

‼️ Michael Hudson: Note 3 on the planned Alaska meeting

Alaska Breakdown Looming

It looks like Trump has just announced that the Alaska meeting will be hostile and he is rejecting all Russian demands. He has threatened to walk away in the first two minutes if Russia does not agree to a cease fire on Ukraine’s terms. His intention is to threaten Russia with more U.S. blustering that poses no real threat to Russia, but will (he hopes) solidify his support from the Donor Class, CIA and EU Russia-haters.

It is literally impossible for Trump to make any peace deal with Russia. First of all, he cannot control Europe, and Starmer, Macron and Merz have announced that they are going to fight Russia regardless of what Trump might want.

Second, Ukraine’s Azov battalion and related neo-Nazi nationalists insist that they will continue to fight – if not overtly, then by constant sabotage. Ditto the CIA alongside MI6.

And Trump’s neocon coterie is pressing the third rail: ny treaty settlement needs Congressional approval. Trump is no more in charge of Congress than the is of the CIA. It’s they that are running him.

So why is Putin attending, now that the original hints of reasonability by Trump has been summarily rejected, according to the Wednesday afternoon New York Times and WSJ reports of his statements? Trump has reverted to calling Russia the aggressor, as if it rather than Ukraine is bombing civilians. It is clear that he is incorrigible.

The last few days has seen Trump accelerate its military confrontation with Russia. The EU has announced a trillion-euro arms buildup against Russia’s threat to send 10 million troops to occupy it – as if countries still fought by armies occupying enemies instead of just bombing them.

The only way to salvage this meeting is not to talk about Ukraine at all, but about NATO/Russian relations and possible negotiation of a new atomic arms control treaty.

All that I can imagine Putin saying are two things. First of all, of course Russia wants Ukraine at the table to end the war. He hopes that by the end of the year his troops will establish a new Ukrainian government that will be able to sign the armistice, creating a New Ukraine with a new constitution. He’ll tell Trump that he is trying to end the war as quickly as possible.

Putin may bring up Armenia and Azerbaijan and ask the US to withdraw its intrusion, unless he wants a repeat of the Kennedy/Khruschev showdown with Russia putting atomic missiles in Cuba. The sphere-of-influence principle will come up – as it did in the Monroe Doctrine, which promised that the United States would not intervene in European affairs if European kingdoms stayed out of the Western Hemisphere.

Finally, Putin can say that in view of the fact that they can’t agree not to continue the US/NATO attack on Russia (and China and Iran and the entire rest of the world), at least they should agree that even in the absence of an arms treaty, they won’t bomb each other. The United States is free to sell all the arms and missiles it wants to Germany and other bellicose NATO countries. But once these arms are bought by Europe, Russia will treat any attack on its territory (including its extension into former Ukraine) as an attack by the country supplying the arms – and will feel free to bomb the hell out of it.

Putin can quip to Trump that this is the most peace-oriented thing that the United States can do: avoid a direct US/Russian exchange of bombs. “You can have Europe,” Putin can say. “It has nothing that we need or want.” Just leave us alone and stay out of our way, and you’ll have your US-Russia peace.”

It will be interesting to see how Trump depicts this as a great victory.

Russian Foreign Intelligence Service’s (SVR) statement original

Spies and sabotage

I have updated this as it is now available in a formal publication at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The original that came from Tass is below:

Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation: (http://svr.gov.ru/smi/2025/08/britanskie-spetssluzhby-gotovyat-ekologicheskuyu-katastrofu-v-mezhdunarodnykh-vodakh.htm)

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service has been receiving reports indicating that the UK intelligence agencies are planning to involve NATO allies to launch a massive raid on the so-called shadow fleet.

London intends to use a resonating incident with one or several tankers for launching this campaign.

This plan provides for a major act of sabotage so that the resulting damage can be used as the pretext for Russia’s oil shipments to be dubbed a threat to international maritime navigation. This would, in turn, give the West a free hand in taking countermeasures. They can go as far as detaining any vessels deemed suspicious in international waters and escorting them to ports in NATO countries.

The Britons are considering the two options as possible casus belli.

• First — staging an accident with an undesirable tanker in a narrow spot along maritime navigation routes, such as in a strait. London believes that an oil spill or the fact that the accident results in blocking the waterway would give NATO countries ‘sufficient grounds’ for creating a precedent to carry out special and extraordinary inspections of vessels in a pretended move to check them for compliance with navigation safety rules and environmental standards.

• Second — setting a tanker on fire while it unloads its cargo at a port of a country friendly to Russia. In this case, the fire is expected to cause serious damage to port infrastructure and to spread to other ships, which would require an international investigation.

London intends to task Ukrainian security services with carrying out these terrorist attacks.

In fact, the UK expects the perpetrators to do the dirty work and to fail at covering up their tracks, which would serve as a safety guarantee for the British. The international investigation would hold Russia responsible for the disaster, while in the worst-case scenario Ukraine will bear the blame, as it happened with the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines.

The UK plans to choose the right moment for the attack so that it creates a ripple effect in the media for pressuring Donald Trump administration to compromise its national interests and forcing Washington to go all out in imposing harsh secondary sanctions on the buyers of Russian energy resources by casting them as having indirectly contributed to this tragedy.

The UK’s intelligence community has totally lost the remnants of any good sense because of the reminiscence for the time when Britain ruled the seas, with the British crown approving pirate lawlessness at sea.

It is high time that our UK colleagues understood that their increasingly brazen attempts not only to ‘spite’ their rivals, but to undermine global energy security and environment can make even their closest allies run out of patience.

ORIGINAL from TASS

The UK’s intelligence services are planning to enlist NATO allies in a large-scale operation targeting the “shadow fleet,” which could lead to an environmental disaster in international waters

According to the plan, a “resonant incident involving one or more tankers” would provide the impetus for such a campaign

The plan involves organizing a major act of sabotage to allow the transportation of Russian oil to be declared a threat to all international shipping, which would give Western countries more freedom in choosing methods of counteraction

The British secret services are working on “two potential casus belli”: one involves staging an “unwanted” tanker accident, such as an oil spill or blocking the fairway, and the second involves setting fire to a tanker while loading in a port of a Russia-friendly state

The UK intends to time the attack so that the resulting media coverage will put pressure on the administration of US President Donald Trump

The goal is to force Washington to impose the most severe secondary sanctions against buyers of Russian energy resources, portraying them as “indirect culprits of the tragedy”

Yarlung Tsangpo Hydroelectric Power Plant : Tibet (Xizang)

The information following is from professional Chinese sources. A Russian discussion on this project follows.

1. Location

• Officially Published:

“The project is located in Mêdog County, Nyingchi City, Tibet (Xizang) Autonomous Region, at the great bend of the lower Yarlung Tsangpo River. It leverages a natural 2,350-meter water drop across just 50 km.”
*(Source: 《中国水电发展”十四五”规划》[China Hydropower Development 14th Five-Year Plan], 2021)*

2. Why China is Building It

• Official Reasons Stated:

Clean Energy Goals: “Critical for achieving China’s carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060.”

Energy Security: “Will become the largest clean energy base in China, replacing 90 million tons of coal annually.”

Regional Development: “Key project for the ‘Western China Development Strategy’, boosting Tibet’s economy and ethnic unity.”
(Sources: National Energy Administration (NEA) reports; 《西藏自治区能源发展规划》[Tibet Energy Development Plan])

3. Communities Served

• Per State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC):
Tier Service Area
Primary Tibet (Lhasa, Nyingchi, Shigatse)
National Grid Guangdong, Zhejiang, Sichuan (via ±800kV UHVDC lines)
International* Bangladesh, Myanmar (under discussion)

Note: Cross-border supply requires bilateral agreements.

4. Construction Timeline

• Official Estimate (China Hydropower Engineering Association):

Phase 1 (Pre-construction): 2023–2030 (Feasibility studies, environmental assessments)

Phase 2 (Core Construction): 2030–2040 (First 20 GW operational)

Full Completion: 2045+ (Total 60 GW capacity)

“Complex geology (seismic zone) and ecological sensitivity require extended timelines.”

Key Official Concerns Highlighted

Environmental Protection:

“Strict adherence to 《青藏高原生态屏障保护规划》[Tibetan Plateau Ecological Barrier Protection Plan]; 15% of budget allocated to habitat restoration.”

Geopolitical Sensitivity:

“All construction occurs within China’s undisputed territory; cross-border impacts require dialogue.” (Foreign Ministry Statement, 2023)

Direct Quotes from Chinese Sources

• “雅鲁藏布江下游水电开发是落实国家能源安全新战略的重要举措，装机容量可超6000万千瓦。”

Translation: “The lower Yarlung Tsangpo hydropower development is vital for national energy security, with capacity exceeding 60 GW.”
(Source: National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), 2022)

Official English Translations

China occasionally releases English versions of key policy documents:

《China’s Energy Development Report》 (NEA)

《Tibet’s Green Development White Paper》 (State Council)

China Southern Power Grid reports (partial English editions).

…

The following Russian discussion is by Dmitry Skvortsov, writing for https://vz.ru/world/2025/7/22/1347113.html and titled:

Who is hindered by the creation of a Chinese engineering miracle

China is starting construction of the most expensive project in human history: a series of hydroelectric power plants in Tibet. This project is not only an engineering marvel, but also a crucial element of China’s energy strategy. So why is it facing fierce opposition from other countries?

China has launched the construction of a cascade of hydroelectric power plants in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo River in Tibet. The total amount of planned investments will be 1.2 trillion yuan (167 billion US dollars). This is almost five times more than the cost of the previous Chinese mega – project-the Three Gorges hydroelectric power station (254.2 billion yuan). This estimated cost makes the Yarlung Tsangpo Canyon hydroelectric complex the most expensive project in human history.

The Yarlung Tsangpo River originates in the Tibetan Plateau and, after passing through vast heights and sharp drops, forms a canyon that is deeper and longer than the Grand Canyon in the United States. In the construction area, the river makes a giant loop around Mount Namcha Barwa, creating ideal conditions for the construction of a hydroelectric power plant: a sharp drop in elevation, a powerful flow of water, and a naturally narrow canyon.

Hydroelectric power plant builders do not need to use a dam to create a height difference to provide the necessary water pressure. This avoids the need to flood large areas of land, which is inevitable when building large-capacity hydroelectric power plants in flatter areas.

At the same time, the builders will have to overcome many problems. The terrain is extremely difficult, with elevations exceeding 3,000 meters, frequent landslides and mudflows, and tectonic activity requiring the use of earthquake-resistant technologies. Hydrologically, the river is characterized by high seasonal water levels and large fluctuations in water flow.

The projected installed capacity of the plant exceeds 70 GW, which will make it the largest hydroelectric power plant in the world. It surpasses the largest hydroelectric power plant to date (also in China) Three Gorges Dam by more than three times. Its installed capacity is greater than the combined installed capacity of the three largest hydroelectric power plants on earth: Three Gorges Dam (China – 22.5 GW), Baihetan (China – 16 GW), Itaipu (Brazil/Paraguay – 14 GW). This is more than half of the installed capacity of all power plants in countries such as the UK, Italy, or Spain (120–130 GW).

The project will use the latest technologies for tunnel drilling and earthquake-resistant concrete reinforcement. It will also use the latest flow control systems. The project will also include environmental compensation measures. Special attention will be paid to creating a network of reservoirs and cascades that will ensure even generation during seasonal fluctuations.

The scale of the construction project is unprecedented: tens of thousands of workers, hundreds of kilometers of roads and tunnels, and the construction of airfields and logistics centers.

The choice of location for the construction of hydroelectric power plants is not only due to the topography of the area. The Tibetan region remains one of the least electrified areas in China. The remoteness, rugged terrain, and low population density have hindered the development of the power grid. However, the growth of high-altitude cities, infrastructure projects, and tourist destinations requires a reliable power supply.

Since the late 1990s, China has been developing plans for the comprehensive electrification of Tibet. Since 2000, China has initiated the development of 193 hydropower projects in the region. Approximately 60% of these projects are still in the planning or preparation stages. However, the most ambitious project has been selected, located in the Yarlung Tsangpo Gorge. The construction permit was obtained in December 2024, and the official start of construction took place on July 19, 2025.

This hydroelectric power plant should not only provide electricity to Tibet, but also become an important part of the energy transmission system from the west to the east of China, where most of the industrial consumers are located. The installed capacity of the plant will help cover the evening and night peaks when solar generation decreases and wind generation is unstable.

We should not forget about the large-scale deposits of lithium in Tibet. This production is very energy-intensive and impossible without a stable energy supply. The launch of hydroelectric power plants will give a start to the industrial development of Tibet’s mineral and rare-earth reserves.

In China, which plays the role of the “factory of the world,” coal-fired thermal power plants still play a significant role in the electricity sector (1,150 GW, or 34.3% of the total installed capacity of the country’s electricity generation). However, China is also a leader in the development of renewable energy. The installed capacity of solar power plants currently stands at 887 GW (26.5%), while the installed capacity of wind power plants is 520 GW (15.5%).

However, renewable energy sources are unstable. The recent blackouts in Spain and France, caused by sudden changes in grid load, have highlighted the importance of having managed backup capacity. Hydroelectric power plants are one of the best candidates for this role. Unlike solar and wind power, hydroelectric power plants can quickly adjust their generation to adapt to changes in the grid. The Yarlung Tsangpo Hydroelectric Power Plant will serve as a flexible backup capacity as the share of renewable energy increases, reducing the risk of instability.

The announcement of the construction project has sparked expected opposition from China’s geopolitical adversaries. India and Bangladesh have expressed concerns about the project, fearing that the water may be diverted or held back. The Yarlung Tsangpo River becomes the Brahmaputra River as it flows southward into the Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, and then into Bangladesh as the Jamuna River. The closure of the river could have significant implications for millions of people living downstream, according to The Guardian.

“China can always use this water as a weapon by blocking it or diverting it elsewhere,” said Niraj Singh Manhas, an analyst at the Jamestown Foundation.

International environmental organizations have also become more active. They express concern about the state of wildlife in the region, as well as the significant tectonic shifts, severe landslides, and extreme geographical conditions in which the dam is expected to be built.

This hydroelectric power plant is especially important for China today, when the United States is preparing to move from a tariff war with China to blocking its access to energy resources. According to the White House, the upcoming economic negotiations with China will include discussions about the need to stop importing Russian and Iranian oil. Beijing is forced to seriously consider the scenarios of forceful blockades of Chinese maritime imports that have been discussed in some English-language media outlets.

In these circumstances, Russian supplies across the land border are not at risk. However, China’s goal is to prioritize energy supply that is independent of maritime oil imports, not only in the north but also in the south of the country.

‘Concentration camp’: Israel’s planned new city in Rafah, explained

What we know about Israel Katz’s ‘humanitarian city’, how it seeks to realise Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan and what international legal experts think

From Middle East Eye

Israel Katz is calling it a “humanitarian city”, from which Palestinians will be encouraged to “voluntarily emigrate” out of Gaza.

But analysts believe the Israeli defence minister, who unveiled plans this week to confine over two million Palestinians into a small area in southern Gaza, is using distorted language.

Experts in genocide and international law say the “humanitarian city” is more akin to a concentration camp. And any talk of “voluntary emigration”, they told Middle East Eye, should actually be read as forcible displacement.

The proposals are not fringe discussions. They were revealed by Katz, and appear to have the backing of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Here, we break down what we know about the plan, how it relates to months-long US and Israeli rhetoric of ejecting Palestinians from Gaza, and what the international legal implications are.

What do we know about the ‘humanitarian city’ plan?

Katz said the plan would initially involve the ejection of 600,000 displaced Palestinians currently living in camps and makeshift homes in the al-Mawasi area of southern Gaza to an area in the ruins of Rafah city.

Once they arrive in this new zone, security screenings would take place. They won’t be allowed to leave once they’ve entered, Katz said.

Eventually, the entire civilian population of over two million in Gaza would be confined to this small “city”.

Four aid distribution centres are to be established within the area.

The defence minister initially said that Israeli forces would secure the perimeter of the site, but would not run it. He said Israel was seeking international partners to manage the city.

However, an Israeli official told Haaretz that Israel may run the area “for the time being”.

The official said that Netanyahu thinks that if Israel doesn’t manage the zone in the short term, “no one will volunteer on their own accord to take control over the humanitarian matter, and Hamas will simply continue to rule”.

The source added that the prime minister believed that countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE would then be incentivised to take over Israeli control of the area, “without being considered collaborators with Israel”.

There is no evidence that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, or any other country in the region has expressed a desire to be involved in the plans.

Katz said that once concentrated in the new city, Palestinians would be encouraged to “voluntarily” leave the Gaza Strip for other countries, as part of an “emigration plan” he said “will happen”.

He added that Netanyahu was leading efforts to find countries to take in Palestinians from Gaza.

There is not yet a clear indication as to when construction for such a new city would begin, or if it could go ahead without international backing.

Katz envisaged that if conditions permitted, the city would be built during a two-month pause in hostilities. Such a ceasefire is being negotiated between Israel and Hamas, via intermediaries, but is far from being agreed.

What does international law say?

The planned city will violate multiple provisions of international humanitarian law (IHL), according to Eitan Diamond, a Jerusalem-based senior legal expert at the Diakonia International Humanitarian Law Centre.

He said that in accordance with the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, populations in occupied territories “shall at all times be humanely treated”, and may only exceptionally be placed under assigned residence or internment when there are “imperative reasons of security”.

“A blanket decision to enclose hundreds of thousands of people in a concentration camp or zone clearly falls well outside the lawful exception and would entail an unlawful deprivation of liberty in breach of IHL and of human rights law,” Diamond told Middle East Eye.

The Fourth Geneva Convention also states that mass transfers of people from an occupied territory are prohibited.

‘Third countries that willingly take part in the crime would be complicit in the violation of the law’

– Neve Gordon, Israeli expert on international law

“Compelling residents of the occupied territory to move from their homes to another part of the occupied territory would constitute a prohibited act of forcible transfer,” said Diamond.

In relation to Katz’s “emigration plan”, Diamond added that compelling the population to leave the occupied territory altogether to move to another country “would constitute an act of deportation”.

“Both are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, implicating those responsible in the commission of a war crime.”

He added that when such acts are committed as part of a systematic attack against a civilian population, which appears to be the case in Gaza, it implicates those responsible in the crime against humanity of deportation or forcible transfer.

IHL permits warring parties to temporarily transfer civilian populations for humanitarian reasons, however they must be allowed to return to their homes.

“These are often called ‘safe zones’, ‘safe areas’, ‘buffer zones’, and ‘safe humanitarian zones’,” Neve Gordon, an Israeli professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London, told MEE.

“What Katz is proposing is a ‘humanitarian concentration camp’, which is a very different story.”

Diamond said that a warring party cannot move a population to avoid risks being caused by that same warring party. As such, he said, Israel’s plan to displace hundreds of thousands of people into a very tight area could not be characterised as a lawful evacuation.

“On the contrary, such actions would almost certainly amount to an act of ethnic cleansing.”
Is the emigration plan really ‘voluntary’?

The short answer is no.

Katz’s “emigration plan” is a manifestation of US President Donald Trump’s proposal to ethnically cleanse the enclave.

Trump said in February that Washington would “take over” the Gaza Strip and eject the Palestinian population to other countries. In the meantime, the enclave would be turned into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.

Katz has been a cheerleader for these plans for months. In March, he announced a new government agency set up to oversee “voluntary departures” in compliance with Trump’s proposal.

‘Concentrating the civilian population in the way Israel proposes is clearly an act of genocide’

– Martin Shaw, sociologist

“The phrase ‘voluntary emigration’ has long been used in Zionist ideology as a euphemism for expelling the Palestinian people from their homeland, including by creating coercive conditions that compel the natives to leave,” Nimer Sultany, a Palestinian academic in public law at Soas University in London, told MEE.

Sultany noted that Katz had long threatened Palestinians with another Nakba, having made such remarks in 2022 before the ongoing war.

The Nakba, or “catastrophe”, refers to the forced displacement of 750,000 Palestinians from their ancestral homes in 1948.

“There is nothing voluntary about any emigration scheme that Israel devises in these circumstances,” Martin Shaw, a prominent sociologist and author of several books on the subject of genocide, told MEE.

“The people of Gaza have been bombed out of their homes, lost their loved ones, starved and shot at when they try to get food.

“Israel will be using all this cruelty to force people to leave, and to remove their right to return as they have from previous generations of Palestinians.”

Diamond said that it is well established under IHL that forcible displacements can be brought about by a coercive environment.

“When a party creates conditions that compel people to move to avert conditions that threaten their lives or wellbeing, their decision to move is not a genuine choice,” he said.

“This is no more voluntary than the decision of a person who hands over their wallet to a gun robber saying ‘your money or your life.’”

So far, Israel has failed to find any countries willing to take displaced Palestinians from Gaza.

“Given that Israel’s actions and future plans are blatantly illegal and constitute war crimes, third countries that willingly take part in the crime would be complicit in the violation of the law,” said Gordon.

The UN said on Wednesday that it stood firmly against any such plans to forcibly displace those in Gaza.

How is the ‘city’ being described by experts?

Many legal experts, including one of Britain’s most distinguished human rights lawyers, have said the plans are synonymous with concentration camps.

Sultany noted that the plans involve a starving population being “concentrated” into a tiny site and being prevented from leaving.

“In other words, the civilian population has no choice, and they will be placed in a prison or a ghetto that Israel controls,” he stated. “This is the definition of a concentration camp.”

He said that Israel had already concentrated Palestinians in less than 20 percent of Gaza, and imposed conditions on them “that bring about their physical destruction”.

“The evidence that Israel has been committing a genocide is overwhelming,” Sultany said.

Shaw, author of War and Genocide, What is Genocide and Genocide and International Relations, agreed.

“Concentrating the civilian population in the way Israel proposes is clearly an act of genocide,” he said.

He added that Katz’s proposal was designed to “consolidate the results” of Israeli killings over the past 21 months by heading towards “removing the survivors so as to complete the destruction of Palestinian society in Gaza”.

“The destruction of a society is, of course, the very meaning of genocide.”

Siberianisation and the Pursuit of a New Civilisational Platform

A Third Interview with Prof. Sergey A. Karaganov

– Nora Hoppe and Tariq Marzbaan – Al Mayadeen English

Introduction

Following our first two interviews here and here, we wish to turn once again to esteemed luminary, political scientist and senior political advisor, Professor Sergey A. Karaganov* to discuss the topics of Russia’s historic civilisations, Siberia and the process of Siberianisation, and the essence of a New Civilisational Platform for the Russian Federation.

* * *

I. Russia’s historical civilisations

HOPPE/ MARZBAAN: You mentioned in our last interview with you that Russia is the proud heir of two great civilisations – the Mongol and the Byzantine civilisations…

The Byzantine legacies…

What did Russia inherit from Byzantium beyond Orthodox Christianity, other than its influence on the arts and architecture?

PROFESSOR KARAGANOV: Let me begin by saying that if we want to get to the deep origins of the identity of Russia, the Russians and other peoples of the Russian Empire and the USSR, as well as very many other peoples of Eurasia, we must go back to the end of the first millennium BC and the beginning of the first millennium AD. At that time, the vast spaces from Mongolia to the Carpathians and beyond, and then toward Iran and even India to the forests of today’s Russia were roamed by Scythian tribes that left a significant cultural layer and a huge number of burial mounds. The Scythians were a very interesting people. Unfortunately, they did not leave literary texts, although they left a lot of household items testifying to their high culture. There is also the famous Scythian gold. These tribes, which made up a soft empire, laid the foundation for most of the peoples in Central Eurasia from Mongolia through Iran, Phoenicia, Byzantium, and Southern Russia, approximately to present-day Hungary. The Scythians spoke a language that apparently had Eastern Iranic roots. Now we are rediscovering within ourselves these roots that unite us with the peoples of Eurasia.

Many Russian literary works are devoted to the Scythians. The Scythian heritage and passionarity were vividly embodied in Russian culture and ideology.

For some time, at the beginning or the middle of the first millennium, the Scythians were replaced by the Huns, who lived in an area stretching from approximately present-day northern Italy to Ukraine. They left a smaller mark on our culture, although the Huns terrified the whole of Europe.

At the end of the 8^th and beginning of the 9^th centuries, Ancient Rus’ had to choose its religion. There were three options: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity in its Byzantine version. The Russian princes, who baptized Russia, chose Byzantium ― at that time the richest, the most developed and intellectually flourishing country in Central Eurasia, much more developed than Europe was. I believe it was much more developed than the Jewish or Muslim state associations. The Russian princes’ astute choice of Byzantium largely predetermined Russian culture, Russian architecture, and, of course, Russian religion, that is, our Orthodoxy. We remained faithful to Orthodoxy even after Christianity had split into Orthodoxy and Catholicism. So to some extent we are Old Believers in this sense and can even say that we are true Christians.

Byzantium gave us icon painting, architecture ― early pre-Mongol Russian architecture is magnificent ― and, if we compare it with European architecture of that time, I am talking about the beginning of the last millennium, it looks, of course, much more beautiful, more sophisticated. It reveals a very strong Byzantine influence.

It was at that time that the Russian writing system came from present-day Greece. Greek monks ― Byzantines ― had the strongest influence on the formation of basic Russian culture. Early Russia frequently fought with Byzantium but gained much more from it. Moreover, the so-called trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks, from Scandinavia to Byzantium, passed through Ancient Rus’, and it not only enriched the Russian lands but had the strongest influence on Russian culture.

The Mongol legacies…

HOPPE/ MARZBAAN: The Mongol invasions of Asia are known to have been ruthless and devastating… And yet the PAX MONGOLICA that followed in territories under continued Mongol rule is said to have brought many beneficial developments, such as more extensive trade routes, increased cultural exchanges and scientific and technological developments, etc.

Moreover, the occupation of Eastern Europe by the Golden Horde even led to the unification of Russia: before Mongol rule, the Russian-speaking peoples of the region lived in scattered city-states, and in order to free themselves from the Mongol yoke, they had to unite. And the Silk Road flourished in this period.

But in mostly Western history books and in the general Western view today, the Mongols, the “Golden Horde” (only one of the many khanates of the Mongol Empire), “hordes” (which became a derogatory term for large groups) in general and often even the Tatars as a people (the origin of the designation “Tatar” being unclear, due to many different interpretations) are conflated and generally viewed as brutal and backward in all respects.

How would you describe the “encounter” of the Russians with the Mongols and later with the creation of the Golden Horde? How is the Mongol Empire seen today by most citizens of the Russian Federation today? Are there many divided views?

PROF. KARAGANOV: Until recently, the Russian interpretation of history was dominated by the Westernized view of the Mongol Empire. Modern Russian historiography began around the 18^th-19^th centuries and was very strongly influenced by Western culture, so everything that came from Asia was perceived negatively.

Until recently, this was the dominant narrative in Russian historical memory. Things began to change in recent decades. We are beginning to understand more and more that the Mongols did not only plunder Russia and delay its material development, but they also had a huge positive impact on Russia. Firstly, reliance on the Mongols allowed Grand Prince Alexander Nevsky, one of the most important heroes in Russian history, who reigned in the 13^th century, to defeat the Teutons. He chose the Mongols because they were religiously tolerant and more culturally open than the Teutonic Catholics. By that, he largely predetermined the course of Russia’s development. The Mongol Empire left a deep mark on Russian history also, because it was multicultural and very tolerant religiously, and this is where I think (although there is no complete agreement amongst historians on this matter) the Russians ― the dominant people in the former Russian Empire and the USSR ― inherited their unique cultural, religious, and national openness.

The Horde’s power was quite unique. Russia was its vassal, but the Horde did not interfere concretely in Russia’s internal affairs. Russia was a vassal but not a colony. The Mongols taxed, plundered, and delayed material development, but they did not delay cultural and spiritual development. Perhaps external pressure even spurred the development of core Russian culture around the Orthodox Church.

Nevertheless, there is still no complete agreement on this issue. Ethnic Russian nationalists reject our Mongolian roots in every possible way. So-called liberal Westerners, who would like Russia to align entirely with Europe, also reject this. As is often the case in history, and this is a historical irony, liberal Westerners and ultranationalists have closed their ranks in this regard. But the debate is on, and it greatly helps our spiritual development. I think that sooner or later we will come to a more balanced view of the Mongol period. So far, this period has mainly been described as “the struggle of the Russian people against the Mongols”.

In fact, the Russian national character was largely formed in their struggle against the Mongols, on the one hand, and against the Teutons and other potential invaders from the West, on the other. The Russian national character, the character of the warrior, was born in these struggles.

HOPPE/ MARZBAAN: Can you describe the “vertical power” and the “global thinking” inherited from the Mongols? And what else did Russia inherit from the Mongols?

PROF. KARAGANOV: I think there will be a reassessment of our Mongolian heritage, as I said. All the more so, because we are now turning, finally, to the East, but we will talk about this a little later. We are beginning to understand that we may not even have become who we are without this Mongolian heritage, and the Mongols gave us the concept of vertical power that helped Russia become a huge country, a de facto empire.

The Mongols left us a unique system of roadways, when envoys were able to travel on constantly changing horses from what is now China to what is now Hungary in just a few months. This is a very fascinating period in history, and we are studying it now. One of the most interesting discoveries, which I personally made only recently, is that the great Russian ruler, Alexander Nevsky, the prince who defeated the Teutons and founded the Russian state in many spiritual ways, at some point in 1247-1248, travelled to the capital of the Mongol Empire, Karakorum, for a jarlig [a written imperial decree] in order to rule.

Alexander Nevsky and maybe – but we don’t know this for sure – his father were the first Russian Siberians. He crossed almost all of southern Siberia and then lived in Karakorum for several months. The most interesting thing is that the crown prince of the Mongol Empire, Kublai Khan, or Hubilai, as he is known in Europe through Marco Polo, was in Karakorum at that moment. At that time, he was only a contender for the throne of the great khan. A few years after their almost certain meeting and perhaps even after many conversations, he became a great khan, a unifier of China, and the founder of the Yuan dynasty. So we have common historical roots with China. Neither Russian nor Chinese historians have so far delved into this period of our history. But this is an interesting task to tackle in the future.

HOPPE/ MARZBAAN: Can we perhaps utilise the positive aspects of the Pax Mongolica for a renaissance of Eurasia, for the BRICS, for a Multipolar World?

PROF. KARAGANOV: Apparently, our great capacity for complex thinking dates back to the time when Russia was part of the Mongol Empire, when it interacted with various peoples from China to present-day Eastern Europe via the Mongol Empire and before that via the common Scythian heritage, when the Russian princes travelled through almost all of Eurasia. It was our deepest root. this capacity for complex thinking was further developed from the 16^th century onwards, when Russians headed for Asia again. This time, they crossed the Ural Range and undertook the conquest and development of Siberia ― one of the most glorious episodes in Russian history, which ultimately established the greatness of Russia and its national character.

Naturally, we can and should utilise the positive aspects of the history of Pax Mongolica and the Mongol Empire, in order to substantiate the unity of Eurasia. And, as I said at the beginning of our interview, we must rely just as much on the heritage of the Scythians, who were the forefathers of so many peoples in Greater Central Eurasia.

Eurasia is living through a renaissance, and, of course, we must study our common history, which is much richer than it seemed until now, when we, both in Russia and in Asia, largely looked at the world through the eyes of Europeans. We read European books and considered Byzantium dirty and backward. We in Russia even had the term “vizantiyshchina,” which meant intrigue and inefficiency, even though Byzantium was much more developed than Western Europe was back then.

But the Mongol Empire and the Scythians unite us with Iran, with the Phoenicians, with the Mongols, and with North India. In fact, they were, firstly, the most powerful empire in the history of humankind, and secondly, they laid the foundation for Eurasia to become the centre of the world, which it was during the Mongol Empire that, incidentally, offered protection to the Silk Road stretching from China to the West.

I am not sure that the legacy of the Mongol Empire can and should be used to substantiate the development of BRICS. After all, BRICS is a global phenomenon. It includes countries in Latin America and Africa, but our Mongolian heritage is very appropriate for substantiating the development of the SCO as well as pan-Eurasian development and the security system that we are starting to build.

Pagan roots and legacies…

HOPPE/ MARZBAAN: Before the Byzantines and Mongols came, the Rus‘ people were pagan (e.g. Prince Oleg the Wise, who laid the foundation for the state of Kievan Rus’) – thus Paganism is also a root of the Rus‘ Russian people (not to mention the root of non-Rus’ Russians)… Are there any positive “pagan legacies” for Russia today?

PROF. KARAGANOV: We have a huge number of national customs and holidays that connect us with the times when we were pagans. Many Christian, Orthodox holidays are directly related to holidays dating back to pagan times. In our country, if you look closely, you can obviously see pagan traditions often preserved in regions where Orthodoxy and even Islam formally prevail.

Moreover, in the last decades of the Soviet period and even now, the traditions of the “small peoples” [In the Russian Federation, “small peoples” (malye narody) refers to the 40 indigenous ethnic groups inhabiting the North, Siberia, and the Far East, particularly those with traditional lifestyles based on subsistence activities like fishing, reindeer herding, and hunting and local traditions receive wide support and have become much more popular. When traveling through the Urals and Siberia, I often met very dedicated, very educated, formally Orthodox people or even atheists, who nevertheless observe pagan holidays. But the most exciting and wonderful pagan holiday is Pancake Week in early spring when we eat pancakes with all sorts of salted vegetables, salted fish, sweets and honey. This is the funniest holiday in Russia, and it is observed not only by Orthodox Christians, although it coincides in part with the Orthodox calendar, but it is also celebrated by our Muslim and Jewish brothers. It is a nationwide feast. It is a little unhealthy, of course, today to eat so many pancakes with all sorts of pickled vegetables, but it’s great fun.

II. Siberia and Siberianisation

HOPPE/ MARZBAAN: What is “Siberia” and how can it be defined today?

PROF. KARAGANOV: All over the world and, above all, in Europe, Siberia is associated with cold, vast spaces, uncomfortable life, and hard labour. Russia has a different attitude towards Siberia. In Russia, Siberia is also associated with cold – that’s true, even though Siberia is getting warmer: the zone of convenient agriculture is expanding there, and its climate is becoming milder. But, with regard to Russian identity and in Russian thinking, Siberia is mainly associated with boundless expanses and unlimited possibilities, but most importantly with freedom, volya. That’s Russian freedom ― freedom without borders, which we probably inherited from the Mongol Empire. For Russians, freedom means a movement towards vastitude, towards infinity, towards God.

The conquest and development of Siberia cannot be explained without God’s intervention. How could the Cossacks travel many thousands of kilometres from the Urals to Kamchatka in just 60 years? There is no explanation for this. They sought volya, something larger-than-life. They also sought, of course, “soft gold” ― furs ― but none of them became really rich. However Siberia formed and strengthened the best features of the Russian national character: perseverance, industriousness, collectivism, internationalism, courage, and the pursuit of freedom.

HOPPE/ MARZBAAN: We know that Siberia is rich in many different kinds of resources and vast agricultural space, as well as a great mix of different peoples… so it already has a lot to give the rest of Russia.

Can you describe what else Siberia has to offer the rest of Russia – culturally, spiritually? Which city or cities do you believe will become the most active centres or future capitals of Siberia? And which cities would represent which activities?

PROF. KARAGANOV: Siberia is without a doubt a unique territory in terms of cultural, religious, and ethnic openness. In this sense, Siberia is, as some Russian writers say, the place where the best of the Russian character was brewed, that is, a combination of all the best and the strongest in it. Dozens of peoples and cultures co-existed in Siberia: Muslims, Buddhists, many pagans, and, of course, Orthodox Christians lived next to each other. For all of Russia and the whole world, Siberia should be an example of unique friendship amongst peoples, a unique alloy of different cultures ― South Asian, East Asian, Chinese, and European. It has everything.

My favourite memory of Siberia is when, a few years ago, I travelled to its first capital ― the city of Tobolsk, founded in the 17^th century. I was invited to attend a classical organ performance at a local Catholic church. It had been built by exiles who apparently lived in Tobolsk after the Polish uprisings had been crushed and a large number of Poles had been exiled to Siberia. By the way, the detained Swedes and French, captured by Alexander I and Kutuzov, also lived there. So in this church, built in the century before last, we were greeted by the local Armenian community that had organized this organ recital. So we took our seats. It is quite a traditional and very beautiful Catholic church.

A young man came out, he said that he was an Armenian and his father was a builder who had rebuilt this church 20 years earlier. It was then that this young man had decided to convert to Catholicism, although before that he had been an Orthodox believer. And then he sat down at the organ and started playing music by Bach, Mendelssohn, Handel, and Tchaikovsky. An Orthodox Armenian, who adopted Catholicism in the centre of Siberia, plays Bach and Handel for the Armenian community in a Polish church, and a group of visitors from Moscow… This is the essence of Siberia.

Siberia is also a unique ethnic “alloy.” When the Russians headed for Siberia, they, naturally, could not bring women with them at first and had to marry women from the local tribes. The only thing that was required of them was to baptize these women first. This is why the indigenous Siberians have both Turkic and Mongolian features inherited from the “small peoples” with whom the Russians intermarried. These “small peoples” still live and enjoy support in Siberia. Moreover, some of these peoples are growing in numbers, which is a unique experience for all humankind. Thus there can be no such thing as racism in Siberia or anywhere else in Russia. Instead there is multiculturalism, multiracialism, multi-religiousness, and incredible openness.

HOPPE/ MARZBAAN: What does the process of “Siberianisation” entail? Do you believe the attitude toward this has changed over the past years?

PROF. KARAGANOV: In the late 1990s, realizing the need for Russia’s turn to the East at a time when it was completely focused on the West, I tried to organise a group of people from the Russian elite in order to substantiate a new strategy for the development of Siberia. We released several reports, but the idea didn’t take off. By the end of the 2000s, my young colleagues and I had started a new project, which was later called “The Eastern Turn.” Using economic calculations and historical studies, but primarily economic calculations, we demonstrated that a turn to the East, to Asia, was necessary, not just because the situation in the West would inevitably deteriorate – which I did not tell anyone back then as it was simply dangerous – but also because new markets were likely to open for Russia in the East and in the South. Fortunately, our calculations and reports – along with those of Sergei Shoigu, who is now our Security Council Secretary, and of his associates – were acted upon. And in the early 2010s, President Putin announced the first Eastern Turn, and so it began.

That Eastern Turn was partially successful. Suffice it to say that in 2009, European markets accounted for 56-58% of Russian trade turnover, and we were unilaterally dependent on them. By the beginning of the 2020s, their share had decreased to 35%, and Asia’s share had doubled. This helped us persevere though our confrontation with the West, which began in the early 2010s but escalated in 2022.

But now Russia is facing a much more ambitious task from my point of view ― the spiritual, cultural, political, and economic development of Russia in the eastern direction to the Urals and Siberia. The western direction of our policy and economic ties has bleak prospects.

Naturally, we would like to restore some of our economic ties with Europe, and we were not the ones who ruptured them… they were and are being broken by distraught European elites who seek total isolation and self-isolation in order to stir up military hysteria in their countries. They were broken by the Americans who wanted to make Europe even more dependent on them. This rupture does not benefit us, yet it has yielded some positive aspects: we have at last focused on ourselves and we are getting rid of the comprador elite, Western-centrism, and Westernism. However we should not only rid ourselves of such things, we should also move forward.

Our future depends on our “return home”, and Russia’s home since the 16^th-17^th centuries has been Siberia, of course. There would be no Russia as a great state and as a multinational unique nation without the development of Siberia. This is why we need to shift our efforts there now, especially as Siberia is becoming a much more pleasant place to live – due to climate change. There are new, fantastic opportunities opening up there for the development of agriculture. And Siberia’s mineral and water wealth are absolutely unique. This is why we are currently demonstrating and proving to ourselves that the many roots of both the Russian national character and of Russian history are in Siberia.

Thus, by returning to Siberia after our western journey – which Peter the Great embarked upon more than 300 years ago and which peaked in the 1990s, when part of our elite lost their minds and rushed headlong to Europe – we are balancing our spiritual, economic, and political orientation. This is what we call “Siberianization”.

But we are certainly not forsaking our European cultural roots. We appreciate them. Moreover, many of us believe that we remain true Europeans now that Europe is abandoning its traditional roots, Christianity, and moral values. We are becoming who we were and should be, the way the Lord made us; hence the tremendous efforts of our people who moved beyond the Urals and who built the Trans-Siberian Railway. We are becoming the northern Eurasian people who we have always been but at some point chose to forget. Thus Siberianization also means returning home, to our true selves.

One element in the process of the Siberianization of Russia is the creation of a third Russian capital, which is absolutely necessary. The first one is political and largely industrial ― that is Moscow; the second one ― St. Petersburg ― is cultural. But we need a third capital. Once we thought it should be in the Far East, but now everything looks much clearer ― it needs to be created in Central Siberia, with some of the ministries, departments, and the headquarters of major corporations who run operations in Siberia to be moved there. President Vladimir Putin has already taken relevant decisions in response to our initiative.

I will not try to determine where the new capital should be located. This is something for our economists and politicians to decide. From my point of view, it should not be in one of the large Siberian cities, which already attract a large number of people. It should be somewhere near a large city, a large communication and transport hub. We will decide. We are now preparing a special report in which we will compare the pros and cons of different regions and different locations for a new capital.

I think the best place is the Minusinsk Basin. It is a paradise where peaches and apricots grow, 600 km north of Krasnoyarsk. But this place is not very convenient in terms of transport. So we will have to think about it.

Needless to say, I really fell in love with the first capital of Siberia, the city of Tobolsk, which houses Siberia’s only Kremlin built in the 17^th century, very beautiful with magnificent cathedrals. Once a very rich city, it has partially lost its central role, unfortunately. It was a very important hub on the Northern Silk Road from China in the 17^th–19^th centuries. The Trans-Siberian Railway bypassed it. So for a century it lost its centrality. Plus, from my point of view, it is too close to the centre of Russia. Still, I would like a new capital to be even farther east. And yet, Tobolsk, with its unique beauty and history, is the most obvious place for a third capital. It may become that one day.

Tobolsk is rapidly reviving now due to a powerful industry, with various plants created there recently. The city is going through a renaissance. I often visit it, and we have launched a special a special event there: The Tobolsk Readings, on the Siberianization of Russia. The first readings took place in Tobolsk. Additional events will be held in other cities of Siberia and Central Russia, but they will still be called The Tobolsk Readings.

HOPPE/ MARZBAAN: How can Russia free or protect itself more from Western influence and its insidious “soft power”? How can the eurocentrism of some of the Russian elites be overcome? Why do you think some fear or reject the Asian aspects of Russia?

PROF. KARAGANOV: This attitude is rapidly changing, it began to change in the decade before last, but the open confrontation with the West in 2022 provided the most powerful incentive. This is basically a war with the West in Ukraine, where the West is using the unfortunate and deceived Ukrainian people as cannon fodder.

Eurocentrism is rooted quite deeply in Russian consciousness, as well as in the minds of many other peoples around the world who were under the influence of Europe that dominated world history for 500 years and whose dominance began to shrink only a few decades ago. Now this process has intensified. We still have a lot of work to do to understand who we are and to restore our true Russian identity.

Russia is objectively freeing itself from harmful Western influences. As I have said before, one of the goals of the special military operation, of the war with the West in Ukraine, is our mental, political, and economic liberation from Western influence, which has become not only obsolete but also very harmful because, apart from neo-colonialism, racism, and everything that was previously connected with it, the West is now promoting post-human and anti-human values such as the LGBT agenda, ultra-feminism, the denial of history, transhumanism, and so on.

We need not completely abandon our European heritage ― after all, it gave us a lot, and we would not have become a country of great culture without European influence. It spawned 19^th century Russian literature ― an alloy of traditional Russian and high European culture. Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy would probably not have been born if there hadn’t been European influence. Europe gave us much and enriched us. But now we no longer need it. We acquired everything we could and even more than we needed.

I have already said and written more than once that we should have completed our European journey a century ago, before the First World War, in which we got embroiled in playing European games. We should have done it before Bolshevism and the bloody revolution, before we borrowed “vulgar Marxism” that had many very grave consequences for our country. Many in Russia are still, of course, afraid of Asianism. This might be a sign of backwardness and squalor of the mind. I speak and write about this without mincing words. In conversations with my friends and colleagues, I often hear them say that we do not understand Asia and we do not know Asia. I agree that many of us do not understand or know Asia, but if we see this as a merit, then it would be no different from a blind person being proud of his blindness. We must open our eyes and see that Asia is a cluster of great cultures and great civilizations that have given us so much to absorb.

For many years, other countries but also our own Westernizers cultivated here the fear of Asia, of the “Yellow Peril”. For example, they claimed until recently that almost three or even more million Chinese live in Russia. There are more than ten times fewer of them, maybe even too few. As I have said before, I wish we had more Chinese chefs in our restaurants.

Anti-Asian sentiment in Russia was purposefully kindled and stoked by the West and liberal westernized Russians. Fortunately, their time has passed, and many of them simply fled after the start of the war, and we cleared our country of this scum. But I repeat, while turning to Asia, the South, and the East, we must not forget our magnificent European roots. We must move towards the future, towards being what history intended us to be ― a great northern Eurasian power, a unifier and balancer of Greater Eurasia.

III. The Pursuit of a New Civilisational Platform

HOPPE/ MARZBAAN: In your recent epic article “To Eurasia with Intellectual Freedom”, you describe the many aspects of Russia’s “Turn to the East”, and you also speak of Russia’s need for a spiritual rebirth and for its need to adopt a new, core identity – based on its rich and multifarious historical roots, as well as on its multifarious peoples, cultures, beliefs of today – in order to better unite all its peoples into a new harmonious future. You call the pursuit of this national identity Russia’s “Idea-Dream”. You have, for a while now, organised several study groups to come up with some ideas for a “New Civilisational Platform” for the Russian Federation… one that might even be of great inspiration for a “Civilisational Platform” for the Global Majority…

In that article, you wrote that “the economy should turn from the core and master of state strategy into a respected servant. People should become the ends rather than the means of development, the purpose of state policy and public life, and not just as individuals, but as citizens ready to work for a common cause.” Is a “preliminary” economic system being considered? Neoliberal capitalism has failed and was never a just system for the People… what could substitute it?

PROF. KARAGANOV: This is the most difficult question. It is clear that the neoliberal capitalist system has failed and is dragging us down and back. But the socialist model did not work very well either. We need to think about another civilizational platform that would use capitalist business practices but would at the same time be geared towards facilitating human development and protecting nature and what is known as the noosphere in Russian philosophical language, that is, the unity of man and nature.

But most importantly, I think that we in Russia, and maybe other people in the world, should focus on the development of the human being ― his intellectual, spiritual, and physical development ― not just as an individual, but as a person who serves the family, society, the country, the state, and God. First of all, we need to focus on self-improvement. This is embedded in almost all religions and all codes of ethics. We must take these ideas from the world’s spiritual and philosophical heritage and make them our top priority. This is a daunting task, but I think this should be the cornerstone of Russia’s new Idea-Dream – a Russian Citizen’s Code for himself, for his country, and the world. We are working on it, and we will implement it through concrete policies. But this must be mainly done through public discussion, of course, and then through education. This requires essentially another civilizational platform, although many elements of this civilizational platform were laid down by the best humanists and philosophers, and they lie at the heart of most religions.

HOPPE/ MARZBAAN: You have often mentioned that there were positive aspects of the Soviet system… What aspects of the Soviet system would you like to see retained or re-instated in a new “Civilisational Platform”?

PROF. KARAGANOV: The Soviet system failed primarily because it was based on an inefficient economic policy that rejected private ownership and personal economic interest. Nevertheless, what distinguishes it from other totalitarian ideologies is that it had a strong humanist core. The creation of the Soviet socialist system rendered capitalism in the West and the rest of the world somewhat more humane, open and progressive for some time. There emerged a so-called “social capitalism” that allowed societies in many countries to make great headway in their development.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, due to its own reasons and geopolitical failures, we saw a rapid degradation of social systems around the world. What was good in the Soviet Union? Certainly its universal, free and excellent education system. We are now restoring it but with great difficulty. Fortunately, it works at the secondary school level, which is however supplemented with private schools, and we are working to provide more opportunities to people from poor families so that they can get the best higher education. The Unified State Exam system helps, but there is still a long way to go.

We also need a free healthcare system, or at least free basic healthcare. We are now creating something similar through different structures.

The only thing that should not be restored from Soviet times is, of course, its homogenization of thought. This is what destroyed the Soviet Union when communist homogenization of thought narrowed minds. Burdened with a so-called Marxist-Leninist philosophy and political economy, we really did not understand what was happening in our country and in the world. So, to a large extent, this was the reason why the Soviet Union collapsed. And, of course, in no case should we restore the ways in which the Soviet system was imposed. In fact, the early Bolsheviks were guided by outwardly humanist ideas, but they used brutal methods to install them, including mass repressions and collectivization, which was carried out in order to break the peasantry’s backbones in the first place.

HOPPE/ MARZBAAN: How do you see the role and function of religion in Russia today?

PROF. KARAGANOV: I cannot say that Russia has completely overcome its anti-religious past that was imposed on it under the Soviet Union when the Bolsheviks tried to replace religious consciousness with their ideology – with “a new communist religion”, by officially promoting atheism and suppressing religious feelings and faith. They closed most of the churches – there were only a few remaining open in the whole country, and they executed hundreds of thousands of clergymen – Christian, Muslim, and Jewish. This happened in the early days of the Soviet Union.

The Bolsheviks only partially succeeded in their aim to destroy religious consciousness, because the main postulates of communist ideology were based on God’s commandments. But the fact that they destroyed faith caused us enormous moral damage, which we are just beginning to repair now…

I believe that we need to make a deliberate effort in order to restore our faiths – but not in an obligatory manner. Every person can and should believe as he pleases; what matters is that he should be a good human being, and I think man was created in order to serve his family, his community, his country, and the state, if it is Russia, humanity, and God – if he is a believer.

Faith in God also means faith in the best that the human has within. After all, God created us in His own image ― this is the basis of all religions. So by striving for God, we strive for the best version of ourselves, especially since all religions ― Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Judaism ― promote the best in man… that is: morality, virtue, honour, dignity, and love for one another. If a man strives for such things, then he is a “godly man”, even if he does not believe in God.

Now there is a slow but obvious revival of religion in Russia. Tens of thousands of Orthodox churches and thousands of mosques have been restored or built anew. The number of believers is growing.

So, Christianity and Orthodoxy are returning to Russia, but Russia has never been, will not be and cannot be solely Christian. And I do not think that Russia should become a solely Christian country. The more different faiths there are in it, the better. At the same time, we should clearly understand that the fundamental Russian faith is Orthodox Christianity, which united the people and the vast Empire, and it should be supported in the first place – but without ousting other denominations. I hope that Orthodox Christianity will increase its influence in Russia. I can already see that happening, and I am helping this process. But I believe that society and the state should encourage all religious denominations, or, in any case, all traditional religious denominations united in their service to people, the family, society, and the state.

Russia is a unique and outstanding fusion of different religions, different cultures, and different ethnic groups. This is its main strength and its main distinction from the vast majority of other countries.

This revival of faith is associated, among other things, with the spiritual revival of Russia, although I am not sure that Russia will become as religious a country as it was historically. After all, the communist past delivered a very strong blow, plus modern culture largely distracts from religious consciousness.

Today, religion in Russia is separated from the state. In the past, when the church was not separated from the state, it led to the weakening of this state – this was already obvious in the 19^th and the early 20^th centuries. But state policy indirectly facilitates the revival of all traditional faiths and helps churches. And the churches in return help the state and people in their spiritual, economic, and political revival.

I have a house in a remote village; next to it stands a church that we have recently restored, and I see now that this church has become a cultural centre for the development of the village. People gather around the church, hold events, organize children’s holidays, and collect parcels for soldiers fighting on the western front in Ukraine.

HOPPE/ MARZBAAN: And what are the chances of Russia returning to a monarchy with a tsar at the head? And what would Russia look like if it were only Christian?

PROF. KARAGANOV: I don’t think that Russia will return to a monarchy, although many elements of the monarchy and enlightened authoritarianism are visibly present in the current Russian system of government.

Putin is an elected president, but people perceive him as an enlightened sovereign. We have monarchists, but I don’t think the monarchy can be restored.

What is quite clear though is, that for a country like Russia, traditional European democracy does not fit in. In Russia, there must be strong democratic elements, especially at the local level, and some electoral democracy in order to connect society and the authorities. But, at the very top, I think, there should be a system of transfer of power that would be legalized by popular vote, a nationwide referendum.

In such a complex and tough world we now live in and will live in, a constant change of leadership is prohibitively expensive, so it is better to ensure a “seamless” transition of power from one leader to another. But this, of course, is a difficult and challenging process, and we have just entered it. So far, this process has been successful: the transfer of power from Yeltsin to Putin and from Putin to Medvedev and back was extremely successful and ensured the stable development of the country.

Western-style modern democracy is obviously doomed. This system is only beneficial for very wealthy countries in very comfortable external circumstances. Russia will never live in very calm circumstances, and although its well-being is growing, it will never be too wealthy. We must know and remember that in hard times and dire circumstances ― this is history ― democracies always perish. Let me remind you that the Greek republics were replaced by despotism, the Roman one turned into an empire, the North Italian republics were taken over by monarchies, our Pskov and Novgorod Republics fell, the French Republic was replaced by an empire, German Weimar democracy got Hitler, with almost all European democracies surrendering to him, and only the enormous and unflinching determination of the Soviet Union and its willingness to make every sacrifice saved Europe from becoming a German colony and speaking German.

Nowadays democracies are once again going through hard times, as there is a global capitalism crisis, and contradictions are deepening. We see authoritarianism rising in many societies in its worst forms. But I do not advocate a restoration of the monarchy in Russia. Our own history and the history of other countries have proved that monarchies are not always an effective form of government; apparently their time has passed. On the other hand, an enlightened monarchy with a strong aristocracy is perhaps the most effective mode of governance, but we are unlikely to return to it again. So when someone asks me: “Do you want a return of the monarchy?” I say: “Yes, but only if I am the monarch.” This is a joke.

HOPPE/ MARZBAAN: In a speech in June 2024 to an audience of soldiers fighting in the SMO, President V.V. Putin highlighted that: “We are a multicultural country, and a multi-religious one. […] That’s our strength that no one can beat! […] …no matter what ethnic group we belong to, we have been living on the same land for more than 1000 years!”

Nevertheless, we have read that there are some who dream of a Tsarist Russia and others dream of a Russia that is solely Christian (some people have been quoted as saying: “Russia only for the Russians” and “Russia only for Christ”)… and yet many Russians of “non-Rus’-Russian” origin sacrifice their lives or their own personal safety in the SMO for their motherland Russia. (Recent notable examples are: Commander Tamerlan A. Ilhamov of Bashkortostan, RT producer and journalist Magomed Buchaev of Dagestan, Officer Zakarya Aliyev from Dagestan and Corporal Andrey Grigoryev from Yakutia.) What greater demonstration of true patriotism exists than to be prepared to sacrifice one’s safety, one’s life for one’s motherland!

So, what can one do on a domestic national level for the non-Rus’ Russians (who may also not be of the Russian Orthodox faith or who may not even believe in a God) so that they could also be seen as full members of Russian society (as there are some who say “Russia only for the Russians” and “Russia only for Christ”)?

PROF. KARAGANOV: The special military operation has once again emphasized the unique unity of the Russian people. People of different faiths and different ethnic backgrounds are fighting there together. A new brotherhood is being born and strengthened there. True, there are ethnic Russian nationalists, but they are and should be the exception. And from my point of view, they are the greatest internal threat to our country. It is no coincidence that our opponents used to rely on pro-Western liberals before, but now they are going out of their way to exaggerate to incite ethnic Russian nationalism, also by playing up the migration problem. Migration is poorly managed in our country. This is a big problem that needs to be solved. However ethnic nationalism is not just a problem but a threat. Every person and the entire society must fight it. I think that those who say that “Russia only for the Russians” are enemies of our country. Those who say that Russians are only Christians are not enemies of Russia, they are simply deeply mistaken. I myself am an Orthodox Christian precisely because this religion unites most of my people. But I read the Koran, I read the Talmud, I read the holy books of other religions, and I believe that such openness, cultural and religious openness, is the best feature of the Russian people.

There was a Russian writer by the name of Yuri Tynyanov, who lived at the beginning of the last century. He was a wonderful writer, not very famous, but quite brilliant. And he coined a phrase, a definition of a Russian, that sounds I think amazingly interesting: “The Chancellor of the Russian Empire, Count and Baron Erich Maria Ivan Vasilyevich Nesselrode was born by a Jewish mother and a German father aboard a Spanish galleon en route from London to Lisbon.” Half-jokingly and half-seriously, I call it the best definition of a Russian.

HOPPE/ MARZBAAN: Russia has over 193 ethnic groups nationwide, and these ethnic groups share a land, a language and the same modern history. Are there other binding elements amongst them?

PROF. KARAGANOV: I am very proud that my country is a kind of cosmos, an example for all humankind. It is unique, multi-religious, multi-cultural, and multi-ethnic, and yet it is united. It is united by common codes of ethics, common history, the Russian language and great Russian culture, of course, but without suppressing other cultures.

On the contrary, the cultures of the “small peoples” are supported in every possible way. In this sense, we do not want to impose our example on anyone, but it seems to me that we demonstrate to all humankind how different cultures, different ethnic groups, and different faiths can cohabitate in a single community.

I am happy to travel around our country, where there are Christian and Muslim communities, many unbelievers, and even pagans who are looked upon very positively, and many people, even Christians and Muslims, enjoy celebrating old pagan holidays together and observe old pagan customs.

Racism is alien to Russia due to its history. In this sense, it is unique among huge empires. This is also a wonderful feature of our country, which is why we can offer ourselves as an example but certainly without imposing ourselves on other countries and all humankind.

What matters is that we are Russians ― citizens of the old Rus’, the Russian Empire, the USSR, and today’s Russia. I frequently write that Russians are Great Russians – descendants of the peoples that lived in Central Russia Old Rus’; Russians are Ukrainians; Russians are Belarusians; Russians are Tatars; Russians are Kalmyks; Russians are Yakuts; Russians are Jews; Russian are Bashkirs; Russians are Armenians; etc. We are all Russians or Rossiyane [Россияне], which is difficult to translate into English. In any case, we are a single community ― this was predestined by history, and we have furthered ourselves this way. Under no circumstances should we lose this unique feature of our civilization ― cultural, religious, and ethnic openness. The great Dostoevsky said once that “Russians are probably the most open people in the world.”

HOPPE/ MARZBAAN: As we have seen throughout history and continue to see today, there exist peoples who live for something more than money, acquisitions, fame… for more than even their own personal survival… which cannot be said of the bulk of Western civilisation. Examples with regard to Russia: in the recent past are the Leningraders and Stalingraders during the German Siege… and presently, the people of Donetsk and the soldiers engaged in the Special Military Operation. Do you believe that what they have been fighting for is an essential component for a New Civilisational Platform? And what do you believe is the essential component or components for a New Civilisational Platform?

PROF. KARAGANOV: People in Leningrad and Stalingrad fought and died, and people are now fighting in Donbass and in Ukraine against the West to serve our family, community and country and to preserve the human in man.

This is a civilizational struggle against techno-barbarism and techno-paganism, against the new Nazism, against dehumanization.

I am proud to be a member of my fighting people. Russian culture and Russian civilization inherently imply that the highest goal of man is service. At some point, when we succumbed to Western civilization, this pushed us away from our essence and almost drove us to a tragedy. So I am glad that we are returning to our traditional values, including, of course, service to the family and society, love between a man and a woman, love for children, respect for the elderly, love for the Motherland, love for native nature, the pursuit of higher goals, service to the spirit… but not to Mammon. For all this, the Russian people need a strong state with a strong leader.

We are normal people, we want to live well, but we believe that the main goal of a person is to improve himself, to help others, to serve the best in himself and therefore the Divine – even if he or she does not believe in God.

This is a new civilizational platform, which is ultimately quite traditional… so there is no need to invent something “new”. One simply needs to preserve and develop one’s best qualities inherited from the history of humankind and reject all the worst things that are being propagated by modern civilization and present-day globalist liberal imperialism, which is devoid of ethical roots, which by definition destroys individuality, morality and ethics… and ultimately destroys man himself. And our planet Earth – by imposing a boundless growth of consumption.

This is why a civilizational platform means service to the people, but to a people who are ready to serve others and the world.

* * *

* Professor Sergey A. Karaganov – a luminary of the Russian Federation with a long, illustrious career, who continues to hold many posts, amongst them: Honorary Chairman of the Council for Foreign and Defence Policy (Russia’s leading public foreign policy organisation) and academic supervisor of the Faculty of World Economics and World Politics of the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

When life is too fast

Can you think of a time in your life when you really needed one of these?

Adolf Hitler tueur en série. Entretien avec François Delpla

Cohn Bendit, Sarkozy comment se fâcher avec ses amis.