L’échiquier mondial : Les enjeux militaro-économiques de la mer Noire

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La mer Noire, traditionnellement zone de prospérité avec d’abondantes ressources agricoles mais aussi zone de transit énergétique nécessaire à l’Europe depuis la destruction des gazoducs Nord Stream, est devenue une zone d’affrontement. Le 19 juillet 2023, le ministère de la Défense russe a déclaré que tous les navires naviguant en mer Noire vers les ports ukrainiens seront considérés comme des transporteurs potentiels de cargaison militaire.

Iran’s renewed Africa policy: Raisi’s ambition and the perception of Western decline

Over the past two years, as the United States and the European Union have invested in the revival of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the Iranian leadership has opted to solidify its non-Western foreign policy approach. In line with this approach, President Ebrahim Raisi embarked on a three-country trip to Africa in mid-July, marking the first time an Iranian president has undertaken such a visit in over 11 years. Earlier in the month, Iranian officials reported that the Islamic Republic’s exports to the continent had increased by 100% over the past year. It is now clear that engagement with Africa will be a major foreign policy focus under the Raisi administration. However, this is not the first time that Iran has taken such an approach to the continent. Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad implemented a similar policy from 2005 to 2013, although it did not yield significant results. This raises the question of whether, a decade on, Raisi’s Africa policy will prove any more successful.

Two decades on, Iraq’s ongoing, if fragile, cultural revival

Photo by Khalil Dawood/Xinhua via Getty Images

The view across the Tigris River from the eighth floor of the Babylon Hotel reveals a telling mise-en-scène: As a giant neon billboard that adorns the gleaming 32-story Baghdad Mall flashes the Iraqi flag in between ads for Coca-Cola, the ghost of the late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid looms large over her adjacent tower in progress. Commissioned in 2010 to be the headquarters for the Central Bank of Iraq and a symbol of a “new era,” it’s not yet finished, and the Australian engineer whose company helped build it is still languishing in Iraqi prison after a dispute about payment.

MAKE RUSSIAN PEOPLE

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Alexander Dugin
Once we have established ourselves as a sovereign civilization, we need to change the dominant discourse. What everyone was afraid or embarrassed to say before (what the world community will think of us in the West …) must now be stated clearly and openly.

So let’s say: we urgently need to begin the revival of the Russian people.

WHY “SOFT POWER” IS NOT APPLICABLE IN RUSSIA

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Leonid Savin
Copying alien theories and models is unlikely to benefit our state and people.
From the mid-2000s to the early 2020s, there was a fashion for “soft power” in the Russian community of political scientists and international affairs experts – numerous articles on this topic were published, dissertations were defended, representatives of a number of Russian NGOs and foundations eloquently tried to convince that they were engaged in “soft power” issues in order to promote Russia’s interests abroad. We must agree that the term coined by Joseph Nye Jr. was indeed attractive. True, he also talked about hard power, smart power and cyber power. And then there’s the sharp power (by Christopher Walker) and the sticky power (by Walter Russell Mead). And different views on how to use power to exercise US domination led to controversy between theorists of these methodologies.

DECIPHERING THE RUSSIAN CODE

Alexander Prokhanov
Russia is in dire need of an ideology capable of fighting the enemy on an invisible battlefield.

Yeltsin destroyed the Soviet Union, and with it the communist ideology. The ideologues of victorious liberalism – Gaidar and Chubais – built a country that resembled an ugly caricature of the victorious Western civilization.

Prigozhin’s Mutiny Shatters Illusion of Powerful Media Empire

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Prigozhin’s media empire was conceived as a contractor that would perform functions for the state while remaining under external management. But it turns out that receiving billions of dollars in taxpayers’ money is no guarantee of either effectiveness or loyalty.

Eurodollars As A Fractional Reserve Market – OpEd

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Austrian economics properly understands the ability of commercial banks to create money by mismatching their depositor liabilities with their issuing of money substitutes (i.e., the creation of credit). One possible place for further exploration is the role that nonbank or foreign financial institutions play in the creation of credit and the broader implications on business-cycle creation.

Jihad in Austria: ‘Christians Must Die’

Two young Muslims [ages 15 and 16] living in Austria recently confessed that they would like to “kill Christians” and “restore the caliphate.”

“Killing Christians takes us to paradise.” — The boys’ reply in court.

As in other European nations, sex crimes — including against young boys — have skyrocketed in Austria.

Macron conduit la France dans l’impasse en Afrique

Est-ce que le président français actuel est un bon stratège politique ? À l’aune de la déroute de la France au Niger, au Sahel et plus largement sur le continent africain tant sur le point humain, militaire, et géopolitique, la question se pose.