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It is so disheartening that we live in such a corrupt world.

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Indeed! Being Human is secondary to greed, corruption and exploitation.

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…and self-interest. The historian Arnold Toynbee famously said that civilizations die by suicide.

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Hopefully Western regimes are heading towards the cliff.

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Excellent article. I especially appreciated the links embedded in it. Do you know where I can access Vinogradov's actual writings and not Shamir's translation of them?

I still believe Israel is a failed state which will not survive much longer. And BRICS matters. Iran's support of Palestinian rights matters. And the more money the US "sends" to Ukraine and Israel, the less the dollar is worth and the angrier the American population becomes and the more likely other nations move to other currencies with which to trade which merely speeds up the process. I read yesterday that the US dollar has lost 24% of its buying power. The US/Israel are playing a lose/lose game. At some point the US dollar will no longer save Israel or these other countries. Turkey is playing both sides of the game and will be burned for its dishonesty. That is inevitable. This is not new either. When the Saudis can no longer sedate its population with $$ as it has done for generations, there will be a revolution there, too. That will really mix things up.

China and Russia are now stronger than the US in real political and economic terms, for different reasons. They are also more pragmatic and have their eyes on the horizon, not on their steel-toed boots (and what they can crush beneath them). And they both know how to play well with others.

Tourism, as anyone who has lived in a touristy town knows, is a double-edged problem/benefit. I cannot see the Middle East as being a prime tourist spot when the ambient temperatures are 130 degrees and higher, especially for Westerners who are not used to these temperatures. Desalinization and air conditioning eventually break down. Israel has already polluted the Mediterranean to a great degree with all the salt they are pouring into it from the desalinization plants. And if they develop the oil and gas fields offshore, believe me, oil isn't a lot of fun to swim in.

They are bringing back the draft for males 18-26 in the U.S. I think. I was pretty tired when I read that. I hope I am wrong but they're not able to get young people to sign up. The US already has greater national debt than GDP (Israel does not but who knows what Israel's REAL unemployment rate is--I believe their debt is 60% of their GDP and the US ratio is 124% debt of their GDP; I believe Russia's is 12% debt of GDP). The US is also looking at a bill that will open up immigration to Palestinian refugees. I think Palestinian spirit is the elephant in the room in all these stupid plans by other people. I can't say that I see it wavering. Yesterday we had unusual flyovers that sounded suspiciously and heavily military. I am very far from any military airport. The aircraft were too high to be visible to the naked eye. It reminded me--though not nearly as badly--as the night in February 1991 when the skies were full of American fighter jets heading to Iraq for their "shock and awe" ejaculation. It lasted about an hour and it took each jet approximately 3 seconds to traverse from eastern to western horizon. I have no idea how far apart they were. It sounded like God was roller skating.

Interesting times. But these Middle Eastern countries are not operating in a vacuum.

WHY does Ukraine have so much debt? The Arab Spring was a CIA operation which destroyed Egypt, among other countries. But anyone who knows Middle Eastern History knows that the present moment is just a zit on a teenie-bopper's face. This too shall pass. There have been lots and lots of little zits on this particular face and it survived. The history goes back further than 99.9% of Westerners can even fathom. Empires rise and empires fall. All of them. Europe is a bunch of vassal states. The US is on its way down and if Israel manages to survive more than five years it will be pulled down with its benefactor. I don't think it will. Not even the Zionist billionaires have enough money to save it.

Actually, I do not worry about Trump destroying American democracy. I think Israel is a greater threat to the US than Trump. I see Israel already moving over here in almost every industry and part of government. It seems to have destroyed Europe already. How ironic. All for a group of people who don't even know who they really are.

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Ref Vinogradov, simple answer is no. I will ask around. I agree with much that you surmise and hope I get to see such changes.

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You will. You're younger than me. I hate what the US has done to Egypt. They managed to kill every single one of my childhood heroes. Mossadegh, Nasser, Qaddafi, Arafat. They actually LYNCHED Qaddafi. And what is the Zionist obsession with anal rape? I won't write what I think that means.

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Thanks Vanessa. The gulf state's (ruling classes therein) pro Zionist stance is disgusting, but to me was less perplexing than Egypt's. But Egypt is neck deep in the same corruption. MOre IMF blackmail too.

What I keep thinking about is how US/UK/zionists killed all the Pan-Arabist and Pan-Africanist leaders. The world would be a different (better) place if people like Lumumba, Nasser, Qaddafi, etc. had lived.

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Reading this, your senses of decency and hope for humanity certainly is assaulted, resulting from the realisation that these West Asian sleuths, akin a strain of a virulent flu, truly get into every crevice of your mind..

A spiders web of layer upon layer of the beholden upon the beholden and ultimately ending nearly always as it does, in London, D.C or Brussels…

Debt laden nations all, the entire Western financial system built upon a foundation of fresh air, nothing backing their devalued currencies with which they entrap the fiscally feeble minded, enslaving them, fresh air and empty promises heaped upon more fresh air and empty promises derived currencies.

The globe is in for a major reset, pray Putin and Nubillina his most adroit and genius Monetary minder, head of Russias Central Bank, who with Putin, himself possessed of both a Law degree and an PhD his dissertation focussed on International Economics with a Mining and Resources minor adjunct to said Doctorate earned have between them set up Russia to defeat the nearly 20,000 sanctions that have been imposed on the Russian Federation as well as being the chief architects of the global de dollarisation and proposed BRICS+ Gold backed trade currency likely to be launched at this years penultimate BRICS+ summit in Russia.

These proposed fiscal changes have won wide support from the BRICS+ members as well as the 87 nations who have intimated a desire to join the BRICS+ group or who have formally applied to join.

This new fiscal architecture is really what this conflict with Russia and China is all about, reminiscent of the twin assaults against Iraqs Saddam Hussein and Libyas Muammar Gaddafi both of whom misguidedly proposed a Gold Backed Dinar, Settling Oil,Transactions in Euro vs USD and in the case of Libya promoted a new Gold backed Libyan pound that was then to extend throughout Africa to replace the tepid French backed … African Franc.

Neither option was palatable to either the U.S and or France, more so given their absolute backing at all costs the respective golden goose relied upon… anything/anyone threatening said respective dominance USD used in international energy trade and France’s heavy reliance upon African states to supplement their budget via the onerous and usurious African Franc terms necessitated the strongest response to said threats… France’s insistence and contrived risk threat against Gaddafi a case in point, whilst we saw following the debacle in Iraq, the lengths the U.S will go to defending their patch..

With what would be expected criminal enterprises, both states helped and assisted each other to take out these West Asian upstarts, fast forward the present and it’s a different story, Russia no lightweight has its arsenal of hypersonic and military tech superior to Western equivalents together a nuclear arsenal beyond compare… hence the escalatory rhetoric now so oft espoused these hysteria laden Western politicians… they know time is almost up, threshing as they are like the wounded beasts they represent, finally the world on the edge of a paradigm shift in power…

Pray Russia as they did WW2 defeat the West, reset the global architecture both fiscally and from the sovereign, trade, international order perspectives… central to their BRICS+ doctrine reinvigorating international conventions, laws, norms and especially institutions…. all of which have under Western influence have become corrupted, politicised, biased, inequitable… the global majority clamouring for equanimity in global institutions…

Putin ever the lawyer is convinced they will reorient our international bodies as noted or if not, they will establish their own parallel bodies leaving the Western bankrupted states to argue amongst themselves with these international institutions that no longer can be taken seriously….

Multipolarity a new paradigm… read, learn, discern, bring it on, end the colonial tyranny the world has laboured under for centuries… a new dawn beckons predicate trade, respect for sovereignty, non interference in nations affairs, peace, and a non confrontation environment… contrast the number of nations the collective West have entered into conflict with, sanctioned, the number of sanctions, the individuals impacted, killed, wounded, destabilised resulting the incessant wars, regime change, coup and assassinations or attempts with the BRICS+ states… you have the answer… if the Western elites need a boogie man to blame… look in the mirror the image staring back will have a lot to do with who is to blame be they male or female… both are loathsome… beneath contempt the destruction they have wrought… something we, the citizens of the world live and experience every minute of every day, many worse than others… just ask Gazan’s, Syrians, Libyans, Iraqi’s, Myanmarese, Sudanese, Ethiopians, Slavic peoples the former Yugoslavia, Vietnamese, Japanese, and so, so many more including civilians in the Donbas, Crocus, Belgorad, it is vile and evil the winner take all zero sum game played… there will be a reckoning, the World has just gotten much smaller, given time, full account or past behaviour in these conflicts will be had, Russia has stated there is no time expiration, no statute of limitations they will consider, ever, to excuse much of the behaviours these tyrants Blair, Bush, Cheney, Biden, Obama, Synak, Scholz, Macron, Van der Leyen et al to name but a handful will be able to rely upon moving forward… Russia and BRICS+ determined as we are seeing the ICJ presently to have justice done, an exciting just world beckons…. Kia Kaha from New Zealand

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Ever since the tale of "Lawrence of Arabia", folks have been persuaded to accept British jingoism and Arab nihilism. Have the nations ever achieved unity? The British (US and the EU included) have patronized and bribed their way throughout the Middle East and Africa, while Arab treachery eases their assassinations and coups. This war is different. Much of the world is watching an infanticide sponsored by the West and carried out by their last colonial regime. It hurts deeply to feel powerless, voiceless in the slaughter. The elected "leaders" may lie to hide their complicity, but it's out there for all to see. Thank you, Vanessa, for explaining "Egypt"....I do believe, though, that the Egyptian people have shed tears, too.

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