Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on Monday said that Ukraine should cede to Russia the territory Moscow and the Donbass separatists controlled before invading to end the war and called for negotiations.
When I’ve talked in the past about the patchwork tyranny post COVID-9/11, I had more mundane things in mind than the fate of a major tennis star. Novak Djokovic was deported from Australia on Sunday after his appeal to reinstate his visa failed. And it failed not for health reasons but for political ones. To me, the kinds of terrible rules put in place for ‘public safety’ always conjure up images of casual oppression. Endless videos of pathetic public servants intimidating priests in churches or police arresting pub owners for serving willing patrons. But it goes far deeper than that....
Since the first assault on Turkey’s finances in 2018, which I wrote about multiple times (here, here, and here), I’ve been the lone voice telling everyone that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a lunatic but he’s a lunatic with a plan. That plan is to de-dollarize the economy of a valuable member of NATO geostrategically. Since the first shots across the bow by the Trump administration at Erdogan’s toying with those powers east of the Bosporus (Russia, China and Iran) the Turkish lira has been the primary mode of attack against Erdogan. Erdogan has pursued what has been deemed unorthodox...
The big worry among the bitcoin perma-bears is the threat of government ‘making it illegal.’ The latest bogeyman on this front is none other than U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. Rumors float that he’s considering outlawing ‘self-custody wallets,’ in effect confiscating the private keys of everyone’s cryptos. In a Twitter-thread, the chief executive [of Coinbase Brian Armstrong] said that his firm “heard rumors” about the US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s plans to introduce fresh rules for “self-custody wallets” by the end of his term. The open nature of cryptocurrencies allows...
This article originally appeared at Anti-Media. Davos —Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba — the Chinese company surpassed Wal-Mart as the world’s largest retailer in 2016 — said the United States has no one but itself to blame for its economic woes, and that much of the problem is rooted in wasteful spending on warfare. CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin had asked Ma about his thoughts on the American economy and how it relates to China. Incoming President Donald Trump’s stance has consistently been anti-China — the former reality TV...
This article originally appeared at Anti-Media. Davos — Marking the first time a Chinese head of state has attended the World Economic Forum — an annual meeting of financial and political juggernauts from around the globe — China’s President Xi Jinping gave a landmark speech in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday, in which he vehemently defended free trade and globalization. “No one will emerge as a winner in a trade war,” Xi said in his near hour-long speech. He also likened protectionism to “locking oneself in a dark room” out of fear, which cuts out “light and air.” Though he never...
