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The Valdai meeting: Where West Asia meets multipolarity

At Russia's Valdai Club meeting - the east's answer to Davos - intellectuals and influencers gathered to frame West Asia's current and future developments.
Valdai Club

The 12th "Middle East Conference" at the Valdai Club in Moscow offered a more than welcome cornucopia of views on interconnected troubles and tribulations affecting the region.

But first, an important word on terminology - as only one of Valdai's guests took the trouble to stress. This is not the "Middle East" - a reductionist, Orientalist notion devised by old colonials: at The Cradle we emphasize the region must be correctly described as West Asia.

Some of the region's trials and tribulations have been mapped by the official Valdai report, The Middle East and The Future of Polycentric World. But the intellectual and political clout of those in attendance can provide valuable anecdotal insights too. Here are a few of the major strands participants highlighted on regional developments, current and future:

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov set the stage by stressing that Kremlin policy encourages the formation of an "inclusive regional security system." That's exactly what the Americans refused to discuss with the Russians in December 2021, then applied to Europe and the post-Soviet space. The result was a proxy war.

Kayhan Barzegar of Islamic Azad University in Iran qualified the two major strategic developments affecting West Asia: a possible US retreat and a message to regional allies: "You cannot count on our security guarantees."

Every vector - from rivalry in the South Caucasus to the Israeli normalization with the Persian Gulf - is subordinated to this logic, notes Barzegar, with quite a few Arab actors finally understanding that there now exists a margin of maneuver to choose between the western or the non-western bloc.

Barzegar does not identify Iran-Russia ties as a strategic alliance, but rather a geopolitical, economic bloc based on technology and regional supply chains - a "new algorithm in politics" - ranging from weapons deals to nuclear and energy cooperation, driven by Moscow's revived southern and eastward orientations. And as far as Iran-western relations go, Barzegar still believes the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or Iran nuclear deal, is not dead. A least not yet.

Bad Guys

Best of the Web: Rectenwald: The attack of the subversive elites

Klaus Schwab
© Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty ImagesWEF founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab in Davos on May 23, 2022
It is tempting, as Naomi Wolf has done recently, to ascribe the breakdown of Western civilization to the debasing of "Judeo-Christian" ethics and the reemergence of malignant supernatural forces. Witnessing the many assaults on the infrastructure and social order of the United States of late, I wouldn't rule out metaphysical causality either. But to blame the pagan gods, or, in specifically Christian terms, to blame Satan, and not his legions, is to take comfort in an obscured perspective on the current global arrangement. To lay culpability strictly on gaseous, unknowable forces is to let the global elite off the hook.

As I write in The Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty, the Western world is in the grips and under the control of "subversive elites." With inordinate power and influence, these people aren't naturally superior but have as their object the undermining of Western civilization.

They can be found in such globalist "Round Table" organizations as the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House), the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, the Club of Rome, and the World Economic Forum (WEF); in their main international intergovernmental counterpart, the United Nations (UN); and in the monetary organizations that fund the globalist regime, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. All these organizations have had as their objective the undermining of nation states, the destruction of the free market, and the control of the world economic system by a globalist elite. These objectives are now being conducted under the rubric of "stakeholder capitalism," with the WEF running interference for and coordinating the "public-private partnerships" that are ushering in stakeholder capitalism, supposedly to combat "climate change."

Broom

'Conspiracy with a foreign power': Cambodia opposition leader sentenced to 27 years for treason, intended to encourage a 'colour revolution'

Kem Sokha
© Tang Chhin Sothy/AFPKem Sokha acknowledges supporters on his way to court in Phnom Penh
Cambodian opposition leader Kem Sokha has been sentenced to 27 years under house arrest after being found guilty of treason following a three-year trial in which a judge deemed that his election campaigning and civil society work were designed to encourage a "colour revolution".

The judge at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court told the former president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) that he would be banned from politics and voting in elections indefinitely. Nor would he be allowed to meet anyone outside his family while under house arrest.

Kem Sokha was arrested in September 2017 without a warrant in a midnight raid on his home and taken to a provincial jail. Denied bail several times before eventually being released under house arrest, the prominent politician was charged with "conspiracy with a foreign power" under article 443 of Cambodia's criminal code.

Comment: It seems as though this failed colour revolution is yet another sign of how West's corrupting influence is waning across the planet.

See also: WHO investigation bird flu cases in Cambodia after child died who tested positive


Take 2

It's coming

Harrelson
© Will Heath/NBC/Getty ImagesWoody Harrelson during the Monologue on Saturday February 25, 2023
Millions of people in the West see the spiritual catastrophe their societies are being led towards. The elites are going crazy, but that is their problem. What we have to do is defend our children from this degradation and degeneracy.
Aimee Therese on Twitter
"It's Coming." That's what Elon Musk said a while back apropos of the Twitter files that show all the US government suppression of Covid-19 information mis-labeled as "misinformation." Think of whatever the truth is as mis-misinformation. Get it? You might have to read that sentence more than once to comprehend what went wrong with the American consensus the past three years. And then you'll begin to understand why the operation is called mind-fuckery.

"It" comes out in weird ways now. For instance, Woody Harrelson's little prank on Saturday Night Live. The A-List actor opened the show acting stoned, talking about how much he likes weed and getting stoned, and, at the very end of his routine, spoke of a "movie script" that spun out in his stoned head:
"The biggest drug cartels in the world get together, and buy up all the media and all the politicians... and force all the people in the world to stay locked in their homes... and people can only come out if they take the cartel's drug... and keep taking them over and over. I threw the script away. I mean, who's gonna believe that crazy idea?"

Beaker

Disinformation Inc: Government-backed group tried to punish sites boosting COVID lab leak theory

disinfo inc
© Disinfo Inc
A State Department-backed "disinformation" tracking group blacklisting conservative news outlets pressured advertising companies to punish websites boosting the COVID-19 "lab leak" theory, which a federal agency now says is the most likely origin of the virus.

The Global Disinformation Index, a British group with two affiliated U.S. nonprofit organizations, has continued to come under fire for feeding conservative news blacklists to advertising companies. This same government-funded entity repeatedly applied pressure on companies to cut ties with websites promoting the once alleged right-wing "conspiracy" that COVID-19 emerged from a lab — which the Energy Department recently concluded is probable based on intelligence.

"GDI is part of [a] disturbing constellation of pop-up censorship organizations that all descended on stifling COVID origins discourse online simultaneously," Mike Benz, a former State Department official and director of Foundation For Freedom Online, a censorship watchdog, told the Washington Examiner.

Yoda

Hungary calls for 'European NATO' free of US influence

Putin Orban
© Sputnik / Vitaly BelousovHungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Russian President Vladimir Putin
The EU is doing Washington's bidding since "Americans have the last word," the Hungarian prime minister believes

Europe needs its own military bloc free of American influence, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told Swiss magazine Weltwoche on Thursday. The politician accused the US of dragging Europe into a conflict that cannot be won and risking a global war.

"The solution would be a European NATO," Orban said, arguing that America's desire for further expansion of its influence is what led to the current tensions between the West and Russia.

Moscow is concerned about NATO expanding further east into Ukraine and Georgia, Orban stated, referring to his conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin just weeks before the conflict between Moscow and Kiev erupted in late February 2022.

Syringe

Damning revelations: Matt Hancock staged "rearguard" action to close schools after Education Secretary won argument to keep them open

britain Health Secretary Matt Hancock
© Press AssociationUK Health Secretary Matt Hancock
The 'Lockdown Files' - the trove of WhatsApp messages between senior Government figures during the pandemic, handed to the Telegraph by Isabel Oakeshott after they were given to her by Matt Hancock to help her ghost-write his biography - continue to bring out scandalous revelations about how pandemic management by WhatsApp was conducted. Here are some of the top stories from Wednesday.

Matt Hancock mounted a "rearguard action" to close schools despite Sir Gavin Williamson battling "tooth and nail" to keep classrooms open.
Exchanges seen by the Telegraph reveal that the then Health Secretary battled the Education Secretary in late December 2020 and suggested it was "mad" that Sir Gavin was attempting to keep schools open.

Mr. Hancock initially lost a Cabinet argument during which he tried to persuade the Prime Minister to close schools ahead of their return in January 2021.

After Boris Johnson sided with Sir Gavin, Mr. Hancock told an aide: "The next U-turn is born" and added: "I want to find a way, Gavin having won the day, of actually preventing a policy car crash when the kids spread the disease in January. And for that we must now fight a rearguard action."

Messages show that Mr. Hancock immediately contacted Dan Rosenfield, Mr. Johnson's Chief of Staff, and began an attempt to have schools closed before children returned. He then provided his private email address.

As the planned reopening became increasingly chaotic over the following week, with U-turns on dates and testing requirements for secondary schools, Mr. Hancock and his team said Sir Gavin was having to eat "humble pie".

Comment: So Hancock and his cronies found it just too inconvenient to reverse policies causing untold developmental damage to young school children. Got it.

In earlier days, Hancock would be running for his life from lynch mobs. But he'll probably never see a charge, let alone the inside of a prison cell.


Bizarro Earth

Best of the Web: The World Economic Forum's 'AI enslavement' is coming for you

Klaus Schwab
© Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty ImagesWEF founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab in Davos on May 23, 2022
The mission objective of the World Economic Forum (WEF) is remarkably simple: the smartest, best people in the world should rule everyone else. In WEF parlance, their schemes of total supervision and behavioral modification will create a "sustainable" future for humanity. Humans become nothing more than "things" to be counted, shuffled, categorized, tagged, monitored, manipulated, and controlled. They become nothing more than cogs in the WEF's great trans-humanist, technocratic machine.

When Sir Thomas More wrote his socio-political satire about a fictional island society in the New World, he gave it the fabricated name, Utopia, derived from simple Greek and meaning, "no-place." Although More was humorously telling his audience that his idealized community existed nowhere, centuries of central planners chasing the fantasy of utopian societies have failed to get the joke. Worse, for every peaceful religious community seeking separation from modern civilization, there is a power-hungry tyrant seeking to impose his will upon everyone else.

It seems as if not a generation goes by when some megalomaniac does not rise to proclaim, "If only the world does exactly as I demand, I will deliver you paradise here on Earth." Usually, these same narcissists go down in history remembered as either vainglorious buffoons or bloodthirsty tyrants — often both.

Black Cat 2

UK considered mandating killing of all pet cats to stop COVID

pet cat
© Westend61 via Getty Images
UK health authorities considered ordering the euthanization of all pet cats in the country during the first COVID outbreak, it has been revealed.

Ex-Deputy Health Minister Lord James Bethell made the admission while trying to argue that governments were caught unawares in how to respond to the virus, remarking, "We shouldn't forget... how little we understood about this disease."

"There was a moment we were very unclear about whether domestic pets could transmit the disease," he said. "In fact, there was an idea at one moment that we might have to ask the public to exterminate all the cats in Britain. Can you imagine what would have happened if we had wanted to do that?"

Comment: See also:


Handcuffs

"Get heavy with police" to enforce lockdown, Matt Hancock told Ministers

UK police
Ministers and the country's most senior civil servant discussed how they needed to "get heavy with the police" to crack down on the public during the Covid pandemic. The Telegraph has the story.
WhatsApp messages in the Lockdown Files disclose how Matt Hancock and colleagues gave officers their "marching orders" to enforce lockdown measures, just days before Number 10 staff held a party in Downing Street.

They also messaged about how "the plod got their marching orders" during a meeting attended by the prime minister, the home secretary and Simon Case, now the Cabinet Secretary.