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.

Prof. Sergey Karaganov, in an interview with Nora Hoppe and Tariq Marzbaan, outlines Russia's civilizational turn: rejecting Western liberalism, embracing its multiethnic spiritual heritage, Siberian future, and its Eastward path to revive a mission of service over consumption.

* * *

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.

AI is doing to the universities what Gutenberg did to the monasteries

By the late middle ages monasteries were spectacularly wealthy. They were immune from taxation, and possessed vast land holdings thanks to generous donations made over the centuries by nobles looking to assure themselves a comfortable place in the afterlife. Many of them performed economic functions, such as brewing beer or providing financial services; some performed charitable functions, distributing alms to the poor or operating hospitals; some performed spiritual functions, such as hosting holy relics or maintaining elaborate ritual vigils to intercede with God on behalf of the people. But their primary utility, from the perspective of the wider society, was as repositories, preservers, and disseminators of knowledge. Their scriptoria ensured that books were copied from one generation to the next, preventing knowledge from being lost. The monastic focus was naturally religious, but their monopoly on literacy and information reproduction meant that if you needed a secular work to be replicated for wider distribution, the monastery was the only place to go.

Emboldened by the cultural ferment of the Reformation, in 1534 the British Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, recognizing King Henry VIII as the head of the new Church of England following his break with Rome the year before on account of Pope Clement VII's refusal to annual his marriage to Catherine of Aragorn. Immediately following this, the king dispatched his chief minister Thomas Cromwell (a distant ancestor of the Lord Protector) to visit England's monasteries in order to gently remind them of their duty to submit to and obey their new religious authority, and more importantly, to inventory their finances. The monasteries of England and Wales held a quarter of the arable land, and their interiors were lavishly appointed with silver and gold; an English proverb held that if the Abbot of Glastonbury were to wed the Abbess of Shaftesbury, their heir would be richer than the king. This would of course have required both Abbot and Abbess to flout their vows of chastity, and perhaps this proverb was also a subtle dig at the widespread perception that monastic orders held their vows quite lightly. Thus, Cromwell's delegates were also directed to investigate the moral state of the monasteries, examining the prevalence of superstitious practices such as the veneration of relics, the piety with which their monastic vows were being kept, and searching for evidence of dissolute sexual behaviour.

Parts of South Africa, Namibia, and Lesotho have seen serious snowfall as sweeping cold swept across the area. The cold front brought rare snowfall to parts of South Africa on Monday, coating rooftops, clogging roads, and prompting emergency responses across several provinces unaccustomed to such wintry conditions. It has been called the largest snow event in Lesotho's recent history by the Lesotho Tribune.

The ski resort Afriski Mountain Resort in Lesotho advised visitors to delay travel until conditions improve. Emergency crews at the resort had to rescue 10 people bogged in snow at Mahlasela, in Butha-Buthe where it was snowing heavily. Truck drivers as well as 4WD vehicles without snow chains had gotten stuck on the snow covered roads.

The South African Weather Service (SAWS) issued a series of warnings as temperatures plunged overnight, leading to snowfall in Gauteng, the Eastern Cape, and elevated areas of KwaZulu-Natal—regions where snow is either infrequent or typically limited to light flurries.

Videos and images quickly spread across social media showing children building snowmen in suburban neighborhoods, cars inching across icy roads, and normally sun-drenched landscapes turned white. While the scenes brought excitement to many, they also created dangerous conditions on the ground. Several highways and mountain passes were temporarily closed due to ice and reduced visibility. Authorities urged motorists to avoid unnecessary travel, citing a growing number of minor collisions and weather-related incidents.

Fake News, Psychological Bioterrorism, and Hallucinating AI

On May 31, The "Daily Mail" and the web-based news aggregator "All Sides" had articles titled: "CDC tells Americans to CANCEL their flights after finding world's most infectious disease is spreading on planes."

This is one of the most clear-cut examples of fake news being deployed in a coordinated manner to advance a psychological bioterror campaign that I have ever encountered.

These articles make outright false claims about Measles. Other terms to describe what is being done here include psychological bioterrorism, fear porn, or simply lies and disinformation. The proof of this follows. Which leads to the burning question of whether or not the notoriously censorial UK Government of Keir Starmer will do anything about it. If not, we can reasonably consider this prima facie evidence that the UK government is (at a minimum) complicit in spreading disinformation and promoting false fear of infectious disease for some hidden purpose.

Mount Etna has begun to erupt sending huge plumes of ash into the air and leaving tourists running for their lives.

Footage shared online showed holidaymakers running along a ledge of the volcano in Sicily, with the huge ash cloud growing behind them.

The most active volcano in Europe had been experiencing some activity in the last few hours but has escalated to continuous "explosions of growing intensity", experts said.

The first volcanic tremor were felt just moments before the eruption.

The tremors began at roughly 10pm on Sunday evening before reaching a peak three hours later in the middle of the night.

The first tremor was localised at an altitude of 2.8km below the crater area, according to reports.

The next chapter in the Social Media battle to splinter reality, the internet, and your own mind

Splinternet (as defined per Grok):

The splinternet refers to the fragmentation of the internet into separate, often isolated networks due to political, cultural, technological, or commercial reasons. It describes a scenario where the internet is no longer a unified global system but is instead divided into distinct "splinters" or subnetworks. This can happen through government censorship (like China's Great Firewall), regional regulations (such as the EU's GDPR), or tech companies creating walled gardens (e.g., Apple's ecosystem).

The term highlights how these divisions limit universal access to information and create digital borders, often reflecting real-world geopolitical tensions or differing values on privacy, security, and free expression.

Elon asked a key question. This is not dark humor or sarcasm; this is today's reality:

After years of scamdemic hype and veiled threats, the World Health Organization (WHO) have finalized their pandemic treaty.

Formally referred to as the "WHO Pandemic Agreement," the document reflects years of wrangling, cajoling and horse trading among the globalist technocrats. And now that the negotiations are over, their control over the global health space can now be hardwired into international law.

There are reasons to be relieved that the document is not as bad as it could have been. As some are pointing out, the latest draft of the agreement has been significantly defanged, with the most egregious language about mandatory enforcement and WHO sovereignty having been removed. Even better, the relevance of this agreement to Americans has been lessened by the recent executive order withdrawing the US from the WHO.


But for those of us concerned about the establishment of world government, we are not out of the woods yet. There are provisions in this agreement that will allow the would-be global health tyrants to expand beyond the boundaries of the current draft text and to assume the dictatorial powers that their critics (like yours truly) have been warning the treaty would bestow on the WHO.

What's worse, what can be undone with the stroke of Trump's presidential pen (or robopen) can be redone with the stroke of a presidential pen (or robopen), and it would be the height of naïveté to assume that the next puppet to occupy the Oval Office won't immediately sign the US back on to the agreement.

So, is this the start of a global governmental system of technocratic health control? And, if it is, what does that mean for the future of humanity?

In order to answer that question, we're going to have to go back to the roots of the WHO's power grab. And that story, it turns out, starts in a most unexpected place . . .

The daily images of the humanitarian catastrophe that Benjamin Netanyahu's government is causing in Gaza with its military offensive and the blockade of international aid are shaking even the European countries most aligned with Israel.

The increasingly critical tone from several EU capitals in the face of a situation almost unanimously described as "unacceptable" culminated on Tuesday in Brussels with a shift that, until just weeks ago, would have been unthinkable in Europe — traditionally very reluctant to take retaliatory action against Israel.

At the request of an "overwhelming majority" of member states — 17 out of 27 — the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Kaja Kallas, has decided to review the EU-Israel Association Agreement, the main instrument of political and trade relations between the two since it came into force in 2000.

"Pressure is necessary to change the situation," explained Kallas after a meeting of foreign ministers in which the dire situation of the population in Gaza — militarily besieged and with barely any access to humanitarian aid blocked by Israel for more than two months — was a central focus of discussion, along with Ukraine.

The tragedy in the Palestinian enclave has also led the United Kingdom to take decisive action: the Labour government of Keir Starmer has decided to suspend ongoing negotiations on a future trade agreement with Israel. Starmer himself has said he is "horrified" by the military escalation in the Gaza Strip. Downing Street has also summoned the Israeli ambassador in London to express its protest over the "intolerable" offensive in Gaza, according to Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

Western capitals are still coordinating with Israel and the US on their 'criticisms' of the genocide - just as they coordinated on their support for the slaughter

After 19 months of being presented with dissembling accounts of Gaza from their governments, western publics are now being served up a different - but equally deceitful - narrative.

With the finishing line in sight for Israel's programme of genocidal ethnic cleansing, the West's Gaza script is being hastily rewritten. But make no mistake: it is the same web of self-serving lies.

As if under the direction of a hidden conductor, Britain, France and Canada - key US allies - erupted this week into a chorus of condemnation of Israel.

Left-wing politician Yair Golan faced a wave of backlash on Tuesday from across the political spectrum after he accused Israel of killing babies in Gaza "as a hobby."

Golan, a former IDF deputy chief of staff and current head of the The Democrats party, a merger of Labor and Meretz, said in an interview with the Kan public broadcaster that "Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was, if we don't return to acting like a sane country."

The political leader, who is not a current member of Knesset, added that "a sane country does not fight against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not give itself the aim of expelling populations."

Golan accused the current government of being "full of vengeful types with no morals and no ability to run a country in a time of crisis. This endangers our existence."