Turkey's decision to block Sweden's NATO membership has sparked a new controversy in the alliance at a time when the alliance is desperately looking to expand. Turkey's Erdogan thinks that Sweden has failed to take the action that it was supposed to take i.e., act against "terrorists" living in Sweden and expel others involved in the 2016 military coup controversy. Turkey's decision to block Sweden's membership has, however, produced something else: a new military pact between Sweden and the US. Called a bilateral "Defence Cooperation Agreement", the pact will allow the US to deploy its forces immediately to Sweden. The pact has been announced at a time when the US - and its allies in Europe - are already intensifying their war on Russia by supplying tanks. But the question that merits attention is: why is Turkey blocking this membership even though Sweden claims to have all it could do to fulfill Turkey's conditions?

As it appears, the underlying reasons for this blockade have more to do with the Erdogan government's own interests rather than any real annoyance with Sweden's non-compliance with the 2022 agreement with Ankara, in which Stockholm had agreed to act upon Turkey's demands.

Many foreign brands and businesses are leaving Russia not of their own volition but because they are feeling pressured to do so, and suffer financially as a result, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday at a meeting of the supervisory board of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives.

Moscow, however, will not force anyone to stay, according to the president.

"Many of them, as you know, under pressure from their governments, are leaving our market. Well, all the best to them. However, because of the loss of our market they incur huge losses. It's their choice, it's their decision.

"Who wants to lose a well-established business in which they invested effort, money? It's not even about the money sometimes - many have invested their hearts - but under pressure from their governments are forced to leave. Many do it without any pleasure."

According to Putin, Russia will not allow the varied assets and infrastructure these companies leave behind to go to waste, and domestic industries may even benefit from the situation.

"They leave behind a good legacy, so to speak, they leave behind production infrastructure, well-trained personnel. Perhaps someone thinks that all of this will immediately crumble and fall apart - nothing of the sort is happening. Our companies, our entrepreneurs are picking up these enterprises and businesses and continuing this work. And quite successfully."

From the most recent lunacy propagated by western "democracies," my recent suggestion that Washington wants to give half of Ukraine to Poland may have merit. But, news, the Germans have been blackmailed into sending some old Leopard tanks to Ukraine bears watching since this move will undoubtedly sever Russo-German ties for good. And the fact that Russia now faces almost all westerners begs the question, "When does Russia go ahead and declare war?"

Crimea. If the Euromaidan coup was the catalyst for breaking west-east detente, Crimean's deciding to return to Mother Russia busted any hope there would ever be peace on the steppes of Russia. Interestingly, Crimea and Ukraine have never been at peace and under a unified socio-cultural rule since the time of the Scythians. From the 7th to the 3rd century BC, those ancient equestrian nomads from Iran and Central Asia ruled the so-called Pontic-Caspian steppe. I know it's a deep dive into distant history, but a necessary one for making my Ukraine conflict point.

You see, this region of the world now known as Ukraine has never seen peace except during the time of the powerful Scythians and Sarmatians, for a few decades as part of the U.S.S.R., and briefly as a close economic and cultural neighbor to the new Russian Federation. The in-between times consisted of the Goths took over and their role in the fall of the Roman Empire, followed by an endless succession of migrations, wars, and governance by the Huns, Mongols, Khazars, Magyars, the Russian Empire, and most recently the Soviet Union during the 20th Century. Peace in this land has been a rare commodity since immortal time. There is only one real constant that is fundamental to the crisis today.

The strategists in the so-called west are playing a centuries old game designed to fragment the natural inheritors of Eurasia's wealth and culture at one another's throats. Ukraine, much of Russia, and almost all of eastern Europe have roots in the mysterious Zeriuani tribe at the center of all Slavic cultures, nations, and empires. Few readers will have heard of the Zeriuani, for their origins remain obscure. However, whether these first Slavs came from Serbia, Lesser Poland, or along the Oder River in the Czech Republic, their legacy of conflict with outside influencers still causes clashes between great powers.

During a Wednesday hearing of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene slammed former Twitter Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth for banning her account while allowing child pornography to thrive on the social media platform.

"It's amazing to me, Mr. Roth, as the head and trust of safety at Twitter, your ability, or should I say inability, to remove child porn," Greene said.

"And here's something that disgusts me about you. In your doctoral dissertation entitled 'Gay Data,' you argued that minors should have access to Grindr, an adult male gay hookup app. Minors? Really?"

Greene noted that once Elon Musk took over as the new owner of Twitter, 44,000 child pornography accounts were banned. Referencing Roth, Greene said, "You permanently banned my Twitter account, but you allowed child porn all over Twitter."

News of Russian banks connecting to Iran's financial messaging system strengthens the resistance against US-imposed sanctions on both countries and accelerates global de-dollarization.
The agreement between the Central Banks of Russia and Iran formally signed on 29 January connecting their interbank transfer systems is a game-changer in more ways than one.

Technically, from now on 52 Iranian banks already using SEPAM, Iran's interbank telecom system, are connecting with 106 banks using SPFS, Russia's equivalent to the western banking messaging system SWIFT.

Less than a week before the deal, State Duma Chairman Vyachslav Volodin was in Tehran overseeing the last-minute details, part of a meeting of the Russia-Iran Inter-Parliamentary Commission on Cooperation: he was adamant both nations should quickly increase trade in their own currencies.

I returned to Brussels on Sunday after a month of travels in exotic and warm lands south of the equator. The re-entry shock upon arrival in Belgium was a lot greater than the 27 degree Centigrade drop in outdoor air temperature. After a month of only very limited reception of Russian news, due to satellite issues and hotel service issues, last night I switched on Russian state television's news and talk show "Sixty Minutes" on www.smotrim.ru and got a full blast of the current state of relations with the US, which are very close to Doomsday.

Allow me to share with you the key point, namely the soon to be announced changes to the Russian doctrine on first use of nuclear weapons and their new more precise red lines that have come about from the plans for Russia's partition and destruction that seem to be aired daily on US television.

As usual, Yevgeny Popov, State Duma member and host of "Sixty Minutes," put a lot of video segments from Western television up on the screen, including a lengthy statement by Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, former commander of all U.S. forces in Europe from 2014 to 2017, on how the Ukrainians must be given long range precision missiles for them to attack Russian Crimea and also further into the Russian heartland. The interview from which this declaration was made does not yet appear in Google search, but from interviews posted in 2022 it is clear that Hodges is no madman, and his statements must, as Popov said, be taken with utmost seriousness.

The context, of course, for the radical escalation now being discussed in the United States is the expectation of a massive Russian offensive to begin shortly as the anniversary of the Special Military Operation approaches. The imminent defeat of Ukrainian forces has focused minds in Washington.

NATO soldiers are fighting in Ukraine as mercenaries claimed the Austrian Colonel Markus Reisner.

According to Colonel Markus Reisner, the military strategist of the Austrian Ministry of Defence, Ukraine does not need NATO soldiers, as they are already there on the frontlines as mercenaries.

Empire poised to lose on two fronts at once-but at least we shot down that *&#! Chinese balloon!

In a lecture and Q&A with foreign journalists last night, strategic analyst Dr. Mostafa Khosh-Cheshm summarized the history and current state of what he described as the US hybrid war on Iran. He asserted that the American campaign has stalled due to Iran's successful counterattacks and deterrents, but anticipates possible escalation into new battlegrounds despite the American side's failure to make any progress toward achieving its objectives.

The apparent failure of the Israeli-inspired US hybrid war on Iran comes at the worst possible time for the US empire, which faces impending military catastrophe in Ukraine as even The New York Times has belatedly admitted. Future historians may look back on the neoconservatives' decision to simultaneously target Russia, China, and Iran as one of the biggest blunders in history, on the scale of those analyzed in Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. Writing of the foolish Goth king Recared, who inadvertently opened Spain to Muslim conquest, Tuchman notes that "for a ruler opposed by two inimical groups, it is folly to continue antagonizing both at once" (p.16). True enough; and how much more foolish to simultaneously antagonize three such groups!

Basically, great power competition and the fight for hegemonic control between America on the one side and Russia and China on the other, is being fought on two fronts.

The one is Ukraine war with enlarging NATO engagement, the other front is financial with America facing a coordinated attack by Russia and China on its dollar hegemony. The Russians are planning a replacement trade settlement currency, which could unleash a flood of foreign-owned dollars onto the foreign exchange markets. In fact, the second front encases also the third front, the formation of global alliances. Ultimately, there is a competition of new world order and fight for global power (world hegemon).

All these topics have been analysed in various articles on this website and will be analysed also in the future but this article focuses again on military side of this subject, because there is, as the title indicates, endgame currently going. Some fundamental factors are now emerging for further analysis.

Some 83 years after being employed against Germany in 1940, economic sanctions have become the most widely-used tool in Washington's arsenal to coerce adversarial states. Sanctions have become a parallel or alternative policy to military invasions, especially after the dollar solidified as the world's dominant currency by being pegged to oil in 1975 - and further strengthened by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

This US financial and economic weapon has caused Syria suffering for decades, but its impact has become lethal in recent years, particularly after 2019.

Sanctions negatively affect all vital sectors of the economy, from medicine to education, energy, communications, agriculture, and industry - all the way to dealing with emergency disasters, such as the earthquake that struck Syria and Turkiye in the early morning of 6 February, which has so far led to the death of 1,300 civilians, mass injuries, and the destruction of thousands of homes.

The impact of western sanctions and the US military occupation of Syria has crippled the nation's economy and undermined its ability to respond to major natural disasters of this kind. The situation issue pressing that the Middle East Council of Churches issued a demand on 6 February for the immediate lifting of sanctions on Syria so that Damascus can deal with the humanitarian fallout from the tragic earthquake.