Fast but not furious, the Global South is revving up. The key takeaway of the BRICS+ summit in Beijing, held in sharp contrast with the G7 in the Bavarian Alps, is that both West Asia's Iran and South America's Argentina officially applied for BRICS membership.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry has highlighted how BRICS has "a very creative mechanism with broad aspects". Tehran - a close partner of both Beijing and Moscow - already had "a series of consultations" about the application: the Iranians are sure that will "add value" to the expanded BRICS.

Talk about China, Russia and Iran being sooooo isolated. Well, after all we're deep into the metaverse spectrum, where things are the opposite of what they seem.

Moscow's obstinacy in not following Washington's Plan A to start a pan-European war is rattling Atlanticist nerves to the core. So right after the G7 summit significantly held at a former Nazi sanatorium, enter NATO's, in full warmongering regalia.

So welcome to an atrocity exhibition featuring total demonization of Russia, defined as the ultimate "direct threat"; the upgrading of Eastern Europe into "a fort"; a torrent of tears shed about the Russia-China strategic partnership; and as an extra bonus, the branding of China as a "systemic challenge".

There you go: for the NATO/G7 combo, the leaders of the emerging multipolar world as well as the vast swathes of the Global South that want to join in, are a "systemic challenge".

Turkiye under the Sultan of Swing - Global South in spirit, tightrope walker in practice - got literally everything it wanted to magnanimously allow Sweden and Finland to clear their paths on the way of being absorbed by NATO.

Bets can be made on what kind of shenanigans NATO navies will come up with in the Baltics against the Russian Baltic Fleet, to be followed by assorted business cards distributed by Mr. Khinzal, Mr. Zircon, Mr. Onyx and Mr. Kalibr, capable of course of annihilating any NATO permutation, including "decision centers".

So it came as a sort of perverse comic relief when Roscosmos released a set of quite entertaining satellite images pinpointing the coordinates of those "decision centers".

The "leaders" of NATO and the G7 seem to enjoy performing a brand of lousy cop/clownish cop routine. The NATO summit told coke comedian Elensky (remember, the letter "Z" is verboten) that the Russian combined arms police operation - or war - must be "resolved" militarily. So NATO will continue to help Kiev to fight till the last Ukrainian cannon fodder.

In parallel, at the G7, German Chancellor Scholz was asked to specify what "security guarantees" would be provided to what's left of Ukraine after the war. Response from the grinning Chancellor: "Yes ... I could" (specify). And then he trailed off.

NATO will reportedly retain the 1997 Founding Act between the military alliance and Russia, which says that the two "do not consider each other as adversaries." According to German media, Berlin and Paris argued against axing the accord.

In a report on Tuesday, Die Welt claimed that a number of Eastern European NATO member states wanted the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation officially scrapped during the ongoing NATO summit in Madrid. The unnamed nations believe that Moscow ceased to abide by the accord in 2008, when its forces crossed into Georgia, the article reported. Germany and France, however, have insisted on retaining the "chimera of a valid agreement," as the journalists put it in their report.

Being a big baby by expelling so many Russian diplomats after populists punished him for his anti-Russian policies that crushed their country's economy is nothing but a political provocation by the Bulgarian Prime Minister designed to feed into the US-led West's Mainstream Media narrative that attempts to blame the Kremlin for everything bad that happens nowadays.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov just expelled a whopping 70 Russian diplomats around a week after losing a vote of no confidence in parliament. He earlier claimed that he was the victim of a conspiracy between corrupt and pro-Russian elements in his country, which he predicted will "soften" his country's stance towards the Ukrainian Conflict in the event that he can't assemble a new coalition government. While the primary catalyst for his coalition's collapse was officially disputes over the budget and neighboring Macedonia's EU membership process, the reality is that the populist forces made good on their promise to pull out of the government if the authorities decided to arm Kiev.

Switzerland has officially put into effect the EU's sixth package of sanctions against Russia, including the partial oil embargo, TASS reported on Wednesday, citing the country's government, the Federal Council.

"With the decision made on June 29, Switzerland puts into effect the new measures introduced by the EU on June 3, 2022," the Federal Council said in a statement, as cited by TASS.

According to the Swiss ruling body, these sanctions "include an embargo on crude oil and certain petroleum products of Russian origin."

"Similar to EU measures, the purchase, import, transit and transportation [of Russian oil products] to or within Switzerland is prohibited," the statement said. The authorities explained that the oil embargo will be introduced in Switzerland gradually and should be fully enforced by the beginning of 2023.

Besides the oil embargo, Switzerland has prohibited the country's companies from providing auditing and consulting services to Russian enterprises, and has banned them from advertising products in some Russian media, including RT and Sputnik.

The Kremlin says Russia will halt its months-long military offensive in neighboring Ukraine as soon as Ukrainian forces surrender.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday that hostilities in Ukraine could end "before the end of today" if Kiev orders the nationalists to lay down their weapons and Moscow's demands are met.

"The Ukrainian side can end all this before the end of today; an order is necessary for the nationalist units to lay down their weapons, an order is necessary for the Ukrainian military to lay down their weapons; and they must fulfill all Russia's demands. Then everything will be over before the day ends.

"Everything else are just speculations of the Ukrainian head of state. We are guided by the statements of our President Vladimir Putin that the special military operation is going according to plan and achieving its goals."

Asked whether the Russian side had any approximate timeframe for the end of the offensive in Ukraine, the Kremlin spokesman responded in the negative.

Peskov made the comment while reacting to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky's remark that he would like to end the hostilities before the end of the year. Zelensky urged world powers on Monday to do their utmost to help end Russia's offensive before the cold season, also saying that the time was not ripe for holding talks with Russia as Kiev was seeking to consolidate its positions.

Turkey's President Erdogan has officially withdrawn Ankara's objection to the addition of Finland and Sweden to NATO membership, with the three countries signing a trilateral memorandum at a NATO summit in Madrid.

The removal of Erdogan's objection was reportedly obtained via significant natsec concessions from the other two nations largely geared toward facilitating Turkey's ongoing conflict with regional Kurdish factions, and it removes the final obstacle to Finland and Sweden beginning the process of becoming NATO members. Finland's addition will more than double the size of NATO's direct border with Russia, a major national security concern for Moscow.

Axios reports:

"Sweden and Finland moved rapidly to apply to NATO in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, reversing decades of security policy and opening the door to the alliance's ninth expansion since 1949."

So the western empire will be expanding NATO again in response to a war that was predominantly caused by NATO expansion. Brilliant.

Joe Biden has fulfilled one of the first promises he made upon becoming president. His administration has just announced a comprehensive set of regulations — 701 pages worth — that will gut due-process rights for college students accused of sexual misconduct.

Apparently, Biden learned nothing from going through his own sexual assault accusation crucible.

During his vice presidency, Joe Biden was the Obama administration's point man for a major domestic initiative: ending sexual assault on campus. There is no question bad, sometimes criminal, sexual behavior occurs on campus. Eliminating it is a worthy, if elusive, goal. But the Obama-Biden mandate expanded the definition of sexual misconduct so broadly that jokes, flirting, or "any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature," could be punishable offenses.

The Obama administration set out to change campus culture, and it did. But in doing so, it undermined women, demonized men, and diverted vast resources away from education. Under rules promulgated by Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education under Trump, many of these policies were rolled back. The Biden administration now plans to restore much of this.

The West's Malthusian neoliberal political order is rapidly collapsing.

Led by U.S. President Joe Biden, the Group of Seven (G-7) economic powers today announced plans to ban the transport of Russian oil sold above a certain price with the goal of hurting Russia enough so that it ends its war against Ukraine. "There is only one way out: for Putin to accept that his plans in Ukraine will not succeed," said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The G-7's plan is to impose a price cap on Russian oil through the regulation of petroleum shipping, banking, and insurance.

The proposal is, in a word, ludicrous. Russian President Vladimir Putin would never agree to a price cap. He would likely withhold oil from the market in the same way he has been withholding natural gas from Europe, driving up prices. Putin would then sell oil to countries including China and India at a 30-40% discount, as he has been doing, or larger. Russia produces oil at a price of just $3-$4 per barrel and Russian firms can profit with oil prices at $25-$30 per barrel. And while it's true that there is a near-monopoly in shipping insurance, Russia has been creating alternatives to it.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned the West that continuing to supply Ukraine with advanced weaponry will only prolong the conflict in the east European country.

Speaking at a press conference, on Tuesday, the veteran diplomat stated that the position of the West regarding Ukraine is "absolutely counterproductive and harmful".

"'Pumping up' Ukraine with Western weapons will only lead Russia to perform more missions on the ground. The more weapons are pumped into Ukraine, the longer this conflict will last, the longer the agony of the Nazi regime, which is supported by Western capitals, will last."

Lavrov's comments on accusations from Ukrainian and Western politicians related to a shopping mall in Kremenchug, which was allegedly hit by Russian forces on Monday.

On June 23, 2022, an organization funded by the US Congress, the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe - also known as the Helsinki Commission - held a virtual conference calling for the "decolonizing of Russia."

This begs the question of why they are not seeking the decolonization of the United States. After all, the country was literally founded by the successors of white colonists who had crossed an ocean to violently seize the territory from its indigenous people.

While the conference speakers, who can be listened to here, used the current crisis in Ukraine as a jumping off point, they demanded that the Russian Federation "decolonizes" from regions and republics which have been governed by Moscow since the 16th century (e.g. Siberia and Tatarstan) and others going back to the early 1800's (e.g. Chechnya).

This is, of course, tantamount to calling upon the US to relinquish nearly all of its territory from the Atlantic to Pacific, not to mention more recent holdings such as Hawaii.