As Filipinos choose their next President on Monday, prospect of election of anti-establishment candidate threatens the geopolitical viability of the US's Pivot to Asia. The Philippines votes for its next President on Monday. Whilst the rest of the world pays little attention, strategists in Washington are worried.

The electoral frontrunner is Rodrigo Duterte, an eccentric, no-nonsense former mayor from the southern island of Mindanao who commands a Trump-like popularity and an equally loyal following. He has shaken Philippine politics to its core over the past couple of months, defying establishment pundits who - just as they did with Trump - wrongly predicted that his campaign would fizzle out over the course of each passing week.

Having totally underestimated just how dissatisfied most Filipinos are with the status quo, Duterte's rivals missed the chance to outshine him by his anti-system rhetoric. With the race in its final days that is now too late. Instead - also paralleling what happened with Trump - there are desperate calls for coalitions and deals to stop him. Should these fail and should Duterte win on Monday, he promises a geopolitical revolution unlike anything the Philippines has ever seen in its history.

Indian Prime Minister Modi's realignment of India with the US threatens to shatter BRICS unity reversing the course away from the US-led unipolar world.

In an earlier article I discussed India's recent moves and how these threaten to realign India with the US against China and Russia. In this article I will discuss the background to this and the strategic implications and how these developments threaten the development of the multipolar order that is challenging US global power.

The Chinese-Indian Cold War

South East Asia

Prime Minister Modi's moves over the last month exacerbate an already existing low-intensity Chinese-Indian Cold War. The main focus of Chinese-Indian competition at the present time is in south east Asia.

India plans to ramp up its commercial ties with the mainland members of ASEAN - often referred to as "the Mekong River states" - by cooperating with them to build the Trilateral Highway through Myanmar and Thailand. Part of this project links up to the Japanese East-West corridor at the Myanmar port city of Mawlamyine, connecting India to northern Thailand, southern Laos, and central Vietnam.

This map shows the crisscrossing infrastructure corridors that are planned for the Greater Mekong Subregion. India's Trilateral Highway - labelled the Western Corridor - is coloured purple. Japan's East-Corridor is coloured turquoise. It is not a coincidence that these trade networks are expected to interlink with each other. India and Japan are the US's two most important Asian allies in "containing" China. From a US perspective, it makes sense for India and China [Japan] to pool their resources in the ASEAN theatre.

On the naval front, as I discussed in my previous article, India is slated to become one of the out-of-region forces active in the South China Sea alongside Japan, the US, and Australia in the "Quadrilateral Security Dialogue".

May 9 is Victory Day - the day that Russia commemorates the tremendous sacrifice made by the people of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War.

Many nationalities took part in the fight against the Nazis, but no single country shed anywhere near as much blood as the Soviet Union. Overall, 27 million Soviet citizens lost their lives in the war. Yes, that's right: TWENTY-SEVEN MILLION. There's no typo.

Yet today, for geopolitical reasons, the enormous contribution that the Soviet Union made to the defeat of Hitler's forces is being deliberately - and shamefully - downplayed by elites in the west.

Western leaders boycott World War Two commemorative events held in Russia.

Anti-Russian neocon propagandists, whose voices dominate the media and whose books always get enthusiastic reviews and endorsements from fellow hawks, equate Nazi Germany - the clear aggressor in World War Two - with the Soviet Union, the country that was fighting for its survival and which only wanted to be left alone.

Hollywood meanwhile relentlessly pushes the line that it was the US - and the western allies alone - who won the war. Disgustingly, and quite scandalously, the deaths of 27 million people are being airbrushed out of history.

This pernicious and morally repugnant New Cold War revisionism regarding World War Two and the role of Russia/the Soviet Union is more pervasive now than it was in the days when the Soviet Union still existed. I remember growing up in Britain in the 1970s at a time when anti-Russian neocons weren't writing the script.

The groundbreaking 26-episode 1973 Thames TV series The World at War told the story of WW2 in a very fair way and did not seek to diminish the Soviet contribution. In the final episode, the programme's historical adviser, Noble Frankland - a director of the Imperial War Museum and decorated war veteran - dismissed the ludicrous assertion that after the war eastern European countries merely swapped one tyranny for another that was just as bad.

The Presidential Council of Libya, which is the name of country's national unity government, calls for Russia's contribution to the struggle against terrorists in the African nation, Ahmed Maiteeq, the council's vice chairman, told Sputnik Monday.

The United Nations brokered the creation of a new national unity government in the war-torn country earlier this year, after the overthrow of Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi had plummeted it into chaos five years ago.

"We have historically strong ties, the majority of Libya's officers have studied in Russia. That's why we always call for Russia's role in the struggle against terrorism in Libya and the creation of strong army," Maiteeq said.

He added that the council welcomed any international help in country's struggle against terrorism.

Austrian Chancellor and ruling Social-Democratic party (SPO) leader Werner Faymann resigned on Monday from both posts, local media reported.

Faymann announced his resignation in an afternoon appearance broadcast live on the Austrian Federal Chancellery website.

"I am giving up my role as party chief and federal chancellor," Faymann said as he wrapped up a statement on the party's future and his 7.5-year term at the helm of the Austrian government, according to Austria's Heute daily.

"I am firmly convinced that this country will be able to cope with its future," Faymann said. "We are a country that I have been honored to serve. Goodbye."

Where would we be without Bin Laden? Or rather, where would the US Empire's rationale to justify wars of aggression be without Bin Laden?

Wherever he is right now, the lanky Saudi playboy cum jihadi has every right to feel proud of the role he was co-opted to play by the pioneers of the phony war on terror. After all, he and he alone 'did' 9/11. The scramble to 'get him' for 'doing 9/11' allowed for a US military take over of Afghanistan and, with a few blatant lies repeated ad nauseam by the Western press, Iraq was overrun too. That's a lot of return on the energy invested in turning the son of a Saudi millionaire into the bete noire of the freedom-loving peoples of the world.

Once Afghanistan and Iraq were 'done' however, Osama was retreated to his mysteriously inaccessible-to-all-but-Allah mountain cave, and 'al-Qaeda' took over for the next few years of securing freedom and democracy for the Middle East, which took the unusual form of destroying as much of it as possible.

By the time 2011 rolled around, US and NATO warmongers were getting a bit peckish again, and Syria and Libya were lined up for obliteration. But al-Qaeda had become a bit 'old' and no one had seen Osama for years, except in the form of grainy videos of some guy who looked a bit like him. So from the rubble of Iraq, "ISIS" was launched onto the geopolitical scene to replace 'al-qaeda' who the USA government was now actively funding and arming in Syria and Libya.

But to facilitate his definitive exit from the stage, bin Laden was to take one last hit for the Secret Team as the victim of the 'heroic Navy Seal raid' on his 'compound' in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a popular retirement and holiday retreat for Pakistani military and civilian intelligence. This was a bizarre choice of hiding place for the world's (then) most wanted man, especially since it was located just a few kms away from the Pakistani equivalent of West Point and the CIA had an office there. Then again, very little ever makes sense in the phony war on terror that is used as a cover for imperial wars of aggression.

Vladimir Putin said Russia is all for creating a non-aligned system of international security to counter global terror. The president, speaking at the V-Day parade in Moscow, called on all nations to learn the lessons of WWII. "Today our civilization has faced brutality and violence - terrorism has become a global threat," the Russian president said, addressing the crowds on Moscow's Red Square ahead of a parade dedicated to the 71st anniversary of victory in WWII. "We must defeat this evil, and Russia is open to join forces with all countries and is ready to work on the creation of a modern, non-aligned system of international security."

According to the Russian leader, the lessons of the World War II showed that "double standards" and "short-sighted indulgence to those who are nurturing new criminal plans" are unacceptable. "The lessons of history show that peace on our planet doesn't establish itself, that you need to be on high alert," he said. The Great Patriotic War (the term used in Russia and former Soviet republics to describe the conflict on the Eastern Front from 1941-45) will always remain "an outstanding, sacred heroic deed of our people, a call to live according to conscience, to keep the height of the truth and justice, to transfer these values from generation to generation," the president added.

As the Syrian army is closing in on ISIL militants in Aleppo, a victory that will undoubtedly restore Damascus' authority over Syria, Washington is leveling charges of 'war crimes' to politically discredit President al-Assad.

While the move is not exactly surprising, Western powers have been painfully predictable in their hypocrisy and political maneuvering against President Bashar al-Assad. And Washington's latest stunt shows just how far down the rabbit hole the US will go to eliminate the competition.

I say 'competition' because America's ambitions in Syria, and beyond the Middle East, have nothing to do with counter-terrorism. What Washington is pursuing in the Mid-East is an asymmetrical war of neo-colonialization. Within this dynamic, Terror has served both as a convenient alibi and a political rationale.

Both a political and militarily roadblock, President al-Assad has been a thorn in the West's military complex's thigh in more ways than one. A tower of resistance against Western imperialism, President al-Assad has managed not only to retain his people trust, he asserted himself as a keen military strategist. How many heads of state can claim to have raised a regional resistance movement against both Terror and imperialism, and live to tell the tale?

South Ossetia plans to hold a referendum on whether to become part of the Russian Federation before August, the republic's president, Leonid Tibilov, told TASS in an interview. "We are already discussing the dates," Tibilov said. "A specific date can't be named yet, but it will take place in the near future, we plan before August."

He explained that issues of changing a certain article of the South Ossetian constitution will be put to referendum, which will make it possible in the future to ask the Russian leadership to incorporate the republic. "Currently, proceeding from the situation in the world, we would not like to put at serious political risks our strategic partner in the person of Russia," Tibilov said. "So we reached the conclusion that we need to introduce changes to the current Constitution, its 10th article, which would enable the president to ask, with the approval of the republic's parliament, the top leadership of Russia to consider the possibility of making [South Ossetia] part of the country," he said.

Article 10 of South Ossetia's constitution says that the republic is entitled to enter into alliance with other states and hand the alliance's bodies part of its powers. "We plan to hold a referendum on supplementing that article with paragraphs stating that the Republic of South Ossetia is entitled to hand part of its powers to the Russian Federation," Tibilov said. "And then what I have already outlined - to give the president the opportunity to ask the Russian leadership to incorporate our republic...as a new constituent member of Russia."

Venezuelan politician German Mavare, leader of the opposition UNT party, died Friday after being shot in the head, an assassination that occurred in the western state of Lara, his organization said.

"The board of the UNT expresses its deepest sorrow for the slaying of colleague German Mavare. We demand justice and an end to violence," was the message posted on the Twitter account of the UNT party, headed by jailed ex-presidential candidate and former governor of Zulia state, Manuel Rosales.

The mayor of Iribarren in Lara state, Alfredo Ramos, said on his Twitter account minutes after the incident occurred before dawn Friday: "German Mavare, of the popular urbanization of Carucieña, a tireless fighter for social causes, has just been hit by a bullet in the head."