World News
Russia occupies the global Heartland, what else need we aspire to?

The 10 most important things you need to know on Caspian Sea Region for Tuesday, June 23:
1The West is mean to Russia, but let’s be friends. “If we accept the so-called Heartland theory of that great 19th-century strategist Sir Halford Mackinder that, in a continuous struggle between land and sea powers, the ultimate victory will go to the land power, Russia is in the right place geographically and geopolitically – she occupies the global Heartland. What else need we aspire to? None of our interests is fundamentally incompatible with Europe’s common good, in 21st-century terms, when it comes to regional security. The other day, the British Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, spoke of “the fragility of the EU’s democratic legitimacy”. Indeed, you can see this in how Brussels bureaucracy acted in Ukraine, without public debate, real talks, honest assessment of the costs and consequences – trying to get its expansionism on the cheap” writes Alexander Yakovenko the Russian Ambassador to Britain for the Telegraph.
2President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan on completion of the talks for Kazakhstan to enter the WTO: “WTO membership opens new opportunities for Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan-based enterprises will enjoy an easier access to foreign markets, while consumers will enjoy a wider selection of goods and services. WTO member states are responsible for 90% of Kazakhstan&rsquos overall foreign trade figure. So the completion of the talks is an important milestone for us. With the membership, Kazakhstan is set to be more attractive for both foreign and domestic investors. There is an ample opportunity to launch new industries and create more jobs.” The negotiations had been going on for 19 years. Kazakhstan submitted its bid January 29, 1996.
3Norway’s FMC Kongsberg Subsea AS and Britain’s OneSubsea (UK) Ltd have won contracts for subsea infrastructure totalling $363 million for Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz gas field. A consortium led by BP said it awarded the construction contracts to help develop the Shah Deniz II project under the Caspian Sea, which offers Europe a chance to reduce reliance on Russian gas. Shah Deniz, Azerbaijan’s biggest gas field, is being developed by partners including Britain’s BP, Norway’s Statoil , Azeri state energy company SOCAR and the South Caucasus Pipeline Company.
4The government of Turkmenistan expects the selection of the consortium that will finance the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline project to be finalized by September 1, the Central Asian country’s ambassador to India told Sputnik Tuesday. TAPI project is a proposed 1,078-mile pipeline to transport Caspian Sea natural gas from Turkmenistan to India. Originally, the cost of the project was estimated at $7.5 billion, however, recent media reports have readjusted this calculation to $10 billion.
5Time for a Reset in Russian-Saudi Relations. “Russia should carry out at least two important foreign policy tasks. The first relates to the timely and properly forecasting of regime change in Syria which will sooner or later take place. If this happens contrary to Moscow’s efforts, the need for Russia will considerably subside, while the Russian Federation might lose its only outpost in the region and suffer major reputational damage as a state that has misplaced its bets and has been defeated after nonstop wrangling. If Moscow still views President Assad as the least of all evils, the relevant argumentation must be revised. As a matter of fact, current cooperation is reasonable with regards to the domestic audience but is hardly convincing elsewhere” writes Maxim Suchkov for RIAC.
6The leaders of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) are scheduled to convene in Tehran on November 23, IRNA news agency reported June 23. The GECF has 18 permanent and observing members and its permanent headquarters is in Doha, Qatar. Iran, Russia, Qatar, Algeria, Bolivia, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Nigeria, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Peru, the United Arabic Emirates and Oman are the permanent members. The Netherlands, Kazakhstan, Iraq and Norway are observing members. Iran has also invited the UAE to the summit. The GECF members have in possession 42 percent of the world’s gas production, 70 of its gas reserves, 40 percent of the world’s gas transfer through pipelines, and 65 percent of the world trade in LNG.
7The Iran Deal’s Fatal Flaw. “President Obama’s main pitch for the pending nuclear deal with Iran is that it would extend the “breakout time” necessary for Iran to produce enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. In a recent interview with NPR, he said that the current breakout time is “about two to three months by our intelligence estimates.” By contrast, he claimed, the pending deal would shrink Iran’s nuclear program, so that if Iran later “decided to break the deal, kick out all the inspectors, break the seals and go for a bomb, we’d have over a year to respond.” Unfortunately, that claim is false, as can be demonstrated with basic science and math. By my calculations, Iran’s actual breakout time under the deal would be approximately three months — not over a year. Thus, the deal would be unlikely to improve the world’s ability to react to a sudden effort by Iran to build a bomb.” writes Alan J. Kuperman for the New York Times.
8The Group of the European People’s Party held a meeting in Strasbourg on June 22, APA reports. The report on the functioning of democratic institutions in Azerbaijan developed by PACE co-rapporteurs Pedro Agramunt and Tadeusz Iwiński was discussed at the meeting. The main discussions were about Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region and other occupied territories. Member of the Azerbaijan Delegation to PACE, MP Elkhan Suleymanov has addressed the meeting. “I’m very disappointed with your attitude toward the Armenian occupation of Azerbaijani lands. With this attitude, you ignore the judgment dated 16 June 2015 of the European Court of Human Rights. The ECHR judgment proved the fact that the Armenian government exercises effective control over Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts,” said Suleymanov.
9Russia surpassed Saudi Arabia to become China’s top crude supplier as the fight for market share in the world’s second-largest oil consumer intensifies. China imported a record 3.92 million metric tons from its northern neighbor in May, according to data emailed by the Beijing-based General Administration of Customs on Tuesday. That’s equivalent to 927,000 barrels a day, a 20 percent increase from the previous month. Saudi sales slumped 42 percent from April to 3.05 million tons. China is becoming a key market for global oil exporters as surging output from shale fields from Texas to North Dakota allows the U.S., the biggest crude consumer, to rely less on overseas supplies. The Asian nation will account for more than 11 percent of world demand this year, the Paris-based International Energy Agency predicted this month. [Bloomberg]
10Nur Telecom starts internet roaming promotion in Kazakhstan. Kyrgyzstan mobile operator Nur Telecom, working under the O! brand, has introduced a mobile internet roaming promotion for using services in Kazakhstan. The service costs KGS 1 per MB rate and is now accessible under coverage of the Altel network. Altel is a subsidiary of national operator Kazakhtelecom.
World News
White House is following a narrow path of strict escalation toward superpower confrontation

Current U.S. foreign policy toward Russia is following a narrow path of strict escalation toward superpower confrontation. Russia is not going to lead a peace effort, nor will Ukraine, writes Matthew G. Andersson, a law and policy author, he studied with White House National Security Advisor W.W. Rostow at the Johnson School of Public Affairs.
The Biden administration has through its own incompetence and incapacity, also left leadership open to other countries. It is a strategy that creates economic and industrial disruption, perhaps even deliberate destruction, including of American government itself.
Why would this be?
I suggest that there are six reasons that directly serve the “Biden” administration by this foreign policy of war escalation:
The current administration’s domestic social policies are so radical that they cannot be implemented (or disclosed) within a normal spectrum of law and government. Its plans require extra-constitutional authority. War provides that authority.
A formalized war footing with Russia is presumed an essential path to oil and gas supply disruption, both physical (exploration, production, and refinement, including Arctic claims) and price stability disruption, which presumably will accelerate green energy switching behavior (problem: there is nothing to switch to). In reality, war merely enriches oil and gas, and further consolidates its central energy role.
Financial flows, commercial/central banking, and U.S. dollar stability would all be subject to war-time emergency manipulation. The U.S. is not able to absorb over $30 Trillion in national debt obligations under normal economic arrangements and methods.
War is also an ideal platform to fully effect political persecution, and the marginalization or complete removal of competitive political parties. The U.S. is already well on its way to a single-party consolidation. A civil or world war “seals the deal” just as it did in wartime Germany, the Soviet Union, North Korea, and eventually in Cuba and China. The Biden administration has numerous “blueprints” it can follow from other countries, as the administration is saturated with inexperienced ideologues who both naively admire “revolutionaries” and at the same time are intellectually incapable of imagining and carrying out actual economic development policy.
A fifth reason involves traditional Pentagon motivations in defense spending. Most of the public (and even political class) doesn’t acknowledge that the GWOT (Global War on Terror) is still fully operational, but more, its legal infrastructure, formed after 2001 through the Patriot Act, among other legislation and executive orders (hundreds that remain undisclosed or unexamined) can be activated at-will under emergency pretext. Moreover, the GWOT has been turned inward toward America’s own citizens. All that was required was a structured program of terror accusations against a manufactured target: Trump provided that, and now Russia does in a war context.
Finally, war unleashes massive disruptions in population, demographics and health risk. The current administration and its supporters, above all else, are ideologues devoted to population control because it is the “root cause” of global warming. And global warming is the fundamental organizing policy of the Left, even though it has nothing to do with climate, but rather with absolute social control.
An unsettling aspect of the Biden administration’s foreign policy is that, while it seeks war, it isn’t prepared to fight one (especially with a putative civilian commander qualified for 25th Amendment removal): it invites a confrontation with Russia (and to some extent with China) not to win, but in an unprecedented perversion of U.S. national security interests, to lose: it has declared America, Americanism, and a majority of Americans, as its enemy.
It will use Russia as a tool for its own domestic “transformation” which means the attempted dismantling of U.S. constitutional law.
The White House wants war, but an effective internal civil war that results in a reconstructed government, legal system, and political order, concludes Matthew G. Andersson.
World News
Polish militants join armored assaults into Russian Territory

Polish militants fighting in Ukraine have participated in recent assaults into Russia’s Belgorod Region, with the Polish Volunteer Corps releasing an announcement and video evidence of their roles in these operations. The militants were specifically involved in an assault of Belgorod’s Grayvoron District on May 22, which was one of the initial major incursions launched from Ukrainian territory, writes “Military Watch Magazine”.
Videos published by the Polish militants regarding their operations show them using Ukrainian T-72B tanks and Mi-8 helicopters as well as U.S.-supplied HMMWV armoured vehicles, which comes as part of a much wider trend towards Polish combatants in Ukraine being given extensive access to weapons supplies as they are often considered more reliable than many of the local conscript units.
Poland has been outstanding even within the Western world for its hard line position against Russia, with senior politicians calling for Russia’s “balkanization” into separate states, while the country’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki stated shortly after the outbreak of fighting in Ukraine that the only way forward for the West was through “fighting” against Moscow…
The country has accordingly been a leading supplier of armaments to Ukraine. In contrast to political leaders, however, Polish military leaders have repeatedly expressed serious doubts regarding Ukraine and its allies’ ability to prevail in the ongoing war against Russia.
Although forces from multiple Western countries have been deployed very widely in Ukraine, forming what the ‘New York Times’ referred to as a ‘stealth network’ of assets directed by Western intelligence agencies to fight Russia within the country, Poland has been the leading contributor of manpower among foreign countries involved in the conflict.
Former senior advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Defence U.S. Army Colonel (ret.) Douglas McGregor accordingly reported the presence of an estimated 20,000 contractors from Poland alone who have played key roles in the war effort including in frontline positions such as Bakhmut, which was for months a key centre of hostilities until its capture by Russian forces in late May.
World News
Gen. Li Shangfu: “When jackals or wolves come, we will face them with shotguns”

In his first international public address since becoming defense minister in March, General Li Shangfu told the Shangri-La Dialogue that China doesn’t have any problems with “innocent passage” but that “we must prevent attempts that try to use those freedom of navigation (patrols), that innocent passage, to exercise hegemony of navigation.”
A U.S. guided-missile destroyer and a Canadian frigate were intercepted by a Chinese warship as they transited the strait between the self-governed island of Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, and mainland China. The Chinese vessel overtook the American ship and then veered across its bow at a distance of 150 yards in an “unsafe manner,” according to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.
Additionally, the U.S. has said a Chinese J-16 fighter jet late last month “performed an unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” while intercepting a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea, flying directly in front of the plane’s nose.
Those and previous incidents have raised concerns of a possible accident occurring that could lead to an escalation between the two nations at a time when tensions are already high.
Li suggested the U.S. and its allies had created the danger, and should instead should focus on taking “good care of your own territorial airspace and waters.”
“The best way is for the countries, especially the naval vessels and fighter jets of countries, not to do closing actions around other countries’ territories,” he said through an interpreter. “What’s the point of going there? In China we always say, ‘Mind your own business.’”
He accused the U.S. and others of “meddling in China’s internal affairs” by providing Taiwan with defense support and training, and conducting high-level diplomatic visits.
“China stays committed to the path of peaceful development, but we will never hesitate to defend our legitimate rights and interests, let alone sacrifice the nation’s core interests,” he said.
“As the lyrics of a well-known Chinese song go: ‘When friends visit us, we welcome them with fine wine. When jackals or wolves come, we will face them with shotguns.’”
In his speech U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin broadly outlined the U.S. vision for a “free, open, and secure Indo-Pacific within a world of rules and rights.”
Li scoffed at the notion, saying “some country takes a selective approach to rules and international laws.” “It likes forcing its own rules on others,” he said. “Its so-called ‘rules-based international order’ never tells you what the rules are and who made these rules.”
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