Geography Archives: Russia

General Stephen Townsend, commander of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), and General Kenneth McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, are scheduled to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 22.

Two major cyberhacks—of ‘SolarWinds’ and ‘Microsoft Exchange Server’—have affected a whole range of computer systems worldwide. Both are supply chain hacks, meaning that they appeared to be routine software upgrades for particular components in these systems instead of inserted malicious codes.

In his landmark foreign policy speech delivered from the U.S. state department on February 4, President Joe Biden had proclaimed that “America is back. Diplomacy is back at the centre of our foreign policy.” That maxim was put to test last week. And it failed to make the grade.  

As tensions heat up on the Ukraine-Russia border, Vijay Prashad takes a look at the factors and interests behind what is happening.

The USA has the unique condition of being a flagrant violator of human rights within its own borders and in practically every region of the world. No other nation has such a systematic record. Its massive control of media and communications hides this truth from its own people.

The terrible beauty of “frozen conflicts” is that it takes hardly any effort to turn up the heat and re-escalate them into hot violence, but pressing the “pause” button later would need consensus, which is not so easy.

“The person attempting to travel two roads at once will get nowhere”. It’s a well-known Chinese maxim, especially in Myanmar (Burma), China’s backdoor to the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean, and the Indian Navy’s forward defence line.

‘…all countries have offensive and defensive capabilities and ‘stealing” data and knowledge from other countries are time-honoured tasks of spook agencies. It becomes an act of war only if it leads to physical damage to critical equipment or infrastructure.’

Meanwhile, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the “killer” jab a “very bad statement by the U.S. president,” ​that indicated “he doesn’t want to normalize relations.”

The initial coalition against Syria has collapsed, with Turkey frustrated over the U.S.’ sustained support for the Kurds and the Arabs pivoting back to Syria.

Brazil has suffered the world’s second-worst number of COVID-19 death rates, with Bolsonaro’s COVID-19 policy being described as “homicidally negligent”.

More importantly, the planned action reflects two very serious errors in judgement, which left unchecked, could increase in scope under the new Biden administration.

Sources told The New York Times that the first major actions are expected sometime in the next three weeks.

Both pro- and anti-war voices have stated that the U.S. is on the cusp of entering a second Cold War, and a new Gallup poll suggests that the groundwork for such a conflict has already been laid.

The 2014 coup is now called with masterly irony in Wikipedia “The Revolution of Dignity.” That is a Big Lie even Josef Goebbels would have envied.

The reasons behind the protest actions that began in Russia in January 2021, the social forces involved, and the possible consequences.

On the subject of oligarchy and the treasure storehouses which oligarchs build for themselves, Alexei Navalny reveals that he’s following a U.S. and NATO script: this takes no account of how President Vladimir Putin rules Russia, or the choice most Russians believe is the preferred alternative to Putin–that’s rule by a combination of officers and civilians acceptable to the military.

A regime change project in Russia was launched on Sunday with the return of political activist Alexei Navalny to Moscow. It was a highly symbolic event—except that Navalny was traveling by an airplane from Germany and not in a sealed train.

Recent reporting reinforces the false impression that the United States is threatened by Chinese and Russian expansionism.

Russia on Tuesday offered to freeze its current arsenal, and proposed an extension of the treaty by one year. The treaty signed in 2010 capped the number of nuclear warheads by the two countries and its deployment.