The China Foreign Exchange Trade System has announced that since December 29, China, Russia, Malaysia and New Zealand will start the usage of national currencies in mutual transactions. Beijing hopes to make the yuan an…
Category: Korea
From Energy War to Currency War: America’s Attack on the Russian Ruble A multi-spectrum war is being waged against Moscow by Washington. If there are any doubts about this, they should be put to rest. Geopolitics, science and technology, speculation, financial markets, information streams, large business conglomerates, intelligentsia, mass communication, social media, the internet, popular culture, news networks, international institutions, sanctions, audiences, public opinion, nationalism, different governmental bodies and agencies, identity politics, proxy wars, diplomacy, countervailing international alliances, major business agreements, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), human rights, prestige, military personnel, capital, and psychological tactics are all involved in this multi-spectrum war. On a daily basis this struggle can be seen playing out on the airwaves, in the war theaters in Ukraine and the Middle East, through the statements and accusations of diplomats, and in the economic sphere.
The China-Russia Double Helix What we are seeing is the mutual agreement to establish a full-spectrum geostrategic symbiosis between two civilizational realms as both Russia and China are what used to be called ’empires’ in the past but which today are what I call “civilizational realms”: multi-ethnic, multi-national and multi-religious ex-empires whose influence extends beyond their current national borders and whose international strategic “weight” makes far more akin to continents then to countries. Make no mistake, what we are seeing is something unprecedented in history and it is much more than just an “alliance”. After all, an alliance can easily be broken and country A can decide to switch from an alliance with country B to an alliance with country C.
This is a time of year for memories, and the ones that keep bothering me are from my childhood, which seemed at the time to be wholly happy and untroubled. Yet all the adults in…
Nuclear radiation resulting from the March 2011 Fukushima disaster –which threatens life on planet earth– is not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern, including the local level crime scene…
The United States used the flimsiest of evidence to justify a massive attack on the rudimentary Internet servicing the Democratic People’s Republic of (North) Korea. By launching what amounts to a pre-emptive cyber-attack on North…
“If the Russian side needs it, we shall offer all possible support we may have,” the Chinese foreign minister said. China believes Russia will be able to overcome the current economic problems, and is ready to offer whatever assistance if needed, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in an interview with Hong Kong’s Fenghuang television channel on Sunday. “We believe that Russia has opportunities and knowledge to overcome the current problems in the economy. The Chinese-Russian relations of strategic partnership are at a high level, we are always supporting and helping our friend. If the Russian side needs it, we shall offer all possible support we may have,” the foreign minister said.
A Japanese company with some offices in California was hacked. Several terrabytes of data were copied off its internal networks and some of it was put on file sharing sites. One of the items copied was a film produced in Canada that depicts as comedy the terror act of killing of a current head of state. The U.S. State Department applauded that movie scene. But there were tons of other data like social security numbers, payroll data, and internal emails stolen all of which that might have been the real target of the hackers. The tools to hack the company are well known and in the public domain. The company, Sony, had lousy internal network security and had been hacked before.
Today Sony canceled the premiere of “The Interview” and its entire Christmas-Day release of the movie because of fears that terrorists might attack theaters showing the film. The actions show just how much power the attackers behind the Sony hack have amassed in a short time. But who exactly are they? 1 The New York Times reported this evening that North Korea is “centrally involved” in the hack, citing unnamed U.S. intelligence officials. It’s unclear from the Times report what “centrally involved” means and whether the intelligence officials are saying the hackers were state-sponsored or actually agents of the state. The Times also notes that “It is not clear how the United States came to its determination that the North Korean regime played a central role in the Sony attacks.” The public evidence pointing at the Hermit Kingdom is flimsy.
Go West, Young Han As Washington “Pivots” to Asia, China Does the Eurasian Pirouette November 18, 2014: it’s a day that should live forever in history. On that day, in the city of Yiwu in…