On Aug. 30, one day ahead of schedule, U.S. Central Command chief Gen. Frank McKenzie officially announced “the end of the military component of the evacuation,” and “the end of the nearly 20-year mission that began in Afghanistan shortly after Sept. 11, 2001.” The withdrawal also signifies, although the commander did not say so, the end of a failed system, […]
Read moreSince the beginning of the U.S. announcement to withdraw from Afghanistan, the British establishment has exploded in indignation against President Joe Biden’s decision, as we reported last week. Beyond the issue of Afghanistan as such, the hysteria in the United Kingdom is driven by the discredit ing of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “Global Britain” policy (cf. SAS 13/21). Announced last […]
Read moreKarel Vereycken, the vice-president of the French Solidarité et Progrès party, gave a three-minute live interview on Afghanistan last week to the “Asia Today” program on CGTN’s English-language channel. While supporting the delivery of humanitarian aid to the country, Vereycken urged the European Union to “break with the war party and NATO which fomented bloody wars in countries such as […]
Read moreAs central bankers were apparently unable to come up with a solution to the threatening financial collapse during their annual convention at Jackson Hole (Aug. 26–28), the International Monetary Fund was quietly deployed to bail out the debt bomb of developing countries. As Donald Kohn, the Federal Reserve’s former Vice Chair for Financial Supervision, told the gathering, the global debt […]
Read moreSince the perspective of having Green party candidate Annalena Baerbock become the next chancellor of Germany has collapsed as fast as it was pumped up (artificially) in the media a few months ago, the next best option for the Greens to enter the next government would be as a junior partner in a coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD) following […]
Read moreThe narrative that the COVID-19 virus originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and was deliberately covered up by the Chinese authorities, took a major hit with the release on Aug. 27 of the assessment by the United States Intelligence Community, which found no evidence of any origin other than natural ones. Last May, amid a fierce debate on policy […]
Read moreFormer Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Criminal Affairs (1997–2001) Pino Arlacchi has started a media offensive, bringing to the public key issues regarding the necessity of rapid economic development in Afghanistan, the implementation of a drug eradication program and working with the Taliban to accomplish this, and exposing the roots of international terrorism. Professor Arlacchi, after discussing […]
Read moreA guest column in France’s Le Figaro Aug. 27, headlined, “How the West Let Afghanistan Again Become the Land of Drugs,” presents a devastating rundown of how the opium poppy production was drastically reduced in Afghanistan over the years 1999-2001, under the Taliban rule, but was later increased again, during the occupation by U.S., British and NATO forces. The author […]
Read moreOn Aug. 21, the first batch of nuclear fuel was successfully loaded into unit 1 of the demonstration high-temperature gas-cooled reactor plant (HTR-PM) at Shidaowan, in China’s Shandong province (cf. SAS 44/20). The loading should be completed in 30 days, at which point the first reactor will reach criticality. It should be connected to the grid before the end of […]
Read moreScientists in China are about to turn on for the first time ever an experimental thorium-based molten salt reactor, with the first tests scheduled to begin as early as September. The new reactor, built at Wuwei on the edge of the Gobi Desert in northern China, is a small prototype designed to have an output of just 2 MW. According […]
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