Russia under attack by 56 nations in spy war – security chief

“In effect, a huge system of more than 50 nations – 56 to be exact – is using the entire experience of their special services in conducting sabotage and terrorist attacks against critical infrastructure to target our nation,” the former defense minister said."

https://www.rt.com/russia/635311-shoigu-western-sabotage-operations/

#Russia, #Sabotage, #WesternNations, #TheWest, #TerroristAttacks.

Het is niet in Westerse belangen om Israël een haar in de weg te leggen. Alana Lentin:

'Thus, the almost total impunity granted Israel as it has exacted death and destruction on the people of Palestine and sown murderous chaos around the region since its founding can also be understood in terms of the function it serves for the West. Israel’s recent June 12 attack on Iran exposes this in no uncertain terms. Germany, erroneously thought by a majority of observers to be driven in its rabid support for the Zionist colony by guilt for its genocide of the Jews of Europe, made its desires clear. Commending the strikes, German Chancellor Merz said, “This is the dirty work Israel is doing for all of us.”'

https://mondoweiss.net/2025/07/against-jewish-safety/#comments

@[email protected] @palestine

#Israel #antisemitism #fascism #racism #CedricRobinson #AntiRacism #TheWest #capitalism #RacialRegime

Bit of an off-the-wall connection, but the point of #Scifi IS to explore ideas through a lens of fiction...

I've been watching #StarTrek #Enterprise lately, with episodes like "Dear Doctor", "#Cogenitor", "North Star", and "Observer Effect" going into the realm of "why we don't interfere with other cultures, no matter what".

I've also been watching the #IranWar, with absurd projections of impossibly wishful scenarios of an instant transition to pro-US democracy with the low-cost application of a few hundred bombs, contrasted with the reality of an #Iran now galvanized against "#TheWest" by the completely unprovoked and sudden attack by the #US and #Israel alone against the will of all allies.

I don't think even Crazy Captain Archer would approve, and it seems to me like most of us should've learned this lesson the hard way by 2004, to the point where scifi writers were putting it on UPN.

#USpol #war #ENT

Reclaiming the West

There are moments when it feels as though the twin cults of Marx and Islam, each with its own absolutist creed, each hostile to the foundations of Western civilisation, are poised to overwhelm the cultural, moral, and institutional inheritance that made the modern world possible.

What follows is not a master‑plan or manifesto, but a set of practical strategies for halting the erosion and beginning the long work of recovery.

Understand the Tactics of the Cults

Both Marxist and Islamist movements rely on a simple but devastating principle: manipulate the reaction, then weaponise it.

As the activist manual Beautiful Trouble puts it:

The real action is your target’s reaction.

We’ve seen this pattern repeatedly:

• provoke outrage,
• frame the response as oppression,
• leverage the manufactured crisis for more power.

Recognising this tactic is the first step in neutralising it.

Reclaim the Storytelling Space

Andrew Klavan is right: one of the most powerful tools we have is storytelling.

And the opportunity has never been greater. The cultural Left has hollowed out its own creative well, leaving us with the Woke Hero, the Girl Boss, and the Mary Sue — archetypes so thin and predictable that audiences have simply walked away. Hollywood’s box‑office collapse is not a mystery; it’s a verdict.

This vacuum is a gift. If we write compelling stories — stories with moral weight, human complexity, and genuine heroism — people will come. They are starving for it.

Rebuild Popular Culture from the Ground Up

The battlefield is not just film. It’s everything:

• video games,
• comics,
• novels,
• tabletop RPGs,
• online worlds,
• indie animation,
• podcasts.

The cults have been doing a catastrophically poor job of late. Their ideological constraints make good storytelling almost impossible. The bar is low. We can step over it simply by being competent, imaginative, and honest.

This is how cultures are reclaimed: one story, one world, one character at a time.

Remind People What the West Actually Is

We must remind people, especially the young, that Western civilisation exists, that it is theirs, and that it has made their lives immeasurably better.

It is not a vague abstraction. It is:

• the rule of law,
• individual rights,
• scientific inquiry,
• free speech,
• religious liberty,
• the dignity of the person,
• the separation of church and state,
• the idea that rulers are accountable.

To surrender this inheritance to the ideological barbarians of Marxism and Islam would be an act of civilisational self‑harm.

Build Parallel Institutions

The long march through the institutions has been underway for decades. Universities, in particular, may already be lost. But nothing prevents us from building alternatives.

We can create:

• independent universities that reject Critical Theory,
• classical academies,
• online institutions with rigorous standards,
• apprenticeship‑based professional pathways.

Similarly, homeschooling, charter schools, and partnership schools offer ways to bypass the machinery of critical pedagogy entirely.

The point is not to reform captured institutions; it is to outgrow them.

Expose the Public Sector

In the public sector, sunlight is often the most effective disinfectant.

• Use Official Information Requests.
• Document incompetence.
• Expose ideological capture.
• Publicise the absurdities.

Bureaucracies fear humiliation more than anything else. They can ignore criticism, but they cannot ignore ridicule.

Reclaim the Culture, Not Just the Politics

Politics is downstream from culture, and culture is downstream from imagination.

If we want to reclaim the West, we must:

• tell better stories,
• build better institutions,
• model better values,
• create better art,
• cultivate better citizens.

This is not a short project. It is generational work. But every civilisation that has ever recovered itself has done so by remembering what it is, why it matters, and what it refuses to become.

Shada Islam

'Racial logic is woven into our laws as well as our political, economic and social systems. It shapes access to jobs, housing, education and justice. It informs policing practices, border controls and foreign policy choices. Racialised biases are being stamped into our AI tools'

#euPol #racism #policy #europe #theWest

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/27/orban-europe-eu-racism-migration-border

Multilateralism for middle powers

" Multilateralism is shorthand for the much-invoked “rules-based international order”; multipolarity is the world of competing spheres of interest, what Stubb calls “an oligopoly of power”, where the strong do what they will and the weak do what they must.

We are not simply in a transition; we are in a fight for a future world order. And the path to a healthy outcome necessarily runs through international institutions, from the UN to settings far beyond it, where we must rethink membership and power for global cooperation to survive.The world is being reshaped by the “structural” forces of demography, climate and technology,

Part of the problem, Stubb argues, is that “the US is not a modern society by European or Asian standards”. This helps to explain the growing influence of a radical form of evangelical Christianity within the Trump administration. But it also accounts for the absence of adequate healthcare, education and housing that plagues the US, in particular, and neoliberal economies like Australia’s more generally.

Without strong multilateral systems, all interstate deals become transactional. A multipolar world runs on self-interest. A multilateral world makes the common interest a self-interest. " >>
https://theconversation.com/finlands-president-alexander-stubb-has-some-ideas-to-save-the-international-order-and-ourselves-280153
#Multilateralism #MiddlePowers #Australia #TheWest #InternationalOrder #SelfInterest #oligopoly

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

https://activitypub.writeworks.uk/2026/03/tuesday-march-31-2026/

Beyond Pragmatism: Dmitry Trenin’s Sceptical Turn On Trump 2.0

Beyond Pragmatism: Dmitry Trenin’s Sceptical Turn On Trump 2.0

By Andrew Korybko

What can be described as Russia’s pro-BRI policymaking faction has long lobbied for a harder line against the US, but their ‘friendly rivals’ in the balancing one of which Putin is a part disagreed, though Trenin’s ‘defection’ from the balancing faction to the pro-BRI one suggests that the tide might be turning.

Dmitry Trenin is one of Russia’s top experts and used to be considered a Westernizer among many prior to having a change of heart as a result of everything that happened since the special operation began. He’s an interesting figure to follow and that’s likely why RT published the translated version of an article that he recently wrote sharing a very sceptical assessment of Trump 2.0. The present piece will draw attention to the highlights before analysing the importance of what he wrote.

Trenin thinks that “the American political establishment – Congress, the media, and much of the foreign policy bureaucracy – was deeply uncomfortable with a peace formula that could hardly be presented domestically as a victory over Russia”, ergo why the “spirit of Anchorage” fizzled out. Trump “appears to have aligned himself more closely with powerful political and financial groups in Washington, including neoconservative circles and the Israeli lobby”, thus “sidelining” his “original MAGA allies”.

The end result is that “Instead of presiding over the slow decline of the liberal-globalist order, Trump is attempting to build a new version of American hegemony, one based far more openly on force.” Correspondingly, Trenin believes that “Washington’s objective today is not necessarily to construct a stable new world order. Rather, it may be to generate global instability and then dominate within that chaos.” This “inevitably” makes the US Russia’s “geopolitical, and potentially military, adversary.”

With this assessment in mind, Trenin advises that “Russia shouldn’t forget the duplicity Trump has already shown toward Iran in 2025 and again in 2026. Notably, the same American envoys involved in negotiations with Russia over Ukraine were also conducting talks with Iran…Dialogue with him is possible, but trust is not advisable. Russia must also remember that US military doctrine places great emphasis on neutralizing the leadership of an adversary at the beginning of any conflict.”

Just as importantly, “Economic cooperation with the United States is theoretically possible. In practice, it is highly unlikely. Most American sanctions against Russia are embedded in US legislation and cannot be lifted by presidential decision alone. For most Russians alive today, those sanctions will remain a long-term reality. Russia must therefore orient its economic strategy toward domestic development and cooperation with non-Western partners.”

Trenin then concludes that “Russia’s task is clear: deepen cooperation with partners facing pressure from the United States. Their resistance could slow, and perhaps eventually halt, the current American counteroffensive. Because one thing is certain: the United States will not stop unless it is stopped.” While he earlier reaffirmed that it’s Putin’s decision how to proceed, the importance of Trenin’s article is that it shows how radically even previously Western-friendly thought leaders have soured on the West.

What can be described as Russia’s pro-BRI policymaking faction has long lobbied for a harder line against the US, but their ‘friendly rivals’ in the balancing one of which Putin is a part disagreed, though Trenin’s ‘defection’ from the balancing faction to the pro-BRI one suggests that the tide might be turning. It’s therefore possible that Putin might finally be persuaded to abandon his pragmatic approach towards Trump 2.0 if the US soon doesn’t give him what he wants in Ukraine and continues encircling Russia.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Voice of East.

The New Energy Realpolitik: Lavrov’s Warning About Trump 2.0’s Quest For Global Dominance

The New Energy Realpolitik: Lavrov’s Warning About Trump 2.0’s Quest For Global Dominance

By Andrew Korybko

Russia’s threat perception of the US is growing as a result of stalled peace talks, increasing pressure to enter into even more concessions than were already agreed to during the Anchorage Summit, and the global systemic consequences of the Third Gulf War that the US initiated.

Last month, “Lavrov Soberly Acknowledged The Challenges Posed By Trump 2.0”, and now he’s warning about its plans for global dominance in a recent interview. In his words, “[The US] is prepared to defend [its] wellbeing by whatever it takes – coups, abductions, or even the killings of leaders of the countries that possess natural resources that are of interest to the United States. Our US colleagues do not hide the fact that oil is what they are after in Venezuela and Iran.”

He observed that “They operate in line with their doctrine of dominance in global energy markets”, which alludes to what was written here at the start of the Third Gulf War about how one of its goals is to disrupt China’s import of Iranian oil (13.4% of last year’s total by sea) or control it by proxy. In parallel, Russia is being squeezed out of the European energy market, first in Germany through Nord Stream’s destruction and now Hungary, Slovakia, and even Serbia, to turn the continent into a captive US market.

As such, “We are being forced out of all global energy markets. Eventually, we will be left with our own territory. The Americans will then come to us and tell us they want to be partners. However, if we are prepared to carry out mutually beneficial projects on our territory and provide Americans with whatever may interest them, while taking our own interests into account, they, too, must take our interests into consideration.” This is an allusion to the ongoing talks over a resource-centric strategic partnership.

Lavrov is sceptical that any deal with the US is possible right now, however, after revealing to his interlocutor that “Our US colleagues are telling us: let’s settle the situation in Ukraine – we were ready to do so back during the summit in Alaska, but they are not so sure about it now – suggesting that we make more concessions, and vast economic opportunities will open up to us after that.” This suggests that Trump 2.0 was emboldened since the Anchorage Summit into ramping up pressure on Russia.

A week before his meeting with Putin in Alaska, he hosted the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders at the White House, where they signed a peace deal and jointly announced the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP). This megaproject will expand Western – including NATO – influence across Russia’s entire southern periphery in the South Caucasus, Caspian Sea, and Central Asia. It’s therefore possible that Trump now wants to weaponize TRIPP to coerce more concessions from Russia.

Russia is in a stronger position vis-à-vis the US than before the Third Gulf War, however, since it’s poised to be one of the only oases of security and stability in Afro-Eurasia if the global energy crisis sparks a polycrisis of starvation, unemployment, and unrest there. If the US doesn’t get Ukraine to give Russia what it wants, then Russia might cut off energy exports to the EU before the bloc’s 2027 deadline, which the US can’t replace in full. That would deal a deathblow to one of the US’ largest trade partners.

Regardless of whatever comes from the Russian-US talks and no matter the outcome of the Ukrainian Conflict, Lavrov is assessed that Trump 2.0 is “taking us back to a world where nothing existed – no international law, no Versailles system, no Yalta system – nothing. A world where might makes right.” In such a world, “the weak get beaten. That sums it all up. We must be strong. And Russia is a very strong country.” It’s therefore expected to fare a lot better than most in Trump 2.0’s envisaged world order.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Voice of East.