Category: Geo-Politics

Journalist

USA vs Europe

U.S. Business as Usual

At What Costs Part II by Yanis Varoufakis edited: Anton Foek Amsterdam, September 26th 2021– Consider the ambition and desire to create a euro-dominated payments system that allows companies and states to trade independently of the US-dominated financial system. For such a system to work, it must be liquid, which means it must be able to…
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Aukus Agreement submarine

Humiliation To The Bone

Business as Usual At What Price Part I of II by Yanis Varoufakis edited by Anton Foek Amsterdam, September 26th 2021– Former U.S. president, Donald Trump, humiliated the European Union by annulling the Iran nuclear deal.  And now the current president, Joe Biden, has done so too, by announcing the new AUKUS agreement with Australia…
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Archi Mali timbuktu People climbing

The Timbuktu Storyteller

Centre of the world Part II by Anthony Ham Amsterdam, September 12th 2021—Ag Mohamed Ali initiated travellers into Timbuktu’s secrets. He took them to the private family libraries that still held manuscripts from Timbuktu’s golden age – biographies of the Prophet Muhammad on pages of gold leaf and scientific treatises from the great Islamic scholars of…
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Timbuktu Storytelling

Storytelling in and from Timbuktu

Part I by: Anthony Ham Amsterdam, September 12th 2021– As the sun neared the horizon, before the day’s final call to prayer, Azima Ag Mohamed Ali began his nightly walk through the sandy streets of Timbuktu in Mali. Along the way, first one, then a second friend fell into step alongside him. The greetings continued…
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Zanh Xielin Ping Pong

Ping Pong diplomacy the Road To Peace

Fifty Years ago Ammsterdam, Agust 4th 2021– It was 50 years ago but Zhang Xielin still remembers vividly how a shaggy-haired American table tennis player stepped onto the Chinese team’s bus, a chance encounter which would shape history. It was the world championships in Nagoya, Japan, and Glenn Cowan mistakenly hopped in with Zhang and…
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Mud Flow Indonesia

15 years on, mud continues to gush in East Java villages as residents reel from odour and heat

SIDOARJO, East Java: Indonesian Muanisah, who goes by one name, recalled the day when she held her 40-day-old baby in despair as he had trouble breathing. She was just about to have her breakfast on May 29, 2006 when she smelled a pungent odour, which she believed caused her baby to cry while gasping for air.  He…
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Agafia

Agafia. Hermit Surviving in Russian Wilderness for 70 years

Soon after this film aired, Agafia found a helper who has now been living with her for more than a year. Georgy Danilov, 53, is from Orenburg. He is an Old Believer. It was Agafia’s spiritual father who found and blessed her helper. Georgy has been doing the toughest chores for almost two years: he…
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Kalmykia History

Kalmykia between Time and Space

Where To This Time? Anton Foek Amsterdam, June 8 th 2021–Kalmykia is in Southern Russia. North of the Caucasus it is bordered by the Oblasts of Volgograd, Dagestan, Astrakhan, Rostov and Stavropol Krai. It has access to the Caspian Sea and the Volga River. The Republic has many natural resources and wildlife including the protected…
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Burundi Civil War

Burundi, the Almost Forgotten Civil War

Beatriz and Bernard Amsterdam, March 12, 2021 – First thing the Vice Minister of Health in Bujumbura, the then Capital of Burundi says when I am entering his impressive office and on a story invited by a Dutch NGO, to report on the construction of a water system in Muyinga, is: ‘ Be welcome and…
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Xinjiang Province Holidays

Visit Xinjiang Province Holidays

The Boys from Beijing Kindergartens, handicrafts markets, high-tech companies, hydroelectric dams … political indoctrination camps? These are some of the sights international journalists are whisked around when they take part in all-expenses paid tours to China. The motive of these invitations is, in the mantra of Chinese president Xi Jinping, to “tell a good China…
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