Today, Vladimir Putin was officially inaugurated as President of the Russian Federation for the fourth time. His inaugural speech contained little new. Russia had upped its defence budget, although against whom is unclear. As our video points out, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US and NATO countries…
Read MoreChina’s Long-Term Strategy vs The West’s Civil War and Short-Termism While the effectively bankrupt West is tearing itself apart and undermining its society, economy and science, China is not just getting on with it, but forging ahead. A good starting point in understanding what is happening now, with all the…
Read MoreReports and comments on Donald’s Trump’s renewed “tweet storms” after the New Year holidays are as woefully uninformed and emotional as in 2017. The President tweeted that North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the “Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.” Will someone from his…
Read MoreOn Wednesday 25 July 2017, President Trump’s announcement on Twitter that transgender people would be banned from serving in the US military predictably made the headlines. But just days before, Chinese warships entered the Baltic Sea for the first time – a profound development which was barely registered by the…
Read MoreIn 2009, the second edition of Mark Maslin’s book Global Warming. A Very Short Introduction appeared in the well-known series published by Oxford University Press. According to Maslin’s website, the book has sold over 40,000 copies – and yet it betrays a fundamental flaw in thinking, knowledge and understanding before…
Read MoreIn the run-up to the G20 meeting under Angela Merkel in Hamburg, U.S. President Donald Trump has come in for the usual round of massive criticism – much of it wholly unfounded. The ostensibly conservative writer George F. Will wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post that Trump has…
Read MoreThe last few weeks have seen efforts and rhetoric by NATO members to mollify the U.S. President following Donald Trump’s various remarks during last year’s campaign and following his election that NATO was obsolete, that the U.S. was paying too much for the alliance and that most other countries were…
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For decades, we have been taking our freedom for granted. But suddenly authoritarian populists are threatening liberal societies worldwide. Time to wake up. Die Zeit, 4 August 2016. *** The headline and subtitle come from Die Zeit, Germany’s most prestigious and “highbrow” weekly broadsheet. Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt was…
Read MoreIan Pryde takes part as Expert Speaker on Yukos Case Round Table at the Energy Arbitration Conference: Challenges and Opportunities for the Next Decade: Lessons from Recent Awards The conference is being organised by the Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy (CEPMLP), University of Dundee. Principal sponsors…
Read MoreBy Ian Pryde and Suzanne Stafford For the Letter to Investors published by the Diamond Age Russia Fund As 2014, an unusually eventful year, drew to a close, Russia was yet again in the global headlines for all the wrong reasons. The collapsing oil price dragged down the rouble, leading…
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