Podcasts about Siberia

Topics:   SPECIAL PODCAST: Brant and Sherri recap their first Bible study livestream on YouTube. Also, Sherri asks for prayer for her family.

When I first laid eyes on a book with the title, SELF-HELP FROM THE MIDDLE AGES: What the Seven Deadly Sins Can Teach Us About Living, I interested myself. Even more when I found out the author is an expert in medieval times. Peter Jones is a writer and academic specializing in the history of the human heart. Over his career he has taught at New York University, the University of Toronto, University College London, Complutense University of Madrid, and School of Advanced Studies in Tyumen, Siberia, where he helped put History at the centre of the liberal arts curriculum. But this book is about something that started in the 1300s when I've now learned that the ultimate level of high education was theology with a focus to “create self-aware citizens” and the most prized roles had job descriptions that involved analyzing the triggers of temptation and desire, giving lectures on fear and doubt, and healing the anxieties of people in crisis. Sounds like what we need, now. Thus why I did this show. I thoroughly enjoyed and benefited from this conversation with Pete and learned how I can have a better relationship with these 7 Deadly Sins, which the originator described as, “generic thoughts,” or in essence, human impulses, which include: 1) Pride - vanity, 2) Envy, 3) Anger, 4) Sloth, 5) Avarice - Greed, 6) Gluttony, 7) Lust. Which you are about to find out are seen as aspects of being a human, and the point is not whether we engage with them. We do. It's what our relationship is with each. Or rather, how our relationship is with each. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the China Compass podcast on the Fight Laugh Feast Network! You can follow me on Twitter, @chinaadventures, where I post daily reminders to pray for China (PrayforChina.us). You can also email me any questions or comments @ bfwesten at gmail dot com… And if you want to learn more about our missions projects or get one of my books, visit PrayGiveGo.us. Here's the link to the interview I did with NSA Professor, Mr. Pinkall, the week before this podcast went live (August 17, 2024): https://pubtv.flfnetwork.com/tabs/audio/podcasts/30293/episodes/19 We start out the actual podcast by discussing Tim Walz' ties to China, as seen in two different articles... Seven Troubling Tim Walz Connections to Communist China https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/08/08/exclusive-seamus-bruner-seven-troubling-tim-walz-connections-to-communist-china/ Tim Walz’s Long Relationship With China Defies Easy Stereotypes https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/11/us/tim-walz-china.html Next we talk about our primary sponsor, Pray for China, where we encourage Christians from every US state to pray for every Chinese province. Today in “honor” of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, we are looking at the Chinese province of Heilongjiang (Black Dragon River), which is paired up with the state of Minnesota for prayer in our Pray for China intercession scheme. Heilongjiang translates literally as Black Dragon River, and is located in far northern China just south of the Black Dragon River, which separates it from Siberia to the north. Black Dragon River is known for its pine forests, rivers, lakes, and frigid winter weather (sound familiar?). It makes a natural fit for Minnesota. The capital of Black Dragon River is Harbin, but that same trip I also visited the towns of Suihua, Hegang, Yichun, Jiamusi, Shuangyashan, Jixi, Qiezihe, Qitaihe, Mishan, Hulin, and more. I tell a few stories in the time that remains… 4am Conversation with a Homeless Man https://open.substack.com/pub/chinacall/p/4am-conversation-with-a-homeless Double Duck Mountain Orphanage Thinking in Chinese for the 1st Time More fun town names: Eggplant River, Western Chicken, Tiger Forest One final story. It was in one of these cities where I ate dog for the first time. And can you guess the one and only place I've eaten camel (burgers)? Thank you for listening! Subscribe to my blog/substack @ ChinaCall.Substack.com and find everything else at PrayGiveGo.us!

Notas Macabrosas - Atrapan a posible asesino serial - Hombre desaparece mientras pescaba en un cenote - Veterano ruso sobrevive a un rayo que le alcanzó cuando fue a pelear contra oso en Siberia   - Cayó Rosamel Fierro - Los daños provocados por Neil the Seal - Davis Flow coquetea con Emma Coronel y se arrepiente - Hombre le corta la mano a su vecino tras pelear por estacionamiento - Ponen a la venta supuesto “manuscrito” de Cañitas - La policía de Ecuador se sorprende al encontrar el rostro de Erling Haaland estampado en ladrillos de cocaína - Militar dispara accidentalmente durante jornada de desarme en Michoacán y hiere a cuatro personas - Christian Castro se gradúa de la prepa - Supuesto nahual en Cocoyoc - Tragedia en el río: hallan 15 pasajeros muertos y más de 20 desaparecidos tras hundirse barco en aguas infestadas de cocodrilos Encuentros Cercanos (con Poncho Herrera) - Poncho Herrera nos habla de su nueva película “La Captura”, y el dilema moral de entregar a un criminal o aceptar mucho dinero para dejarlo ir. También puedes escucharnos en Youtube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music o tu app de podcasts favorita. Apóyanos en Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/leyendaspodcast​ Apóyanos en YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/c/leyendaslegendarias/join Síguenos:https://instagram.com/leyendaspodcast​https://twitter.com/leyendaspodcast​https://facebook.com/leyendaspodcast​ #Podcast​ #LeyendasLegendarias​ #HistoriasDelMasAca Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the past months, the world has watched as the people of New York City elected Zohran Mamdani to office as mayor of the largest city in the United States, with over 8 million residents and international cultural and economic centers such as the financial sector and performing arts realm. Youthful, charismatic, and bold, he won the election by over 50% in a 3-way race. Mayor Mamdani started making changes from his first day in office. His political philosophy, however, is the same old package the world has seen fail in socialist countries around the world, including Cuba and Venezuela in our own hemisphere. In the name of fairness, Mamdani planned to pay for the universal daycare, the subsidized housing, the price-controlled groceries, the public transportation through various taxes and other fees, especially on the very rich, the celebrities and billionaires who call New York City home, or own property there. Despite being targeted as the cash cows that would pay for the party, the wealthy did not just pack up and leave on the day that Mayor Mamdani was sworn in. They appeared to be holding their breath, waiting to see if they could afford to stay. Then Taylor Swift posted two short social media items, neither one long and neither one declaring she was leaving New York City, but containing an air of wistfulness and a hint that leaving might be an option. Within 48 hours, there was a surge unlike any seen in living memory in new listings of high-end residences for sale. Values of the listings totaled $2.3 billion. Should even a portion of those owners who are listing depart from the city, the financial repercussions for New York City and for New York State will be enormous. Meanwhile, on the heels of the Mamdani victory, new political hopefuls who are declared far-left socialists, many under the banner of Democrat Socialists of America(DSA) are running in primaries around the US. The DSA party and the DSA National Election Commission are hip, excited, and trying hard to be fun. But all the charisma, the self-declared desire to be kind, to be fair, and all the taxes in the world will not create a more productive, liberty-oriented, vibrant environment able to nurture ingenuity, growth, and opportunity for all. The Democratic Socialists of America have totalitarian goals that they share with their sibling revolutionaries, Communists, Socialists, and the Woke Left Under all the hype and the slogans of the Democratic Socialists of America and other far-left groups is a desire to tear down the America we grew up in. They want another American revolution. Like basic Communist tenants the far left wants to abolish private property (or tax it to death), put religion in a closet or abolish it altogether, make everyone “equal” – not in opportunity, but in outcome, and embrace the policies promoted by globalist entities such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization which have lots of goals and targets aiming at fairness and equality on an international scale and at the expense especially of the United States. We have tried in the West to be so kind, so tolerant, so darn nice in the face of destructive policies and hate-filled rhetoric and actions that we have allowed the destruction of our own culture. So, we invited a genuine survivor of the totalitarian communist USSR who was born in Moscow and immigrated with his family as a young child to Canada. Our guest brought his memories of long food lines, the fear that sits like a stone in a family of dissidents, and his awareness that those who make trouble can be shipped off to Siberia. We met with Jamie Glazov for an episode of The Breggin Hour. It was one of those rare conversations that feels less like an interview and more like speaking with family. Jamie's presence, his clarity, and the depth of his lifelong study of totalitarianism left us both strengthened and sobered. The perspectives Jamie shares are fresh, straight from the news headlines. Jamie is the Russian-born Canadian author, historian, and managing editor of FrontPage Magazine. His updated and expanded book, United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny, Terror, and Hamas, is not merely a must-read. It is a work of truth-telling that explains phenomena many of us have watched with growing alarm but struggled to fully name. The Left's Romance with Murderous Regimes and Movements In United in Hate, Jamie traces a continuous thread through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: the Western Left's repeated romance with the most murderous regimes and movements of their time. The first half of the book examines the “political pilgrims” and fellow travelers who traveled to Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, Castro's Cuba, and the killing fields of Cambodia and Vietnam, returning to praise the very systems that produced mass graves. The second half shows how that same psychological and ideological pattern transferred, almost seamlessly, to embracing radical Islam and groups such as Hamas. After the collapse of Soviet communism, the Left did not abandon its hunger for a totalitarian alternative to the West. It found a new object of adoration. October 7, 2023, became the catalyst for the revised edition of United in Hate. Jamie told us that the moment he saw the celebrations and justifications erupting across Western campuses, streets, and media, he knew the book had to be updated and expanded. The ecstasy some on the Left displayed at the rape, mutilation, and murder of Jews was not an aberration. It was the logical continuation of a long romance with tyranny and terror. A Profound Alienation from the West Jamie does not stop at documentation. He examines the inner life of what he calls “the Believer.” The hard Left, he argues, is driven by a profound alienation from the West, a self-hatred that seeks external enemies to destroy, and a quasi-religious need for a purifying utopia that requires blood sacrifice. Communism once supplied that vision. When it failed, radical Islam offered a new version: a death cult that openly rejects the Judeo-Christian foundations of the civilization the Left already despises. In our conversation, he described two layers of the problem. There are the malicious actors who knowingly work to dismantle Western civilization. And there are the many more who simply cannot emotionally bear the truth. To acknowledge what radical Islam teaches and practices would shatter the comforting narrative that “everything will be okay if we just show more tolerance.” So, they choose willful blindness. They sacrifice Jewish and Christian victims on the altar of their own psychological comfort. Peter, who has spent decades studying the psychology of power and vulnerability, was particularly struck by how accurately Jamie captures the leftist mindset of alienation turning into passionate identification with those who attack the West. A Spiritual Battle Jamie spoke openly about the spiritual dimension of what we face. He reminded us that we are in a battle that cannot be reduced to politics alone. The hatred directed at Jews and at the Christian West has a demonic quality. The same forces that once celebrated Stalin and Mao now celebrate those who butchered families on October 7 and who openly seek the destruction of Israel, Christianity, and, ultimately, Western civilization. Peter and I felt an immediate kinship with Jamie. He is the son of Soviet dissidents. His heart has always been with the persecuted. That same impulse—the refusal to look away from suffering—has driven our own work for decades. When Jamie said he felt he was among family while speaking with us, we felt the same. Listen and Read I urge you to listen to the full interview. Jamie's passion, his refusal to soft-pedal, and his moral clarity come through powerfully. Then get the book. United in Hate will equip you to understand not only the present moment but the deeper currents that have brought us here. We are living in a time when large portions of our cultural and institutional elite have chosen sides against the civilization that produced them. Jamie Glazov has given us a map of that betrayal. The least we can do is study it carefully and refuse to look away. Order United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny, Terror, and Hamas by Jamie Glazov.

Last time we spoke about the beginning of the Pacific War. In late 1941, the Second Battle of Changsha ended with Chinese forces claiming victory despite suffering nearly 100,000 casualties against roughly 1,670 Japanese losses. Chiang Kai-shek's government launched an aggressive propaganda campaign, flooding international press with fabricated triumph narratives to sustain national morale. Behind closed doors, Chiang was furious at his generals' tactical failures, executing commanders and dismantling units. Meanwhile, geopolitical forces threatened China's survival. Japan's 1939 defeat at Nomonhan crushed hopes for a Soviet alliance against Tokyo. Germany's pact with the Soviet Union left China isolated, while Western powers remained reluctant to commit meaningful support. Britain offered little; the US provided only modest loans. By 1941, facing potential collapse, Chiang desperately searched for allies while Wang Jingwei's Japanese-backed rival government beckoned as an alternative. China's exhausted people endured horror—including a 1941 bombing massacre in Chongqing that killed over 400 trapped civilians. Then Japan unleashed a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.   #215 An Implosion in the East Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.   In the early morning of December 7, 1941, the US Pacific Fleet was anchored at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Two waves of Japanese bomber aircraft, launched from six aircraft carriers, attacked the vessels and their sleeping crews, destroying the battleship Arizona outright and damaging seventeen others, as well as most of the military aircraft parked nearby. Some 2,400 Americans died, and another 1,100 were wounded. Within a day Japanese invasion forces had attacked Siam, Malaya, and the Philippines. Chiang Kai-shek heard the news at one o'clock in the morning and immediately dictated a letter of support to President Roosevelt, pledging commitment to a new "common battle." The news reached Zhou Fohai in Shanghai as well. On December 8 across the international date line from Hawaii he had heard the sounds of firing as the Japanese took over the rest of the city, and then received reports that Japan had declared war on the Western powers. "I heard they'd bombed Honolulu, Manila, Singapore, and Hong Kong. From now on, the Pacific becomes a killing ground."   When Japanese carrier planes descended on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, they were executing far more than a tactical strike. They were unleashing the culmination of a strategic vision that had shaped Japanese military planning since the 1920s: the Nanshin-ron, or "Southern Advance" doctrine.    The Nanshin-ron represented a critical strategic choice that emerged from internal Japanese debates during the 1920s and 1930s. Japan faced an inescapable vulnerability: it was an island nation with virtually no natural resources of its own. The nation's population had doubled since the Meiji Restoration, growing to over 70 million by 1941. An industrial economy of tremendous sophistication, capable of producing world-class warships, aircraft, and military equipment, depended entirely on imported raw materials. Oil, rubber, tin, iron ore, bauxite, copper, and manganese all had to be acquired through foreign trade or conquest. This resource dependency was not a luxury problem; it was an existential one. A nation that could not feed itself or fuel its economy was a nation vulnerable to strangulation by enemies who controlled the resources it needed. Japanese strategic thinkers divided into two camps on how to resolve this vulnerability. The Hokushin-ron advocates, primarily within the Army, pushed for expansion northward into Siberia and Mongolia, seeking to conquer Soviet territory and resources. The Soviet Union possessed vast tracts of land, mineral wealth, timber, and agricultural output. From a purely materialist perspective, the Northern Advance made geographic sense—it was contiguous with Manchuria, which Japan had already secured in 1931. Yet by the late 1930s, the Hokushin-ron strategy had suffered a catastrophic blow. In 1938 and 1939, Japanese and Soviet forces clashed at Khalkhin Gol in Mongolia in what the Japanese called the Nomonhan Incident. The battles revealed a terrifying truth: the Soviet Red Army, under General Georgy Zhukov, was far more formidable than Japanese military planners had anticipated. Soviet armor, air power, and coordinated tactics annihilated Japanese forces. Japan suffered over 60,000 casualties while inflicting perhaps 10,000 on the Soviets. The defeat was concealed from the Japanese public, but it was unmistakable to military planners. A direct clash with Soviet power could end catastrophically. The Northern Advance, it became clear, would almost certainly provoke war with a nation capable of destroying the Japanese Army. This strategic defeat tilted the balance decisively toward the Nanshin-ron. If Japan could not safely expand northward, it must expand southward, toward Southeast Asia, the Dutch East Indies, Indochina, and the western Pacific. The appeal of the Nanshin-ron was immediately apparent to the Navy, which had always been more oriented toward maritime commerce and expansion across the ocean. The territories to the south were not militarily formidable. The colonial powers, Britain, the Netherlands, France, were either already defeated in 1940 or distracted by their own desperate struggles leaving Britain fighting alone against Germany. The United States, though potentially a formidable adversary, was not yet at war, and there was a chance, however slender, that a decisive blow against American naval power might convince America to negotiate rather than fight. But beyond strategic opportunity, the Nanshin-ron offered something that the Hokushin-ron did not: it offered resources of staggering abundance. The Dutch East Indies possessed oil reserves that could dwarf Japan's consumption for years. Malaya produced the world's rubber. Thailand offered agricultural bounty and geographic position. Burma's timber and agricultural products could feed Japan's growing empire. The Philippines possessed harbors, airfields, and economic output. These were not marginal additions to Japan's economy—they were transformative. Together, they would convert Japan from a resource-hungry island nation into the master of an imperial domain encompassing hundreds of millions of people and containing most of the strategic materials necessary for sustained industrial warfare. In the last episode I explained the western sanctions and embargoes that drained Japan's military of the resources they required to continue the China War. By 1941, Japan faced a civilization crisis. Japan imported roughly 90 percent of its petroleum, and the bulk of that came from the Dutch East Indies and the United States. Suddenly, the American supply was cut off entirely. Reserves would last perhaps 18 months if Japan's military and industrial consumption continued at existing rates. After that, the military machine would sputter and die. The industrial economy would collapse. Even civilian life would become impossible to sustain. Japan was facing not merely economic inconvenience but literal strangulation by the Western powers.   Yet it would be a mistake to reduce Japanese motivation to just materialism. Japanese military leaders wrapped their conquests in an ideological framework, one that many of them genuinely believed, or wanted to believe, served a higher historical purpose. The concept of the Daitoa Kyoeiken, the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere," posited a new regional order in which Japan would play the leading role in liberating Asian peoples from Western colonial domination and creating an Asian-centered political and economic system. This ideology drew on genuine anti-colonial sentiment. For a century, Western powers had dominated Asia, treating Asian peoples and nations as subordinate, colonized territories existing to serve Western economic interests. Japan, which had modernized and Westernized enough to avoid colonization, saw itself as the natural leader of an Asian renaissance—a civilizing force that would restore Asian dignity and independence even as it established Japanese hegemony. Of course, this was propagandistic. Japanese conquest represented a substitution of one imperial master for another, and often a harsher and more brutal one at that. But for understanding Japanese decision-making, the ideology mattered profoundly. It provided Japanese leaders with a moral narrative for conquest. It allowed them to understand themselves as liberators rather than mere conquerors. It provided a rationale for extracting resources from occupied territories and for mobilizing subject populations to support the Japanese war effort. And it resonated with anti-Western sentiment throughout Asia, making Japanese occupation seem, in some quarters, preferable to continued Western colonial rule. The slogan Hakko ichiu—"eight corners under one roof", captured this ideological vision: a unified Asia and eventually world under Japanese guidance. Whether Japanese leaders truly believed this vision or cynically deployed it as propaganda, it shaped how they understood their actions and justified them to their subjects. Now I know this is a podcast dedicated to the century of humiliation, ie: China's experience. But I thought it was necessary just to have one episode explain what Dan Carlin titled "a supernova in the east" and I have titled an implosion in the east. I won't go into depth into the campaigns as some of them have a lot of Chinese involvement and we will be covering them in depth, but rather I will explain the rationale for Japan's numerous invasions following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.   Japan's assault on Malaya began within hours of the Pearl Harbor attack, indeed, Japanese troops were already landing on the Kota Bharu beachhead on the Malaysian peninsula before dawn on December 8, 1941 local time. Malaya was one of the world's largest rubber producers, and Singapore, at the tip of the peninsula, was the linchpin of British naval power in the Far East.The Japanese interest in Malaya was straightforward but crucial: rubber. The Japanese military consumed vast quantities of rubber for tires, gaskets, hoses, and countless other applications. American and Dutch rubber supplies were now cut off by embargo. Malaya's rubber plantations represented perhaps the world's richest reservoir of this strategic material. Beyond rubber, Malaya and the surrounding region were major tin producers—essential for alloys and manufacturing. For Japan to conduct prolonged warfare, Malaya was not a luxury target; it was a necessity. Singapore represented something different: a symbol of Western power in Asia and a strategic chokepoint. As the major British naval base in the region, Singapore served as the anchor of British imperial authority across the South China Sea. By seizing Singapore, Japan would not only capture crucial resources and port facilities but would also deliver a psychological blow to the entire edifice of Western dominance in Asia. The fortress city that the British considered nearly impregnable fell within seventy days, a stunning demonstration of Japanese military capability and the vulnerability of overextended Western empires. If Malaya was critical for rubber, the Dutch East Indies was essential for oil. The region, comprising present-day Indonesia, was the world's third-largest oil producer and had reserves that could sustain Japanese military operations for years. This was the jewel of the resource-conquest strategy. Japanese planners had long eyed the East Indies, but direct conquest had seemed risky while Britain and America remained neutral or opposed. With both now at war, the window of opportunity had opened. Japan needed the oil so desperately that when the Dutch East Indies Petroleum Company initially agreed to some Japanese oil purchases before the war, Tokyo was already planning its takeover. The conquest of the Dutch East Indies would provide not just oil but also tin, nickel, bauxite, and other materials essential to an industrial war machine. The islands would also provide air and naval bases from which Japan could defend its new empire and potentially threaten Australia. The Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies, which began in late December 1941 and accelerated through January and February 1942, was methodical and comprehensive. Various island groups were targeted systematically: Java, Borneo, Celebes, and the Moluccas. Dutch military forces, though brave, were overwhelmed. By March 1942, Japan had secured the entire archipelago,a stunning logistical and military achievement that delivered vast resources into Japanese hands. Thailand presented a fundamentally different case from Japan's other targets. Rather than conquest, Japan pursued alliance with military strongman Plaek Phibunsongkhram, who had seized power in a 1938 coup as a nationalist ideologue determined to reassert Thai sovereignty and recover territory lost to French colonialism in the nineteenth century. Thailand was the last independent state in mainland Southeast Asia, hemmed in by British-controlled Burma and Malaya to the west, and French Indochina to the east. For a century, Thailand had survived by playing European imperial powers against each other. But by the late 1930s, this strategy was becoming obsolete. Europe was distracted by Hitler's Germany. Colonial powers were weakening. Japanese power was visibly ascending. Phibunsongkhram recognized both danger and opportunity. He could resist Japan and invite invasion, or he could ally with Japan and profit from rising Asian power. Japanese diplomats approached Thailand with sophistication: they offered military alliance and support for Thai territorial expansion at French expense. This addressed Thailand's deepest national wound, the humiliation of nineteenth-century territorial losses to France. The Franco-Thai War of 1940-1941 became transformative. With Japan providing military support, advisors, tanks, aircraft, Thai forces defeated the French for the first time in history. By May 1941, Thailand had recovered 54,000 square kilometers of Cambodian territory and portions of Laos. For Phibunsongkhram, this was extraordinary: he had achieved what Thai leaders could not in a century, reclaiming territory from a Western imperial power. Domestically, his position was dramatically strengthened. The parallel to China's century of humiliation—the foundation of your podcast is striking: Thailand too was reversing colonial diminishment through association with rising Asian power. The Thai-Japanese relationship was unique. Unlike the Philippines, Malaya, or the Dutch East Indies, Thailand would retain nominal independence. Phibunsongkhram remained in power. Japanese occupation was light. Thai forces maintained their own command structure. Most importantly, Thailand's territorial gains from the Franco-Thai War were recognized and secured. Japan valued Thai cooperation more than conquest. Burma, controlled by the British, was the next target in Japan's southwestward advance. Japanese planners had multiple motivations for invading Burma. First, it was strategically positioned on India's eastern frontier, and Japan harbored ambitions of eventually striking toward India and linking up with Germany in the Middle East or at least destabilizing the British position in South Asia. Second, Burma was a significant producer of timber and agricultural products. Third, and perhaps most importantly, the invasion of Burma was meant to cut the Burma Road, the crucial supply line that allowed American aid to reach Nationalist China. The invasion of Burma began in late 1941 and accelerated through early 1942.  The invasion of the Philippines, which began on December 10, 1941, just days after Pearl Harbor, served multiple strategic purposes. Like the assault on Pearl Harbor itself, it was meant to neutralize American military power in the region, in this case, the American garrison under General Douglas MacArthur and the American colonial administration. But the Philippines were also valuable in their own right. The islands sat directly in the path of what Japan envisioned as its defensive perimeter. By controlling the Philippines, Japan would make it extraordinarily difficult for American forces to project power westward into Southeast Asia. The territory would provide naval and air bases critical to defending Japan's new empire. Additionally, the Philippines possessed some agricultural and industrial resources valuable to the war effort, and their conquest delivered a psychological victory, defeating American forces and ending American colonial rule in Asia, which appealed to anti-Western sentiment that Japan tried to cultivate. Beyond Southeast Asia and the Philippines, Japan rapidly invaded Guam and Wake island to extend Japan's defensive perimeter further into the Pacific and eliminate American air and naval bases that could threaten Japanese operations. Guam, seized on December 10, 1941, fell within two days, the American garrison was small and the island's strategic value lay primarily in denying the United States a forward staging ground for any counteroffensive. Wake Island, attacked the same day and finally captured on December 23 after a brief but heroic American defense, served similar purposes: cutting off American reconnaissance and interdicting potential supply lines to the Philippines.  Now I believe that's enough of the implosion in the east, let's get back to the situation in China. After Chiang Kai-shek sent his letter of support to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, pledging Chinese commitment to what he termed a new "common battle." he did something most revealing about his mood towards the global war. He played "Ave Maria" on his gramophone, celebrating with an almost spiritual gratitude the implications of what had just transpired in the American Pacific. This moment crystallized the profound difference Pearl Harbor would mean to different members of the emerging Allied coalition. For the United States, the attack was pure shock, a violation of the sanctity of American soil and the complacency of American isolationism. For Britain, it was like the pricking of a large, painful blister—painful but perhaps not entirely unexpected given Japan's regional ambitions. But for China, the relief that surged through the government and the consciousness of the Chinese people surpassed even Britain's response. For four long years, China had fought Japan almost alone, watching as Western nations remained neutral or limited their commitment to rhetorical support and modest material assistance. Now, suddenly, the trajectory of the entire conflict had shifted with breathtaking speed. Chiang's emotional state at this moment could scarcely be contained, and those close to him understood that beneath his carefully maintained Confucian composure burned an intoxicating sensation of vindication. These Western powers who had been so impatient with Chinese strategy, who had mocked the retreats of the Nationalist Army and spoken scornfully of Japanese capabilities, were now themselves in headlong retreat from those very islanders. In Hong Kong, Singapore, and Manila, British and American forces would be fighting desperately for their lives against the Japanese military that China had been contending with for years. Chiang could not have failed to perceive the irony: the Japanese had conquered vast stretches of China through relentless campaigns, yet Westerners had dismissed Chinese resistance as inadequate. Now the Japanese were proving that they posed a formidable challenge to Western military power as well. There was a bitter satisfaction in this vindication, even as Chiang understood that the strategic implications of American entry far outweighed any emotional satisfaction. What was pragmatic and strategically clear to Chiang, however, was far more important than any emotional satisfaction. The United States was now at war, and it was on China's side. This represented the transformation for which Chiang had labored for years, bringing the full weight of American industrial capacity and military might to bear against the Japanese enemy. The diplomatic foundations for this alliance had already been laid in the months preceding Pearl Harbor. Beginning in the spring of 1941, the United States had begun to commit significant resources to supporting China. In April 1941, following the conclusion of the Soviet-Japanese neutrality agreement, which had devastated Chinese morale by suggesting that Japan might attack the Soviet Union rather than move southward, the Roosevelt administration had determined to provide $45 million worth of militarily useful commodities to China as an immediate gesture of support. Then, on May 6, 1941, President Roosevelt had made a more formal commitment by announcing that the munitions provisions of the Lend-Lease Act applied to China, declaring a phrase that captured the strategic logic of American assistance: "defending China is the key to defending America." This declaration represented a significant shift in American policy, elevating China from a regional concern to a central element of American grand strategy in Asia. Subsequently, in July 1941, Roosevelt had sent Owen Lattimore to China to serve as political adviser to the Chinese government, a position that signaled deepening American engagement with Chinese affairs. In August, the administration appointed John Magruder as military attaché and head of the American Military Mission to China (AMMISCA), with the primary responsibility of overseeing the delivery of Lend-Lease material to the Chinese armed forces. On the diplomatic front, Chiang moved with remarkable alacrity. He had already severed relations with Germany on July 2, 1941, the very day after Hitler had formally recognized the Wang Jingwei puppet government in an attempt to appease Japan and encourage it to finally implement the Southern Advance. Now, on December 8, 1941, just one day after the Pearl Harbor attack, Chiang took the decisive step of formally declaring war against the Axis powers, Germany, Italy, and Japan. This declaration transformed China's position from a beleaguered nation fighting a war of survival into a formal member of the Allied coalition. Chiang had seized the opportunity that Pearl Harbor presented to ally China with a genuinely strong power against Japan, a gambit that fundamentally altered the diplomatic weight and international legitimacy of both the Chinese government and the Chinese cause. From a strategic perspective, the Japanese had committed what Chiang and others immediately recognized as a catastrophic blunder. On the operational level, Pearl Harbor was indeed a devastating tactical success, the American Pacific Fleet was crippled, and Japanese forces now enjoyed temporary naval superiority throughout much of the Pacific and Southeast Asia. Yet strategically, Pearl Harbor represented a failure of epic proportions, a miscalculation rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of the intangibles of warfare: what motivated the Chinese people and what motivated the Americans. The Chinese had understood, through four years of brutal conflict, that warfare was about more than territorial conquest and resource acquisition. It was about will, about endurance, about the capacity to absorb punishment and continue fighting. The Japanese had learned this lesson imperfectly in China, where despite overwhelming military advantages they had been unable to force a decisive conclusion or compel Chinese surrender. The Americans would teach the Japanese this lesson even more emphatically. The attack on American sailors in Hawaii instantly galvanized the American population to prosecute an unlimited war, with Tokyo itself as the ultimate destination of American counterattack. While Americans would remember the "date that will live in infamy" primarily because of the assault on Pearl Harbor itself, the strategic consequence was that Japanese actions in Hawaii had introduced numerous new adversaries into the Pacific conflict: not only the United States, but also Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands. These additions transformed what had been, from the Japanese perspective, a regional conflict with manageable parameters into a global war that Japan could not possibly win through any conceivable means. What made this particularly disastrous for Japan was the context in which the new theater had been opened. Japan was already deeply mired in a quagmire in China—a "malignant quagmire," as one observer would later characterize it, that had consumed vast resources, inflicted enormous casualties, and failed to produce decisive victory. In military strategy, it is sometimes wise to open a new theater in order to attack an enemy from an additional and unexpected direction, thereby dispersing their forces and creating new challenges for them to manage. But opening a new theater that introduces an entirely new, powerful adversary, and doing so when one is already overextended in an existing theater is a prescription for strategic catastrophe. This was precisely what Japan had done at Pearl Harbor. Chiang Kai-shek understood the magnitude of Japan's miscalculation with crystalline clarity. He understood that whatever the military complexities that lay ahead, whatever the challenges of coordinating with Western allies, and whatever the limitations of Western military assistance to China might be, the fundamental equation had changed. The United States would ultimately defeat Japan. The Chinese did not need to defeat Japan by themselves; they merely needed to survive long enough for American industrial and military capacity to grind the Japanese military into defeat. In the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor, Chinese and American officials moved swiftly to formalize the alliance and establish the mechanisms of wartime cooperation. Roosevelt asked Chiang Kai-shek to serve as commander in chief of the Allied forces in the China theater, a designation that recognized China's central role in the Pacific War and elevated Chiang's international standing to something he had long sought: a position as an equal partner in the Allied coalition, a seat at the "top table of global decision-making" alongside Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. To support this expanded role and to ensure effective coordination of the military effort, Roosevelt dispatched Lieutenant General Joseph W. Stilwell to China. Stilwell was not chosen randomly; he brought fifteen years of experience in China, a deep familiarity with the country, its military, and its complexities that few American officers possessed. Stilwell was appointed to serve simultaneously as the U.S. government's military representative in China, as chief of staff of the China Theater, and as commander in chief of the American forces in the China-Burma-India (CBI) theater. This appointment established the framework for joint Chinese-American military cooperation and represented an American commitment to the Asian theater that, while never receiving the resources devoted to the European theater, nonetheless signified recognition of China's strategic importance. Trust me, going forward we will be having a lot of time dedicated to the hilarious bromance / bro hatred of Vinegar Joe and Peanut.  Yet the formation of an alliance and the establishment of command structures was easier than the practical implementation of military cooperation. The fundamental challenge that would plague Chinese-American relations throughout the war emerged almost immediately: the problem of delivering military assistance to China. Before Pearl Harbor, the United States and China had reached agreement on three major points regarding military assistance. First, the United States would provide training and technical support to assist China in establishing a modern air force. Second, the United States would provide training and equipment for a ground army consisting of thirty divisions. Third, the United States would assist China in constructing railways and highways from Yunnan to Burma, along with the provision of rolling stock and vehicles to support these new transportation routes. These were ambitious plans, reflecting the extent of Chinese need and American willingness to support the Chinese war effort. However, the outbreak of the Pacific War threw American plans into disarray. The fundamental strategic doctrine guiding American policy was the "Europe first" strategy, which meant that the European theater and the defeat of Nazi Germany received priority over the Pacific theater. Additionally, China's geography made it extraordinarily difficult to supply. China could only be reached through supply lines of extraordinary length and complexity, either through the port of Rangoon in Burma and then overland via the treacherous Yunnan-Burma Road, or through the port of Hong Kong, which immediately fell into Japanese hands after Pearl Harbor. The first Sino-American loan agreement had specified that the United States would deliver commodities worth $45 million to China in 1941. However, shipping shortages meant that only $26 million worth of commodities actually left the United States. These commodities were shipped to the transit port of Rangoon, where a massive traffic jam developed as supplies accumulated faster than they could be distributed onward to China. Along the Yunnan-Burma Road, that "much-contested life line" as it came to be known, conditions were chaotic. The road had always been a source of trouble: it was long, extraordinarily difficult to keep in repair, fantastically dangerous to travel, and too narrow to permit much volume of traffic at any one time. Due to mismanagement and pilfering, the commodities that were shipped out of Burma suffered heavy losses in transit, and only one-third of them eventually arrived in Chongqing. Yet the United States had already established one valuable asset in China that could be deployed relatively quickly: an air force nucleus. Just before Pearl Harbor, a group of American aviators had been formally organized in Chongqing who worked on volunteer status for China under the command of Colonel Claire Chennault, an American aviation officer who served as instructor at the Chinese Air Force Cadet School. Some of these men had been flying in China since the Kuomintang first began purchasing American aircraft, having come to demonstrate the aircraft and remaining to pilot and teach. Others had hurried to China after being released from their volunteer service in Spain, where they had gained combat experience during the Spanish Civil War. It was a familiar joke that pilots from both sides of the Spanish conflict were likely to meet and work side by side in China, but political convictions proved immaterial to these professional aviators, they got on well enough with each other, mercenaries of the twentieth century united by their expertise and their willingness to fight. When American traffic on the Burma Road swelled in volume and became chaotic, with cargo lost to pilfering and trucks breaking down from mishandling, the air freight service into Chongqing became increasingly vital to maintaining Chinese military capabilities. The backbone of this organization was American, and it had been in operation for months before the Japanese attack. Halfway down the Burma Road, over the border in Burma, was a plane factory backed by American and Chinese capital, providing some degree of repair and maintenance capacity for the aircraft operating out of China. Recognizing the strategic value of these experienced aviators and the need to formalize and expand their operations, American and Chinese officials moved quickly to incorporate this volunteer group, formally known as the American Volunteer Group or "Flying Tigers," into the U.S. Army Air Force. This transformation of volunteer aviators into official American military personnel represented a commitment to providing air support to Chinese operations, recognizing that air power could compensate to some degree for Chinese numerical disadvantages in ground combat. In Chongqing, it was clear that among the United Nations fighting Japan, America was the only one taking China seriously, the only one prepared to invest significant resources in Chinese military capabilities and the Chinese war effort. Yet Pearl Harbor brought consequences that extended far beyond the strategic and diplomatic spheres. For Western civilians living in China,missionaries, teachers, doctors, businessmen, and journalists, the attack represented a catastrophic change in their status and their fate. Until December 8, 1941, Westerners residing in China had maintained a curious protected status as foreign neutrals, even in areas nominally controlled by the Japanese. This status had provided them with a measure of distance from, and protection against, the grinding reality of the war that had devastated Chinese populations. For a century, Americans had been part of an imperial presence in China, sometimes benevolent, sometimes violent, but always ultimately under Western control. That world came to an abrupt end on December 8, 1941. All across eastern China, Americans and Britons were rounded up and interned. The International Settlement of Shanghai—that remarkable oasis of neutrality that had persisted in the midst of a war-torn city—was now reunified under Japanese control. Thousands of foreigners with Allied nationality were sent to holding camps scattered throughout occupied China. Some, like the eleven-year-old British boy Jim Ballard, would remain imprisoned for the remainder of the war, enduring hunger, cold, and disease in camps like Longhua, which housed approximately 2,000 detainees. Forty years later, as the novelist J. G. Ballard, he would memorialized this experience in his semi-autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun. For missionaries like Velva Brown, the evacuation process was degrading and final. The missionary staff were permitted to pack no more than three suitcases with their belongings. As they prepared to leave, Japanese and Taiwanese "sightseeing" parties arrived to decide which houses they might want to occupy. The journey home aboard crowded Japanese ships offered no concessions to status or dignity; ambassadors, consuls, merchants, and missionaries alike were given "bed-sized strips of Chinese matting which we spread side by side on the iron floor of the hold," as Brown recorded. The humiliation was compounded by the finality of it all. For many, their decades-long presence in China was ending not in orderly retreat but in hasty evacuation, leaving behind "servants, many of whom had been with us for fifteen or twenty years." Despite these immediate human tragedies, the strategic transformation that Pearl Harbor wrought for China was undeniable. Chiang Kai-shek now embarked on an entirely new sort of life, heavily involved with the leaders and generals of the Western powers. He held diplomatic discussions with the leaders of the United Nations and military planning sessions with Western generals. In these unfamiliar circumstances, he did his best to live up to the Confucian ideal of the gentleman, seldom permitting the mask to slip—though the pressure of these new responsibilities and the intoxicating combination of vindication and anxiety would occasionally prove too much even for his considerable self-control. Within weeks of Pearl Harbor, Chiang demonstrated the value he could bring to the new alliance. He visited India and spoke with the leaders of the Indian independence struggle as an ally and friend, as a fellow non-European speaking to others seeking to escape from colonialism and imperial domination. He joined the Allies in their first joint campaign, not in China but in the jungles of neighboring Burma, committing Chinese forces to operations outside China's borders in support of the broader Allied military strategy. Yet the price that Chiang would pay for China's belated entry into the global alliance against the Axis powers would prove to be a heavy one. Chiang desperately needed his new American and British partners, but accepting this alliance would unleash forces within Chinese society that would threaten the very basis of his political control. The complexities of this bargain would become most visible in the four-year struggle between Chiang and General Joseph Warren Stilwell, the American officer who would become simultaneously his chief of staff and the administrator of American military assistance to China. This relationship, shaped by mutual suspicion, different strategic visions, and incompatible political agendas, would define Chinese-American military cooperation during the Pacific War and would have profound implications extending far beyond the battlefields of Asia. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Pearl Harbor's shock reverberated through Asia. Japan's assault on Hawaii, combined with invasions of Burma, the Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island, inadvertently transformed regional conflict into global war. Chiang Kai-shek, vindicated after four years of isolation fighting Japan, embraced American alliance with profound relief. The U.S. committed military aid, appointed General Stilwell as chief of staff, and recognized China as a co-belligerent. For Chiang, this partnership brought diplomatic status but also internal tensions that would define the Pacific War's final chapter.

Day 1,631.Today, a train in Siberia, said to be carrying ballistic missiles from North Korea, goes up in flames. Then, not to be outdone, a Russian oil terminal near St Petersburg announces it has “completely” shut down following a recent Ukrainian attack. The Starlink spat between Poland and “big man” Elon Musk seems to be cooling and Putin has placed the son of US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr on Russia's wanted list for fighting in Ukraine. Plus later, we speak to two women brought together by an NGO that helps Ukrainians improve their English – as one of their sons fights on the front line in Ukraine.Contributors: Dominic Nicholls (Host on Ukraine: The Latest). @DomNicholls on X.Francis Dearnley (Host on Ukraine: The Latest). @FrancisDearnley on X.Adelie Pojzman-Pontay (Host on Ukraine: The Latest). @Adeliepjz on X.With thanks to ENGin volunteers Jane and Anastasia.Producer: Rachel PorterSenior Producer: Lilian FawcettVideo Producer: Sophie O'SullivanSocial Producer: Tom SteedStudio Director: Meghan SearleExecutive Editor: Francis DearnleyCreated by David KnowlesNOW IN FULL VIDEO WITH MAPS & BATTLEFIELD FOOTAGE:Every episode is now available on our YouTube channel shortly after the release of the audio version. You will find it here: https://www.youtube.com/@UkraineTheLatest CONTENT REFERENCED:Learn more about the ENGin program, which helps Ukrainians of all ages improve their English-language conversation via volunteers worldwide: https://www.enginprogram.org/ If you're interested in sponsoring Dom's upcoming defence event, email our colleagues at events@telegraph.co.ukKremlin hired assassin to murder American on Polish soil, says Tusk (The Telegraph)https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/08/13/kremlin-hired-assassin-to-execute-american-on-polish-soil/ Blast at Rotterdam port energy facility kills one person (Reuters)https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/rotterdam-port-explosion-causes-one-death-police-say-2026-08-13/ Putin flexes Moscow's muscles in the Far East (The Telegraph)https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/08/14/putin-flexes-moscows-muscles-in-the-far-east/ US armoured brigade pummelled by Ukraine's drones in wargame (The Telegraph)https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2026/08/13/us-armoured-brigade-pummelled-ukraine-drones-wargame/ Pictured: ‘Russian escort' accused of assassinating Ukrainian defector (The Telegraph)https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/08/13/woman-assassinates-ukrainian-submarine-commander-who-defect/ Ukraine offers Russia truce in the Black Sea as food supply fears mount (Reuters)https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-offers-russia-truce-black-sea-food-supply-fears-mount-source-says-2026-08-13/ Russian Strikes on Dozens of Grain Ships Threaten Global Food Supplies (New York Times)https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/13/world/europe/russia-ukraine-ports-odesa-cargo-ship-attacks.html ‘We have nowhere to return to': How Russia is seizing homes in occupied Ukraine (BBC Verify)https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-f153d864-33b6-4ffa-823a-bf085f8ec5e1 Ukraine Receives Bodies of 261 Fallen Soldiers From Russia (Kyiv Post)https://www.kyivpost.com/post/82292 EMAIL US:Contact the team on ukrainepod@telegraph.co.uk. We continue to read every message, and seek to respond to as many as possible.HIGHLIGHTS:Ukraine 'destroys North Korean missiles 6000km inside Russia'Huge explosion rips through Italian munitions factory Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Charley Boorman sits down with Jase to tell the real story behind Long Way Round, the trip with Ewan McGregor that changed the motorcycle adventure genre forever. From how the idea came together over dinner in London, to the Dakar Rally training that got him ready, to riding the Road of Bones across Siberia to Magadan, Charley walks through the trip that shaped his life. They get into what four months on the road with Ewan actually taught him, how the Sky One deal came together, the Long Way Down and Long Way Up follow-ups, riding Australia end to end, 53 miles of hard enduro at the Isle of Man with David Knight, and what makes Jett Lawrence and Marc Marquez operate on a different level than the rest of us. Whether you've watched every Long Way series or you're finding Charley for the first time, this is the interview that goes deeper than the shows ever could. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS_mpK0lzxg Listen on Spotify/Apple → https://pod.link/1335551721

Hollywood legend Rob Schneider (SNL, Deuce Bigalow, Grown Ups) joins Andrew Gold in the desert. in this deep dive, Rob reveals why he's choosing to stay in "Siberia" rather than conform to the new authoritarianism of the film world. From secret phone calls with A-list stars who are too afraid to speak out, to his famous (and surprisingly touching) confrontation with Robert De Niro, Rob pulls back the curtain on the "blacklisting" happening behind the scenes. We explore the "politics of envy," why critics have always had it out for him, and the emotional toll of being "canceled" by his own family. This isn't just about movies—it's a conversation about the collapse of Western institutions, the rise of "suicidal empathy," and why Rob believes that "silly is king" in a world that has lost its sense of humor. Whether you're a fan of classic SNL comedy or you're here for the "heretical" truth-telling, this interview is a must-watch. 00:00 The Hollywood Blacklist: Who's Really in Control? 04:40 The Politics of Envy: James Cameron & The Titanic Backlash 08:45 The Secret Discussion with Jerry Seinfeld at SNL 50 11:15 Why the Studio System is Collapsing in Real Time 13:30 Was Senator McCarthy Right? The New Blacklist 16:25 The Usurpation of Movements: From Rights to Grifts 19:10 Why Hollywood Executives Fear for Their Beach Houses 24:50 Selective Outrage: The Hamas Massacre & Celebrity Silences 28:40 The "French Model" vs. The American Typecast 31:55 Why English Actors Are More "Honest" About the Money 34:55 Richard Dreyfuss and the Reality of Winning an Oscar 39:00 The Status Trap: Why Hollywood Stars Are So Fragile 42:30 Adam Sandler's Loyalty in a Career of "Siberia" 46:20 The Saskatchewan Benefit: Jokes That Got Me Banned 51:25 Secret Calls: The A-Listers Who Agree with Me in Private 53:20 The Daughter I Lost: Forgiveness & The Family Divide 58:30 Finding Faith: How Christianity Changed the Game 01:05:50 Why Dave Chappelle is the Modern Prophet 01:11:30 John Cleese, Silly Icons, and the Future of Comedy #RobSchneider #Hollywood #CancelCulture #AndrewGold #Heretics #AdamSandler #JerrySeinfeld #FreeSpeech #Comedy #HollywoodUnfiltered #Interview Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vào lúc lệnh cấm nhập khẩu khí ga hóa lỏng LNG của Nga sắp có hiệu lực, châu Âu trong vòng sáu tháng đầu năm 2026, đã mua gần như toàn bộ lượng LNG do nhà máy Yamal tại Siberia sản xuất. Sự việc cho thấy thế khó khăn của Liên Hiệp Châu Âu (EU) để thoát khỏi sự phụ thuộc vào khí đốt Nga, đồng thời phản ảnh nguy cơ làm suy yếu hiệu quả của các biện pháp trừng phạt khi khối này liên tục cho phép các ngoại lệ. Bất chấp các biện pháp trừng phạt, châu Âu chưa thể nào khóa được vòi khí đốt Nga. Trong một báo cáo công bố hồi đầu tháng 7/2026, Cơ quan Hợp tác Điều tiết Năng lượng EU (ACER) của Liên Hiệp Châu Âu ghi nhận : « Từ tháng 01-05/2026, nhập khẩu khí đốt qua đường ống tăng 7% so với cùng kỳ năm 2025, trong khi nhập khẩu khí ga hóa lỏng LNG tăng 11% ». Các dữ liệu từ công ty phân tích Kpler, được nhật báo tài chính Anh Financial Times dẫn lại, xác nhận xu hướng trên, theo đó, trong vòng sáu tháng đầu năm, Liên Âu mua gần như toàn bộ sản lượng của dự án Yamal LNG tại Siberia, do công ty tư nhân Novatek của Nga kiểm soát, đạt mức 9,89 triệu tấn, tăng 18% so với cùng kỳ năm 2025. Các nước Pháp, Bỉ và Tây Ban Nha là những nhà nhập khẩu khí đốt Nga nhiều nhất, để rồi từ đó tái xuất một phần sang các nước khác trong khu vực. Cũng theo Kpler, châu Âu dường như đã trả hơn sáu tỷ euro cho Nga. Xung đột Trung Đông : Khí đốt Nga được lợi ? Theo ACER, việc Liên Âu tăng nhập khẩu khí tự nhiên hóa lỏng (LNG) từ Nga là do các nước và doanh nghiệp tranh thủ nhập hàng trước khi các lệnh hạn chế mới có hiệu lực, cùng với những điều chỉnh trong hợp đồng và việc giữ lại một phần LNG vốn trước đây được trung chuyển sang nơi khác. Kênh truyền hình tư nhân Pháp BFMTV, nhắc lại, trung tuần tháng 3/2026, Liên Âu đã cam kết ngưng hoàn toàn mua khí đốt Nga từ đây đến tháng 11/2027. Các quy định của EU hiện nay cấm mua khí ga hóa lỏng Nga theo hợp đồng ngắn hạn. Và kể từ ngày 01/01/2027, lệnh cấm của EU đối với các hợp đồng dài hạn sẽ có hiệu lực. Ngoài ra, xung đột ở Trung Đông cũng làm giảm nguồn cung LNG từ Qatar, đặc biệt sau các rủi ro liên quan đến eo biển Hormuz. Vì vậy, trong giai đoạn châu Âu tích trữ khí đốt cho mùa đông, Nga tiếp tục trở thành một nguồn cung quan trọng. Về điểm này, chuyên gia Philippe Chalmin, giáo sư tại đại học Paris Dauphine, chuyên gia về thị trường nguyên nhiên liệu, trả lời kênh truyền hình tư nhân Pháp LCI, nhìn nhận, một phần nguyên nhân còn do việc khí ga tự nhiên hóa lỏng của Nga chưa bị trừng phạt, và mặt khác, đó còn là một thực tế khác khá mỉa mai : Châu Âu cần khí hóa lỏng Nga để có thể nhập khẩu ít hơn từ Mỹ. « Điều này diễn ra trong bối cảnh toàn cầu rất căng thẳng; hầu như không có LNG nào rời khỏi vùng Vịnh Ba Tư. Gần đây người ta đã chứng kiến ​​một vụ tấn công, gây ra mối lo ngại đáng kể, vào một cảng dầu ở Damietta, Ai Cập, mà cho đến hiện tại người ta vẫn chưa xác định được hoàn toàn nguồn gốc. Rõ ràng là thế giới hiện đang trải qua một thời kỳ căng thẳng liên quan đến khí tự nhiên hóa lỏng. Giá khí đốt lúc này không xa mức 20 đô la Mỹ/triệu BTU (đơn vị nhiệt Anh), và điều đó tương đương với giá ở châu Âu gần 60 euro/megawatt-giờ, vì vậy chúng ta đang ở trong một tình huống tương đối khó khăn. Có một điểm quan trọng cuối cùng cần nhấn mạnh là trước đây, khi thời tiết tốt hơn, mùa cao điểm tiêu thụ khí đốt tự nhiên là mùa đông. Hiện nay, với những đợt nắng nóng, sau điều được gọi là "mùa sưởi ấm", chúng ta có mùa hè, "mùa làm mát", hay mùa của máy điều hòa. Điều này có nghĩa là lượng tiêu thụ điện tăng lên và do đó, tỷ lệ tiêu thụ khí đốt tự nhiên cũng tăng theo. » Lệnh trừng phạt và những mâu thuẫn của Liên Âu Theo Cơ quan Hợp tác Điều tiết Năng lượng EU, hiện nay khí đốt Nga vẫn chiếm 12% nhu cầu của khối. Tại hai nước Đông Âu là Hungary và Slovakia, khí đốt Nga chiếm từ 70 – 80% lượng tiêu thụ, được sử dụng chủ yếu cho sưởi ấm nhà và ngành công nghiệp. Từ góc độ này, chuyên gia về nguyên nhiên liệu Philippe Chalmin, giải thích vì sao châu Âu vẫn chưa sẵn sàng từ bỏ khí đốt Nga vào lúc lệnh cấm đối với LNG Nga sắp có hiệu lực vào đầu năm 2027. « Nếu chúng ta muốn tuân theo logic của các lệnh trừng phạt, chúng ta thực sự sẽ phải từ bỏ LNG của Nga. Vấn đề là, chúng ta sẽ thay thế LNG của Nga bằng cái gì ? Về cơ bản là đối với châu Âu là bằng LNG của Mỹ. Nhưng như vậy, chúng ta có nguy cơ phải trả giá cao hơn cho LNG của Mỹ. Bởi vì, khi một tàu chở LNG rời vịnh châu Mỹ, như ông Trump nói, hoặc Vịnh Mexico, như cách gọi trước đây, thì có hai khả năng : Đi đến châu Âu, là lựa chọn gần nhất, hoặc đi đến châu Á. Hiện tại, sự chênh lệch giá cả khiến chúng nghiêng về phía châu Á nhiều hơn. Điều đó có nghĩa là có một cuộc đấu về giá cả giữa châu Á và châu Âu. » Một nghịch lý khác cho thấy rõ sự phụ thuộc của EU đối với khí đốt Nga : Ngày 23/07/2026, để có thể đạt được gói trừng phạt thứ 21 nhắm vào Matxcơva, EU đã chấp nhận một ngoại lệ theo yêu cầu của Hy Lạp. Theo đó, nước này được phép tiếp tục vận chuyển LNG của Nga đến các nước thứ ba trong một số điều kiện nhất định, trái ngược hoàn toàn với quyết định được Liên Âu đưa ra vào trung tuần tháng Ba năm nay. Thời báo Le Temps của Thụy Sĩ nhận định, quyết định này đã làm nổi rõ sự khó khăn ngày càng lớn của châu Âu trong việc thống nhất áp đặt các biện pháp trừng phạt đối với Matxcơva. Quyết tâm chính trị chung ngày càng vấp phải những thực tế thương mại và lợi ích quốc gia riêng. Việc cho phép các trường hợp ngoại lệ đồng nghĩa với việc tạo ra những kẽ hở và làm suy yếu một trong những công cụ gây sức ép quan trọng nhất của khối. Đội tầu ma của Nga Trong khoảng thời gian này Nga cũng đang điều chỉnh và thích nghi với tình hình, khi không ngừng mở rộng « hạm đội ma » nhằm tìm cách lách các lệnh trừng phạt bằng nhiều biện pháp như đổi cờ hiệu đăng ký, vô hiệu hóa hoặc gây nhiễu hệ thống định vị, cũng như sử dụng các công ty bình phong để che giấu hoạt động. Theo tiết lộ của Financial Times, « hạm đội ma » của Nga giờ có đến 25 tầu, bao gồm tám chiếc mua lại. Mặc dù Liên Âu ngày càng siết chặt các biện pháp nhắm vào mạng lưới này, nhưng Matxcơva dường như vẫn luôn đi trước một bước. Gói trừng phạt mới nhất của EU lần đầu tiên nhắm vào các tầu và các nhà cung cấp dịch vụ bên thứ ba hỗ trợ trực tiếp về hậu cần hoặc vận hành cho đội tầu bí mật. Tuy nhiên hiệu quả của các biện pháp đó vẫn còn hạn chế. Trên kênh truyền hình LCI, nhà sử học quân sự, Benoist Bihan, chuyên gia về các vấn đề chiến lược giải thích : « Việc này sẽ trở nên khó khăn hơn bởi vì việc chuyển trở lại trực tiếp một số tầu dưới quốc kỳ Nga có thể cho phép Nga chẳng hạn như triển khai lực lượng bảo vệ có vũ trang trên tàu, hay nói cách khác là "quốc hữu hóa hạm đội ma" của mình. Điều đó sẽ khiến việc kiểm tra, chặn bắt hoặc khám xét các tàu này trên biển trở nên phức tạp hơn rất nhiều. Bởi vì, việc kiểm soát một tầu mang cờ hiệu của nước thứ ba hoàn toàn khác với cách xử lý một con tàu treo quốc kỳ Nga và được hưởng sự bảo hộ trực tiếp của Nhà nước Nga. Do đó, Nga cũng đang thích nghi với các biện pháp mà các nước châu Âu, trong đó có Pháp, đã áp dụng trong những tháng gần đây nhằm cản trở hoạt động của các tàu này. Nga vẫn có khả năng bố trí các tàu hộ tống đi kèm, điều này có thể buộc các nước phương Tây phải vượt qua những ngưỡng đối đầu nghiêm trọng hơn nếu muốn ngăn chặn tuyến vận tải này. Vì vậy, đây hoàn toàn không phải là một vấn đề đơn giản. Tôi cũng muốn nói thêm rằng Tuyến Hàng hải Phương Bắc (Northern Sea Route), chạy dọc phía bắc nước Nga và kết nối đến châu Á, hiện đang ngày càng được khai thác nhiều hơn. Khi khí hậu ấm lên, tuyến đường này không bị băng bao phủ lâu như trước và có thể hoạt động trong thời gian dài hơn trong năm. Điều đó tạo ra những hành lang vận tải mới vì lượng băng ngày càng ít đi. Đồng thời, các tuyến đường này đặc biệt có lợi cho Nga vì chúng nằm trong những khu vực mà hải quân NATO khó tiếp cận hoặc khó triển khai hoạt động quân sự, qua đó giúp Nga duy trì và phát triển các tuyến vận chuyển năng lượng sang thị trường châu Á. » Song song với đội tầu ma, Nga hiện nay dường như cũng đang tự sản xuất các tầu chở khí tự nhiên hóa lỏng, qua đó từng bước giảm sự phụ thuộc vào cơ sở hạ tầng và công nghệ phương Tây. Trong bối cảnh này, trang Le Temps đặt câu hỏi : châu Âu đã thực sự sẵn sàng đi xa đến mức nào để cắt đứt nguồn khí đốt Nga, nguồn thu góp phần tài trợ cho cuộc chiến ở Ukraina ? Một chính sách trừng phạt liên tục kèm theo các trường hợp ngoại lệ cuối cùng lại có thể gởi đi thông điệp ngược với mục tiêu ban đầu : Matxcơva vẫn có thể dựa vào những bất đồng và chia rẽ trong nội bộ Liên Âu, tờ báo kết luận.

PushingUpRoses and Special Boy Matt Aukamp overcome clicking bugs and sadness to bring you this absolute grab-bag of an episode! We talk about games! We talk about movies! We talk about palette knives! We answer emails! We rank games! Come have fun with us in this mp3 file.Games Mentioned: The Mermaid Mask Pokémon Scarlet Fields of Mistria Rainbow Billy and the Curse of the Leviathan The Life and Suffering of Sir Bronte King's Quest/Space Quest Jazz & Faust Dark Coolman Dark Earth The Chzos Mythos; Siberia; Grey Matter; Samarost; The Longest Journey; Enclosure; Ben Jordan: Paranormal Investigator; Apprentice; Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney; Danganronpa; The Walking Dead; Firewatch; Broken Age; The Cave; Life is Strange; Braid; World of Goo; Hollow Knight; Shovel Knight Loom Crushed in Time Citizen Sleeper Gilbert Goodmate and the something of Phungoria David Slade Mysteries: Case Files Krystopia: A Puzzle Journey Spy Fox 2: Some Assembly Required The Shattering Midnight Scenes: A Safe PlaceEmail us! mattandroses@gmail.comJoin our Discord: https://discord.gg/fPv7hRgTeVFollow us on Instagram: instagram.com/saveyourgamepodcast

1918-1919.  Determined to tackle the forces of international revolution head on, Canada leads an imperial military expedition to Siberia.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-nations-of-canada--4572969/support.

Guess what? It's Matt Rutherford on the show again! Matt & I recorded this episode while he was at-sea on the Valiant 42, far north of Russia and a few days away from entering the first ""pinch point"" on his Northern Sea Route above Siberia. Meanwhile I was recording from the cabin on SPICA outside Stockholm. Matt & I talked through how the first 4,000+ miles of his passage has gone so far, how he was featured in Playboy magazine, what he thinks his chances of success are and how much he enjoys being alone at sea. Make sure to donate to Matt's Ocean Research Project so they can continue doing the environmental and climate research in the far north, or better yet, come to our Crew Party in Annapolis this October where all proceeds will go to ORP! -- Support the podcast & become a member of The Quarterdeck, where Andy, August & Mia dive deep on the art of seam'nship. Nerd out with us on our members-only forum and talk boats, gear, safety-at-sea, meet like-minded sailors, find crew, and more. Check it out on quarterdeck.59-north.com. See you there! -- This season of ON THE WIND is supported by our friends at Weems & Plath and BVI Yacht Sales. Support the show by supporting our sponsors!

National Geographic Explorer Sarah Marquis has spent 25 years walking alone through some of the most remote landscapes on Earth — the equivalent of circumnavigating the planet on foot. Her expeditions include a 14,000km, 17-month crossing of the Australian Outback, three years walking solo from Siberia to Australia, and three months surviving off bush tucker in the Kimberley. In this episode, she talks about the seven-year-old girl who slept alone in a cave and never lost her sense of mission, why fear is a construction we choose to believe, how she learned to read the land through a herd of wild cattle, surviving a near-fatal fall in Tasmania that left her crawling out of a gorge with a broken shoulder, and the grief that followed her mother's sudden death. This is a conversation about instinct, consciousness, and what it means to build a life from the inside out.Sarah is a force of curiosity and nature and it was both a joy and inspiration to sit with her.For more of Sarah Marquis' work:Website: https://www.sarahmarquis.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/explorer_sarahmarquis/ For more from Mark McCartney:Newsletter: https://www.whatisagood.life/Website: https://www.mmcleadership.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mccartney-14b0161b4/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ ⁨@whatisagoodlife3875⁩

Astronomy Daily · S05E164 “Eclipse Eve” · Tuesday 11 August 2026. Sources are primary/agency where possible; aggregator dates were checked against originals. In this episode •    LEAD — The 12 August total solar eclipse: the only total eclipse of 2026 and the first over mainland Europe since 1999. Totality arcs from Siberia over the North Pole to eastern Greenland, western Iceland, northern Spain and a sliver of Portugal; maximum totality ~2 min 18 s. Partial for much of North America near sunset; not visible from Australia. ESA livestreams from the Javalambre Observatory, Spain. •    MIDDLE 1 — A state CASC Long March 7A exploded ~85 seconds after lifting off from Wenchang on 10 August, a total loss (payload reported as the Zhongxing-4B communications satellite). Separately, Landspace's private Zhuque-3 was on the same-night manifest from Jiuquan for its second propulsive landing-legs recovery attempt — outcome unconfirmed at recording. China's first orbital-booster landing (net-capture, Long March 10B) already succeeded on 10 July. •    MIDDLE 2 — The Perseids peak overnight 12–13 August under a New Moon — the darkest conditions in roughly two decades. Parent comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. Realistic ~30–50 meteors/hr from dark sites (nominal ~100), with a slim chance of a dust-trail boost; the next confidently forecast outburst is 2028. •    MIDDLE 3 — Japan's H3 launched Michibiki No. 7 (QZS-7) from Tanegashima, bringing the Quasi-Zenith Satellite System up to the strength Japan needs to run it as a standalone service — a regional navigation layer that keeps a satellite near the zenith over Japan/Asia-Pacific, reinforcing GPS and building navigation resilience. The satellite also hosts a US Space Force space-surveillance sensor (SACHI). •    CLOSER — Both-hemispheres skywatch: eclipse viewing times (totality window ~16:58–18:34 UT, greatest ~17:46 UT) and the ISO 12312-2 eye-safety rule; Perseid how-to for the North (best 2 a.m.–dawn); and Southern-Hemisphere content — pre-dawn planets, evening Venus, Comet 10P/Tempel 2. Eye safety •    A partial eclipse is never safe to view with the naked eye. Use ISO 12312-2 certified eclipse glasses/viewers, or indirect projection (pinhole). Direct viewing is only safe during true totality, and only inside the path (Greenland, Iceland, Spain). Links •    astronomydaily.io — full back-catalogue, daily news feed, listener reviews, newsletter sign-up, contact form •    @AstroDailyPod on your platform of choiceBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Nel Maestro e Margherita Michail Bulgakov immagina che il diavolo venga in visita a Mosca, curioso di vedere come sono cambiati i moscoviti dopo la Rivoluzione. Nel novembre 1941, il diavolo stava davvero per arrivare: Hitler aveva scatenato l'Operazione Barbarossa, e la Wehrmacht era alla periferia di Mosca. Nella città in stato d'assedio, Stalin fece tenere egualmente, il 7 novembre, la parata per l'anniversario della Rivoluzione; pochi giorni dopo l'inverno più freddo del XX secolo e i rinforzi provenienti dalla Siberia permisero di respingere i tedeschi e salvare la capitale. Si accresceva così nella memoria russa quella sacralità di Mosca che ne fa una città-mondo per tutto l'immenso continente che dall'Ucraina arriva al Mar del Giappone. Alessandro Barbero è uno degli ospiti di "LEZIONI DI STORIA – CITTÀ MONDO - XX edizione del ciclo di incontri con storici e studiosi per esplorare il tema delle grandi città" organizzato da Editori Laterza. Crediti: https://www.laterza.it/ Audio registrato in loco. --- // Disclaimer // Tutti gli audio disponibili sono utilizzati negli episodi dopo previo consenso e accordo con i distributori originali di altre piattaforme e/o comunque distribuiti liberamente e originariamente con licenze CC BY 4.0 e affini - o registrati in loco, viene sempre riportata la fonte. I titoli potrebbero differire in caso di titoli originali troppo lunghi. Per qualsiasi dubbio o problema contattateci PER FAVORE prima alla nostra mail: vassallidibarbero[@]gmail[dot]com - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last time we spoke about the ending of the Second Battle of Changsha. In late September and early October 1941, Chinese commander Chen Cheng planned an operation to retake Yichang, a strategic Yangtze River city whose control was essential for protecting the approach to Chongqing. Japanese forces were pulling back from Changsha, weakened by supply problems and casualties, which created an opportunity for Chen to intensify his campaign. Yichang had been captured by Japan in 1940, a defeat that Chen carried as a personal and political burden. He therefore moved to encircle the Japanese 13th Division inside Yichang and drive it to collapse. Although the Chinese held a clear manpower advantage—fourteen divisions against the encircled Japanese—progress was slowed by stubborn fighting from prepared, entrenched positions. The battle inside the city produced desperate close-quarters combat and heavy casualties, showing how the fate of Yichang and the wider defense of Chongqing were tightly linked.    #214 War hits the Pacific Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.   The guns fell silent on October 9, 1941, as the Ninth War Zone's forces restored their pre-battle positions, marking the end of the Second Battle of Changsha. The balance sheet was grim on both sides, but it was China that bore the heavier cost. The Ninth Military Front suffered 70,672 killed, wounded, or missing. The concurrent Yichang offensive added a further 21,368 casualties to the Sixth Military Front, a force that outnumbered its Japanese opponents ten to one yet still failed to retake the city. By the time the dust settled, the Chinese army had lost nearly 100,000 men across both theatres. The Chinese command was frank, at least in private, about what had gone wrong. The Japanese had moved with a speed that recalled Blitzkrieg, advancing 130 kilometres in eleven days and withdrawing at twelve kilometres a day, catching the defenders perpetually off-balance. The 26th, 37th, 10th, and 74th Corps had been picked apart piecemeal rather than fighting in concert, the original plan to destroy the Japanese south of the Miluo River coming to nothing. Elite formations had paid a disproportionate price: the 74th Corps suffered 14,521 casualties, the 37th Corps 14,015, and the 58th Division alone lost 6,192 of its 11,907 men, nearly its entire fighting strength.   Yet none of this was the story the public would hear. On October 10th, China's National Day, radio stations announced the "Second Great Victory in Northern Hunan", the annihilation of over 40,000 enemy troops. Newspapers rushed out special editions. Congratulatory telegrams flooded in from government ministries and civic organizations. Senior officials seized on the moment: Sun Ke, Premier of the Executive Yuan, declared that the victory "laid the foundation for the counter-offensive and the recapture of Hankou and Guangzhou," while General Bai Chongxi called it "the pivotal moment for us to turn defeat into victory." Chiang Kai-shek, reading through the pages of triumphant commentary produced overnight by his propagandists, was reportedly impressed by their industry, if not convinced by their content. He had not wanted to call it a victory at all, but the political calculus was unavoidable: after four years of war, an exhausted nation needed the psychological sustenance that only "victory" could provide.   The gap between public performance and private reality was nowhere more visible than in the arrival of a twenty-two-member international press delegation on October 13th. Journalists from Britain, the United States, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Hong Kong, and major Chinese newspapers were flown to Changsha and carefully guided through selected battlefields, where they inspected mountains of war trophies and heard testimony from soldiers and civilians. They left satisfied, presenting their war souvenirs—swords, binoculars, Japanese military flags—to their audiences back home as proof of Chinese heroism and Japanese defeat. Both China and Japan were claiming victory simultaneously. The only conclusion the foreign press could draw was that one side was lying, and it was not the side that had shown them the evidence.   Chiang Kai-shek's real verdict came at the Third Nanyue Military Conference, held from October 16 to 21. His anger was withering. He condemned his generals for their obsession with defending sprawling outer perimeter lines while leaving city centres barely fortified, a mentality so rigid, he said, that the Japanese could announce the exact time of their advance and withdrawal in advance and still execute it on schedule without interference. "Generals, what a disgrace this is!" On the failure to capture prisoners, only 263 prisoners were claimed across the entire front, of whom only 16 names were actually published, he was almost incredulous: "We can definitely defeat the enemy, capture many enemy prisoners, and seize countless enemy weapons! Even if we cannot capture ten thousand prisoners, we should at least capture a thousand! If not a thousand, then at least a hundred! But now, you don't even have ten!" The conference handed down punishments to match the rhetoric. Liao Lingqi, commander of the shattered 58th Division, was sentenced to death for desertion and shot on October 22nd. His men were so outraged that three regimental commanders resigned in protest; the division was pulled from the order of battle entirely and given three months to rebuild. Li Yutang, commander of the 10th Corps, was dismissed—though the Third Battle of Changsha would begin before his replacement could take post, and he would be reinstated to play a key role in the city's defence.   On the Japanese side, the 11th Army acknowledged 1,670 killed, 5,184 wounded, and 14 missing, far fewer than Chinese claims, though post-war regimental histories suggest the true figure was higher. Lieutenant General Anami, who had championed the operation, found himself stung by the charge that the battle had served mainly as material for Chinese propaganda. On November 23rd, he reportedly reacted with visible displeasure when someone in his headquarters said as much aloud.  Anami's annoyance was easy enough to understand, but the accusation carried a troubling degree of accuracy. The Second Battle of Changsha had yielded no decisive strategic gain and no substantial alteration in the military balance. What it did generate, rather effectively, was a story and by the autumn of 1941, stories were one of the few things China still had in plentiful supply. The most consequential struggles were taking place not along the Miluo River, but in foreign ministries and embassies, in Washington and Moscow, in the messages passing between Chongqing and London, and in the increasingly strained calculations of statesmen trying to determine, amid rapidly changing circumstances, whom to support and for how long.   For Chiang Kai-shek, the challenge was never merely military. It was structural, and had been so from the outset. He had always seen clearly, precisely because he understood China's weakness, that Japan could not be defeated by China alone. The country lacked the industrial base, the logistical reach, and after four years of relentless attrition more and more the manpower needed to force a decisive result on the battlefield. China's survival depended on making its war inseparable from the wars of other powers. Since 1937, Chiang's diplomacy had pursued that single objective: convincing enough great powers that their interests were aligned with China's, and holding that coalition together long enough for Japan to be subdued. That effort turned out to be vastly more difficult than it ought to have been.   The problem started with the international order in which the war emerged. Chiang had hoped to assemble a concert of allies willing to help defend China against Japanese aggression. He was blocked not just by the reluctance of neutral states to aid China, but by the speed with which alliances shifted in the opening years of the Second World War. He had never welcomed the prospect of a general European conflict, correctly fearing that it would push China even further to the margins of world attention. Even so, he recognized that once the lines had hardened between the imperial democracies and fascism, new alignments might become possible. From his perspective, the growing amity between Berlin and Moscow was therefore disastrous. He had been eager to draw the USSR into war against Japan. Instead, the Soviets were now effectively aligned with the Nazis, who were themselves allied with Tokyo.   The world created after Versailles had already enraged many Chinese. After all, the May Fourth demonstrations of 1919 had arisen directly from the settlement reached at the Paris Peace Conference. Yet that older order had at least possessed recognizable anchors, especially the dominance of the two great European empires and the United States. Now those empires were weakening, and no one could say with confidence what the new geopolitical order would be. For all Chiang knew, Germany might emerge as Europe's new dominant power. The early years of the European war produced a bewildering spectacle of diplomatic realignment.   The Nationalist government had previously enjoyed a short-lived flirtation with Nazi Germany. In fact, Hitler's regime continued supplying Chiang with munitions in the first months of China's war against Japan. The Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936 had theoretically joined Germany, Italy, and Japan into the Axis, but mutual distrust prevented them from forming anything like a fully coherent alliance. Chiang found it useful to imply to Western powers that he might be pushed into closer alignment with Germany, a particularly disturbing possibility for the USSR, which faced enemies in both Europe and Asia. But eventually the contradictions in German policy toward East Asia became too severe. In April 1938, Germany yielded to Japanese pressure and ended its support for China.   Britain offered little meaningful help. Neville Chamberlain became prime minister in May 1937 at the head of a Conservative-led National Government, and was quickly overwhelmed by the deteriorating European situation. If Czechoslovakia was for him a "far-off country of which we know nothing," China's fate was even more distant and obscure to many,  perhaps most  policymakers in London. The Nationalists had more success in cultivating the United States. At the Nine-Power Conference in Brussels in November 1937, the Chinese delegation failed to persuade Washington to impose sanctions on Japan and confront it directly. By the middle of 1938, however, American views were beginning to shift. As Japan pushed deeper into southern China, it became increasingly obvious that the occupied territory would be closed to foreign trade. In December 1938, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau arranged a private American loan of $25 million to China, to be repaid through shipments of tung oil, a varnish product whose real importance lay not in itself, but in what the arrangement signified: a quiet American expression of faith that Chongqing would survive. Chiang also held on to the hope of an even less likely partnership. He had become fiercely anti-Communist during the 1920s, yet in the early years of the anti-Japanese war his greatest hope still rested on Soviet entry into the conflict. Soviet advisers and pilots had aided China from 1937 to 1939, but the USSR never formally declared war on Japan. Still, as Japanese aggression in northern Asia intensified, it remained possible that the Soviets would eventually be drawn in.   Then, as so often happened whenever Chiang tried to impose some control over the course of the war, events beyond China's borders altered the struggle in fundamental ways. While Western attention remained fixed on Europe's darkening horizon, a battle with major consequences for East Asia unfolded on the frontiers of Outer Mongolia, Manchukuo, and the eastern Soviet Union. Throughout much of 1938 and early 1939, one faction within the Japanese Imperial Army sought to pressure the Soviets along their eastern frontier. The USSR appeared vulnerable; Stalin's paranoid purges had executed or exiled many of the Red Army's best officers. In May 1939, fighting broke out near Nomonhan between forces from Soviet-backed Mongolia and Japanese troops from Manchukuo. Within days, both sides had reinforced heavily, until nearly 60,000 Soviet troops faced about 40,000 soldiers from the Kwantung Army. Over the next four months, until mid-September, they fought a major battle ending in a decisive Japanese defeat and establishing the reputation of General Georgi Zhukov, who would later become one of Stalin's most celebrated wartime commanders. The much-derided Soviet Army had fought with formidable effectiveness, and the result was not only a ceasefire but also a nonaggression pact between the two sides, extinguishing, in one stroke, Chiang's hopes for a Chinese-Soviet military alliance. The final blow came after developments in northern Europe. In the Winter War of 1939–1940, the Soviet invasion of Finland led Britain and France to back a motion expelling the USSR from the League of Nations. China, then a member of the League Council, declined to use its veto to block the resolution. Stalin was enraged by Chiang's failure to prevent Soviet expulsion, and mutual suspicion thereafter poisoned relations between the two leaders for the rest of the war against Japan. China would now have to continue without further major Soviet backing.   By the spring of 1940, China's position had become deeply precarious. In March, senior Japanese negotiators sought an agreement with Chiang in Chongqing, while Wang Jingwei was trying to formalize his rival Nationalist government in Nanjing. This effort, known in Chinese as the Tong Operation, and in Japanese as Operation Kiri, led to talks in Hong Kong from March 7 to 10, 1940. Militarily, the Nationalists were in grave danger: the United States remained neutral, and Europe was in chaos. Indeed, that same spring, with France seemingly near collapse, the British government also sent out discreet feelers to explore the possibility of a negotiated peace with Germany. For China, Western assistance was nowhere in sight. The Japanese judged the moment favorable for pressing Chiang toward concessions. Faced with serious danger to his regime, Chiang allowed the door to negotiation to open just slightly.   As a consequence, the Japanese delayed full recognition of Wang Jingwei's new government. Through the summer and autumn of 1940, Tokyo remained uncertain about the defector. Prominent Japanese figures such as Count Arima Yoriyasu of the Privy Council said Wang's conduct demonstrated his untrustworthiness, and Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yōsuke continued to express interest in an agreement with Chongqing. Zhou Fohai captured the defectors' frustration, men who believed they had made the highest patriotic sacrifice when he wrote: "Chongqing sees us as collaborators, we see ourselves as heroes. We think only peace can save the country — that's why we think of ourselves as heroes. If we end up classed as heroes, then China and Japan will be at peace. If we end up classed as collaborators, then China and Japan will never be at peace."That formulation conveyed something genuine about the moral dizziness of the period. Most of the defectors were not men devoid of principles; they were men whose principles had carried them to a place that history would find exceptionally hard to pardon.   The "New Fourth Army Incident" brought to a close one of the most consequential years in modern Chinese political history. The battle of ideas unfolding in 1940 was already visible to informed contemporaries. Early in 1941, US Ambassador Nelson Johnson sent Washington a detailed assessment of the Chinese political situation in reply to another report passed along by Major Evans Carlson, an American officer who had made an extensive journey through the Chinese interior. The contrast between the two documents revealed a widening split in American views of China. Carlson, together with his travelling companion, the New Zealander Rewi Alley, had become increasingly sympathetic to the Communists after visiting their territories in 1938 and admiring their discipline. Carlson described the Nationalists as moving toward "fascism," and argued that American aid should be conditioned on Chiang's government being compelled to adopt more "democratic" institutions.   Johnson strongly disagreed. It was "only normal and natural," he wrote, that the Nationalists wanted to retain power, but during the war they had established the National Political Consultative Council, in which multiple parties, including the Communists, were represented. He also noted that the CCP could publish its own newspaper in Chongqing in a way that would have been impossible before the war. One might have expected the Nationalists to use the war as a justification "to extinguish . . . all political opposition," yet instead they had chosen to "muddle along." Johnson further thought that the influence of competing cliques inside the Nationalist Party had been overstated. Chiang Kai-shek, by contrast, had "grown in stature, as he has come to be recognized as the symbol of united resistance to Japanese encroachment"; ultimately, "it is he who makes the final decisions." Johnson did agree with Carlson that Chiang's regime was hesitant to encourage a broad-based popular movement animated by anything beyond anti-Japanese feeling, though he also pointed to Nationalist cooperative programs and county-level reforms. But he rejected the idea that American support should depend on sweeping political transformation. Chiang was committed to continuing the war against Japan, and Washington should back him in that effort. In a notably farsighted passage, Johnson wrote: "It is my view that since the fall of the Manchu dynasty and the collapse of the traditional Chinese concept of government the Chinese people have been feeling their way along toward a new evolving form of government. A definitive form of government has not yet been established and may not be established for decades; it may or may not be in the form of a democracy, but it will be a type of government that will be adapted to the needs of China and its people." The tension between these two American interpretations,  Carlson's idealized belief in the Communists and Johnson's pragmatic support for Chiang was more than a minor bureaucratic dispute. It foreshadowed a debate that would dominate American foreign policy for the next decade, and would still echo when the People's Republic was proclaimed in 1949.   The disastrous experience of 1940 seemed to cast doubt on whether any future for China existed outside the Japanese Empire. As 1941 wore on, another dreadful event shook the exhausted wartime capital. On June 5, Chongqing endured roughly five hours of bombing, driving the population into air-raid shelters. In one tunnel in the Shibati district, the conditions were even worse than usual. The large shelter was supposed to have lights and electric fans, but the generators had never been connected. Inside, the air was dark, hot, and suffocating. Around ten that evening, people began emerging from the tunnel when rumors spread that the Japanese were returning with poison-gas bombs. Air-raid wardens forced people back inside, even as others were still trying to come out. Bodies toppled over one another, and panic spread as people realized they could not breathe. Over the next few hours, hundreds died underground in the darkness. The exact number was never definitively established: the official figure was 461, though a contemporary police report placed it far higher, at 1,527. What rescuers remembered most vividly were the tortured expressions of the dead, people tangled together in each other's arms as they lost consciousness, clothing ripped to shreds by desperate hands clawing at one another, and bodies so drenched in sweat that they looked as though they had been soaked in water. One survivor, Tang Zhengchang, remembered a hand reaching out from a pile of corpses and pleading, "Sir, please help me . . ." The grip on Tang's shorts was so tight that it pulled them off; he escaped the tunnel naked from the waist down. Official descriptions of the disaster were softened. Even so, the tragedy deepened the city's gloom and in a place already saturated with grief, an added layer of darkness mattered a great deal.   Yet events elsewhere would soon offer the National Government a narrow margin of hope. Late in 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt won re-election as president of the United States. "I am not going to send your boys into any foreign wars," he had proclaimed during the campaign against Wendell Willkie. But Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull both understood that Nazi domination of Europe posed a grave challenge to American influence there. And with China's "Open Door" to trade effectively shut by Japanese occupation, it was becoming increasingly clear that strict neutrality might not remain viable. In a 1941 report on China's domestic and foreign situation, Ambassador Johnson noted that during Germany's sweeping victories across Europe in mid-1940, the Chinese had become anxious about whether the Allies would remain committed to their cause. Britain's refusal to surrender, however, together with continuing Soviet goodwill, lifted public morale in China. People now looked toward the United States and Britain for support and felt that "victory" was "virtually theirs."   Then, on June 22, 1941, the world awoke to news that roughly three million German soldiers were advancing into the Soviet Union. Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's invasion of the USSR, dramatically overturned the nonaggression that had governed relations between the two major European dictatorships for the previous two years. It transformed the war in Europe entirely. Less obviously, it also transformed the war in Asia. Thanks to intelligence leaks, Chiang Kai-shek had already realized that war between Germany and the USSR was likely. After the neutrality treaty between the USSR and Japan was signed on April 13, 1941, Chiang predicted that the United States would be drawn into the Asian war, and even that Japan might eventually reverse course and strike the Soviet Union. If that happened, China would become the critical Asian ally of both Washington and Moscow. Stalin had been caught off guard by the German assault — largely because he ignored increasingly urgent warnings from senior colleagues receiving intelligence from well-placed spies in Germany and the Comintern, eager to preserve its alliances, now pressed the Chinese Communists to cooperate more closely with the Nationalists. On June 23, 1941, the CCP Central Committee responded with a declaration that it would "persevere in the Anti-Japanese United Front, persevere in Nationalist-Communist cooperation," and would align itself with the British, the Americans, and others resisting the "fascist rulers" of the Axis.   In Chongqing and Yan'an, the German attack on the Soviet Union was interpreted as a hopeful sign that Japan's fortunes might be beginning to turn. In Nanjing, the reaction was different. On June 22, Zhou Fohai recorded in his diary that, although the outcome "cannot be predicted," members of the Nanjing regime "all believe Germany will win and will take Moscow within two months." Zhou speculated that Japan could not easily reconcile its neutrality treaty with the USSR and its membership in the Anti-Comintern Pact, which was supposed to unite the Axis against Soviet expansionism. Still, because Germany had struck first, Japan was under no formal obligation to help. Zhou also continued to view events through a lens he had never abandoned: that of Chinese nationalism. "If Chongqing joins the Allies and they win," he wrote, "then this is good for China." If they lost, it would be disastrous for Chiang Kai-shek; but because Wang Jingwei had established a government in Nanjing under Japanese sponsorship, China now had "a foot in both boats." It was a ruthless calculation, but not a wholly dishonorable one. Zhou was not merely advancing Japanese interests. He was hedging, wagering on multiple futures in the name of a China he believed would endure beyond whatever constellation of powers happened to dominate at the moment. Whether posterity would judge that conduct prudent or collaborative was a question he could neither settle nor live to see resolved to his satisfaction.   The summer of 1941 marked a major geopolitical turning point in the war. Until then, the conflicts in China and Europe had remained separate, if desperate, struggles on the Eurasian continent. Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union now forced Japan to decide whether it too would enter war against the USSR. Debate in Tokyo was brief. Although some officials, including Foreign Minister Matsuoka, favored striking north before moving south, both the Kwantung Army and the Navy advised against helping Germany at least until Germany had succeeded in drawing substantial Soviet forces away from Siberia and into Europe. Konoye, once again prime minister, agreed. With the northern option set aside, Japanese leaders turned toward another great power instead: the United States. Japan's failure to gain further decisive momentum in China had fueled demands for broader regional expansion, especially into Southeast Asia, with its abundant oil, rubber, and other strategic resources. From 1940 onward, measures such as the pressure to close the Burma Road made it increasingly obvious that Tokyo had adopted a more aggressive posture in Asia. Unable to subdue China, Japanese policymakers chose instead to escalate the conflict still further.   Japanese political life had become ever more dominated by the unresolved war in China. As early as 1938, military expenditures consumed about 70 percent of the national budget, and that same year a National Mobilization Bill granted the government "total war control" over the zaibatsu, Japan's major industrial conglomerates. By 1940, the New Order was making itself felt throughout everyday life, with campaigns against luxury and extravagant consumption taking on new prominence. In February 1940, a parliamentarian was expelled from the Diet simply for daring to criticize the "holy war" in China. In such an atmosphere, retreat from imperial ambitions became increasingly unthinkable. That figure, 70 percent of the national budget devoted to the military is worth dwelling on, because it reveals something essential about the trap in which Japanese strategists had placed themselves. The war in China had not been won, yet abandoning it would have meant admitting a failure so severe that it would have shaken the ideological and institutional foundations of military supremacy in Japanese politics. The only apparent ways out required pushing further in: more conquest, more extraction, more expansion. The logic was brutally clear, and profoundly destructive.   The Roosevelt administration watched these developments with growing alarm. Though still formally neutral, the United States was already using Lend-Lease to provide major assistance to Britain and the Soviet Union in their struggles against Germany. It now expanded aid to China as well. On February 10, Roosevelt's representative Lauchlin Currie visited Chongqing to inform Chiang Kai-shek that the United States would soon provide $45 million in military equipment. General John Magruder, head of the small AMMISCA mission,  the American Military Mission in China had been sent to Chongqing in September 1941, as part of quiet preparation for possible Chinese entry into an alliance against Japan. The China branch of the OSS, precursor to the CIA, was led by General William "Wild Bill" Donovan, whom Roosevelt had dispatched to China in early 1941.   The Americans repeatedly tried to discourage Japan from moving south into Southeast Asia, but relations only grew more confrontational. Japan occupied the southern part of French Indochina, and in response the United States imposed an oil embargo in July 1941. The consequences were immense. Japan imported around 80 percent of its oil from the United States. Without that supply, its navy, the essential instrument for southern expansion  had reserves for perhaps eighteen months. The real question facing Tokyo, then, was not whether it must act, but how soon. Unable any longer to resist mounting military pressure for war, Konoye resigned on October 16 and was replaced as premier by General Tōjō Hideki. Tokyo accelerated its preparations for conflict with the Western powers. Planned targets included Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaya, the Netherlands East Indies, and the Philippines. I should note, if you want to learn about all of this history in more detail, you can go check out the pacific war channel on youtube. I have a chronological series that is just now talking about events like the Japanese invasion of french indochina and the road to pearl harbor.   Throughout the autumn of 1941, increasingly desperate negotiations took place between Japan and the United States. Washington insisted that Japan withdraw from China; Tokyo was equally firm that it would do no such thing. From the Japanese point of view, the demand to leave China was not a serious negotiating position but a demand for national humiliation a call to repudiate four years of war, vast casualties, and the ideological basis of Japanese militarism in a single diplomatic act. In the end, the gulf between the two positions could not be bridged.   While civilian and military leaders in Tokyo argued over the pace at which they should move toward war, few among Japan's rulers doubted that war was coming. At the imperial conference of November 5, it was formally agreed that if no satisfactory diplomatic solution had been reached by December 1, war would follow soon after. Talks in Washington between Ambassador Nomura Kichisaburō, diplomat Kurusu Saburō, and Secretary of State Cordell Hull led nowhere. On November 26, Hull delivered a note repeating the American position that Japan must withdraw from both China and Indochina. On December 1, the imperial conference resolved to go to war; the following day, the date of attack was fixed as December 8, December 7 by American time. In one sense, this was the culmination toward which the entire previous decade had been moving. The war in China had started as a localized conflict, then expanded into a continental one, and was now about to become something larger still: a truly global war, stretching from the North Atlantic to the western Pacific. China's long, lonely resistance would suddenly gain new dimensions and new allies,  though not the ones Chiang had spent four years trying to cultivate, and not under circumstances he would have chosen.   In the early morning of December 7, 1941, the US Pacific Fleet lay anchored at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, its sailors and officers still largely asleep as dawn crept across the Pacific. The attack did not come without warning signs,  American and Japanese diplomats had been locked in increasingly desperate negotiations throughout the autumn, each side hardening its position until no room remained to maneuver. Washington had demanded that Japan withdraw from China, a condition Tokyo viewed not as a serious opening offer but as a demand for national humiliation: a call to repudiate four years of brutal war, hundreds of thousands of casualties, and the entire ideological foundation upon which Japanese militarism rested. No agreement was possible on those terms, and both sides privately knew it.   The strike force assembled in secret was formidable. Six aircraft carriers,  the Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū, Hiryū, Shōkaku, and Zuikaku had sailed under strict radio silence across the North Pacific, launching their aircraft in two successive waves before the American base had any meaningful chance to respond. The first wave of approximately 183 planes swept in just before 8 a.m., targeting the rows of battleships moored along Battleship Row and the military airfields at Wheeler, Hickam, and Ford Island simultaneously, ensuring that American aircraft could not scramble in time to mount an effective defense. A second wave of roughly 170 planes followed less than an hour later, pressing the attack on damaged ships and harbor installations.   The destruction was staggering. The battleship Arizona suffered a catastrophic magazine explosion after a armor-piercing bomb penetrated her forward decks, killing nearly 1,177 of her crew in minutes, almost half of the total American dead from the entire attack. The Oklahoma capsized after being struck by multiple torpedoes. The West Virginia and California sank at their moorings. In total, seventeen vessels were damaged or destroyed, and the vast majority of military aircraft at the nearby airfields were caught on the ground and obliterated before they could take flight. Around 2,400 Americans were killed and another 1,100 wounded, making it the deadliest single attack on American soil or territory in the nation's history to that point.   Yet the attack was not a complete strategic success for Japan. The US Pacific Fleet's aircraft carriers, the vessels that would ultimately decide the naval war in the Pacific happened to be at sea that morning and escaped unharmed. The harbor's fuel storage and repair facilities were also left largely intact, allowing the fleet to reconstitute faster than Japanese planners had anticipated. What Japan achieved in tactical devastation, it partly squandered in strategic miscalculation. The attack ended American neutrality instantly and irrevocably. The following day, President Roosevelt addressed Congress, calling December 7 "a date which will live in infamy," and within hours the United States declared war on Japan. For China, after more than four years of fighting alone, the blow that devastated Pearl Harbor paradoxically carried a thread of desperate hope at last, the great power Chiang Kai-shek had spent years trying to draw into the conflict had arrived, not under circumstances he would have chosen, but arrived nonetheless. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. After years of fighting, China's situation darkened in 1941 with intense bombing of Chongqing and fears of poison-gas attacks. Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in June shifted alliances and pressured Japan toward wider war. Japan escalated plans for Southeast Asia, suffered an oil embargo, and negotiations with the United States broke down over withdrawing from China and Indochina. Then the Pearl Harbor attack began the Pacific War.

Near and Desired Things: Shamanism in Late Imperial Local Siberian Museums (Cornell University Press, 2026) reveals nineteenth-century Siberian museums, built on Indigenous land and increasingly populated by political exiles, as active sites of ethnographic knowledge-making and centers of scientific research, regional identity, and colonial authority. Rather than collecting from distant colonies, these institutions concentrated on surrounding communities, their tools, beliefs, and everyday lives, to configure ideas about what counted as legitimate knowledge. Dr. Marisa Karyl Franz traces how Siberian museums helped construct shamanism as an ethnographic category. Shamans, while familiar and embedded in local space, were recast as icons of cultural otherness or representatives of an imagined primitive past. Through the evolving languages of science, anthropology, and empire, the local was abstracted and exported, feeding global museum networks and shaping modern anthropology. Yet, the museums held onto the intimacy of place, preserving tensions between familiarity and spectacle, documentation and desire. By placing Siberia at the center of a broader intellectual and political history, Near and Desired Things challenges assumptions about where modern knowledge is made and redefines provincial spaces as sites of innovation and as forces that reshape the terms of empire. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Near and Desired Things: Shamanism in Late Imperial Local Siberian Museums (Cornell University Press, 2026) reveals nineteenth-century Siberian museums, built on Indigenous land and increasingly populated by political exiles, as active sites of ethnographic knowledge-making and centers of scientific research, regional identity, and colonial authority. Rather than collecting from distant colonies, these institutions concentrated on surrounding communities, their tools, beliefs, and everyday lives, to configure ideas about what counted as legitimate knowledge. Dr. Marisa Karyl Franz traces how Siberian museums helped construct shamanism as an ethnographic category. Shamans, while familiar and embedded in local space, were recast as icons of cultural otherness or representatives of an imagined primitive past. Through the evolving languages of science, anthropology, and empire, the local was abstracted and exported, feeding global museum networks and shaping modern anthropology. Yet, the museums held onto the intimacy of place, preserving tensions between familiarity and spectacle, documentation and desire. By placing Siberia at the center of a broader intellectual and political history, Near and Desired Things challenges assumptions about where modern knowledge is made and redefines provincial spaces as sites of innovation and as forces that reshape the terms of empire. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies

Near and Desired Things: Shamanism in Late Imperial Local Siberian Museums (Cornell University Press, 2026) reveals nineteenth-century Siberian museums, built on Indigenous land and increasingly populated by political exiles, as active sites of ethnographic knowledge-making and centers of scientific research, regional identity, and colonial authority. Rather than collecting from distant colonies, these institutions concentrated on surrounding communities, their tools, beliefs, and everyday lives, to configure ideas about what counted as legitimate knowledge. Dr. Marisa Karyl Franz traces how Siberian museums helped construct shamanism as an ethnographic category. Shamans, while familiar and embedded in local space, were recast as icons of cultural otherness or representatives of an imagined primitive past. Through the evolving languages of science, anthropology, and empire, the local was abstracted and exported, feeding global museum networks and shaping modern anthropology. Yet, the museums held onto the intimacy of place, preserving tensions between familiarity and spectacle, documentation and desire. By placing Siberia at the center of a broader intellectual and political history, Near and Desired Things challenges assumptions about where modern knowledge is made and redefines provincial spaces as sites of innovation and as forces that reshape the terms of empire. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Near and Desired Things: Shamanism in Late Imperial Local Siberian Museums (Cornell University Press, 2026) reveals nineteenth-century Siberian museums, built on Indigenous land and increasingly populated by political exiles, as active sites of ethnographic knowledge-making and centers of scientific research, regional identity, and colonial authority. Rather than collecting from distant colonies, these institutions concentrated on surrounding communities, their tools, beliefs, and everyday lives, to configure ideas about what counted as legitimate knowledge. Dr. Marisa Karyl Franz traces how Siberian museums helped construct shamanism as an ethnographic category. Shamans, while familiar and embedded in local space, were recast as icons of cultural otherness or representatives of an imagined primitive past. Through the evolving languages of science, anthropology, and empire, the local was abstracted and exported, feeding global museum networks and shaping modern anthropology. Yet, the museums held onto the intimacy of place, preserving tensions between familiarity and spectacle, documentation and desire. By placing Siberia at the center of a broader intellectual and political history, Near and Desired Things challenges assumptions about where modern knowledge is made and redefines provincial spaces as sites of innovation and as forces that reshape the terms of empire. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

Near and Desired Things: Shamanism in Late Imperial Local Siberian Museums (Cornell University Press, 2026) reveals nineteenth-century Siberian museums, built on Indigenous land and increasingly populated by political exiles, as active sites of ethnographic knowledge-making and centers of scientific research, regional identity, and colonial authority. Rather than collecting from distant colonies, these institutions concentrated on surrounding communities, their tools, beliefs, and everyday lives, to configure ideas about what counted as legitimate knowledge. Dr. Marisa Karyl Franz traces how Siberian museums helped construct shamanism as an ethnographic category. Shamans, while familiar and embedded in local space, were recast as icons of cultural otherness or representatives of an imagined primitive past. Through the evolving languages of science, anthropology, and empire, the local was abstracted and exported, feeding global museum networks and shaping modern anthropology. Yet, the museums held onto the intimacy of place, preserving tensions between familiarity and spectacle, documentation and desire. By placing Siberia at the center of a broader intellectual and political history, Near and Desired Things challenges assumptions about where modern knowledge is made and redefines provincial spaces as sites of innovation and as forces that reshape the terms of empire. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Eliza May is the founder of Elevated Bass Music, a genre she built from scratch by fusing dubstep and bass music with singing bowls, tuning forks, healing frequencies, and personal storytelling. In this episode, she traces the whole arc — how a psychic in Russia once told her parents "all she hears is music," a childhood shaped by her sister's death and years of isolation in Siberia, and how music school taught her to keep performing even while terrified of crowds.We get into how DJing found her by accident, how scratching led her to DJ Qbert's Scratch University and eventually to a plane ticket to America to train with him in person, and the dream in Bali where she heard the words "elevated bass music" and woke up knowing she had to build it.She walks us through what actually goes into her sets: chakra-matched singing bowls, tuning forks, subconscious affirmations mixed low enough that you can't consciously hear them but still feel them.If you care about the person behind the music as much as the music itself, this is the one.#ElevatedBassMusic #DJElizaMay #BassMusic #Dubstep #SoundHealing #WomenInMusic #ElectronicMusic #ArtistStory #MusicPodcast #elizamay #gettingtoknowyou Connect With Eliza • Instagram: @djelizamay• Instagram: @elizamay.music• YouTube: @elv8_elizamay• YouTube: @ElizaMayTv

Hoy te cuento la historia de Jordan Jonas. Un tipo que creció en una granja en Idaho, leyó el Archipiélago Gulag con 17 años, se fue a Siberia a vivir con nómadas que crían renos y luego sobrevivió 77 días completamente solo en el ártico canadiense. Mató un alce con arco y flecha. Se enfrentó a un glotón a oscuras con un hacha. Y salió de todo eso con una filosofía de vida que me parece una de las más honestas y útiles que he escuchado en mucho tiempo. Este episodio no va de supervivencia. Va de propósito, de resiliencia y de qué ocurre cuando eliminas todas las capas de abstracción entre tú y la realidad.

Gina Johansen is a Swedish-born endurance athlete, adventurer, and a track work rider based in Sydney and Norway. She is currently preparing for a world record attempt to become the fastest woman to ski solo and unsupported to the South Pole in 2026.  She grew up on a horse farm in Sweden, where her love for horses and the outdoors began early. Gina spent eight years riding trackwork for leading Thoroughbred racing stables in Australia and is now back riding racehorses in Sydney alongside her polar training.  Her previous expeditions include becoming the first woman to cross Lake Baikal in Siberia solo by foot, skiing solo from North Cape to Jäckvik, crossing Svalbard on skis, cycling 2700km from Sydney to Cairns, and hiking the full length of Norway with her partner and their dog. She also spent eight years living near North Cape, the northernmost point of Europe, training in extreme Arctic conditions.  Through her journey, Gina hopes to inspire others—especially women—to push beyond their limits, take on big challenges, and discover what they're truly capable of. ***  New episodes of the Tough Girl Podcast drop every Tuesday at 7 AM (UK time)! Make sure to subscribe so you never miss the inspiring journeys and incredible stories of tough women pushing boundaries.  Do you want to support the Tough Girl Mission to increase the amount of female role models in the media in the world of adventure and physical challenges? Support via Patreon! Join me in making a difference by signing up here: www.patreon.com/toughgirlpodcast.  Your support makes a difference.  Thank you x *** Show notes From Sweden originally  Being based in Northern Norway (North Cape) for the past 8 years before moving to Sydney in December 2025 Riding racehorse in the early morning and training for her South Pole Expedition in the afternoon  Her goal - to ski solo and unsupported to the South Pole, attempting to break the women's speed record Gina shared her story on the Tough Girl Podcast - April 28th 2020 - Walking 3,000km the length of Norway, plus a solo crossing of Lake Baikal in Siberia You can listen to that episode HERE  What's been going on in the past 6 years  Living in remote mountain areas doing a lot of skiing, hiking, hunting and dealing with a lot of injuries  Trying to work on the financials to pay for the expedition  Doing training expeditions and building up her skills  After the Lake Baikal expedition in 2019 - starting to think about the next big challenge  Always wanting to go to Antarctica and the challenges of doing a solo expedition  Wanting a real test - both physically and mentally  The last 4 years being focused on the expedition  Dealing with injuries and set backs along the way Struggling to get the financial support to make it possible US$95,000 plus costs for equipment and flights  Needing to be ready fitness wise and mentally  What the planning looks like to plan an expedition of this size Trying not to get overwhelmed with the size of the challenge Taking some time out - to reset  Dealing with two stress fractures  Wanting to understand why she was getting stress fractures  Doing the rehab and keeping fit  Having smaller projects to focus on and having things to look forward to Working with a coach Starting at 5am and riding horse for 4.5 hrs Trying to eat a lot and not being afraid of eating fast carbs Handling set backs  Working with a physio  Focusing on staying positive Doing a crossing of Svalbard from East to West with a team of women Being in an environment with polar bears - needing to take on night watch shifts to keep the camp safe from polar bears  Mentally preparation before the challenge  Knowing it will hard and lonely  Also understanding it will be very tough  Focusing on the goal and being so motivated to reach it Discipline  The pain of disciple is lighter than the pain of regret The importance of socialising with friends - but organising this around training  If you want to achieve anything, you've got to put in the work Showing up even when you don't feel like it Needing to make the final payment by August, and send the equipment over in September  Trying to get sponsorship from corporate and individuals  Meeting the right people  How to connect with Gina Final words of advice for women who want to step outside their comfort zone When things go wrong, that is when the best stories are created!    Social Media Website: www.ginajohansen.com Instagram: @Ginajohansen91  Facebook: www.facebook.com/ginajohansen91

Deep beneath the frozen waters of Lake Baikal, the deepest freshwater lake on Earth, Soviet military divers allegedly encountered something that should not exist. According to a strange Cold War–era story circulating among Russian military circles and later cryptozoology communities, a group of Soviet divers exploring the depths of Lake Baikal in the 1980s reported encountering large humanoid swimmers wearing reflective silver suits moving silently through the dark water. Lake Baikal is not just any lake. Located in Siberia, it is the deepest and oldest freshwater lake on the planet, plunging over 1,600 meters (5,300 feet) into darkness. Its ecosystem is unique, hosting thousands of endemic species that evolved in isolation for millions of years. But what the divers allegedly saw was something far beyond unusual wildlife. According to the report, the divers encountered three massive humanoid figures, estimated to be nearly three meters tall, moving effortlessly in the frigid depths. These entities were described as wearing metallic suits and helmet-like head coverings, yet the divers claimed they saw no obvious breathing apparatus. The beings reportedly swam with incredible speed and control despite the extreme pressure and near-freezing temperatures of Baikal's deep water. Thank you for watching Roanoke Tales! Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/RoanokeTalesPatreon Roanoke Gaming: https://www.youtube.com/@UCs8lYkna2S6DkcHO9o2008A Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roanokegaming/ Twitter: https://x.com/RoannokeGaming Thank you for watching Roanoke tales Wendigo illustration made by Tania Sanchez-Fortun. Here are the links! Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/tania_sanchezfortun_art/ Cara ; https://cara.app/tsanchezfortun Artstation : https://www.artstation.com/taniasanchezfortun Go and check out his work! The story becomes even stranger when Soviet command allegedly ordered the divers to attempt to capture one of the creatures using a weighted net. When the divers moved to intercept the humanoids, they were reportedly hit with a powerful force or pressure wave, violently propelling them upward toward the surface. Several divers allegedly suffered severe decompression injuries, a dangerous condition caused by ascending too quickly from deep water. While the authenticity of this report remains controversial, the story raises fascinating biological and evolutionary questions. Could an aquatic humanoid species theoretically evolve in an isolated environment like Lake Baikal? What adaptations would be necessary for an organism to survive at those depths? In this video, we break down the Lake Baikal humanoid swimmer incident from both a scientific and speculative perspective. We'll explore the extreme conditions of the lake's deep ecosystem, including crushing pressure, low light levels, and near-freezing temperatures. We'll also examine how real deep-water organisms adapt to these environments and whether any evolutionary pathway could realistically produce a large, intelligent aquatic organism capable of maneuvering through Baikal's abyssal depths. We'll also discuss the history of Soviet deep-water exploration, how Cold War secrecy helped fuel strange rumors, and why stories like this continue to circulate in cryptozoology and unexplained mystery communities today. Were the Soviet divers misinterpreting a natural phenomenon in the darkness of the lake? Could the story be an exaggerated military anecdote that evolved into modern folklore? Or does Lake Baikal still hide unknown creatures adapted to one of the most extreme freshwater environments on Earth? Let's dive into the mystery. #LakeBaikal #Cryptids #DeepSeaMysteries

Born in Russia in 1836, he became one of the great Orthodox missionaries of modern times. As a boy, he resolved to become a missionary in the far East. With the counsel and blessing of Bishop Innocent of Siberia and Alaska, he went to Japan in 1861 and joined a small Russian mission there. Though the mission's official purpose was to minister to the Russian consular community, the consul-general who invited Hieromonk Nikolai hoped to bring the light of the Orthodox Faith to the Japanese people as well. Realizing that he could only hope to convert the Japanese people if they understood one another well, Fr Nikolai immersed himself in the study of Japanese thought, culture and language. Over the course of his life he translated most of the Bible and most of the Orthodox services into Japanese, and became a fluent speaker of the language. He encountered much resistance: Preaching of Christian doctrine was officially banned in Japan, and a Samurai once approached him with the words "Foreigners must die!" It was this same Samurai who later became his first Japanese priest. In 1880 he was elevated to Bishop of Japan. During the Russo-Japanese war he remained in Japan and labored successfully to overcome nationalist strife that might have harmed or destroyed the Church in Japan. He encouraged all his Japanese faithful to pray for the Japanese armed forces, though he explained that as a Russian he could not do so, and excluded himself from all public services for the duration of the war. He sent Russian-speaking Japanese priests to the prison camps to minister to Russian prisoners of war. At the time of his repose in 1912, after forty-eight years in Japan, St Nikolai left a Cathedral, eight churches, more than 400 chapels and meeting houses, 34 priests, 8 deacons, 115 lay catechists, and 34,110 Orthodox faithful. The Church of Japan is now an autonomous Orthodox Church under the mantle of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Paul Metsa is a legendary musician and songwriter from Minnesota. Born on the Iron Range, he has been based in Minneapolis since 1978. He has received seven Minnesota Music Awards and has played more than five thousand gigs, including forays to Iceland and Siberia.

Ukrainian deep-strike drones are acting as mechanical Bobbit worms—buried deep in the operational rear, snapping Russia's supply chains in half. In Episode 2.47, we wade through the ashes of burning logistics hubs, examine the return of Soviet-style digital price-fixing, and dissect the escalating panic inside the Kremlin elite. From 154 destroyed energy nodes in occupied Crimea to the Ryazan Wildberries double-tap, the "careful war" is bleeding out. Meanwhile, State Duma Speaker Volodin orders the public "not to vibrate" while the FSB hunts imaginary New Zealand spies in Siberia. We cap it all off with the downfall of Andrea Pirlo and our formal endorsement of Count Binface for the Clacton by-election.Become our patron:https://www.patreon.com/theeasternborderMerch store + another option for memberships:https://theeasternborder-shop.fourthwall.com/Follow what's going on here in the very border of Eastern Europe:https://bsky.app/profile/theeasternborder.lvDownload all episodes for free on our website; pictures accompanying certain episodes can be found there as well!http://theeasternborder.lv/Car4Ukraine Eastern Border Summer Campaign!https://car4ukraine.com/campaigns/summer-sunshine-trucks-2026-eastern-borderYouTube - as this one has visuals:https://youtu.be/_ChUkgwosqQSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/theeasternborder. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Annie Jacobsen on BIOLOGICAL WAR: how a single lab leak could take us from outbreak to anarchy in six days — and why bio may be scarier than nuclear. WIN a signed copy of BIOLOGICAL WAR or NUCLEAR WAR, a meteorite & more — enter free: https://briankeating.com/annie (Join there for the free Biological War Scenario Simulation and Source Dossier + early access to my next Nobel-laureate interview.) Covid killed ~1% of the people it infected. Pneumonic plague, untreated, kills nearly 100% within 24 hours. In her new book Biological War: A Scenario, bestselling journalist Annie Jacobsen war-games what happens when an engineered pathogen escapes — drawing on interviews with presidential advisors, secretaries of defense, STRATCOM commanders, epidemiologists, and directors of Operation Warp Speed. We get into gain-of-function, the Soviet bioweapons program, mirror life, AI and bioweapons (including her conversation with Sam Altman), the Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter — and why the first 24 hours decide everything. ENTER THE GIVEAWAY + GET THE FREE SOURCE DOSSIER: https://briankeating.com/annie GET THE BOOK (Annie narrates the audiobook): https://www.amazon.es/Biological-War-non-fiction-thriller-bestselling/dp/1911742035 https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details?id=AQAAAEBqvjj-QM 0:00 Covid was 1%. Pneumonic plague is 100%. 1:31 Why this conversation matters (please subscribe) 2:05 Don't judge a book by its cover — Biological War 4:54 "You can only mitigate extermination" 5:50 Reporting a classified world without a clearance 9:00 Gain-of-function: cure or weapon? 11:22 BSL-4, Vektor & the Siberia lab leak 15:28 Katalin Karikó & the two sides of the lab bench 18:06 Paul Berg & when biology turned dangerous 20:42 Paranoia as doctrine: why the Soviets cheated 23:13 Tailored bioweapons & genetic privacy 27:16 Could it happen again? What Covid taught us 33:40 The WHO "not airborne" mistake & the collapse of trust 36:52 Both sides failed: the vaccine politics 39:48 The "euphoria" enhancement — dark-hearted evil 44:02 Why "airborne" changes everything 45:50 Climate vs. AI: the next scenario? 48:12 Biological twilight & "devolution" 52:52 Fritz Haber and the hubris of genius 54:36 AI + bio: the real threat 1:00:34 Mirror life: the extinction-level horror 1:04:44 Trinity Day, Iran & "the atomic weapon" 1:08:26 The Fermi Paradox & the Great Filter 1:09:34 A gift for Annie (a meteorite + a piece of the Moon) 1:16:36 Igor Domaradsky's secret notes 1:21:12 Daschle, anthrax & "inhuman things just to survive" 1:21:56 If you were President: shutting down the internet 1:27:18 Who dies first — first responders and mothers 1:33:02 Sam Altman, ChatGPT & the change OpenAI made 1:37:26 "You want me on that wall" 1:40:00 A hopeful ending ABOUT ANNIE JACOBSEN Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Nuclear War: A Scenario, Operation Paperclip, Area 51, and Surprise, Kill, Vanish. GO DEEPER • Katalin Karikó — the mRNA breakthrough: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3oPZMPMlzsEFEyvVHA5dAE • Jay Bhattacharya — Follow Science, Not Scientists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTnJNXYFg9M • Freeman Dyson — Into the Impossible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egpsFbbpkHQ A FEW SOURCES FROM THE BOOK (full dossier at https://briankeating.com/annie) • "Confronting risks of mirror life," Science (2024): https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ads9158 • Ken Alibek, Biohazard (the Soviet program from the man who ran it) • Biological Weapons Convention (1972): https://disarmament.unoda.org/en/our-work/weapons-mass-destruction/biological-weapons/biological-weapons-convention SUBSCRIBE so guests like Annie keep saying yes: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 Newsletter + meteorite offer: https://BrianKeating.com/edu: https://briankeating.com/annie Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join What scares you more — nuclear war or biological war? Tell me in the comments. #AnnieJacobsen #BiologicalWar #Bioweapons #Pandemic #BrianKeating #IntoTheImpossible #NuclearWar #MirrorLife #AI #Biosecurity Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Be Comforted Be Comforted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Carly's really into a new game, the appearance of a mysterious footprint might be a bad omen, and the time elevator sends our friends back to 1900's Siberia to investigate an explosion that didn't leave much of a mark. Originally aired 7/24/24.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Silicon Bites Ep372 | 2026-07-21 | They've Started Burying Putin Alive. The oligarchs are running, Beijing is hedging, the ratings are collapsing — every group that holds this regime up is quietly preparing for the world after Putin. They have not yet moved against him, but the life support for his regime is being switched off one input at a time. Soon the plug will be pulled, as Putin's relentless war is dragging Russia down the abyss and taking everyone in a benighted, failing empire with him. In a single week in July 2026, Bloomberg documented the oligarchs stampeding for the exits with tens of billions of dollars; the Wall Street Journal revealed that Xi Jinping now treats Putin as a supplicant and is quietly building relationships with the people who will run Russia after him; the Kremlin's own pollsters recorded the steepest one-week collapse in Putin's approval since the mobilisation panic of 2022; and Russia's Defence Ministry admitted its flagship drone force has recruited barely a quarter of its plan. Four pillars. One message. The people who know this regime best have stopped believing in it.----------ACTIVE CAMPAIGN:We are raising funds for 5 of 15 Vampire DronesSilicon Curtain for Kupiansk Vampires. Dzyga's Paw, together with Jonathan Fink, is joining forces to raise $40,000 to provide the Khartiia Brigade with Vampire Drones.https://dzygaspaw.com/silicon-curtain-for-kupiansk-vampiresThese heavy bombers are designed to destroy manpower and equipment, as well as for remote mining. The Vampire UAV, manufactured by Skyfall, has proven itself to be one of the most effective weapons in the Kupiansk direction. Skyfall is one of Ukraine's largest defense tech companies, producing Vampire bomber drones, various modifications of Shrike FPV drones, P1-SUN, Shahed drone interceptors, communication systems, and components.----------SUPPORT THE CHANNEL:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.gofundme.com/f/scaling-up-campaign-to-fight-authoritarian-disinformation----------TRUSTED CHARITIES ON THE GROUND:Save Ukrainehttps://www.saveukraineua.org/Superhumans - Hospital for war traumashttps://superhumans.com/en/UNBROKEN - Treatment. Prosthesis. Rehabilitation for Ukrainians in Ukrainehttps://unbroken.org.ua/Come Back Alivehttps://savelife.in.ua/en/Chefs For Ukraine - World Central Kitchenhttps://wck.org/relief/activation-chefs-for-ukraineUNITED24 - An initiative of President Zelenskyyhttps://u24.gov.ua/Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundationhttps://prytulafoundation.org----------SOURCES:Bloomberg — "Russia's Elite Are Moving Billions Beyond Putin's Wartime Grasp" (16 July 2026), via Yahoo FinanceMeduza — "Russia's richest businessmen are moving billions abroad amid fears of asset seizures, Bloomberg reports" (16 July 2026)Ukrainska Pravda — "Russian oligarchs move billions abroad for fear of asset confiscation" (16 July 2026)The Wall Street Journal — "Putin Was Xi's Role Model. Now He's the Junior Partner." (14–15 July 2026), via tovima.comMeduza — recap of the WSJ report on Power of Siberia 2 and Putin's supplicant status (15 July 2026)RBC-Ukraine — "Xi preparing for power shift in Russia as Putin losing China's trust — WSJ" (15 July 2026)Meduza — "Putin's approval rating just posted its steepest drop since Russia invaded Ukraine" (17 July 2026)Kyiv Post — "Putin's Approval Rating Sees Biggest Weekly Drop Since 2022 Amid Fuel Crisis" (17 July 2026)Charter97 — "Putin's Approval Rating In Russia Has Fallen To A Record Low" (17 July 2026)Kyiv Post — "Russia Struggles to Staff New Drone Force as Military Recruitment Falters – Report" (20 July 2026, citing CIT and Ukraine's SZRU)Janis Kluge — "Federal budget data shows 71,216 new contract soldiers in Q1 2026, lowest in 3 years" (9 June 2026)----------

Greetings Dear Listeners,This episode is packed with information, ideas, thoughts and insights for your listening consideration.  It is always an honor and delight when I'm in conversation with my sister-friend, Kathy Harmon-Luber. In today's segment she brings a wealth of insights and knowledge about the "Dwarf Planets"  which are just starting to be recognized in the astrology community.  The importance of their place in astrology is immense.  They appear to be offering a re-balancing  of astrological knowledge, understanding and wisdom, by deepening  the view of the emerging feminine archetype.(Please Note:  At the 40 minute mark, Kathy will be doing a Guided Sound Bath. As you listen please refrain from driving.  Also better listening with headphones when relaxing in the sound bath.)Insights for this New Moon in CancerLunar Theme: This New Moon in Cancer brings a powerful awareness about transformation as we move through the next  6 months and beyond. Questions such as how do we take care of self through more rest, learning more truthful and meaningful connection with others?  The sign of Cancer is endowed with great empathy, emotional resilience, and the capacity to heal the emotional woundedness in themselves and others.  They have another great asset in the form of their unparalleled psychic and spiritual ability for getting the answers they need for living in an authentic and heart centered way. ( This healing includes a  Cancer sign country, in particular, the United States).Cancer is associated with the 4th house, guided by the Moon. This is the house of the “mothering energy”.  The lunar house is at the root and foundation of life.  Here's where the subconscious patterns and beliefs about life  and self are developed. Since Cancer is part of the triad of water signs, this sign brings emphasis to the experience of feeling in tune with life through one's emotions. Each person has a  unique soul journey. How  is this  journey being revealed in each person's life? The following are some prompts to help examine those core experiences that every person has to face. On a personal level how will each of us deal with the life systems that are no longer functioning?  Notice Capricorn energy.  See previous episode, Full Moon in Capricorn.The dilemma of what is  “home”?  This could be the family of origin, chosen family group, more specifically the meaning of home within your own being ?The regard and treatment of our “home, planet Earth” is on the line and how does this impact your view of yourself, and the way you move through the world, the societal collective experience?How are all the inhabitants upon the planet going to reconnect with our“home” and live more equitably with one another?Rebirth and AwakeningThis New Moon in Cancer brings everyone face to face with the question of how to embrace the ability to be self-nurturing, truthful, loving, creative, and willing to take the “high road” in relating to others.The sign of Cancer is the potential to activate self-insight, deep nurturing, and the experience of understanding the emotion of vulnerability. Some Important Questions“How  does an individual embrace, experience and move through the times of energy constriction, inertia, confusion, emotional numbness, physical blockage, psychic delusion, and challenges to the spirit?”This sign is fully available to facilitate big life changes,  because it's operating from the energy of the Moon, the planet(luminary) that provides planetary and Soul guidance. The rebirth and healing is the essential evolutionary paradigm shift that is moving through the entire collective on this planet.  Currently, the massive and pervasive health, socio-political, cultural,  and spiritual crises are indicators that healing can only occur when everyone is included as having value as a human being. The fighting, dissension, and the false belief systems about who is entitled to what, within the world “family”, meaning the collective of humanity, will continue to falter and fall.“Come Home to Yourself” Steps for Embodying the Cancer archetype  which represents the essence of your innermost expression of self.  The lunar energy is the hidden part that is not as obvious as the Sun sign energy,  but just as important.Cancer symbolizes birthing, mothering and nurturing experience.  It represents the roots, home, family, ancestral lineage that provides the foundation for living. As a “feminine” sign, meaning there is an innate receptivity and heart-centeredness that taps directly into the cosmic/universal energy.“Masculine” energy seeks an action oriented, ego expressed and personal hands on approach.This sign is part of the triad of three water signs, which all embody the intuitive ability to sense  life through the emotions. Cancer is the sign that brings emotional comfort to others in a creative and nurturing way. This sign provides circumstances and life situations where they give solace to others. On a physical level, Cancer is associated with nourishment. Food serves as a particular way of showing love. The ability to support and feed others, but choose to deny nurturing and nourishment to others.Cancer represents the remembrance of the ancestral connections. It represents “emotional intelligence”and  the ability to initiate movement using this intuitive awareness.  Along with the other water signs, there is a psychic understanding and awareness of the 6th sensory realm.   The Cancer archetype is revealed as the “I Mother”Principle. This sign possesses the ability to connect through the power of emotional and psychic clarity. Some Words from  Kathy about the New Moon and Dwarf Planets:"Yes, the July 14th New Moon at 21° Cancer invites nourishing self-care and intuition – but the question isn't merely “How do I nourish myself?”. Something much larger is happening. Humanity is standing in a rare evolutionary moment – a Golden Era, a time portended in the ancient prophecies of indigenous peoples of N & S Americas, the Inuits, ancestors from Siberia, Asia, India, Africa, Australia, the world over.I believe each of us alive on Earth at this particularly challenging time is here for an important reason. To shine your unique light. To remember who you are and awaken to your place in the unfolding story. There's only one YOU in the entire universe. Right now, our world needs the unique gifts only YOU were born to share. The July's sky's deeper question is 'Why am I here at this time on Earth? What unique gift did my soul come to bring and how am I meant to share my gifts with the world?' Making this the perfect time for reflecting on what your soul purpose is at this transformational time in humanity's evolution.For many of us, this may be the deepest invitation of this lifetime… the dialogue we have with our soul, the Creator, the Cosmos. If you're not in dialogue with those questions then, as poet Mary Oliver wrote, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild & precious life?” Other notable planetary-cosmic events:Mercury in Cancer, retrogradeFour planets at 4 degrees, described as "Barbault's BasketEmergence of feminine energy through the Dwarf planetsContact for Kathy: Kathy Harmon-LuberCertified Sound Therapy Practitioner | Reiki Master | Award-winning photographer | poet | musicianBest-selling Author, "Suffering to Thriving: Your Toolkit for Navigating Your Healing Journey", SufferingToThriving.comHappy New Moon,MaeRuth Let's have an Astrology Conversation.  I look forward to seeing you.  Now is the time.https://www.soulsoundinsights.com/light-reading.htmlhttps://www.soulsoundinsights.com/music-musings-meditation.htmlI am proud to announce my new offering as a Certified Creative Depth Coach.  As a Creative Depth Coach, I provide guidance, support and soul insights on how to discover, explore and navigate your life by  recognizing your magnificent "Creative Genius". Some of my modalities and Soul tools are "Art as Process" EFT Tapping,  Sound and Music for Inner Journeying , using the wisdom of Astrology, Tarot, Oracle and Numerology. l   Enjoy Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Taurus Drumming Video:https://vimeo.com/769123538/b344b2b541"Calling the Wild" or " QuickSilver and Astro Magic" Original Music by MaeRuth McCants 

Are global secret accords leaving the U.S. vulnerable, or is a massive military response against Iran already underway? Brian Kilmeade breaks down the hidden flaws of the 14-point Iran MOU, the revolutionary shift in drone warfare from Ukraine to Siberia, and the shocking courtroom evidence finally dismantling the Charlie Kirk trial conspiracy theories. [00:00:00] Adm. Robert Harward (Ret.)   [00:18:27] Gerri Willis   [00:36:51] Mark Penn   [00:55:14] Rebeccah Heinrichs   [01:13:38] Marc Thiessen   [01:32:02] Riley Gaines Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Has the Iran war validated China's decades-long approach to energy security?In this episode of Energy Vista, Leslie Palti-Guzman sits down with Erica Downs, Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy, following her recent trip to China.Together, they explore how Beijing weathered the Iran war, why China proved more resilient than many expected, and what this means for global energy markets and the intensifying competition between Chinese and American energy models.The conversation examines:• Whether China's reduced LNG and crude purchases helped stabilize global energy markets• China's balancing act between Iran and the United States• Whether de-dollarization remains more narrative than reality• Whether the Iran war could revive Russia's Power of Siberia 2 pipeline• The growing competition between the United States and China to power the AI economyA wide-ranging discussion about energy security, geopolitics, maritime trade, and two competing narratives of energy power

In this episode of The President's Daily Brief: Cuba's next-generation Castro is stepping out of the shadows. We examine the first-ever interview between Raúl Castro's grandson and a U.S. news outlet, why he's suddenly reaching out to the American people, and what it may reveal about Havana's strategy toward the Trump administration. President Trump heads to the NATO summit in Turkey with a clear message for America's allies: it's time for Europe to take far greater responsibility for its own defense. We break down the summit's high-stakes agenda and what it could mean for the future of the alliance. Russia and Ukraine exchange major blows ahead of the NATO meeting, with Moscow launching another deadly strike on Kyiv while Ukrainian drones hit Russia's largest oil refinery deep in Siberia in one of the longest-range attacks of the war. In today's Back of the Brief: British fighter jets scramble to intercept a Russian military aircraft after it flies dangerously close to the Royal Navy's flagship aircraft carrier during NATO operations near Iceland. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President's Daily Brief by visiting https://PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief.  YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Acre Gold: Turn your pocket change into physical 24-karat gold and enter to win a limited-edition Hot Wheels gold bar at https://GetAcreGold.com/PDB QUO: Make this the season where no opportunity slips away. Try QUO for free PLUS get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to https://Quo.com/PDB Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-agression pact in late August 1939, it sent shockwaves throughout the entire world, but seemed especially ominous for the Jews of Europe. Now that these sworn enemies were friends, war seemed inevitable, and what lay in store for the future of Polish Jewry? When war did indeed break out several days later, western Poland ultimately fell under Nazi occupation, while the Soviets occupied Poland's east. Polish Jewry was in a hopeless situation, where the Soviet Union was often viewed as the lesser of two evils. Soviet persecution led to the deportation of many to Siberia, which in a cruel irony proved to be a salvation as they were spared the Nazi Final Solution. The Molotov Von Ribbentrop pact had significant ramifications not only on world history and World War II, but also on Jewish history and the Holocaust.  Subscribe to Jewish History Soundbites Podcast on: PodBean: https://jsoundbites.podbean.com/ or your favorite podcast platform Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram at @Jsoundbites For sponsorship opportunities about your favorite topics of Jewish history or feedback contact Yehuda at: yehuda@yehudageberer.com

It is the deepest lake in the world, the oldest lake in the world, and it holds more freshwater than all five of the Great Lakes combined.  Hidden in Siberia, Lake Baikal is a place where geology, evolution, history, and myth all come together.  It has its own seal species, its own unique ecosystem, and a story that stretches back millions of years.  Learn more about Lake Baikal, one of the greatest natural wonders on Earth, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Shop the store at Shop.Everything-Everywhere.com Sponsors Hexclad Get 10% off your order at hexclad.com/DAILY Mint Mobile Save 50% on Unlimited premium wireless plans starting at $15/month at MintMobile.com/EED Quince Go to quince.com/daily for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order! DripDrop Go to dripdrop.com and use promo code EVERYTHING for 20% off your first order! Subscribe to the podcast!  https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Austin Oetken & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Discord Server: https://discord.gg/Ds7Rx7jvPJ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/  Disce aliquid novi cotidie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-agression pact in late August 1939, it sent shockwaves throughout the entire world, but seemed especially ominous for the Jews of Europe. Now that these sworn enemies were friends, war seemed inevitable, and what lay in store for the future of Polish Jewry? When war did indeed break out several days later, western Poland ultimately fell under Nazi occupation, while the Soviets occupied Poland's east. Polish Jewry was in a hopeless situation, where the Soviet Union was often viewed as the lesser of two evils. Soviet persecution led to the deportation of many to Siberia, which in a cruel irony proved to be a salvation as they were spared the Nazi Final Solution. The Molotov Von Ribbentrop pact had significant ramifications not only on world history and World War II, but also on Jewish history and the Holocaust.  Subscribe to Jewish History Soundbites Podcast on: PodBean: https://jsoundbites.podbean.com/ or your favorite podcast platform Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram at @Jsoundbites For sponsorship opportunities about your favorite topics of Jewish history or feedback contact Yehuda at: yehuda@yehudageberer.com

This week, we travel far and wide, from the unpopulated reaches of Siberia to the very deepest parts of the galaxy, and then return to our North Shore roots. Yes, there's another WW2 story in the offing, but, yet again, you haven't read one just like this. And, sure, we're doing the Russian thing again, but there aren't any gentlemen involved this week, we promise. The big question, of course, is: How did Elizabeth Strout do with her depiction of our home turf? This fortnight, we read: "The Sleeping Land," by Ella Alexander "The Things We Never Say," by Elizabeth Strout "Massif," by Garth Nix "Rooms for Vanishing," by Stuart Nadler What sound effects did we give each of these books? You'll just have to listen and find out! 

Ten years on, Captain America: Civil War still hits different, and dig into why. We revisit the Sokovia Accords, the clash between Tony and Steve's philosophies, and the franchise-changing introductions of Black Panther and Spider-Man. From the Lagos opening to the airport hangar brawl to that gut-punch finale in Siberia, it's a conversation about trauma, loyalty, and choosing sides—and why this one Avengers movie still sparks debate a decade later. (Mild spoilers ahead for a movie that's had 10 years to spread the word.) Join the conversation across generations, only on Father.Son.Galaxy.

The Russian state isn't just collapsing; it's being quietly appraised for a corporate buyout. In Episode 2.41, we dive into the terminal loop of the imperial engine. While British Storm Shadows vaporize the Voronezh Semiconductor Plant and the 31st Air Defense Division gets systematically wiped off the map in Crimea, the Kremlin elite are complaining about diplomatic visas and banning the word "restriction" at the gas pump. All Hail Hypnotoad.We break down the visceral, physical reality of the Russian fuel death spiral, where farmers are paying double for diesel and civilian cars are dying on the highway from toxic "Euro-3" sludge. We track the $103 billion federal budget crater, the 1.5 million empty concrete apartments dragging down the Russian middle class, and the terrifying realization among Z-patriots that Beijing is quietly deploying unmarked corporate armies into Siberia to foreclose on the empire. From nineteenth-century Maxim guns mounted on pickup trucks to $65 payouts for amputee veterans, the social contract is dead. The rats aren't just fleeing the ship—they're negotiating with the iceberg.Become our patron:https://www.patreon.com/theeasternborderMerch store + another option for memberships:https://theeasternborder-shop.fourthwall.com/Follow what's going on here in the very border of Eastern Europe:https://bsky.app/profile/theeasternborder.lvDownload all episodes for free on our website; pictures accompanying certain episodes can be found there as well!http://theeasternborder.lv/Car4Ukraine Eastern Border Summer Campaign!https://car4ukraine.com/campaigns/summer-sunshine-trucks-2026-eastern-borderSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/theeasternborder. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Silicon Bites Ep357 | 2026-06-22 | When the island runs dry: how Ukraine turned Putin's crown jewel into his most exposed nerve — an Achilles heel rather than a strategic asset – and why the pumps going dry on Russia Day's weekend is the moment the myth of Putin's invincibility died. At nine o'clock this morning, in occupied Crimea, the petrol stopped. Not only rationed. Not accepting coupon-only. Not capped at twenty litres. Stopped entirely. The panic has truly set in. The Kremlin's man on the peninsula, Sergey Aksyonov, posted to Telegram that from 09:00 on Sunday 21 June, fuel would be sold to nobody — not for cash, not by card, not on a voucher, not to a private citizen, not to a business. Only the state gets to refuel now. This of course puts the military requirements above the population. Absolutely standard for Russia. ----------ACTIVE CAMPAIGN:We are raising funds for 5 of 15 Vampire DronesSilicon Curtain for Kupiansk Vampires. Dzyga's Paw, together with Jonathan Fink, is joining forces to raise $40,000 to provide the Khartiia Brigade with Vampire Drones.https://dzygaspaw.com/silicon-curtain-for-kupiansk-vampiresThese heavy bombers are designed to destroy manpower and equipment, as well as for remote mining. The Vampire UAV, manufactured by Skyfall, has proven itself to be one of the most effective weapons in the Kupiansk direction. Skyfall is one of Ukraine's largest defense tech companies, producing Vampire bomber drones, various modifications of Shrike FPV drones, P1-SUN, Shahed drone interceptors, communication systems, and components.----------SUPPORT THE CHANNEL:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.gofundme.com/f/scaling-up-campaign-to-fight-authoritarian-disinformation----------TRUSTED CHARITIES ON THE GROUND:Save Ukrainehttps://www.saveukraineua.org/Superhumans - Hospital for war traumashttps://superhumans.com/en/UNBROKEN - Treatment. Prosthesis. Rehabilitation for Ukrainians in Ukrainehttps://unbroken.org.ua/Come Back Alivehttps://savelife.in.ua/en/Chefs For Ukraine - World Central Kitchenhttps://wck.org/relief/activation-chefs-for-ukraineUNITED24 - An initiative of President Zelenskyyhttps://u24.gov.ua/Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundationhttps://prytulafoundation.org----------SOURCES:Euronews — Russian-occupied Crimea suspends petrol sales amid fuel crisis (21 June 2026)The Moscow Times — Ukrainian Strikes on Russian-Annexed Crimea Kill 4, Pause Fuel Sales (21 June 2026)Bloomberg — Russia-Occupied Crimea Halts Fuel Sales After Ukrainian Attacks (21 June 2026)WRAL / AP — Ukrainian attacks prompt Russian-held Crimea to halt civilian gasoline sales (21 June 2026)The New Voice of Ukraine — Fuel sales halted in occupied Crimea as fire burns at Kerch fuel terminal (21 June 2026)The New Voice of Ukraine — Explosions reported across occupied Crimea amid large drone attack (21 June 2026)Ukrainska Pravda — Explosions reported in occupied Crimea, fires break out in Kerch (21 June 2026)LIGA.net — Video of the attacks on the Port of Kerch on June 21, 2026 (21 June 2026)Kyiv Independent — Oil terminal, port infrastructure reportedly set ablaze on both sides of Kerch Strait (21 June 2026)Kyiv Independent — Ukrainian drones strike Russian oil, gas sites in Crimea and Siberia (20 June 2026)Kyiv Independent — 'Hell is beginning' — Ukraine could isolate occupied Crimea, Fedorov says (17 June 2026)Ukrainska Pravda — Crimea will become isolated due to Ukrainian drone strikes, Ukraine's defence minister says (17 June 2026)----------

Justin Bruch is back in the Farm4Fun studio, and as always, the conversation goes far beyond the original topic. What starts as a discussion about a recent trip to Spain and the Maya Corn head factory quickly turns into a fascinating journey through global agriculture. Justin shares stories from managing large-scale farming operations in Ukraine, developing farms in Brazil, working in Africa, and helping introduce innovative equipment solutions that eventually led to the creation of Maya Corn heads in North America. In this episode, the crew discusses: Touring the Maya Corn head factory in Spain How Maya Corn heads were discovered while farming in Ukraine Managing more than 250,000 acres across multiple countries The realities of farming in Ukraine before and during wartime Stories from Russia, Siberia, Africa, Brazil, and Canada Why Ukraine may have some of the best farmland in the world Global differences in farming practices and technology adoption Corn head design, reliability, and residue management The impact of tariffs and international trade on agriculture equipment Rising fertilizer and diesel costs facing American farmers Soil health, carbon sequestration, and regenerative agriculture Organic farming opportunities and market challenges Why equipment efficiency matters more than ever in tight-margin years Justin also dives into the economics of modern farming, discussing nitrogen availability, residue breakdown, organic matter, and practical ways farmers can improve profitability while building healthier soils. The conversation includes an honest look at current agricultural policy, 45Z opportunities, regenerative agriculture, and what the future may hold for American producers. Along the way, listeners will hear unforgettable stories involving international travel, farming in post-Soviet Ukraine, navigating foreign business environments, and lessons learned from agriculture around the globe. Whether you're interested in equipment, agronomy, world agriculture, or simply great storytelling, this episode delivers all of the above. Want Farm4Profit Merch? Custom order your favorite items today!https://farmfocused.com/farm-4profit/ Don't forget to like the podcast on all platforms and leave a review where ever you listen! Website: www.Farm4Profit.comShareable episode link: https://intro-to-farm4profit.simplecast.comEmail address: Farm4profitllc@gmail.comCall/Text: 515.207.9640Subscribe to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSR8c1BrCjNDDI_Acku5XqwFollow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@farm4profitllc Connect with us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Farm4ProfitLLC/Farm4Profit Media is not a financial, legal, or tax advisor. Content is provided for informational purposes only, and we serve solely as a platform for third-party opinions. Any actions taken based on this content are at your own risk. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Russia has long been a cradle of modern longevity science, even before its current president started spending billions to extend his life. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by David Tatasciore and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King. Russian President Vladimir Putin sunbathing during a vacation in southern Siberia. Photo by Alexey NIKOLSKY / SPUTNIK / AFP via Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In August of 1993, six experienced young hikers and their extremely experienced guide went up into the mountains of Siberia. About a week later, only one of them returned, bloodied and traumatized. Her story would change over the years and spark decades of debate as to what actually happened to the rest of her group. Strange and Unexplained is a podcast from Grab Bag Collab & Three Goose Entertainment and is a journey into the uncomfortable and the unknowable that will leave you both laughing and sleeping with the lights on. You can get early and ad-free episodes and much more over at www.grabbagcollab.comFollow us on InstagramEpisode Sponsors:Storyworth. This year, give Dad a gift that captures who he really is, before the stories get harder to remember. Father's Day is Sunday, June 21st. Order RIGHT NOW and save up to $20 at STORYWORTH.com/daisy. Alloy. Get your menopause treatment plan today. Visit myalloy.com and use code STRANGE for $20 off your first order! #AgeGracefully

Michael Bernstam examines the failure of Russia's Power of Siberia 2 pipeline deal, as Vladimir Putin left Beijingwithout securing the agreement while China shows no immediate need for the gas. Furthermore, China demanded to pay domestic Russian prices, which would yield no profit for Moscow. (10)BAKU

SCHEDULE THE JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW, 5-27-26.APRIL 1900 OTTAWA.Cliff May discusses the deepening crisis in Cuba, where extreme food and electricity shortages have led officials to describe it as a failing state. However, the regime has reportedly received hundreds of attack drones from Russia and Iran, posing a new offensive threat to U.S. interests in the Caribbean. (1)Cliff May examines the empty pageantry of the Trump-Xi summit in Beijing, where the high-profile ceremony produced no major deals regarding trade or artificial intelligence. Xi Jinping made no concessions on human rights issues, such as the persecution of Christians or the Uyghurs. (2)Jon Hartley discusses the confirmation of Kevin Warsh as the new Federal Reserve Chairman, bringing a hawkish reputation focused on reducing the Fed's expanded balance sheet. Warsh advocates for a return to principles linking money growth directly to inflation control. (3)Jon Hartley proposes a new agreement modeled after the 1951 Accord that would separate the missions of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury. Under this plan, the Fed would focus strictly on short-term rates and price stability rather than long-term debt management. (4)Captain James Fanell analyzes the Balikatan military exercise, which featured 17,000 troops and, for the first time, combat forces from Japan participating in counter-invasion training. The drills demonstrated the capacity of allied nations to successfully target and strike enemy vessels at sea. (5)General Blaine Holt discusses Russian hypersonic threats and the shift to asymmetric drone warfare, noting Russia's threats of using weapons of mass destruction against Kyiv to warn European leaders against further intervention. Meanwhile, low-cost drone technology is proving to be an asymmetric force that renders expensive, multi-million dollar military systems obsolete. (6)Charles Burton examines Canada's controversial economic pivot toward China, where Prime Minister Mark Carney is pursuing a strategic partnership that includes non-public security agreements and the reduction of tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. Critics warn these moves compromise Canadian sovereignty and allow for significant Chineseinfiltration. (7)Charles Burton and Gordon Chang analyze China's strategic gain from prolonged conflict in the Middle East, with Beijing appearing content to allow the conflict in the Strait of Hormuz to drag out as a way to deplete U.S. military resources. This instability supports China's narrative that the United States is a declining power. (8)Michael Bernstam discusses the impact of Ukrainian drone strikes on the Russian oil market, noting that strikes on refineries and ports have forced Russia to export more crude oil at discounted prices instead of high-value refined products. Simultaneously, U.S. oil production has hit record levels, significantly influencing global market prices. (9)Michael Bernstam examines the failure of Russia's Power of Siberia 2 pipeline deal, as Vladimir Putin left Beijingwithout securing the agreement while China shows no immediate need for the gas. Furthermore, China demanded to pay domestic Russian prices, which would yield no profit for Moscow. (10)Bob Zimmerman discusses the success of SpaceX's Starship 12 test, which demonstrated major design improvements, while NASA has effectively ended Boeing's role in manned missions to the ISS. NASA awarded all manned flights through 2030 to SpaceX, leaving Boeing out of the picture. (11)Bob Zimmerman reports that the Webb telescope has detected weather variations, including morning clouds, on a distant exoplanet. Additionally, images from Mars show parallel ridges that suggest a history of climate cycles and the presence of significant near-surface ice. (12)Craig Unger argues that Donald Trump has been a Russian intelligence asset since 1987. He highlights how Trump's first trip to the Soviet Union was followed by advertisements in U.S. newspapers featuring KGB talking points. (13)Craig Unger discusses U.S. unreliability and the future of the NATO alliance, noting that under Trump, the United States is seen as an unreliable partner by allies like Finland, who fear he will not honor Article 5. This lack of reliability forces European nations to consider whether they can emerge as a self-sufficient military power. (14)Judy Dempsey examines how the ongoing conflict between the U.S. and Iran distracts from Russian aggression in Ukraine and causes economic sluggishness in Germany. European allies feel jaundiced by the lack of consultation from the U.S. regarding Middle East diplomacy. (15)Judy Dempsey discusses how the AfD has become Germany's leading political party by capitalizing on public anger over housing shortages and the government's handling of the wars in Iran and Ukraine. The party represents a growing threat to the established political order in Europe. (16)

Alice Han and James Kynge break down why Russia is pushing hard for China to approve the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, what China's accelerating selloff of U.S. Treasuries could mean for the American economy, and how China became the first country to commercially approve a brain-computer implant — moving ahead of the U.S. and Elon Musk's Neuralink. They also explore the deepening China-Russia alliance, mounting pressure on the U.S. dollar, and whether China is beginning to pull ahead in the global race for technological dominance. Subscribe to China Decode on Substack for weekly analysis, livestreams, and deep dives into the biggest story shaping the global economy: chinadecode.profgmedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices