Ex-London based global fund manager for 32 years. Sapienza. Geopolitics/geoeconomics. 國語 عربي . زبان فارسی BRICS. Woke globalist. Trail runner & ocean swimmer.
Joined May 2012
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Charles Crevequer retweeted
Taiwan's Secret Weapon Against China: Taking Photos of Chinese Ships and Posting Them Online
Breaking: Chinese Fleet Defeated by Strongly Worded PowerPoint
A Taiwan representative in the UK recently unveiled the master plan for defeating China: take photographs of Chinese ships in it's territorial waters, post them online, hold a press conference, and then wait for Beijing to surrender from embarrassment.
The strategy is revolutionary.
For years, China foolishly believed naval power involved shipbuilding, logistics, industrial capacity, missile forces, and geographic proximity. Little did the PLAN know that its greatest vulnerability was being filmed in 4K.
"Look!" cries the representative. "There's another Chinese coast guard vessel in the Taiwan Strait!"
The Chinese response:
"Yes. We know. That's why we sent it there." "At least we confirm you are not sleeping."
The representative then escalates.
"We have exposed your grey-zone activities!"
China glances out the window at the same vessel conducting the same patrol it conducted yesterday.
Mission accomplished.
Next comes the coalition strategy.
The representative explains that allied democracies will match Chinese presence using a sophisticated rotational schedule whereby ships designed for coastal defense travel ten thousands of kilometers across the Pacific to demonstrate their unwavering commitment to spending two weeks in the area before sailing home again.
China, meanwhile, commits the radical act of being located in Asia.
An unfair advantage, clearly.
Then comes Freedom of Navigation Operations.
A destroyer arrives.
A destroyer leaves as it runs out of scarce diesel and food.
Press releases are issued.
PowerPoint slides are updated.
The Chinese coast guard cutter remains exactly where it was before.
The representative proudly declares this a victory for rules-based order.
Nobody is entirely sure which rule changed or which order was altered.
My personal favorite is the undersea-cable strategy.
The representative proposes intelligence fusion centers, anomaly detection systems, information sharing, resilience frameworks, response matrices, stakeholder consultations, governance mechanisms, and working groups.
In other words, an army of bureaucrats armed with PDFs.
China's greatest fear has always been a well-formatted committee report.
But perhaps the funniest part is listening to a Taiwan representative discuss "our foreign policy."
Our foreign policy? Taiwan is not even a country!
Really?
The script is written in Washington.
The edits come from Washington.
The strategic guidance comes from Washington.
The talking points come from Washington.
At some point the representative begins to resemble the GPS voice in a rental car.
"Turn left."
"Increase deterrence."
"Signal resolve."
"Enhance resilience."
The voice is local.
The destination was selected by someone else.
The uncomfortable reality is that geography remains stubbornly unimpressed by narratives.
China does not possess a "grey-zone advantage" because of clever hashtags or information campaigns.
It possesses an advantage because Chinese ships, aircraft, ports, shipyards, logistics hubs, and supply chains are already there. China's PLAN is the largest and the most modern navy in the world and it is operating in it's own backyard unlike the overseas help Taiwan is asking.
You can photograph that reality.
You can livestream that reality.
You can issue twenty-seven strongly worded statements about that reality.
But posting evidence of China's presence is not the same thing as removing China's presence.
Which is why the representative's strategy often resembles a man standing on a beach, taking increasingly high-resolution photographs of the tide, and announcing that the ocean is suffering a devastating reputational setback.
telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2…
"Peace Train" featuring Yusuf / Cat Stevens | Playing For Change | Song ... youtu.be/0QpjR6-Uuks?is=yj1a… via @YouTube
@beyondB_DAG
1/n
Traore staying home was the most articulate statement of the entire summit, precisely because he didn't make it. No communiqué, no snub, no explanation offered, which is why it reads as confidence rather than pique.
2/n
In a room built for symbolic gratitude, the one leader with the least to prove by showing up declined the proof. This is the man who electrified St. Petersburg in 2023. Three years later, the same podium can't pull him across the Mediterranean.
Charles Crevequer retweeted
A yolk carries everything needed to build an entire chicken, and nothing else in the shop can say that.
It carries choline, the raw material your brain uses to make the chemical of memory.
It carries the choline a liver needs to export its own fat, which is why a choline-starved liver fills with it.
It carries vitamin A ready-made, not the plant version your body has to convert.
It carries vitamin D, one of the few foods on earth that does.
It carries K2, the vitamin that steers calcium into bone and out of your arteries.
It carries lutein, the pigment your retina is built from.
It carries every amino acid you're made of, in such perfect proportion that scientists once scored every other protein against it.
A pregnant woman needs more choline than almost anyone alive, and a yolk is the cheapest supply there is.
Then, in 1968, the heart association told us to keep it to three a week.
Britain's egg consumption roughly halved over the decades that followed.
Around 9 in 10 people now fall short of the choline target.
Fatty liver, the disease of a liver that can't export its fat, went from unnamed in 1980 to a third of adults.
In 2015, the cholesterol limit was quietly dropped, with no apology to the yolks.
Nobody rang the millions of people who'd been eating egg-white omelettes for forty years.
The chicken still puts everything in the yolk. It was never told about the guidelines.
Third Russia – Africa Summit Statement of President Putin
en.special.kremlin.ru/events…
3rd Russia-Africa Summit adopts declaration calling for multipolar world order, expanded cooperation english.news.cn/20261030/98d…
Charles Crevequer retweeted
The Chinese Revolution was not clean.
Nothing that emerges from a century of colonial humiliation, decades of civil war, and the specific conditions of mid-20th century China was going to be clean.
The deaths were real.
The coercion was real.
The suppression of dissent, the destruction of the Cultural Revolution, the specific and irreplaceable things that were lost: these are real and they matter, and the Chinese people who lived through them are not plot devices in anyone’s geopolitical story.
But here is the other truth, the one that sits alongside it:
China is not a colony.
China was not carved into spheres of influence for the convenience of foreign capital.
China was not kept poor and dependent and "open" in the specific way that "open" means when powerful countries say it about weaker ones.
China made its own catastrophic decisions, on its own terms, and rebuilt from them on its own terms.
That sovereignty, costly, contested, imperfect, real, is what the revolution purchased.
Whether the price was worth it is a question the Chinese people get to answer.
Not the people who were planning to own the country.
Not the people who are still angry that they don’t.
Charles Crevequer retweeted
Lectura hermenéutica, cartesiana y dialéctica del poder: la contradicción estructural en la formación de gobierno en Israel.
Eisenkot rechaza el apoyo de los partidos árabes: diecinueve escaños que no bastan para constituir mayoría.
Los resultados parciales (más de 90 % escrutado) sitúan al bloque de Netanyahu en unos 53 escaños, al de Eisenkot en 48 y a los partidos árabes (Lista Conjunta y Ra’am) en un récord de 19. Ninguno alcanza los 61 necesarios. La oposición más los partidos árabes sumarían alrededor de 67, pero Eisenkot ha declarado que no aceptaría llegar al gobierno con su apoyo, posición compartida por Bennett y Liberman en favor de un “gobierno sionista”.
Esta negativa no es técnica, sino ideológica. Los ciudadanos palestinos de Israel (más del 20 % de la población) votaron en cifras récord y se colocan en posición de actores decisivos. Sin embargo, el centro y la derecha alternativa los tratan como un apoyo ilegítimo: la ciudadanía árabe resulta tolerable mientras no decida.
El gesto de Eisenkot afirma que el Estado se define primero como judío y solo después como democrático. La participación árabe puede contarse en las urnas, pero no se reconoce como constitutiva del poder. Es la misma lógica que opera en Gaza y Cisjordania. La noción de etnocracia de Oren Yiftachel (1999, 2006) resulta pertinente: el ethnos prevalece sobre el demos. Ilan Pappé (2011, 2017) ha caracterizado el sistema como “democracia herrenvolk” solo para el grupo dominante, donde la ciudadanía árabe permanece incompleta.
El voto árabe es un acto de resistencia dentro de un marco que lo niega; la negativa de Eisenkot lo reproduce. Un gobierno en minoría con apoyo externo árabe (precedente de Rabin en 1993) es técnicamente viable, pero exigiría romper la promesa de campaña. El escenario más probable es el bloqueo prolongado. Netanyahu permanece no porque tenga mayoría, sino porque la alternativa se niega a reconocer a quienes podrían dársela.
Se trata de si un sistema etno-nacional puede reconocer la capacidad política del otro sin disolverse. Martha Nussbaum (2000, 2011) identifica las capacidades básicas negadas; Adela Cortina (1997, 2017), la suspensión del reconocimiento y del diálogo; Edgar Morin (1990, 2008), la complejidad que el pensamiento binario no procesa. El voto árabe no resuelve el conflicto; lo vuelve visible. Lo que está en juego es si la exclusión estructural puede seguir presentándose como normalidad democrática.
Charles Crevequer retweeted
🇲🇱🇷🇺 MALI–RUSSIE : 350 BUS ANNONCÉS POUR LE MALI !
Selon les informations attribuées au ministère des Transports, la société russe KAMAZ aurait conclu un accord portant sur la livraison de 350 bus au Mali dans les prochains mois.
Cet accord illustre la volonté des autorités maliennes de diversifier leurs partenariats et de renforcer leur coopération avec la Russie, notamment dans le secteur des transports.
Depuis 1960, le Mali entretient des relations de coopération avec la Russie. Pour nous, l’essentiel est de bâtir des partenariats fondés sur le respect mutuel, la souveraineté nationale et l’égalité entre les États, sans ingérence ni diktat extérieur.
🇷🇺 La Russie est considérée par de nombreux partisans de ce rapprochement comme un partenaire stratégique du Mali. Mais au-delà des discours, ce sont les résultats concrets, les engagements respectés et les bénéfices pour les populations qui doivent permettre de juger l’efficacité de cette coopération.
À la jeunesse de l’AES 🇲🇱🇧🇫🇳🇪 : restons attentifs aux partenariats que nos pays construisent et évaluons-les à travers leurs résultats, leur transparence et leur contribution au développement de nos nations.
Concernant l’histoire, rappelons que les relations entre l’Afrique et les puissances étrangères doivent être examinées avec rigueur, en tenant compte des faits historiques propres à chaque pays.
Notre priorité doit rester la même : défendre la souveraineté de nos États, promouvoir des partenariats équilibrés et placer les intérêts de nos populations au cœur de chaque décision.
✊🏿 Vive le Mali !
✊🏿 Vive l’AES !
🇲🇱🇧🇫🇳🇪 Vive la coopération entre les peuples souverains !
Images d’illustration 👇🏾
Charles Crevequer retweeted
Cuba has a higher literacy rate than the United States.
It has a longer life expectancy than many countries far wealthier than it.
It produced a medical system capable of sending doctors to dozens of countries, including some that sanctioned it.
It did all of this under 66 years of economic blockade.
Now imagine what it might have built without the blockade.
The people who imposed the blockade have imagined this too.
That is why the blockade continued for 66 years.
Not because Cuba was failing.
Because Cuba was, in specific and inconvenient ways, succeeding.
And a Cuba that succeeded under its own system was more dangerous to the argument than a Cuba that failed.
The blockade was not punishment for failure.
It was prevention of success.
UNSC on Iran non-proliferation briefing...
securitycouncilreport.org/wh…
Charles Crevequer retweeted
🇮🇷|Pezeshkian puts the figures on the table: 300 billion cubic meters. Third place globally. Sanctions have not crushed us.
October 27, 2026. Moscow. At the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) summit, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian delivered a message to the assembled international representatives, a statement that the architects of sanctions in Washington would least want to hear:
"Despite facing international sanctions, we have successfully increased our natural gas production to approximately 300 billion cubic meters, firmly securing our position as the world’s third-largest natural gas producer. We also rank among the leaders in domestic consumption."
💥 What does 300 billion cubic meters mean?
300 billion cubic meters. This is not a "plan." It is not a "goal." It is an annual production volume that has already been achieved.
In the global natural gas production rankings, the United States holds first place, Russia second, and Iran third. Iran’s output surpasses that of Qatar, Canada, China, Australia, Norway, and Saudi Arabia all of which are major energy powers.
And Iran has achieved this while under sanctions for forty-seven years.
No Western technology. No Western investment. No international bank financing. No SWIFT access. No American equipment. No European engineers.
Iran’s natural gas industry has been built entirely on domestic capabilities. Every phase of the South Pars gas field development was carried out by Iranian engineers and companies. Compressors, pipelines, processing facilities every single component is "Made in Iran."
This is not just "resilience." This is "independence."
🎯 Who claimed sanctions would crush Iran?
The United States argued: Sanctions will cut off Iran’s oil and gas exports, cause its economy to collapse, and force Iran back to the negotiating table to accept our terms.
In Moscow, Pezeshkian responded: We are producing 300 billion cubic meters. We rank third. We are also a leader in domestic consumption.
In other words: Your sanctions have not stopped us from producing. They have not stopped us from exporting. They have not stopped us from developing. Iranian natural gas flows to Turkey via the TurkStream pipeline; to Iraq through swap agreements; toward Russia and Central Asia via the Caspian corridor; and, via the prospective North-South Corridor, toward Pakistan and India.
Meanwhile, the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) convenes in Moscow. Nations collectively holding 70% of the world’s natural gas reserves sit together in the same room—l, a room in which the United States is notably absent.
📜 Domestic Consumption: An Overlooked Metric
"In terms of domestic consumption," says Pezeshkian, "we also rank among the leaders."
The significance of this statement lies not in the word "consumption," but in the concept of "self-sufficiency."
Iran’s power generation, heating, industrial sector, and petrochemical industry all rely on domestic natural gas. While Europe grapples with soaring gas prices, while kitchens in Pakistan go cold, and while gas stations in Italy run dry, Iran’s natural gas remains within its own borders, fueling its own industries and households.
This is not an "export-oriented" model; it is one of "self-sufficiency." And a nation capable of self-sufficiency cannot be coerced by the threat of having its supplies cut off.
⚔️ The GECF: A Validation of Achievement
Pezeshkian did not make these remarks during a mere bilateral meeting; he spoke at the GECF summit, in the presence of representatives from nations that control 70% of the world’s gas reserves, an event hosted by Vladimir Putin.
Iran is a founding member of the GECF, and an Iranian, Mohammad Hossein Adeli, served as the forum’s first Secretary General.
Today, the Iranian President stands before this forum to announce that Iran ranks third globally in natural gas production. This is not "showing off," it is an overt rejection of sanctions.
The United States, meanwhile, is not a member of the GECF. It is not in that room, and it has no voice within this forum to challenge or diminish Iran’s achievements.
Floating infrastructure...
splash247.com/seatrium-and-k…
Charles Crevequer retweeted
It's past time to have alternative institutions hosted in the global south.
