Reuters Ukraine's Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius quit today.

Ukraine’s economy minister Aivaras Abromavicius resigned from his position today and unleashed a lengthy and scathing statement about why.

Effectively he said in a statement, emailed to journalists including Business Insider and available on the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine website, that senior figures within the government were blocking his attempts at reforming the country's economy and that corruption was still widespread.

The statement is pretty dramatic and huge but here are some excerpts (emphasis ours):

• "It has become clear that any kind of systemic reform is decisively blocked."
• "It is more than the mere lack of support or political will. These are concrete actions aiming to paralyse our reform efforts, ranging from a sudden removal of my security detail to the pressure to appoint questionable individuals to my team or to key positions in state-owned enterprises."
• "The more radical our actions, the deeper our reforms, and the bigger our progress, the more pressure we had to endure. We learned how to overcome the resistance of the old system. Turned out, some of the 'well-meaning newcomers' are much worse."

• "Neither me, nor my team have any desire to serve as a cover-up for the covert corruption, or become puppets for those who, very much like the “old” government, are trying to exercise control over the flow of public funds. I am not willing to travel to Davos and talk about our successes to international investors and partners, all the while knowing that certain individuals are scheming to pursue their own interests behind my back."

• "These people have names. Particularly, I would like to name one today. The name is Igor Kononenko. Despite representing the political party that had nominated me for my post, lately he has been bent on obstructing our efforts."
• "I am a patriot of Ukraine. I live here, and so does my family. I deeply care about our country. We have done a lot, but the point of no return is yet ahead of us. Evil forces still want to wind things back. Let us get rid of all those who shamelessly siphon billions off the Ukrainian economy. These people have no place in the Ukrainian politics or the Ukrainian government."

You can read the entire statement here.

Abromavicius was born in Lithuania but took Ukrainian citizenship when he became minister in 2014. He is also a former fund manager. The current administration led by President Petro Poroshenko has struggled to demonstrate reforms in order to gain aid from the US and European Union while the country's economy remains in tatters.

In April 2014, the International Monetary Fund sketched out a bailout plan worth some $17.5 billion to come in a series of tranches while the European Union offered Ukraine about $2 billion in short-term assistance at the same time.

In return, Ukraine has to demonstrate it is reforming its economy and dealing with widespread corruption.

Ukraine has to borrow a heap of cash to help its economy because it finds it difficult to borrow money on the open market.

Ukraine's issues were also further exacerbated when two years ago, the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea was controversially "reunified" with Russia by way of well equipped, organised, and trained "self-defense units," who were actually Russian special forces.

The operation to seize Crimea began on February 27, 2014, when an unidentified task force captured several government buildings including the parliament in Simferopol. Within a month, Putin signed a treaty to annex Crimea and has since then turned the peninsula into a Russian forward operating base.

However, many Western nations still do not recognise the annexation of Crimea because of Russia's military involvement. Russia, of course, denies any military involvement at all.

In March 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged that the mountain of criticism and economic sanctions placed on his country for the illegal annexation of Crimea were creating difficulties for Russia. It also created issues for Ukraine.

Ukraine's Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine said yesterday the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine negatively affected the economy — "The GDP decline amounted to 40% in 2015," it said.

The World Bank affirmed its forecast that Ukraine's economy will grow by just 1% this year.

“The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al-Qaeda, and any informed intelligence officer knows this. But, there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an intensified entity representing the ‘devil’ only in order to drive TV watchers to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the United States.” – Former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook

The quote above appears to resonate with many within the political and intelligence spheres, and numerous insiders have also voiced their opinion that we are seeing the same thing with ISIS. Don’t get me wrong, I am not pointing my finger at the United States, more so the elite banking cartel that has complete control over government policy and actions. As John C. Calhoun, the 7th Vice President of the United States, once said, “a power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many, and various, and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks.” (source) You can see more quotes like this, from people who have held similar positions, here.

Not long ago, FBI whistleblower and founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition(NSWBC), Sibel Edmunds, made an appearance on RT stating that ISIS is the new Al-Qaeda, here to revive what she describes as the “terror war industry.” David Steele, a 20-year Marine Corps Intelligence Officer, and the second-highest-ranking civilian in the U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence, has expressed much the same thing, stating that most terrorists are false flag terrorists, or are created by “our own security services.”

More recently, the current Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition, British politician Jeremy Corbyn, added himself to the long and growing list of politicians and intelligence officers voicing their concerns regarding the true origin of ISIS.

According to several media outlets, he made the following statement: (source)(source)(source)(source)

ISIS did not come from nowhere. They have got a lot of money that’s come from somewhere. They’ve got a huge supply of arms that have come from somewhere. They are – not in total, but in part – a creation of Western interventions in the region. What I would do is try to economically isolate them. And also try to unite the other groups in the region by supporting autonomy for the Kurdish groups and recognize the vast amount of arms that we have sold – particularly to Saudi Arabia – end up somewhere and those are now being used.

Bombing by the West in Syria now would create more mayhem. It’s very unclear who the alliances would be with and it would make the situation worse. I opposed the bombing of Syria in that historic 2013 vote and would continue that position.

He went on to say that:

We make ourselves safer by not being part of US foreign policy at every single turn. We make ourselves safer by saying we understand the diversity of faith and diversity of aspirations around the world. And also by becoming a force for human rights rather than military interventions around the world. I think that would make us safer.

Corbyn is no stranger to controversy, nor could anyone be who holds a political position like this and makes such remarks regarding ISIS publicly. Award winning journalist Ben Swann also shares a number of facts (in the video below) regarding the origin and creation of ISIS that are not often shared in the mainstream.

“All three buildings were destroyed by carefully planned, orchestrated and executed controlled demolition.” – Professor Lynn Margulis, Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts at Amherst and National Academy of Science member, one of many academics who have been very outspoken regarding 9/11 (source) (source)

What is false flag terrorism? It is the idea that these ‘terrorist’ attacks, like 9/11 and the recent events in Paris, are not as they appear; that they were engendered by the Western Military Alliance as a means to justify the infiltration of other countries.

“We are dealing with a criminal undertaking at a global level . . . and there is an ongoing war, it is led by the United States, it may be carried out by a number of proxy countries, which are obeying orders from Washington . . . The global war on terrorism is a US undertaking, which is fake, it’s based on fake premises. It tells us that somehow America and the Western world are going after a fictitious enemy, the Islamic state, when in fact the Islamic state is fully supported and financed by the Western military alliance and America’s allies in the Persian Gulf. . . . They say Muslims are terrorists, but it just so happens that terrorists are Made in America. They’re not the product of Muslim society, and that should be abundantly clear to everyone on this floor. . . . The global war on terrorism is a fabrication, a big lie and a crime against humanity.” (source) (source)

The quote above comes from prominent author and Canadian economist Dr. Michel Chossudovsky, who is the University of Ottawa’s Emeritus Professor of Economics, spoken at the International Conference on the New World Order, which was organized and sponsored by the Perdana Global Peace Foundation. During the conference, he also stated that:

Al Qaeda and the Al Qaeda affiliated organizations, including the Islamic State, are not independent organizations, they are sponsored, and they are sponsored by the United States and its allies. It is documented that prior to 2011, there was a process of recruitment of mujahideen to fight in Syria, and this was coordinated by NATO and the Turkish high command. This report is confirmed by Israeli news sources and unequivocally, we are dealing with a state-sponsorship of terrorism, the recruitment of mercenaries, the training and the financing of terrorism. (source)

Below is a video of Russian president Vladimir Putin alluding to the same thing. At the G20 summit, he also revealed a list of 40 countries that are helping to fund ISIS.

It is a shame and a tragedy that so many people retain vested interests in the prolongation of war. Hopefully this article gives you something to think about and serves as a launching point for your own research into this side of the terrorist story. Ultimately (in my opinion at least), it is the people sitting atop the financial pyramid who are pulling the strings here. What do you think? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.

A recent report issued by human rights organization Amnesty International exposes a large group of underage workers in the African cobalt mining sector.

In today’s tech-heavy world, the demand for key component minerals has been climbing rapidly. These precious minerals are commonly mined in developing countries, where multi-national corporations such as Apple and Samsung employ the locals for “economical” wages. What these mega-companies rarely speak about and what consumers usually do not see or hear about, however, are the deplorable working conditions and shocking number of underage children working within the mining industry.

According to a recent report issued by Amnesty International, as it currently stands nearly 50 percent of the world’s cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of the world’s poorest countries. Investigators from the human rights organization got an inside look into the cobalt industry and found that thousands of African children as young as seven are being employed to do rigorous physical labour, including long days of digging with “basic” tools, as well as washing and sorting ore.

These artisanal miners are referred to as “creuseurs,” and the report estimates that anywhere between 110,000 – 150,000 creuseurs are currently employed in the Congo. While not all of these workers are underage, Amnesty investigators estimate close to 40,000 of those workers are children.

The reason for cobalt’s high demand is due to its use in the manufacturing of lithium-ion rechargeable batteries, which can be found in a plethora of today’s most popular technological devices, such as smart phones and laptops.

Most cobalt is sold to Congo Donfang Mining International, a wholly-owned subsidiary of China’s Hyayou Cobalt Company, Ltd. The report also sourced cobalt trade to products sold by big tech-players such as Microsoft, Motorola, Dell, HP Inc., Sony, Vodafone, Volkswagen, Samsung, Apple, and Chinese firm BYD.

Here’s what the report had to say about the working conditions:

Several children said that they had been beaten, or seen other children beaten, by security guards employed by mining companies when they trespassed on those companies’ mining concessions. Security guards also demanded money from them.

Most children indicated that they earned between 1,000-2,000 Congolese Francs per day (US$1-2). Children who collected, sorted, washed, crushed and transported minerals were paid per sack of minerals by the traders. The children had no way of independently verifying the weight of the sacks or the grade of the ore, and so had to accept what the traders paid them, making them susceptible to exploitation.

In response to the report, many of the mentioned companies have denied sourcing from the DRC, or have explained that every effort has been made to source the product ethically.

Dynda A. Thomas, a lawyer specializing in conflict minerals, noted in another analysis published Monday by National Law Review, that existing laws covering conflict minerals are unlikely to apply to cobalt, and efforts to change these regulations are likely to face steep resistance. She used Intel’s move toward “conflict-free” microprocessors as an example:

[E]arlier this month, Intel announced that it is now manufacturing “conflict-free” microprocessors. And, the company went on to commit that its broader product base would also be “conflict-free.” But, adding cobalt to the SEC’s definition of conflict minerals would mean starting over, at least with respect to cobalt in Intel’s supply chain.

She urged corporations to do more than the law requires, or face the wrath of human rights groups and the possible lost profits caused by the boycotts and activism they inspire.

The increased focus on cobalt illustrates why companies are well advised to develop due diligence processes and procedures that can be built upon and that address the risks in their own individual supply chains — based on their geographies, industries and products and not just based on the specifics of current government regulation.

Rathke concurred, and suggested tech corporations might take a page from another industry and reach out to human rights groups before that happens. She explained:

[M]any in the food and beverage industry have learned that working directly with NGOs and collaborating industry-wide is a better way to address these sorts of issues. Corporate-NGO partnerships have existed since at least the 1990s, and are often effective at addressing corporate social responsibility concerns raised by activists, such as workers’ rights, sustainability, and protecting indigenous populations.

They strongly believe that with this scheme, the middlemen lenders would be forced to lend more to their clients to spur economic growth. Otherwise, they will be charged for parking their money with the central bank.

Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate for the First Time

Keith Bradsher

As Japan’s economic doldrums have lingered, its leaders have tried a number of tricks over the years, from increasing government spending to flooding the financial system with cash.

With the global economy looking increasingly fragile, Japan is now taking a more aggressive step by cutting interest rates below zero on Friday.

The policy — which means banks are essentially paying for the privilege of parking their money — represents a last resort for a country that has struggled through a quarter-century of weak growth. In theory, negative rates will push banks to lend more to companies, which would then spend and hire.

The Bank of Japan is following other central banks in going negative on rates, a sign of the continuing global trouble from plummeting low oil prices, stalling international trade and slowing growth in China. Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is seeking new ways to break the country’s cycle of decline.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/30/business/international/japan-interest-rate.html

The importance of Japan’s economy is borne from the fact that it has been feeding the Khazarians’ pocket for almost a century, the most significant of which was during the Second World War, when it raped China of its historical gold bullion and placed it in the Philippines and some other parts in Southeast Asia. The Khazarians then built an industrial empire out of the Asian loot and in the defeated country, while another victim of the Jesuit-sanctioned Japanese military misadventure across Asia, i.e. the Philippines, is supplying the industrial empire with raw materials even up to now.

Yes, the Jesuits controlled both sides of the conflict as they have always been for the last four centuries.

Below, are Maltese Knights Gen. MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito.

No wonder that, for decades, the West has been buying Japanese consumer products at much lower prices than those made at home. Along the way, the Khazarians still thought it wasn’t enough and so the Fukushima nuclear extortion had to happen resulting to the prime minister then giving out at least $70 billion, or else the rest of the nuclear plants in the country would explode.

Onward to the last three years or so, Japan’s pension fund was also skimmed to keep the Khazarians afloat amidst ongoing international effort to pin them all down, and now Japan is bowing again to the Khazarian diktats of adopting to the Western ongoing trend of imposing negative interest rates, a desperate move proving the true value of the fiat dollar, i.e. nil.

The basic problem is, the bank borrowers know exactly that the central banks are just printing worthless paper money, and countries like China are now restricting the acceptance of fiat dollar effectively halting the delivery of goods worldwide since December last year.

• International Shipping Shuts Down; Baltic Dry Index Freefalling
• The Unfolding Global Reset that Only Few Understand

Retail Apocalypse: 2016 Brings Empty Shelves And Store Closings All Across America

By Michael Snyder, on January 31st, 2016

Closed – Public DomainMajor retailers in the United States are shutting down hundreds of stores, and shoppers are reporting alarmingly bare shelves in many retail locations that are still open all over the country. It appears that the retail apocalypse that made so many headlines in 2015 has gone to an entirely new level as we enter 2016. As economic activity slows down and Internet retailers capture more of the market, brick and mortar retailers are cutting their losses.

This is especially true in areas that are on the lower portion of the income scale. In impoverished urban centers all over the nation, it is not uncommon to find entire malls that have now been completely abandoned. It has been estimated that there is about a billion square feet of retail space sitting empty in this country, and this crisis is only going to get worse as the retail apocalypse accelerates.

We always get a wave of store closings after the holiday shopping season, but this year has been particularly active. The following are just a few of the big retailers that have already made major announcements…

-Wal-Mart is closing 269 stores, including 154 inside the United States.

-K-Mart is closing down more than two dozen stores over the next several months.

-J.C. Penney will be permanently shutting down 47 more storesafter closing a total of 40 stores in 2015.

-Macy’s has decided that it needs to shutter 36 stores and lay offapproximately 2,500 employees.

-The Gap is in the process of closing 175 stores in North America.

-Aeropostale is in the process of closing 84 stores all across America.

-Finish Line has announced that 150 stores will be shutting down over the next few years.

-Sears has shut down about 600 stores over the past year or so, but sales at the stores that remain open continue to fall precipitously.

But these store closings are only part of the story.

All over the country, shoppers are noticing bare shelves and alarmingly low inventory levels. This is happening even at the largest and most prominent retailers.

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/retail-apocalypse-2016-brings-empty-shelves-and-store-closings-all-across-america

Not only that shelves are going empty across America, in the last few minutes, Nikkei is also reporting that its 10Y Auction is postponed indefinitely due to the same self imposed negative interest rates.

“February 3, 2016 3:11 am JST

Japanese 10-year bonds Sales to individuals to be called off over negative yields

TOKYO — The planned March sale of 10-year Japanese government bonds through banks to retail investors, municipalities and others will be canceled amid expected below-zero yields following the Bank of Japan’s recent move to adopt negative interest rates.

The Ministry of Finance is expected to announce Wednesday the first-ever decision to call off sales of 10-year JGBs.

The JGBs in question are sold through Japan Post Bank and regional banks in 50,000 yen ($415) units. The holder can cash out this new type of bond ahead of maturity. With the ministry already having suspended sales of two- and five-year instruments, all sales will end. But variable-rate 10-year JGBs for retail investors will still be offered.

Winning bids at the ministry’s auction of 10-year JGBs on Tuesday translated to a record-low average yield of 0.078%. As of Monday, nearly 70% of JGBs on the market already had negative yields, according to the Japan Securities Dealers Association.

Corporations and municipalities have started delaying their own issuances. Daiwa Securities Group has dropped plans to set conditions later this week for the issuance of seven- and 10-year straight bonds this month. The brokerage decided to take a fresh look at JGB yields and investor demand and said it has not decided when to proceed.”

http://asia.nikkei.com/Markets/Tokyo-Market/Sales-to-individuals-to-be-called-off-over-negative-yields

This plummeting integrity of the government’s promissory notes is what defines an economic crash, and Japan is just a mirror of the current Western financial condition that is still in grave denial.

This current predicament is compounded by Saudi’s unilateral massive unloading of petrodollar denominated foreign asset holdings, like so:

“The Saudis selling their stocks in the open market en masse, especially in the first weeks of January, spreading panic all around the world, appears to have seriously displeased another faction of the Masters of the Universe. This faction might eventually let everyone know what the secret Saudi position is in US Treasuries. Remember, we’re talking about at least $8 trillion.

The House of Saud, predictably, is in total panic. Imagine a leak stating they are sitting on $8 trillion while asking the poor in Saudi Arabia for economic “sacrifices” to support their oil price war plus the unwinnable war on Yemen, fought with expensive mercenaries. A global uproar would be inevitable — claiming a freeze on Saudi assets that are being used to destroy world markets. A barely concealed secret is that the House of Saud is not exactly popular in all the crucial places, from Moscow to Washington and Berlin.

The House of Saud cannot possibly believe that the FSB, SVR and GRU deeply love them for trying to destroy Russia; that Texans love them for trying to destroy the shale oil industry; that Germany or Italy love them for dumping a trillion dollars in securities on the markets to crash them as Mario Draghi pumps major QE trying to rescue the eurozone. “

http://sputniknews.com/columnists/20160129/1033920936/saudi-arabia-plays-russian-roulette.html

Saudi is just trying to save its own ass. Here’s why:

“Following Russia’s recent acceptance of the renminbi as payments for oil, we expect more record high oil imports ahead to China,” Gordon Kwan, the Hong Kong-based head of regional oil and gas research at Nomura Holdings Inc., said in an e-mail, referring to the Chinese currency. “If Saudi Arabia wants to recapture its number one ranking, it needs to accept the renminbi for oil payments instead of just the dollar.”

As both the head of the Eurasian Economic Union (and founding member of BRICS), as well as a major energy exporter, Russia is leading the charge against the dollar. And now other nations are following suit: Iran and India announced last month that they intend to settle all outstanding crude oil payments in rupees, as part of a joint strategy to dump the dollar and trade instead in national currencies.

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/saudi-arabia-has-lost-asia-russia-now-chinas-biggest-oil-partner/ri12611

So, what should the Federal Reserve do now that their Saudi friends are leaving their dollar behind in favor of the Chinese Yuan, and their latest pilot testing in Japan is not working?

They just don’t care. In fact, it wouldn’t be too far fetched to conclude that somehow it’s deliberately orchestrated.

“The Fed Wants to Test How Banks Would Handle Negative Rates

As interest rates turn negative around the world, the Federal Reserve is asking banks to consider the possibility of the same happening in the U.S.

In its annual stress test for 2016, the Fed said it will assess the resilience of big banks to a number of possible situations, including one where the rate on the three-month U.S. Treasury bill stays below zero for a prolonged period.

“The severely adverse scenario is characterized by a severe global recession, accompanied by a period of heightened corporate financial stress and negative yields for short-term U.S. Treasury securities,” the central bank said in announcing the stress tests last week.”

…

New York Fed President William Dudley said last month that policy makers were “not thinking at all seriously of moving to negative interest rates.

“But I suppose if the economy were to unexpectedly weaken dramatically, and we decided that we needed to use a full array of monetary policy tools to provide stimulus, it’s something that we would contemplate as a potential action,” he said on Jan. 15.

Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer said Monday that foreign central banks that had resorted to negative interest rates to stimulate their economies had been more successful than he anticipated.

“It’s working more than I can say I expected in 2012,” he told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “Everybody is looking at how this works,” he added.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-02/rates-less-than-zero-is-bank-stress-fed-wants-to-test-in-2016

Whatever they want to call it, the fiat financial system is crashing in front of their faces and what they are about to do is just another way of kicking the can one more time, because telling the people the real financial condition would surely put them out of power quickly, or so we believe.

However, and this is what they are counting on, if the Greek reaction to the financial bullying of the Troika is any yardstick, the Khazarian madmen will have no qualms of implementing even harsher “solution” to their crashing empire. In fact, they could even profit from their own defeat from the East with more austerity measures against its own people.

To continue their reign over the multitude they must maintain the entire facade legitimizing the whole fiat enterprise, and already they are laying the groundwork for a cashless society to essentially tie everyone to the computers.

• Who would actually benefit from a Cashless Society?

Obviously, with the full digitization of your lifeline they will be able to eliminate privacy and cloaked the true nature of their projected and imaginary power all at the same time. This is the only feasible solution to stay in power and the people will be sold out once again and will continue to have faith in the very system that enslave them.

Understanding this simple truth should empower the victim and the whole fiat enterprise will crumble via non-participation and active counter offensives.

Western populations need not wait for the complete deterioration of their quality of life to the level of the Third World with their apathy.

The East expects the West to clean its own house from all undesirables before a healthy “win-win” collaboration can be expected. The mechanism for this mutual cooperation is already in place.

We can avoid using drugs, defeat any viral attack and scaremongering easily by knowing how to build our own comprehensive antiviral system. Find more about it here.

A Eurasian Golden Triangle is emerging with China, Russia and Iran as the three key points, F. William Engdahl notes.

The latest Sino-Iranian rapprochement has prompted a lively debate regarding the new Eurasian "world order."

"Sometimes profound tectonic shifts in the global politics arise from the least noticed events. Such is the situation with Iran and the recent visit to Tehran of China's President Xi Jinping. What emerged from the talks confirms that the vital third leg of what will become a genuine Eurasian Golden Triangle, of nations committed to peaceful economic development, is now in place," American-German researcher, historian and strategic risk consultant F. William Engdahl writes in his article for New Eastern Outlook.

SCO HOST PHOTO AGENCY

New World Paradigm: Russia, Iran and China Make a Strong Team

On January 23, Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani signed almost 17 agreements on economic and technological cooperation. Furthermore, the leaders announced they will cooperate on the China-led One Belt One Road initiative.

The researcher calls the formal inclusion of Iran into China's New Economic Silk Road project "a giant positive step." According to Engdahl, it will allow Tehran to "break years of economic isolation" and will open doors to the region's economic development.

Pakistani columnist Afzal Hussain echoes Engdahl's stance.

"The lifting of economic sanctions from Iran provides trade opportunities for regional countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Russia, and Central Asian Countries particularly, Tajikistan. The trade activity will generate billions of dollars not only for oil rich Iran but also for the countries having close economic relations with Iran," Hussain noted in his article for The Nation, the Pakistani media outlet.

© AP PHOTO/ EBRAHIM NOROOZI

New Era for Tehran: China, Russia to Actively ‘Push Forward’ Iran’s SCO Membership

Hussain views Pakistan as a "geographical corridor" between China and Iran.

"The China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project has become more vital after latest trade accords between Iran and China," he underscored.

The Pakistani columnist highlighted Russia's determining role in the region and expressed his confidence that China, Pakistan, Iran and Russia will bolster trade and economic growth in Central Asia and beyond.

Referring to the fact that Iran currently has SCO Observer status Engdahl envisages that Iran will be formally admitted as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at their next annual meeting this summer.

© AP PHOTO/ EBRAHIM NOROOZI

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, right, and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping shake hands at the conclusion of their joint press conference at the Saadabad Palace in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016

In contrast to those experts who regard the recent Sino-Iranian rapprochement as a potential apple of discord between Beijing and Moscow, the researcher points to the fact that the countries would rather create a mutually beneficial triple alliance, a future cornerstone of a unified Eurasia.

"We're seeing the emergence of a true Eurasian Golden Triangle with China, Russia and Iran as the three key points," Engdahl underscores.

"With the stated plan to route the Silk Road rail infrastructure to assist the mining of new gold for currency backing of the Eurasian member states, including now Iran with its significant own unexploited gold, the hyper-inflated, debt-bloated dollar system is gaining a formidable positive alternative, one committed to peace and development," the researcher concludes.