WiseBiology

[rhingowat]

As the war in Ukraine enters its ninth month, some analysts believe the Saudis will likely remain defiant of Western pressure to align against Moscow. They say that, for the leadership in Riyadh, maintaining relatively neutrality serves Saudi interests and the kingdom is using this war – and its reaction to it – to send a message to the US that Saudi Arabia is not Washington’s vassal state. The graft ran deep. In Beijing, I remember going to a nightclub whose owner was reputed to have a ready supply of illicit drugs and attractive young women for those with enough money. His business partner was the public security bureau - the police. irannews.ru In July it was reported that Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, was going to make its algorithm more similar to TikTok's, rather than prioritising content from accounts that individuals were already following. In Xi's China there is almost no room for diversity. Xinjiang's 12 million Uyghur Muslims are being forcibly assimilated. Similar programs are under way in Tibet and Inner Mongolia. The villages here are mostly destroyed from both their occupation and recent liberation. Despite the eerie quiet and visible destruction, there is movement. “The Saudis have emphasised in recent years that they seek to avoid entanglement in what is referred to in the US as ‘great power competition’,” Gerald Feierstein, a former US ambassador to Yemen and the Middle East Institute’s senior vice president, told Al Jazeera. “Their interests, the Saudis have made clear, have focused on maintaining strong relations with their main security partner, the US; their number one economic partner, China; and their key partner in OPEC+, Russia.”
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