Russia

Authored by Robert Gore via Straight Line Logic blog,

Mainstream analysis has been wrong for so long, why start believing it now?

On Monday Russia warned that it would begin aggressively reducing its dependence on the US Dollar and US-based payment systems, and shortly after it confirmed just that when Indonesia announced that it will barter coffee, palm oil, tea and various other commodities in exchange for 11 Russian-made Su-35 fighter jets, calling U.S. and European sanctions against Russia "an opportunity to boost the Southeast Asian nation's trade."

Authored by Pepe Escobar via InformationClearingHouse.info,

The Empire of Whiners simply can't get enough when it comes to huff, puff and pout as the Empire of Sanctions.

With an Orwellian 99% majority that would delight the Kim dynasty in North Korea, the "representative democracy" Capitol Hill has bulldozed its latest House/Senate sanctions package, aimed mostly at Russia, but also targeting Iran and North Korea.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held their first meeting since Donald Trump signed into law new sanctions against Moscow which Russia said amounted to a full-scale trade war and ended hopes for better ties, sending relations between the two nations back to their lows, hit during the Obama administration.

Authored by George Friedman, Xander Snyder, and Ekaterina Zolotova via MauldinEconomics.com,

The US Congress has passed new sanctions targeting Russia’s energy companies. Among the other notable aspects of the sanctions is that they take some authority away from the US president (who used to be able to implement some measures but not others at his discretion) and give it to Congress.