The United States is in the “acute” stage. The end of the nation is in sight now.

A certainty.

The interruption of communication between the US and China militarily.

Li Shangfu was sanctioned by the US government in 2018.

Li Shangfu sought to buy the Russian S-400 system and more Su35 aircraft.

Americans said you can’t do that!

Yes you read that Americans think they can dictate terms to what other countries can and can’t do that’s the level of arrogance they have.

So they sanctioned him.

Li Shangfu was promoted to PRC defence minister.

So? The USA can’t talk to him because of THEIR OWN RULES because of THEIR own sanctions.

So? The USA can lift the sanctions if it wants to talk.

But since they won’t what is there to talk about?

Quora covers tons of topics and spaces. One of them is relationships. It’s like being abused by a partner then Quorans telling them to forget (him) and get back together.

Nah.

Why do many people say Japan is “on the decline”? I mean its still a developed country and a very good place to live in at this moment in time.

Simple.

Japan made a wrong choice and it refused to pay for it by getting into the arms of a strange bedfellow USA. It has no choice in 1945 after the U.S. decided based purely on racial hate to nuke Japan. It works out fine up to 2000. By now China is by far the most humongous market on planet earth. Sucking up to the U.S. and doing shit on your biggest customer by far and bigger than the next 10 market put together is a total And absolute disaster.

You can say it is like Japan Nuking Japan all over again but this time economically. It’s death of companies may be worst. Even more fatal. It will sink with the U.S. Like a self induced suicide. Japan like The US is simply not sustainable at all. It population dropped a million in 2021! It’s products are fast made uncompetitive and highly over priced. It’s people work till they drop while is companies are doing worst by the day.

It has good infrastructure and its bureaucrats are doing a good job but it’s political and social structures simply cannot sustain. Within a decade the over 60 years old is 50% of Japanese population. It is sucking up to a spent force the U.S. and for the life of me, Uncle Sam can only bring trouble to Japan.

It is time to rethink. Once I had a Japanese colleague who is honest to me and said. Japan must collapse totally to restart correctly again. He is absolutely right. There is no better way to put it. For a start it must totally dump the U.S. It needs to get out of its suicidal pact the G7. Japan needs it and yes US needs it too. They need to take care of the real issue. The Japanese and the Americans.

Photographer Weronika Gęsicka Takes Corny American Photography And Manipulates It Into Something Surreal And Uncomfortable

In Weronika Gęsicka’s unsettling images, American archive photography gets distorted into scenes that are both nightmarish yet somehow entirely plausible. Gęsicka is a guest artist at the Circulations festival for young European photographers, Paris, until 5 March.

More info: Weronika Gęsicka (h/t: theguardian)

Why are Americans mad at China counter-sanctioning Micron?

Because those Americans mad at China’s counter-sanctions are really mad.

They have lost their basic saneness to be normal people with healthy mentality.

In their insane world, they can do whatever they want to, they can hurt whoever they want to, they can bomb whichever country they want to. But never vice versa.

As a normal and mentally health people, do you think there really exists such a world?!

So, this group of Americans are living in their own Madhouse.

Boovashenkel

These Pennsylvania Dutch potato dumplings are a wonderful side dish for ham. This is also a great way to use leftover mashed potatoes.

Ingredients

• 2 eggs
• About 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups mashed potatoes
• 1 egg, beaten
• 2 onions, chopped
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 2 (3/4 pound) slices ham
• Additional chopped fresh parsley

Instructions

1. In a large bowl or in a food processor fitted with the steel blade, beat 2 eggs. Blend in as much flour as eggs will moisten. Add the 1/2 teaspoon salt.
2. On a floured surface, roll out dough until very thin. Cut into 6-inch circles.
3. In a large bowl, combine mashed potatoes, egg, onions and parsley. Add salt and pepper. Place a heaping tablespoonful of potato mixture onto each dough round. Fold over and moisten edges; pinch to seal.
4. Heat about 2 quarts water to boiling in a large pot; add the 2 tablespoons salt. Drop stuffed dumplings into boiling water. Simmer gently, uncovered, for 12 minutes.
5. In a large heavy skillet, fry ham until heated through. Place on a warm platter. Surround ham with dumplings. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.

US ComSec Gina Raimondo said the US “won’t tolerate” China’s decision to ban chips by Micron Technology and won’t tolerate it.” How will the US retaliate?

School Shooters Reacting To Life Sentence

Qin Gang meets Elon Musk. telling him developing Sino-U.S. ties is like driving car

Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang met with Tesla CEO Elon Musk in Beijing on May 30 to discuss the development of the country’s car industry and China-U.S. relations.

Qin stressed the importance of a healthy, stable and constructive China-U.S. relationship, saying:

“Developing China-U.S. relations is like driving a car. The driver needs to keep the steering wheel in the right direction, step on the brake when necessary to avoid danger and press the throttle at times to accelerate.”

Musk stated that the Chinese people are diligent and intelligent, and China’s “development achievements are well deserved.” He emphasized Tesla’s stance against “decoupling and breaking the chain,” saying the company will continue to expand business in China and share China’s development opportunities.

“The United States makes the rules that the world must follow”.

“All nations are sovereign, and serve their own interests.”

World Hal Turner 30 May 2023

Institutions like Hospitals, jails, prisons, etc., were told, casually, three weeks ago, they “should probably have enough food on-hand to get through a ten day disruption of supply chains.”   Few thought much of that.   Then today . . .

. . . they are being explicitly WARNED to “make sure you have enough food to get through a ten day supply chain outage.”

The warnings are coming down from vendors and now, from GOVERNMENT.  It’s not a suggestion anymore, it is a mandate.  They’re being told “Do this; make sure it’s done.”

Hospitals and institutions like prisons, jails, and the like, have populations that cannot simply go elsewhere and find food; so them HAVING the food would be essential if someone knows there is definitely a major disruption to supply chains coming.

Now, on its face, there is nothing going on at the moment that might even give rise to a HINT of supply chain disruption, never mind specifically for ten days, unless . . .

The NATO Exercise in Europe from June 12-24, near the Ukraine conflict, goes “hot” and there is some type of massive exchange with Russia, as reported today, HERE.

If the powers-that-be (TPTB) already KNOW there is going to be some type of wild-weasel situation between NATO and Russia, then it would be in the interests of TPTB to cover their butts and make certain their institutions have food supplies in advance.

Common sense tells us that these institutions wouldn’t be getting this warning — NATIONWIDE IN THE U.S. — unless this “supply chain disruption” was, in fact, going to affect the entire nation.   What else but a big exchange between NATO and Russia could affect the entire nation?

If government is now telling Hospitals and other institutions to MAKE SURE they have enough food to get through a ten day supply chain disruption, then maybe you and I should take heed and make sure we have food too?

In fact, seems to me we should make sure we have a lot more than ten days supply.

Of course, we only have so much space to store our food, and only have so much money we can throw at that project without knowing better details, but I strongly recommend my readers of this web site take heed and take action.

NOW.  While you still can . . .

18-Year-Old Gets Busted, Decides to Put Up a Fight

Pennsylvania Dutch Banana Bread

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 1/2 cups unbleached regular flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 cup soft margarine
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup oil
• 2 cups mashed ripe bananas
• 1 cup chopped nuts (optional)
• Dash of cinnamon (optional)
• Dash of nutmeg (optional)

Instructions

1. Cream sugar and margarine; add eggs and mix well.
2. Stir in baking soda, baking powder and salt.
3. Add oil and stir again.
4. Add bananas and mix.
5. Add flour, 1 cup at a time, and stir well after each addition.
6. Grease and flour 4 to 5 bread tins.
7. Bake at 350 degrees F for 1 hour. Test for doneness with wooden pick until it comes out clean.
8. When cool, wrap in plastic.

Loaves may be frozen.

An analysis of how China is building a global economic alternative, while the US-led neoliberal financial order decays.

By Radhika Desai , Michael Hudson and Mick Dunford

Transcript

RADHIKA DESAI: Hello and welcome to the 10th Geopolitical Economy Hour , the fortnightly show in which we discuss the political and geopolitical economy of our times. I’m Radhika Desai.

MICHAEL HUDSON: And I’m Michael Hudson.

RADHIKA DESAI: And as last time, we have once again with us today, Professor Mick Dunford, professor emeritus at Sussex University and visiting scholar at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Mick is based in Beijing and his work focuses on world development, especially in Eurasia and China. And as you know from the last episode, Mick is here to help us discuss the political and geopolitical economy of the conflict over Ukraine.

Last time we discussed the political and geopolitical economy of the conflict vis-a-vis Ukraine, Russia, and Europe. And in this episode, we would like to discuss the same thing, but in relation to the United States, China, and the rest of the world.

So I’ll maybe just start us off on the US by essentially pointing out that, when people do take a critical view of what’s going on and look at the economic aspects of the war, the main thing they focus on is the arms industry and the profits being made by the arms industry.

And there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that American arms manufacturers, the military-industrial complex in the United States, is absolutely jubilant over this war. They are making profits hand over fist.

Not only are arms orders going to increase as a direct result of the conflict with the United States supplying arms to Ukraine and then seeking to replenish its stock of arms. So that was already happening.

And in the last US budget, as you saw, the military budget was massively increased, because in addition to the conflict over Ukraine, it is generally believed, or it was the grounds were given, that in fact, we can now expect ever greater conflict, ever greater security, uncertainty, and therefore more money needs to be spent on arms.

So there’s absolutely no doubt that this is what’s going on.

And there’s also absolutely no doubt that the sort of industries that we were talking about in the last episode, industries that rely on the enforcement of intellectual property rights, etc., are also happy about the conflict over Ukraine, because it’s really about imposing Western and US imperialism on the rest of the world, which includes, of course, the enforcement of intellectual property rights.

So they are happy. But it is also very clear that there are sections of US business that are not particularly happy about the conflict that relied on trade, both certainly with China, but also with Russia.

And they look at the prospect of breaking these relations with increasing apprehension. So there are divisions within the United States as well.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, we ended the last episode by talking about how neoliberalism is basically a rentier economy.

And the point that you just raised Radhika is, if the US is a neoliberal rentier economy, and if Europe is following the US lead, how on earth can the West expect to keep pace with Eurasia and the global majority that is now trying to industrialize and raise its own living standards, and in fact is forced to industrialize and raise its own living standards by the US sanctioning of their economy, which is forcing them to go it alone?

Well, a lot of pacifists and opponents of the Ukraine war in the United States, like Medea Benjamin, have said that — Well, there’s really nothing to worry about China. We don’t have to be an enemy of China because other countries are bound to grow. And of course, the United States will lose its relative position as other countries begin to grow also.

— And we can have a happily growing world economy together and American absolute power and absolute economic strength can continue to increase. We don’t need war.

Well, I think, Radhika, you’re in our position as, yes, they do need war, absolutely, because the United States is declining in absolute terms, because what it calls GDP is largely financial services.

As we’ve said before on this show, when banks increase their late fees to credit card holders, and late fees are now over a trillion dollars, more than credit card companies get in interest, all that is added to GDP.

When American real estate prices have been going up in the last few months of the year, the homeowners’ imputed value of their homes, if they were to rent their homes to themselves, has been going up, increasing GDP. That’s 7% of GDP.

So what we call GDP here is really a rentier economy that is polarizing between the finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sector and the rest of the economy.

Well, the fact is that the US actually cannot catch up with the productivity that Mick’s chart has shown with China and Russia, because we’ve reached the limit to the growth.

And the limit to the US growth right now is not yet environmental, is not yet global warming. When there is hurricane damage, all that rebuilding is considered an increase in GDP. It’s not environmental pollution. It’s debt pollution.

It’s the fact that the economy is so highly indebted that the wage earners cannot afford to increase their consumption as long as they’ve had to increase their mortgage debt, their credit card debt, and their auto debt.

The US has reached the limit of its ability to grow without essentially doing a mixed economy and a debt write-down. And somehow you’ve got to free the economy from the rentier sector, from the savers, that their savings are the debts of the 99%.

And you have the US and NATO increase in military spending, forcing cutbacks in social programs in order to get the balanced budget that the Republicans are advocating and that President Biden has long advocated.

So what you’re having is the US simply is not growing, and the only way that it can somehow survive by letting the 1% increase its wealth at the rate at which it’s accustomed to is what you mentioned, Radhika, intellectual property.

By monopolizing information technology, by monopolizing pharmaceuticals, by monopolizing technologies and military industrial weapons and charging huge economic rents, far in excess of the value of the cost of production, in order to get a free lunch.

The only way that the United States can grow is by increasing the free lunch, and that means economic shrinkage for the economy as a whole. That’s what really underlies the splitting of the world that we’re seeing that is just beginning with the Ukraine fighting.

MICK DUNFORD: Okay, I mean, Radhika mentioned the important point that the military-industrial complex accounts for a significant share of the US economy, and emphasized the way it generates profits for US capital.

But it’s also quite important to note that the products of the military-industrial complex do not enter into subsequent accumulation in the way in which other capital goods do, nor do they enter into workers’ consumption.

So in a sense, there’s a way in which a vast military-industrial complex is devoting a huge volume of resources to activities that do not contribute significantly to human welfare.

The point I want to make, however, is that this US global role requires a huge volume of resources. And the US essentially spends much more than it earns – much, much more than it earns.

Now, this is a [graph] that just depicts the balance of payments of the Five Eyes. So the United States, but also Great Britain, figure prominently in shaping these numbers [along with Australia, Canada, and New Zealand].

And what’s very, very striking, first of all, is that these countries have very substantial trade deficits in real commodities. So they are very dependent upon real goods manufactured in other parts of the world, a sustained, large trade deficit.

At present, they generally have surpluses in services, because, in part, of the role of the US dollar and of other European currencies in the international financial system, and the way in which insurance and all sorts of other activities are connected with that role.

But of course, there are roles that depend on the continuing role of the dollar in the international system. But really, to offset this gap between what these countries can sell abroad by way of goods and services and their own imports of goods and services, they require a large net inflow of financial resources.

And these financial resources derive from a number of different sources. They derive in part from the fact that the United States produces dollars and other countries have to hold dollars in order to finance their international trade activities.

So they do not use these dollars in order to purchase goods in return from the United States, for example.

They also arise because surplus countries use their surpluses to purchase US Treasury bills at very low rates of interest. So that provides the US with a debt privilege that no other country in the world possesses.

Extraordinarily, Alan Greenspan said “the United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money ”.

The US also imposes or seeks to impose a kind of opening up of markets, privatization, so that it can use dollars to acquire assets throughout the world to generate income streams that can offset its trade deficit.

So in a sense it benefits enormously from a post-Bretton Woods system, which effectively allows the United States to behave as if it has a credit card with no repayment date and no limit on what it spends.

But it is a world which is changing. And I think it’s a change that poses an enormous challenge for the United States.

RADHIKA DESAI: Right. So, first of all, Mick, this is absolutely critical. And of course, as you likely know, these privileges that you have rightly pointed to, which the US has hitherto enjoyed, are also in danger of disappearing with the process of de-dollarization, something that Michael and I have explored in great detail over four programs.

But this is an absolutely critical point that needs to be made, is that in the context of the war, I mean, this is the thing: One of the ironies of this war, which I noted almost at the beginning, is that when the only means you have to achieve such a certain goal – in the US case to keep its position in the world, to keep the dollar the world’s money, et cetera – when the only means you have to achieve these goals are the very means that are actually going to undermine the achievement of these goals, you have a serious problem.

That’s the situation that the United States is in. So absolutely, I completely agree with that.

I should also add, of course, that this debt ceiling drama is really quite interesting, and we don’t know how it will be resolved.

But the two things about it that I think worth noting, number one, the very fact that this drama is occurring at all, underlines the deep political divisions in the United States, which are the result exactly of following the policies that the US has followed, the neoliberal policies, the financialization policies that it has followed over the last many decades.

This has resulted in a level of political dysfunction, which we are witness to today. That’s the first point. In a certain sense this political division may become economically quite meaningful at some point.

Secondly, I’d like to say that no matter how this death ceiling drama is resolved, Alan Greenspan’s idea that somehow the United States can continue to issue debt until kingdom come is completely wrong.

The fact of the matter is that the treasury market, the market for treasuries is already in trouble. The treasury market is not as liquid as it used to be.

That is to say that the treasuries being issued by the United States government in order to finance its debt, do not find as many willing buyers as in the past, which is why the Federal Reserve has to keep buying treasuries at a great rate of knots.

That is why its balance sheet has swelled to the extent that it has.

And if the United States does – you know, one of the ideas to break this debt ceiling knot, to cut the Gordian knot here, has been that the United States can simply issue a whole lot of money – this is going to lead to a further rapid acceleration of the de-dollarization process, which is in fact then going to land the US into a lot of trouble.

The US is already suffering from inflation, which is already a mark of the fact that its imperial power is declining. Because, at the end of the day, why is the US suffering from inflation? Because its ability to compel the rest of the world to sell goods and services to it for nothing is declining.

That’s why inflation has returned to the United States. So in these ways, I mean, the points you make about financialization and the kind of economy the US has are very important.

The solution to that, as Michael and I have observed at various occasions in this, because it’s such an important truth that it needs underlining, the solution to that will have to be a fundamental root-and-branch reform of the financial system, to reorient it away from predation and speculation, which is what it does today, towards productive investment, something it has really not done in decades, if that.

So a complete transformation of what we can also call bank-industry relations.

But I want to also shift, I want to also add another point, which I think is a very important one, which is, I’m sure I’m not the only one who said this.

The United States has never seen a war it doesn’t like, because the United States has over the last many decades, in fact, the United States has become as dominant as it has in the world, essentially by exploiting wars between other powers.

In the Second World War, in the First World War, the United States economy expanded massively while the economies of other countries were being destroyed, essentially because the United States was keeping those wars going by supplying arms and materiel to all sides, basically.

So the United States has always benefited from wars, and it is continuing to benefit from wars. And that is partly why the era of American dominance that we have witnessed over the past many decades has been an era of unending wars.

MICHAEL HUDSON: We’ve spent quite a few shows talking about the US balance of payments and what is America’s foreign debt.

This is a topic that’s not taught in economics courses or political courses, and it’s one of the most confusing topics to most people. How did America run up this foreign debt, and why do other countries keep their savings in the United States?

Well, until the last two years, China, Saudi Arabia, and other countries held very strong savings in the United States, because after all, it’s an open capital market, and because they needed the US dollars in order to pay for the oil that they bought, for the copper.

The US dollar was how all of the world’s commodity markets worked, from oil, to raw materials, to manufacturers.

Well, one result, the United States just basically committed suicide for the US dollar standard by grabbing, first of all, Venezuela’s gold, saying Venezuela didn’t elect the president we want; we appointed them to please give all of the gold in the Bank of England to Mr. [Juan] Guaidó.

And secondly, the grabbing of Russia’s foreign exchange in Europe and America, anywhere from $30 billion to $300 billion. So now the US is not a safe country.

But more importantly, why on earth would anybody hold US dollars to pay for oil if Saudi Arabia now pays for its Russian oil in rubles, and Saudi Arabia now pays for its imports from China with a Chinese RMB?

Now that world trade is multipolarizing, now that countries are paying for their trade and investment with each other in their own currencies, there is no need for the dollar.

So yes, the United States can print all of the dollars it wants, but it can’t produce the goods and services, which is the whole reason that people hold dollars.

The US debt is so much larger than the amount to pay that the United States is technically insolvent. The United States as a whole is just like Silicon Valley Bank and the banks that have just gone under

. There’s no way that the United States can or has any intention of paying the foreign debt.

The United States, following Greenspan, says —We are never going to redeem our debt. You can hold your money here, but just like a Ponzi scheme, and just like Silicon Valley Bank, you can all think of this dollar holding as being worth something, until you actually try to sell it.

— You try to sell it, then you’re going to find out that it’s all the savings that you’ve accumulated since 1945, since World War II ended 75 years ago. All of this is fictitious capital. And you’re just waking up to the fact of reality economics.

Other countries are finally realizing this. By splitting the world financially, this is the lever, like cutting a diamond. This is the key split that is basically splitting the whole world economy on financial terms.

This is the one topic that you cannot discuss in the major media here, and you cannot even raise in economics courses in the United States, because the answer is so terrifying to advocates of US hegemony.

MICK DUNFORD: I wonder about the speech that [US National Security Advisor Jake] Sullivan gave

[in April], when he said that globalization, privatization, deregulation, trade liberalization had failed, he said, because a non-market economy – namely China, he calls it a non-market economy – was part of the “liberal international order”.

He said the idea that markets lead growth is wrong. He said there was an overemphasis on finance. He said that the real industry, real sector was hollowed out. He said that there was a decline in public investment.

He said that the policy of spend first failed. He said that trickle-down failed. He spoke about some process through which the erosion of the working class eroded the middle class. And then of course he advocates blockading China.

But it, in a sense, represents a quite considerable sort of reversal within the United States. And I wonder how Radhika and Michael see this speech. I mean, it’s also of course important to ask just how much support it actually has amongst elites in the United States and the political class.

RADHIKA DESAI: Yeah, I mean this is a very important question. And I’ve argued in my [book] Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy

, which came out just at the end of last year, because this sort of talk was already beginning to happen at the time I was writing it.

And so I’ve dealt with this matter. So here’s my position.

Essentially, obviously, the mounting contradictions of neoliberalism inevitably mean that people will be talking about what’s wrong with it and so on. And certainly this talk is going on. So there are two possibilities.

Number one, just because neoliberalism is failing doesn’t mean that they’re going to give it up, because neoliberalism has never been about markets; it has always been about favoring the corporate capitalist classes.

And the nature of the US state is not going to change overnight. So what’s going to happen is that, the first option is that people will say these sorts of things: we have to do finance differently. You know, Mariana Mazzucato says we have to do capitalism differently.

So they will find a way of doing corporate capitalism differently. And so they will say we have to do a little bit more of this and a little bit less of that, or even a lot more of this and a lot less of that.

But in reality, the underlying structure will not change. The corporate capital will continue to be favored in a different way, in new forms, because the old forms no longer work. The old forms have led to financial crises and so on. So that’s the first option.

But there is also, thanks to the very divisions that have been created, the political divisions that have been created by neoliberalism, there is also another option, which is that someone like Trump, Trump himself might come back to power.

And then we are going to see a much more authoritarian version, much more – I mean, this other version, option number one, is dystopian enough, but an even more dystopian option will be seen.

So I think those are the two options. I mean, unless there is some kind of a radical revolution, you are not going to displace the corporate capital that has the reins of the US state in its hands, and that drives that.

So I think that corporate capital is either going to drive the US state to destruction, or it may be replaced by something even worse. So that’s what I think.

But Michael, please respond to Mick’s question.

MICHAEL HUDSON: I’m in agreement with what both of you said. Neoliberalism really, in trickle-down theory, has been amazingly successful in polarizing the economy.

The aim of the 1% is to have all of the economic surplus, leaving nothing for the rest. Just as the aim of neoliberal foreign policy is to get the whole world surplus in one country, and leave nothing for the rest. That’s the implicit dynamic.

The trick, and what makes academic economics fictitious economics, and more like science fiction than like science, is the pretense that somehow benefiting the 1% benefits the 99%.

Unless you realize that rent income, monopoly rent, land rent, natural resource rent, is a transfer payment that has nothing to do with earned income – we’re back to the classical economics of Adam Smith, Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, and Marx – then you’re not going to realize that what seems to be a growing economy is an economy that is shrinking as a result of all of the economic surplus being sucked upward, not by profits, but by rent-seeking, by monopoly rents, by exploitation of almost a pre-capitalist form.

So we are dealing with the fact that you don’t have the kind of industrial capitalism in America or Europe that you had in the 19th century. You have a regression to a kind of neo-feudal, rentier economy of inherited privilege, and oligarchy, not democracy.

And we’ve talked enough about that in earlier programs that all we have to do is remind [our audience] that this is the context for what we’re talking about with Ukraine and Russia, and the US and China, and the rest of the world today.

RADHIKA DESAI: No, and you know, so to sum up on this question, I forgot to add one other thing, which is that, of course, as we’ve already talked about before in the last episode, there’s increasing talk about industrial policy on both sides of the Atlantic.

But given the neoliberal orientation of these governments, that is to say the corporate orientation of these governments, essentially what will be labeled industrial policy will be stuck onto a new raft of programs and policies through which states are going to provide support to big corporations, including massive subsidies.

But I also, before we go on to talk about China, I also wanted to make a couple of other points about the United States in the context of this war.

One is that you always read these statistics about the astronomical sums that the United States spends on its military. You know, it’s more than the next X number of states combined. And all of these things are true.

But what’s remarkable is that after all this spending, what has the United States got to show for it? It’s got to show for it a series of military failures: Korea, Vietnam, all the 21st century wars, you name it.

And I think that the war in Ukraine, which is of course a proxy war, the United States is not fighting it itself because, quite frankly, I don’t think the American public has the stomach to fight wars anymore. And this is going to be a major issue in the election.

But nevertheless, even the United States is also going to face defeat in this war. The whole optics are being managed around the so-called spring offensive in such a way that the United States can at some point say, okay, we’ve done all we can; the Ukrainians have done all we can, but this war cannot be won.

And they will shift their attention elsewhere, especially given that an election campaign is coming and Biden is not very popular, nor is the war very popular.

More and more Americans are asking: Why are we spending all this money on wars when we have so much need at home?

So that’s really an important thing to watch for is how the war will play out in this campaign.

MICHAEL HUDSON: I can’t add anything to that.

RADHIKA DESAI: Yeah, that’s good. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn’t sort of jumping onto the next one.

Why don’t actually, I ask Mick, you are our resident China expert. So why don’t you start us off on China?

MICK DUNFORD: Okay, I’ll just say something more generally about China, first of all. I mean, the first thing I would say is that in 2017, China entered a new era.

That era was actually foreshadowed by what started to happen around the turn of the millennium. So China has in a sense embarked on a new phase in its development and its transition, if you like, to socialism.

So this new phase follows two very broad ones. It follows a turbulent phase of socialist construction after 1949, which occurred in the context of United States embargoes, in the context subsequently of a conflict with the Soviet Union, and in a context of acute capital shortage.

And of course as a country that came from behind, China had to address its capital shortage, not in the way in which the imperial and colonial countries had done so, basically by appropriating resources from other parts of the world, but it had to generate those resources internally, or initially, of course, with the help of Soviet loans and Soviet industrial assistance.

Then, after the rapprochement with the United States, which of course occurred in order to increasingly isolate the Soviet Union, China embarked on a path that actually it planned before 1949, but it was unable to follow that path simply because of the way in which it was isolated by the actions of the United States and the Western world.

So it entered on a path; it called it reform and opening up. And that occurred in a context of neoliberal globalization. Its roots in China lay in the early 1970s.

As soon as the embargo started to be lifted, Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, started to acquire loans abroad in order to finance industries producing consumer goods along coastal areas.

That then led to this phase of reform and opening up in which China managed its integration into the global order, generating these extraordinary rates of growth.

The thing that I would emphasize, first of all, is that it was driven by sustained high rates of capital accumulation right the way through. Of course, it fluctuated a lot in the first 30 years, but you’ve got sustained high rates of capital formation.

I would say you should describe China as a sort of planned, rational, socialist state – which uses, after reform and opening up, market instruments.

A planned, rational state because it basically sets social and economic objectives that are essentially designed to progressively improve the living standards of all the Chinese people. And then it acts in order to achieve these goals that it has set itself.

I think that it’s important to say that, throughout this set of phases, what you see are a whole succession of successive waves of reform and transformation of economic structures and of institutions. And all of these changes are basically designed to address crises and contradictions that emerge in the course of its development.

What’s interesting is that in a sense, an attempt to avoid the dynastic cycle, the rise and fall of dynasties. In other words, you address the contradictions at each stage through processes of reform, which enable you to move forward progressively on a path whose endpoint is socialism, communism.

But that lies a very, very long way into the future.

The important thing about this new era, as far as China’s concerned, is that basically, it’s mapping out a new development path. And it’s a development path that will differ very significantly from the Western path.

It explicitly argues that this path differs from that that is being pursued by the West.

It’s a path that is people-centered and not capital-centered. There’s one profound difference between a socialist country and a capitalist country.

In a sense, politics, right, including China’s whole process democracy, is in a sense in command and sets the objectives and targets. And it’s basically directed at improving the quality of lives of all the Chinese people.

But one way of trying to capture it is to say that there’s a whole series of new concepts that are being talked about. So this kind of notion of dual circulation, in which the domestic and overseas sectors reinforce each other, but where the domestic mark is the sort of mainstay of economic growth.

The emphasis, I mean, really since 2013, has been on high-quality development rather than on rapid growth. On scientific and technological innovation, technological upgrading, developing the technologies of the next industrial revolution and then trying to ensure that those technologies diffuse rapidly in order to improve the livelihoods of people.

It’s sustainable green development. I mean, anyone who lives in China will have seen already extraordinary improvements in the quality of the environment. Really, really quite remarkable.

So the idea is green development, rural revitalization, a world in which perhaps a relatively large share of the population continues to live and work in the countryside. It involves spiritual civilization, which is a response to the consequences of liberalization, of consumerism, of selfishness.

So, I mean, this is quite interesting because Wang Huning, who’s one of the current leadership wrote a book after he visited America in the 1980s called America Against America, in which he actually identified the way in which trends in American society were leading in the direction of isolation, fragmentation, disintegration.

And in a sense, this concern with spiritual civilization is really concerned to guarantee and ensure sort of social cohesion.

It involves concern with strategic security and stability and very important common prosperity. So this notion of common prosperity is, in a sense, one of the key drivers of Chinese development.

So in a sense, it’s mapping out a kind of development trajectory that differs very, very radically from the development trajectory of countries that embarked on neoliberal paths.

And then, I mean, we can talk more about that when we talk about the world, but at the same time, it’s trying to contribute to the emergence of a new world order, you know, a global civilization, with shared prosperity in the world.

So I think what is important to me is it’s setting out a kind of model for the creation of a rather different kind of world as well as for a different kind of China.

And when you look at all the problems in other countries it’s, in a sense, a very positive vision. But it reflects this capacity to set social and economic goals.

RADHIKA DESAI: Yeah, I’m very glad you started it off this way, because what you’ve done is you sort of laid the foundation for a picture that is becoming increasingly clear, in which, of course, for the West and for, obviously, for obvious reasons, for Ukraine, this is a huge and deep crisis.

But the fact of the matter is, as far as China is concerned, for the war, the conflict over Ukraine is really a small part of a much larger picture, which is largely composed of its peaceful rise, of its anti-imperialism.

I’d also like to emphasize something that you said and slightly elaborate on it.

You said China had to overcome its lack of capital, thanks to imperialism. So I would say in order to understand the development of China and also understand what every Third World country faces today, you have to understand that the development process in these countries will have to be very different from the West.

Why? Because number one, Western development itself set them back in the first place, thanks to imperialism, colonialism, et cetera, so that they had to start from a much worse place to begin with.

Number two, they have to complete the process. They have to undertake the process of development without having the luxury of imperialism.

I think you, as you rightly said, that you cannot source your capital from elsewhere. You cannot plunder India in order to finance the industrialisation of Europe and the United States and the settler colonies and so on. You can’t do that.

So you have to generate your own capital in order to do that. And you have to generate all your resources to do that.

And number three, you have to do it against the unremitting resistance of the imperialist powers. In all of these ways, the development of China is very, very different and it’s bound to be very different.

And I’ll come back to that when we come back to talking about the rest of the world as well. But for the rest, I just want to say a couple of things.

Number one, I think that the West really dreams that it’s going to be able to drive a wedge between China and Russia.

But I think China understands, no matter what criticisms it may have of Russia’s actions privately, but China understands that the Western aggression is primarily responsible for this war and there’s absolutely no way that giving into it is going to benefit anybody.

So this is the real source of China’s support for Russia. It’s not being partial to Russia. It just understands things in a much bigger way. So China can be expected to continue supporting Russia.

And of course, the fact that it now has a cheap source of energy is not going to go amiss at all. But I think between them, I think China is, of course, in the lead, but they are pioneering a new world order, which is essentially about a model of development, which is absolutely a model of development which is absolutely the opposite of neoliberalism.

So yeah, I’ll just say that for now and leave it there because I’m sure Michael has lots to say as well.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, what’s unique about what China’s doing internationally is it’s made no attempt at all to proselytize its economic system.

What is its economic model? It’s interesting you’ve used that term. It hasn’t said it. It doesn’t say, we have an economic model that’s an alternative to neoliberalism. Here is how we are redesigning our national income accounts to show what we’re doing, as Soviet Russia had a different set of national income accounts.

It’s not really explaining a different economic doctrine to what is taught in the United States schools. And in fact, Chinese students are sent to the United States to study economics. And once they return to China, I’m told they’re given priority over Chinese students.

And there really isn’t any economic teaching of a model even within China.

And a few weeks ago, President Xi’s speech at the Party Congress talked all about what the overall aims were, world peace, a growing economy, the aims that Mick has mentioned.

But there was no analytic content of: — How are we going to get there? What is our tax policy going to be? How are we going to finance the local government budgets that are now financed by selling off land to real estate developers?

— How are we going to handle our land issue, the financial issue? What are the virtues of what we’ve done is keeping money as a public utility in the hands of government, not privatizing it, not turning money into a financial commodity.

— How do we avoid turning land into a financial commodity? How do we avoid turning labor into a commodity, but treat the objective as raising labor?

There’s been no kind of economic model to teach an alternative. And in fact, there’s very little discussion in China of the history of economic thought apart from Marx.

So I don’t think that if we’re talking about where is all this going to end, I don’t think there can be a multilateral order without some kind of a explicit economic doctrine that finds its counterpart in a mirroring set of institutions built along socialist lines as alternative to the World Bank, to the International Monetary Fund.

We’ve mentioned the International Criminal Court. We’ve mentioned basically a whole different United Nations with: What are economic rights of countries? What are the kinds of growth that we want to do? This is what’s basic.

I won’t talk about China’s foreign policy yet. I’ll throw it back to you guys, but it’s unique that China hasn’t spelled out what it’s going to do.

The only thing that we have that China might say is: Well, how are we going to respond to the sanctions?

It said that if Ms. Baerbock’s projected sanctions on Chinese trade are imposed, there will be retaliation, but it hasn’t said anything about how it’s going to retaliate and what are the principles of retaliation against America’s economic war against China.

For instance, it could impose sanctions on European countries that are importing U.S. products that could be used for the war of Ukraine.

Suppose that China were to mirror the U.S. sanctions policy, starting with tanks and missiles or oil and gas, food.

Imagine if China and Russia, backed by the global majority, somehow could mirror American sanctions and say, — Okay, you’re not going to trade with us except for key things that you want. We’re not going to trade with you. We’re going to go it alone.

Well, if China, Russia, and the global majority go it alone, which is where we’re moving towards, what are the principles going to be to create economic institutions like their own trade organization, their own central bank, to finance all this?

There’s been no discussion of this and not even a proselytizing of economic ideology that ultimately is the framework for all of this alternative.

MICK DUNFORD: I think I would just emphasize this idea that certain goals are set.

For example, you might set a goal concerned with rural regeneration. That means that certain resources are mobilized.

It’s an attempt, if you like, to mobilize the human, financial, and material resources of particular localities in order to generate income streams that improves the living standards, quality of life in different places.

Some of these things generate certain vulnerabilities. You can illustrate it by looking at what particular things have happened in particular places.

A particular locality with a traditional culture had resources from government to rebuild people’s homes, adding on guest rooms, and then this village then becomes a place which is used for seminars and workshops. It generates an income stream through acting as a kind of a center for visitors.

In that context, you see quite significant increases in local income. It’s mobilizing the environment, it’s mobilizing the infrastructural assets that have been put in in order to enable people to establish sustainable livelihoods.

In some cases, it confronts difficulties because, for example, in the pandemic, it had enormous negative impact upon travel of all kinds and so negatively impacted the incomes of people who are involved in that kind of project.

You see these things going on at a grassroots level all over China. In relation to the industrial issues, we’re talking about restrictions on semiconductors.

Of course, China is launching a whole series of major industrial policies that are basically designed to develop these capabilities, to ensure that China is able to develop these capabilities and does not find itself in a situation again where it cannot acquire what it needs because someone refuses to sell it to them.

I don’t see it through economic theory. I see it through an attempt to achieve certain kinds of targets and then developing projects, mobilizing resources for those projects, and then evaluating how they work.

If they work well in one place, you might copy those ideas in other places. It works in a very different way from many of the things that you actually see in the Western world. I’m not sure how one would easily theorize it.

If I were to talk about the whole of China’s experience, I’d probably not do it in terms of those transitions to a market economy.

Actually, I think what happened there was that you saw a very significant decentralization of initiative in a situation in which the central government lacked resources for a whole series of reasons, in part because it had to repay debts.

It decided to let local initiative rip, in a way, which is what happened with the household responsibility system or with the establishment of township and village enterprises and so on.

RADHIKA DESAI: What you say, Mick, is very interesting. I never thought we would end up discussing this, but this is very interesting. Let me say two things very quickly.

Number one, I think Mick, you’re absolutely right. I think what the Chinese have done right from the beginning is that they have actually been, essentially, like you say, how do you prevent this cycle of the rise and fall of dynasties? How does the party remain in power?

It remains in power by addressing concrete problems as they emerge concretely with whatever resources that may be available at that time. In that sense, there is not a model to be proselytized about.

China has also been extremely careful internationally, partly because it wishes to distance itself on this matter anyway from the Soviet experience. It says, — We are not exporting any model. There is no Chinese model, et cetera. I think that there is also a point to that.

But there is another side to it, which is if you think about it, what is the purpose of neoclassical economics? What is the purpose of all this economic theory?

It is the purpose of the dominant trend in economics is actually to get countries to open themselves up to the West. The purpose of economic theory is actually imperialism.

So in that sense, of course, China is not going to produce any direct counterpart to that because China does not intend to be imperialist.

And I would say that a lot of people also point out that the abstractness of the theories of neoclassical economics are contrasted with the concreteness of the theories, such as that of the developmental state, which is different in different parts of the world, which have been very concretely based on the particular situation and the resources at hand, whether it is a developmental state in Japan or South Korea or elsewhere.

So in that sense, I do not think that there is going to be a model. And having said that, I think that the thing is that the critique of neoclassical economics and the critique of the Western model and of Western imperialism is certainly sharpening in China as we speak, I think.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, there may not be a model, but there should be economic concepts. To me, the main concept is economic rent, the distinction between earned and unearned income.

There has to be a model of international payments. It’s obvious, as we’ve spoken about before, that some countries are going to end up with claims on other countries.

China, how will China be remunerated for the expense of its Belt and Road Initiative? How will all this be settled? There has to be some kind of accounting system for all of this.

An accounting system basically uses economic categories. And so we don’t need a whole model of the economy, but we do need some basic concepts that are the building blocks of China’s pragmatic experimentation that it’s following.

MICK DUNFORD: There are economic concepts that you can use. I mean, in relation to this idea of common prosperity they talk about the role of the primary, the secondary and the tertiary distribution of income.

And the idea is that in a socialist country, everyone should contribute, everyone should work. So this kind of primary distribution of income, the income that you derive from the work that you do, plays a very, very fundamental role.

But of course, at present, there’s a lot of development of a whole series of services, which obviously are financed in part through contributions, but in part also through taxation, in terms of health, education and so on.

Then you’ve also got mechanisms, these so-called tertiary distribution, that’s what they call a situation where, for example, companies undertake socially useful initiatives in other parts of China, or where you have cooperation between local governments in one part of China, which are expected to actually mount projects in other parts of China.

And if you like, places that have become relatively rich help those places that have not become relatively rich.

So those concepts are used and I mean, you were talking about the international side in terms of the international side, obviously they have balance of payments accounts so they examine the balance of payments.

When they built Belt and Road projects involving investment finance, that involves interest, it involves repayment arrangements and so on, usually on terms that are less onerous than those of international, if they have a multinational, of the multilateral banks, and also of Western financial resources.

When they opened up, their capital account was not opened. So I mean, these categories do play a role. And the non-opening of the capital account had a very great deal to do with China’s development path, because it actually had impacts on the exchange rate, and therefore on the competitiveness of Chinese exports.

You can use economic concepts to discuss some of these things, but there’s nothing equivalent to the kind of neoclassical theory of markets that you can apply to the Chinese case.

I know that it’s taught in China as well as in the United States and in Europe, but I tend to see things much more in kind of a more practical way of moving moving things forward in terms of moving up the value chain, improving people’s livelihoods, improving the quality of the environment, improving air quality, all sorts of things of that kind they’re very, very concrete many things are trying to achieve are very, very concrete.

RADHIKA DESAI: That’s I mean, in a certain sense, that makes sense. Because after all, what is socialism, it’s use-value production. Use-values are very concrete, they are not abstract, as value is, or what was often called exchange-value. I just call it value.

But anyway, maybe we should, we’ve been going for nearly a little over 50 minutes now. And so I think we should transition to our last topic, which is what’s going on in the rest of the world.

And I have to say, compared with the optimism that existed in the much of the 2010s, we talk about rising multi polarity and rising BRICS, and so on, the rest of the world is not doing as well as China.

And I think that at the same time, I think that another thing is very clear, which is that if the rest of the world wants to do better, say, for example, President Lula in Brazil, then he is going to have to implement policies that are make a clean break with the Washington consensus, with neoliberalism, and at least learn from China.

There is no model, there’s no Chinese model, but sort of learn about how the Chinese essentially created development in their context and take tips for that, because essentially, the rest of the world is actually suffering from obviously high prices.

Many countries are facing a debt crisis. There’s also a lot of political uncertainty in many parts of the world, thanks to the current war, the destabilization of existing arrangements.

But I think underlying all this is the decline of the West, whose chief cause is neoliberalism.

I think if the rest of the world is to learn anything from this and climb out of the crisis and build a better economic model, etc, it will have to be in some kind of anti-neoliberal kind of socialist or quasi socialist manner.

And here, I have to say that, one, I’m originally from India, I study India, and I have to say for the last several years, things have looked very depressing with the present government in power, which is really a fascist government in power, making nonsense of the rule of law, allowing its goons to prosecute whoever it likes, and making an absolute mess of the economy.

Indian economic growth has been actually extremely weak, even though the government has cooked up statistics to show that it is somehow good.

But just a day or two ago, there was a really bright light in this rather dim scenario. And that was that in the Indian state of Karnataka, there was an election, which the Congress won, and it won the election by promising a people-centered set of policies.

And I think if the Congress and other opposition parties can understand what this means and stick to it, I think that it will be able to bring India out of this mess.

Of course, in Brazil, we have President Lula, but South Africa is also not in a very good state, it is in a state of perpetual economic crisis.

But I think in the context of the decline of the West, the awful consequences of the neoliberal model, and the rise of China, I think that the world should be able to learn from this contrasting fate of the West and China.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, what’s blocking the rest of the world from moving away from neoliberalism?

Lula last week proposed that China, Argentina and Brazil should have a common currency? Well, how can you have an alternative to the dollar or a common currency when you have an immense dollar debt?

What’s blocking other countries right now from creating an alternative that is more of mixed economy with a public sector dominant and ending rentiers is the fact that this dollar debt is forcing these countries to submit to the International Monetary Fund, which is the neoliberal hammer, forcing privatization, forcing anti-labor policies, all the things that we’ve described before.

And the only way that other countries can pursue an alternative to the trap that they’re in, the only way they can escape from this trap is to repudiate the dollar debt and say, — Look, we’ve been led into a trap that has financially killed as many people as a military occupation.

Just like President Putin had said that more Russians died as a result of the privatizations of neoliberal policies of the 1990s than died in World War II, you can say that the Third World finance is how the neoliberals are locking other countries into the U.S.-centered diplomacy.

And the only way that countries can break from this U.S.-centered diplomacy and the sanctions and the U.S. control of the world coordinating organizations is to create a new set of coordinating organizations, which requires really withdrawing ultimately from what you call Western civilization.

And I agree with you. It’s a civilizational problem. So this is the basic fight for what will the next millennium look like.

And it can’t be done without an explicit break. There’s a Chinese proverb, “Whoever tries to go two roads at once will get a broken hip joint.”

Well, that’s the problem that they face. You can go beyond just the U.S. and China and say, what about Syria and the U.S. presence in the Near East right now that the U.S. is holding?

It’s been told to leave Iraq, and it hasn’t left Iraq. The U.S. military presence over the rest of the world is doing everything it can to prevent other countries from following the alternative. And it’s in fact militarized neoliberalism.

That’s really the problem that we have today. And Mr. Blinken said just last week that there is a kind of just and durable peace, but it can’t ratify what Russia has done, that America will fight not only against Russia and China until everything, all of the Russian assimilations of Crimea, of Luhansk and Donetsk are all reversed and things go back to the way they were before.

That’s the neoliberal dream, going back to the way it was before to prevent any change going forward. That really is the final statement of neoliberalism. There cannot be any escape. There is no alternative.

There cannot be any escape from dollar diplomacy and the world institutions that we control. That’s what the rest of the world is facing.

MICK DUNFORD: I think I want to just present a more positive view about some of the things that I mean, I realize, I agree absolutely.

I mean, that is a problem, especially ever since the 1980s, especially. I mean, it’s a trap, which many countries have simply not managed to escape. And it’s a trap that’s extremely difficult to escape.

But this is simply a chart that looks at the share of world output of agricultural products, of manufacturing goods, of energy, raw materials. And then it also gives a share of GDP and the share of the population.

So the share of the GDP is in black. So you can see that’s relatively low. But these are the so-called BRI countries. And you can see that they account for 60% of the world population.

But if you look at their contribution to the world production of energy of the kind of materials, raw materials that are needed, if you look at their contribution to the production of manufacturers, if you look at their contribution to the production of food, you see a sustained increase.

If you look at the BRICS, you get a similar story. If you look at the SCO, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, you get a similar story. If you look at RESAP, you see a similar story.

There are deep difficulties, not least because of the conflict in Ukraine, but also because of the deepening debt crisis, because of the impact of the conflict in Ukraine on the availability of energy, on the availability of food especially, of course, in emerging countries.

So there are serious, serious difficulties. And yet some parts of the world are making progress. That should be a message of hope beyond the neoliberal order dominated by the collective West.

The parts of the world that colonized the rest of the world largely after a series of Chinese inventions like watertight compartments in ships, gun powders, magnetic compass, printing. They arrive in Europe, and Europe uses those Chinese inventions to put guns on ships and dominate the world.

I think there is also a vision of a different type of world system centered around a series of civilization states.

And while there are enormous challenges I think, if you look at what’s going on in the world, you can see stories that offer us a certain amount of hope.

Many of these are associated with what is happening in Asia and Russia is orientating itself towards Asia and will also make an enormous contribution to the development of what will hopefully, beyond these disasters through which we’re living, what will hopefully start to look like a better world.

So I think we need this kind of positive vision of a way forward as well as identifying the problems of crises that we confront.

That’s one of the reasons why I spoke about China in the way I did, because it’s an attempt to move in the direction of collective prosperity, in other words, because it’s only an upper middle income country at the moment.

It may be the largest economy in the world, but it’s a middle income country. And so there’s a long way to go in improving the livelihoods of Chinese people, and indeed, of course, of people in other parts of the world.

So that’s one of the things I would want to say.

RADHIKA DESAI: Well maybe if it’s okay with you, we should draw this to a close now, because we’re kind of nearly done.

So let me just then bring this to a close by saying that a mixed graph that he just showed, also tells us why the neoliberal system and the dollar system have to be rejected. Because the difference between the value or the fact that the GDP is very low, but their actual production is very high, is very simple.

The dollar system relies on systematically undervaluing the currencies, and therefore the labor and the products of the rest of the world, which is why you see this discrepancy between how much is produced and what the GDP is.

So I think that also, so as far as the rest of the world is concerned, what we are saying is that the road for the rest of the world is very clear.

It is away from the West, towards China, Asia, away from the Washington consensus, towards whatever locally adaptable forms of socialism are possible. That’s the way in which things have to go.

And one of the things that the neoliberal West has also done, by the way, is, which is going to affect the rest of the world very badly, and the rest of the world needs to take an initiative to deal with it, is that, of course, in the present context, the war has become an excuse to essentially abandon all efforts to reach any climate goals.

And again, China is an example of how to deal with emissions and generally ecological issues.

So meanwhile, global warming is reaching a point where it is seriously affecting labor as well as agricultural productivity in many parts of the world.

So the urgency of moving away from the West and from Western neoliberalism and Western imperialism has never been greater.

So I think with that, I’d just like to thank you all for listening. Thanks to Mick Dunford for joining us on this amazing show, which Mick’s contribution made so excellent, I think.

And of course, thanks as usual to Paul Graham, our videographer. So thank you again and see you next time. Bye bye.

Top 10 Most DANGEROUS Hells Angels In History

As others have pointed out, Russian and Chinese armies are mass conscript armies, with large numbers of often unwilling conscripts given minimal training for a short period of service. While most Western armies are now professional armies made up of willing volunteers who serve for a number of years and therefore can be trained to a much higher level.

The Chinese military is above peer-capable in many areas, and use a different style of fighting and military doctrine than the United States uses.

One must remember that EVERYONE in China gets military training, starting in first grade. And it continues throughout their life.

So to say that China’s military is just “conscripts” that are untrained, and undisciplined, and a mass conscript army is blatantly and absolutely false.

Here’s the bottom line.

You all want to sail over to China and “start shooting ’em slant-eyed commies”… go ahead. See what happens.

The point of this response is not to point out China is good, or the USA is good, or bad or whatever. It is to answer the question. Comparatively, how does Russia or China compare to NATO and the United States?

I say let’s find out.

Are you all up to have a DF-41 rammed up the ass of your home city? Because that is exactly what China is going to do. China does not play games.

These Female Cartel Bosses Are SCARY. Here’s Why…

https://youtu.be/8qrY5xScqL8

World Hal Turner 30 May 2023 

The US is a very contradictory country, or to be more accurate: the principle of US politics is very contradictory.

On one hand, the US wants every country to be democratic, so that none of them can be united as one and against the US. It means that if the ruling party doesn’t obey, just raise the opposition party. Same thing happened for countless times, Juan Gerardo Guaidó Márquez is one of them.

On the other hand, the US wants a dictator in every other country, so that it could have total control over them by controling the ruler.

The US wants other countries to be both open and isolated at the same time. So that the US capital can enter them to invest and harvest, while people in those countries wouldn’t notice what’s going on.

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White people used to just exploit Africa by purchasing primary prodcuts with very low prices. Most of the income from the business would go to the pockets of the agents of the west, i.e. the dictators and their lackeys.

Jean-Bédel Bokassa, supported by France, was a brutal and heartless dictator in Central Africa Republic. This photo was taken during his ceromony coronation, because he wanted to turn the country into an empire and be an emperor, because he worshipped Napoleon.

Reza Pahlavi, dictator of Iran. During his dynasty, the upper class of Iran was “open and free”. Photos takend during Pahlavi dynasty usually been used as the proof of superiority of democracy nowadays, eventhough he was a dictator and only the upper class in Iran was free and open.

Ironically, he was overthrown because the US thought that he wasn’t democratic enough, and abandoned him in the revolution.

More ironically, the result of the revolution was a conservative and reglious authority based on Sharia, something which the US hates even more.

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After years and years of exploitation, most people in Africa just got used of it, until China came.

Oh fuck, China builds roads and hospitals for them, to give them the taste of modernization.

FFS, China even trained the locals to know how to build railways and operate trains, so that one day the locals could do it on their own. Maybe still with Chinese technology, but they would know all the principles and rules behind the construction and machines.

This, smashed the old world oder built by the white people.

Africans are not supposed to understand how to build and operate. They need to rely on the west to do things: borrowing money from the west, contribution cheap labour to OEM factories, and sell their resources in low price when they cannot repay the loans.

And now Chinese are teaching them to stand on their feet.

Just tell Africans that China is building a debt trap, because this is how the west always does, and the west knows this better than anyone else.

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A more cruel fact is that the US used to lack of interest in Africa, because it’s too poor there.

US politicians would only show some interest when USSR influence appeared there.

Africans were not even qualified to be exploit by the US, until China decided to participate in the development of Africa more, which is in the new millennium.

Even Africans would be confused about the US presence, since it’s never interested in Africa.

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BTW,

recently China lent 10 billion USD to Brazil,

so that Brazil could repay international loan.

Meanwhile Brazil sells 69 billion RMB (10B USD) worth of soybeans to China, and then use the RMB to repay China’s loan.

Brazil got its international loan cleared, China got the soybean, and RMB got used in international trade.

Win-win.

Only the US is pissed off.

Because it could exploit something from Brazil, if Brazil couldn’t pay off the loan.

I wonder if anyone noticed that ever since the bankruptcy of Sri Lanka in 2022, we haven’t seen more countries go bankrupt?

THIS IS WW3, Putin just scored a devastating blow to the U.S.!

https://youtu.be/hPzMXYNBndY

Yes.

It already has.

Korean War – Conventional

Americans will know this war as the “Korean War”. And it was a bloody fiasco for all sides. Millions of Chinese died, and thousands of American and allies died. But at the end, the Chinese attained their objectives; the United States left China, and evacuated South Korea (in a rout, no less). The only Americans who still remember this war, and the massive hardships associated with it, is the United States Marine Corp.

Bio-weapon carpet bombing

This was followed by bio-weapon carpet bombing that began immediately at the conclusion of the conventional fighting. This lasted for decades. It started in the mid 1950s, and continued into the 1970s. This was a major CIA enterprise.

Eventually, the Chinese got to be pretty good at detecting bio-weapons, tracking the viruses, and devising strategies to counter the bio-weapons assaults. And over time, the effect of the bio-weapon carpet bombing became softer; lighter, and ineffective.

Engineered Famine

Thus, this method of warfare evolved into a new type of assault; a new kind of warfare. Rather than kill the Chinese people directly though viruses, the United States decides to starve China into submission. Thus, famine attempts were bio-weapons and genetically engineering insect strains were introduced inside of China to induce starvation and famine.

Interlude 1

During the late 1970s and into the 1980s, the United States made agreements with China, and the overt attempts at famine ended. Instead black operations, hidden no doubt, to start color revolutions were put in place.

Tiananmen color revolution

The NED tried their first Chinese color revolution in the “Pro Democracy movement” of the 1990s. Which failed for a multitude of reasons. But, both the United States and China learned from that event.

Interlude 2

Aside from a couple of “punches” by the United States (such as the Belgrade embassy bombing, and the carrier trip down the Taiwan strait) the United States spent it’s time readying for the next big attempt. Preparations took time, but pre-positioned elements of color revolutions were placed in the mainland, in Uighur-controlled Xinjiang, in Tibet, and in Hong Kong.

Then Edward Snowden comes to HK before going to Russia and provided the Chinese everything about the NED, and CIA prep work. Decades of work, and long-duration agents, were rounded up and killed. Those that were not, only made it out alive by going black and leaving everything behind. The horrors that the captured CIA operatives experienced sent shock-waves and shivers throughout the various agencies involved. The Chinese do not play.

Donald Trump initiates war

Oh, he talked a good talk, and spoke about never having a war. But there are many ways to conduct a war, and his administration was very active in them. Following in the pre-prep planning by the Obama Administration, The following wars came into being under Trump….

• Trade War (failed)
• Technology War (on-going)
• Color Revolution in Tibet (failed)
• Color revolution in HK (failed)
• Taiwan color revolution (partial success)
• Engineered famine through Drone dispersal (failed)
• Submarine War in the South China Sea (on-going)
• January 2020 Coronavirus on CNY in Wuhan (failed)
• July 2020. The diarrhea Tick Virus assault in Beijing (failed)
• August 2020. The vomiting humanized swine flu virus (failed)
• The USN Naval flotilla engagement in 2020 (a dud, and resulted in the firing of Mark Esper)
• Insurgency in XinJiang (Failed)
• AUKUS (In process)
• Nuclear systems in Australia (success)

Biden continues the war efforts…

Now, President Biden took the actions by President Trump and put them on “overdrive”. He also added some new wars…

• NATO+ in the Pacific. (In process)
• QUAD in the Pacific. (In process)
• Nuclear systems in South Korea (success)
• Nuclear systems in Japan (in process)
• Interruption of the BRI (in process)
• Militarizing Taiwan (in process)

And many more.

As I see it, the United States has been actively fighting a war with China. It is being so poorly reported that it is a stealth war, with certain fear-mongering hypes over blown, and many tactical events unreported.

Now, if you, the reader, desires to pretend that there has never been any hostilities at all, and that one day, there might be a war… then that’s fine.

I don’t care.

Seeing what I see; a historical BIG PICTURE… it is clear that the United States has no brakes or reverse gear and the current geo-political trajectory will absolutely result in conflict.

But, you know, I am of a conservative bent, and I like to believe that the United States would never be so stupid to attack the nation that [1] it owes so much debt to; [2] the nation that is nuclear armed and not afraid to use them, and [3] the nation that makes EVERYTHING the United States uses.

No American leader would ever be so absolutely stupid to do such a crazy thing.

Not even Biden.

What is the craziest thing someone has done just to spite somebody else?

Someone built a whole three-story building just to block his brother’s view of the sea.

The building, aptly called “Spite House”, was built in the 1950s, in Beirut, Lebanon.

What hapened is two brothers had inherited some land from their father.

Ensued a long dispute on how to manage the land. An agreement couldn’t be reached.

One of the brothers, apparently without the other’s go-ahead, built a wonderful house for himself with a perfect view of the sea.

This left the other brother quite pissed.

So, in order to spite him, the other brother built a very narrow, quite oddly-shaped, yet somehow still inhabitable building that looked like it jumped out of a Dr. Seuss book — smack dab in between the house and the lovely sea view.

 

house on the right, spite house on the left

Spite House is around 60 centimeters (2 feet) at its narrowest point and 4 meters (13 feet) at its widest.

There are two apartments on each floor.

Spite House served its purpose – it blocked the beautiful view of the sea from his brother’s house. Plus as a result of this the house decreased in property value.

The building is called Al Ba’sa (in Arabic) which translates to “The Grudge”.

Jeff Brown has a great Twitter account

I suggest you all subscribe.

GUILTY TEENS Reacting To Life Sentences… #4

My Chinese American friend tells me that China can beat the US in a war with only 1/10 of their total force, should I believe him?

The United States, for all of its 800+ military bases, high technology planes and submarines, and for it being involved in over 9 continuous wars all over the globe… it ONLY have 50,000 combat troops.

China has 915,000 active duty troops, of which a full 210,000 are combat troops.

…

Now, let’s do the math.

Assuming that the United States deploys 100% of it’s combat troops in China to fight the Chinese, the Chinese would out number the combat forces by a 4.5x margin. Not a 10x margin.

…

So, no, your friend is wrong. 

He means well, but his numbers are off. China would meet parity with the United States with 1/5 of it’s total force. Not 1/10th.

Or 20% of it’s combat reserves. Of course, this assumes that Chinese missiles would not be used, nor the huge advantages in technology, numbers, bases, and other attributes that the Chinese have inside of China. 

This is a “sanity check” that is available for everyone to crunch the numbers with. What is amazing to me is that the American population has been so dumbed down into a state of numb stupidity, that they are unable to perform the most basic third grade level calculations.

People Laughed at His House Until They Came Inside

https://youtu.be/Km1MCUE2Rf4

World Hal Turner 30 May 2023

Based upon information which came to me discreetly via postal mail, I have concluded that World War 3 can kick-off in less than two weeks, between the dates of June 12 thru 24.   The largest NATO air ‘exercise” – Air Defender 23 – takes place in that time period; may cover Ukraine “Counter-Offensive.”

As described during my Memorial Day radio show last night, my wife and son came up to the house here in Pennsylvania, from our regular home in New Jersey, this past Saturday evening.  They brought with them, postal mail from my P.O. Box which has accumulated for about 3 weeks.

In that postal mail was a discreet, but large, envelope, containing what can be described as intelligence material about certain NATO planning.

I perused the material and then set about trying to verify it.   But with the entire US being on Memorial Day Weekend holiday, it was very difficult reaching my contacts from my years working with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), during which I handled National Security Intelligence, Terrorism, and Foreign Counter-Intelligence.

As of early this morning, Tuesday, May 30, I am able to reach several contacts  from my FBI years, and am further verifying the material.

Here’s what I can confirm:

NATO will commence its largest air exercise in history, called “Air Defender 2023” on June 12.

Air Defender 23 will be the most significant military exercise ever carried out in European skies. The event will involve the air forces of 25 nations.

More specifically, Air Defender 23 will represent the most extensive deployment exercise of air forces in the history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, commonly known as NATO. The unprecedented event will involve up to 10,000 exercise participants who will train their flying skills with approximately 220 aircraft. The military exercise will take place in European airspace and under the command of the German Air Force, or Luftwaffe.

By creating this joint exercise, Air Defender 23 aims to enhance and optimize cooperation among NATO forces and show the alliance’s strength. But what exactly are the skills that Air Defender 23 intends its participants to train?

The 25 participating nations plan to investigate how their respective air forces would react and cooperate in case of a military crisis. Mainly, Air Defender 23 will be an opportunity to assess the participants’ joint airborne response to a hypothetical emergency. In this context, Germany will act as a collective defense hub for European airspace.

The 25 participating nations include Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, and Greece.

Air Defender 23 will see the arrival of 23 different aircraft types, including the F-35 of the Americans and Dutch, a NATO AWACS reconnaissance aircraft, and, for the first time ever, a Japanese Air Force transport aircraft. Of the 220 aircraft involved, 100 alone will be arriving from 35 states in the US.  Those US aircraft constitute the largest deployment of Air National Guard aircraft since Operation Desert Storm in Iraq back in 1991.

(HT REMARK: Not to put too fine a point on it, but one does not move that many aircraft, from that many countries, halfway around the world – and just outside an ongoing conflict zone in Ukraine – just to have an “exercise.”)

 

NATO “Exercise” Covering for Real Attack

Readers may recall that another NATO Exercise “BaltOps-2022” was used as cover to plant explosives on the NordStream 2 gas pipelines.  This was revealed by Investigative Journalist Seymour Hersh who showed the Biden regime planned the Nordstream bombing attack in the White House, deployed specialized Navy Divers from a team outside the investigative purview of Congress, to plant explosives that could be activated by special tones emitted from a sonar buoy.  Three months or so after the BaltOps-22 exercise, Hersh reported, a Norwegian air force plane was sent to air-drop the special tone-emitting sonar buoy, which detonated the underwater explosives, destroying much of the Nordtream 2 pipeline.

So NATO using an “exercise” to cover for an actual military operation, is nothing new, and still fresh in most people’s minds.

Fast-forward to today, and NATO is planning its largest air strike exercise in history.   It is doing so just outside the Ukraine-Russia conflict zone.  Gee, what a coincidence!

NATO supports Ukraine and has been supplying Ukraine with massive amounts of money and military weaponry/ammunition.

None of it has succeeded in turning the tide in Ukraine’s favor; Russia is winning, slowly-but-surely.  In fact, Ukraine is LOSING so badly, their own troops have begun SHOOTING OFFICERS IN THE HEAD rather than engage in battle.   That story, with horrifying graphic video of a Ukraine Battalion Commander shot in the head by his own men, is HERE

Now, the NATO countries have given almost all they can give to Ukraine, and yet Ukraine is still losing.

So NATO is coming to an inflection point: Either they admit they cannot help Ukraine defeat Russia, or . . . .

They come into the war on the side of Ukraine.

THAT, is what the postal mail material I received on Saturday, seems to indicate.

The only chance Ukraine has of turning the tide, and the ONLY chance NATO has of saving face after all its help to Ukraine failed, is for NATO to come into the conflict directly.

But there’s a problem: Russia has not attacked NATO.   Moreover, Ukraine is not a member of NATO.

So in order for NATO to come into the conflict, there has to be some action or event, that would “justify” NATO entering the fight.

 

CREATING AN INCIDENT

For months, the world has been hearing about the coming “Ukraine Counter-Offensive.”  It’s been repeatedly stated that Ukraine is going to launch some blistering effort, to repel Russia out of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye Oblasts (states) which voted to secede from Ukraine and join Russia, and to regain control over Crimea, which seceded by vote in the year 2014.

Of late, mass-media in the West is also reporting that the U.S., through NATO, is working on giving fourth generation F-16 Fighter Jets to Ukraine and training Ukrainian pilots to operate those jets.  Sadly for Ukraine, training a fighter pilot is not done quickly.  It take upwards of a year.

Even worse, I reported (HERE) that the U.S. is not only pushing its NATO allies to donate F-16’s but the U.S. is also insisting the planes be of the type with special modifications, enabling those planes to carry U.S. B-61 free-fall, nuclear bombs, and Ukrainian pilots be trained in using them!

This demand by the US has been met with strong opposition from a number of NATO allies.

However, the material sent to me via postal mail, indicates NATO plans to create an incident wherein they can justify NATO entry into the war, and use the coming “Ukrainian Counter-Offensive” as the means to do just that.

The papers mailed to me indicate the following scenarios are in-planning:

SCENARIO “A”

1)  Ukraine grants NATO permission to enter its air space to establish a nationwide no-fly zone.  NATO agrees and enters.

2) Russia has already warned it will engage and destroy such foreign aircraft.   Russia then does what it says it would do, NATO screams it has been “attacked by Russia” and it’s on like Donkey Kong.

The papers mailed to me also include other scenarios:

 

SCENARIO “B”

A) “Ukrainian F-16’s” enter the fight and launch attacks into actual Russia.  Belgorad is the likely attack zone.  But since there are no qualified Ukrainian Pilots, the planes will be piloted by British and American pilots.

B) Russia shoots down the planes either in Ukraine or inside Russia.

C) When the pilots are either captured alive, or killed in the fight, their bodies will prove they were British and American.

D) Russia declares they have been attacked by the US and NATO and declare war upon us.  Again, it’s on like Donkey Kong.

 

SCENARIO “C”

Includes both Scenario “A” and Scenario “B” above.

i) NATO is granted permission to enter Ukrainian air space to set up no-fly zone and NATO enters.

ii) Ukrainian F-16’s enter Russia and attack.

iii) NATO planes warn incoming Russian defenders they cannot attack the Ukrainian planes or they will be hit by some 200 NATO planes.

iv) Russia tells both Ukraine and NATO what’s what, and commences hitting all of them.   It’s on like Donkey Kong.

 

In support of this intel received via postal mail, I can also report the USS Gerald R. Ford made a port call to Oslo, Norway last week, spending four days in port.  It is shown entering Oslo harbor in the photo below:

The USS Gerald Ford is the largest warship in the world, and carries upwards of 90 aircraft for battle.

It even has small in-flight refueling tankers.

It’s squadrons of fighter jets can take off, be refueled in-flight, enter northwestern Russia to launch attacks, and return to the aircraft carrier.

So Russia would be faced with intense air battles in Ukraine, intense air strikes into Belgorad, and other air strikes in northwestern Russia from fighters on the USS Gerald Ford, while US aircraft carriers in the Pacific, sail from Japan and perhaps launch additional attacks against far eastern Russia, from the Pacific Ocean.

The intel I received by mail claims this massive series of strikes would immediately overwhelm Russia’s conventional forces, but it says that NATO concludes this would compel Russia to sue for peace.

I say that conclusion is flat-out wrong.

I say such an overwhelming attack, would compel Russia to use nuclear weapons because the survival of their country is at stake.

I say, if Russia has to resort to nukes, it won’t be some small, tactical nukes on a battlefield.  I say they are far more likely to make large, strategic launches, against western decision-making centers, which is precisely what Russia warned it would do if the West interfered with Russia’s Ukrainian operations.

Of course, I can say anything i want, but I don’t speak for Russia . . .  or for any other country.  I am just applying what I know to the situation, and making an intelligence assessment based upon the information I have.

For what it’s worth, I am going on record with this article saying that the time window of June 12-24 is the period when the outbreak of World War 3 seems almost unavoidable.

If this takes place — and it may not —- I suspect we in the west would be hit with nukes very early in the conflict.

The one variable that I cannot factor-in, is if Russia is able to thwart a potential Ukraine Counter-oiffensive, using missile strikes which take out Weapons Depots needed for such a Counter-Offensive.

If Russia is able to wipe out a large portion of the few weapons Ukraine has left, then undertaking the scenarios above would be utterly futile for NATO unless . . . .     unless . . . . this whole Ukraine conflict was set-up to pave the way for a war against Russia anyway . . . and whatever happens in and to Ukraine has never mattered.

If THAT is the case, then it seems to be June 12-23 is the date range for the actual start of World War 3.

I earnestly hope you and your family have emergency food, water, medicine, a generator for electric, fuel for your generator and for your cars, portable communications gear like a CB radio for each car and for your house, and a shortwave radio at home so you can get news from around the world, and a plan to “bug-out” if the nukes start flying.

If the intel I received by mail is accurate — and I think it is — then you have about two weeks left to plan, stock-up, and pray.

Get right with God.

Vermont Spice Cake

You don’t have to live in Vermont to enjoy this spicy Vermont Spice Cake crowned with an icy cream cheese frosting sprinkled with chopped nuts or whole pecans.

Yield: 12 servings

Ingredients

Cake

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter, softened
• 3 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups Libby’s® 100% Pure Pumpkin
• 1/2 cup Nestlé® Carnation® Evaporated Milk
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Maple Frosting

• 11 ounces cream cheese (8 ounce package plus a 3 ounce package), softened
• 1/3 cup butter, softened
• 3 1/2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
• 2 teaspoons maple flavoring*
• 1/2 cup chopped nuts and nut halves (optional)

Instructions

1. Heat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and flour** two 9 inch round cake pans.

Cake

1. Combine flour, baking powder, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda, nutmeg and salt in small bowl.
2. Beat sugar and butter in large mixer bowl until creamy.
3. Add eggs; beat for 2 minutes.
4. Beat in pumpkin, evaporated milk, water and vanilla extract.
5. Gradually beat in flour mixture.
6. Spread evenly into prepared cake pans.
7. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean.
8. Cool in pans on wire racks for 15 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

Maple Frosting

1. Beat cream cheese, butter and powdered sugar in large mixer bowl until fluffy.
2. Add maple flavoring; mix well.
3. To Assemble: Cut each cake in half horizontally with long, serrated knife.
4. Frost between layers and on top of cake, leaving sides unfrosted.
5. Garnish with nuts, if desired.

Notes

* 3 teaspoons maple flavoring are suggested for a stronger maple flavor.

** For best results, use our Pan Release!

To make a 2-layer cake, frost between layers, over top and on sides of cake.

Nutrition

Per serving: Calories: 607 Calories from Fat: 231 Total Fat: 25.7g (39% of DV) Saturated Fat: 15.5g 77% of DV) Cholesterol: 122mg (41% of DV) Sodium: 529mg (21% of DV) Carbohydrates: 88.3g (28% of DV) Dietary Fiber: 2.2g (9% of DV) Sugars: 60.3g Protein: 7.7g

Vitamin A: 20% DV Vitamin C: 2% DV Calcium: 9% DV Iron: 22% DV

* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet.

Oh SH*T, The gloves just came OFF

In recent years, the United States has been saying at every turn that the products of Chinese companies have affected the national security of the United States, thus imposing restrictions on Chinese products.

One of the most hilarious is that they say the refrigerators and corn produced by China are Chinese spies that could steal American secrets and affect US national security. The report concocted by a Washington-based think tank called Observe, Orientate, Decide, Act (OODA) claims that “Next time you open your fridge for a late-night snack, watch out, because China might be spying on you!”

At the state level, the most typically absurd incident was on January 14, 2021, when the U.S. Department of Defense added nine Chinese companies, including Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp, to a blacklist of alleged Chinese Military companies and imposed sanctions.

On March 25, 2022, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) added China Telecom and China Mobile to a list of “communication equipment and services that pose a threat to U.S. national security.”

Well, this time the bully had a taste of his own medicine.

But I don’t view the Micron ban a tit-for-tat action. Micron has itself to blame for failing to abide by Chinese laws and regulations.

It’s natural that China has its own concerns about national security. And Micron chips were only barred in China’s key infrastructure sectors. They were not banned in the general consumer goods sector.

BTW, Micron has been a double dealer. While reaping colossal profits from the Chinese market, Micron actively instigated U.S. sanctions on China.

On May 22, the day after the review results of Micron were revealed, Micron said at a J.P. Morgan conference call that: “We estimate that the combined direct sales and indirect sales through distributors to China headquartered companies is about 1/4 of our total revenue.”

No doubt, China is a very large and important market for Micron.

Since the United States launched the trade war and science and technology war against China, the normal reaction of US enterprises with huge interests in China is to try to lobby the US government not to do so before launching a trade war. These companies would only passively enforce the ban, and they would write applications to the U.S. government for imposing an exemption for his company or one of their products, or to obtain a certain transition period.

But Micron was an exception.

From 2018 to 2022, Micron spent $9.5 million in lobbying, with the goal of attacking China’s semiconductor manufacturing industry.

Micron submitted more than 170 lobbying issues to the U.S. government between 2018 and 2022, of which lobbying content related to China accounted for as much as 67 percent…

In the end, Micron is only eating its own bitter fruit.

Micron itself knows clearly whether it has cooperated with Washington to export unsafe products to China. It should reflect on its own behavior.

As a black person, when did you realize that not all black people are your allies and not all white people your enemies?

Two instances opened my eyes at an early age.

When I was 10 I was consumed with being an astronaut. I could tell you all about Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. I was glued to the TV when I heard “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. I invited Neil Armstrong to speak at my 6th grade graduation (he graciously declined due to previous engagements, LOL).

I didn’t want to be the first black astronaut, I just wanted to be an astronaut.

For Christmas my mother bought me a Revell model of the Saturn V moon rocket that was supposed to be the biggest plastic model ever created to date, over 4 feet high when completed. The box doubled as a carry/display case. When I finished it I was so proud that I even took it to family get togethers to show it off (yeah, weird). On one such occasion I overheard one of our relatives and a family friend telling my mother that she needed to “get that fool stuff outta that boy’s head ‘cause ain’t no colored boy gonna be some damn astronaut”. My mother who was wise beyond her years (she had me young) chose to ignore them.

I also loved to draw. I drew everything. Animals, people, pictures I saw in magazines and naturally, rockets. I liked going to the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park and try and draw the paintings. Again with the family negativity. “Black folks don’t do no art. Better get him straight”. Again, Mom ignored them.

She worked as a housekeeper for a wealthy (to us) white family that lived near San Diego State University. I was 8 at the time. The husband was the Graduate Manager for SDSU. His wife was a homemaker with three kids. He listened to my passion for airplanes and rockets and shared with me what I would have to do to become a pilot and astronaut. They had a huge shelf of books in the house and he said whenever I was there I could read anything I wanted. He even had a few books on airplanes and flight. Being a Navy town he used some of his connections to arrange a visit to NAS North Island and I even got to talk briefly to an actual pilot (That’s when I fell in love with the F4 Phantom jet). Not one white person told me I couldn’t be an astronaut.

His wife looked at one of my drawings one day (naturally it was an airplane) and she asked me why I drew the wing like I did. I said because that’s what I see. She made a makeshift still-life on the kitchen table, gave me clean sheet of paper and asked me to draw it. When I blurred out the background started to shade in shadows she asked me why. “‘Cause things in the back are always fuzzy and making this side darker makes it rounder”. I was identifying perspective and drawing 3D without being taught because “that’s what I saw”.

A few weeks later they asked my Mom if she would like for me to attend the Campus Lab School on the SDSU campus instead of public school. It was a private K-6 grade university school for faculty and staff kids and was used as a training school for Education majors. The school experimented with individualized curriculum, non-graded organization structures, team teaching and a lot of new and creative teaching processes for the time.

I was introduced to learning art and creativity in a way that I could have never received in public schools. Not one white person told me I couldn’t be an artist.

I never learned to fly or be an astronaut but when I took my 6 year old son to see the Blue Angels in 1995 I made sure he was introduced to Lt. Commander Donnie Cochran, leader of the Blue Angels that year. A black man. My son has spent the last two years as a project manager for SpaceX.

(CDR, now Captain Donnie Cochran, commanding officer of the Blue Angels.)

I did take that interest in art (that was nurtured by a white woman who saw talent and not color) and became an art director for the past 30 years. I’ve done work for Reebok, Transamerica, Honda, Acura and a ton of other clients, large and small.

I learned from an early age to see people for their character not their skin color because a long time ago someone saw me for my character (and potential) and not as a color.

It’s not just black and white, though. You can find race/class enemies and allies everywhere. I have heard from friends and colleagues that there were people of their own ethnicity who discouraged and hindered them from succeeding, while the only positive help they got was from another race. Mexican, Hispanic, Korean, Indian, etc. Even some white friends who grew up in dirt-poor families were told to “get that stupid stuff out of your head ‘cause this is just who we are down here”.

BTW: They also encouraged my mother to go back to school. I was awfully proud to see my Mom graduate with a Masters’ degree in Education just ten years after I graduated with my Bachelors’.

Beautiful Children Book Illustrations By Emilia Dziubak

Emilia Dziubak is a super talented illustrator based in Poznan, Poland. Here you can enjoy some of her book illustrations for children. Aren’t they beautiful?

Human beings are practical creatures.

Four of the top 6 apps in the app store (ios) stateside is Chinese.

Further, temu, TikTok, capcut and shein occupied the top 4 spots for the most downloads in the past month (Feb-March 2023).

Why are temu and shein so popular, despite the omnipresence of Amazon and a galaxy of shopping apps?

They offer what the competition doesn’t, which is trendy and affordable bang for the buck that shapeshift to ever evolving taste and yes, fashion.

For example, Shein’s turnaround from design to limited risk production is measured in hours and days.

The competition can’t keep up, literally.

TikTok is hassle-free to use, and optimized as a short video sharing platform. People keep coming back for more of what is dished out, and the word on the street is “it rocks”, evidenced by the 150m active American users today. That’s a 70 percent penetration rate of the under 50 population.

Tiktok’s algorithms, which is a trade secret just like coca cola’s formula, must be doing something right.

Ultimately, survival in both the natural and man-made worlds is predicated on utility. Cease being useful and one becomes redundant, discarded over time.

The Chinese are incredibly useful to American youth, and benefit is enjoyed biting off the fruit of Chinese innovation.

There will be hell to pay if benefits are withdrawn, even if the Chinese nation may be the devil himself.

Remember, America is willing to scream “climate change is fake! ” and withdraw from both the Kyoto protocol and Paris accord in order to continue enjoying cheap gas powering their gas guzzlers.

China Became The World’s Largest CHIP Producer It’s Company Left SAMSUNG BEHIND!

What if I tell you that China has won the chip war against the U.S? China recently broke records for chip production while the U.S is still under the chip crisis. China is expanding its chip production capacity and has become the world’s largest chip producer, but will the U.S accept its defeat while the U.S companies are incompetent? It is still not ready to accept China as a winner. do you want to know how China’s chip company SMIC became the world’s greatest chip producer?

Let’s find out.

China’s chip industry is growing very fast, the industry has seen spikes in recent years that no other country has ever seen most of the developed countries took years to make their chip Industries and on the other hand China in a few years made its industry one of the top leading chip Industries starting a chip industry from scratch takes decades and China did it in a very short period.

Some Nations like the U.S have tried to Skyrocket their chip industry but no one has ever been able to do it except China. The U.S has been making chips for years but it is still not a part of the top three countries in chip production.

China has now become the world’s largest chip producer, it made 57 percent of the world’s total chips in 2022 and on the other hand Taiwan made 21 percent and South Korea made 19 percent of the world’s total chips. China left everyone behind on this.

China always makes futuristic decisions it starts making things that will be used years later, it is always very fast and it’s one of China’s rules to focus on its tech industry.

But why are other developed nations not able to achieve their goal as much as China is, because they are taking most things for granted.

Chinese people’s habit is to work hard (not lazy and lethargic as Indians) and on the other hand the other nations are not focusing on the sectors that need attention, no one is making the progress that China is making, because they are not taking the right actions at the right time and if it continues no one can stop China from becoming the world’s leading Tech country within the coming ten years time frame.

Whoa! Nebraska just did the UNTHINKABLE and BANS child mutilations