Today is the middle of the “May Day” holiday in China. And as such, I have been very busy taking care of my family and spending some time together. As such, I have grabbed some trivial moments and threw this post together.
Please enjoy.
Can a Taiwanese citizen go to mainland China and get mainland China citizenship immediately?
PRC considers most Taiwanese to be citizens of the People’s Republic of China. You can get a Taiwan Compatriots Pass from the PRC and that serves as your identity card for most things.
I’ve been told that it is not difficult for a person from Taiwan to get Mainland hukou and full Mainland identity cards and passport. The trouble here is not Mainland China but Taiwan. If the Taiwanese authorities find out that you have a PRC passport and PRC hukou, they will classify you as a Mainlander and cancel all of your Taiwanese passports, identity cards, etc. etc and revoke your right to travel to Taiwan.
American “Leadership”
[1] Note cards with photo of the journalist, of [2] the exact questions she would ask, and [3] of the answer to tell her.
This is no longer a press conference. It’s a scripted movie set.
This is America.
Hank Paulson says the U.S.-China relationship is ‘on the brink’ and calls it a ‘dangerous situation’
Prarthana Prakash
April 15, 2023
The U.S. and China’s feud shows no signs of abating. It’s starting to worry international organizations such as the World Bank, which recently predicted that the rift between the two superpowers could hurt the growth of other economies.
Now, former Treasury Secretary Henry “Hank” Paulson is echoing similar concerns about intensifying geopolitical tensions.
“The U.S.-China relationship is on the brink. Communications have ground to a halt,” Paulson said in an interview with the Financial Times published Friday. “There’s a lot going on in the world that’s troubling, but to me it’s the U.S.-China relationship that is the most worrying.”
The two countries have gone head-to-head in trade, foreign policy, and the race for technology in recent years. While tariffs and trade restrictions are already in place, a complete “decoupling” scenario, where the economies work separately from each other, could have a significant impact. China is still among the U.S.’s top trading partners and the world’s second largest economy.
The economic importance of the two nations raises the stakes of them clashing, and Paulson thinks America may be underestimating what China can do.
“This is a dangerous situation,” he said. “I strongly believe that [President Joe] Biden would like to stabilize the China relationship, but both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have staked out a very strong line which complicates things for Biden. I have a concern that Congress is underestimating the relative power of China, the permanence of China, and China’s relationship with so many other countries.”
According to Paulson, China is boosting its presence around the world, and putting out a clear message that “China is open for business again.” So, if the U.S. responds with further curbs on trade and investment, even as other nations deepen ties with Beijing, the U.S. could become more isolated.
The rest HERE
Trade between BRICS nations hits record levels
Meanwhile in the United States
Way to make someone hate not just you, but your entire church.
The US is PANICKING: Over the Rise of a Multipolar World!
American manners today
Sheech!
Zelensky’s top adviser issues threat to China
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s most prominent adviser, Mikhail Podoliak, has claimed that China must follow the West’s position on Ukraine or it will find its standing in the world diminished and its economic power weakened.
However, Beijing has given no indication that it intends to take his advice.
“Now China has to make a choice,” Podoliak told Ukraine’s Rada TV on Friday. “Either it works within the framework defined by international law, and then replaces Russia in the full sense of the word, or China continues to stand aside and then it will gradually lose its influence, including economic influence.”
Podoliak’s statement came two days after Zelensky and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by phone, in their first known conversation since Russia’s military offensive began last February. According to the Chinese side, Xi stressed that Beijing’s “core position” on the conflict is that “dialogue and negotiations are the only viable way out.”
The US has repeatedly called on China to condemn Russia over the conflict, which Beijing has refused to do. Instead, the two governments have deepened their diplomatic and trade links, and officials from both countries have repeatedly condemned the US for attempting to impose what it calls a “rules-based international order” upon the world through military force and sanctions.
China and Russia have instead called for the construction of a multipolar system based on the rule of international law and respect for the UN charter. “Right now there are changes – the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years – and we are the ones driving these changes together,” Xi told Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow last month.
Podoliak has attempted to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing before. Late last month he asked the Italian Corriere della Sera newspaper why China would “help Russia, which is experiencing the collapse of its civilization?”
“It would be an irreversible investment, and China is too pragmatic to make such mistakes,” he added.
However, even if China were to break from Russia, it would still face a United States hostile to its interests. The Pentagon’s most recent National Defense Strategy lists countering the supposed “threat posed by China” as its number one priority, while Washington has blocked the sale of some semiconductor manufacturing hardware to China and rallied its Asian allies to shut Beijing out of this vital industrial sector.
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden has said on several occasions that he would use the US military to defend Taiwan – which China considers its territory – from a potential Chinese invasion.
$1000 tip
Beef Taco Bake
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground beef
- 1 can condensed tomato soup
- 1 cup salsa
- 1/2 cup milk
- 6 flour or 8 corn tortillas, (6 to 8 inches), cut into 1-inch pieces
- 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
Instructions
- In skillet over medium-high heat, cook beef until browned, stirring to separate meat. Pour off fat.
- Add soup, salsa, milk, tortillas and half the cheese.
- Spoon into 2-quart shallow baking dish. Cover.
- Bake at 400 degrees F for 30 minutes or until hot.
- Sprinkle with remaining cheese.
Yield: 4 servings
United States is really insane right now…
Hmm, 50 year old guy going to personal attacks and commenting on a 15 year old girls body. Disturbing on so many levels.
Yuan power: China’s push to challenge the US dollar gathers steam
Singapore: First, there was oil in Saudi Arabia, then there was nuclear power in Bangladesh and, finally, there were railways in Pakistan. China is taking multibillion-dollar transactions away from the international currency that has underpinned them for generations, the US dollar, and pushing them into the yuan…
Article HERE
American rudeness on display.
If you are not making the world a better place, then you are subtracting from it.
Why do foreigners raise children in China?
With busy diplomacy, China has no time to receive insincere people — Global Times
Recently, there have been frequent complaints from Washington about China’s “neglect” of the US and a “lack of interest” in engaging with them. One is that China has refused to reschedule US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to China, and another is that the Chinese Ministry of Defense has declined request for call from the US Department of Defense, and the defense ministers of China and the US have not spoken for nearly five months.
At the G7 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Japan, Blinken called out to China on Tuesday, stating that China must make clear its intentions to keep engaging with the US and that “countries around the world expect us to manage the relationship with China responsibly.” The day before, an undersecretary of US Department of Defense even speculated that China “refuses to talk during crises in bid to spook US into fleeing” from the Western Pacific. To borrow a term used by Chinese netizens, doesn’t the US have any sense of self-awareness?
Blinken’s planned visit to China in February was unilaterally postponed by the US due to the sudden hype around the “balloon incident” before his departure. This to some extent, it has reflected the US’ reckless and irresponsible attitude towards Blinken’s visit to China. It refused to come then, but now insists on coming. How can everything be up to the US, and everyone else has to cooperate with it? China is a big country and will not indulge such problem. China’s diplomacy is very busy and cannot adjust at any time according to the US’ schedule, especially no time to receive insincere or even people with malicious intentions.
As for the reason why the defense ministers of China and the US have not spoken on the phone, the US side knows well. Putting aside other issues, the US has not yet lifted the illegal sanctions on China’s new Defense Minister Li Shangfu, which has created a lack of basic atmosphere for military dialogue between China and the US. If the US truly wants to maintain contact and communication with China, then they should not act in this way. The Americans have also seen that in the past month, many leaders of countries, including US allies, and heads of international organizations have visited China, achieving very good communication results. So why is there a problem when it comes to the US?
A common saying in Chinese diplomacy is “listen to their words and observe their actions,” but with today’s US, “listen to their words” is a waste of time because the US has played the game of saying one thing and doing another to the extreme, and its “words” have lost credibility in China and the international community. According to reports from US media, Washington is about to implement “unprecedented rules” limiting American investment in China, and US’ interference in the Taiwan question is getting worse. The US’ comprehensive containment and suppression of China has not shown any signs of easing.
The feeling of Chinese people is that the various actions taken by the US are almost the opposite of its promises to China. How can we believe it? Dialogue and engagement can boost cooperation, add value to bilateral relations for one thing, or to prevent crises and conflicts to minimize the damage to the relationship for another. But what Washington wants is neither the first nor the second, it wants the political gains that come with “engaging with China” posture. This fully explains why the US has been shouting about “setting up guardrails” in recent years, while the pit in China-US relations is getting deeper and deeper due to Washington’s actions.
China has always approached and developed China-US relations with great goodwill and patience, which is China’s sense of responsibility as a major country. But Washington should not have any illusions, it can never speak to China while riding on its head. China supports communication and exchange based on mutual respect, committed to peaceful coexistence, win-win cooperation, in order to promoting the improvement of China-US relations. However, the “engagement with China” emphasized by the US is often just a show, to appease its allies and other countries concerned about the deterioration of China-US relations and also to shift the blame onto China. Additionally, Washington attempts to impose pressure on China with the so-called engagement. Almost every time its high-ranking officials come, they bring a long list of so-called demands.
While the US continues to take hostile actions towards China, it also wants to use “engagement” to stabilize China and control risks while taking advantage of the opportunity to pressure and unilaterally demand from China, with even the idea that “communication” is all for “convenience for me to better attack you.” Can’t China just don’t deal with the US, which is so calculative? With such insincerity and even malice from the US, why should we cooperate with Washington politicians’ performances?
In conclusion, temporarily cold-shouldering Washington is not a bad idea. China’s door is always open, and when the US shows sincerity and take practical actions, communication and exchange between China and the US in various fields will come naturally, which is also what the international community expects to see.
The West can no longer loot the world without boomerang responses.
The United States recently confiscated a cargo of Iranian crude oil from a tanker at sea, according to a maritime security company, indicating that the seizure pre-dated Iran’s move to seize Chevron’s cargo of crude oil on Thursday off the coast of Oman.
On Thursday, a Marshall Islands-flagged tanker carrying crude oil destined for Chevron was seized by the Iranian Navy, according to the U.S. Navy. According to Tehran, the tanker had been involved in a collision with an Iranian vessel in the Gulf of Oman, resulting in Iranian crewmember injuries, with several missing. Iran also said that the tanker ignored eight hours’ worth of radio calls following the collision.
7 Culture Shocks I had in China
U.S. Sends Troops To Taiwan!
No debate is necessary. A war with China is already determined.
FOREIGN MINISTRY: “U.S. DIRECTLY KILLING RUSSIANS”
World Hal Turner 29 April 2023
The US is directly contributing to the deaths of Russians by providing military and financial aid to Ukraine, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova charged on Friday.
She was reacting to a Kommersant interview with Lynne Tracy, the US ambassador to Moscow, who stated that Washington “does not view Russians as enemies.”
“The Russian people are getting killed with targeting done by the US, money [provided] by the US, weapons [supplied] by the US, and by the hands of a regime that was brought to power by the US as a result of a coup orchestrated by the US,” Zakharova wrote on Telegram, referring to the Western-backed 2014 uprising in Kiev that ousted the democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovich.
In an interview published in Russian newspaper Kommersant on Thursday, Tracy said she supports informal contacts between Americans and Russians, and that the US “does not want to ‘cancel’ the Russian people in any way.”
“No matter what differences we, the United States, have with the Russian government, they are not differences with the people of Russia,” she said.
The Foreign Ministry later issued a statement criticizing the ambassador’s interview, in which it accused Tracy of cherry-picking and fabricating facts about Ukraine’s recent history. The US diplomat claimed that “a situation in which a leader who lost support and got scared of his own people takes a decision to flee” could not be called a coup.
“Madam Ambassador probably does not know, and was not informed by her aides, that this simple puzzle… lacks the truth and correct sequence of events,” the ministry said.
The statement went on to explain that the protests in Kiev were infiltrated by violent extremists supported by US officials, and ended with a power-sharing agreement that the opposition forces immediately broke. Tracy’s failure to acknowledge the nature of the events in Kiev can be explained by either amnesia or ignorance, while her description has nothing to do with reality, the Russian ministry added. The statement included a screenshot of the interview with a large red ‘FAKE’ stamp on it.
Washington imposed sweeping sanctions on Moscow shortly after Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. The US and many other NATO countries have since supplied Kiev with heavy weapons, including tanks and artillery systems, and shared intelligence with Ukraine. The State Department said in January that it was up to Kiev to determine how to use foreign arms.
Russia has warned that the military aid makes the US and NATO de facto direct participants in the conflict. Moscow also repeatedly accused Ukraine of using US-made weapons, such as HIMARS multiple rocket launchers and M777 howitzers, to kill civilians.
On April 13, Ukrainian troops used HIMARS launchers to shell a hospital in the Donbass city of Svatovo, local officials said. On Thursday, several areas in the Donetsk People’s Republic were hit with rockets and artillery rounds, leaving one woman dead and eight people, including four children, injured, according to the authorities.
Reality
All Eyes on east Asia: China-Taiwan Flare-up – Japan WARNED by China
World Hal Turner 28 April 2023
Chinese Ambassador to Japan, Wu Jiangao, warned Japanese leaders that their planned visit to Taiwan was equated with crossing the “red line.”
“Foreign forces are conspiring with Taiwan’s independence forces and carrying out constant provocations,” the ambassador told reporters in Tokyo on Friday, saying their ultimate goal was “separation of Taiwan from China.” He added that inciting “the split in China will bring the Japanese people into the fire”.
Japanese officials have said that any contingency in Taiwan will be tantamount to an unpredictable situation in Japan.
In recent years, Beijing has pursued a policy of diplomatic isolation of Taiwan, forcing other countries to recognize it as part of a “single China” and repeatedly threatened to invade.
The day after Emmanuel Macron’s visit, China began large-scale military exercises around Taiwan working out a rocket attack and the surroundings of the island. Training became answer on Taiwan’s President Cai Ying Wen’s 10-day diplomatic tour of Central America and a meeting with US government officials in California. In particular, she met with Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House of Representatives of the US Congress from Republicans.
The day after China imitated “high-precision strikes” on Taiwan, Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said Beijing can prepare for the invasion of the island.
Later reported, that this year’s annual Taiwanese military exercises “Han Kuan” will focus on fighting the blockade of the island against the background of China’s statements.
China again moved military forces near Taiwan today.
China’s largest combat drone, the TB-001 drone (an entire ship) nicknamed the “twin-tailed scorpion”, arrived late Thursday and remained on Friday around Taiwan:
Also on Friday, China flew 38 warplanes near Taiwan, and deployed another 6 navy vessels in area.
In addition, a Chinese uncrewed combat aircraft (Drone) has flown around Taiwan, the island’s defense ministry said, showcasing Beijing’s ability to attack its fall-back east coast bases, as a U.S. maritime patrol aircraft transited the Taiwan Strait. Here is a photo of that combat drone:
China also had words for the United States.
“We strongly urge the US side to fully recognize the high sensitivity of the Taiwan question as well as the complexity and severity of the current situation across the Taiwan Strait,” said Senior Colonel Tan Kefei, spokesperson for China’s Ministry of National Defense, at a regular press conference.
When asked to comment on the reports that a group of US defense companies will visit Taiwan to discuss issues such as the joint production of drones and ammunition in early May, Defense Spokesperson Tan said that the Taiwan question is purely China’s internal affair and brooks no foreign interference.
“These American military-industrial complexes have always been zealous to peddle munitions, trigger conflicts and chaos, and reap staggering profits around the world,” he point out sharply, adding that the Democratic Progressive Party’s act is rather contemptible, like putting the cat near the goldfish bowl, which will only bring untold disaster to the Taiwan compatriots.
Then the spokesperson reiterated that no one or any force can shake Chinese people’s staunch determination and firm will to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and urged the US side to adhere to the one-China principle and the provisions of the three China-US joint communiqués, prudently handle Taiwan-related issues, refrain from interfering in the Taiwan question, cease arms sales to the Taiwan region as well as its military contact with the island.
Soooooooo, what did the US Congress go ahead an do today? Well . . .
The House committee dedicated to countering China began preparing bipartisan proposals for the fiscal 2024 defense authorization bill that would accelerate U.S. munitions production and arms transfers to Taiwan.
In the meantime, here is an up-to-date graphic showi9ng the very considerable firepower which is around Taiwan as of yesterday:
It is entirely plausible that China may decide it is better to grab Taiwan NOW, before more US assets reach the region and BEFORE US arms manufacturers can fill new weapons orders. What the US is doing, and pledging, to Taiwan’s “defense” may actually TRIGGER a Chinese invasion of Taiwan!
Top 7 things I wish I knew before I moved to China
Why Did Judas Betray Jesus?
According to the Bible, Judas Iscariot was one of Jesus’ twelve disciples and the one who ultimately betrayed him. The exact reason for Judas’ betrayal is not entirely clear, and scholars have offered various interpretations based on the available evidence.
One interpretation is that Judas betrayed Jesus for financial gain. According to the Gospel of Matthew, Judas accepted thirty pieces of silver from the chief priests in exchange for leading them to Jesus. This has led some scholars to suggest that Judas may have been motivated by greed or a desire for material wealth.
Another interpretation is that Judas was disillusioned with Jesus’ message and mission. Some scholars believe that Judas may have expected Jesus to lead a military rebellion against the Roman authorities, but instead saw Jesus’ message of love and forgiveness as weak and ineffective. This interpretation suggests that Judas may have betrayed Jesus out of a sense of disappointment or frustration.
Ultimately, the exact reason for Judas’ betrayal remains a matter of debate among scholars and theologians. Regardless of the reason, Judas’ betrayal ultimately led to Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion, which Christians believe were necessary for the salvation of humanity.
Recently Tung Signa technology in Shanghai has two domestic lithography machines stationed in the production line independently developed by Shanghai microelectronics
This represents a major advancement in domestic lithography machines highlighting that domestic lithography machines have rapidly replaced imported lithography machines
In the future the production capacity of 20 000 pieces of full process gold bumps per month can be realized
The introduction of the first domestically produced lithography machine this time is great news for China.
Shanghai microelectronics is the largest lithography machine company in China it has already mass-produced 90 nanometer lithography machines and is currently accelerating the promotion of 28 nanometer and 14 nanometer lithography machines
The lithography machine delivered this time is a packaging and testing lithography machine but this also represents a major progress in China’s lithography machine which means that the domestic 14 nanometers lithography machine will soon be mass produced
After the packaging and testing lithography machine is delivered it is expected to complete the debugging in May and complete the test and mass production next month.
It is expected that the production of twenty thousand chips per month will be completed by next year.
The first lithography machine of Shanghai microelectronics 20-year research was successfully delivered with move-in-ceremony held. This was the proud moment for China and its people.
The icing on the cake is the price of these lithography machines which is only one-seventh of the price of ASML equivalent lithography machines which shows the ultra low cost advantage of domestic lithography machines such a low-cost Advantage will help greatly reduce the cost of Chinese Chips.
lithography machines are not the only ones for making chips in addition to being divided into EUV, DUV and UV, according to the advanced level of the light source they can also be divided into front-end lithography machines for chip manufacturing and back-end lithography machines for packaging and testing.
This time the company introduced a gold bump packaging and testing lithography machine which belongs to the back-end lithography machine for packaging and testing in the field of packaging and testing lithography machines.
28 nanometers to 7 nanometers lithography machines are all immersion lithography Machine Technologies which means that China has successfully developed the 28 nanometers lithography machine to handle the key technology of immersion lithography machines.
Since the difficulty of developing 14 nanometers and 7 nanometers lithography machines has been greatly reduced, as a result ASML’s 1980 lithography machine will also lose its competitiveness.
If China successfully develops (front end) immersion lithography machine technology then ASML will lose a large chunk of market and may return to the days when it was lingering, so of course it is afraid.
This is the great news for China and a shocker for ASML who may want to change its attitude in the coming days.
Long live China – the counterweight to western world.
No One Is Coming to Save You
Every moment you spend hoping for someone else to save you is a moment wasted. You hold the key to your own freedom.
Freedom from ignorance, from suffering, from poverty, from illness, from anxiety, and from judgment. Freedom even from the constraints of your own mind. It’s up to you, and only you, to grant yourself this gift of liberation.
You must take ownership of every aspect of your life. The results you create, the challenges life throws at you, and the messes others may cause that you must clean up. You have to own it all.
It’s time to let go of the opinions of others, shed bad habits, stop overspending, underworking, overeating, underestimating, overvaluing, or any other harmful behavior that holds you back.
No one else can do it for you, not because you are alone or because the world is unkind, but because it is solely within your power. You are the only one who can dig deep into your soul and unleash every spark of life that resides within. It has to be you.
No one is coming to save you, and the truth is, no one needs to. When you save yourself, you’ll realize that you hold the key to your own liberation and empowerment. It’s time to take charge and be your own hero.
Vintage Cover Photos of The Popular Magazine in the 1920s
The Popular Magazine, a literary publication that ran for an impressive 612 issues from 1903 to 1931, was a staple in early American literature. With a diverse range of genres, the magazine featured everything from short fiction and novellas to serialized works and even complete short novels. Although the magazine covered various subjects, it had a tendency to lean towards men’s adventure stories, particularly in its later years as the demand for hardboiled fiction increased.
h/t: vintag.es
The Popular Magazine marketed itself as “a magazine for men and women who like to read about men,” and had its headquarters in New York City. It was published by Street & Smith and edited by Henry Harrison Lewis from 1903 to 1904, and Charles Agnew MacLean from 1904 to 1928. Each bi-monthly issue typically contained 194 to 224 pages. Sadly, The Popular Magazine’s journey came to an end in October 1931 when it was merged with another Street & Smith pulp, Complete Stories.
I went out with a Chinese man: You won’t believe what he made me eat!! *I cried*
I really like this gal. Attractive, great smiles, and so beautiful!
Burrito Supreme Casserole
Ingredients
- 8 (8-inch) flour tortillas
- 1 1/2 cups tomato juice
- 1 envelope taco seasoning mix
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 1/2 pound ground beef
- 1 (16 ounce) can refried beans
- 3 cups shredded Cheddar cheese, divided
- 1 small avocado
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 1 1/2 cups shredded lettuce
- 1 cup chopped tomato
Instructions
- Wrap tortillas securely in aluminum foil; bake at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes or until thoroughly heated.
- Combine tomato juice, seasoning mix and oil; stir well, and set aside.
- Cook ground beef in a large skillet until browned, stirring to crumble; drain.
- Stir in beans and 1/2 cup tomato juice mixture. Bring to a boil; cover, reduce heat, and simmer 5 minutes or until mixture is thoroughly heated, stirring occasionally.
- Remove from heat.
- Place 1/4 cup beef mixture and 2 1/2 tablespoons cheese down center of each tortilla. Roll up tortillas, and place seam side down in a lightly greased 13 x 9-inch baking dish.
- Pour remaining tomato juice mixture over casserole.
- Cover and bake at 350 degrees F for 30 to 35 minutes.
- Uncover and sprinkle with remaining cheese; bake an additional 5 minutes or until cheese melts.
- Peel and cube avocado; toss with lemon juice.
- Sprinkle avocado, lettuce and tomato over casserole.
- Serve immediately.
Yield: 4 servings
Yet not so science fiction implementation… in Wuhan, Hubei, China
Americans: China is so backward it’s still living in the dirt.
Also Americans: Tssk, Americans don’t need these lame monorail, we prefer our gas guzzling pickup trucks.
What JUST Leaked Out of Congress Is HORRIFYING!
How Do You Know If You’re In Love?
“You’ll just know.” This was my mother’s vague response when I asked her how to know if you’re in love with someone, and needless to say, I was less than enthused by her response. To be honest, it seemed like a cop-out. Why, I wondered, can’t anyone seem to accurately describe what being in love feels like? We’ve all heard rom-com movie characters talk about fireworks and pop stars sing about the all-consuming obsession that comes with a new romance, but is that really love? Or is it just infatuation? How can you tell whether you’re just experiencing fiery passion or you’ve truly fallen for someone?
As it turns out, there are ways to know you’re in love. And no, they have nothing to do with feeling butterflies in your stomach. In fact, research has revealed some common signs of being lovestruck. For example, people reported having new interests and personality traits after entering a loving relationship, according to one 1995 study. Another study revealed that falling in love can cause you to exhibit symptoms similar to those that come with anxiety, such as sweating more (woof, I know).
Of course, if you’re thinking and talking about the person nonstop, or you’re already envisioning a future with them, you may suspect you’re in love. Still, those signals don’t always indicate that it’s the real thing. After all, in the beginning, your excitement around this new relationship could cloud your ability to see whether there’s real potential for a long-term relationship. The chemistry is great, you have endless topics to talk about, and you haven’t discovered all of their quirks, irritating habits or “flaws” yet. So it’s pretty easy to fool yourself into thinking you’ve fallen head over heels. Here are some of the things you feel when you’re in love:
1. You’re happy and just a little bit nervous.
When you’re in love, you’re genuinely a happier person. It’s like you’re on a natural high. The thought of spending time with your partner really excites you and just looking at the dozens of selfies you took together is enough to put a cheesy smile on your face. But being in love also makes you a tiny bit nervous. You’re anxious for what the future holds. Because you know that you want your relationship to last. “Lots of people compare love to something they could not lose or let pass them by, yet the uncertainty of its unknown outcome is exciting,” Maria says.
2. Everything feels new and exciting.
When you’re in love, you’re excited to do things you’ve already done a million times before because it’s with your partner this time. They’re the first ones you think of when you see a romantic movie preview or when you’re planning to make a quick trip to the nearest fast food place. You’d even be willing to sit through four hours of a sports game if it means spending time with them.. Maria says that’s because love sparks a new change in you. “When you’re in love, the basis of your perception changes. I compare it to a feeling of being really awake and excited,” she says. “You have found someone that makes everything feel new and intriguing – even if it’s just sitting on the couch watching TV.”
3. Your relationship feels easy.
Being with your partner isn’t hard work. You don’t have to struggle to find time to spend with them because you really want to. Even the arguments don’t feel as intense as they did in other relationships. While all couples argue and bicker, when you’re both in love, your priority is your relationship, not your pride. You’re not worried about being the first person to give in or lose the argument because you can’t imagine your life without this person. Even one day apart really feels like forever.
4. This person is on your mind literally all the time.
When you’re in love, your partner is always in the back of your mind. You might have a sudden thought to call them because you haven’t chatted in a few hours. Or, maybe, you go into a clothing store with the intention of buying something for yourself and then end up buying something for your partner, too. “Love is determined. When you like someone, you can brush it off and think of other things as you go about your day,” Maria says. When you’re in love, this person is always on your mind, but it isn’t overwhelming. “When you love someone, you are physically, mentally and emotionally impacted at theoretically any/all time(s). It is a calm and secure reality you will consistently crave,” Maria says.
5. You get just a little jealous.
A little bit of jealousy is natural. Jealousy becomes dangerous, however, when you start obsessing over what your partner’s doing, so much so that you do stuff like look through their phone without them knowing. That is toxic behavior and it might signal you’re not in a healthy relationship.
6. You become more affectionate towards them.
When you’re in love, you’re obviously attracted to your partner, so it’s only natural that you want to be all over them all the time. Whether it’s simply holding hands or turning your cuddling into an intense make out session, you want to be affectionate towards your second half. If you’re completely repulsed by them, that’s something to think about.
7. You want to bring them around your family and friends.
When you’re really into your relationship, you want to bring your partner into all aspects of your life. You want to introduce them to your family and friends because you genuinely want your relationship last.
8. You start feeling a sense of empathy towards your partner.
When you’re in love, you start seeing your bae as an extension of yourself, so when they’re hurt, nervous or really excited about something like getting accepted into a school or program they really wanted, then you experience the same feelings as them. Feeling empathy towards your partner also makes you want to make tiny sacrifices for them, like getting up and going to the store for some soup and medicine when they’re sick. Small things like that are easy to do when they’re for the person you love.
9. You’re becoming a better person.
You know you’re in love when being with your second half makes you want to improve yourself in some way, whether it’s setting new goals or having a more positive attitude. Your partner should push you towards becoming better, but not in a way that’s consistently negative. “If a partner isn’t building you up, then you must consider looking elsewhere for love – no matter what other characteristics he or she may have that you are infatuated with,” Maria says. When you’re truly in love with someone, you want your partner to succeed as much as you because you want to create a stable future for the both of you.
10. You start planning for the future.
When you truly love someone, you know that you don’t have plans to let them go any time soon, if ever. So, you start to include them in all your future plans, whether it’s going on vacation or figuring out your plan after high school. You start thinking of your partner when you’re making big decisions because you want them to be there for it all. When you’re in love, your bae becomes your permanent “plus one.”
After 4 years living in China, these are the 4 truths I’ve learned!
What’s the bravest thing you have ever done?
When I was in the Marines, I knew a guy. He called me one day and said, “I just saw some paperwork. You’ll be getting sent to Japan for 6 months soon, unless you want to be sent to Camp Lejeune (where I had lots of friends). But if you go there, you will join a unit that’s going to depart for Iraq in December, and there’s going to be a war (this was almost a full year before the Iraq War started).
With this information I spent a few weeks thinking about the various possible outcomes of this decision, and in the end I opted to go to Camp Lejeune because if there was a war, I knew I might make a real difference to a few good men. I’m very smart, fairly strong, and have always performed very well under pressure, and I knew that I could save some lives that might have been lost if given the chance.
During the war I was in a major battle and got blown up inside of an AAAV. I carried two guys with half-blown-off legs out of the vehicle, which by then was basically a fireball on top of a big pile of explosives, on top of 1,000 pounds of fuel.
Today those guys have wives and kids, and that’s a really incredible thing to me when I think about it from time to time.
I chose not to go to Japan a year before the war even started, and now those children exist.
Top 10 CHEAPEST Countries To Live Lavishly On $1000/Month
Life in America
What’s It Like To Have A Bed Bug Infestation?
They are creatures from hell.
If you are sensitive to the bites, it’s MUCH worse than mosquito bites – think painful, weeping blisters that burn if a breeze so much blows across them the wrong way, nevermind laying down, or clothes rubbing on them.
A single bug feeds on you multiple times in a night, leaving what’s sometimes referred to as ‘breakfast-lunch-dinner bites’ because the clusters/lines of bites they leave are very distinctive. Each bite takes days, even weeks, to go away, and they itch/burn the whole time – so if you’re infested (50-100+) imagine waking up with any accessible skin (including your face) covered in burning, persistent bites that there’s no real relief for.
It ruins your ability to rest – every tickle or itch starts making you bolt up in horror to turn on the lights and check. Long after they’re gone, years after you’ve been rid of them, you will still experience a surge of adrenaline from a hair moving the wrong way.
They reproduce insanely fast; a fertilized female lays 5-7 eggs a day, the eggs take around 2 weeks to hatch, and then they’re able to reproduce about 3 weeks after they hatch. A female will lay hundreds of eggs over her life after being fertilized even ONCE. This means one fertilized female could come into your home, and within a year if the infestation is not dealt with fast and harshly enough, you can have THOUSANDS of them.
While they prefer to stay close to their prey (in the bed, headboard, bedlinens) they can hide anywhere a sesame seed would fit – between the pages of a book, inside cardboard, cracks in the baseboards, carpeting, seams in cushions, etc. If you try to get relief by treating your bed with chemicals, all that happens is that they disperse into the walls and other nearby hiding places, and become harder to find and eliminate as their numbers swell.
They have evolved to be keenly attuned to everything about their prey (humans) when it comes to temperature, lighting, movement, breathing, etc, so that they are most attracted to you when you as sleeping and vulnerable. They will hunt you down if you move to another room to sleep at night. If you put your bed up on risers/dishes of oil/put double-sided tape all around so they can’t get to you, they will crawl up walls to the ceiling and drop down on you to get at you.
If they are consistently denied food (say you pack up everything you have in tubs and plastic bags or something, and accidentally miss a couple hiding in your things), they can go into hibernation – in ideal conditions, for almost 2 years without feeding. The eggs are smaller than a poppy seed, and can remain viable and unhatched in the right conditions for a similar length of time.
Most of the chemical treatments that work against adults do not work on the eggs, so unless you do multiple scheduled treatments, you’ll just have new waves hatching every so often after the last round of adults was killed off. Each time you get your home chemically treated, you will have to leave it and stay somewhere else because the chemicals are dangerous to you as well.
If you live in a building with shared walls, even if vents and things from unit to unit aren’t connected, if someone else gets infested and they don’t treat the entire building at once (only treating the immediately affected rooms) it’s just like only treating the bed – they will disperse into neighboring units, and seek shelter in any little crack or crevice they can find.
Sufficient heat is the only guaranteed way to kill off an infestation all at once – adults, nymphs, eggs – and they make specialized heaters for this, both for heating up rooms, and for placing your belongings into to heat treat anything that might be hiding eggs or bugs. Many people accidentally burn their houses down every year trying to DIY treatments because this is expensive – thousands of dollars per round of treatment, either chemical OR heat.
It doesn’t matter if you or your house is clean or dirty – you can get bedbugs by going literally anywhere that other people go. The store, offices, clinics, movies, public transportation, etc. While adults won’t live in your clothes, they’ll hitchhike on them – so anywhere people spend time holding still, someone with an established infestation can be carrying eggs or hidden adults that end up dropped off in a public space that then end up stuck to or climbing onto others. All it takes is one fertilized female riding home with you unseen on your clothes, a bag, your jacket.
Bedbugs exist in pretty much every country – anywhere where it is cool enough indoors for people to live, bedbugs can live also. Infestations are actually on the rise in some countries due to shorter, warmer winters meaning they can be active for longer (since cold temps generally only put them into a dormant stage, not kill them).
Hotels and other hospitality locations that care about prevention will routinely pay for specially trained sniffer dogs that can detect the smell of bedbugs, and shut-down/cordon off buildings as soon as anything is found, because it is more costly to handle a major infestation than to destroy a colony before it gets the chance to hit critical mass.
Even so, a hotel has no way of being able to tell if the guest immediately before you dropped off hitchhikers; even a high-end hotel isn’t flipping the mattress over to steam and vacuum the mattress and box-spring when they change out the bed linens.
Hotels are often the first choice of people trying to get a rest from an infestation, or needing a place to stay while getting their own place treated.
If you ever stay anywhere away from home where other people have been, always put your luggage in the bathtub first before unpacking; then check for signs of bedbugs in headboards, under the mattress, in the seams of the box-spring, etc. There are guides with pictures on what to look for. When you get home, make sure any clothes that travelled with you go into a high-heat wash and dry cycle. Bag up any luggage carriers than cannot be washed or tumbled; consider treating their insides with diatomaceous earth until their next usage.
It might seem like an annoying extra effort, but it is a tiny amount of labor to save you from experiencing what will feel like an unending hell if you ever bring bedbugs home. An infestion will completely ruin your life and mental health. Pray you never have to deal with them.
– HallowskulledHorror
The Roundtable #54: Brian Berletic and Pepe Escobar
WHAT IS CHINA REALLY LIKE?
The USA has this “thing” called “prank orders”
Watch what happens when you try this move in China.
These China “Experts” need to be stopped
Today’s “Drudge Report”
It’s a reflection of the madness of the United States.
United States has become a ghetto
Late stage collapse.
Dislodging the Neocons, Difficult But Necessary
Last week I discussed the ironic role that America’s dominant Neocons may have played in shaping recent world events, perhaps inadvertently producing a beneficial outcome exactly contrary to their aggressive intent.
Over the last decade, prominent political scientists such as Graham Allison of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago had argued that a centuries-long pattern suggested that the world was locked into a “Thucydides Trap,” the likelihood of a looming clash between the reigning global power of America and the rising global power of China. This political and potentially military conflict had nothing to do with the ideological or social characteristics of those two enormous countries nor their leadership, but was simply the inevitable consequence of China’s size and growing power, which threatened to displace America from its position of world dominance. The term referred to the analogous rivalry between Athens and Sparta that had unleashed the long Peloponnesian War, devastating Classical Greece.
Meanwhile, on totally different grounds the ideologically-driven foreign policy of America’s dominant Neocons also threatened global warfare against all countries that refused to accept American hegemony, with Russia and Iran being the leading targets of their intense hostility. During the Obama Administration, these individuals had orchestrated a 2014 coup that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically-elected pro-Russian government. Seven years of military buildup and anti-Russian provocations had eventually led to the outbreak of the Ukraine war in early 2022, with the first year of the fighting having already cost many tens of thousands of lives while raising the risk of World War III.
So the world faced two entirely different geopolitical perils, one ideologically-driven and one not.
However, I then argued that these two separate threats to world peace may have very fortuitously canceled each other out. The extreme over-reaction by the West against Russia over the last year had driven that enormous, resource-rich country into China’s arms, and the resulting China-Russia alliance was now so strong that it probably outweighed the geopolitical power of America and its allies. Furthermore, outrageous anti-Russian measures taken by America’s reckless leadership—the seizure of $300 billion in Russian financial reserves, the destruction of Germany’s Nord Stream energy pipelines—had deeply alienated many other major world powers, which naturally gravitated towards the China-Russia bloc as a consequence, notably including Saudi Arabia, Iran, India, and Brazil. Even some of our own most important vassal-states such as France and Japan seem to have recently become a little shaky in their allegiance.
Thus, over the last twelve months, the global coalition aligned with China had quickly grown so overwhelmingly powerful that the likelihood of any conflict with America was greatly diminished. The aggressive arrogance and incompetence of the Neocons may have allowed the world to escape the Thucydides Trap, increasing the chances that China could replace America as the world’s leading power without bloodshed or bitter conflict.
But even if this analysis is correct and the disastrous failure of the Neocon geopolitical strategy has inadvertently yielded a positive outcome, such behavior can hardly be excused. An elite political leadership class so incompetent that it avoids war by unintentionally wrecking its own country’s strategic alliances must obviously be removed lest future blunders have less fortunate consequences.
Furthermore, the same sort of blindness to reality that produced these American strategic disasters might still lead to a deadly crisis. Perhaps the Neocons will fail to recognize the enormous advantages now enjoyed by the China-Russia bloc that America faces and arrogantly continue their military provocations, eventually triggering a wider war. As an example of such strikingly unrealistic beliefs, the WSJ last year carried a column by an editor at the arch-Neocon New York Sun who argued that China and Russia could be successfully contained by the U.S. together with a handful of “Rimland” powers such as Israel, the UAE, and Australia, although the former outweigh the latter perhaps 50-to-1 in population and industrial base.
However, removing the Neocons from authority may be difficult to achieve since they have become so deeply embedded within DC political circles and the broader Atlanticist community.
After first gaining influence in the Reagan Administration during the 1980s and keeping much of it under his successor George H.W. Bush, they soon began to heavily dominate the foreign policy of Bill Clinton. Because they backed Sen. John McCain in the 2000 Republican primaries, they were seemingly excluded from power under George W. Bush, receiving not a single Cabinet appointment; yet in the wake of the 9/11 Attacks, they still managed to gain control of the entire government. Barack Obama was elected partly because he seemed to represent the total repudiation of his unpopular predecessor, but in his administration Bush Neocons were merely replaced by Obama Neocons. Then in 2016, massive popular revulsion against both political parties unexpectedly propelled Donald Trump into the White House, but he soon placed his foreign policy in the hands of particularly hard-line Neocons such as Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, and more recently the Democratic Neocons have regained that same role under Biden. So Neocon control has now endured for more than thirty years, stretching across Democratic, Republican, and Trumpist administrations alike.
A perfect illustration of this remarkable situation is the fact that Robert Kagan, a leading Neocon architect of George W. Bush’s foreign policy, is the husband of Victoria Nuland, who subsequently played the same role for Barack Obama and now Joe Biden. A political elite so unsuccessful and unsatisfactory must be driven from power, yet apparently this is easier said than done.
One difficulty is that the very term “Neocon” used here has actually become much less meaningful than it once was. After having controlled American foreign policy for more than three decades, promoting their allies and protégés and purging their opponents, the adherents of that world view now constitute nearly the entire political establishment, including control of the leading thinktanks and publications. By now, I doubt there are many prominent figures in either party who follow a sharply different line. Furthermore, over the last two decades, the national security-focused Neocons have largely merged with the economically-focused neoliberals, forming a unified ideological block that represents the political worldview of the elites running both American parties.
Back in 2012 I had already noted the emergence of what amounted to a one party American state:
Consider the pattern of the last decade. With two ruinous wars and a financial collapse to his record, George W. Bush was widely regarded as one of the most disastrous presidents in American history, and at times his public approval numbers sank to the lowest levels ever measured. The sweeping victory of his successor, Barack Obama, represented more a repudiation of Bush and his policies than anything else, and leading political activists, left and right alike, characterized Obama as Bush’s absolute antithesis, both in background and in ideology. This sentiment was certainly shared abroad, with Obama being selected for the Nobel Peace Prize just months after entering office, based on the widespread assumption that he was certain to reverse most of the policies of his detested predecessor and restore America to sanity.
Yet almost none of these reversals took place. Instead, the continuity of administration policy has been so complete and so obvious that many critics now routinely speak of the Bush/Obama administration.
The harsh violations of constitutional principles and civil liberties which Bush pioneered following the 9/11 attacks have only further intensified under Obama, the heralded Harvard constitutional scholar and ardent civil libertarian, and this has occurred without the excuse of any major new terrorist attacks. During his Democratic primary campaign, Obama promised that he would move to end Bush’s futile Iraq War immediately upon taking office, but instead large American forces remained in place for years until heavy pressure from the Iraqi government finally forced their removal; meanwhile, America’s occupation army in Afghanistan actually tripled in size. The government bailout of the hated financial manipulators of Wall Street, begun under Bush, continued apace under Obama, with no serious attempts at either government prosecution or drastic reform. Americans are still mostly suffering through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, but Wall Street profits and multimillion-dollar bonuses soon returned to record levels.
In particular, the continuity of top officials has been remarkable. As Bush’s second defense secretary, Robert Gates had been responsible for the ongoing management of America’s foreign wars and military occupations since 2006; Obama kept him on, and he continued to play the same role in the new administration. Similarly, Timothy Geithner had been one of Bush’s most senior financial appointments, playing a crucial role in the widely unpopular financial bailout of Wall Street; Obama promoted him to Treasury secretary and authorized continuation of those same policies. Ben Bernanke had been appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve by Bush and was reappointed by Obama. Bush wars and bailouts became Obama wars and bailouts. The American public voted for an anti-Bush, but got Bush’s third term instead.
During the Cold War, Soviet propagandists routinely characterized our democracy as a sham, with the American public merely selecting which of the two intertwined branches of their single political party should alternate in office, while the actual underlying policies remained essentially unchanged, being decided and implemented by the same corrupt ruling class. This accusation may have been mostly false at the time it was made but seems disturbingly accurate today.
By 2016 public dissatisfaction with the obvious policy failures of this bipartisan political consensus had become so widespread that it provided an opening for an angry outsider such as Donald Trump, a candidate whose campaign was enabled by the new power of Twitter and other social media outlets.
Trump had been considered a joke candidate when he first entered the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, a popular reality television star who had no serious chance against such established political heavyweights as Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. At one of his early debates, he denounced President George W. Bush for having lied America into the disastrous Iraq War, a shocking declaration that seemed sure to doom his candidacy with the conservative Republican base. But oddly enough it failed to dent his enthusiastic, right-wing support, suggesting that our hawkish foreign policy actually resonated much more deeply with Republican donors, DC thinktankers, and Beltway lobbyists than with conservative primary voters.
Trump’s unexpected primary triumph against his establishmentarian Republican opponents was mostly due to domestic issues, especially his powerful focus on the hot-button conservative topics of illegal immigration and free trade agreements. As a consequence, he was regarded as an extreme underdog against Hillary Clinton’s Democratic campaign, with the latter backed by an overwhelming advantage in money and media support.
Clinton’s positions represented the bipartisan elite consensus on foreign policy, and in one of her last debates with Trump she stated that she would immediately declare a “No Fly Zone” in Syria against Russia’s expeditionary force in support of President Assad’s government, with the American air force presumably shooting down any Russian planes that continued to attack the anti-government rebels. A presidential candidate promising war with nuclear-armed Russia should have raised a few eyebrows, but America’s media and political establishments apparently regarded her positions as solid and sensible ones in contrast to Trump’s outrageous proposals to reestablish good relations with the Russians.
Trump’s narrow victory in the 2016 race stunned both political parties. The national security establishments of the Democrats and the Republicans reacted viscerally to the possibility that his contrary ideas might now set Washington policy, and the DC political organism displayed a fierce immune-reaction, trying to reject the alien ideology that had suddenly been grafted onto the top of the American government.
The mainstream media was quickly enlisted in the effort to delegitimize Trump’s election and frustrate his foreign policy plans. Although the bizarre claims that Russian interference had tilted the election towards Trump—or even stolen it outright—probably originated with Clinton’s embarrassed excuses to explain away her shocking defeat against all odds, the cry was quickly taken up by the media echo-chamber and the Russiagate scandal soon dogged the new Trump Administration. Faced with an avalanche of media accusations that Trump was a Russian agent and Putin’s puppet, neither the President nor his top officials could afford the risk of attempting to repair our relations with that country.
Meanwhile, a wide range of dissenting websites—right-wing, left-wing, racialist, and libertarian—were immediately labeled Russian disinformation sources, and although most of the accusations were utterly risible—Ron Paul a Russian agent?—some of these publications were intimidated by those wild charges while our social media gatekeepers were urged to restrict the circulation of any such material.
All of these external pressures on the new administration to toe the establishment line on foreign policy were coupled with internal pressures as well, especially after Trump was persuaded to elevate Mike Pompeo from CIA Director to Secretary of State in late March 2018 and bring in John Bolton as his new National Security Advisor around the same time. Bolton had been known as one of the most extremely hawkish figures in the Bush Administration, a leading advocate of the Iraq War, and Pompeo was regarded as supportive of those same policies. Although Trump’s own views may not have changed, the top figures running his foreign policy were now solidly within the Beltway’s Neocon consensus, even situated at its more extreme end.
Bolton in particular seemed eager and willing to sabotage the policy initiatives of his inattentive new superior.
For example, Trump had made considerable progress on persuading North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to abandon his nuclear weapons development program in exchange for American security guarantees, inspiring South Korean leaders to suggest that the American President deserved a Nobel Peace Prize for his successful diplomatic breakthrough. However, soon after his appointment, Bolton declared that the agreement would be modeled after the one with Muammar Qaddafi of Libya, who had similarly renounced his nuclear weapons efforts in 2004, only to be overthrown and killed in a 2011 NATO-backed military uprising, ending his life sodomized by a bayonet. This torpedoed any possibility of a pact with Kim and Trump later declared that those remarks had been a “disaster” with regard to the negotiations.
That same year Trump was finalizing his crucial trade agreement with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at a private dinner when Bolton secretly ordered the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, one of China’s highest-profile tech executives as she was changing planes in Canada, an act that blindsided and outraged the Chinese leadership. According to a WSJ account, Trump had been completely unaware of what was happening and later asked Bolton “Why did you arrest Meng? Don’t you know she’s the Ivanka Trump of China?”
Leading journalists even reported that Trump’s own senior aides would sometimes hide the executive orders he planned to issue, preventing him from signing them into law and correctly believing that our disengaged Chief Executive would forget about them.
Trump’s original hopes of improving our relationship with Russia had been immediately stymied by the Russiagate Hoax, orchestrated by his Deep State opponents and their mainstream media allies. But his policy towards China followed a different trajectory, and I think Kevin Rudd’s 2022 book The Avoidable War provides a good overview of these developments.
As the former prime minister of Australia, Rudd had relocated to the U.S. in 2014 after leaving office and later served as president of The Asia Society based in New York City. He was obviously a very well-connected individual, even lobbying for nomination as U.N. Secretary-General in 2016, and was already intensely focusing on relations between China and America, which became the subject of his subsequent book. His account explains the sharp break that eventually occurred.
As Rudd tells the story, Trump was overwhelmingly focused on trade issues with China and although he was willing to take tough negotiating positions, he also emphasized the importance of his personal relationship with his “very, very good friend” Xi. He believed that forming such bonds represented a crucial element of his skills as a deal-maker, and he was extremely pleased with the successful trade agreement the two countries had finalized, with Rudd invited to the January 15, 2020 signing ceremony at the White House.
Around this same time, the first news of the Covid outbreak in Wuhan was starting to reach America, but Trump paid no attention to the matter. Even weeks after the virus had begun to spread worldwide, Trump continued praising the successful efforts of China’s leaders in controlling the disease in their own country while disregarding any risk it might pose to the U.S. Only after the burgeoning global epidemic triggered a stock market crash amid indications of widespread American outbreaks did Trump begin blaming the China for the catastrophe, sharply criticizing that country in late March and suggesting that the virus might have escaped from a Chinese virology lab. This shift seemed to have reflected the growing influence of Pompeo, one of the leading anti-China figures in Trump’s administration, and indeed our CIA-affiliated Radio Free Asia propaganda outlet had already begun claiming that Covid was an escaped Chinese bioweapon months earlier on January 9th, before even the first death had yet occurred.
By Rudd’s account, the political impact of the Covid epidemic was enormous, being entirely responsible for the complete reversal of Trump’s China policy, which was transformed from tough negotiations on trade but otherwise amicable strategic cooperation into intense international hostility. And that momentous shift in America’s China stance even remained after Biden replaced Trump in January 2021.
As the elections of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump demonstrated, even the surprising political victory of someone perceived as an extreme outsider seems to have much less impact upon American foreign policy than might be expected. Over the last couple of decades, the political establishments of both parties have been so heavily absorbed into the Neocon world view that it might take a geopolitical earthquake of generational magnitude to dislodge their hold on power.
But as it happens, over the last three years American society experienced exactly such a earthquake. The Covid epidemic killed well over a million Americans and greatly disrupted the lives of everyone else, certainly amounting to the greatest disaster our society had experienced since the Great Depression more than three generations ago. Moreover, the sudden appearance of the virus also had a drastic political impact as well, driving the intense hostility towards China that has governed our political life since early 2020.
Yet despite its huge importance and impact upon the world, the actual origin of this calamitous disease has received far less attention than it warrants, and that discussion has been extremely circumscribed both in the mainstream and even in the alternative media. Since January 2020, the public debate has been almost entirely restricted to two major theories of Covid origins. Most of the scientific and media establishment quickly declared that the virus was natural and had randomly appeared in the city of Wuhan during late 2019. Meanwhile, a strong minority view widespread on the Internet had argued that the virus was bioengineered in a Wuhan laboratory and accidentally leaked out into the surrounding city, setting off the global epidemic.
Last year I reviewed the contradictory evidence and the arguments of the key proponents on both sides, suggesting that an excluded third possibility was the best solution:
I think these exchanges demonstrate that to a considerable extent, the two main camps on the Covid origins debate have been talking past each other.
The testimonies provided by Quammen and Holmes strongly challenged the possibility of any lab-leak at Wuhan, suggesting that this proves the virus must have been natural, even though few arguments on that latter point were ever made; at most, they raised some doubts about the strength of the evidence for bioengineering.
Meanwhile, the articles and papers by Wade, Sachs, Bruttel, and others have provided strong evidence that the virus was artificial. All of this has usually been interpreted as support for the lab-leak hypothesis, even though very little evidence was ever presented that any lab-leak had occurred.
Yet the apparent vector-sum of these conflicting arguments is the conclusion that the Covid virus neither leaked from the Wuhan lab nor was natural, and this suggests that the public debate has been improperly restricted to just those two possibilities.
For more than 30 months I have emphasized that there are actually three perfectly plausible hypotheses for the Covid outbreak. The virus might have been natural, randomly appearing in Wuhan during late 2019; the virus might have been the artificial product of a scientific lab in Wuhan, which accidentally leaked out at that time; or the virus might have been the bioengineered product of America’s hundred-billion-dollar biowarfare program, the oldest and largest in the world, a bioweapon deployed against China and Iran by elements of the Trump Administration at the height of our hostile international confrontation with those countries.
The first two possibilities have been very widely discussed and debated across the Western mainstream and alternative media, while the third has been almost totally ignored, despite top Russian, Iranian, and Chinese government officials having publicly accused America of releasing Covid in a deliberate biowarfare attack.
Indeed, beginning in April 2020 I have published a long series of articles arguing that there is strong perhaps even overwhelming evidence in favor of that third, disregarded possibility.
Last December I had discussed and reviewed several important recent books on the origins of the Covid virus, all advocating the lab-leak hypothesis. I noted that none of the authors—Jasper Becker, Sharri Markson, Alina Chan and Matt Ridley—had dared to even consider the excluded third possibility, perhaps because the realities of the publishing industry required them to apply such Orwellian “crimestop” to their thinking.
A few days ago we passed the third anniversary of my original April 2020 article in which I had outlined the likely motives for this attack.
If the virus had been released intentionally, the context and motive for such a biowarfare attack against China could not be more obvious. Although our disingenuous media continues to pretend otherwise, the size of China’s economy surpassed that of our own several years ago, and has continued to grow much more rapidly. Chinese companies have also taken the lead in several crucial technologies, with Huawei becoming the world’s leading telecommunications equipment manufacturer and dominating the important 5G market. China’s sweeping Belt and Road Initiative has threatened to reorient global trade around an interconnected Eurasian landmass, greatly diminishing the leverage of America’s own control over the seas. I have closely followed China for over forty years, and the trend-lines have never been more apparent. Back in 2012, I published an article bearing the provocative title “China’s Rise, America’s Fall?” and since then I have seen no reason to reassess my verdict.
For three generations following the end of World War II, America had stood as the world’s supreme economic and technological power, while the collapse of the Soviet Union thirty years ago left us as the sole remaining superpower, facing no conceivable military rival. A growing sense that we were rapidly losing that unchallenged position had certainly inspired the anti-China rhetoric of many senior figures in the Trump Administration, who launched a major trade war soon after coming into office. The increasing misery and impoverishment of large sections of the American population naturally left these voters searching for a convenient scapegoat, and the prosperous, rising Chinese made a perfect target.
Despite America’s growing economic conflict with China over the last couple of years, I had never considered the possibility that matters might take a military turn. The Chinese had long ago deployed advanced intermediate range missiles that many believed could easily sink our carriers in the region, and they had also generally improved their conventional military deterrent. Moreover, China was on quite good terms with Russia, which itself had been the target of intense American hostility for several years; and Russia’s new suite of revolutionary hypersonic missiles had drastically reduced any American strategic advantage. Thus, a conventional war against China seemed an absolutely hopeless undertaking, while China’s outstanding businessmen and engineers were steadily gaining ground against America’s decaying and heavily-financialized economic system.
Under these difficult circumstances, an American biowarfare attack against China might have seemed the only remaining card to play in hopes of maintaining American supremacy. Plausible deniability would minimize the risk of any direct Chinese retaliation, and if successful, the terrible blow inflicted to China’s economy would set it back for many years, perhaps even destabilizing its social and political system. Using alternative media to immediately promote theories that the coronavirus outbreak was the result of a leak from a Chinese biowarfare lab was a natural means of preempting any later Chinese accusations along similar lines, thereby allowing America to win the international propaganda war before China had even begun to fight.
A decision by elements of our national security establishment to wage biological warfare in hopes of maintaining American world power would certainly have been an extremely reckless act, but extreme recklessness has become a regular aspect of American behavior since 2001, especially under the Trump Administration. Just a year earlier we had kidnapped the daughter of Huawei’s founder and chairman, who also served as CFO and ranked as one of China’s top executives, while at the beginning of January we suddenly assassinated Iran’s top military leader.
Under this explosive reconstruction, the Covid disease epidemic that has taken more than million American lives resulted from the blowback of a botched American biowarfare attack against China (and Iran), an attack carried out without the knowledge or approval of President Donald Trump.
All of the compelling evidence supporting this controversial hypothesis has been easily available in mainstream media sources since early 2020, but very few individuals anywhere have been willing to recognize or mention it.
My own long series of articles has presented and analyzed all this material and also placed it within the context of the hidden history of America’s longstanding biological warfare programs. These pieces have been collected into a freely downloadable ebook.
- Covid/Biowarfare Series
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • April 2020-February 2023 • 90,000 Words
I’d particularly recommend the following articles in my series.
- American Pravda: Our Coronavirus Catastrophe as Biowarfare Blowback?
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • April 21, 2020 • 7,400 Words - American Pravda: Covid Epidemic as Lab-Leak or Biowarfare?
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • July 12, 2021 • 13,100 Words - American Pravda: Waging Biological Warfare
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • August 9, 2021 • 7,500 Words - American Pravda: Confronting Covid Crimestop
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • December 13, 2021 • 6,400 Words - The Alt-Covid Community Begins Unraveling the Origins of Covid
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • January 16, 2023 • 4,500 Words
Although the articles run many tens of thousands of words, some of the most striking evidence can be summarized in just a few paragraphs mostly extracted from my original April 2020 article:
For example, in 2017 Trump brought in Robert Kadlec, who since the 1990s had been one of America’s leading biowarfare advocates. The following year in 2018 a mysterious viral epidemic hit China’s poultry industry and in 2019, another mysterious viral epidemic devastated China’s pork industry…
From the earliest days of the administration, leading Trump officials had regarded China as America’s most formidable geopolitical adversary, and orchestrated a policy of confrontation. Then from January to August 2019, Kadlec’s department ran the “Crimson Contagion” simulation exercise, involving the hypothetical outbreak of a dangerous respiratory viral disease in China, which eventually spreads into the United States, with the participants focusing on the necessary measures to control it in this country. As one of America’s foremost biowarfare experts, Kadlec had emphasized the unique effectiveness of bioweapons as far back as the late 1990s and we must commend him for his considerable prescience in having organized a major viral epidemic exercise in 2019 that was so remarkably similar to what actually began in the real world just a few months later.
With leading Trump officials greatly enamored of biowarfare, fiercely hostile to China, and running large-scale 2019 simulations on the consequences of a mysterious viral outbreak in that country, it seems entirely unreasonable to completely disregard the possibility that such extremely reckless plans may have been privately discussed and eventually implemented, though probably without presidential authorization.
But with the horrific consequences of our own later governmental inaction being obvious, elements within our intelligence agencies have sought to demonstrate that they were not the ones asleep at the switch. Earlier this month, an ABC News story cited four separate government sources to reveal that as far back as late November, a special medical intelligence unit within our Defense Intelligence Agency had produced a report warning that an out-of-control disease epidemic was occurring in the Wuhan area of China, and widely distributed that document throughout the top ranks of our government, warning that steps should be taken to protect US forces based in Asia. After the story aired, a Pentagon spokesman officially denied the existence of that November report, while various other top level government and intelligence officials refused to comment. But a few days later, Israeli television mentioned that in November American intelligence had indeed shared such a report on the Wuhan disease outbreak with its NATO and Israeli allies, thus seeming to independently confirm the complete accuracy of the original ABC News story and its several government sources.
It therefore appears that elements of the Defense Intelligence Agency were aware of the deadly viral outbreak in Wuhan more than a month before any officials in the Chinese government itself. Unless our intelligence agencies have pioneered the technology of precognition, I think this may have happened for the same reason that arsonists have the earliest knowledge of future fires.
According to these multiply-sourced mainstream media accounts, by “the second week of November” our Defense Intelligence Agency was already preparing a secret report warning of a “cataclysmic” disease outbreak taking place in Wuhan. Yet at that point, probably no more than a couple of dozen individuals had been infected in that city of 11 million, with few of those yet having any serious symptoms. The implications are rather obvious. Furthermore:
As the coronavirus gradually began to spread beyond China’s own borders, another development occurred that greatly multiplied my suspicions. Most of these early cases had occurred exactly where one might expect, among the East Asian countries bordering China. But by late February Iran had become the second epicenter of the global outbreak. Even more surprisingly, its political elites had been especially hard-hit, with a full 10% of the entire Iranian parliament soon infected and at least a dozen of its officials and politicians dying of the disease, including some who were quite senior. Indeed, Neocon activists on Twitter began gleefully noting that their hated Iranian enemies were now dropping like flies.
Let us consider the implications of these facts. Across the entire world the only political elites that have yet suffered any significant human losses have been those of Iran, and they died at a very early stage, before significant outbreaks had even occurred almost anywhere else in the world outside China. Thus, we have America assassinating Iran’s top military commander on Jan. 2nd and then just a few weeks later large portions of the Iranian ruling elites became infected by a mysterious and deadly new virus, with many of them soon dying as a consequence. Could any rational individual possibly regard this as a mere coincidence?
The Iranians themselves were well aware of these facts, and their top political and military leaders publicly accused America of an illegal biowarfare attack against their own country and China, with their former president even filing an official protest with the United Nations. But although these explosive charges were widely reported in the Iranian press, they were completely ignored by the American media so that almost no Americans ever became aware of them.
Much of this same information is also effectively summarized in several of my podcast interviews from a year ago, originally on Rumble but now available on Youtube as well.
Kevin Barrett, FFWN • February 16, 2022 • 15m • on Rumble
Full article HERE
The kremlin military has begun deploying T-14 Armata tanks in the ongoing “special military operation”. These tanks are said to have been fitted with enhanced anti-tank ammunition protection.
The report claimed that Russia’s most powerful tank, T-14, had been involved in combat with Ukrainian defensive positions in an unspecified area of the conflict zone but did not take part in direct attacks.
The Armata tanks deployed in Ukraine are equipped with extra protection on their flanks. Their operators have been undergoing training since late December at a military base in Ukraine’s Donbas region.
Advantages Of T-14 Tank Over Western Tanks
The T-14 Armata is equipped with numerous advanced features, positioning it as Russia’s answer to the American M1A3 Abrams, the British Challenger 2, and Germany’s Leopard 2 tank.
The tank is outfitted with a remote-controlled turret, allowing for improved crew accuracy and safety. It also has enhanced protection measures for the crew, including composite ceramic-and-steel layered armor and explosive reactive armor blocks to counter incoming threats.
Additionally, the T-14 Armata features a sensor-activated defense system that can detect and launch interceptor charges to neutralize missiles and anti-tank shells, further increasing its effectiveness on the battlefield.
According to a military official from Russia, the design and cross-country capabilities of the T-14 Armata tank provide it with a distinct advantage over both the Abrams and Leopard tanks.
Major General Sergey Lipova, also known as Hero of Russia, said the Russian T-14 tank has several advantages over the Western Abrams, Leopard, and Challenger tanks.
These advantages come from the unique design of the T-14, which offers greater protection to the crew against incoming shells. The T-14 also has superior cross-country capabilities compared to the other tanks.
The T-14 tank is designed differently from foreign tanks regarding crew placement. While the crew in foreign tanks is evenly placed inside the hull, the T-14 has its crew housed in separate armored capsules.
This unique design feature increases the crew’s survivability in case anti-tank weapons hit the tank. He also said the T-14 tank was sent to Ukraine for testing in actual combat conditions.
He also pointed out another advantage of the T-14 tank over Western combat vehicles. He mentioned that the Russian tank is lighter, enhancing its maneuverability on the battlefield, particularly in swampy areas.
Who is the worst president of South Korea?
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol took office last May. In less than a year, his popularity ratings have plunged to a pathetic 28%. His predecessor Moon Jae-in, in stark contrast, left office basking in stratospheric 78% support. These ratings are a true measure of competence and experience or lack thereof.
Yoon was a prosecutor general, with no prior chance to cut his teeth on international politics. Geopolitically, he is wet behind the ears. By his actions and words, he is a wet leader—weak and gaffe-prone. His only cashable political asset is his charming and photogenic wife.
In the past month alone, Yoon has littered his record with a terrible triple jump. He has forgotten his geography, that Korea is located in Asia and must navigate the treacherous relations with China, Russia and Japan. On all three fronts, he has been an unmitigated disaster. He has angered China by declaring before his Western partners that “Taiwan is a global issue.” As a newcomer, he craved approval and attention. But he didn’t realize that this is an uncrossable red line for China. Just as provocatively, he has gone out on a limb telling the world that he is prepared to send lethal weapons to Ukraine if and when warranted by the war situation, thereby netting another major power to his list of enemies. He did, however, try to cuddle up to two countries: Japan and America. Korea’s relations with Japan have always been ticklish and fraught, given the latter’s brutal colonial rule of the Korean peninsula. But he blundered with an unsolicited olive branch to the Japanese, saying that he will not accept Japan having to kneel in shame for its atrocities a hundred years ago. This might be music to Japanese ears, but it is a hammer blow to stunned fellow Koreans.
Yoon is currently on a state visit to Washington. It has been rumored that he had burnt the midnight oil trying to memorize his English speech to impress his American hosts. No other foreign leader has tried so hard to curry favor with his US overlord. By angering China on Taiwan and Russia on military aid to Ukraine, he has put himself in Biden’s good books, but at what price? He has given away all his bargaining chips before he even set foot in America. His cupboards are bare. He has given America everything it wants, unasked, including Korea’s kitchen sink. But does this earn him America’s unconditional trust? Quite the contrary. News has just leaked that the US has been spying on its Korean partners. So much for blood brotherhood.
Yoon’s background as prosecutor echoes the CV of US Vice President Kamala Harris, a fellow former prosecutor. Both are socially and strategically challenged–handicapped by poor people skills, a low likeability factor and non-existent geopolitical awareness. They should have stuck with their original occupation. The presidency or vice presidency is simply a bridge too far. They prove that the Peter Principle is alive and kicking—some people are indeed promoted to the level of their incompetence.
Yoon’s foray into Washington is thus doomed. He doesn’t seem to know which side of his bread is buttered, forgetting that Korea’s core interests remain in Asia. Without China, there can be no stable, long-term peace in the region. His inflammatory statements have poured fuel on the flames, with his ill-timed and ill-considered words disrupting the equilibrium. Even Europeans, at the height of a dangerous war raging in Ukraine, know only too well that the US practices an “America First” policy. Alliances are only partnerships of convenience. Yet Yoon is rashly betting his political fortunes on the roller-coaster of US domestic politics. Besides, America is an ocean away. I feel sorry for Koreans for being cursed with a blundering, bird-brained leader who turns out to be a sell-out artist. He talks like a US puppet and acts like a US puppet and will pay a dear price for being a sniveling puppet. With all his bargaining chips squandered, he goes to Washington, empty-handed. What more can he offer Biden? Kimchee, I guess.
American sense of entitlement…
It’s profound and disturbing.
Jeffrey Sachs – United States Putting All Of Us In Peril
Mr Jeffrey you are 100% the voice of reason and clairvoyance. Unfortunately this has gotten too far already, the human losses on both sides means that Russia is going to keep the provinces it freed under the Russian federation. USa is dangerously commanded by a rogue minority in the shadows, that knows no guilt, and will have to experience defeat to relearn humility and noble principles that most other countries in the world have in their society values and that they don't. Those rogues are treating the world as a far west frontier and dont realize that the true decent, humble and well mannered civilization is not Usa.
https://youtu.be/S6g9xuMK7a8
Something that you would NEVER see in China…
It’s an “American thing”.
A collection of links that describe American Conservative “news” at this moment in time
We will look back and reflect in the insanity that the United States has become. No need to click on the links. Wait three years, then investigate. Say in 2026-2027.
- CFP Saturday Night Champagne Room is now open…
- New Florida law cracks down on anti-Semitsim…
- House strikes down Biden handout to Chinese solar companies…
- Cowboys draft coach’s son, smallest player in NFL…
- FDIC to seize First Republic Bank… Developing…
- DeSantis gets poor reviews from Britain…
- Newsmax is throwing everything at Tucker Carlson…
- You can run the entire network…
- The Newsroom is dead.
- Justice Alito speaks out… I know who leaked the Abortion ruling…
- Now we drive in bulletproof tanks…
- Al Gore wind turbine collapses at high school…
- Stunning accusation from Hugh Grant…
- Google engineer believes AI has feelings…
- Willie Nelson turns 90 with historic concert at Hollywood Bowl…
- Jenny Craig is trimming the fat…
- Sinaloa Cartel couldn’t exist without China…
- Mysterious UFO spotted over Las Vegas…
- Roman Polanski and ‘victim’ pose together smiling in Paris…
- Couple’s night out, no hard feelings…
- Steven Crowder responds to ‘ugly abusive’ video… Threatens to release wife’s mental health records…
- Ticketmaster embroiled in Royal mess…
- Disinformation Experts suddenly go silent…
- Scientists crack ancient Mayan code…
- Moderna ceo banked $400 million, and got a raise…
- All eyes on Jack Smith…
- Biden authorizes troop deployment to Southern border…
- Read the white house executive order…
- Ukraine launches massive drone strike on Russian troops in Crimea…
- Russian oil depot turns into raging inferno…
- Mexican gunman kills 5 neighbors near Houston… Manhunt underway…
- Raw video from multiple scenes in Crimea…
- ‘Russian fighter pilots getting cocky, want dogfight in Syria’…
- Illinois to file appeal on assault weapons ban…
- New way of catfish noodling…
- Late Friday | Federal Judge grants huge 2nd Amendment victory in Illinois…
- ‘Huge kick in the gonads for Army pilots’…
- Las Vegas child predator arrested on camera…
- Marxists take victory lap in Minnesota…
- Global study on diabetes…
- Leigh Finke didn’t get what he/she/it wanted….
- CITIZEN OPEN THREAD — SATURDAY
- Full Video | Steve Bannon interviews President Trump at Mar-a-Lago…
- The Donald in rare form, ready for 2024 Victory…
- Minnesota bill normalizing Pedophilia…
- Lithium burns underwater…
- Deep Dive | Red Cross guide to illegal immigration…
- Raw fighting at Riverside high school…
- North Carolina Supreme Court reinstates Voter ID, bans Felon voting…
- The Guardian is emotionally triggered by ruling…
- AP admits… Huge victory for republicans, with national implications…
- Jim Justice is running for Senate…
- Trump tells story about Rocketman…
- Federal Reserve mea culpa…
- When Feinstein is away, Joe Manchin will play…
- Senate cancels Biden rule on trucks…
- ABC News refuses to broadcast Bobby Kennedy comments on Covid Vaccines…
- Update — ABC News broke election law with censorship…
- 11th Circuit overrules Obama Judge… DeSantis gets huge victory on Voting Law…
- Drop boxes now illegal, Bloomberg reporter is not pleased…
- Jennifer Granholm on acid…
- Lawrence Jones to audition for Tucker’s spot next week…
- Abortionist LeRoy Carhart is dead…
- ‘Yes it’s true, I kill babies’…
- Tennessee Governor — Killer’s Manifesto will be released ‘soon’…
- Peter Daszak strikes again, paragraph 7…
- Misleading sex abuse headline… $2 billion is actually $1 million…
- What is Glenfarne doing in Texas…
- NY residents are furious… No natural gas in any new buildings…
- Kathy Hochul is trying to destroy New York…
- Brutal comments for Kathy on twitter…
- ‘Spike Protein is the swiss army knife of death’…
- Disney lawsuit assigned to Obama judge who hates DeSantis…
- Sudan Biolab loaded with dangerous pathogens…
- Biden is breaking law to allow Chinese Confucius Institute to spy on U.S. colleges…
- Teenage boy dies during sex mutilation surgery…
- Graphic photos of genital reconstruction…
- Doctor promotes sex mutilation surgery with straight face…
- Worst teacher of the year, now arrested…
- Biden wants to destroy women’s sports… Biological males welcome…
- Shameful display, Princeton…
- Awesome photo of Trump and Bannon live on War Room from Mar-a-Lago…
- Tucker has higher approval rating than Fox News…
- DOJ sues Tennessee… Sexual mutilation of children must remain legal…
- Sex change surgery ‘increases suicide rate’ in kids…
- Elon Musk shares ‘trans suicide study’…
- DOJ press release promotes ‘radical gender theory’…
- Americans in Sudan ‘furious at Biden’…
- Perp attempts to stab police dog. Perp is shot dead.
- Black conservative drops history bomb…
- Charlie LeDuff goes deep on MSU killer…
- Interesting comments from Megyn Kelly…
- CDC Warns — ‘Monkey Pox will be worse this year for gay community’…
- 90 percent of Monkeypox deaths already have HIV…
- Utah Mayor — This pornographic filth needs to be removed from schools…
- School Board confronted, local news picks up the story…
- Vivek dances on grave of Don Lemon…
- USAID funded chinese military research at Wuhan Lab…
- Rand Paul puts Samantha Power thru the wringer…
- Biden will not like this new Gallup poll…
- Hey Gavin, what happened to your 1,300 RVs for the homeless…
- Republicans plan to stop second Iran nuclear deal…
- Missouri elementary school contaminated by radioactive waste…
- Kunstler | It’s not funny anymore…
- Every day there is a gaffe. Every. Damn. Day.
- Chris Christie admits the truth… ‘We can’t stop Trump’…
- ‘Parts of Manifesto to be released soon’…
- Trump — I will ban child sex mutilation in all 50 states…
- How the Media lies about January 6th…
- Martina Navratilova punches back at Will Thomas…
- Watch Live | Charlie Kirk show…
- Scientists develop 3D-printed patch to administer mRNA Vaccines…
- $1,000 fine if you harass the Homeless in Oregon…
- Oral Sex fueling ‘epidemic’ of throat cancer…
- Analyzing all 32 NFL first round picks…
- Gavin Newsom wants new housing for homeless in Berkeley People’s Park…
- KJP — Biden’s cheat sheet is totally normal…
- Matt Gaetz activated, shows no mercy for ATF Director…
- Bizarre ‘rape comments’ from Trump accuser…
- Disturbing story from Australia…
- CNN appearance doesn’t go well… Randi Weingarten called ‘liar’ to her face…
- Weed smell has taken over New York…
- Trump — I will restore the travel ban…
- Perp tunneled thru the wall. Perp is now dead.
- Climate officials caught stealing millions…
- Trump hilarious highlights from New Hampshire…
- Russian spies hide ‘under diplomatic cover’…
- 500 Australians file world’s first Vaccine Injury class action…
- 25 Counties with highest life expectancy…
- Criminal charges for giving Macron the finger…
- Mike Pence testifies before J6 grand jury…
- Jack Smith tightens the noose on Trump, Pence testifies for 6 hours…
- This is the result of grooming in schools…
- Eli Lilly obesity drug poised to blow up weight loss industry…
- Ukraine tried to assassinate Putin…
- Army Apache helicopters collide, 3 dead…
- No one has ever done this in MLB before… Ohtani is incredible…
- Bitcoin thief sentenced to 4 years…
- There’s a new highest paid player in NFL…
- Dr. Malone | The Truth about the Origin of Covid…
- CITIZEN OPEN THREAD — FRIDAY
- Klaus Schwab posts update to Agenda 2030…
- Decorated Army commander (female) accused of sexual assault…
- New York street interviews are brutal for Biden…
- Cloud growth is slowing at Amazon…
- Pearl clutching over SpaceX debris, the blast was awesome…
- I would be smiling too, dude…
- China’s secret quest for Heavy Artillery…
- Pope Francis to meet with Viktor Orban in Budapest…
- San Fran Target video goes viral…
- Are protein powders bad for your health…
- Van Jones — Kamala is running for president, not VP…
- Wynn unveils Island Utopia…
- Democrats want to spy on encrypted messages…
- Elon Musk bans ‘pride flag for pedophiles’… Leftist account promoted sex with children…
- Restorative Justice is killing kids…
- Infant’s laughter is infectious, nice work dad…
- DeSantis dines with Trump donor in Israel…
- Portland schools beg for help with violent students…
- Elon Musk gets sweet offer from South Korea…
- IRS hiring page for armed agents…
- ‘Democrat education agenda will start a race war’…
- Trump drops new commercial for 2024…
- Arizona democrat caught stealing Bibles… Watch both videos…
- Train derailment in Wisconsin…
- mRNA vaccines in U.S. pork supply since 2018…
- Marxist president of Colombia is failing…
- Sounds like Elon Musk is talking about CFP…
- Steven Crowder ‘abuse’ video surfaces… Decide for yourself…
- Now we know why Crowder was worried…
- Trump leads DeSantis by 46 points in new Emerson poll…
- Huge increase, see the progression…
- Robert Reich — States must refuse to put Trump on 2024 Ballot…
- Read the full fascist op-ed from reich…
- ‘Abby Grossberg has never met Tucker Carlson in person’…
- Intel revenue drops 37 percent…
- Biden stands for grooming kids…
- Commercial real estate timebomb in San Fran… Prices down 80 percent…
- Alabama is the new Florida for retirees…
- Facebook stock up 170% on zero revenue growth…
- She killed her pet parrot with a Glock.
- Mentally ill humans think AI friends are real…
- Astronomers perplexed by 25 fast radio bursts from Space…
- $16,000 penis enlargement surgery growing in popularity…
- First Republic Bank stock crashes to $6…
- Trump widens lead over DeSantis… Kennedy now at 19 percent vs Biden…
- Schwarzenegger joins Lib Media celebration…
- Watch Live | Emerald Robinson show…
- Iran seizes oil tanker headed to Texas…
- Nikki Haley — ‘Biden will be dead within 5 years’…
- Dow gains 500 pts, live updates…
- Jerome Powell gets pranked, thought he was talking to Zelensky…
- Facebook stock is spiking, live quote…
- Vice News Tonight is done, layoffs begin…
- Jack Teixeira appears in court… Internet history detailed…
- IRS hiring gun-toting agents in all 50 states…
- Fox News ratings fall, Hannity tanks, Newsmax gains viewers…
- Who will replace Tucker, wacky possibilities…
- Jelly Roll, convict turned country singer is blowing up Nashville…
- GDP slowdown triggers Recession fear…
- NYT — We don’t need a healthy, engaged president…
- Vivek one liner on Biden announcement…
- Project Veritas has stopped losing followers…
- Marjorie takes Randi Weingarten to school…
- Studying Supercentenarians, people who live to 110…
- Embarrassing moment for Swalwell…
- Biological male Tranny beats 14,000 women at London Marathon…
- Here’s the video, interview after race…
- South Korea president sings American Pie at white house…
- Watch the U.S. debt clock for 10 seconds…
- Tucker issues first statement, drops new video, precisely at 8 pm…
- Biden isn’t sure how old he is…
- Insider blows the whistle on NGO censorship…
- New Twitter Files | The Information Cartel…
- Jennifer Granholm in the hot seat…
- Pronoun Mafia snaps at sheriff…
- Biden had advance knowledge of Rose Garden questions…
- GDP comes in weak…
- U.S. to set up ‘migrant screening’ offices in Latin America…
- ‘Just say you’re gay, Biden will let you in’…
- Pedophile has now cost Santa Monica $230 Million…
- Jerry Springer dead at 79…
- McCarthy passes debt ceiling bill by only two votes…
- Republicans revolt over ethanol tax breaks…
- $5 Trillion in spending cuts over 10 years…
- Fugees rapper convicted on 10 felony counts for political conspiracy…
- Love the sound of this engine…
- Biden can’t even make a threat without gaffing…
- Watch Live | Blinken holds presser to welcome Illegals to America…
- Bull runs for cover during hailstorm…
- Asa Hutchinson announces 2024 campaign to get rich…
- ESPN female reporter fired for saying ‘cunt’…
- Nikki Haley — I will help Disney move to South Carolina…
- Happy Birthday, First Lady Melania…
- Fox News ratings crash in Tucker time slot…
- Most Athletic Quarterback in football history awaits today’s NFL draft…
- Erdogan denies heart attack, here’s the video…
- Equitable grading is here and it’s already killing education.
- So much for glo-bull warming…
- Facebook beats expectations, stock rallies…
- Zuckerberg takes $4 Billion loss on meta virtual world…
- The Rise of voluntary celibacy…
- Montana bans Tranny lawmaker from House floor…
- Arizona democrat steals Bibles…
- Abby Grossberg sounds like a democrat plant to bring down Tucker…
- Grossberg whines like a banshee on msnbc…
- ‘They used mean words, made fun of Nancy Pelosi in bathing suit’…
- Kamala eats word salad, Joe gets lost on stage…
- Brutal question at WH briefing… Check out Jake Sullivan’s face…
- Did you participate in criminal fraud, Jake…
- Chart — Vaccine demand falls off a cliff…
- Ted Cruz — I bought the dip in Bitcoin…
- Update — Hunter Biden lawyers met with Justice Dept today…
- Athletes who died ‘suddenly’ after Vaccine…
- Disturbing read on South Africa…
- Biden’s stenographer drops a ‘criminal’ bomb on Obama…
- Annie Oakley would be proud… Nice shooting…
- That’s one hell of a renovation job…
- Gutfeld ‘tucker running against susan rice’…
- Historic shift from Pope Francis…
- That’s a lot of stolen cars…
- Masks can cause stillbirths, testicular dysfunction…
- Fish sing songs timed with the Moon…
- DeSantis announcement rumors getting hot…
- Always do the opposite of Jim Cramer…
- Jim Boeheim settles lawsuit over deadly car crash…
- 6th Circuit rules ‘bump stocks’ are legal…
- Photo… Elon meeting with Schumer on AI policy…
- Thiel doesn’t like the culture wars…
- Elizabeth Holmes final hail mary…
- China is finally using more Yuan than U.S. Dollars…
What is the century of humiliation the Chinese people always speak about?
The Century of Humiliation encompasses a period of roughly between 90–120 years between 1824 and 1944 when China was divided into the sphere of influence by foreign western powers and invaded by Japan
It’s called a COH because CHINA was humiliated
First the Chinese Emperor was overwhelmed by the gunpower and the British Navy & French Soldiers and was forced to cede territory to them where they ran per their own laws.
Second the Opium Trade was red hot and many Chinese became addicts and wealthy families became paupers
China was HELPLESS in every way and their Officials were like Indians of today — Corrupt to the core or Honest yet Indifferent
The Boxer Rebellion is officially regarded the end of the Century of Humiliation but since 2017,=in their textbooks the Chinese add the 13 years of Japanese occupation as also part of the Century of Humiliation
China under Mao referred to the COH every day but under Deng and Jiang the term vanished because the Chinese wanted goodies and favours from the West
It reappeared from 2015 when Xi Jingping told the Chinese to “NEVER FORGET THE CENTURY OF HUMILIATION”
The End of American “Exceptionalism”?
.
Watching a once great nation commit suicide is not pretty.
President Joe Biden does not seem to understand that his role as elected leader of the United States is to take actions that directly or indirectly benefit the folks who voted for him as well as the other Americans who did not do so. That is how a constitutional democracy is supposed to work.
Instead, Biden and the gang of introverts and neocon war criminals that the has surrounded himself with have done everything that can to inflict fatal damage on the economy through rash initiatives both overseas and at home.
A spending spree to buy support from the bizarre constituencies that make up the Democrat Party base while also fighting an undeclared war in Europe have meant that nearly two trillion dollars has been added to the national debt under Biden’s rule, a debt that was already unsustainable at nearly $30 trillion, larger than the United States’ gross national product. Plans to cancel student loan debts will add hundreds of billions of dollars more to the red ink.
And those actions undertaken overseas, to include continuing to expand the war in Ukraine against Russia, will do immeasurable more damage. Consider how the Democratic Party has long had it in for Russian Federal President Vladimir Putin, dating back to when Putin took power in 2000 and started kicking out the western scallywags who were looting his country.
Subsequently, false intelligence and other innuendoes were contrived by Hillary Clinton and her team in 2016 to implicate Donald Trump as a Russian stooge who was secretly working for Putin.
When that didn’t work and Trump was elected, the Russians were accused by the media and Democrats of willy-nilly interfering in US elections more generally speaking, a much-exaggerated claim in contrast to the overwhelming silence surrounding the real electoral and policy interference, which has been coming from Israel and its fifth column inside the United States, who, not coincidentally, are the chief proponents of the war against Russia.
Placing a target on Vladimir Putin’s back appears to have an unfortunate consequence which Biden has yet to wake up to, namely the fact that the United States now has what might be described as a Ponzi scheme faux economy which is very vulnerable, particularly as much of the world has become disenchanted with the US style of global leadership.
Note for example the recent state visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to Beijing, where he embraced a “global strategic partnership with China” to bring about a “multipolar” world, freed of “blocs” that is not sheltering behind “Cold War mentality.” Macron also criticized the “extraterritoriality of the US dollar.”
And threats made by the Bidens against both China and Russia have accomplished little beyond drawing the two major political and military powers closer together.
Beijing and Moscow entered into a trade agreement in their own currencies in 2014 and have openly taken steps to challenge US dominance of international currency exchanges, creating instead a global multipolar trading environment.
Europe aside, many nations are now eager to cut the tie that binds, which is the decades long American dominance of international financial mechanisms and also the general use of dollars to pay for oil and other energy supplies.
The widespread use of petrodollars enables the buffoonish Janet Yellen at the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve banks to print unlimited unbacked fiat currency, knowing that there will always be a market for it.
Which brings us back to the Ukraine war, pursued “until we win” by Biden and his somnolent Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
One of the first moves when Russia intervened in Ukraine was to block and eventually confiscate Russia’s 300 billion dollars-worth of foreign reserves in banks in the US and Europe.
That sent a shock wave across currency markets all around the world. Biden and Yellen had weaponized the US’s own national currency, which hitherto had been an untouchable step in international relations for nations that were not actually at war.
Countries like China and India with large economies then realized that the US Treasury Department and the dominance of the dollar as an exchange currency had now become a weapon of war and a serious threat to the economies of all other nations.
As a consequence, the US Dollar is right now being rejected by many nations as the world’s reserve currency. Some nations all over the world have agreed to use the Chinese Yuan and Indian Rupee for any-and-all international currency transactions.
Saudi Arabia continues to use the petrodollar but does not demand it. Recently, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to permit the Saudis to sell oil to China in Yuan. Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, is now allowing multiple currencies to be used to purchase its oil, a major attack on the primacy of the US dollar and it also has accepted Chinese mediation to mend fences with the US and Israel’s arch enemy Iran.
And the Saudis have even more recently refused a Biden Administration request that it start pumping more oil to reduce energy costs, signaling that the shift is both political and economic in nature.
Japan, a major economy, has also started purchasing oil and gas directly from Russia against the US imposed energy embargo while Brazil, another major economy, has agreed to use the Yuan in its increasing trade with China.
As fewer nations utilize the US dollar, America’s ability to export and ignore its burgeoning domestic debt and inflation to other countries is being diminished.
This might have a decisive impact on the US currency as the drive to break with the petrodollar continues to grow and could produce something like a “perfect storm” impacting on the US economy.
It threatens to drastically lower the standards of living of nearly all Americans within the next several years as the dollar loses value and purchasing power. As the US economy is heavily interconnected with many European economies, Europe is also likely to be a victim of the coming disaster.
The good news, of course, is that the United States will no longer be able to afford its endless wars and international interventions.
Lacking its economic power, it will no longer be able to declare itself “exceptional” and the enforcer of a “rules based international order.”
It would mean an ending of the funding of developments like the Ukraine proxy war and the troops will have to come home from places like Syria and Somalia. And it might even mark the ending of sending billions of dollars annually to a wealthy Israel.
Ending dollar supremacy would inevitably have an immediate impact on what passes for US foreign policy, making it more difficult for Washington to initiate and sustain Treasury Department sanctions on countries like Iran and North Korea.
It could also create economic turmoil for many countries until the situation resolves itself by producing greater volatility in currency markets worldwide. The Federal Reserve Bank will no doubt respond to the unfolding crisis by acting as it always does by raising interest rates to astronomical levels, thereby hurting most the Americans who can least afford the shock therapy.
And it did not have to turn out this way. It could have been avoided. If the US, which had no horse in the race, had left Ukraine alone Vladimir Putin would not have become a symbol of defiance against the “Rules Based International Order” and he would not have worked with China to establish multipolarity in the way the financial world operates.
Instead, we have a situation where Europe is being de-industrialized due to soaring energy prices and Washington’s destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines while the US is potentially confronting economic disaster as the dollar’s relevance to international trade sinks.
The ultimate irony is that Russia, and also the US/Israeli arch enemy Iran, are by comparison doing quite well economically as they sell their oil and gas to anyone in any currency.
One has to conclude that when US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently made her secret trip to Kiev to promise the despicable Volodymyr Zelensky billions of taxpayer dollars the United States might just have been better served if she had stayed in Washington and made some minimal effort to address the mounting economic problems confronting us here at home.
And people wonder why restaurants ban children entirely…..
Meanwhile in the United States.
China is a far better place to live than the US!! They won’t admit it, though.
America is truly a garbage dump now. This is coming from someone who currently lives there. I have travelled quite a bit around the world and I have been watching videos of China recently....I am blown away by how the country looks. I need to visit. I had only been to Shanghai a few years ago but the other cities look even better.
Which country do you think the United States will invade or launch a military operation against NEXT?
This is an answer that I penned on Quora -MM
Currently, as of today April 30, 2023, the United States is actively involved in nine (x9) wars around the globe. It is also involved in numerous “color revolutions” (NED / CIA operations), and has over 800 overseas military bases internationally.
As if that isn’t enough, the American “news” media (which is a unacknowledged branch of the United States government) is promoting wars with…
- China
- Haiti
- Mexico
What do I think will happen next?
I haven’t any idea.
It all depends on the ebb and flow of the tide of sentiment inside the oligarchy that rules the United States military Empire.
However, we can take some educated guesses based upon NEED and OUTLOOK. Here we look at five scenarios.
[1] Devalue of the the USD Scenario
In this scenario, everything stays the same, but the global decision to stop using the USD as a reserve currency has resulted in a devaluing of the USD. This, in turn, results in a great deal of inflation.
Not only are the American people restless, but the inflation has pushed the cost of living to enormous heights. This in turn, has made it very expensive to maintain a massive global military empire.
Under this scenario, a prudent leadership would (out of necessity) scale back the military forces, and force projections. The amounts of moneys that would flow to other nations would also be curtailed.
Without this kind of fiat fiscal policy, the United States would be unable to fund any wars, and would need to cut back (substantially) on the ones it is presently engaged in.
[2] “Damn the torpedoes – full steam ahead” Scenario
In this scenario, there is no consideration given to anything other than ideology.
- Us vs. Them
- Democracy vs. “Regimes”
- Neocon vs. the ignorant rest of the world.
The President and his neocon controllers “put the petal to the metal” and force another war. Probably against China, while keeping all the other wars intact.
This, coupled with various other realities, would be devastating for the United States.
Not only militarily, but also economically and financially.
This scenario would hasten the end of the United States via numerous vectors. (Military is just a tiny portion of the calculus. Other factors have a much greater bearing in this vector.)
As the United States is already in late state collapse, this action would end the present United States government and social organization. As such, we can expect a decade long discomfort inside the Untied States, followed by a two to three decade period of reconstruction to a new form of governance.
[3] Trivial distraction war Scenario
In this scenario, a surrogate target other than China is selected. It doesn’t matter which nation, only that it isn’t a peer-capable one like China.
The war takes place, and all of the media attention is redirected towards that end. This war is used to postpone the decline of the Untied States though a “band-aid” and the United States continues to exist limping long for another decade or so before the eventual collapse.
Eventual collapse will still be spectacular. No doubt.
The advantage of this scenario is that of continued life-support for the dying empire, and enough time to make the necessary arrangements for the lifeboats of the rich to ride out the fiasco.
[4] “Kitchen Sink” Scenario
The American military (using the Presidential figurehead) uses nuclear weapons against one or more combatants. In response, the Global South erases the United States. There are debates on how much damage will occur. But I see an emergent globe where the United States no longer exists, where Americans are treated as lepers, and the Global South manages the world quite well without the “West”.
I will further add that no one wants this scenario. And only a lunatic egotistical idiot with dementia and fueled on cocaine would dare consider it. So, it is of my opinion that is is an unlikely scenario.
[5] “Fade into black” Scenario
In this scenario, there are no additional wars. But the existing ones aren’t ended either. The various vectors continue to their ultimate conclusion. The United States dies. The proxy allies start to “turn off the lights” and the last one out of the theater locks the door.
It’s over.
…
Now, in these five scenarios, the United States dies.
There is no scenario where it doesn’t die.
The last chance to stop the “great burn” was when the government was still able to function. But that time has passed. The bureaucracy period ended under President Bill Clinton…
Since that period of time, the ability to reverse-course became substantially difficult.
And the United States slid into death. And it is at death where the United States sits today.
Now during this decade of convulsions; it’s over.
The death spasms of a dying military empire is obvious to everyone.
And so we have our actual reality.
At this period of late stage collapse, the United States cannot be taken off of it’s vector. It will die, the only issues are [1] how quickly and [2] how painfully for the Americans and allies.
Finally, I must add that the United States needs a new kind of leader to slow down the march-of-death. I propose the following…
Greetings.
As a sort of intelligence source with feet on the ground, I can say that I am already going through hardship, and it feels bad. Would not surprise me if it gets worse. I have no possibility of getting out of this situation. I feel trapped. Like being in someones else house taking refuge from the hurricane, waiting for it to stop. But the hurricane does not stop.
I do not want pity. I am writing this as a form of cathartic relief.
At least I have access to the basics necessary for living. I am very thankful for my mother and partner. I am here thanks to them and for them. I could not do it any other way.
It could be worse for me, and when it comes to that, I hope I am able to navigate and survive the hurricane.
Meanwhile I see everything around me seeming to do well. Am I a living now what will be lived by everyone else in the future?
I want to keep my faith, keep moving forward. Sometimes I feel lost. I do not want to be given the fish, I want to be able to fish, figuratively speaking. What I enjoyed doing for a living, with a pretty good salary, has been taken away from me. Taking away the capability of earning a living is demoralizing. Also, identifying the problems and understanding how they can be solved, but having no possibility of doing anything is very frustrating.
That is way I keep my affirmations campaign going. It seems to be my only tool left.
Thank You Metallicman, for gifting me the experience and knowledge of your site, which I found through the Nobulart site.
This is for you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b37cvQ_zoVw
Thank You and thanks to your audience.
Today I am feeling much better. A lot of motivation to do good, constructive stuff. Someone out there felt I needed help to change my sad, frustrated state of mind. Whoever you are, wherever you are, I want to Thank You for your assistance.
Thank You all.
Alexander
The western hegemonic leadership is so intend on its NWO ideology & continue western “global leadership” that they have forsaken their own people. Homelessness, crumbling infrastructure, unemployment, soaring inflation, rampant crime, illegal immigration, hopelessness are just the few things that need to be sorted out immediately but instead the current priority is to prolong war & conflict abroad. How does these “democratic” leaders gets voted back time & time again by the very people that is suffering.
If any country that truly needs a color revolution right now, it is the USA followed by the poodles UK, Australia (the trio Anglo Saxons cousins). Rise up Americans Brits Ozzies & take back your country!
*NZ is left out as they seem to have their head out of US arse*
It will take more than just a change of guard. Sadly, it will take a huge shock for the western people to wake up, and perhaps will realize, how bad and hard we have been exploited for the purposes of the western “leaders”. They had us asleep through financial engineering to create a false perception or prosperity and liberty, while the western “leadership” went all over the world committing all kinds of atrocities.
I heard Catherine Austin Fitts tell, that the guns that once upon a time pointed out are pointing in, towards us now.
When you see what China and Russia have achieved, considering they partially used the same financial systems of the west to get out of the deep hole they were in, it takes a lot of talent, discipline, knowledge and a deep sense of sovereignty on an individual and national level.
We can be as helpful as we can, and continue our affirmation campaigns because, as Professor Snape once told Harry Potter, “The Dark Lord never rests”.
As long as The Old Empire continues influencing us, our nature will never change. That is the reason why history repeats. Our nature will not change, unless we go through a deep transformation, for the better of course. For that to happen, we need help.
Your choice of new American leadership to slow our collapse gives me paws. But I must agree.
OG