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Virtually no one knows about it. But last December, another coup was discreetly thwarted in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek.
Kyrgyz intel sources attribute the engineering to a rash of NGOs linked with the USA, Britain and Turkey.
That introduces an absolutely key facet of The Big Picture: NATO-linked intel and their assets have been preparing a simultaneous color revolution offensive across Central Asia.On my Central Asia travels in late 2019, pre-Covid, it was plain to see how western NGOs – Hybrid War fronts – remained extremely powerful in both Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
Yet, they are just one nexus in a western nebulae of Hybrid War fog deployed across Central Asia, and West Asia for that matter.
Here we see the CIA and the US Deep State crisscrossing MI6 and different strands of Turkish intel.When President Tokayev was referring, in code, to a “single center,” he meant a so far ‘secret’ US-Turk-Israeli military-intel operations room based in the southern business hub of Almaty, according to a highly placed Central Asia intel source.
In this “center,” there were 22 Americans, 16 Turks and 6 Israelis coordinating sabotage gangs – trained in West Asia by the Turks – and then rat-lined to Almaty.
-UNZ
For those who follow the Western Bloc “news” it’s all full of Taiwan independence, Uighur torture and rape camps, and Ukraine NATO membership. The truth however is actually quite different. Instead of this “carefully crafted” narrative, something else has been going on; There has been major fighting to destroy the BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) in the heart of Central Asia.
And the usual culprits (The USA, UK, and Israel) are (as usual) failing and floundering left and right.
The BRI is (as I have discussed before) the solution to bypass the liability of the logistic transport from China to the rest of the world.
It’s a land route from China to Asia, Europe, and Africa. It’s faster, and cheaper than sea shipments, and further it is not subject to blockade by the powerful and omnipresent American naval forces.
The real threat of Naval blockade as presented to China by then President Obama.
It has been a top American (warmongering) neocon agenda for nearly a decade now. Stop the BRI at all costs.
Here, we are going to review the latest fiasco; the battle for Kazakhstan. It’s a CIA-sponsored “color revolution” using Turkish assets that was stopped and dissambled within days.
So let’s start off by taking a look at a map.
Where is Kazakhstan with regard to the BRI?
Well, it’s easy to see. Just look at a map.
You can easily see that most of the BRI route corrodors plow through Kazakhstan and the Uighur regions in Xinjiang in Western China.
Kazakhstan is a key rail hub for the BRI. A loss to hostile forces would stop the BRI operational corridors.
It’s very obvious, and as clear as day.
But you all had best be careful in your selection of maps.
Not every map is accurate, and it is becoming more and more predominant that images, text and maps are being rewritten to fit whatever narrative is driving the great American Military Empire.
It’s curious how most maps out of the United States strategically omit that Kazakhstan holds the critical rail lines for the BRI.
Look at this map (below) that omits the key rail lines as shown above. they are all rerouted out of Kazakhstan, and away from the Uighur populated regions in China. Imagine that!
Raw map, blatantly lying about the BRI route corridors.
It’s not at all accurate.
However, what is most interesting is really how carefully the map sidesteps the CIA “color revolution” target areas…
Notice how the BRI corridors are strategically located outside all the CIA-color revolution hot spots. What a coincidence!
Careful, careful.
Don’t step in the target color revolution “hot zones”.
Ok, so, here’s how the ACTUAL MAP should actually look. The BRI corrodors are in brown. The black lines are what “The China Road Project” wants you all to think the BRI actually is.
The first thing an astute MM reader will notice is that the rail lines to Laos, Cambodia, are missing.
Then all the transport and rail lines to the Western part of China through Uighur land is sidestepped.
Then, you will note how Afghanistan, and Iran are somehow ignored. I guess their membership in the SEO means nothing…
Notice how the BRI goes through EVERY SINGLE region that has experienced a color revolution, and being propagandized.
Let’s talk about Some areas of “color revolutions”
Actually, I really hate the term “color revolution”. It’s so very deceptive. Instead, we should be calling them what they are. They are “unorthodox military campaigns” used to create proxy / client states and territories for the United States military bases.
On Monday morning, leaders of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) held an extraordinary session to discuss Kazakhstan.Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev framed it succinctly. Riots were “hidden behind unplanned protests.” The goal was “to seize power” – a coup attempt. Actions were “coordinated from a single center.” And “foreign militants were involved in the riots.”Russian President Vladimir Putin went further: during the riots, “Maidan technologies were used,” a reference to the Ukranian square where 2013 protests unseated a NATO-unfriendly government.Defending the prompt intervention of CSTO peacekeeping forces in Kazakhstan, Putin said, “it was necessary to react without delay.” The CSTO will be on the ground “as long as necessary,” but after the mission is accomplished, “of course, the entire contingent will be withdrawn from the country.” Forces are expected to exit later this week.But here’s the clincher: “CSTO countries have shown that they will not allow chaos and ‘color revolutions’ to be implemented inside their borders.”Putin was in synch with Kazakh State Secretary Erlan Karin, who was the first, on the record, to apply the correct terminology to events in his country: What happened was a “hybrid terrorist attack,” by both internal and external forces, aimed at overthrowing the government.
-UNZ
I list four primary (simply because they are germane to this article topic) color revolution targets.
Belarus
Ukraine
Kazakhstan
Xinjiang (Uighur Ethnic stronghold)
You can find all sorts of detailed information regarding the various color revolutions in these targeted regions. Most of the revolutions failed.
The only successful one was the Ukraine. But it has pretty much split the country in two.
Just like how the American military intervention split Korea into two...
... and split Vietnam into two...
... and Germany into two.
History repeats itself, don't you know.
There is a Russian-leaning (culturally and socially) East with most of the industry and infrastructure, and a Western-leaning (Nationalist / Fascist) Western side, with mostly rural areas.
A split Ukraine.
Additionally, there have been color revolution attempts in…
We will leave out the rout of American military forces out of Afghanistan, and the ongoing “soft” war with Iran. We will jsut say that they are now pro-China, and independent of the Western Bloc.
So it is really NOT BEING REPORTED what is actually going on. The United States have been conducting CIA-sponsored “color revolutions” throughout Central Asia in a very dramatic effort to stop the BRI from manifesting.
The magnitude of the crisis in Kazakhstan has surprised many, including myself.
Some compared what happened to the Euromaidan in Kiev, but that is a very bad comparison, if only because the Euromaidan happened on one square of one city whereas the violent insurrection (because that it was it was!) in Kazakhstan began in the western regions but quickly spread to the entire country (which is huge).
Kazakhstan is huge.
Just by the sheer magnitude of the insurrection (about 20’000 well organized and trained combatants all over the country) and its extreme violence (cops had their heads cut off!), it was pretty obvious that this was not something spontaneous, but something carefully prepared, organized and then executed.
The way the insurgents immediately attacked all TV stations and airports, while bigger mobs were trashing the streets and looting stores, shows a degree of sophistication Ed Luttwak would have approved of!
To me, this is much more similar to what happened in Syria in the cities of Daraa, Homs, Hama, Aleppo, Damascus, and many more.
I will admit that my initial reaction also was…
“wow, how could the Kazakh and Russian intelligence services miss all the indicators and warnings that such a huge insurrection was carefully prepared and about to explode?”.
Then came the news that President Tokaev appealed to The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).
Which up until now was a rather flaccid organization.
And that very same evening Russia began an air bridge to move forces to Kazakhstan.
These forces were huge and substantive, including the subunits of the 45th Guards Separate Special Forces Brigade, 98th Guards Airborne Division and 31st Guards Airborne Assault Brigade.
Russian military transporters also airlifted small contingents of Armenian, Kyrgyz, Tadjik special forces.
Most interestingly, the Belarusians also sent one reinforced company from their elite 103rd Separate Guards Airborne Brigade (that is the famous Vitebsk Airborne Division, one of the best Soviet Airborne Divisions).
Considering the current tensions with the West over the Ukraine, the speed with which these forces were sent to Kazakhstan indicated to me that this was clearly a prepared move.
A prepared action.
The breakdown of the messy Kazakh op necessarily starts with the usual suspects: the US Deep State, which all but “sang” its strategy in a 2019 RAND corporation report, Extending Russia. Chapter 4, on “geopolitical measures”, details everything from “providing lethal aid to Ukraine”, “promoting regime change in Belarus”, and “increasing support for Syrian rebels” – all major fails – to “reducing Russian influence in Central Asia.”That was the master concept. Implementation fell to the MI6-Turk connection.The CIA and MI6 had been investing in dodgy outfits in Central Asia since at least 2005, when they encouraged the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), then close to the Taliban, to wreak havoc in southern Kyrgyzstan. Nothing happened.It was a completely different story by May 2021, when the MI6’s Jonathan Powell met the leadership of Jabhat al-Nusra – which harbors a lot of Central Asian jihadis – somewhere in the Turkish-Syrian border near Idlib. The deal was that these ‘moderate rebels’ – in US terminology – would cease to be branded ‘terrorists’ as long as they followed the anti-Russia NATO agenda.That was one of the key prep moves ahead of the jihadist ratline to Afghanistan – complete with Central Asia branching out.The genesis of the offensive should be found in June 2020, when former ambassador to Turkey from 2014 to 2018, Richard Moore, was appointed head of MI6. Moore may not have an inch of Kim Philby’s competence, but he does fit the profile: rabid Russophobe, and a cheerleader of the Great Turania fantasy, which promotes a pan-Turk confederation of Turkic-speaking peoples from West Asia and the Caucasus to Central Asia and even Russian republics in the Volga.MI6 is deeply entrenched in all the ‘stans’ except autarchic Turkmenistan – cleverly riding the pan-Turkist offensive as the ideal vehicle to counter Russia and China.
-UNZ
In other words, at least the Russians had advanced warning and were fully prepared. If so, I doubt they said anything to their colleagues from the CSTO, with the possible (likely?) exception of the Belarusians.
Okay, so let’s explore the implications of the above.
If the Russians knew, why did they do nothing at all to prevent what just happened?
Here we first need to revisit what recently happened in Belarus.
The Belarus “Color Revolution”.
President Lukashenko had pretty much the same foreign policy as President Tokaev. It’s something they call a “multi-vector” foreign policy.
This is a policy I would summarize as follows:
First, pump all the aid and money from Russia,
While suppressing pro-Russian forces inside your own country.
Try to show the AngloZionist Empire that we can be bought, just for the right price of course (this is also what Vucic is doing in Serbia right now).
Now let’s recall what happened in Belarus.
The United States Military Empire and its vassal states in the EU tried to overthrow Lukashenko.
He had no other choice than to turn to Russia for help and survival.
Russia, of course, did oblige, but only in exchange for Lukashenko’s “good behavior” and comprehensive abandonment of his “multi-vector” foreign policy.
Lukashenko prevailed, the opposition was crushed, and Russia and Belarus have already taken major further steps towards their integration.
Result? “Color Revolution” collapsed.
But of the nay-sayers…
Now I know that there are those out there who love to accuse Putin (personally) that he “showed weakness”, “let the US and NATO blow up countries on the Russian periphery”, etc. etc. etc.
To those inclined to this, I ask a simple question: compare the Belarus before the insurrection and after. Specifically, from the Russian point of view, was the multi-vectoring Belarus preferable to the fully aligned Belarus of today or not?
The answer, I submit, is absolutely obvious.
Kazakhstan
Now let’s look at Kazakhstan.
Potentially, this is a much more dangerous country for Russia than Belarus: it has a huge border (7’600km, open and undefended as Kazakhstan is a member of the Eurasian Economic Community!).
It has a strong pan-Turkic underground (supported by Turkey).
It also has an equally strong Takfiri underground (supported by various non-state and even state actors in the region).
As well as ethnic tensions between the Kazakhs and the Russian minority and (of course) very important security ties to Russia.
To have the United States Military Empire take over Belarus would have been very bad indeed, but the Empire taking over Kazakhstan would have been even much MUCH worse.
Yet, as a direct (and, I submit, predictable) consequence of the insurrection, Tokaev now knows that his fate depends on Russia, just like Lukashenko’s.
Is that a bad or a good outcome for the Kremlin?
I will toss in another name here: Armenia’s Pashinian.
Pashinian was a notorious russophobe until the Azeris attacked at which point he had no other choice but to turn to Russia for help and, frankly, survival. (That is also true of Erdogan, but he is an ungrateful SOB who can’t ever be trusted, not even for minor matters.)
Now remember all those dummies who were screaming urbi et orbi that the CSTO is useless, that the Russians just let the Azeris beat the crap of Armenia and could do nothing about it? As soon as Russia got involved, the war stopped and the “invincible” Bayraktars stopped flying.
Is that a good or bad outcome for Russia?
And now, oh sweet irony, the self-same Pashinian happens to be the formal head of the CSTO (more like Stoltenberg really, a official mouthpiece with no real authority) and he had to “order” (announce, really) the CSTO operation into Kazakhstan.
So we have Lukashenko, Pashinian and now Tokaev all ex-multi-vector politicians begging Russia for help and getting that help, but at the obvious political price of ditching their former multi-vector policies.
I don’t know about you, but for me this is a triumph for Russia: without any military intervention or “invasion”.
Putin “cracked” three notorious multi-vectorist and got them to be nice, loyal and very grateful (!) partners for Russia.
By the way, Russia also has a very deep “penetration” into all the other “stans” whose leaders are not stupid and who, unlike the western journos and “experts” all read the writing on the wall.
The impact of what just took place in Kazakhstan will reverberate all over Central Asia.
Central Asia.
Now, about the CSTO operation itself…
We talk about how the “Color Revolution” was stopped.
First, there are the Russian and Belarusian forces. Consisting of about 3’000 Russians and 500 Belarusians. They are truly elite, top of the line, battle hardened, professional, highly trained and superbly equipped forces (the other smaller contingents are more for “PR decoration” than for anything else).
Officially, their mission is only to protect key official (Kazakh and Russian) facilities. However, these forces would be more than enough to make minced meat of out any western or Turkish trained Takfiris or nationalists. THis is regardless of their size or training. This is true, even if their numbers are much higher than the 20’000 estimate.
And, in the worst case which did happen, these forces happened to be in control of key airports were Russians (and Belarusians) could send in even more forces, including at least two Russian airborne divisions. (That was strategically important, to prevent Russian and CSTO resupply, while allowing United States Military resupply and logistics.).
That would be a force nothing in Central Asia can even dream of taking on.
I should also mention that Russia has a large and strategically crucial military base in Tadjikistan which has trained to fight against Takfiri terrorists and insurgents for decades now and which could also support any Russian military operation in Central Asia.
So the objective of these forces are:
To free up Kazakh security and military forces to put down the uprising (which they did.)
To send a political message to the Kazakh security forces: we got your back, no worries, do your job.
To send a political message to the insurgents: you will either lay down arms, flee abroad or die (which is what Putin ordered in both Chechnia and Syria, so these are not empty threats at all).
To send a political message to the US and Turkey: Tokaev is our guy now, you lost him and this country!
To send a political message to the entire Central Asia and Caucasus: if Russia has your back, you will stay in power even if the idiots at CIA/NED/etc. try to color-revolutionize you.
To send yet another message to folks like Erdogan or Vucic – all that multi-vectorness will end up very badly for you, use your head before it is too late (for you, not for us – we are fine either way!).
Suggestions of NATO involvement
Some have suggested that the timing of the insurrection Kazakhstan was some kind of attempt by US/NATO to “hurt” Russia in her “weak underbelly” and to show Russia that she has to back down from her ultimatum to the West (negotiations are supposed to start tomorrow, in an atmosphere of general pessimism). Well, I don’t have any info out of Langley or Mons, but if that was the US plan, then this entire project not only collapsed, but has backfired very very badly indeed.
Remember, the PSYOP narrative was that Putin is either stupid, or weak or sold out to the West, yet when we look at the “before and after” thingie, we see that while the West “almost” (or so they think) “got” Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan and, now, Kazakhstan, the reality is quite different.
The reality is that in each case it appears that the narcissistic megalomaniacs running the West have confidently waltzed into a carefully laid Russian trap. This trap, which, far from giving the Empire the control of the countries it “almost” acquired, made them lose them for the foreseeable future.
Can you imagine the level of impotent rage and frustration in Langley and Mons when the watch that kind of footage on their C3 monitors.
Of sure, the AngloZionist propaganda machine and the clueless trolls (paid or not) who parrot that nonsense won’t say a word about all this, but just use your own common sense, use the “before and after” thing, and reach your own conclusions.
Conclusions
Speaking of conclusions: how about all those who bitched about the CSTO being a toothless wannabe copy of NATO which can get nothing done? You still find it so toothless now?
How does it compare to NATO, no, not on paper, but in terms of combat operations capability?
The Western Bloc wanted to turn Kazakhstan into a “Russian Afghanistan” (same plan for the Ukraine, by the way).
Turkey wanted to turn Kazakhstan into a Turkish-run vassal state.
The Takfiris wanted to turn Kazakhstan into some kind of Emirate.
The United States Military Empire wanted to turn Kazakhstan into a strategic roadblock to the Chinese BRI.
In your opinion, how do you evaluate the effectiveness of a collective security treaty which could foil all of these plans with only a brigade-sized force and in just a few days?
Heavy CIA involvement
One more thing: there is something else which Kazakhstan and Syria have in common: there were A LOT of CIA/MI6/Mossad/etc agents around Assad.
This became quite clear by the number of high-level Syrian officials who either backed the insurrection, or even led it.
Most later fled to the West, though some were killed.
But the point is that the “apple” of the powers structure in Syria was quite rotten.
The same can be said for Kazakhstan where a huge purge is taking place, with the highly influential head of the security services (and former Prime Minister!) not only demoted, but arrested for treason!
Simplified Summary
The “Color Revolution” collapsed and the instigators were rounded up, tortured and executed.
So in plain English, the SVR/FSB/GRU will now have a free hand to “clean house” the same way the Russians “cleaned house” around Lukashenko and Assad (in this case with Iranian help): quietly and very effectively,
Again, I can hear the hysterical and desperate wailing out of Langley and Mons. That’s what you get for believing your own stupid propaganda!
As for those who bought that silly “Putin losing countries all over the former Soviet Union space” PSYOP narrative, they probably feel quite stupid right now, but won’t ever admit it. Speaking of stupid,
No, Putin is NOT, repeat, NOT trying to “re-create” the Soviet Union.
And while that mediocre non-entity Blinken warns about how the Russians are “hard to get out once they come in” (coming from a US Secretary of State this is both quite hilarious and a new, even higher, level of absolute hypocrisy!), the truth is that most CSTO forces will leave pretty soon, if only because there will be no need to keep them in Kazakhstan.
Why?
Simple: the hardcore trained terrorists and insurgents will soon be dead.
Additionally, the looting rioters will get off the streets and hope that they don’t get a visit from the Kazakh NSC (National Security Committee).
The traitors in power will either leave the country for the EU or be jailed.
And the Kazakh security and military forces will regain control of the country and maintain law and order.
So…
Why would the Russian paratroopers and special forces need to stay?
Consider the Russian point of view
The Central Asian nations with Russia and China are chasing the CIA-backed forces out of the area.
Furthermore, Russia has no need, or desire, to invade or, even less so, administer poor, mostly dysfunctional countries, with major social problems and very little actual benefits to offer Russia.
And now that Lukashenko, Pashinian, and Tokaev know that they serve at the pleasure of the Kremlin, you can rest assured that they will generally “behave”.
Oh sure, they will remain mostly corrupt states, with nepotism, tribal affiliation, and religious extremism all brewing at some level, but as long [1] as they represent no threat to the Russian minority in these states and [2] to Russian national security interests, the Kremlin will not micro-manage them.
But at the first sign of a resurgence of “multi-vectoriality” (possibly inspired by the many western corporations working in Kazakhstan) the chairs upon which these leaders currently sit will immediately begin shaking pretty badly and they will know whom to call to stop this.
American United States Involvement
Speaking of weak “idiots” who “lost” countries to the Empire, does anybody care to make a list of countries the Empire has ACTUALLY snatched away from Russia (or any other adversary) and succeeded in keeping? Syria? Libya? Afghanistan? Iraq maybe? Yemen? And that is after the “Mission Accomplished” declaration by a “triumphant” US President 🙂
Okay, the three Baltic statelets. Bravo! Captain America won another Grenada!
Ah, I can hear the voices chanting “the Ukraine! What about the Ukraine!?”.
Well, what about the Ukraine?
There is a Russian saying (цыплят по осени считают) which can be roughly translated as “do not count your chickens before they are hatched“.
Right now, NOBODY can confidently predict what will happen with the Ukraine further down the road.
Not only has the Ukraine become a country 404 deindustrialized shithole, it now is run by an entire class (in the Marxist sense) of Nazis whom, apparently, nobody has the will or the ability to de-Nazify (Russia could, but has exactly zero motive to do so, as for the US/NATO, LOL!!).
Even if Russia and the US agree to some kind of neutral status for the Ukraine, this will not remove a single Nazi from power and, if anything will create the conditions for an even bigger breakup of the country (which is what I think will eventually happen anyway, but very slowly and very very painfully).
The one thing which the Ukraine does have in common with Kazakhstan is that these are both invented countries created by the rabidly Russophobic Bolsheviks.
Not only are their current borders meaningless (and I mean totally completely meaningless), but these borders bring under one totally artificial political “roof” completely different regions and ethnic groups.
The big difference is, of course, that the Ukie leaders, all of them, were, and still are, infinitely worse than either Nazarbaev or Tokaev ever were.
Also, Ukie nationalism is the most hate-filled and demented on the planet, they can only be compared with the Hutu Interahamwe in Rwanda.
Yes, there is definitely a nationalist streak in the Kazakh society (lovingly nourished and fed by the West for decades), but in comparison with the Ukronazis, these are soft-spoken and mostly mentally sane humanitarians.
In my personal, and therefore admittedly subjective, experience, Kazakhs and Russians get along much better than Ukrainians and Russians.
Belarusian-style “housecleaning” in Kazakhstan has already begun!
Last, but not least, it will take decades to de-Nazify the Ukraine, and God only knows who will be willing and capable of doing that (certainly NOT Russia!) whereas Kazakhstan’s insurgents are already being killed, in large numbers (several thousand by some accounts), by Kazakh security forces.
As for the Kazakh oligarchs and officials who assisted them, they are either dead or in jail or already abroad.
Did I mention China?
It is a very important actor in Kazakhstan.
On one level, China and Russia are economic and even political competitors in Kazakhstan, however China absolutely and categorically cannot allow Kazakhstan to be taken over by either the US/NATO, or the Takfiris or the pan-Turkists.
The Chinese have not flexed their military muscle (yet), but they could, and you can be rest assured that they will flex with (immense) economic muscle to prevent such an outcome.
So while the poor Ukraine has Poland as a neighbor, Kazakhstan has both Russia and China which are absolutely determined not to allow any hostile force (anti-Chinese or anti-Russian, these are the same forces) to color-revolutionize Kazakhstan.
They will not all it to turn into the kind of nightmarish shithole the Empire turned so many countries into, from the US-occupied EU to the Nazi-occupied Ukraine.
The bottom line about the Ukraine is this: let’s wait and see what kind of chickens the Ukie eggs will hatch in time and whether the eventual outcome will be worse or better for Russia.
And, by “outcome” I do not refer to the roaring statements coming from western politicians and the talking heads on the idiot box, I mean actual outcomes.
Outcomes, which in such matters can take months or even years before becoming fully apparent.
Conclusion:
What just happened in Kazakhstan was both a US-triggered full-scale insurrection AND an attempted coup.
There is overwhelming evidence that the Russians were aware of what was coming and allowed the chaos to get just bad enough to give only one possible option to Tokaev: to appeal for a CSTO intervention.
The extreme swiftness of the Russian military operation took everybody by surprise and none of the parties involved in that insurrection+coup (the US, the Takfiris and the Turks) had any time to react.
Thus, they couldn’t prevent the quick deployment of (extremely) combat-capable forces which then made it possible for the Kazakh military and security forces to regroup and go on the offensive. Having Pashinian “order” this CSTO operation was beautiful, karmic, cherry on the cake 🙂
All in all, this is just the latest in a series of cataclysmic failures of the leaders of the (already dead) AngloZionist Empire and the (equally dead) USA to actually get something, anything, done. In the confrontation between western hot air and Russian military action, the latter has prevailed, yet again.
Tomorrow the US will try to scare Russia with talks about “sanctions from hell”. Good luck with that!
-Andrei
…
So now with the collapse of the “color revolutions” designed to stop the BRI, the United States Military Empire is insisting on the placment of nuclear weapons throughout the edges where the BRI intersects with Russia and Europe. This is why the Ukraine is so strategicaly important right now.
And the American leadership is engaged in “dialogue” to make sure that they can stop the BRI at all costs…
Washington will not consider Russian proposals on no expansion of NATO, and has no intention of even discussing the idea.
So much for “dialogue”.
It was the first high-level Russia-NATO meeting since 2019 – coming immediately after the non sequitur of the U.S.-Russia “security guarantee” non-dialogue dialogue earlier in the week in Geneva.
So what happened in Brussels? Essentially yet another non-dialogue dialogue – complete with a Kafkaesque NATO preface: we’re prepared for dialogue, but the Kremlin’s proposals are unacceptable.
This was a double down on the American envoy to NATO, Julianne Smith, preemptively blaming Russia for the actions that “accelerated this disaster”.
By now every sentient being across Eurasia and its European peninsula should be familiar with Russia’s top two, rational demands:
No further NATO expansion, and
No missile systems stationed near its borders.
Now let’s switch to the United States / Western Bloc spin machine.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s platitudes were predictably faithful to his spectacular mediocrity.
On the already pre-empted dialogue, he said…
…brace yourself…
…it was “important to start a dialogue”.
Russia, he said,
“urged NATO to refuse to admit Ukraine; the alliance responded by refusing to compromise on enlargement”.
Yet NATO “welcomed bilateral consultations” on security guarantees.
NATO also proposed a series of broad security consultations, and
“Russia has not yet agreed, but has not ruled out them either.”
No wonder: the Russians had already noted, even before it happened, that this is noting but stalling tactics.
Stall.
Stall.
Stall.
STALL. STALL. STALL. STALL.
The Global South will be relieved to know that Stoltenberg defended NATO’s military blitzkriegs in both Kosovo and Libya: after all “they fell under UN mandates”. So they were benign.
Not a word on NATO’s stellar performance in Afghanistan.
Hum.
And then, the much-awaited clincher: NATO worries about Russian troops “on the border with Ukraine” – actually from 130 km to 180 km away, inside European Russian territory. And the alliance considers “untrue” that expansion is “an aggressive act”.
Why?
Because “it spreads democracy”.
Bomb me to democracy, baby
So here’s the NATO gospel in a flash.
Now compare it with the sobering words of Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko.
Grushko carefully enounced how
“NATO is determined to contain Russia. The United States and its allies are trying to achieve superiority in all areas and in all possible theaters of military operations.”
That was a veiled reference to Full Spectrum Dominance, which since 2002 remains the American gospel.
Grushko also referred to “Cold War-era containment tactics”, and that “all cooperation [with Russia] has been halted” – by NATO.
Still,
“Russia honestly and directly pointed out to NATO that a further slide of the situation could lead to dire consequences for European security.”
The conclusion was stark:
“The Russian Federation and NATO do not have a unifying positive agenda at all.”
Virtually all Russophobic factions of the bipartisan War Inc. machine in Washington cannot possibly accept that…
[1] …there should be no forces stationed on European states that were not members of NATO in 1997; and ….
[2]…that current NATO members should attempt no military intervention in Ukraine as well as in other Eastern European, Transcaucasian, and Central Asian states.
On Monday in Geneva, Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov had already stressed, once again, that Russia’s red line is unmovable:
“For us, it’s absolutely mandatory to make sure that Ukraine never, never, ever becomes a member of NATO.”
Diplomatic sources confirmed that in Geneva, Ryabkov and his team had for all practical purposes to act like teachers in kindergarten, making sure there would be “no misunderstandings”.
Now compare it with the U.S. State Department’s Ned Price, speaking after those grueling eight hours shared between Ryabkov and Deputy Secretary of StateWendy Sherman:
[1] Washington will not consider Russian proposals on no expansion of NATO,
[2] and has no intention of even discussing the idea.
So much for “dialogue”.
Ryabkov confirmed there was no progress.
Referring to his didacticism, he had to stress,
“We are calling on the U.S. to demonstrate a maximum of responsibility at this moment. Risks related to a possible increase of confrontation shouldn’t be underestimated.”
To say, in Ryabkov’s words, that “significant” Russian effort has been made to persuade the Americans that “playing with fire” is not in their interests is the euphemism of the young century.
Let me sanction you to oblivion
A quick recap is crucial to understand how things could have derailed so fast.
NATO’s not exactly secret strategy, from the beginning, has been to pressure Moscow to directly negotiate with Kiev on Donbass, even though Russia is not mentioned in the Minsk Agreements.
While Moscow was being forced to become part of the Ukraine/Donbass confrontation, it barely broke a sweat smashing a coup cum color revolution in Belarus. Afterwards, the Russians assembled in no time an impressive strike force – with corresponding military infrastructure – in European Russia territory to respond in lightning quick fashion in case there was a Ukrainian blitzkrieg in Donbass.
No wonder an alarmed NATOstan had to do something about the notion of fighting Russia to the last impoverished Ukrainian. They may at least have understood that Ukraine would be completely destroyed.
The beauty is how Moscow turned things around with a new geopolitical jiu-jitsu move. Ukro-dementia encouraged by NATO – complete with empty promises of becoming a member – opened the way for Russia to demand no further NATO expansion, with the withdrawal of all military infrastructure from Eastern Europe to boot.
It was obvious that Ryabkov, in his talks with Sherman, would refuse any suggestion that Russia should dismantle the logistical infrastructure set up in its own European Russia territory. For all practical purposes, Ryabkov smashed Sherman to bits. What was left was meek threats of more sanctions.
Still, it will be a Sisyphean task to convince the Empire and its NATO satrapies not to stage some sort of military adventure in Ukraine.
That’s the gist of what Ryabkov and Grushko said over and over again in Geneva and Brussels. They also had to stress the obvious: if further sanctions are imposed on Russia, there would be severe blowback especially in Europe.
But how is it humanly possible for seasoned pros like Ryabkov and Grushko to argue, rationally, with a bunch of amateur blind bats such as Blinken, Sullivan, Nuland and Sherman?
There has been some serious speculation on the timeframe ahead for Russia to in fact not even bother to listen to the American “baby babble” (copyright Maria Zakharova) anymore. Could be around 2027, or even 2025.
What’s happening next is that the five-year extension of the new START treaty expires in February 2026. Then there will be no ceiling for nuclear strategic weapons. The Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline to China will make Gazprom even less dependent on the European market.
The combined Russia-China financial system will become nearly impervious to U.S. sanctions. The Russia-China strategic partnership will be sharing even more substantial military tech.
All of that is way more consequential than the dirty secret that is not a secret in the current “security guarantees” kabuki: the exceptionalist, “indispensable” nation is congenitally incapable of giving up on the forever expansion of NATO to, well, outer space.
At the same time, the Russians are very much aware of a quite prosaic truth; the U.S. will not fight for Ukraine.
So welcome to Instagrammed Irrationalism.
What happens next?
Most possibly a provocation, with the possibility, for instance, of a chemical black ops to be blamed on Russia, followed by – what else – more sanctions.
The package is ready. It comes in the form of a bill by Dem senators supported by the White House to bring “severe costs” to the Russian economy in case Moscow finally answers their prayers and “invades” Ukraine.
Sanctions would directly hit President Putin, Prime Minister Mishustin, Foreign Minister Lavrov, the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces Gen Gerasimov, and “commanders of various branches of the Armed Forces, including the Air Force and Navy.”
Targeted banks and financial institutions include Sberbank, VTB, Gazprombank, Moscow Credit Bank, Alfa-Bank, Otkritie Bank, PSB, Sovcombank, Transcapitalbank, and the Russian Direct Investment Fund. They would all be cut off from SWIFT.
If this bill sounds like a declaration of war, that’s because it is. Call it the American version of “dialogue”.
War.
MM Comments.
Tokayev is a very smart operator. Trained by the foreign service of the former USSR, fluent in Russian and Chinese, he is totally aligned with Russia-China – which means fully in sync with the masterplan of BRI, the Eurasia Economic Union and the SCO.Tokayev, much like Putin and Xi, understands how this BRI/EAEU/SCO triad represents the ultimate imperial nightmare, and how destabilizing Kazakhstan – a key actor in the triad – would be a mortal coup against Eurasian integration.Kazakhstan, after all, represents 60 percent of Central Asia’s GDP, massive oil/gas and mineral resources, cutting-edge high tech industries: a secular, unitary, constitutional republic bearing a rich cultural heritage.It didn’t take long for Tokayev to understand the merits of immediately calling the CSTO to the rescue: Kazakhstan signed the treaty way back in 1994. After all, Tokayev was fighting a foreign-led coup against his government.Putin, among others, has stressed how an official Kazakh investigation is the only one entitled to get to the heart of the matter. It’s still unclear exactly who – and to what extent – sponsored the rioting mobs. Motives abound: to sabotage a pro-Russia/China government, to provoke Russia, to sabotage BRI, to plunder mineral resources, to turbo-charge a House of Saud-style ‘Islamization’.Rushed to only a few days before the start of the Russia-US ‘security guarantees’ in Geneva, this color revolution represented a sort of counter-ultimatum – in desperation – by the NATO establishment.Central Asia, West Asia, and the overwhelming majority of the Global South have witnessed the lightning fast Eurasian response by the CSTO troops – who, having now done their job, are set to leave Kazakhstan in a couple of days – and how this color revolution has failed, miserably.It might as well be the last. Beware the rage of a humiliated Empire.
-UNZ
America has been prepping for war for some time now.
Russia knows this.
China knows this.
Now it’s pushing for the fomalities.
Here’s a screen capture of a member of the American leadership with the proud (but out of shape) Marines. He is all full of pomp, and impressive regalia. Aren’t you all proud of the great mighty might of the American Military Empire?
Relax military standards. Relax military rules. Start pushing the rest of the world around, and threatening color revolutions and nuclear war everywhere…
The American military war machine.
Now, let’s compare that with Mr. Putin paying homage to the Russian soldiers that died to save Russia. Determined to move forward in uncertain times when dealing with an out of control, mad-dog, Western Bloc.
Asia is VERY SERIOUS.
And now, let’s compare that to China, and China’s military…
Determined. Disiplined. Lethal.
Honor guards attend a flag-raising ceremony at Tiananmen Square in 2017. Under President Xi Jinping, China has ambitiously pressed its advantage almost everywhere at once.
So now we see the whole picture.
China and Russia, along with the entirety of the SEO and Iran are linking together. They are forming one unified block. The BRI is critical to that unity, and the Western Bloc DOES NOT WANT THAT TO HAPPEN.
And so they are doing everything to stop it.
Look at the picture of the American military review above again. Do you know what it reminds me of?
America comparisons.
Yeah.
It’s frightening that these “people” have inhereted the weapons, technology, and systems of their predecessors. They do not deserve them.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning 3. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Go to the sewer pit of zerohedge and check the comments on any China article, or to Unz and its China article comments, or for that matter to Kunstler where antiChina accusations seem to be mandatory once per article.
You could also try any YouTube video on China's space agency's stunning successes and check the comments.
The oozing racism, ignorance and hatred shown by some - in the case of zerohedge most - replies is a signal lesson on why their regimes think the way they do.
Posted by: Biswapriya Purkayast | Jul 20 2021 22:37 utc | 54
We will start our little exploration in China “stuff” with…
Chinese Robots
All of this is “flying under the radar screen”. No one is interested in it. But China is leading in robotic technology. Sorry Boston Dynamics. But it is true. I have a small zipped up file that has a few videos of some of the more personable robots being developed in China these days.
While I was writing this post, my daughter went to my computer and published it. Before, I could flush it out 68 people read the article. Sigh. I guess that I am committed. It’s like bacon and eggs. The chicken was involved, but the pig was committed.
“Chinese astronauts floated into the country’s new Tiangong space station Thursday, becoming the first people to board China’s outpost in orbit after a successful launch from a military base in the Gobi Desert to start a three-month mission.”
Chinese Astronauts Enter Space Station.
When the International Space Station was being fomented, the Chinese wanted to take part. The US blocked them. So they built their own. The ISS is to be decommissioned in a few years, presumably leaving China as having the only functioning space station. It is notable that all of these off-earth efforts, to include the placing of a lander on the dark side of the moon, have worked.
Some Chinese Girls
Some technology, huh?
You can see a nice little collection of a cross section in this zip file HERE. I think that if a woman is “built like a battleship” that they deserve to be placed in the technology section. Don’t you?
I have been in the Shanghai Maglev train - it's elevated and banked and is very smooth and quiet, taking under 10mins to go 50km. The digital readout in the carriage got up to 432 kmh on my journey.
Posted by: anonymous | Jul 21 2021 2:54 utc | 77
China begins construction of its fifth rocket launch site
“BEIJING (Reuters) – A port city in eastern China has launched an ambitious plan to build the country’s fifth rocket launch site, under a longer-term goal to ramp up space infrastructure to meet the demands of an expected boom in commercial missions.”
Why can the Chinese do all of these things at once? Because they have money and many smart engineers.
Why do they have money? Because they make stuff and sell it.
America doesn’t have money because it spends it all on aircraft carriers, and doesn’t make stuff because it sent its factories to…
…China.
Why doesn’t America have more and better engineers? Because it has a far smaller base of STEM-capable young and because it is dumbing down its schools and universities for the gratification of unproductive minorities.
Whose fault is all of this?
Why…
China’s. Who could doubt it?
On GDP, the Outlaw US Empire's is grossly overstated by trillions such that GDP has actually shrunk over the last 30 years. So doing any sort of comparative analysis using GDP as a metric will yield a false result. Trillions of dollars that amount to the Fraudulent Financial Free Lunch are actually negatives that must be subtracted from overall GDP, which we've discussed here rather often. Again, the closest depiction is Shadowstats GDP chart whose blue line would look even worse if all the Enron Accounting was eliminated.
As I wrote @59, China has the Outlaw US/Anglo Empire by the balls--dependent upon China--geoeconomically as Trump's failed Trade War proved beyond doubt. There is a solution, but it will never be implemented by the Neoliberal Duopoly, which will never be overcome by the popular vote.
Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 20 2021 23:36 utc | 60
“Linglong One is a pressurized water reactor with a capacity of 125 MW – the first small commercial onshore modular reactor or SMR to be constructed in the world. After being launched, the SMR will be able to generate enough power to meet the energy demands of approximately 526,000 households annually.”
Dutch Boy says:
July 15, 2021 at 10:53 pm GMT • 5.3 days ago • 100 Words ↑
Not only were the lower-paying assembly-type scutwork jobs sent to China but also the technical design and engineering that goes with the manufacturing (at the insistence of the Chinese and with the cooperation of the American corporations).
There are plenty of clever young people who could do those jobs here (most STEM grads here must find work in other fields) but the jobs are in China.
Physics.org: Chinese achieve new milestone with 56 qubit computer
“A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in China, working at the University of Science and Technology of China, has achieved another milestone in the development of a usable quantum computer.”
The world’s first 100,000-ton deep-sea semi-submersible oil production and storage platform, China’s self-developed “Deep Sea No 1” energy station, has successfully completed installation of all equipment and is expected to start production at the end of June, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) said on Saturday.
China maintains ‘artificial sun’ at 120 million Celsius for over 100 seconds, setting new world record
Another step in the quest for fusion power. Other countries, inclusing America, are working on this, but there was a time when the US would have been the clear leader. Times change.
Geez people,
China has had maglev trains connecting shanghai to its airport, its been running for years and cuts the usual 1.5hr road travel to 30 our so minutes. I've been on it numerous times.
This 600kph model is just a further development.
I don't know if you've all noticed, the recent Chinese tech development model has been rapid iterations instead of spending years or decades to design the perfect mouse trap. It plays well into their strengths and it's the only to find out if there's some gating tech they haven't figured out yet. They've learnt that hard lesson with semiconductors and jet engines.
For example with the aircraft carrier, everyone was pissing on China for relaunching an old soviet hull, before the laughter died out they've already built a second, improved one with what they've learnt. Then the same people laughed at the ski jump deck, and soon an EM catapult flattop will be launched.
Same with civil projects, space flight, aviation, submarines etc etc.
Keep on laughing.
Posted by: A.L. | Jul 20 2021 21:45 utc | 47
Lunar Return Mission
BBC: China’s Chang-e Five Mission returns lunar samples
This was a sophisticated, automated endeavor involving a lunar orbiter, a lander that collected samples, a unit that took the samples back to the orbiter, and a return vehicle that parachuted into Mongolia. It was nontrivial engineering. And: It worked. Note how quickly this and the achievements mentioned in the following have come.
Tunneling Machine in a Panda outfit
China Launches Largest Self-Built Shield tunneling machine with adorable ‘panda’ outfit
The machine has a diameter of 12.79 meters and weighs 3,000 tons. It will be used in the construction of Jinxiu Tunnel, an essential component of the highspeed railway from Chengdu to Zigong in Southwest China’s Sichuan Province, which is known for being a home to pandas.”
Roving Mars
Chinese Mars Rover Begins Roaming the Red Planet
“China’s Mars rover drove from its landing platform and began exploring the surface on Saturday, state-run Xinhua news agency said, making the country only the second nation to land and operate a rover on the Red Planet.”
Very impressive, like beating Murphy’s Law in straight sets. First, it was an orbiter, circling Mars and doing orbiter things. Second, a lander. Third, a rover. Americans are ahead still in some respexts, but not by much. The riveting thing is how fast the Chinese are catching up.
Meanwhile in America…
Death throes…
“City Journal: “Identity politics has engulfed the humanities and social sciences on American campuses; now it is taking over the hard sciences.
"The STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and math—are under attack for being insufficiently “diverse.” The pressure to increase the representation of females, blacks, and Hispanics comes from the federal government, university administrators, and scientific societies themselves. That pressure is changing how science is taught and how scientific qualifications are evaluated. The results will be disastrous for scientific innovation and for American competitiveness”
”Such an effort would involve faculty holding well-performing students back, even while pushing their less intellectual peers forward (as if they were all indeed equal in abilities). Potentially stranding a group of gifted individuals in a situation where they are held back by a single child who simply can’t get a problem right and needs endless special instruction is hardly something to be proud of….”
Stupidity beyond a certain point becomes entertaining.
Bayviking says:July 15, 2021 at 11:34 pm GMT • 5.3 days ago↑
Holy crap, this does not look good for the arrogant Americans. I understand that 5G in the US will never operate up to specs because the US defense department refuses to surrender the bandwidth it controls necessary to function properly.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
I have long argued that the reason why the West; and yeah that means America, wants the fierce anti-China propaganda campaign about the poor Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang is to prevent the BRI.
.
You see, the BRI originates in Xinjiang, and this fact, and the completion of the BRI offers a land trade route to Europe and Africa that completely bypasses the threat of American naval blockade.
.
As shown in this map…
The BRI passes right through XinJiang, and it is the home of the Uighur Muslims who are ready to enjoy the fruits of their association with China. And the USA does not like this one bit.
.
I have argued that once the BRI is fully operational, those in XinJiang would become wealthy. Simply because they sit on the major trade route between the Chinese manufacturing sites, and Europe. Just like Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, and other similar cities do.
.
I further argue that they would all become filthy rich in the process. Not just Singapore rich, but Dubai rich.
Big News Everyone!
Guess what?
It turns out the Xinjiang is just loaded with huge and vast deposits of oil. It’s of a quality, and a quantity that makes the Middle East look small in comparison. And what’s more, it’s easy to extract. No need to get involved an the use of any fracking technologies.
Of course you won’t hear about this in the MSM (Western Main Stream Media). Americans are to be kept stupid, ignorant, and ready to go to war at any moment!
Check out the video.
Pretty cool huh?
China in Space….
China is doing a lot right now, and it’s really worthy to take note.
One of my favorite websites is MoA and it’s run by a singular guy who has a passion like myself. I have to admit that many of the articles tend to be boring to me personally. They deal with obscure issues that I am not interested in, but when one comes across my desk that I am interested it, it shines like a beacon.
Such as this one.
This is a full reprint. All credit to the MoA, edited to fit this venue, and disseminated as found. Also I am including a host of comments as they really flush out the subjects in an interesting manner.
Since the U.S. Excluded China From International Space Projects – It Built Its Own
There was a time when the U.S. was open to international cooperation in space. It gained prestige and influence from these projects. But fear of competition from China and Russia have led to attempts to exclude these countries from international projects.
A two-sentence clause included in the U.S. spending bill approved by Congress a few weeks ago threatens to reverse more than three decades of constructive U.S. engagement with the People's Republic of China.
...
Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA), a long-time critic of the Chinese government who chairs a House spending committee that oversees several science agencies, inserted the language into the spending legislation to prevent NASA or the Office of Science and Technology Policy from using federal funds "to develop, design, plan, promulgate, implement or execute a bilateral policy, program, order, or contract of any kind to participate, collaborate, or coordinate bilaterally in any way with China or any Chinese-owned company."
The European Space Agency as well as NASA were at that time favoring future cooperation with China on the International Space Station and on a planned Mars mission.
Since then other laws and sanctions have made the continuing cooperation with Russia on the International Space Station more difficult.
Banned from international space projects in which the U.S. is involved China went its own way. Ten years later it put a lander on the far side of the moon where the rover Yutu, the jade rabbit, is now pounding moon stones in his mortar to look for the elixir of life.
Last year China sent Tianwen, Heavenly Questions, and another rover named Zhurong, a god of fire, to Mars. It landed there in February:
"Tianwen-1 is going to orbit, land and release a rover all on the very first try, and coordinate observations with an orbiter," mission managers wrote before launch in the journal Nature Astronomy. "No planetary missions have ever been implemented in this way. If successful, it would signify a major technical breakthrough."
A week ago Zhurong, the fire god, took a selfie and sent it back to earth:
The camera, originally fitted to the rover bottom, was released by the rover at 10 meters south of the platform and captured the video footage of the rover returning to the platform and took the selfie. The camera then used a wireless signal to transmit the pictures and videos to the rover, which beamed them back to Earth via the orbiter.
“China will publish the related scientific data in a timely manner to let humankind share in the fruits of the country’s space exploration development,” said Zhang Kejian, head of the CNSA.
.
That is the best FU selfie I have seen. I showed it to a 15 year old and was told at first glance that it was China saying FU to the USA. Plus they pointed out the three China flags.
I like the virtual grin on the camera head.
Well done China. This has dramatically liberated the space exploration science and simultaneously stated the east's equivalence with all nations.
Posted by: uncle tungsten
Yesterday China’s space agency announced another success as three astronauts arrived at Tianhe, the Harmony of Heavens, which is the first module of Tiangong, the Heavenly Palace space station:
Three Chinese astronauts have entered the core module of China's permanent space station to embark on their three-month mission, becoming the module's first occupants and pioneers in one of the nation's grandest space endeavors.
...
Tianhe, the biggest and heaviest spacecraft China has constructed, is 16.6 meters long and has a diameter of 4.2 meters. The craft's weight, at 22.5 tons, is equal to the combined weight of 15 standard size automobiles. It has three parts－a connecting section, a life-support and control section and a resources section.
Meanwhile the International Space Station develops more and more technical problems and is becoming obsolete. Russia is now thinking of building its own one. It may alternatively add its own modules to the Chinese station.
Russia and China will also cooperate to build a permanent station on the moon:
China and Russia have agreed to jointly construct a lunar space station that will be "open to all countries," the China National Space Administration said in a statement on Tuesday.
...
A statement from Russian space agency Roscosmos said the two organizations planned to "promote cooperation on the creation of an open-access ILRS for all interested countries and international partners, with the goal of strengthening research cooperation and promoting the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes in the interests of all mankind."
The attempts to keep China and increasingly also Russia away from international space projects have only led to them starting competing projects. These are likely to gain more countries to cooperate with them.
The exclusionary policy of the U.S. has not been successful. In the end it resulted in a loss of influence over future projects for which China and Russia are inviting everyone but the U.S.
Humanity would be better off if we avoided such splits.
American nationalists hate this rise of China
It is a purely racist reaction to the rise of China. Even now, go to sites like zerohedge and you'll find foaming mouthed rants against China, belittlement of Chinese achievements, and openly racist desires to eradicate the Chinese.
Given the relative competence of China and America, China is much better off with Amerikastani sanctions that forced it to develop its own capabilities.
Posted by: Biswapriya Purkayast
Criticism from America really hurts the feelings of the Chinese people. They used to really look up to America. It is not so much that they take America's malicious criticism to heart, but more that it pains them to see their hero turn into a petty and whiny little bitch.
At least that is the way it seemed to me last time I was there.
Posted by: William Gruff
But America went to the moon!
Big deal! So what if China is doing this. America mastered that a half a century ago.
A common comment I see over and over again on UToob and other such fora is "Yeah? Well we went to the Moon in... well, a long time ago!"
What these slack-faced, degenerate, devolved, chest-beating baboons in America ignore is that nobody like them has ever gone to the Moon, and none ever will.
The people who went to the Moon were scientists and engineers.
And real ones at that.
It has been mentioned many times, and I suspect the seriousness of the issue eludes many people, but China is producing nearly 5 million STEM graduates each year! Before the pandemic the United States was producing little more than half a million STEM grads per year, and if the scale of this workforce disaster for the US isn't already apparent to you then just remember that MORE than half of all graduate students in the STEM fields in the US are international students. The US would be lucky to be producing a quarter million domestic STEM grads per year... around one twentieth of what China is producing.
China produces 20 times the number of STEM graduates than America does.
If that hasn't given exceptional American readers a chill yet, then you need to pay closer attention to efforts being made by so-called "liberals" in the US to improve "diversity" in American STEM studies.
Are they addressing the harsh economic realities that lumpenize and discourage large sections of America's youth so that they might aspire to be more than a street thug? Of course not! They are dumbing down STEM studies so that a lumpenized street thug with no real academic foundations can "succeed" in those programs!
"You're racist!" exclaims the woke liberal.
"You don't have to know Calculus to be an engineer! That's what calculators are for!"
Let me tell you a little story.
I once taught a bridge program at a state feeder college for the big universities. The objective of this program was to shepherd students with "weak" (as in none) math backgrounds through freshman Calc so that they could go on to enter a STEM field at one of the big state universities. Obviously that ambitious project failed. The gulf between what the students needed to succeed even just in first year Calculus and what knowledge and skills they came to class on day one equipped with was just too great.
Taking a step back, the calculation aid from little over half a century ago would be the slide rule. It's useless for addition and subtraction. The student had to master arithmetic before a slide rule even became useful to them, and then using the slide rule would help build, at a gut level, an understanding of logarithmic, trigonometric, and other relationships. Students then would develop an ever more complex intellectual ability that math teachers refer to as "number sense". The student with "number sense" would be able to look at a mathematical expression and see meaning in it. At the lowest level they can tell that one number is larger or smaller than another number, and at a slightly higher level they can visualize curves from a polynomial, and at a slightly higher level again they can visualize things like the rate of change of a curve and so on. More importantly, they could visualize what these polynomials and curves and such represented back in the real world.
But to get to this level the student has to internalize arithmetic. All of the higher levels of number sense have as their foundations all of the lower levels. You cannot skip the basics and jump straight to "the good stuff" like Calculus. Or rather, you can memorize formulas and also memorize a number of different situations in which certain numbers get plugged into certain locations in the formula, and then be trained to know how to punch that into a calculator, but without the acquired number sense it is all just meaningless busy work.
Sadly, few of the disadvantaged students in the STEM bridge program that I worked in for a while had even the most basic of number sense. Teachers all through their primary and secondary educations had developed countless clever little tricks to get the students through the current math lesson plan without having to require the student know any arithmetic. The students become good at punching keys on a keypad in accordance with instructions on a worksheet, but then promptly forget the procedure after the lesson because all they were doing was hitting keys in a certain sequence and writing down whatever appeared on the screen. If they hit a wrong key or the calculator malfunctioned and gave them an answer of 2 million instead of 2, they lacked the number sense to suspect that the calculator is wrong and would just write whatever was on the screen no matter what.
You simply cannot make up for twelve years of lost learning time in a few hours in a college classroom. I eventually gave up and went to teach at one of the big universities where supposedly the incoming students would not have blown off their previous twelve years of education. Few of my students there were domestic students.
The point that I am making here is that not only is there no talent in the academic pipeline to fix things in America, but that pipeline itself is broken. There is all of this talk about a new space race, but America is like the obese couch potato in this race, and the Chinese have been training for running space race marathons for a generation. There is not going to be any race. There cannot be. When the US did its "space race" against the Soviet Union that happened at a very unique time when the American labor market was flooded with a wave of demobilized service personnel who eagerly took advantage of the GI Bill to get themselves educated, and that in a period of US history when scientists and engineers had something like rockstar status, motivating students in their STEM studies. None of these conditions exist today.
All of the carping you hear from Americans about China's space program successes is nothing more than the bitter bitching of the fat kid hurling abuse at athletes as they pass him by. It is impotent and cannot amount to anything.
Posted by: William Gruff
When the US did its "space race" against the Soviet Union that happened at a very unique time when the American labor market was flooded with a wave of demobilized service personnel who eagerly took advantage of the GI Bill to get themselves educated, and that in a period of US history when scientists and engineers had something like rockstar status, motivating students in their STEM studies. None of these conditions exist today.
Posted by: William Gruff | Jun 18 2021 20:06 utc | 20
I was lucky enough to graduate from the school of mechanical and aerospace engineering that produced the founder of the company, the project manager and all the engineering team leaders that created the Apollo Lunar Lander (LEM).
Which if you think about it was the most amazing part of landing man on the moon.
It is the part that has not been replicated by the U.S. or anyone else in the last 50 years.
It could not be tested in actual conditions, and had to work perfectly the first time.
The tiniest flaw, bad gasket, bent landing leg or hose leak and two astronauts would have crashed in to the surface or been left on the surface of the moon to die a slow agonizing death.
It worked perfectly the first time, and every time after that.
Musk blows every third rocket he tries out despite radically better control technology, computers and knowledge from the past.
That is what makes this achievement so improbable, and leads some to believe it was faked.
But what it took was dedication, a quest for perfection, and 650 of the best engineers the world has ever produced. I had many of the same profs these pioneers did ( several years later) and can attest to the mastery and perfection they demanded.
ziu`Current US stem students would go crying to their Mama if they had to face the hair shirt rigor these Apollo era engineers did.
Our time has passed as we now turn out financial husksters, shoe designers and people who write code to post cat videos instead of first rate engineers.
Good luck to the Chinese as perhaps they have the dedication we did back in the day.
Posted by: Seneca’s Cliff
But America leads in Intellectual property
'If you take IPs literally, the USA still is light-years ahead of China and Russia.'
Not all ‘technology’ carries the same weight. ‘IP’ applies only to commercial products. Consumer electronics like smartphones, chips, software etc is all well and fine but has nothing to do with national strength, which is strictly a function of two technology domains: aerospace and nuclear.
Capabilities in these two areas are what separates the handful of major powers from the rest. Those are also the two most challenging technologies, and in both of them the US is losing ground quickly, without any direction from the top, while China is making big strides [with plenty of direction from the top], and Russia has got back into its Soviet-era stride.
Things like the physics-defying Avangard intercontinental boost-glide vehicle that skips along the top of the atmosphere at Mach 25 are not going to be found in any published IP. Nor is the scramjet engine in the Tsirkon hypersonic missile. Nor any of SpaceX’s secrets.
We still live in a world where force is the ultimate decider. Making lots of smartphones like Korea does, may mean a good standard of living. But if you are a major power, with major rivals [aka sworn enemies], you first have to LIVE, before you can think about living well.
It all comes down to the higher educational output like Mr Gruff mentioned above. China is graduating a lot of engineers and scientists. Only a few out of any group will do anything notable, so the bigger your pool, the more game-changing people you will produce.
I cried when Skylab was abandoned to just crash into Australia, but that period was still far more optimistic than today, even with all of the backsliding that America was doing after the Apollo program. American kids have no brightness in the future that they can see today.
On the other hand, Chinese kids today are on fire. Their optimism and enthusiasm for the future is palpable and pours out of them like a kind of psychic Cherenkov radiation. It is difficult not to develop sympathetic excitement when working with them. A year teaching there, or even just a single term, is highly recommended if one can spare the time. It refreshes the hope for humanity even of cynics like me.
Posted by: William Gruff
Some people still keep up the belief that China is backwards.
Both China and Russia are significantly behind overall. However, both are gaining with critical technologies which will help both leapfrog in the coming years. And, for the Lunar Missions, China and Russia are coordinating their major Lunar Base project.
Posted by: Red Ryder
Where are China and Russia “significantly behind overall”?
Does the Outlaw US Empire or ESA have a heavy lift rocket?
If not, how will it return to the moon?
Then we have the realm of Atomics–fission and fusion–where the Empire lags very far behind as my recent commentary and discussion of that topic have shown.
Most significantly, where will NASA find the funds to return to the moon or build another space station–the privateers are mere glory hounds that aren’t really going anywhere.
Perhaps the biggest constraint on the Outlaw US Empire is its Neoliberal ideology. This ideology doesn’t do any long term planning. And long term planning is precisely what must be done with a space program.
Thus the issue of funding for NASA were trashed with Neoliberalism’s ascendency over industrial capitalism. And that began the downward slide of its political-economy that’s resulted in the ongoing crisis that began in 2007.
As b’s article shows, the main problem resides within the Outlaw US Empire’s Congress.
Where very damaging language can be slipped into massive budget legislation that’s never completely read and goes unpurged. The same is true with illegal sanctions on Iran that must be removed if the JCPOA is ever to be revived.
Congressional zealots like Frank Wolf do more damage to the nation in their fanatical attempts they believe are made in its defense. And thanks to the Anti-Communist and Anti-Iranian Crusades, it’s extremely difficult politically to attempt to get such idiocy removed from the books where they’ll remain and damage the domestic economy as well as international relations.
A Red Ryder #1 who says: 'Both China and Russia are significantly behind overall.'
This is exactly opposite of the facts. It is the US that is far behind Russia in crucial space technologies like engines and space station tech. China has now surpassed the US in engines [more on that in a moment] and space stations.
It is easy to understand why the layman would draw the conclusion you have done---due to massive hype in the US media about SpaceX. But consider this: the current US mars mission with the impressive Perseverance Rover got there with Russian engines on the Atlas V rocket. So did the previous US mars mission in 2011 which carried the Curiosity rover, and also the mars mission before that, plus ALL of the high-profile Nasa missions in the last couple of decades.
Despite all of Musk's lip-flapping about Mars, his spacecraft have never been chosen by Nasa for any mars mission.
The same is true for the US Space Force, which includes the National Security Space Launch program. The Russian-powered Atlas V has flown nearly all of these critical missions, which include the X37 spaceplane, high tech spysats, and even missile early warning sats. Nearly 90 successful flights in all.
SpaceX has been given just three NSSL launches, for only the fairly pedestrian GPS sats. It also launched one out of the six X37 missions. That's it.
Quite clearly the advanced Russian rocket engine technology is the workhorse for both Nasa and the Space Force, with SpaceX nothing more than a sideshow!
And let's not forget that the US was unable to fly humans into space for nearly an entire decade! A big Nasa technology contribution finally resulted in the SpaceX Crew Dragon, which has now made three flights---but Nasa is still booking seats on Soyuz, just in case!
And as for the ISS, that is in actuality a Russian space station. From the wikipedia entry on the Russian Orbital Segment ROS:
'The ROS handles Guidance, Navigation, and Control for the entire Station.'
That is the space station. The American and ESA modules are completely superfluous add-ons. The ROS is in fact MIR2, which was built already by the time the US abandoned its own effort to build a MIR knockoff, called the Freedom space station---which was killed on the drawing board due to serious technical shortcomings.
The US simply bought its way into MIR2 at the time that Russia was in dire straits in the 1990s. China also benefited greatly from the Russian space tech fire sale. Look up the Shenzhou program: they Chinese bought their entire manned program from Russia, lock stock and barrel---including the Soyuz spacecraft, life support systems, astronaut training, even space suits.
The Chinese also bought an advanced Russian rocket engine at that time, the RD120, which they developed into their own YF100. It first flew in 2015 and is an advanced, staged combustion cycle engine that the Russians invented and have been perfecting since the 1960s.
The US has yet to fly a staged-combustion engine, despite getting ten key technologies, plus a license to manufacture their own RD180s. Supposedly, the SpaceX Raptor engine is a staged design, also known as closed-cycle due to its high efficiency. But this engine has yet to fly into space. It is also a much smaller engine, about half the thrust of the RD180. And btw, the RD180 is one half the thrust of its bigger brother the RD170/171, which has been flying for decades, and puts out a monstrous 1.8 million pounds of thrust---the most powerful [and most advanced] engine ever built.
Engines are the heart of space technology, just as they are in aviation or even automobiles. The US is nowhere in this game. A lot of hype, but nothing to show yet. The SpaceX workhorse is the Merlin engine which is only 200,000 pounds of thrust, not even one quarter the RD180, and one-eighth the RD170.
And what about the reusability factor, which is supposed to be a game-changer? Well, nothing in engineering is free. It takes lots of propellant to land that rocket back down---propellant which could have been used to launch a much bigger payload. Go to wikipedia and look up Falcon 9. The expendable payload is 22.8 tons for the latest version, versus just 15.5 tons when landed back. That's a 46 percent increase in payload for the non-reusable version. And that's when the booster is landed downrange on a sea barge. If it has to come back to the launch site, the penalty is much higher yet.
Plus those engines must be torn down and rebuilt anyway, so there is little to be gained, except in certain situations where you don't need the full payload. But this is wasteful in other ways. It does result in lower costs, which is a real advantage---but if you have very valuable payloads that are worth several hundred million dollars, like advanced sats, then your main priority is reliability, not saving a little on launch cost. The Russian engines have an unbelievable 100 percent reliability record in 87 launches.
The bottom line is that the US capability, when examined from a professional perspective, has huge gaps in core technologies. That's not to write off SpaceX---they have a decent small, old-technology [gas generator cycle] engine in the Merlin and the Falcon 9 has made 121 flights, with only a few failures. It's a pretty good step up from where the US was after those two Shuttle disasters.
But it's still a long way from the technology that Russia has. And yes, even China has built on the Russian tech to now surpass the US in both engines and space stations.
Posted by: Gordog
A video showing the new Chinese spacestation
Nice. It doesn’t look like the ISS. Maybe China should have copied the USA ISS Space station so that the MSM (main stream media) can say that China is copying space technology.
Perhaps one of those alumni was Thomas J. Kelly, who wrote a great little book called 'Moon Lander' about the Grumman team that built the LEM.
My favourite bit:
A story about the challenges of building space technology in the Jim Crow-Era South. Once the LEM program advanced to the testing stage it was necessary for Grumman to assemble a staff at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The problem?
Grumman was based in Bethpage, NY, and a sizeable chunk of their engineering and technical workforce was Black.
Hotels in Florida were very enthusiastic about helping to stick it to the Ruskies in space until this fact was mentioned. After being turned down everywhere, they had to fall back on NASA's political connections to secure rooms in Florida's 'Whites Only' hotels.
Westerners usually take such a condescending attitude to Russian and Chinese space technology: "I guess it's quite impressive what they achieved in their totalitarian hell-hole" etc.
I like to remember that story every time I hear sentiments like that.
Posted by: S.P. Korolev
Here’s another video…
And yet another…
And still another. Why with so many videos of the Chinese space station, why is the Western Media (MSM) not providing anything?
Why China is building it’s own systems…
The U$A wants to protect its technological comparative advantage. However, where there is a will there’s a way! Necessity is the mother of innovation. China is determined to develop its technological competencies. BeiDou’s launch marked China’s rise to ‘major space power’ and military independence.
“In 1996, during the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, China fired three missiles to locations on the Taiwan Strait as a warning signal against Taiwan’s moves for independence and full internationally recognized statehood. While the first missile hit about 18.5 kilometers from Taiwan’s Keelung military base as a warning, China lost track of the other two missiles. China asserts that the United States had cut off the GPS signal to the Pacific, on which China was dependent at that time for missile tracking. Consequently, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) woke up to the strategic vulnerability of having such critical military space infrastructure in the hands of a foreign power.
On June 23, 2020, China completed construction of its BeiDou Positioning and Navigation System (BDS) by launching the 55th and final satellite for its BDS3 navigation constellation. With this launch, China now enjoys a fully independent self-reliant global navigation satellite system (GNSS) as an alternative to the U.S. Space Force-maintained Global Positioning System (GPS). An independent BeiDou offers China augmented precision navigation and timing (PNT) for its military space forces.”
BeiDou’s completion does signal a new phase for China’s space capabilities. Also, it is a declaration of technical independence. Having a sovereign GNSS eliminates the problem of relying on the U$A or Europe for satellite navigation. China has incorporated state of the art anti-jamming and anti-spoofing capabilities in it. It gains a technological edge by developing its platforms.
Posted by: Max
Robotic AI automation to ferry supplies to and from the space station
Also not being reported in that China has mastered the full automation process of ferrying supplies to and from the space station. Here is a video. Also not being shown in the MSM.
The videos of the Chinese space station are really nice. It’s pretty big, and resembles the interior of the ISS in many ways. But it’s completely different, and the Chinese took different developmental paths in the design and it shows.
America must stop China at all costs!!!!
Thanks for articulating what is assumed in my analysis of the situation--there must be money and minds, as neither goes far solo. And that's present in most other areas related to a MAGA-type policy proposal.
I don't know if you viewed any of the video related to the construction of the Amur Gas facility I posted, but the entire process was the results of billions of engineering calculations given the project's immensity.
What new innovation is being built within the Outlaw US Empire? Can you think of any cause I can't?
Oh wait, I completely forgot the wave energy project that just started being implemented @ 10 miles up the highway from me based on technologies designed 15+ years ago but never allowed to leave the lab. And yes, the chief engineer/scientist in charge is a female immigrant from Eastern Europe.
After 1970, NASA lacked a vision that would keep the budget flush and the public--particularly youth--curious and eager about the next phase. You'll recall those years and the resulting clusterfuck that was Skylab, although the drama of its salvage into something useful was a bright spot for awhile.
Maybe it's all for the best; if the Outlaw US Empire had established a lunar base, we'd certainly have space-based weapons now and a host of related problems--we might not even have made it this far given the Empire's First Strike mindset.
Posted by: karlof1
Well, that is what the neocon narrative is. And they are so ignorant and deluded that it’s a joke. Here is an American movie; a comedy that makes fun of this belief. Check it out…
The problem with the USA is that it can't put those designs to work anymore. It simply doesn't have the industrial capacity to put all those designs into practice.
There's an interview with a retired Chinese PLAAF general for Dangdai, from 2009, which I linked in this blog last year, in which he explains why China would easily win a war against the USA over the retake of Taiwan. His explanation is exactly that. Grandiose plans and designs are worthless in warfare if you can't mass produce them.
Now you would think: but then let's just restore Trump's "bring manufacture back"/"Made in America" policy and all is well.
That's not the case: the USA is a capitalist country, and capitalism only decides to put something for mass production if its profitable.
But thanks to Karl Marx, we know that, the more advanced the technology, the less profitable it is (Law of the Tendency of the Profit Rate to Fall). Capitalism has a historical period of ascension where technology marries perfectly with profitability, but, after that, a deleterious period commences (financialization period).
And profit rates in the USA have been falling for well over 100 years: in fact, if it wasn't for the money injected by the Fed, profit rates in the USA would've fallen by 35% during the first year of the pandemic (2020).
Manufacturing is never coming back to America, with or without the threat of communism.
Posted by: vk
Debunking A ‘Chinese Defector’ Story
It is sad to see how much Col. Pat Lang’s intelligence judgment has deteriorated.
Here he goes crazy over a story of an alleged Chinese high level defector who allegedly brought all kinds of materials with him:
This man, as Chinese counter-intelligence boss looked around the IC and decided that he was most likely to survive an internal leak if he defected to DIA. That means that in spite of the fact that DIA had an internal Chinese mole (recently arrested at DIA request by the FBI), the rest of the agencies are worse in the level in Chinese intelligence penetration not only of their analytic people but also of their operations staff. How do I know that? Material from the defector (Dong) would not normally be shared with analysts if it had his name in it. His identity would be held in operational channels.
Clearly, this man believes that; CIA. army intelligence, naval intelligence, USAF intelligence and all the rest are heavily penetrated. pl.
Lang took the defector story from Zerohedge.com which took it from Redstate.com where managing editor Jennifer Van Laar made it up by mixing her fantasies, a Freebacon report about Chinese students returning to The U.S. and a rumor about a defection reported by Spytalk:
Chinese-language anti-communist media and Twitter are abuzz this week with rumors that a vice minister of State Security, Dong Jingwei (董经纬) defected in mid-February, flying from Hong Kong to the United States with his daughter, Dong Yang.
Dong is, or was, a longtime official in China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), also known as the Guoanbu. His publicly available background indicates that he was responsible for the Ministry’s counterintelligence efforts in China, i.e., spy-catching, since being promoted to vice minister in April 2018. If the stories are true, Dong would be the highest-level defector in the history of the People’s Republic of China.
The rumor is false.
How do I know?
I copied “vice minister of State Security, Dong Jingwei” into Google Translate with the output language set to Chinese (simplified). That results in this string: “国家安全部副部长董经纬”. The big Chinese search engine is Baidu.com. After pasting the string into Baidu it delivered these results:
The first search result is from September 2020 but the second on is from yesterday. As is the third.
The second result goes to a Baidu news report. I copied the story from there and back into Google Translate – this time from Chinese to English. Here is the outcome:
Ministry of National Security: It is necessary to catch spies as well as "traitors" and "behind the scenes."
China Changan Net
Release time: 06-1815:29 China Changan Net
On the morning of June 18, 2021, Vice Minister Dong Jingwei of the Ministry of National Security presided over a symposium to study and implement the "Regulations on Anti-espionage Security Work" that came into effect on April 26 this year, and make arrangements for anti-rape and anti-espionage work.
The symposium pointed out that the Party Central Committee attaches great importance to national security work and has made a series of important decisions and arrangements for counter-espionage work. As the competent authority for counter-espionage work, the Ministry of National Security has formulated and promulgated regulations that are a realistic need to prevent, stop, and crack down on illegal and criminal activities that endanger national security in accordance with the law, which are conducive to further consolidating the responsibility of counter-espionage security prevention and better organizing and mobilizing all social forces. Fight the "People's War" against espionage. ...
The expression “anti-rape” seems to be a machine translation artifact and probably means “anti-infiltration”.
The third Baidu result has the same report from a different news outlet though the video attached to it is not of Dong Jingwei. A Chinese government site also carries the same story.
So the guy who allegedly defected to the Defense Intelligence Agency apparently just talked about counterespionage at a symposium in presumably Beijing.
On December 14, 2020, the China-Belarus Intergovernmental Cooperation Committee met in Beijing. Dong Jingwei (middle), the Vice Minister of the Ministry of National Security and the Chinese Chairman of the Security Cooperation Sub-Committee, also participated in the meeting. The Minister and the Chinese Chairman of the Cultural Cooperation Sub-Committee Zhang Xu sat together. (Image source: Internet)
The Dong Jingwei and his public activities are regular news. Still some will claim that the Chinese report about the symposium is false and was only launched to divert from the defection which therefore must be real.
Well, consider all the stuff the defector, according to Redstate ‘sources’, allegedly brought with him:
In addition, Dong has provided DIA with the following information:
Early pathogenic studies of the virus we now know as SARS-CoV-2
Models of predicted COVID-19 spread and damage to the US and the world
Financial records detailing which exact organizations and governments funded the research on SARS-CoV-2 and other biological warfare research
Names of US citizens who provide intel to China
Names of Chinese spies working in the US or attending US universities
Financial records showing US businessmen and public officials who’ve received money from the Chinese government
Details of meetings US government officials had (perhaps unwittingly) with Chinese spies and members of Russia’s SVR
How the Chinese government gained access to a CIA communications system, leading to the death of dozens of Chinese people who were working with the CIA
Dong also has provided DIA with copies of the contents of the hard drive on Hunter Biden’s laptop, showing the information the Chinese government has about Hunter’s pornography problem and about his (and Joe’s) business dealings with Chinese entities.
That sounds as much like a wet dream for Republicans as the pee-tape Steele Dossier was a wet dream for Democrats.
How would a Chinese counter-espionage guy, who’s job it is to catch U.S. spies in China, have access to all those claimed materials, especially to the names of Chinese spies in the U.S.? What would be his need to know those? Spying and counter spying are always compartmentalized from each other. They don’t know each others secrets.
How could Pat Lang fall for this nonsense?
Think People! Think!
I read this story somewhere, too, and I had the same thoughts. A super secret Chinese defector to the USA who knows everything. In fact so super secret that not even the CIA knew his name. Hmm. Sure.
But what`s even more amazing than people taking such claims at face value is how easy it is possible to fact-check them in the age of internet. Good job!
Posted by: m
What we're witnessing is a slow motion picture of the demise of an empire. No worries.
Posted by: Steve
Anything will do at this point, these boomers are desperate for any news at all to sink China.
Posted by: Smith
The thing that immediately jumped out at me when I read the zerohedge story was the idea that a Chinese counter-intelligence official had access to the names of Chinese spies in the USA.
Say Whaaaaaaaat?
Does the Director of the FBI have access to the names of all CIA assets inside China?
I.Think.Not.
Posted by: Yeah, Right
I knew immediately something was amiss when I read the reports on different sites and it used the word "defector".
That is old Cold War language that reeks of McCarthyism.
Then in a report was this quote:
"Again, according to sources, Dong told DIA debriefers that at least a third of Chinese students attending US universities are PLA assets or part of the Thousand Talents Plan and that many of the students are here under pseudonyms. One reason for using pseudonyms is that many of these students are the children of high-ranking military and party leaders."
First, that seems unlikely to me. One third of Chinese students being spies sounds absurdly high, yet right inline with accusations thrown about on far-right conspiracy websites.
Second, so many spies being children of high ranking CCP leaders also sounds unlikely. Why put their own children at risk overseas?
I attended a world class engineering school with many Chinese students. They are a force to be reckoned with academically. They were all, as a rule, quiet introverts. They always studied together and made straight A's.
They were there to learn and that is all they did. They never seemed to assimilate or ingratiate themselves with authorities or do anything other than study. They were fantastic students and would certainly make outstanding professors at home. Why waste all that time and effort becoming spies when they could legitimately serve China better as engineers and scientists?
Maybe a few were CCP intelligence, but one third of them? Doubtful.
In short, only consorting with each other, never being overly friendly and never asking questions, I think they would have made terrible spies.
Posted by: Mar man
Lots of supposition all the way around. But what a story! So inscrutable! So many wet dreams! I certainly hope when I pick-up at the local Chinese, and they give such a generous portion of WonTon they are grooming me for recruitment into the "communist" way of life. Because frankly, for years I tried to get on Putin's payroll, dutifully offering the best counter-narrative to Empire I could muster, but nada, zilch.
Qualifications? I love Chinese Food, and admire the accomplishment of the Great Wall. Another wet dream of so many. And Bruce Lee. What's not to love? Call me maybe.
Posted by: gottlieb
I think the success of China's space station blastoff made another fake story attacking China necessary.
You know, to kill the buzz.
Posted by: Bemildred
This is one more for the "I don't know how to read Chinese, therefore China is a totalitarian State with a history of complete secrecy and brutal censorship" Western collection.
China (PRC) is one of the most transparent and open-minded States that have ever existed. I know what the CPC will do for the next five, ten, twenty and even fifty years in advance because they publish everything. I also know the reason why they want to do everything, because they open the debate in their due channels (many of which are translated to English directly from the source).
The PRC is transparent because their predecessor - the RKP (B) (Bolsheviks) - were also very transparent. The history of the RSFSR/USSR from 1917-1929 is one of the most well-documented periods we have because the Bolsheviks were very honest and very open about their policy. We could fill an entire book just telling three months of Soviet History. It was just after the consolidation of Stalin to power and the Cold War that documentation ceased to reach the West.
Communist parties are very transparent because they need to be. Their power, by definition, rests on the supremacy of the proletariat or the alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry, therefore every policy - no matter if it was decided from the top, by the Politburo - must be put to the discussion in some kind of conference and put to ratification by some kind of congress (even if just to be approved by acclamation). Both processes presuppose the publication of the policy in at least one official communication vehicle, which then reaches the historian.
China's history - old and contemporary - and Chinese daily politics are mysterious to the West simply because Westerners don't know how to read and write in Chinese (and the few ones who do are paid to ignore and distort them). This is sold by the Western MSM as evidence China is totalitarian, but the reality is the polar opposite: China is the democratic State, the West is the totalitarian State. In History we call this evidence/archaeology bias (e.g. Roman History that survived to us essentially portrays the point of view of the Senate).
Posted by: vk
vk @16: "This is one more for the "I don't know how to read Chinese, therefore China is a totalitarian State with a history of complete secrecy and brutal censorship" Western collection."
I laughed hard at that because it is so true.
Remember early in the pandemic last year all of the news reports based upon satellite imagery of Wuhan? I was stunned by the ignorance, incompetence, and provincialism that displayed. These "journalists" need satellite imagery to guess what is going on in a major first-tier city of 11 million people? Can't these impostor syndrome victim media people just pick up a phone and call someone there? You'd think from the way these "journalists" handled the stories that Wuhan was a city on Mars, or secluded in the heart of the Dark Continent or something similarly silly. Could anyone imagine using satellite imagery to concoct sensationalist speculative stories about happenings in London or Paris? It is pure lunacy.
Posted by: William Gruff
Strange kind of morons you are. Beneath that none of you speaks much less reads the language, I bet you never were in China. I felt less harrassed by the government there, and orders less scared of the police in your "democratic states". The Chinese police don't shoot dead over 1000 compatriots every year, in fact, deadly incidents inflicting police are in the low double digits per year, with their 1.4b pppl.
And during the pandemic, ppl were quarantined for weeks, no more. The authoritharian "health" regime here goes into the second year, with doctor's clinics searched, even a judge's house and office because he ruled against the government. Democrazy, my ass.
Posted by: aquadraht
I had the same impression as you, B. This is the same nonsense, just as delusional and impossible, as the Russiagate / Steelde dossier was for Trump. In both cases, it's people unable to understand why their Chosen One managed to lose the election.
The Dong bogus affair makes no sense because the "China made Covid on purpose as a biological weapon against the US" is just ridiculous on its face: had the Chinese be crazy enough to launch a pandemic on their own country first (for plausible deniability reasons), then there's no fucking way they would've done it in Wuhan; having the pandemic starting in the city the virus had been designed is supremely idiotic if you want plausible deniability that you definitely didn't engineer it - people were going to make a link, imagined or real. If China really wanted to launch a self-engineered virus from China, they would've picked Chongqing, Chengdu or some other major city that would be far closer to the bat reservoir of coronavirus, a major city without a biolab that would raise suspicions.
What's also funny is the alleged list of Wuhan scientists who got "covid" back in 2019: if they became ill with covid, then it's definitely proof the leak was accidental and not deliberate, not some kind of bio-economic warfare but just shitty management of lab security. Though even then odds would still greatly favor an accidental release of a naturally-evolved virus, and not a human-designed one. In fact, iff these few scientists genuinely got our SARS-2 back in late 2019, odds would be that some guy working in bat caves to find new viruses accidentally got infected with a version that could hit humans, and then spread it to his lab buddies back in Wuhan. Though at the end of the day, odds are even higher that some random Chinese dude caught it near Yunnan and a couple of infected people later, it found its way in Wuhan...
Posted by: Clueless Joe
I hear ya, but logic and reason is not what this is about.
This wishlist is just a forward staging of their fake news ammo chest. The contents will be metered out in due course to bury and trump any bad news domestically like record inflation or good news from China like the recent space launch.
If this defection was true, which it is not by the looks of things, do you think the largest intelligence coup of the century will not be hushed away and used for leverage and counter intelligence purposes? D notices have been issued on much, much less.
Its all just diversionary BS and consensus manufacturing by a bunch of delusional wannabe hacks having a circle jerk over their collective wet dream of a resurgent US.
Posted by: A.L.
Despite their hysterical "partisan politics," the Republicans and Democrats are mirror images of each other and share a lot more in common than they want to admit.
Democrats: Russia, Russia, Russia!
Republicans: China, China, China!
Or as Prof. Richard Wolff recently stated,
"Hillary Clinton focused blame on Russia as the external enemy. Trump chose China instead. Biden blames them both.Blame games serve to distract us from a declining US capitalism, its problems and tensions. Blaming others is now a truly bi-partisan effort."https://twitter.com/profwolff/status/1405709097064935431
The mighty American super-duper power and self-styled Indispensable Nation and "Leader of the Free World" is now reduced to the moral equivalent of a guy babbling to himself on a street corner carrying "The End is Nigh" sign.
America is truly a lunatic asylum.
Or as Donald Trump might say, sad.
Posted by: ak74
This may be nothing more than a trivial affair, but I'll tell it anyway: I have been visiting China often (up until the pandemic broke out) for a number of years on the heels of academic conferences.
Following a Shanghai conference around August 20th in 2014, I took a tour of the typical Chinese tourist sites in a number of cities.
During our Beijing excursion, I noticed that our guide (a youngish fellow) had engaged a few tourists about political matters.
From his conversation I derived that he was sympathetic to the Tiananmen square protests.
I drew closer and listened to him speak glowingly of the United States, while parroting all the propaganda one would expect he might get from something like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
I joined the conversation which soon turned towards the recent armed conflict in the Donbas region.
Sure enough, he voiced antipathy towards the Russians and had bought the propaganda that Russian troops had invaded Ukraine, hook, line and sinker.
I had been following those developments on my lap-top, particularly from Pat Lang's blog since it miraculously was one of the few sites which wasn't blocked in China.
I had read Lang's documented rebuttal of the propaganda concerning the Russian "invasion" of Ukraine. So... I became irritated at our Chinese guide's parroting of the "NED propaganda" about Russia so I countered him: I said that Russia had not invaded Ukraine, which of course intrigued him.
Incredulous, he asked me where I got my information.
You can imagine his surprise when I said I got it from a United States colonel, who held high-level posts in military US intelligence.
He asked to see the source and I gave him Lang's URL.
Now this is where it gets interesting: At that time, Lang had added a neat little feature (an app.) to his blog site. It was one of those world maps which registers a "dot" from the location of anyone who accesses it.
Since my entry to China more than a week earlier, there were no "dots" on mainland China. Hence one could conclude that despite the availability of his blog in China, nobody was accessing it.
That changed the afternoon I gave the URL to my inquisitive tour guide.
Dots started appearing all over the place, and not only in Beijing. Maybe the guy passed it on to friends he had in other cities. Maybe he was being surveilled by the government (which at some level was undoubtedly following developments in the Donbas).
Just an intriguing story of mine.
Posted by: Maracatu
My guess is that it is neither of the above. You might be well surprised at the AI controlled monitoring of the intranet in China. And the training these “guides” get and what their real purposes are.
Is America capable?
Well, America has changed substantially over the years. So many things that are a common sight would be repugnant and disgusting a mere two or three decades ago. This is America today…
A treasured, and valuable member of the community.
Many Americans have become slothful and lazy. They just pretty much have given up. And they live their lives as the winds blow. There was a time when you would rarely come across a slovenly person. But today in America you can find these individuals everywhere. What happened?
I don't get the impression that they (the Chinese) spend nearly as much time thinking about the US as Americans spend thinking...
... and griping,
... and spitting about China.
Posted by: Billb
A mobile garbage car.
I used to liken AmeriKKKa's PTB to spiteful 10 year-old schoolgirls. But that modus operandi has been superceded by devotion to acting like tantrum-throwing 2 1/2 year-olds in a supermarket.
Smart Mums just keep walking to the end of the isle, turn right, and wait for the kid to re-connect with reality and Humble Pie.
Keep it up, Yankees! Nobody cares!
-Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer
America is out of control in every area, and by every measure. And you can see it. Even if you are too stupid to read the signs right in front of your face…
An irresponsible non-representative government that is totally focused on making money for the oligarchy and waging wars is a dangerous government.
China is showing everyone that there is an alternative.
And the American oligarchy trembles in fear over this.
Still don’t get it? Think! People. Think!
It took 200 years, but finally America used up it’s natural resources and was forced to steal from the rest of the world. The last fifty years America has been a very bad Military Empire seizing resources from the rest of the world to exist.
The oligarchy created a system of debt serfs from which to fund the Empire, but when it outsourced all manufacturing and abused the few STEM graduates by treating them to “Office Space” environments and abusing them, eventually the “house of cards” would have to collapse.
They do not understand that they changed the American people. No longer are Americans the rough and sturdy folk that forged America from the wilderness. Americans are now a new kind of person.
China surpassed "the USSR-level" long ago.
In regards to alleviating poverty, China has surpassed all nations that have ever existed.
Yes.
Exactly. The next decades and hopefully centuries belong to those that have the civility and maturity to follow that path.
Posted by: uncle tungsten
America is a real mess.
It really is, and the entire rest of the globe can see this. Though most Americans cannot.
I think Americans care about other countries when their Government tells them they must care about them, e.g. the Invasion of Iraq, Invasion of Afghanistan, Destruction of Libya, Invasion of Syria, Destruction of the Ukraine.
In all of those cases, the factor in common is imperialism: Americans tend to believe and rally behind their Central Government against other nations (Federal Government) when they associate the need of subjugation of said nations with the maintenance of their way of life (American Dream, American Way of Life). For example, the direct association between destroying Iraq with vengeance against 9/11 AND ("while we're at it...") lowering the price of the gallon of gas to less than USD 0.90 (therefore, restoring American purchase power). That those adventures ended up fueling anti-Muslim hate and fundamentalist Christianism is just the inevitable collateral effects of such kind of operations, the small price to pay to keep the vibrancy of the Empire.
A clear parallel of this phenomenon can be observed through Bernie Sanders' last tweet on China: in just one paragraph, he associated the need 1) to effectively destroy China through economic sanctions because of the fake Xinjiang Uighur genocide, 2) fight slave/forced labor worldwide and 3) the promotion of the typical trade-unionist/social-democratic agenda within the USA. He went from your bread-and-butter labor rights activism to an outright imperialist agenda against China (and every other nation that dares to get into the way of the Empire). No mention, of course, of slave children labor in cocoa extraction in Ivory Coast - one of the oldest worst kept secret of post-war capitalism.
Now, it's true that the degeneration of the Empire resulted has started to manifest itself into the fragmentation of that method. Americans are now polarized between liberal leftists (Democrats) and fascist rightists (GOP), and each side is using this same method of association to advance not the interests of the Empire per se, but of their own faction - each of which claim to embody the true essence of the Empire as a whole. That means that, in the name of the whole Empire, each of the two factions are using their own carefully crafted imperialist narrative to advance their own factional interests, and not the Empire's. Examples of this are Russiagate and, during Trump, Anti-China hysteria.
So, my take is this: Americans don't see - and can't see - any distinction between foreign and domestic policy. To them, domestic policy is foreign policy, and foreign policy is domestic policy. They're an empire after all, and to a hammer everything smaller is a nail.
Posted by: vk
I think at this juncture Americans are having a hard time distinguishing much of anything, a condition symptomatic of detachment and ignorance.
I can no longer tell how resourceful they are.
Posted by: john
The Strength of China
If you have been following MM you will be aware that on numerous occasions that China has intercepted American advanced aircraft in Chinese airspace and completely rendered them inoperable. As was described in many articles. This comment here on MM is typical. (from Bo Chen)
In the early morning of June 4, Japan’s TBS TV station suddenly interrupted the broadcast situation, saying: “Yesterday (3rd) early morning, an RC-135U electronic reconnaissance plane of the U.S. Air Force took off from Kadena Base in Okinawa, Japan, and proceeded to the southeast coast of China.
Before dawn, near the northern mouth of the Taiwan Strait, in the airspace less than 55 nautical miles from Fujian Xiapu Air Force Base in the Eastern Theater of China, he was suddenly intercepted and rounded up by three electronic counter-reconnaissance aircraft “Falcon 1” of the Chinese Air Force. This is the Chinese Air Force’s first appearance in the war.
The Japanese media were really dedicated, as if they were on the scene, reporting the whole process as eye-catching and clear as their own military exercises: “The situation was very urgent at the time. The U.S. Air Force’s RC-135U reconnaissance plane was in China. Under the pursuit and interception of the Air Force “Falcon 1”, a very real aerial “cat and mouse game” was staged.
The RC-135U reconnaissance aircraft was “throated” time and time again.
All reconnaissance equipment on the aircraft failed; several times The aircraft was unable to control and fell into the sea out of control; several times it fell into a state of collapse of the navigation system.
Japanese media exclaimed: “If the Taiwan Strait really does, the US military’s RC-135U reconnaissance plane has only two options, either to be captured or shot down to the sea.”
In this regard, the only official source of our “South China Sea Strategic Situational Awareness” think tank stated: “In the early morning of June 3, there was indeed a U.S. Air Force RC-135U electronic reconnaissance plane that took off from Kadena Base in Okinawa, Japan, and secretly entered Fujian. The electronic reconnaissance in the East China Sea airspace near Xiapu Air Force Base was promptly and resolutely expelled by our Air Force fighters. As for what type of fighter planes the People’s Liberation Army dispatched to expel them, I officially kept silent.”
At the same time, China’s official media has been very low-key, with almost no reports about the US RC-135U reconnaissance aircraft invading the airspace of the air defense identification zone near the military sensitive area of Fujian. It’s just that the World Wide Web reprinted the “South China Sea Strategic Situation Awareness” news:
However, overseas media have responded strongly to this. In the past few days, media in Japan, the United States, South Korea, and the French and German media in Europe have all reported and commented on it.
Especially for the first time that the Chinese Air Force deployed the mysterious anti-electronic reconnaissance aircraft “Falcon 1”, and the sword was used for the first time, it severely frustrated the most advanced U.S. military RC-135U reconnaissance aircraft, which caused a shock from the Western media.
On the morning of the 4th, the US military’s Global Air Defense media platform stated: “RC-135U is the most advanced reconnaissance aircraft currently in service in the US military. The biggest weapon and “housekeeper” to seize air supremacy.
However, when facing China’s “Falcon 1″ yesterday, it was suddenly completely electronically suppressed. The entire aircraft was completely out of control, but the Kadena base camp, which was close at hand, did not know it.”
On the evening of the 3rd, Major Rodriguez, a spokesman for the US military at Kadena Base, reluctantly said to the media, “Before, we had almost no knowledge of China’s Falcon 1.
Our intelligence agency was actually the best in China. In front of advanced weapons, he became blind and deaf.
This time it was only when it flew in front of us that he suddenly knew its existence.” He added: “Even the name’Falcon 1′, our intelligence department It also took a huge price to find out. As for its specific aviation technical information, we know very little.”
Major Rodriguez said at the briefing: “According to the specific introduction of the pilot flying the RC-135U reconnaissance aircraft, we learned what happened in the early hours of yesterday.
Our RC-135U reconnaissance aircraft, as usual, was at 3 Taking off in the early morning of the day, from Kadena Base to the high seas airspace near Xiapu Air Force Base in Fujian, China, for routine electronic reconnaissance flights. Their main task on this trip is still to detect the deployment of the Chinese military in the coastal areas of Fujian and Zhejiang and to detect them The deployment situation and combat performance of weapons and equipment, the frequency of collecting their electronic communication signals, and so on.
“After about an hour of flying, our RC-135U reconnaissance plane arrived in the established airspace and was preparing to carry out reconnaissance work.
At this time, the pilot suddenly perceived with his naked eyes that there were three moving flying objects in the air from the top, front, and back directions. Outflank it.
But what is surprising is the advent of such a serious air strike, the eyes can see, and the RC-135U reconnaissance aircraft’s own anti-electronic jamming system and reconnaissance system did not respond. Everything is too late, because the other party The RC-135U has been surrounded and locked, the reconnaissance equipment has failed, the communication system has failed, the aircraft is out of control, can’t move at all, the communication system has failed, the aircraft has lost control of navigation, and can’t move at all. It feels like being stifled by the throat.
This way. In the next flight, the situation of danger was continuously staged and appeared three times. In desperation, we followed international practice and repeatedly expressed goodwill to the Chinese military aircraft several times before the other party finally allowed our aircraft to fly out of the dangerous airspace quickly. “.
Major Rodriguez finally emphasized: “I feel like we are being teased by the other side again and again in the air like mice. At the same time, it also shows that the Chinese Air Force’s Falcon 1 is very terrible. We ate a complete one. Lost in the air. This is an extremely rare humiliation and humiliation that the U.S. Air Force has suffered since World War II.”
Major Rodriguez’s briefing was quickly spread to many media around the world, and aroused international public opinion in exclamation and shock. According to the comment from the web client of South Korea’s “Seoul Arms”:
“In the past 20 years, China’s weapons and equipment have seen rapid development, just like its national strength. Especially this time, the mysterious weapon “Falcon 1″ has been revealed, which is low-key. There will certainly be many weapons like the Chinese military.”
The South Korean intelligence agency also issued a statement on the same day: “According to what we know, the Chinese Air Force “Falcon 1″ is the world’s newest and most advanced anti-electronic reconnaissance aircraft. Its main task is to target the US military’s frequent attacks on China’s coastal areas and Taiwan Electronic reconnaissance in the sea and the South China Sea is used for aerial countermeasures.
In addition to electronic countermeasures and intelligence collection, it also has powerful anti-electronic reconnaissance functions. The most frightening thing is that it not only has the most advanced stealth and protection It also has powerful electronic coverage, electronic blocking, and electronic destruction capabilities.
This is the most advanced electronic countermeasure technology in the world that has surpassed the United States and the West. This technology will directly destroy all electronic communication systems of the target aircraft. The opponent’s high-altitude aircraft completely turned into a headless fly out of control.”
In the afternoon of the same day, Professor Kudur Riffert from the Munich Army Military Academy, Germany, commented through the media: “According to the current technical assessment of China’s air force, the flight range and combat radius of the Falcon 1 are expected to reach 3800-4500. Kilometers. If air refueling is implemented, the farthest may exceed 8000 to 12000 kilometers. It can easily fly over the US military base in Hawaii, and even directly reach Los Angeles or San Francisco on the west coast of the US, and the US military’s existing radar cannot detect it at all. It can be said to be A stealthy and proud intercontinental aircraft.”
“What a terrible weapon. China has mastered this weapon manufacturing technology before the United States and put it into combat before the United States. The United States and the United States Air Force have become the targets of China’s advanced weapons testing. And the proving ground.” Finally, Professor Liffeyt pointed out: “The United States and the West must admit that China will soon be strong if it blocks China; if it challenges China, China will quickly defeat what; and if it suppresses China, China Soon to surpass something; China’s strength and rise, the United States and the West can no longer stop it.
But you know what. It’s pretty much well understood throughout China. Though inside America and “The West” no one knows “Jack Shit”. Because the MSA (American main stream media) won’t report anything good about China. Never the less the Chinese joke about this.
Have you ever watched the Tom Cruse movie “Top Gun”? In it is this iconic scene where Tom Cruse the fighter pilot Ace does an inverted flyover a Russian MIG and takes a picture of the cockpit.
Well, if you do, and you also been following MM, then you will find this Chinese short video hilarious!
What’s next for America?
Well, it seems that America wants to provoke and engage in a full scale war with the rest of the world. In an earlier post HERE, I argue that this war would have the reverse effect than what the elites plan. Instead of unifying Americans against a common enemy, it will accelerate the fragmentation of America and the results would be a Second American Civil War. It would be horrific. As this short video clip illustrates…
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
About eight weeks ago, I got a contact request from one of my literary connections. He said that there was this guy who was pestering him to get in contact with me. This guy apparently runs hundreds of You-Tube video channels and wanted to interview me. So I connected to him and wanted to find out more about what he wanted.
He said that he had a “big network” of You-tube channels and he wanted to get me on because exposure would bring a lot of visitors to my MM site, and would help me become famous…
Obviously, he wasn’t a regular or even a cursory reader to the site. Fame, or a lot of traffic is low on my agenda.
But, I went along with him. I actually like having interviews. And if the subject is a good one, I do love to prepare for it, and say my piece. So I said, “OK. Please send me a list of questions so that I can organize up a script, and then we can establish a time and place for the interview.”
A few weeks passed. Nothing.
Then out of the blue he sends a very brief email. He said that he was sorry, but that he was so busy.
But he still wanted to interview me.
He said that he didn’t have any questions to ask me. That we would just “wing it”, and I should be prepared. He wanted to talk about the origins of the Coronavirus.
Hum.
No questions.
No time to prep.
No narrative, nor dialog.
Sounds squirmy.
OK. So I told him, lets talk face to face over Zoom or SkyPE before hand to get a flavor of what to expect. Let’s talk before hand and see what he has in mind and what I could do to facilitate it.
Two more weeks passed.
He sends me an e-mail. “Oh”, he says “no need for a pre-interview meeting. Let’s do it during his operation hours New York time, between 9am and 3pm.”
Which is my 9 at night, a time for me to drink, rest and relax. And there is no fucking way that I am going to provide him free “cannon fodder” at my 3 am without a pre-screening.
Yet another two weeks pass.
He sends me another e-mail. He said he was really busy. Jesus! He thinks he’s busy? But wants to just call me at HIS convenience, and have the interview on the spot when HE is ready.
What nerve!
What’s the matter with Americans these days? Is this what goes for a business connection, a dialog, or a discussion?
Anyways. Fuck him. He blew it. I really have many more things on my plate, and I really do not need the DISRESPECT, and amateurish behaviors, no matter what this beta-cluck intends.
Let’s talk about what is going on in America to create such losers. Because if he is typical…
…and I think he is…
… China will eat his lunch. And that’s a fact, Jack.
Dmitry Orlov
Dmitry Orlov is an immigrant from Russia who moved to the United States. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and has written a host of articles about the United States based on his experiences, his knowledge of history, and what he sees around him. Aside from being well-written, easy to read, they are “spot on” and tend to pre-date events that the rest of us are only starting to notice.
He is one of the better-known thinkers The New Yorker has dubbed ‘The Dystopians’ in an excellent 2009 profile, along with James Howard Kunstler, another regular contributor to RI (archive). These theorists believe that modern society is headed for a jarring and painful crack-up.
Personally I think Biden Administration was stunned at almost having instigated WW3 within 100 days of taking office. They looked fairly like amateur idiots even to the unwashed such as myself. Then they realized that it would be difficult and given their evident ineptness they chose the well proven political tactic of taking the loss and making it a win. Voila they are genious - why didnt Trump think of that?We in the US must accept that our government is craven incompetents and have to hope that they might accidentally do something good by virtue of being so incompetent.Posted by: jared | May 20 2021 17:10 utc | 8
He is best known for his 2011 book comparing Soviet and American collapse and in it, he thinks America’s collapse will be much worse. He is a prolific author on a wide array of subjects, and you can see his work by searching him on Amazon.
This article is a collection of his most recent musings, and I find most of them to be valuable. You can access his archive HERE. Of course, all credit to him, his hosting organization, Articles were edited to fit this venue, and the usual disclaimers apply.
We will start with this article which was written two years into the Donald Trump Presidency, which was about three years ago. And unlike most Americans he had no hopes or belief that Donald Trump would turn the massive ship of America around. Instead he viewed it as a continuation of a nation’s death throes…
The Suicidal American Empire Is Collapsing Fast, But Its Death Now Would Cause Unacceptable Collateral Damage
Which is why its vassals and even rivals are forced, for now, to try and keep it afloat
There are a lot of behaviors being exhibited by those in positions of power in the US that seem disparate and odd.
We watch Trump who is imposing sanctions on country after country, dreaming of eradicating his country’s structural trade deficit with the rest of the world.
We watch pretty much all of US Congress falling over each other in their attempt to impose the harshest possible sanctions on Russia.
People in Turkey, a key NATO country, are literally burning US dollars and smashing iPhones in a fit of pique.
Confronted with a new suite of Russian and Chinese weapons systems that largely neutralize the ability of the US to dominate the world militarily, the US is setting new records in the size of its already outrageously bloated yet manifestly ineffectual defense spending.
As a backdrop to this military contractor feeding frenzy, the Taliban are making steady gains in Afghanistan, now control over half the territory, and are getting ready to stamp “null and void,” in a repeat of Vietnam, on America’s longest war.
A lengthening list of countries are set to ignore or compensate for US sanctions, especially sanctions against Iranian oil exports.
In a signal moment, Russia’s finance minister has recently pronounced the US dollar “unreliable.”
Meanwhile, US debt keeps galloping upwards, with its largest buyer being reported as a mysterious, possibly entirely nonexistent “Other.”
Although these may seem like manifestations of many different trends in the world, I believe that a case can be made that these are all one thing:
The US—the world’s imperial overlord—standing on a ledge and threatening to jump, while its imperial vassals—too many to mention—are standing down below and shouting “Please, don’t jump!”
To be sure, most of them would be perfectly happy to watch the overlord plummet and jelly up the sidewalk.
But here is the key point: if this were to happen today, it would cause unacceptable levels of political and economic collateral damage around the world.
Does this mean that the US is indispensable?
No, of course not, nobody is.
But dispensing with it will take time and energy, and while that process runs its course the rest of the world is forced to keep it on life support no matter how counterproductive, stupid and demeaning that feels.
What the world needs to do, as quickly as possible, is to dismantle the imperial center.
Which is in Washington politically and militarily and in New York and London financially, while somehow salvaging the principle of empire.
“What?!” you might exclaim, “Isn’t imperialism evil.”
Well, sure it is, whatever, but empires make possible efficient, specialized production and efficient, unhindered trade over large distances.
Empires do all sorts of evil things—up to and including genocide—but they also provide a level playing field and a method for preventing petty grievances from escalating into tribal conflicts.
The Roman Empire, then Byzantium, then the Tatar/Mongol Golden Horde, then the Ottoman Sublime Porte all provided these two essential services…
…unhindered trade and security…
…in exchange for some amount of constant rapine and plunder and a few memorable incidents of genocide.
The Tatar/Mongol Empire was by far the most streamlined: it simply demanded “yarlyk”—tribute—and smashed anyone who attempted to rise above a level at which they were easy to smash.
The American empire is a bit more nuanced: it uses the US dollar as a weapon for periodically expropriating savings from around the world by exporting inflation while annihilating anyone who tries to wiggle out from under the US dollar system.
All empires follow a certain trajectory.
Over time they become corrupt, decadent and enfeebled, and then they collapse.
When they collapse, there are two (possibly three) ways to go.
One is to slog through a millennium-long dark age—as Western Europe did after the Western Roman Empire collapsed.
Another is for a different empire, or a cooperating set of empires, to take over, as happened after the Ottoman Empire collapsed.
You may think that a third way exists: of small nations cooperating sweetly and collaborating successfully on international infrastructure projects that serve the common good. Such a scheme may be possible, but I tend to take a jaundiced view of our simian natures.
We come equipped with MonkeyBrain 2.0, which has some very useful built-in functions for imperialism, along with some ancillary support for nationalism and organized religion.
These we can rely on; everything else would be either a repeat of a failed experiment or an untested innovation.
Sure, let’s innovate, but innovation takes time and resources, and those are the exact two things that are currently lacking.
What we have in permanent surplus is revolutionaries: if they have their way, look out for a Reign of Terror, followed by the rise of a Bonaparte. That’s what happens every time.
Lest you think that the US isn’t an empire—a collapsing one—consider the following.
The US defense budget is larger than that of the next ten countries combined, yet the US can’t prevail even in militarily puny Afghanistan. (That’s because much of its defense budget is trivially stolen.)
The US has something like a thousand military bases, essentially garrisoning the entire planet, but to unknown effect.
It claims the entire planet as its dominion: no matter where you go, you still have to pay US income taxes and are still subject to US laws.
It controls and manipulates governments in numerous countries around the world, always aiming to turn them into satrapies governed from the US embassy compound, but with results that range from unprofitable to embarrassing to lethal.
It is now failing at virtually all of these things, threatening the entire planet with its untimely demise.
What we are observing, at every level, is a sort of blackmail:
“Do as we say, or no more empire for you!” The US dollar will vanish, international trade will stop and a dark age will descend, forcing everyone to toil in the dirt for a millennium while mired in futile, interminable conflicts with neighboring tribes.
MM comment. This was written three years before the March 2021 Alaska summit with the "obey our rules-based order" or suffer the consequences meeting.
None of the old methods of maintaining imperial dominance are working; all that remains is the threat of falling down and leaving a huge mess for the rest of the world to deal with.
The rest of the world is now tasked with rapidly creating a situation where the US empire can be dealt a coup de grâce safely, without causing any collateral damage—and that’s a huge task, so everyone is forced to play for time.
MM comment. And this is exactly the case, and why Russia, China and Iran have all teamed up. The EU is trying to sit on the fence. And the Asian nations are paying "lip service".
There is a lot of military posturing and there are political provocations happening all the time, but these are sideshows that are becoming an unaffordable luxury: there is nothing to be won through these methods and plenty to be lost.
Essentially, all the arguments are over money.
There is a lot of money to be lost.
The total trade surplus of the BRICS countries with the West (US+EU, essentially) is over a trillion dollars a year.
SCO—another grouping of non-Western countries—comes up with almost the same numbers.
That’s the amount of products these countries produce for which they currently have no internal market.
Should the West evaporate overnight, nobody will buy these products.
Russia alone had a 2017 trade surplus of $116 billion, and in 2018 so far it grew by 28.5%.
China alone, in its trade just with the US, generated $275 billion in surplus. Throw in another $16 billion for its trade with the EU.
Those are big numbers, but they are nowhere near enough if the project is to build a turnkey global empire to replace US+EU in a timely manner.
Also, there are no takers.
Russia is rather happy to have shed its former Soviet dependents and is currently invested in building a multilateral, international system of governance based on international institutions such as SCO, BRICS and EAEU.
Numerous other countries are very interested in joining together in such organizations: most recently, Turkey has expressed interest in turning BRICS into BRICTS.
Essentially, all of the post-colonial nations around the world are now forced to trade away some measure of their recently won independence, essentially snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
The job vacancy of Supreme Global Overlord is unlikely to attract any qualified candidates.
What everyone seems to want is a humble, low-budget, cooperative global empire, without all of the corruption and with a lot less life-threatening militarism.
MM comment. Sounds good to me, and the world is turning to China for this.
It will take time to build, and the resources to build it can only come from one place: from gradually bleeding US+EU dry.
In order to do this, the wheels of international commerce must continue to spin.
But this is exactly what all of the new tariffs and sanctions, the saber-rattling and the political provocations, are attempting to prevent: a ship laden with soya is now doing circles in the Pacific off the coast of China; steel I-beams are rusting at the dock in Turkey…
But it is doubtful that these attempts will work.
The EU has been too slow in recognizing just how pernicious its dependence on Washington has become, and will take even more time to find ways to free itself, but the process has clearly started.
For its part, Washington runs on money, and since its current antics will tend to make money grow scarce even faster than it otherwise would, those who stand to lose the most will make the Washingtonians feel their pain and will force a change of course.
As a result, everyone will be pushing in the same direction: toward a slow, steady, controllable imperial collapse.
All we can hope for is that the rest of the world manages to come together and build at least the scaffolding of a functional imperial replacement in time to avoid collapsing into a new post-imperial dark age.
MM Comment; This article is "spot on" and was written three years ago, pre-pandemic, and pre-USA collapse.
Since then, China has shown superiority in just about every arena, and the USA reactions to that has been hysterical.
You will not see Dmitry Orlov write about China because he has no direct experience with China, and what he sees and hears comes from the USA government microphone.
Here’s another article…
Killing for the Sake of It: The Grisly Reality of the Failing US Empire
Mired in financial collapse, moral decay, and lack of leadership & direction, the last sole superpower is lashing out in every direction, spreading brutal destruction throughout the world for nothing more than its own depraved sake
This article from our archives was first published on RI in April 2015. Dmitry Orlov(Club Orlov)Fri, Apr 30 2021|1230 words 29,386Comments
The story is the same every time: some nation, due to a confluence of lucky circumstances, becomes powerful — much more powerful than the rest — and, for a time, is dominant.
But the lucky circumstances, which often amount to no more than a few advantageous quirks of geology, be it Welsh coal or West Texas oil, in due course come to an end.
In the meantime, the erstwhile superpower becomes corrupted by its own power.
As the endgame approaches, those still nominally in charge of the collapsing empire resort to all sorts of desperate measures.
All, that is, except one:
They will refuse to ever consider the fact that their imperial superpower is at an end and that they should change their ways accordingly.
George Orwell once offered an excellent explanation for this phenomenon: as the imperial end-game approaches, it becomes a matter of imperial self-preservation to breed a special-purpose ruling class — one that is incapable of understanding that the end-game is approaching.
Because, you see, if they had an inkling of what’s going on, they wouldn’t take their jobs seriously enough to keep the game going for as long as possible.
The approaching imperial collapse can be seen in the ever-worsening results the empire gets for its imperial efforts.
After World War II, the U.S. was able to do a respectable job helping to rebuild Germany, along with the rest of Western Europe.
Japan also did rather well under U.S. tutelage, as did South Korea after the end of fighting on the Korean peninsula.
With Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, all of which were badly damaged by the U.S., the results were significantly worse: Vietnam was an outright defeat, Cambodia lived through a period of genocide, while amazingly resilient Laos — the most heavily bombed country on the planet — recovered on its own.
The first Gulf War went even more badly: fearful of undertaking a ground offensive in Iraq, the U.S. stopped short of its regular practice of toppling the government and installing a puppet regime there and left it in limbo for a decade.
When the U.S. did eventually invade, it succeeded — after killing countless civilians and destroying much of the infrastructure — in leaving behind a dismembered corpse of a country.
Similar results have been achieved in other places where the U.S. saw fit to get involved: Somalia, Libya and, most recently, Yemen.
Let’s not even mention Afghanistan, since all empires have failed to achieve good results there.
So the trend is unmistakable: whereas at its height the empire destroyed in order to rebuild the world in its own image, as it nears its end it destroys simply for the sake of destruction, leaving piles of corpses and smoldering ruins in its wake.
Another unmistakable trend has to do with the efficacy of spending money on “defense” (which, in the case of the U.S., should be redefined as “offense”).
Having a lavishly endowed military can sometimes lead to success, but here too something has shifted over time.
The famous American can-do spirit that was evident to all during World War II, when the U.S. dwarfed the rest of the world with its industrial might, is no more.
Now, more and more, military spending itself is the goal — never mind what it achieves.
And what it achieves is …
The latest F-35 jet fighter that can’t fly;
The latest aircraft carrier that can’t launch planes without destroying them if they are fitted with the auxiliary tanks they need to fly combat missions;
The most technologically advanced AEGIS destroyer that can be taken out of commission by a single unarmed Russian jet carrying a basket of electronic warfare equipment;
And another aircraft carrier that can be frightened out of deep water and forced to anchor by a few Russian submarines out on routine patrol.
But the Americans like their weapons, and they like handing them out as a show of support.
But more often than not these weapons end up in the wrong hands:
The ones they gave to Iraq are now in the hands of ISIS;
The ones they gave to the Ukrainian nationalists have been sold to the Syrian government;
The ones they gave to the government in Yemen is now in the hands of the Houthis who recently overthrew it.
And so the efficacy of lavish military spending has dwindled too.
At some point it may become more efficient to modify the U.S. Treasury printing presses to blast bundles of U.S. dollars in the general direction of the enemy.
With the strategy of “destroying in order to create” no longer viable, but with the blind ambition to still try to prevail everywhere in the world somehow still part of the political culture, all that remains is murder.
The main tool of foreign policy becomes political assassination: be it Saddam Hussein, or Muammar Qaddafi, or Slobodan Milošević, or Osama bin Laden, or any number of lesser targets, the idea is to simply kill them.
MM Comment. This was written before the USA assassinated an Iranian general in his car, and was involved in other take-downs in Russia. As well as the pronounced desire to decapitate the entire leadership of China.
While aiming for the head of an organization is a favorite technique, the general populace gets its share of murder too.
How many funerals and wedding parties have been taken out by drone strikes?
I don’t know that anyone in the U.S. really knows, but I am sure that those whose relatives were killed do remember, and will remember for the next few centuries at least.
This tactic is generally not conducive to creating a durable peace, but it is a good tactic for perpetuating and escalating conflict.
But that’s now an acceptable goal, because it creates the rationale for increased military spending, making it possible to breed more chaos.
Recently a retired U.S. general went on television to declare that what’s needed to turn around the situation in the Ukraine is to simply “start killing Russians.”
The Russians listened to that, marveled at his idiocy, and then went ahead and opened a criminal case against him.
Now this general will be unable to travel to an ever-increasing number of countries around the world for fear of getting arrested and deported to Russia to stand trial.
MM Comment. As what happened to those war-mongering anti-China neocons that wanted to attack China. Try stepping out of the USA, you Jackasses.
This is largely a symbolic gesture, but non-symbolic non-gestures of a preventive nature are sure to follow.
You see, my fellow space travelers, murder happens to be illegal.
In most jurisdictions, inciting others to murder also happens to be illegal.
Americans have granted themselves the license to kill without checking to see whether perhaps they might be exceeding their authority.
We should expect, then, that as their power trickles away, their license to kill will be revoked, and they will find themselves reclassified from global hegemons to mere murderers.
As empires collapse, they turn inward, and subject their own populations to the same ill treatment to which they subjected others.
Here, America is unexceptional: the number of Americans being murdered by their own police, with minimal repercussions for those doing the killing, is quite stunning.
When Americans wonder who their enemy really is, they need look no further.
But that is only the beginning: the precedent has already been set for deploying U.S. troops on U.S. soil.
As law and order break down in more and more places, we will see more and more U.S. troops on the streets of cities in the U.S., spreading death and destruction just like they did in Iraq or in Afghanistan.
The last license to kill to be revoked will be the license to kill ourselves.
The West Resembles a Decapitated Rooster, Wings Still Flapping, Barely Flying
“Democratic elections are but a recent innovation, and a most uncertain one. For instance, during the 2016 election in the US, the establishment trotted out an entire array of craven, feckless, corrupt opportunists, and Trump knocked them all out with a feather …”
This article from our archives was first published on RI in November 2018. Dmitry OrlovTue, Apr 13 2021|1900 words 9,773Comments
When I was five and spending the summer in a small village a couple of time zones east of Moscow I witnessed the execution of a rooster.
My brother and I walked over to a neighbor’s house to pick up some eggs.
Just as we arrived the neighbor finally caught the rooster and chopped his head of.
The now headless rooster then put on quite an aerobatic performance that was quite amazing.
After doing an unlimited takeoff he repeatedly soared and plummeted, executed several touch-and-gos (more like crash-and-goes, actually) and was undeterred by what previously would have been head-on collisions.
I was by then quite familiar with the poor aerodynamic qualities of barnyard fowl and was duly impressed with the energetic and breathtakingly erratic behavior of a bird liberated from the mental straitjacket of its brain.
Unfortunately, the performance only lasted for a minute or so.
A word to the wise: I later learned that it is possible to prolong the show, should the need ever arise, by heating up the hatchet so as to cauterize the severed neck. More recently, I have learned that such sans-têteaerobatics are not restricted to chickens.
Figurative birds, of the mechanical variety, can exhibit something similar.
A prime example is the greatest boondoggle in the history of military aviation, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
It too is liable to losing its head, in the sense of the pilot blacking out.
In addition to being ridiculously expensive (over $1.5 trillion in projected project costs)…
…and plagued with problems, only half of the built planes are considered ready for any sort of mission…
… there are over a thousand known defects that haven’t been fixed.
Including ones that make it useless for air-to-air combat or ground support F-35 pilots often report feeling sick and there have been many incidents where they lost consciousness, probably due to oxygen starvation and circulation problems.
In response, the fatally flawed jet’s maker Lockheed Martin, whose motto seems to be “One boondoggle deserves another,” has decided to add a subsystem.
Called Auto-GCAS (for Ground Collision Avoidance System), it takes over automatically if it detects the danger of ground collision and the pilot fails to respond to the alarm and take corrective action.
Auto-GCAS then throttles up and directs the plane upward, pulling a maximum of five g’s.
What does that do to a pilot who is already feeling sick or is unconscious?
Once a safe altitude is reached, the plane levels out and Auto-GCAS shuts off.
If the pilot happens to be offline for good, the process repeats until the plane runs out of fuel and crashes.
I hope that you are impressed with the sheer brilliance of the plan.
A show designed to impress was recently staged at an airfield in Utah, where 35 F-35s took off, one right after the other.
It has not been independently verified how many of them landed.
Auto-GCAS is slated to be ready for use by 2024, but Pentagon’s planners are hoping to accelerate the process.
All of this made me wonder about the general behavior to be expected of hierarchically organized, centrally controlled systems once they are deprived of their control module.
Auto-GCAS is by no means the worst case.
For instance, there is the Russian Perimetr system, a.k.a. Dead Hand.
If it detects that the Russian military leadership has been incapacitated by a nuclear strike, it will launch an all-out nuclear attack, obliterating the aggressor.
This may seem like a really bad plan, but then attacking Russia is a really bad plan too, and one bad plan deserves another.
What makes this plan bad is that it doesn’t elicit the right response.
The right response is: “Oh, we see, attacking Russia is sheer suicide, so let’s not do that.”
But where’s the money in not planning to attack Russia?
And so instead the “One boondoggle deserves another” crew sets forth to build anti-ballistic missile systems (which don’t work) and deep underground bomb shelters stocked with years’ worth of supplies (which is gold-plating; a large shallow grave to jump into when the time comes would work just as well).
And yet as far as planning for decapitation goes, Dead Hand is state of the art.
Most other large-scale centrally controlled systems are woefully unprepared for the loss of their command modules.
For instance, look at finance.
After the financial collapse of 2008 it quickly became obvious that nobody competent or responsible was in charge.
The “solution” was for central banks to start blowing financial bubbles by zeroing out interest rates and flooding the world with new debt.
Debt that expands much faster than the economy is garbage debt, and it gave rise to various other kinds of garbage:
Garbage energy from shale and tar sands,
Garbage money in the form of cryptocurrencies,
Garbage real estate investment schemes,
Garbage corporate balance sheets bloated with debt used up in stock buybacks,
A large crop of garbage oligarchs gorging themselves on all of this garbage “wealth” and much else.
Things look good while all this garbage is packaged up in financial bubbles, but once they pop…
…and as all children know all bubbles pop eventually…
… everyone will end up wearing the garbage.
There are plenty of examples of political auto-decapitation as well.
In the US, Trump realized that he can become president simply by insulting all of his competitors (who richly deserved such treatment) and so he did.
But now the hive mind of Washington is deeply at odds with the bumblebee-mind of Trump, and neither qualifies as any sort of a head, except perhaps in a strictly symbolic sense.
Things are no better in Europe.
In the UK, an anti-Brexit team is in charge of negotiating Brexit, struggling to make it as anti-Brexit a Brexit as possible.
That doesn’t seem like any sort of “headedness.”
In Germany, Merkel is on her way out, and her replacement has the unenviable task of hammering together a governing coalition out of parties that are too busy knocking heads with each other.
The multi-headed bureaucratic hydra in Brussels is not exactly popular with anyone.
What is the recourse?
Emperor Macron of France, perhaps?
Is Europe ready to be headed by a diacritical character? (A macron is a horizontal line you place over vowel letters to represent a long vowel: Mācron.)
There are systems that are properly headless: flocks of birds, schools of fish, communes of anarchists, etc.
They are anarchically structured and individuals within them take on temporary, task-based leadership roles as the situation demands and can only expect to be obeyed in accordance with their competence in executing the tasks.
But most of the human systems we have are hierarchically structured and require to be headed by someone.
Democratic elections are but a recent innovation, and a most uncertain one.
For instance, during the 2016 election in the US, the establishment trotted out an entire array of craven, feckless, corrupt opportunists, and Trump knocked them all out with a feather, not because he is any sort of proper leader, but because it was so easy.
For an even more amazing example of democratic failure, look at today’s Ukraine—the most recent experiment in Western democracy.
There, a constitutionally elected, though remarkably corrupt and indecisive president was violently overthrown in 2014 in a US-managed coup.
And replaced with an American puppet.
A puppet so unpopular that yesterday he was forced to introduce martial law.
Just in order to be able to cancel the elections scheduled in three months and to remain in office de facto.
To produce a rationale for declaring martial law he sent some small boats on a truly idiotic mission.
The boats sailed into a Russian-controlled high traffic zone in the Black Sea, refused to respond when hailed and then pointed weapons at Russian border patrol.
For this they were duly arrested and hauled off to jail, and their boats confiscated.
Previously, an ongoing civil war instigated by this same president resulted in some fifty thousand casualties, but no martial law was ever deemed necessary.
What’s different now?
Oh, the elections, of course!
If these are the fruits of democracy, perhaps the Ukrainians should consider going back to a monarchy.
Dynastic succession has worked much better and for much longer periods of time.
For instance, at the time of its annexation by Russia in 1783, Crimea was ruled by Shahin Girei, a descendant of Genghis Khan who was born around 1155.
That one dynasty, spanning 628 years, ruled the largest empire that ever was.
At one point it included all of China, most of Russia, Korea, Persia and India, plus many lands in between.
Genghis had decreed that no part of the Mongol Empire could be ruled by anyone who wasn’t a direct descendant of his, and so it was.
The Mongol Empire ended peacefully, with Shahin Girei abdicating his throne and accepting protection from Catherine the Great.
Maybe that’s the plan, then: install a Ukrainian Emperor and immediately have him abdicate his throne and accept protection from Putin the Great.
Then Putin will turn the heat and the hot water back on, the armed thugs will be marched off to someplace safe for disarming and de-thugging, and the nuke plants will stop breaking down.
Since we seem to be headed (no pun intended) for unstable and disrupted times, it bears pointing out that while democracy may be very nice when everything is going along according to plan…
… it is not particularly resilient in the face of severe disruption.
And what is the plan now—in the US, or in the EU (or what will be left of it)?
We have some truly ghastly examples of the fruits of democracy in the form of the Weimar Republic in Germany or the Interim Government between February and October of 1917 in Russia.
If you don’t fancy being ruled by headless chickens, consider picking a leader using whatever ad hoc procedure that works.
The idea is to avoid any more Robespierrian Reigns of Terror, Reichstag fires or October Revolutions—because we already know what those are like.
Russia’s New Nukes Check-Mate a War-Happy US, and Make the World Safer
Now that its aircraft carrier fleet, global ABM systems, and NATO has been rendered useless, the US can get on with dismantling its entire bloated, over-stretched, global network of military bases.
This article from our archives was first published on RI in March 2018 . Dmitry Orlov(Club Orlov)Sun, Apr 11 2021|3400 words 14,816Comments
A lot of people seem to have lost the thread when it comes to nuclear weapons.
They think that nuclear weapons are like other weapons, and are designed to be used in war.
But this is pure mental inertia.
According to all the evidence available, nuclear weapons are anti-weapons, designed to prevent weapons, nuclear or otherwise, from being used.
In essence, if used correctly, nuclear weapons are war suppression devices.
Of course, if used incorrectly, they pose a grave risk to all life on Earth.
There are other risks to all life on Earth as well, such as runaway global warming from unconstrained burning of hydrocarbons; perhaps we need to invent a weapon or two to prevent that as well.
Some people feel that the mere existence of nuclear weapons guarantees that they will be used as various nuclear-armed countries find themselves financially, economically and politically in extremis.
As “proof” of this, they trot out the dramaturgical principle of Chekhov’s Gun.
Anton Chekhov wrote:
“Если вы говорите в первой главе, что на стене висит ружье, во второй или третьей главе оно должно непременно выстрелить. А если не будет стрелять, не должно и висеть.»”
[“If you say in Act I that there is a gun hanging on the wall, then it is a must that in Act II or III it be fired. And if it won’t be fired, it shouldn’t have been hung there in the first place.”]
And if you point out that we are talking about military strategy and geopolitics, not theater, they then quote Shakespeare’s
“All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances…”
and believe that it is QED.
Now, I happen to agree wholeheartedly with Chekhov, when it comes to dramaturgy, and I agree with the Bard as well, provided we define “the world” as “the world of theater,” from which the worlds of geopolitics and nuclear physics are both dramatically different.
Let me explain it in terms that a drama major would understand.
If there is a nuclear bomb hanging on the wall in Act I, then, chances are, it will still be hanging on that wall during the final curtain call.
In the meantime, no matter how many other weapons are present on stage during the play, you can be sure that none of them would be used.
Or maybe they will be, but then the entire audience would be dead, in which case you should definitely ask for your money back because this was billed as a family-friendly show.
Back in the real world, it is hard to argue that nukes haven’t been useful as deterrents against both conventional and nuclear war.
When the Americans dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they only did this because they could do so with complete impunity.
Had Japan, or an ally of Japan, possessed nuclear weapons at the time, these attacks would not have taken place.
There is a considerable body of opinion that the Americans didn’t nuke Japan in order to secure a victory (the Japanese would have surrendered regardless) but to send a message to Joseph Stalin.
Stalin got the message, and Soviet scientists and engineers got cracking.
There was an uncomfortable period, before the USSR successfully tested their first atomic bomb…
… when the Americans were seriously planning to destroy all major Soviet cities using a nuclear strike…
… but they set these plans aside…
…because they calculated that they didn’t have enough nukes at the time to keep the Red Army from conquering all of Western Europe in retaliation.
But in August 29, 1949, when the USSR tested its first atomic bomb, these plans were set aside…
…not quite permanently, it would later turn out…
…because even a singular nuclear detonation as a result of a Soviet response to an American first strike…
…. wiping out, say, New York or Washington, would have been too high a price to pay for destroying Russia.
Since then—continuously except for a period between 2002 and two days ago—the ability of nuclear weapons to deter military aggression has remained unquestioned.
There were some challenges along the way, but they were dealt with.
The Americans saw it fit to threaten the USSR by placing nuclear missiles in Turkey; in response, the USSR placed nuclear missiles in Cuba.
The Americans didn’t think that was fair, and the result was the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Eventually the Americans were prevailed upon to stand down in Turkey, and the Soviets stood down in Cuba.
Another threat to the deterrent power of nuclear weapons was the development of anti-ballistic weapons that could shoot down nuclear-tipped missiles (just the ballistic ones; more on that later).
But this was widely recognized to be a bad thing, and a major breakthrough came in 1972, when the USA and the USSR signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Over this entire period, the principle that kept the peace was Mutual Assured Destruction: neither side would provoke the other to the point of launching a nuclear strike, because such a move was guaranteed to be suicidal.
The two sides were reduced to fighting a series of proxy wars in various countries around the world…
… which were so much the worse for it…
… but there was no danger of these proxy conflicts erupting into a full-scale nuclear conflagration.
In the meantime, everybody tried to oppose nuclear proliferation, preventing more countries from obtaining access to nuclear weapons technology—with limited success.
The cases where these efforts failed testify to the effective deterrent value of nuclear weapons.
Saddam Hussein of Iraq didn’t have any “weapons of mass destruction” and ended up hung.
Muammar Qaddafi of Libya voluntarily gave up his nuclear program, and ended up tortured to death.
But Pakistan managed to acquire nuclear weapons, and as a result its relations with its traditional nemesis India have become much more polite and cooperative.
To the point that in June of 2017 both became full members of Shanghai Cooperation Organization, along with China, Russia and other Eurasian nations.
And then North Korea has made some breakthroughs with regard to nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles.
As a result of that the US has been reduced to posturing and futile threats against it while South Korea has expressed some newfound respect for its northern neighbor and is now seeking rapprochement.
In 2002 the prospect of continued nuclear deterrence was set a major setback when the US pulled out of the ABM treaty.
Russia protested this move, and promised an asymmetrical response.
American officials ignored this protest, incorrectly thinking that Russia was finished as a nuclear power.
Since then, the Americans spent prodigious amounts of money—well into the trillions of dollars—building a ballistic missile defense system.
Their goal was simple: make it possible to launch a first strike on Russia, destroying much of its nuclear arsenal; then use the new American ABM systems to destroy whatever Russia does manage to launch in response.
On February 2, 2018 the Americans decided that they were ready, and issued a Nuclear Posture Review in which they explicitly reserved the right to use nuclear weapons to prevent Russia from using its nuclear deterrent.
And then, two days ago, all of that came to a happy end when Vladimir Putin gave a speech in which he unveiled several new weapons systems that completely negate the value of US missile defense shield.
…among other things.
That was the response the Russians promised to deliver when the US pulled out of the ABM treaty in 2002.
Now, 16 years later, they are done.
Russia has rearmed with new weapons that have rendered the ABM treaty entirely irrelevant.
The ABM treaty was about ballistic missiles—once that are propelled by rockets that boost the missile to close to escape velocity.
After that the missile follows a ballistic trajectory—just like an artillery shell or a bullet.
That makes its path easy to calculate and the missile easy to intercept.
The US missile defense systems rely on the ability to see the missile on radar, calculate its position, direction and velocity, and to launch a missile in response in such a way that the two trajectories intersect.
When they cross, the interceptor missile is detonated, knocking out the attacking missile.
None of the new Russian weapons follow ballistic trajectories.
The new Sarmat is an ICBM minus the “B”—it maneuvers throughout its flight path and can fly through the atmosphere rather than popping up above it.
It has a short boost phase, making it difficult to intercept after launch.
It has the range to fly arbitrary paths around the planet—over the south pole, for instance—to reach any point on Earth.
And it carries multiple maneuverable hypersonic nuclear-armed reentry vehicles which no existing or planned missile defense system can intercept.
Among other new weapons unveiled two days ago was a nuclear-powered cruise missile which has virtually unlimited range and goes faster than Mach 10.
And a nuclear-powered drone submarine which can descend to much larger depths than any existing submarine and moves faster than any existing vessel.
There was also a mobile laser cannon in the show, of which very little is known, but they are likely to come in handy when it comes to frying military satellites.
All of these are based on physical principles that have never been used before.
All of these have passed testing and are going into production; one of them is already being used on active combat duty in the Russian armed forces.
The Russians are now duly proud of their scientists, engineers and soldiers.
Their country is safe again; Americans have been stopped in their tracks, their new Nuclear Posture now looking like a severe case of lordosis.
This sort of pride is more important than it would seem.
Advanced nuclear weapons systems are a bit like secondary sexual characteristics of animals: like the peacock’s tail or the deer’s antlers or the lion’s mane, they are indicative of the health and vigor of a specimen that has plenty of spare energy to expend on showy accessories.
In order to be able to field a hypersonic nuclear-powered cruise missile with unlimited range, a country has to have a healthy scientific community.
This means lots of high-powered engineers, a highly trained professional military and a competent security establishment that can keep the whole thing secret, along with an industrial economy powerful and diverse enough to supply all of the necessary materials, processes and components with zero reliance on imports. Now that the arms race is over, this new confidence and competence can be turned to civilian purposes.
So far, the Western reaction to Putin’s speech has closely followed the illogic of dreams which Sigmund Freud explained using the following joke:
1. I never borrowed a kettle from you
2. I returned it to you unbroken
3. It was already broken when I borrowed it from you.
A more common example is a child’s excuse for not having done her homework: I lost it; my dog ate it; I didn’t know it was assigned.
In this case, Western commentators have offered us the following:
1. There are no such weapons; Putin is bluffing
2. These weapons exist but they don’t really work
3. These weapons work and this is the beginning of a new nuclear arms race
Taking these one at a time:
1. Putin is not known to bluff; he is known for doing exactly what he says he will do. He announced that Russia will deliver an asymmetric response to the US pulling out of the ABM treaty; and now it has.
2. “They don’t work”. These weapons are a continuation of developments that already existed in the USSR 30 years ago but had been mothballed until 2002. What has changed since then was the development of new materials, which make it possible to build vehicles that fly at above Mach 10, with their skin heating up to 2000ºC, and, of course, dramatic improvements in microelectronics, communications and artificial intelligence. Putin’s statement that the new weapons systems are going into production is an order: they are going into production.
3. “It’s all political talk”. Most of Putin’s speech wasn’t about military matters at all. It was about such things as pay increases, roads, hospitals and clinics, kindergartens, nurseries, boosting retirements, providing housing to young families, streamlining the regulation of small businesses, etc. That is the focus of the Russian government for the next six years: dramatically improving the standard of living of the population. The military problem has already been resolved, the arms race has been won, and Russia’s defense budget is being reduced, not increased.
Another line of thought in the West was that Putin unveiled these new weapons, which have been in development for 16 years at least, as part of his reelection campaign (the vote is on March 18).
This is absurd.
Putin is assured of victory because the vast majority of Russians approve of his leadership.
The elections have been about jockeying for a second place position between the Liberal Democrats, led by the old war horse Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and the Communists.
The Communists have nominated a non-communist oligarch businessman Pavel Grudinin, who has promptly disqualified himself by failing to disclose foreign bank accounts and other improprieties and now appears to have gone into hiding.
Thus, the Communists, who were previously slated for second place, have burned themselves down and Zhirinovsky will probably come in second.
If Americans don’t like Putin, then they definitely wouldn’t like Zhirinovsky.
Putin is practical and ambivalent about “our Western partners,” as he likes to call them.
Zhirinovsky, on the other hand, is rather revenge-minded, and seems to want to inflict pain on them.
At the same time, there is now a committee, composed of very serious-looking men and women, who are charged with monitoring and thwarting American meddling in Russian politics.
It seems unlikely that the CIA, the US State Department and the usual culprits will be able to get away with much in Russia.
The age of color revolutions is over, and the regime change train has sailed… all the way back to Washington, where Trump stands a chance of getting dethroned Ukrainian-style.
Another way to look at the Western reaction to Russia’s new weapons is using Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s stages of grief.
We already saw denial (Putin is bluffing; weapons don’t work) and the start of anger (new arms race).
We should expect a bit more anger before moving on to bargaining (you can have the Ukraine if you stop building Sarmat).
Once the response comes back (“You broke the Ukraine; you pay to get it fixed”) we move on to depression (“The Russians just don’t love us any more!”) and, finally, acceptance.
Once the stage of acceptance is reached, here is what the Americans can usefully do in response to Russia’s new weapons systems.
First of all, Americans can scrap their ABM systems because they are now useless.
Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had this to say about it:
«То, что сегодня создаётся в Польше и Румынии, создаётся на Аляске и предполагается к созданию в Южной Корее и Японии — этот "зонтик" противоракетной обороны, получается, "дырявый". И не знаю, зачем за такие деньги теперь этот "зонтик" им приобретать.»
[“What is being built in Poland and Romania, and in Alaska, and is planned in South Korea and Japan—this missile defense ‘umbrella’—turns out to be riddled with holes. I don’t know why they should now buy this ‘umbrella’ for so much money.”]
Secondly, Americans can scrap their aircraft carrier fleet.
All it’s useful now for now is threatening defenseless nations, but there are much cheaper ways to threaten defenseless nations.
If Americans are still planning to use them to dominate sea lanes and control world trade…
…then the existence of hypersonic cruise missiles with unlimited range and drone submarines that can lurk at great ocean depths for years…
…make the world’s oceans off-limits for American navy’s battle groups…
…in the event of any major (non-nuclear) escalation…
…because now Russia can destroy them from an arbitrary distance without putting any of their assets or personnel at risk.
Lastly, Americans can pull out of NATO, which has now been shown to be completely useless, dismantle their thousand military bases around the world, and repatriate the troops stationed there.
It’s not as if, in light of these new developments, American security guarantees are going to be worth much to anyone, and America’s “allies” will be quick to realize that.
As far as Russian security guarantees, there is a lot on offer:
…unlike the US, which is increasingly seen as a rogue state…
…and an ineffectual and blundering one at that…
…Russia has been scrupulous in adhering to its international agreements and international law.
In developing and deploying its new weapons systems, Russia has not violated any international agreements, treaties or laws.
And Russia has no aggressive plans towards anyone except terrorists.
As Putin put it during his speech,
«Мы ни на кого не собираемся нападать и что-то отнимать. У нас у самих всё есть.»
[“We are not planning to attack anyone or take over anywhere. We have everything we need.”]
I hope that the US doesn’t plan to attack anyone either, because, given its recent history, this won’t work.
Threatening the whole planet and forcing it to use the US dollar in international trade …
…and destroying countries, such as Iraq and Libya, when they refuse…
… running huge trade deficits with virtually the entire world…
…and forcing reserve banks around the world to buy up US government debt…
… leveraging that debt to run up colossal budget deficits…
…now around a trillion dollars a year…
… and robbing the entire planet by printing money…
…and spending it on various corrupt schemes…
…that, my friends, has been America’s business plan since around the 1970s.
And it is unraveling before our eyes.
I have the audacity to hope that the dismantling of the American Empire will proceed as copacetically as the dismantling of the Soviet Empire did.
(This is not to say that it won’t be humiliating or impoverishing, or that it won’t be accompanied by a huge increase in morbidity and mortality.)
One of my greatest fears over the past decade was that Russia wouldn’t take the US and NATO seriously enough and just try to wait them out.
After all, what is there to really to fear from a nation that has over a 100 trillion dollars in unfunded entitlements…
… that’s full of opioid addicts…
… with 100 million working-age people permanently out of work…
… with decrepit infrastructure and poisoned national politics?
And as far as NATO, there is, of course, Germany, which is busy rewriting “Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles” to be gender-neutral.
What are they supposed to do next?
March on Moscow under a rainbow banner and hope that the Russians die laughing?
Oh, and there’s also NATO’s largest Eurasian asset, Turkey, which is currently busy slaughtering America’s Kurdish assets in Northern Syria.
But simply waiting them out would have been a gamble, because in its death throes the American Empire could lashout in unpredictable ways.
I am glad that Russia chose not to gamble with its national security.
Now that the US has been safely checkmated using the new Russian weapons systems, I feel that the world is in a much better place.
If you like peace, then it seems like your best option is to also like nukes—the best ones possible, ones against which no deterrent exists, and wielded by peaceful, law-abiding nations that have no evil designs on the rest of the planet.
The USA is Cracking Up Just Like the USSR Did – In Fact, They Are Related
“You see, ideology is a product of intellectuals, and intellectuals tend to be idiots, … We are born equipped with MonkeyBrain 2.0 that can handle abstraction only too well but always fails when attempting to reconcile it with messy physical reality.”
“And so it would be a grave error to think that, just because communist ideology is idiotic, capitalist ideology is any less so.”
This article from our archives was first published on RI in November 2017. Dmitry OrlovSat, Mar 27 2021|1440 words 27,999Comments
Today is the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution of 1917. It caused a lot of death and destruction, which I won’t go into because you can read all about it elsewhere. It also caused a great outpouring of new art, literature, architecture and culture in general, putting the previously somewhat stodgy Russia securely in the world’s avant-garde.
It also resulted in a tremendous surge of industrialization, rapidly transforming a previously mostly agrarian, though gradually industrializing nation into a global industrial powerhouse (at great human cost).
But perhaps most importantly, the revolution destroyed all of the previously dominant institutions of privilege based on heredity, class and wealth and replaced them with an egalitarian social model centered on the working class.
And it demonstrated (as much through propaganda as by actual example) how this new model was more competitive: while the West wallowed in the Great Depression, the USSR surged ahead both economically and socially.
For all of its many failings, the USSR did serve as a shining city on the hill to the downtrodden millions around the world, including in the USA, fermenting rebellion, so that even there the one-percent ownership class eventually had to stop and think.
Reluctantly, they decided to stop trying to destroy organized labor movements, introduced state old-age pensions (misnamed “Social Security”) and declared a euphemistic “war on poverty.”
And with that a “middle class” was created—so called because it was literally in the middle, having risen out of poverty but still safely walled off from the one-percent ownership class.
But as we shall see this effect was temporary.
Eventually the USSR evaporated, as artificial, synthetic political entities often do.
The reasons for this disappearing act are too numerous to mention, but one of the main ones was that the Soviet political elite turned itself into a much-hated, privileged caste, and then failed to reproduce, turning into a moribund gerontocracy.
MM Comment. Sounds like the USA today, eh?
When the old cadres finally started dying out, the new generation that came in included plenty of traitors who did their best to destroy the system and grab a piece for themselves.
This effect was plain to see, but was it the root cause?
When a complex system collapses, every part of it is touched to one extent or another, and it becomes impossible to say which one played the key role in precipitating the collapse.
With the USSR gone, the owners of the USA had no one to compete against and were no longer under any sort of pressure to maintain the illusion of an equitable and egalitarian society.
Instead, they concentrated on two projects, one [1] ideological, the other [2] economic.
[1] The ideological project involved wrecking what was left of the USSR to the greatest extent possible. And to do so in order to paint a convincing picture of the horrible consequences of communism or socialism. It’s intention was to herd everyone toward wholeheartedly embracing unfettered capitalism.
[2] The economic project involved eviscerating the American middle class—a process that by now has largely run its course.
Since the creation of the middle class was a multigenerational project, so is its destruction.
But the effects of this process on society are already plain to see: there is an overhang of still relatively well-off retirees while their children and grandchildren have greatly diminished economic and social prospects.
Meanwhile, the hastily erected scaffolding that created the appearance of egalitarianism has been knocked out.
Organized labor is all but finished.
Borders have been thrown open to foreign labor and cheap imports.
Entry into the middle class has been blocked through a variety of measures.
These measures include [1] the relentless dumbing down of public education, [2] the equally relentless overpricing of higher education, [3] the health care extortion scheme, [4] the rationing of justice based on wealth and privilege, [5] wealth confiscation using a succession of artificial real estate market bubbles and so on.
Overall, the former middle class is being whittled down to nothing the same way that the Chinese “coolies” were dealt with once the railroads had been built…
…don’t feed them much but give them plenty of opium (now being grown in Afghanistan under the watchful eye of Western troops).
To sum it up: if you aren’t happy with the way things are going in the US, you have a choice.
You can of course blame Russia and / or China.
Or you can blame your owners—your one percent—who have owned you ever since the King of England appointed the Lords Proprietors.
Within Russia itself the commemoration of the October Revolution is no longer a public holiday.
But there was a sort of commemoration held on the vast Palace Square in St. Petersburg, which I attended with my five-year-old son on my shoulders.
It was his first time in a crowd of 35,000, and he was duly impressed.
It was a light-and-sound extravaganza consisting of two shows which played in alternation.
On the vast semicircular facade of the General Staff building was broadcast a multimedia retrospective of the October Revolution that included the reading of historical documents (such as the abdication of Nicholas II) and works of poetry.
It ended on an upbeat note—yes, many horrible events took place, but Russia is now reborn—with the General Staff’s façade painted in the Russian tricolor.
A different show was presented on the façade of the Winter Palace across the square.
Here, multimedia artists from across Europe (including France, Italy, Spain and Poland) used projected light to decorate and transform the palace to music that sung praises to the beauty of St. Petersburg.
The audience was invited to use their phones to vote for the best one.
After the show, as we filtered out of the Palace Square and walked home along the Palace Embankment, my five-year-old son asked some good questions that he had formulated while watching the show.
“Did a lot of people die?” (Yes.)
“But Russia was then and is now?” (Yes, Russia has been around for a 1000 years and will probably be around for 1000 years more.)
“Why do people have to die?” (Because otherwise we we would be full-up with useless old people and there wouldn’t be enough room for young people.)
And then the obvious follow-up: “Why are we full-up with useless old people anyway?” (???)
And finally: “Why do we bury dead people?” (Because they smell really bad.) “Ah…”
A rather unsentimental youth, wouldn’t you say?
But he was only one of the thousands of quite similar-minded ones who were in attendance that day, riding on their fathers’ shoulders or marching along.
Welcome to Russia…
One of the reasons why the USSR failed was because the idiocy of the ideology of Soviet communism became too painful to tolerate.
In a sense, this was inevitable.
You see, ideology is a product of intellectuals, and intellectuals tend to be idiots, making “intellectual idiocy” something of an oxymoron.
We are born equipped with MonkeyBrain 2.0 that can handle abstraction only too well but always fails when attempting to reconcile it with messy physical reality.
And so it would be a grave error to think that, just because communist ideology is idiotic, capitalist ideology is any less so.
By now most thinking people realize that capitalism has failed just has communism had.
We can only hope that one day the US will do with its capitalist legacy what Russia has done with its communist one: turn it into a festive art installation that both children and adults can enjoy.
Dear America – You Are Delusional, and Failing at Everything You Undertake
Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Russia sanctions – “All of these harebrained schemes, hatched in Washington, have backfired grandly.”
“Those who have pushed for them are now reduced to just two face-saving maneuvers: blaming their political opponents; and blaming Russia. And these two maneuvers are set to backfire as well.”
This article from our archives was first published on RI in November 2017. Dmitry OrlovMon, Mar 22 2021|1610 words 46,492Comments
Back in the days when I was still trying to do the corporate thing, I regularly found myself in a bit of a tight spot simply by failing to keep my mouth shut.
I seem to carry some sort of gene that makes me naturally irrepressible.
I can keep my mouth shut for only so long before I have to blurt out what I really think, and in a corporate setting, where thinking isn’t really allowed, this causes no end of trouble.
It didn’t matter that I often turned out to be right.
It didn’t matter what I thought; it only mattered that I thought.
American involvement in the middle-eastern project is now limited to Putin’s sporadic courtesy calls to Trump, to keep him updated.
Of all the thoughts you aren’t allowed to think, perhaps the most offensive one is adequately expressed by a single short phrase: “That’s not gonna work.”
Suppose there is a meeting to unveil a great new initiative, with PowerPoint presentations complete with fancy graphics, org charts, timelines, proposed budgets, yadda-yadda, and everything is going great until this curmudgeonly Russian opens his mouth and says…
“That’s not gonna work.”
And when it is patiently explained to him (doing one’s best to hide one’s extreme irritation) that it absolutely has to work because Senior Management would like it to…
… that furthermore it is his job to make it work and that failure is not an option…
… he opens his mouth again and says “That’s not gonna work either.”
And then it’s time to avoid acting flustered while ignoring him and to think up some face-saving excuse to adjourn the meeting early and regroup.
I lasted for as long as I did in that world because once in a while I would instead say “Sure, that’ll work, let’s do it.”
And then, sure enough, it did work, the company had a banner year or two, with lots of bonuses and atta-boy (and atta-girl) certificates handed out to those not at all responsible for any of it.
Flushed with victory, they, in turn, would think up more harebrained schemes for me to rain on, and the cycle would repeat.
America seems to be blissfully unaware of how it comes across to the rest of the world
It is probably one of the main saving graces of corporations that they do sometimes (mainly by mistake) allow some thought to leak through. The mistake in question is a staffing error in promoting those constitutionally incapable of keeping their mouths shut or shutting off their brains. Such errors create chinks in the monolithic phalanxes of corporate yes-men and yes-women.
Trump is too old to be a reformer or a revolutionary. He is of an age when men are generally mostly concerned about the quantity and consistency of their stool and how it interacts with their enlarged prostates.
The likelihood of such mistakes increases with the agony of defeat, which causes attrition among the ranks of qualified yes-sayers, creating holes that can only be plugged by promoting a few non-yes-sayers.
However, this only seems to work in the smaller, hungrier corporations; the larger, better-fed ones seem to be able to avoid experiencing the agony of defeat for a very long time by moving the goal posts, outlawing any discussion of said defeat or other similar tactics.
Eventually the entire organization goes over the cliff, but by then it is of no benefit to anyone to attempt to inform them of their folly.
It is much the same with governments, except here the situation is even worse.
While the smaller, hungrier governments, and those blessed with a fresh institutional memory of extreme pain, do not have the luxury of lying to themselves.
The larger political agglomerations—the USSR, the EU, the USA—have the ability to keep themselves completely immunized against the truth for historically significant periods of time.
The USSR clung to the fiction of great socialist progress even when it was clear to all that the cupboard was bare and there were rats gnawing through the rafters.
The EU has been able to ignore the fact that its entire scheme is one of enriching Germany while impoverishing and depopulating eastern and southern Europe, neglecting the interests of the native populations throughout.
And the amount of self-delusion that is still currently in effect in the USA makes it a rather large subject.
Regardless of how great the lies are and how forcefully they are defended, a moment always comes when the phalanx of truth-blocking yes-men and yes-women stops marching, turns and runs.
This event results in a tremendous loss of face and confidence for all involved.
It is the crisis of confidence, more than anything else, that precipitates the going-off-a-cliff phenomenon that we could so readily observe in the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s.
I have a very strong hunch that similar cliff-diving exercises are coming up for the EU and the USA.
But for the time being I am just another disembodied voice on the internet, watching from the sidelines and periodically saying the unfashionable thing, which is: “This isn’t gonna work.”
However, I’ve said this a number of times over the years, on the record and more or less forcefully, and I feel vindicated most of the time.
Internationally, for example:
• Carving the Ukraine away from Russia, having it join the EU and NATO and building a NATO naval base in Crimea “wasn’t gonna work.” The Ukraine is a part of Russia, the Ukrainians are Russian, and the Ukrainian ethnic identity is a Bolshevik concoction. Look for a reversion to norm in a decade or two.
• Destroying and partitioning Syria with the help of Wahhabi extremists and foreign mercenaries supported by the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel while Russia, Iran, Turkey and China stand idly by “wasn’t gonna work”; and so it hasn’t.
• Giving Afghanistan “freedom and democracy” and turning it into a stable pro-Western regime with the help of invading NATO troops “wasn’t gonna work,” and hasn’t. Western involvement in Afghanistan can go on, but the results it can achieve are limited to further enhancing the heroin trade.
• Destroying the Russian economy using sanctions “wasn’t gonna work,” and hasn’t. The sanctions have helped Russia regroup internally and achieve a great deal of self-sufficiency in energy production and other forms of technology, in food and in numerous other sectors.
All of these harebrained schemes, hatched in Washington, have backfired grandly. Those who have pushed for them are now reduced to just two face-saving maneuvers: blaming their political opponents; and blaming Russia. And these two maneuvers are set to backfire as well.
In the meantime, the world isn’t waiting for the US to shake itself out of its stupor.
The fulcrum of American influence in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia and the petrodollar. In turn, Saudi Arabia rests on three pillars: the Saudi monarchy, Wahhabi Islam and the petrodollar.
As I write this, the next king, Mohammed bin Salman, is busy hacking away at all three: robbing, imprisoning and torturing his fellow-princes, working to replace the Wahhabi clerics with moderate ones and embracing the petro-yuan instead of the now very tired petrodollar.
Not that any of these three pillars were in good shape in any case: the defeat of ISIS in Syria was a defeat for the Saudi monarchy which supported it, for the Wahhabi clerics who inspired it and, consequently, for the petrodollar as well, because Saudi Arabia was until now its greatest defender.
The new guarantors of peace in the region are Russia, Iran and Turkey, with China watching carefully in the wings. American involvement in the middle-eastern project is now limited to Putin’s sporadic courtesy calls to Trump, to keep him updated.
And so here’s my latest prediction: Trump’s goal of “making America great” “isn’t gonna work” either.
The country is so far gone that just taking the first step—of allowing the truth of its condition to leak through the media filters—will undermine public confidence to such an extent that a subsequent cliff-dive will become unavoidable.
It’s a nice slogan as slogans go, but Trump is too old to be a reformer or a revolutionary. He is of an age when men are generally mostly concerned about the quantity and consistency of their stool and how it interacts with their enlarged prostates.
Perhaps he will succeed in making America great… big piles of feces, but I wouldn’t expect much more than that.
MM Conclusion
Of course, these articles were written by a Russian inside the USA, and his observations at times seem dated. Things have certainly advanced in the last year or so. All of the articles here pre-dates the Coronavirus, the Biden Presidency, and the March 2021 meeting in Anchorage. they are also Russian centric.
Taken as a whole, we can see other elements in the global struggle that is is bracing for the collapse of America. And in hindsight it looks like the world is trying to let the United States suffer slowly and calmly. Some, like Dmitry here, argue that it is best to put the thrashing wounded old animal to bed with a short quick bullet to the head, but I remain guarded in regards to that.
There could well be a considerable amount of collateral damage.
Keep in mind that things are now moving into place and alliances and black operations forming. The USA is doing it’s best to entangle the rest of the world with it’s madness, like a schizophrenic lunatic who cannot see the absurdity of their actions, and the rest of the would holding a “clothespin to their noses” and trying to say out of arm’s reach. With the sole exception of Australia for reasons that are not disclosed publicly lest the government leaderships be hung from the rafters.
In any event this is pretty good stuff, and I do hope that you all enjoyed it.
Let this stuff sit a spell in the back of your mind. I have a follow up article that I will release later on this week concerning exactly where we are, precisely, in regards to the Fourth Turning.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
This article / post is going to be all over the place. The theme behind it is that the largest and most powerful nation of the planet is thrashing about and imploding, and we all are watching it happen in real time.
We will cover various aspects through some other articles that I have dredged up from the internet. The first article discusses how China and Russia now view the Untied States and it is not flattering. In fact, both are accusing the United States fro waging wars, assassinations, and attacks against them. From the NGO “color revolutions”, to the bio-weapons carpet bombing of China, to the black operations in Russia, both nations are starting to get really irritated.
Diplomacy is a way that nations work and interact with each other. To fail in diplomacy is to risk war.
With this understood, just how capable is the United States in dealing with other nations on a diplomatic level?
American Diplomats Are Outclassed
“Butting Heads with China and Russia” with a sub heading of “American Diplomats Are Outclassed” written by Philip Giraldi on May 13, 2021. Edited to fit this venue, all credit to the author, and the usual disclaimers retain.
With the exception of the impending departure of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan, if it occurs, the White House seems to prefer to use aggression to deter adversaries rather than finesse.
The recent exchanges between Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at a meeting in Alaska demonstrate how Beijing has a clear view of its interests which Washington seems to lack.
Blinken initiated the acrimonious exchange when he cited…
“deep concerns with actions by China, including in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyber attacks on the United States, economic coercion toward our allies. Each of these actions threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability. That’s why they’re not merely internal matters, and why we feel an obligation to raise these issues here today.”
He then threatened …
“I said that the United States relationship with China will be competitive where it should be, collaborative where it can be, adversarial where it must be”
“I’m hearing deep satisfaction that the United States is back, that we’re reengaged with our allies and partners. I’m also hearing deep concern about some of the actions your government is taking.”
The Chinese Foreign Minister responded sharply, rejecting U.S. suggestions that it has a right to interfere in another country’s domestic policies,
“I think we thought too well of the United States, we thought that the U.S. side will follow the necessary diplomatic protocols.
The United States does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength.
We believe that it is important for the United States to change its own image, and to stop advancing its own democracy in the rest of the world.”
In another more recent interview Blinken has accused the Chinese of acting “more aggressively abroad” while President Biden has claimed that Beijing has a plan to replace America as the world’s leading economic and military power.
U.S. United Nations envoy Linda Thomas-Greenfield has also delivered the same message that Washington is preparing to take no prisoners, pledging to push back against what she called China’s “authoritarian agenda” through the various agencies that make up the UN bureaucracy.
Indeed, the United States seems trapped in its own rhetoric, finding itself in the middle of a situation with China and Taiwan where warnings that Beijing is preparing to use force to recover its former province leave Washington with few options to support a de facto ally.
Peter Beinart in a recent op-ed observes how the White House has been incrementally increasing its diplomatic ties with Taiwan even as it both declares itself “rock solid” on defending while also maintaining “strategic ambiguity.”
China understands its interests while the U.S. continues to be bewildered by Beijing’s successful building of trade alliances worldwide.
Meanwhile Russian President Vladimir Putin, reputedly an excellent chess player, is able to think about genuine issues in three dimensions and is always at least four moves ahead of where Biden and his advisers are at any time.
Biden public and video appearances frequently seem to be improvisations as he goes along guided by his teleprompter while Putin is able to explain issues clearly, apparently even in English.
A large part of Biden’s problem vis-à-vis both China and Russia is that he has inherited a U.S. Establishment view of foreign and national security policy options.
It is based on three basic principles.
First, that America is the only superpower and can either ignore or comfortably overcome the objections of other nations to what it is doing.
Second, an all-powerful and fully resourced United States can apply “extreme pressure” to recalcitrant foreign governments and those regimes will eventually submit and comply with Washington’s wishes.
And third, America has a widely accepted leadership role of the so-called “free world” which will mean that any decision made in Washington will immediately be endorsed by a large number of other nations, giving legitimacy to U.S. actions worldwide.
What Joe Biden actually thinks is, of course, unknown though he has a history of reflexively supporting an assertive and even belligerent foreign policy during his many years in Congress.
Kamala Harris, who many believe will be succeeding Biden before too long, appears to have no definitive views at all beyond the usual Democratic Party cant of spreading “democracy” and being strong on Israel.
That suggests that the real shaping of policy is coming from the apparatchik and donor levels in the party.
These include the neocon-lite Zionist triumvirate at the State Department consisting of Tony Blinken, Wendy Sherman and Victoria Kagan.
As well as the upper-level bureaucracies at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies.
All of which all support an assertive and also interventionist foreign policy to keep Americans “safe” while also increasing their budgets annually.
Such thinking leaves little room for genuine national interests to surface.
Biden’s Secretary of State Tony Blinken is, for example, the perfect conformist bureaucrat, shaping his own views around established thinking and creating caveats to provide the Democratic Party leadership with some, though limited, options.
Witness for example the current White House attitude towards Iran, which is regarded, along with Russia, as a permanent enemy of the United States.
President Biden has expressed his interest in renegotiating a non-nuclear proliferation treaty with the Iranians, now being discussed by diplomats without direct contact in Austria.
But Blinken undercuts that intention by wrapping the talks in with other issues that are intended to satisfy the Israelis and their friends in Congress that will make progress unlikely if not impossible.
They include eliminating Iran’s alleged role as a regional trouble maker and also ending the ballistic missile development programs currently engaged in by the regime.
The downside to all of this is that having a multilateral agreement to limit Iranian enhancement of uranium up to a bomb-making level is very much in the U.S. interest, but it appears to be secondary to other politically motivated side discussions which will derail the process.
A foreign and national security policy based on political dogma rather than genuine interests can obviously generate some disconnects.
Which is unlike either Russia or China, where red-lines and national interests are clearly understood and acted upon.
To cite yet another dangerous example of playing with fire that one is witnessing in Eastern Europe, the simple understanding that for Russia Belarus and Ukraine are front-line states.
States that could pose existential threats to Moscow if they were to move closer to the west and join NATO appears to be lacking.
The U.S. prefers to stand the question on its head and claims that the real issue is “spreading democracy,” which it is not.
Policy makers in Washington might consider what Washington would likely do if Mexico and Canada were to be threatened with foreign interference that might bring about their joining a military alliance hostile to the United States.
The American Establishment-driven foreign policy thinking clearly has trouble in accommodating the obvious understanding that the U.S. actually becomes more vulnerable…
…every time it interferes in China’s trade practices …
…or gives the green light for alliances like NATO to expand.
Expansion of the national security policy components often brings in another client state. And it is a client state that rarely has anything whatsoever to contribute and which, on the contrary, becomes a burden.
This client state ends up relying for their own security on overstretched American military resources.
In return, the expansion itself guarantees that a hostile and genuinely threatened Russia will take steps of its own to counter what it sees as a potential grave threat to its own security and national identity.
Quite simply, America’s national security should dictate that the United States treat China as a competitor rather than an enemy…
…while also disengaging from support and encouragement of Ukraine’s irredentist ambitions as quickly as possible.
A recent shipment of offensive weapons to Kiev should become the last such initiative and speeches by American politicians pledging “unwavering support” for Ukraine should be considered unacceptable.
Washington should meanwhile reject any clandestine attempts to overthrow Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus and make clear to Vladimir Putin that it will not support any NATO expansion into Eastern Europe…
… which admittedly was a pledge already made when the Soviet Union collapsed that was subsequently ignored by President Bill Clinton.
Thanks to Bill, America is now obligated to defend not only Western Europe but also Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, North Macedonia, the Baltic States and tiny little Montenegro.
In short, United State engagement in complicated overseas quarrels should be limited to areas where genuine vital interests are at stake.
In fact, by that standard one should begin to emphasize the security impact of the crisis on America’s southern border, which has a completely different genesis and is being driven by politics.
As British statesman Lord Palmerston said in 1848 …
“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”
The United States government would be very wise to be guided by that advice.
And Russia and China are taking notice and standing up to the US Bully
This article goes on, and on as many do. But please pay attention to the interesting dynamic here.
America, the United States, is out of control. There is a deeply embedded oligarchy group that is running amok and pushing all the buttons that are saying “WE DEMAND WAR!” And there is nothing, absolutely nothing that can stop them, control them, or mitigate them. They are out of control.
And the rest of the world are taking notice and deciding to work together, far away outside the clutches of the American military empire.
So in order to reason with these psychopathic entities, both the Soviet Union and China have established “red-lines” that will result in ferocious military action.
All in all, I think that both Russia and China have been very tolerant so far. But they cannot keep this situation stable for long. The United States is flailing about wildly with no control. It’s only a matter of time when things will go from dangerous to…
…death.
Consider this article, and when you do, keep in mind how the rest of the world view the insanity that is now the United States.
Only indirectly, or via a delightful metaphor, Kipling’s Jungle Book. Foreign policy was addressed only at the end, almost as an afterthought.
For the best part of an hour and a half, Putin concentrated on domestic issues, detailing a series of policies that amount to the Russian state helping those in need – low income families, children, single mothers, young professionals, the underprivileged – with, for instance, free health checks all the way to the possibility of an universal income in the near future.
Of course he would also need to address the current, highly volatile state of international relations.
The concise manner he chose to do it, counter-acting the prevailing Russophobia in the Atlanticist sphere, was quite striking.
First, the essentials.
Russia’s policy…
“is to ensure peace and security for the well-being of our citizens and for the stable development of our country.”
Yet if …
“someone does not want to ...
...engage in dialogue...
... but chooses an egoistic and arrogant tone, Russia will always find a way to stand up for its position.”
He singled out …
“the practice of politically motivated, illegal economic sanctions”
…to connect it to…
“something much more dangerous”,
…and actually rendered invisible in the Western narrative:
“the recent attempt to organize a coup d’etat in Belarus and the assassination of that country’s president.”
Putin made sure to stress,
“all boundaries have been crossed”.
The plot to kill Lukashenko was unveiled by Russian and Belarusian intel – which detained several bad actors…
…who were backed, by who else, yes, the US intel.
The US State Department predictably denied any involvement.
Putin:
“It is worth pointing to the confessions of the detained participants in the conspiracy...
...that a blockade of Minsk was being prepared...
... including its city infrastructure and communications, the complete shutdown of the entire power grid of the Belarusian capital.
This, incidentally means preparations for a massive cyber-attack.”
And that leads to a very uncomfortable truth:
“Apparently, it’s not for no reason that our Western colleagues have stubbornly rejected numerous proposals by the Russian side to establish an international dialogue in the field of information and cyber-security.”
“Asymmetric, swift and harsh”
Putin remarked how to…
“attack Russia”
…has become…
“a sport, a new sport, who makes the loudest statements.”
And then he went full Kipling:
“Russia is attacked here and there for no reason.
And of course, all sorts of petty Tabaquis [jackals] are running around like Tabaqui ran around Shere Khan [the tiger]
– everything is like in Kipling’s book –
...howling along and ready to serve their sovereign. Kipling was a great writer”.
The – layered – metaphor is even more startling as it echoes the late 19th century geopolitical Great Game between the British and Russian empires, of which Kipling was a protagonist.
Once again Putin had to stress that…
"we really don’t want to burn any bridges.
But if someone perceives our good intentions as indifference or weakness and intends to burn those bridges completely or even blow them up, he should know that Russia’s response will be asymmetric, swift and harsh”.
So here’s the new law of the geopolitical jungle – backed by Mr. Iskander, Mr. Kalibr, Mr. Avangard, Mr. Peresvet, Mr. Khinzal, Mr. Sarmat, Mr. Zircon and other well-respected gentlemen, hypersonic and otherwise, later complimented on the record.
Those who poke the Bear to the point of threatening …
“the fundamental interests of our security will regret what has been done, as they have regretted nothing for a very long time.”
All now… now coalesce into a stark new reality: the era of a unilateral Leviathan imposing its iron will is over.
The era of the Powerful Leviathan United States imposing it’s will is over.
For those Russophobes who still haven’t got the message, a cool, calm and collected Putin was compelled to add…
"clearly, we have enough patience, responsibility, professionalism, self-confidence, self-assurance in the correctness of our position...
... and common sense when it comes to making any decisions.
But I hope that no one will think about crossing Russia’s so-called red lines.
And where they run, we determine ourselves in each specific case.”
Back to realpolitik, Putin once again had to stress the…
“special responsibility”
of the
“five nuclear states”
to seriously discuss
“issues related to strategic armament”.
It’s an open question whether the Biden-Harris administration…
… behind which stand a toxic cocktail of neo-cons and humanitarian imperialists…
… will agree.
Putin:
“The goal of such negotiations could be to create an environment of conflict-free coexistence...
... based on equal security, covering not only strategic weapons such as intercontinental ballistic missiles, heavy bombers and submarines, but also...
... I would like to emphasize...
... all offensive and defensive systems capable of solving strategic tasks, regardless of their equipment.”
As much as Xi’s address to the Boao forum was mostly directed to the Global South, Putin highlighted how
“we are expanding contacts with our closest partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BRICS, the Commonwealth of Independent States and the allies of the Collective Security Treaty Organization”,
and extolled
“joint projects in the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union”,
billed as
“practical tools for solving the problems of national development.”
In a nutshell: integration in effect, following the Russian concept of a
… actually the combo telling him what to do, complete with earpiece and teleprompter…
… promising Ukraine’s President Zelensky that Washington would …
“take measures”
…to support Kiev’s wishful thinking of retaking Donbass and Crimea.
There are several eyebrow-raising issues with this EO.
It denies, de facto, to any Russian national the full rights to their US property.
Any US resident may be accused of being a Russian agent engaged in undermining US security.
A sub-sub paragraph (C), detailing “actions or policies that undermine democratic processes or institutions in the United States or abroad”, is vague enough to be used to eliminate any journalism that supports Russia’s positions in international affairs.
Purchases of Russian OFZ bonds have been sanctioned.
As well as one of the companies involved in the production of the Sputnik V vaccine.
Yet the icing on this sanction cake may well be that from now on all Russian citizens, including dual citizens, may be barred from entering US territory except via a rare special authorization on top of the ordinary visa.
Which is very similar to the EO that made the same demands on Chinese citizenry that have toes to the Chinese government.
The Russian paper Vedomosti has noted that in such paranoid atmosphere the risks for large companies such as Yandex or Kaspersky Lab are significantly increasing.
Still, these sanctions have not been met with surprise in Moscow.
The worst is yet to come, according to Beltway insiders: two packages of sanctions against Nord Stream 2 already approved by the US Department of Justice.
The crucial point is that this EO de facto places anyone reporting on Russia’s political positions as potentially threatening
“American democracy”.
As top political analyst Alastair Crooke has remarked, this is a
“procedure usually reserved for citizens of enemy states during times of war”.
Crooke adds,
“US hawks are upping the ante fiercely against Moscow. Tensions and rhetoric are skirting wartime levels.”
It’s an open question whether Putin’s State of the Nation will be seriously examined by the toxic lunatic combo of neocons and humanitarian imperialists bent on simultaneously harassing Russia and China.
But the fact is something extraordinary has already started to happen: a “de-escalation” of sorts.
Even before Putin’s address, Kiev, NATO and the Pentagon apparently got the message implicit in Russia moving two armies, massive artillery batteries and airborne divisions to the borders of Donbass and to Crimea…
… not to mention top naval assets moved from the Caspian to the Black Sea.
NATO could not even dream of matching that.
Facts on different grounds speak volumes.
Both Paris and Berlin were terrified of a possible Kiev clash directly against Russia, and lobbied furiously against it, bypassing the EU and NATO.
Then someone – it might have been Jake Sullivan – must have whispered on Crash Test Dummy’s earpiece that you don’t go around insulting the head of a nuclear state and expect to keep your global “credibility”.
So after that by now famous “Biden” phone call to Putin came the invitation to the climate change summit, in which any lofty promises are largely rhetorical, as the Pentagon will continue to be the largest polluting entity on planet Earth.
So Washington may have found a way to keep at least one avenue of dialogue open with Moscow.
At the same time Moscow has no illusions whatsoever that the Ukraine/Donbass/Crimea drama is over.
Even if Putin did not mention it in the State of the Nation.
And even if Defense Minister Shoigu has ordered a de-escalation.
The always inestimable Andrei Martyanov has gleefully noted the
“cultural shock when Brussels and D.C. started to suspect that Russia doesn’t ‘want’ Ukraine.
What Russia wants is for this country (Ukraine) to rot and implode without excrement from this implosion hitting Russia.
West’s paying for the clean up of this clusterf**k is also in Russian plans for Ukrainian Bantustan.”
The fact that Putin did not even mention Bantustan in his speech corroborates this analysis.
As far as “red lines” are concerned, Putin’s implicit message remains the same: a NATO base on Russia’s western flank simply won’t be tolerated.
Paris and Berlin know it.
The EU is in denial.
NATO will always refuse to admit it.
We always come back to the same crucial issue: whether Putin will be able, against all odds, to pull a combined Bismarck-Sun Tzu move and build a lasting German-Russian entente cordiale (and that’s quite far from an “alliance’).
Nord Stream 2 is an essential cog in the wheel – and that’s what’s driving Washington hawks crazy.
Whatever happens next, for all practical purposes Iron Curtain 2.0 is now on, and it simply won’t go away.
There will be more sanctions.
Everything was thrown at the Bear short of a hot war.
It will be immensely entertaining to watch how, and via which steps, Washington will engage on a “de-escalation and diplomatic process” with Russia.
The Hegemon may always find a way to deploy a massive P.R. campaign and ultimately claim a diplomatic success in “dissolving” the impasse.
Well, that certainly beats a hot war.
Otherwise, lowly Jungle Book adventurers have been advised: try anything funny and be ready to meet “asymmetric, swift and harsh”.
What about American allies?
What do the American allies think? Here we look at the new rabid anti-China neocon Oz-land; a new American territory filled with people who are willing to die for “freedom”, “democracy”, and Washington DC!
I know, I know.
But apparently the Morrison government believes that having a war with China will be great for the people. Which surprises me. I always thought that Australians were hard-scrabble folk, with good heads on their shoulders and a easy-going fair-dink um’ attitude.
I guess that I need to readjust my thinking.
Like I said, I am often wrong about things. A good 50% of the time.
Once was a hegemon: Australia and the decline of the US
All credit to the author, and the usual disclaimers.
Australia’s Indo-Pacific obsession hides a radical global geopolitical shift. Australian policymakers will persist in making poor choices unless they accept that the US hegemony has passed a tipping point, and America has already become just one great power among others.
Australia’s policy community has become comfortable with the familiar, distinctive, and acceptable pattern of world order the Americans established. The universalist claims of the US’s order are now internalised and any alternative seems unthinkable.
Unthinkable!
Ah. Many things in Australia are unthinkable!
Ian Clark maintains “that hegemons are much more than dominant powers”. Denis Florig writes hegemony
“requires not only the hard military and economic power to enforce dominance when necessary, but also the ideological, political, and institutional power to persuade others to accept the rules and norms of a system largely designed and operated by the hegemon and its allies.”
This is the rules-based order over which Australia is nostalgic.
Hegemony is deep and pervasive.
Michael Mazarr refers to indirect power, which “involves influencing how people think—how they conceive their interests and very identities—rather than trying to coerce or bribe them into making a specific choice. It shapes what others believe they want, and why”.
This has been the flavour of American hegemony since the middle of last century.
A very typical Australian Summer.
America has shaped a weltanschauung and embed norms and values among other political cultures, and its hegemony has come to be seen as a legitimate, and an appropriate and rightful, use of its power. Any other organising framework for politics, society, or international relations other than the US promoted market-based capitalism and its evangelising democracy has become unimaginable. Life in the American hegemony has seemed natural and ordained, especially for Australians.
However, the democracy and capitalism America promoted have lost their lustre and Americans themselves have lost the passion for promoting democracy abroad. Now majorities or very substantial minorities in the US, France, Germany, and the UK believe their political systems need a major overhaul. In addition, half of all Americans, Germans, and British believe their economic system requires major reform. That figure is 70% in France. The ideological engine of the hegemony is spluttering.
America now displays a seemingly irredeemable racism and growing anti-democratic illiberalism, in a violent and divided nation where wealth is over-concentrated and poverty entrenched. Externally America has established a record of military overreach and failed adventures, and is increasingly reduced to using the coercive power of the dollar and sanctions where once it could have persuaded and relied on shared views. However, whether consciously or not, the slogans “Make America Great Again” and “Build Back Better” are admissions of loss.
Europeans doubts have grown about the US’s willingness and capacity to come to their aid in a crisis following the Trump interregnum and the American obsession with the Indo-Pacific. The US cannot commit to the security of Europe and confront China at the same time, this will necessitate a significant reshaping of the strategic environment. This unease is pronounced among both experts and the public; as seen in the recent increase in publications on European strategic autonomy (see here, here, here, here, and here for example) and opinion polls. These concerns haven’t been alleviated by Joe Biden’s election.
That the US is no longer the hegemon doesn’t mean it won’t be an important actor for a long time to come, although history shows economic and military prominence can collapse relatively quickly. However, America remains rich and powerful with enormous economic, military, and social capital. But its loss of capacity to shape world events, deliver security and democracy, and determine the global order is on show on Ukraine’s borders, and in the Black and Azov Seas, Venezuela, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, Yemen, and Tigray, where its influence is marginal.
Most tellingly has been the inability of the US to take a multilateral leadership role over the illegal Israeli actions against Gaza, which will set back Middle East politics a generation, or to resolve the egregious human rights abuses and destruction of democracy in Myanmar, a part of the ASEAN purported to be at the centre of the US’s Indo-Pacific strategy. Multilateralism, democracy, and human rights are the banners of the Biden Administration.
The understanding of hegemony put forward by Clark, Florig, and Mazarr effectively excludes a succession of hegemony to China.
Certainly China aims for international pre-eminence and seeks the diminution of America’s dominant role in world affairs. Many of the norms, values and institutions America has spread will outlast its hegemony. Even where China’s ambition to succeed it, which it’s not, the US would be capable of stifling its prospects.
The waning of a hegemony is an unpredictably complex matter and it presents new and difficult foreign policy challenges.
There is a cognitive dissonance about the power shift in the current US Administration, and a sense that replicating past actions and behaviors will restore the former situation.
A mistaken belief that the hegemony can be rehabilitated and that legitimacy can be regained.
Cleaving too close to America will find Australia in awkward or irretrievable positions.
The state capitalist model might out compete, or at least match, the US in technology, trade, and investment across the globe. Not only the Europeans, but nations generally will act in the interests of their own populations and seek benefits from great powers opportunistically in the absence of a hegemon.
Increasingly Australia will have to navigate a world where there are multiple versions of events and differences over right and wrong, and where states will line up in accord with their interests as they interpret them. The decisive great power actor(s) in any situation will be context specific. The delineation of spheres of influence and shifting balance of power arrangements among powers will require Australia to be nimble, smart, and independent.
A hegemon free environment will be more fluid and offer more chances for middle powers to play-off great powers and engage in temporary alliances to advantage.
It’s about time Australia lifted it’s vision and saw the bigger picture.
What’s the worst that could happen?
And there is the effort to “contain” China using Australia and NGO efforts…
And so we have this article. Written on May 9, 2021, Found HERE, and all the regular disclaimers apply.
Tensions between Washington and Beijing are not merely the recent results of former US President Donald Trump’s time in office – but rather just the latest chapter in US efforts to contain China that stretch back decades.
Indeed, US foreign policy has for decades admittedly aimed at encircling and containing China’s rise and maintaining primacy over the Indo-Pacific region.
The “Pentagon Papers” leaked in 1969 would admit in regards to the ongoing US war against Vietnam that:
…the February decision to bomb North Vietnam and the July approval of Phase I deployments make sense only if they are in support of a long-run United States policy to contain China.
The papers also admitted that China, “looms as a major power threatening to undercut [American] importance and effectiveness in the world and, more remotely but more menacingly, to organize all of Asia against [America].
The papers also made it clear that there were (and still are), “three fronts to a long-run effort to contain China: (a) the Japan-Korea front; (b) the India-Pakistan front; and (c) the Southeast Asia front.”
Since then, it is clear that from the continued US military presence in both Japan and South Korea, the now two decades-long US occupation of Afghanistan on both Pakistan’s and China’s borders, and the emergence of the so-called “Milk Tea Alliance” aimed at overthrowing Southeast Asian governments friendly with China and replacing them with US-backed client regimes – this policy to contain China endures up to today.
Assessing US activity along these three fronts reveals the progress and setbacks Washington faces – and various dangers to global peace and stability Washington’s continued belligerence pose.
The Japan-Korea Front
Military.com in their article, “Here’s What It Costs to Keep US Troops in Japan and South Korea,” reports:
In all, more than 80,000 U.S. troops are deployed to Japan and South Korea. In Japan alone, the U.S. maintains more than 55,000 deployed troops — the largest forward-deployed U.S. force anywhere in the world.
The article notes that according to the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), the US spent “$34 billion to maintain military presences in Japan and South Korea between 2016 and 2019.”
The article cites the GAO providing an explanation as to why this massive US military presence is maintained in East Asia:
“…U.S. forces help strengthen alliances, promote a free and open Indo-Pacific region, provide quick response to emergencies and are essential for U.S. national security.”
“Alliances” that are “strengthened” by the physical presence of what are essentially occupying US forces suggests the “alliance” is hardly voluntary and claims of promoting a “free and open Indo-Pacific region” is highly subjective – begging the question of to whom the Indo-Pacific is “free and open” to.
And as US power wanes both regionally in the Indo-Pacific as well as globally, Washington has placed increasing pressure on both Japan and South Korea to not only help shoulder this financial burden, but to also become more proactive within Washington’s containment strategy toward China.
Japan is one of three other nations (the US itself, Australia, and India) drafted into the US-led Quadrilateral Security Dialogue – also know as the “Quad.”
Rather than the US solely depending on its own military forces based within Japanese territory or supported by its Japan-based forces, Japan’s military along with India’s and Australia’s are also being recruited to take part in military exercises and operations in and around the South China Sea.
India’s inclusion in the Quad also fits well into the US 3-front strategy that made up Washington’s containment policy toward China as early as the 1960s.
The India-Pakistan Front
In addition to recruiting India into the Quad alliance, the US helps encourage escalation through political support and media campaigning of India’s various territorial disputes with China.
The US also targets Pakistan’s close and ongoing relationship with China – including the support of armed insurgents in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.
Recently, a bombing at a hotel in Quetta, Baluchistan appears to have targeted China’s ambassador to Pakistan, Ambassador Nong Rong.
The BBC in its article, “Pakistan hotel bomb: Deadly blast hits luxury venue in Quetta,” would claim:
Initial reports had suggested the target was China’s ambassador. Ambassador Nong Rong is understood to be in Quetta but was not present at the hotel at the time of the attack on Wednesday.
The article also noted:
Balochistan province, near the Afghan border, is home to several armed groups, including separatists. Separatists in the region want independence from the rest of Pakistan and accuse the government and China of exploiting Balochistan, one of Pakistan’s poorest provinces, for its gas and mineral wealth.
Absent from the BBC’s reporting is the extensive and open support the US government has provided these separatists over the years and how – clearly – this is more than just a local uprising against perceived injustice, but yet another example of armed conflict-by-proxy waged by Washington against China.
As far back as 2011 publications like The National Interest in articles like, “Free Baluchistan” would openly advocate expanding US support for separatism in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.
The article was written by the late Selig Harrison – who was a senior fellow at the US-based corporate-financier funded Center for International Policy – and would claim:
Pakistan has given China a base at Gwadar in the heart of Baluch territory. So an independent Baluchistan would serve U.S. strategic interests in addition to the immediate goal of countering Islamist forces.
Of course, “Islamist forces” is a euphemism for US-Persian Gulf state sponsored militants used to both fight Western proxy wars as well as serve as a pretext for Western intervention. Citing “Islamist forces” in Baluchistan, Pakistan clearly serves as an example of the latter.
In addition to op-eds published by influential policy think tanks, US legislators like US Representative Dana Rohrabacher had proposed resolutions such as (emphasis added), “US House of Representatives Concurrent Resolution 104 (112th): Expressing the sense of Congress that the people of Baluchistan, currently divided between Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan, have the right to self-determination and to their own sovereign country.”
There is also funding provided to adjacent, political groups supporting separatism in Baluchistan, Pakistan as listed by the US government’s own National Endowment for Democracy (NED) website under “Pakistan.” Organizations like the “Association for Integrated Development Balochistan” are funded by the US government and used to mobilize people politically, constituting clear interference by the US in Pakistan’s internal political affairs.
The Gwadar Port project is a key juncture within China’s growing global network of infrastructure projects as part of its One Belt, One Road initiative. The US clearly opposes China’s rise and has articulated robust strategies to counter it; everything up to and including open war as seen in the Pentagon Papers regarding the Vietnam War.
The recent bombing in Baluchistan, Pakistan demonstrates that this strategy continues in regards to utilizing local militants to target Chinese-Pakistani cooperation and is one part of the much wider, region-wide strategy of encircling and containing China.
The Southeast Asia Front
Of course the US war against Vietnam was part of a wider effort to reassert Western primacy over Southeast Asia and deny the region from fueling China’s inevitable rise.
The US having lost the war and almost completely retreating from the Southeast Asia region saw Southeast Asia itself repair relations amongst themselves and with China.
Today, the nations of Southeast Asia count China as their largest trade partner, investor, a key partner in infrastructure development, a key supplier for the region’s armed forces, as well as providing the majority of tourism arrivals throughout the region. For countries like Thailand, more tourists arrive from China than from all Western nations combined.
Because existing governments in Southeast Asia have nothing to benefit from by participating in American belligerence toward China, the US has found it necessary to cultivate and attempt to install into power various client regimes. This has been an ongoing process since the Vietnam War.
The US has targeted each nation individually for years. In 2009 and 2010, US-backed opposition leader-in-exile Thaksin Shinawatra deployed his “red shirt” protesters in back-to-back riots – the latter of which included some 300 armed militants and culminated in city-wide arson across Bangkok and the death of over 90 police, soldiers, protesters, and bystanders.
In 2018, US-backed opposition groups took power in Malaysia after the US poured millions of dollars for over a decade in building up the opposition.
Daniel Twining of the US National Endowment for Democracy subsidiary – the International Republican Institute – admitted during a talk (starting at 56 minutes) by the Center for Strategic and International Studies that same year that:
… for 15 years working with NED resources, we worked to strengthen Malaysian opposition parties and guess what happened two months ago after 61 years? They won.
He would elaborate on how the NED’s network played a direct role in placing US-backed opposition figures into power within the Malaysian government, stating:
I visited and I was sitting there with many of the leaders the new leaders of this government, many of whom were just our partners we had been working with for 15 years and one of the most senior of them who’s now one of the people running the government said to me, ‘gosh IRI you never gave up on us even when we were ready to give up on ourselves.’
Far from “promoting freedom” in Malaysia – Twining would make clear the ultimate objective of interfering in Malaysia’s internal political affairs was to serve US interests not only in regards to Malaysia, but in regards to the entire region and specifically toward encircling and containing China.
Twining would boast:
…guess what one of the first steps the new government took? It froze Chinese infrastructure investments.
And that:
[Malaysia] is not a hugely pro-American country. It’s probably never going to be an actual US ally, but this is going to redound to our benefit, and and that’s an example of the long game.
It is a pattern that has repeated itself in Myanmar over the decades with NED money building a parallel political system within the nation and eventually leading to Aung San Suu Kyi and her US-backed National League for Democracy (NLD) party taking power in 2016.
For Myanmar, so deep and extensive is US backing for opposition groups there that elections virtually guarantee US-backed candidates win every single time. The US National Endowment for Democracy’s own website alone lists over 80 programs and organizations receiving US government money for everything from election polling and building up political parties, to funding media networks and “environmental” groups used to block Chinese-initiated infrastructure projects
The move by Myanmar’s military in February this year, ousting Aung Sang Suu Kyi and the NLD was meant to correct this.
However, in addition to backing political groups protesting in the streets, the US has – for many decades – backed and armed ethnic rebels across the country. These rebels have now linked up with the US-backed NLD and are repeating US-backed regime change tactics used against the Arab World in 2011 in nations like Libya, Yemen, and Syria – including explicit calls for “international intervention.”
Watch the following clip from CSIS panel discussion where DC policy operatives admit how the US use ‘democracy promotion’ front organizations like the NED and USAID in order to meddle and gain covert influence over politics in key strategic countries like Malaysia:
A US-Engineered “Asia Spring”
Just as the US did during the 2011 “Arab Spring” – the US State Department, in a bid to create synergies across various regime change campaigns in Asia, has introduced the “Milk Tea Alliance” to transform individual US-backed regime change efforts in Asia into a region-wide crisis.
The BBC itself admits in articles like, “Milk Tea Alliance: Twitter creates emoji for pro-democracy activists,” that:
The alliance has brought together anti-Beijing protesters in Hong Kong and Taiwan with pro-democracy campaigners in Thailand and Myanmar.
Omitted from the BBC’s coverage of the “Milk Tea Alliance” (intentionally) is the actual common denominators that unite it – US funding through fronts like the National Endowment for Democracy and a unifying hatred of China based exclusively on talking points pushed by the US State Department itself.
Circling back to the Pentagon Papers and recalling the coordinated, regional campaign the US sought to encircle China with – we can then look at more recent US government policy papers like the “Indo-Pacific Framework” published in the White House archives from the Trump administration.
The policy paper’s first bullet point asks:
How to maintain US strategic primacy in the Indo-Pacific region and promote a liberal economic order while preventing China from establishing new, illiberal spheres of influence, and cultivating areas of cooperation to promote regional peace and prosperity?
The paper also discusses information campaigns designed to “educate” the world about “China’s coercive behaviour and influence operations around the globe.” These campaigns have materialized in a propaganda war fabricating accusations of “Chinese genocide” in Xinjiang, China, claims that Chinese telecom company Huawei is a global security threat, and that China – not the US – is the single largest threat to global peace and stability today.
In reality US policy aimed at encircling China is predicated upon Washington’s desire to continue its own decades-long impunity upon the global stage and the continuation of all the wars, humanitarian crises, and abuses that have stemmed from it.
Understanding the full scope of Washington’s “competition” with China helps unlock the confusion surrounding unfolding individual crises like the trade war, the ongoing violence and turmoil in Myanmar, bombings in southwest Pakistan, students mobs in Thailand, riots in Hong Kong, and attempts by the US to transform the South China Sea into an international conflict.
Understanding that these events are all connected – then assessing the success or failure of US efforts gives us a clearer picture of the overall success Washington in encircling China. It also gives governments and regional blocs a clearer picture of how to manage policy in protecting against US subversion that threatens national, regional, and global peace and stability.
And inside of the United States what do the sheeple think?
Indeed, the rest of the world is starting to put it’s collective feet down, and they are turning to the combined might of Russia and China which now together is a massive and formidable force to put America in it’s place.
But the dumb-asses don’t quite get it.
They are that fucking stupid.
Of course, Joe and Suzy average in the United States know none of this. They are all lost in some kind of Twilight Zone adventure that they are living. But as the United States thrashes about, certainly the people; the citizenry must be aware of what is going on. Right?
It’s difficult to tell from what constitutes “news” these days…
They keep telling us that economic conditions are improving, but if that is true why are the shortages worse than ever?
For a moment, I would like to take you all the way back to 2019.
Before the pandemic came along, we didn’t have any shortages.
If you wanted something, you just went to the store and got it or you ordered it online. Prices were low, global supply chains were functioning smoothly, and to most people it seemed like it would stay that way for the foreseeable future.
But then the pandemic hit, and “panic buying” caused short-term shortages of certain items such as toilet paper and hand sanitizer.
It was understandable that people would want to hoard those things, because there was a lot of fear in the air. But we also knew that those shortages were only going to be temporary.
Now here we are in 2021, and we were told that things would be getting back to normal by now.
But instead, there are severe shortages everywhere around us.
In fact, the shortages are far worse than anything that we experienced in 2020.
For example, did you know that dozens of important drugs are in short supply?
According to the official FDA website, there are shortages of more than 100 drugs in the United States right now…
Right now there are currently about 120 drugs listed as having a shortage.
On the website, if you type in a drug name in the database search field you can see if and why it’s in short supply. You can also see whether it is scheduled to be discontinued, and when the supply may start flowing again.
“Builders are delaying starting new construction because of the marked increase in costs for lumber and other inputs,” said Mike Fratantoni, senior vice president and chief economist with the Mortgage Bankers Association, in a report Tuesday.
He added that supply shortages for appliances are also putting a damper on new home building activity.
Just over our northern border, the shortages have gotten really severe. In some cases, the construction of homes “is months behind schedule” because the shortages have gotten so bad…
Home builders across Canada are getting hit by a string of supply-chain disruptions, resulting in widespread product shortages and explosive costs for the industry.
In some cases, home construction is months behind schedule as developers struggle to source everything from lumber to PVC pipes, insulation to windows. Builders are also holding back on presales, unable to accurately price their homes too far in advance, given that material costs can fluctuate wildly on a daily basis.
“The whole supply chain is out of whack,” said Matt McCurrach, president of Homex Development Corp. in Kamloops, B.C.
“It’s getting worse and worse every day,” added Sue Wastell, president of Wastell Homes in London, Ont. “Literally every day, we’re finding out something else is not arriving when it was scheduled to. … We’ve never seen anything like this.”
Of even greater concern is the global shortage of computer chips.
Just about every industry that you can name is extremely dependent on equipment that uses computer chips, and CNN is telling us that this shortage “is going from bad to worse”…
The shortage is going from bad to worse, spreading from cars to consumer electronics. With the bulk of chip production concentrated in a handful of suppliers, analysts warn that the crunch is likely to last through 2021.
According to Goldman Sachs, 169 US industries embed semiconductors in their products. The bank is forecasting a 20% average shortfall of computer chips among affected industries, with some of the components used to make chips in short supply until at least this fall and possibly into 2022.
Actually, as I pointed out the other day, many executives now expect the computer chip shortage to extend into 2023.
For automakers, this is rapidly becoming a complete and total nightmare.
During the first quarter, global auto production was down by about 10 percent due to the chip shortage, but Ford has announced that production in the second quarter will be down by about 50 percent…
Investors have heard plenty about the current state of capacity problems for months. Roughly 2 million cars—or about 10% of quarterly global automotive production—weren’t built in the first quarter because of no chips. Ford Motor (ticker: F), one of the auto makers feeling the shortage most acutely, said in late April that it expects to lose about 50% of planned second-quarter production.
A 50 percent decline in production?
That is nuts!
If automakers can’t make vehicles, then they will have to start laying off workers.
Unfortunately, that is precisely what just happened at one factory in northern Illinois…
Some 1,600 jobs are being cut at a Jeep Cherokee factory in northern Illinois as automakers continue being plagued by the global shortage of semiconductors.
The U.S. arm of Stellantis, formerly known as Fiat Chrysler, said Friday it was cutting one of the two work shifts at its Belvidere Assembly Plant as of July 26. That could result in the layoffs of 1,641 workers, company spokeswoman Jodi Tinson said.
The economic optimists keep telling us that better days are right around the corner, but those better days never seem to materialize.
Instead, employment is still way below pre-pandemic levels, global supply chains are in a state of complete and utter chaos, and we are facing severe shortages of just about everything…
Copper, iron ore and steel. Corn, coffee, wheat and soybeans. Lumber, semiconductors, plastic and cardboard for packaging. The world is seemingly low on all of it. “You name it, and we have a shortage on it,” Tom Linebarger, chairman and chief executive of engine and generator manufacturer Cummins Inc., said on a call this month. Clients are “trying to get everything they can because they see high demand,” Jennifer Rumsey, the Columbus, Indiana-based company’s president, said. “They think it’s going to extend into next year.”
The difference between the big crunch of 2021 and past supply disruptions is the sheer magnitude of it, and the fact that there is — as far as anyone can tell — no clear end in sight. Big or small, few businesses are spared. Europe’s largest fleet of trucks, Girteka Logistics, says there’s been a struggle to find enough capacity. Monster Beverage Corp. of Corona, California, is dealing with an aluminum can scarcity. Hong Kong’s MOMAX Technology Ltd. is delaying production of a new product because of a dearth of semiconductors.
In my entire lifetime, I have never seen such widespread shortages.
Those that are running things keep insisting that they have everything totally under control and that things will eventually get back to normal.
You can believe them if you want, but millions of others are preparing for a future in which their optimistic assessments of the future turn out to be very, very wrong.
Do You Get The Feeling That Events Happening Now Are Leading Us Into An Endless Global Nightmare?
2021 was supposed to be the year that life went back to normal.
Obviously that is not happening, and so a lot of prominent voices out there are going to be forced to update their narratives.
Global events have really started to accelerate, and so many of the things that the “doom and gloomers” have been warning about are starting to happen right in front of our eyes.
For example, on my websites I have been talking about Israel a lot in recent months, and now it appears that the region is on the brink of war.
So far, more than 700 rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza, but by the time you read this article that number will probably be even higher. In response, the IDF has conducted a series of dramatic strikes inside Gaza, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is promising “to attack harder and increase the pace of attacks”…
‘Hamas will be hit in ways that it does not expect,’ Netanyahu said. ‘We have eliminated commanders, hit many important targets and we have decided to attack harder and increase the pace of attacks.’
Joe Biden and other world leaders are begging for peace, but neither side appears to be inclined to back down.
Every time Israel retaliates, Hamas just launches even more rockets at Israeli cities, and they are insisting that this is their “right”…
“We have the right to respond to the Israeli offensive and protect the interests of our people as long as the Israeli occupation continues the escalation,” Hamas said in a statement.
So here we go.
As I discussed yesterday, this situation has the potential to get wildly out of control very rapidly.
If that was happening in this country, millions of Americans would be screaming for Biden to nuke somebody.
Meanwhile, the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack has caused massive gasoline shortages up and down the east coast of the United States. On Tuesday evening, the Drudge Report breathlessly declared that more than 1,000 gas stations had run out of gasoline, and Zero Hedge was reporting that some people were waiting in line for up to five hours in a desperate attempt to fill up their vehicles.
Up until recently, just about the only thing that we were missing from the economy of the 1970s was the long gas lines, but now here we are.
North America’s largest petroleum pipeline has been shut down for just a few days, and now much of the southeastern quadrant of the country is absolutely paralyzed.
Do you think that there is a lesson to be learned here?
Of course there is. Once again we see how incredibly vulnerable we are to any sort of a major disruption. If the unprecedented power grid failure in Texas a few months ago was not enough of a wake up call for you, this definitely should be.
At this point, we are being told it is uncertain whether or not the Colonial Pipeline will be able to restore operations by this weekend…
If the Colonial Pipeline is not back in business by the weekend, prices could continue to rise at the pump and there will be broader localized fuel shortages across the southeast and mid-Atlantic regions.
Eventually, the flow of gasoline will be restored and everyone along the east coast will be able to fill up their vehicles again.
But the crazy inflation that we are witnessing right is not going to go away.
For years, economic “doom and gloomers” have been warning that if we kept recklessly creating, borrowing and spending money that really bad things would happen.
How many times have we heard about “the death of the dollar” and the dangers of wildly inflating our currency?
Well, it turns out that the “doom and gloomers” were dead on accurate. Inflation is one of the biggest stories of 2021 so far, and we just got another confirmation of how bad things are getting out there…
The median price for a single-family home in the U.S. rose the most on record in the first quarter, as buyers fought over a dearth of inventory, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Prices jumped 16.2% from a year earlier to a record high of $319,200. The growth eclipsed the 14.8% rate in the fourth quarter, which was the highest in data going back to 1989, the group said in a report Tuesday.
But at least home prices are not rising as fast as the price of cotton is.
If you can believe it, the price of cotton is up more than 50 percent over the past year.
Of course the price of corn is rising even more rapidly. As I discussed the other day, the price of corn is up about 50 percent just since the turn of the year.
Needless to say, lumber still has everyone else beat. The price of lumber has actually risen more than 200 percent over the past 12 months.
A lot of comparisons have been made to the horrible inflation that the U.S. experienced during the 1970s, but really I think that we need to go all the way back to the 1930s for a more accurate parallel to our current situation.
At this point, we are becoming more like the Weimar Republic with each passing day.
Everywhere you look, systems are failing, society is crumbling and evil is growing. Even the Secret Service, who are supposed to be the best of the best, are now plagued by endless scandals and widespread incompetence.
This is not a drill. A widespread societal collapse is now underway, and it is going to get progressively worse.
This is the time of our endless nightmare, but nobody is going to ever be allowed to wake up from it.
It Took Just A Couple Of Days For Madness To Descend Upon America Once Gas Shortages Began
Did you react calmly when you learned that a cyberattack against one of our most important pipelines was causing thousands of gas stations to run out of gasoline?
Sadly, lots of Americans didn’t.
There was yelling, there was screaming, there was lots of hoarding, vehicles were waiting in line for hours at stations that still had gas, and there were reports that brawls were even breaking out between frustrated motorists.
Even though we knew that the shortages were just going to be temporary, people were “panic buying” gasoline as if the apocalypse had arrived.
“This is the worst panic buying for gasoline since the Carter Administration,” said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service.
Kloza said outages at more than 10,000 gas stations are spreading “like a bad rash” on the East Coast. Much of the problem is people are buying gasoline at twice the normal rate in the Florida peninsula, as well as in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
For some individuals, just filling up their tanks with gasoline was not enough. Motorists began to fill up any containers that they had on hand with gasoline, and some of the things we witnessed were incredibly stupid. For example, you should never, ever try to fill up plastic bags with gasoline.
I know that sounds obvious, but apparently so many people were doing this that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission felt that it had to send out a tweet telling people to stop.
The more gas stations that ran dry, the worse the panic buying frenzy became.
In certain major cities, nearly all of the gas stations have run dry. Just check out these numbers…
The supply crunch appears to be much worse in some major metro areas. GasBuddy reported outages Wednesday morning impacting 71% of the stations in metro Charlotte, nearly 60% in Atlanta, 72% in Raleigh and 73% in Pensacola.
All of this happened because a single pipeline got shut down by a cyberattack.
The Colonial Pipeline is 5,500 miles long, and it supples approximately half of the gasoline for the east coast. On Wednesday evening, the company finally announced that operations were restarting, but they warned that it is going to take several days for things to “return to normal”…
Colonial Pipeline initiated the restart of pipeline operations today at approximately 5 p.m. ET.
Following this restart, it will take several days for the product delivery supply chain to return to normal. Some markets served by Colonial Pipeline may experience, or continue to experience, intermittent service interruptions during the start-up period. Colonial will move as much gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel as is safely possible and will continue to do so until markets return to normal.
But something doesn’t add up here. The pipeline is being restarted, but the company has announced that it has absolutely no plans to pay the ransom to the hackers…
Colonial Pipeline reportedly has no plans to pay rumored $5 million-plus ransom to Russian hackers who have paralyzed the key gas pipeline, as President Joe Biden vows to get the fuel crisis ‘under control’ with pressure mounting on his administration to do more.
Do the hackers no longer pose a threat to the pipeline?
I don’t understand.
Either the pipeline never needed to be shut down in the first place, or the hackers are still in a position to cause major damage if they carry through on their threats.
Someone needs to explain which of those alternatives is true.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer says Enbridge Inc. has until Wednesday to shut a huge crude pipeline that crosses the Great Lakes. The Canadian company says it’s got the law on its side, and the oil will keep flowing.
The standoff is the latest milepost in the increasingly tense dispute over Line 5, a 540,000 barrel-a-day line that supplies half of the oil and propane used by parts of the U.S. Midwest and Ontario.
Is she crazy?
Needless to say, we have had the answer to that question for quite some time.
But what she is trying to do now is beyond insane. Why in the world would anyone try to shut down a pipeline when there are gas shortages happening all over the country?
Whitmer argues the pipeline, built in 1953, is too exposed to potential accidents where it crosses at the Straits of Mackinac in the northern part of the state. But the two sides are in a court-ordered mediation, and Enbridge plans to keep the line running while that plays out — prompting Whitmer to threaten to sue to take any profits it makes.
Are you kidding me?
She could have waited until this current crisis has passed, but Whitmer has decided that action must be taken immediately before any “potential accidents” are allowed to happen.
Is Whitmer really this incompetent, or is another agenda at work?
We really don’t know what is going on behind the scenes. We are told that a “ransomware gang” attacked the Colonial Pipeline, but it actually could have been anyone.
It could have been terrorists, it could have been another county, it could have been an attack from inside our own country, or it could have been the work of some smelly overweight guy chomping down Oreo cookies in his mother’s basement.
We just don’t know.
But this just shows us how deeply vulnerable we are.
If disrupting a single pipeline for just a few days can cause this much chaos, what in the world is going to happen when we are facing multiple long-term national emergencies?
To me, this is another major league wake up call.
Global events are starting to spiral out of control, our enemies know where our weak spots are, and this crisis has once again shown how easy it is to push American citizens into a state of utter madness.
What does all this mean?
Here’s my MM executive summary.
The United States is a corrupt oligarchy-ruled military empire.
Those at the functional leadership level are impotent at a number of levels.
The entire government mechanism is careening out of control.
Other nations are observing this.
The USA solution to domestic unrest is to engage in a major war.
Russia, and China have established “red lines” that are fixed and which will result in terrible consequences if crossed.
America is prepping for a major war anyways.
If you were Russia or China, what would you do? I argue that much of what they are doing is not being publicized, and are hidden from most people. And common sense dictates that proper thought and careful measures be taken.
Work at a frenzied pace to fortify all defensive measures. Militarily, socially, electronically, technologically, and politically.
Put military leadership in both command centers, and work together.
Test your offensive and defensive capabilities.
But what else?
Strengthen and enlarge intel collection operations.
Enlarge and expand black operations targeting regional threats.
Prepare a “first strike” doomsday plan.
And as far as the sheeple inside of America, what is going on?
Keep them ignorant.
Have them “chasing their tail” regarding vaccinations, politics, and social re-engineering.
Create a frenzy of hate towards both China and Russia so that many Americans want to go to war.
Make life difficult for Americans so that they will get very angry.
Provide a scapegoat of China / Russia to blame all the discomfort upon.
Meanwhile inflation is starting to eat everything, and prices are rising.
The trade war has been a fiasco for American industry and the American consumer.
Unemployment levels already high are going to increase.
Now, with all that being stated on the global politics side of things, let’s take a look at this article…
…because there is a “wild card” at play here that is not being reported.
Several years ago, one thing became clear — that if Keshe technology was real, the world would change, and hydrocarbons would be a thing of the past as fuel, and that our world economy, an energy slave economy, was dead. It goes further.
What Is Keshe Plasma Technology?
Keshe plasma technology gives us access to the uncontrollable open source technology that builds our universe, and is transforming our lives.
Click to download KESHE_TECH_SUMMARY_v10.pdf
Governments, the US, Israel and Britain, have been contacted about “sharing” technology that would, if Keshe is right, make the planes, missiles and even the billion dollar cradle to grave surveillance nightmare useless.
Now we can share what we do know, the basis for Keshe theory.
For the Keshe machines…
… for Keshe’s irritating language of “magravs” and “plasma” is very real.
His “crap” actually makes electricity “out of thin air” just like he said and, if that is true…
… and it is…
… then the whole thing is going to burn to the ground, the whole sick mess.
As of today, we can categorically state that Keshe tech is very real, that physics we are taught in school, physics the US publicly espouses as valid, is not.
We had known that several major aerospace companies were involved in projects, not only outside conventional science but much further, including time travel, thought inducement and deep space exploration, all using capabilities beyond conventional reality.
We now know that though it all may not be true, much of it is now “probably” true and some of the “impossible” is certainly true.
We begin:
Iranian nuclear physicist and peace activist, Mehran Keshe, has officially announced that it was his technology that brought down an American RQ170 Sentinel drone over Iran and disabled the AEGIS destroyer, the USS Donald Cook, in the Black Sea.
The US has given no plausible explanation for the downing of the RQ 170:
We have, during the past few weeks, been able to verify that Keshe energy units do actually work. We had test results from other sources, but we did our own:
Veterans Today began investigating Mehran Keshe several years ago.
Some of this story we have told before, so please be patient.
Keeping it short as possible, I assigned Colonel Hanke, who works with DARPA on energy projects, along with Mike Harris, to work with the Keshe group.
Then I sent Dr. Riccardo Maggiore of MIT to visit Keshe in Italy.
We then went further and there was a good reason.
Iran had captured an American RQ170 stealth drone, something impossible.
Moreover, Keshe had two groups of painfully inept detractors, a pair of cabals from the “free energy community,” a group that makes the new “truther” groups seem impressive. For those unaware, there is a huge online community of fraudsters who haunt the anti-vacc and natural medicine websites.
To learn about these folks, simply google “keshe” and you can list them.
One in Morocco was picked up and questioned last week about missing children and another, in Belgium (and Netherlands, depending on day of the week) showed up on an INTERPOL notice tied to a “trafficking and slavery” complaint.
Our partnerships with ECIPS, DESI and Center for Counter Terrorism have been very useful. They have given us full access to agencies across Europe. This has been a nasty business with some very nasty people and, quite frankly, dealing with this kind of thing is child’s play for the VT gang.
Where my notice was tweaked was when MI 6 started to trip over themselves in their usual delightfully “oh so British” fashion, as Michael Shrimpton puts it.
We knew this…
Keshe had worked in Iran with a massive budget on projects unrelated to anything arms inspectors have looked at.
Keshe doesn’t do missiles or bombs.
We also know that China has taken a strong interest in Keshe.
Our concern is how China is volunteering to throw endless funding to move Keshe medical and “other” tech from the “imaginary physics” stage to operation.
Either we all trust China, something I am not totally averse to doing, or begin playing with governments we long ago discovered can’t be trusted.
There is no easy way out of this.
Trust China/Iran/Russia or Trust America
Let’s move on to something less dark, something more fun to talk about, and I will turn this over to Ian Greenhalgh:
We suspect that the Keshe technology is…
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[1] The result of reverse-engineering Alien hardware;
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We further suspect that…
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[2] The Iranians found this hardware during archaeological exploration and it is millenia old.
Sharing this technology with Russia may have been a case of Iran lacking the resources to reverse-engineer whatever they found and the Russians are the acknowledged experts at reverse-engineering.
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Sources indicate that Gordon Duff had been briefed on ancient “technology dumps” in both Iran and Ukraine but he is unwilling to discuss this.
A little over two years ago, Preston James wrote an article that seems almost prescient in light of recent intelligence:
Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to be walking with a prideful swagger in his step lately.
“Unsubstantiated rumors have been seeping out of deep contacts inside Russian Space Command the last few weeks that, not only does the new Putin’s Russia have a well developed Secret Space war Program, but that this Program provides substantial ultra-high-tech back-engineered offensive and defensive weaponry.
And that such advanced weaponry can and will be deployed if Israel is able to once again deploy their hijacked American War Machine to start another Proxy War, this time in the Ukraine against Putin’s New Russia.”
This advanced weaponry appears to have been deployed against the USS Sitting Duck in the Black Sea, an event that sent very real shivers down the spines of American and Israeli military and political leaders (if they possess spines, that is). Preston goes on to ask:
“Do Russians now have access to Space War Weapons based on back-engineered Alien ET technology gained through a new treaty negotiated between Putin and a certain group of Alien ETs who are enemies of the group controlling the World Zionists (WZs) and the International Zionist Crime Syndicate (IZCS)?”
The answer to this appears to be a definite ‘maybe’;
It would certainly explain why Russia has stood firm against the Zionists and the criminal operations in Ukraine and Syria, despite wide-ranging sanctions that, despite denials, have undoubtedly damaged their economy and the ruble and an ever-growing belligerence on the part of certain figures in NATO such as Gen. Breedlove. In short, maybe Putin is standing up to the criminals because someone does have his back.
Preston also made a good guess at what some of the offensive weapons that have resulted from back-engineering might be:
The actual state of back-engineered Alien ET technology for Russian weapons systems is not known by American Intel at this time.
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But estimates are constructed using advanced algorithms on advanced computers to make estimates.
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And the latest version of the Russian Sunburn Missile System is a good example of an advanced weapons system that can be used to project what could be considered a fairly good estimate of the current state of Russian Secret Space war weaponry that has been deployed.
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Some military technology experts believe that the Sunburn is based on Alien ET back-engineered technology.
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Why would they think this?
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Because the latest versions of the Sunburn are believed to have hiving capability and the ability to travel at speeds up to 7,000 to 9,000 miles per hour.
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That is a lot more than the officially released figures of Mach 2.1.
“Hiving” is the ability of these missiles when launched in mass to remain in constant communication with one another on special scrambled frequencies which constantly change.
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If one or more Sunburn missile is shot down or interfered with, the rest adjust in response to the threat, re-target, and resort to random defensive maneuvers to make sure every target is still covered and attacked by priority of importance. .
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Some of these maneuvers are so gravity-defying, it is suspected that anti-gravity technology has been utilized in the latest model of the Sunburn missiles.
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It is also suspected that new anti-matter light and time warping technologies are used to provide advanced “cloaking” for these Sunburns.
If these rumors are even close to accurate it means that any USN ships within range of these Sunburns (which may be substantially greater than the claimed 1200 miles), could be sunk within mere minutes.
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Some experts believe that the USAF (or the USN) has nothing that can adequately respond to the Sunburn.
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Even the Rail guns and high-powered particle beams which have been secretly deployed on some carriers and destroyers and kept under wraps until needed, or on special Space war orbital platforms, cannot respond fast or accurately enough to stop all of a hive of Sunburns that are launched.
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“Now here is the grim truth. No matter how good American Intel has been about the Russian’s Secret Space War Program and the level of advanced back-engineered Alien ET technology, which now has been deployed, it is limited.
And it is unlikely that the full story has been gained by American Intel, due to the various levels of secrecy and “need to know” installed around the Russian’s secret Space War Program.
Of course this kind of layered secrecy has been installed around America’s Secret Space War Program. America’s secret Space War program is unfortunately now run by foreign offshore-controlled, private defense Contractors, most of whom are deeply infiltrated by Israeli Intel, some of whom are actually deep cover spies who report directly to Russian Intel, unbeknownst to the Israelis who are cocky and getting quite careless lately.”
Part Two
Hi, this is Gordon back again. Figure it is spring here, half a foot of snow on the ground, and we are trying to find a way to lead where this will go, where it must go. I have friends in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere without electricity half the time, often without water, and we now know we can produce electricity not quite out of nothing but genuinely free energy.
What is unique about Keshe’s program is its direction.
When he talks about peace, he means it.
You know, what has irritated so many about Iran and China is their unwillingness to, despite their burgeoning military spending, threaten neighbors or build offensive capabilities.
Yes, Iran has missiles but Israel and Saudi Arabia, not the best neighbors for anyone, have nuclear weapons and a reputation for bad behavior.
If Keshe tech can take down an RQ170, what would it do with an F18 or even an F35 as Keshe reminds us in Video 2?
(Video was taken down on you-tube and is no longer available. Which is why I always tell people, set up your own website and install your own videos there, or similar systems.)
The key is going to be, based on the assumption that we are dealing with something real, how we can make this something more than a military game or, worse still and a scenario we are prepared to deal with as best possible, how long do we wait until defense contracting firms and the secret society types move from “trolling” to poisoning or let’s say shooting at Keshe and his wife Carolyn while they are in their car.
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No, wait…
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…that’s already been done.
I am not “at home” around Keshe people but what are “Keshe people?” There is an article out there accusing me and the CIA (funny?) of running the upcoming Keshe “event” later this month. I did, however, review applicants to attend, a list that was carefully screened based on the requirement of the hosting country, one that has very strong policies on things like terrorism and crime.
I found lots of engineers, world experts on nanotechnology, more than a couple, but curiously, oil and chemical company execs who seem to really want to be there.
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What this can be, and maybe what it is, above all things is a way for people to find each other and, without government handouts and permission from the Wizard of Oz, take control of their lives, their future and their way of life.
I don’t see room for what we have learned to recognize as “government” in this scenario. I will cry when the last one is shut down.
So what is the “wild card” and how does it play out?
Well, whether it is this technology or something else, or whether it is reverse engineered or home-gown, or whether it is an invention by a mad scientist does not matter.
What does matter is that there is a very high likelihood that the Chinese / Russians and Iranians are in possession of technologies that the United States / UK, and Israel do not have. This gives them advantage.
As we have seen during the 2020 Naval flotilla fiasco in the South China Sea.
Those that run the United States oligarchy and it’s minions are not technology, nor military people. They are of a different disposition. And they are flailing wildly about. The American people are caught up in a vice and they will be the ones who will pay the prices that these maniac oligarchy generate.
While times are certainly testy, they are never the less, still following the fourth turning predictions.
…
If you can believe this; we are just building up to the event. There is still a couple of years to go yet.
The danger period is approaching; 2023 through 2026, centered around 2025.
Hold on to your britches boys and girls. Dicy times are a coming.
Taking note of “The Fourth Turning” and the Strauss and Howe generational theory of predictive behavior in America, we note that they predicted a Crisis Catalyst in 2005 and a Climax in 2020.
If the Crisis catalyst comes on schedule, around the year 2005, then the climax will be due around 2020, the resolution around 2026. What will America be like as it exits the Fourth Turning? History offers no guarantees. Obviously, things could go horribly wrong—the possibilities ranging from a nuclear exchange to incurable plagues, from terrorist anarchy to high-tech dictatorship. We should not assume that Providence will always exempt our nation from the irreversible tragedies that have overtaken so many others: not just temporary hardship, but debasement and total ruin. Since Vietnam, many Americans suppose they know what it means to lose a war. Losing in the next Fourth Turning, however, could mean something incomparably worse. It could mean a lasting defeat from which our national innocence—and perhaps even our nation—might never recover. As many Americans know from their own ancestral backgrounds, history provides numerous examples of societies that have been wiped off the map, ground into submission, or beaten so badly they revert to barbarism.
Indeed, the dates are close but seem to be off by a few years.
In our case, it appears that the “Crisis catalyst” did not occur in 2005 as predicted. It occurred in 2008 with the Wall Street “too big to fail” debacle.
That is three years later.
What does Mr. Howe say?
Below is a brief essay originally published on 3/11/19 by Neil Howe discussing the typical progression of each “Turning”. It remains more relevant than ever amidst our current zeitgeist. It was written nearly a year before 2020 showed it’s ugly, ugly face.
NH: We live in a tumultuous time in American history.
The 2008 financial crisis and all its hardships, was the catalyst that tipped us into this age of uncertainty. It marked the start of a generation-long era of secular upheaval that will continue to run its course over the next decade or so. This is the generational theory I laid out in “The Fourth Turning,” a book I co-authored with William Strauss in 1997.
The Fourth Turning explains the rise of a figure like President Trump. In Trump’s Inauguration Day speech, he painted a bleak picture of “American carnage,” of “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation” with “mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities.”
Looking abroad, it’s unclear whether America will turn inward and fall prey to nativism or maintain it’s nearly seventy year role as leader of the Free World. Other countries are becoming similarly insular. Britain voted to exit the European Union and we’ve heard anti-E.U. rumblings echoed throughout Europe from France to the Netherlands.
Other nations and peoples around the world are looking to either fill the vacuum in global leadership or exploit it to advance their own ambitions. We’ve seen the thunderous rise of Chinese economic clout, the calculating geopolitical maneuvering of a resurgent Russia, and the barbarous chaos wrought by the so-called Islamic State.
In many ways, this era of uncertainty follows the natural order of things. Like Nature’s four seasons, the cycles of history follow a natural rhythm or pattern. Over the past five centuries, Anglo-American society has entered a new era – a new turning – every two decades or so.
At the start of each turning, people change how they feel about themselves, the culture, the nation, and the future. Turnings come in cycles of four. Each cycle spans the length of a long human life, roughly eighty to one hundred years, or a unit of time the ancients called the saeculum.
The First Turning is called a High.
This is an era when institutions are strong and individualism is weak. Society is confident about where it wants to go collectively, even if those outside the majoritarian center feel stifled by the conformity.
America’s most recent First Turning was the post-World War II American High, beginning in 1946 and ending with the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963, a key lifecycle marker for today’s older Americans.
The Second Turningis an Awakening.
This is an era when institutions are attacked in the name of personal and spiritual autonomy. Just when society is reaching its high tide of public progress, people suddenly tire of social discipline and want to recapture a sense of personal authenticity. Young activists and spiritualists look back at the previous High as an era of cultural poverty.
America’s most recent Awakening was the “Consciousness Revolution,” which spanned from the campus and inner-city revolts of the mid 1960s to the tax revolts of the early ‘80s.
The Third Turning is an Unravelling.
The mood of this era is in many ways the opposite of a High. Institutions are weak and distrusted, while individualism is strong and flourishing. Highs follow Crises, which teach the lesson that society must coalesce and build. Unravelings follow Awakenings, which teach the lesson that society must atomize and enjoy.
America’s most recent Unraveling was the Long Boom and Culture Wars, beginning in the early 1980s and probably ending in 2008. The era opened with triumphant “Morning in America” individualism and drifted toward a pervasive distrust of institutions and leaders, an edgy popular culture, and the splitting of national consensus into competing “values” camps.
And finally we enter the Fourth Turning, which is a Crisis.
This is an era in which America’s institutional life is torn down and rebuilt from the ground up—always in response to a perceived threat to the nation’s very survival. Civic authority revives, cultural expression finds a community purpose, and people begin to locate themselves as members of a larger group.
In every instance, Fourth Turnings have eventually become new “founding moments” in America’s history, refreshing and redefining the national identity. Currently, this period began in 2008, with the Global Financial Crisis and the deepening of the War on Terror, and will extend to around 2030.
If the past is any prelude to what is to come, as we contend, consider the prior Fourth Turning which was kicked off by the stock market crash of 1929 and climaxed with World War II.
Just as a Second Turning reshapes our inner world (of values, culture and religion), a Fourth Turning reshapes our outer world (of politics, economy and empire).
To be clear, the road ahead for America will be rough. But I take comfort in the idea that history cycles back and that the past offers us a guide to what we can expect in the future. Like Nature’s four seasons, the cycles of history follow a natural rhythm or pattern.
Make no mistake. Winter is coming. How mild or harsh it will be is anyone’s guess but the basic progression is as natural as counting down the days, weeks and months until Spring.
Exerpts from the book The Fourth Turning
In 1860-1861 southern states took the Lincoln victory as a de-facto proof that the North would increasingly seek to impose its will upon the south (they were right, but losing the war actually made it happen faster and more completely).
What people generally forget is that all states had large militias that were beholden ONLY to the states, and people had much more belief and legal adherence to the individual states, than now.
Terrorist actions do not start a war, because you cannot really go to war conventionally against terrorism. What happened in the 1860's is that state governments formed a new nation in rebellion.
Personally I don't think the Left or the Right, as a whole, have the balls to do this today. But I guess we'll see. Eventually the threats become real enough that it's hard to ignore them and just hope everything goes back to normal.
-Aerindel, SoJ_51 and Observer
This is straight from the book …
“Something happened to America at that time,” recalled U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye on V-J Day in 1995, the last of the 50-year commemoratives of World War II. “I’m not wise enough to know what it was. But it was the strange, strange power that our founding fathers experienced in those early, uncertain days. Let’s call it the spirit of America, a spirit that united and galvanized our people.” Inouye went on to reflect wistfully on an era when the nation considered no obstacle too big, no challenge too great, no goal too distant, no sacrifice too deep. A half-century later, that old spirit had long since dissipated, and nobody under age 70 remembered what it felt like. When Joe Dawson reenacted his D-Day parachute drop over Normandy, he said he did it “to show our country that there was a time when our nation moved forward as one unit.”
The Eternal Return
On the earthen floors of their rounded hogans, Navajo artists sift colored sand to depict the four seasons of life and time. Their ancestors have been doing this for centuries. They draw these sand circles in a counter-clockwise progression, one quadrant at a time, with decorative icons for the challenges of each age and season. When they near the end of the fourth season, they stop the circle, leaving a small gap just to the right of its top. This signifies the moment of death and rebirth, what the Hellenics called ekpyrosis. By Navajo custom, this moment can be provided (and the circle closed) only by God, never by mortal man. All the artist can do is rub out the painting, in reverse seasonal order, after which a new circle can be begun. Thus, in the Navajo tradition, does seasonal time stage its eternal return.
Like most traditional peoples, the Navaho accept not just the circularity of life, but also its perpetuity. Each generation knows its ancestors have drawn similar circles in the sand—and each expects its heirs to keep drawing them. The Navaho ritually reenact the past while anticipating the future. Thus do they transcend time.
Modern societies too often reject circles for straight lines between starts and finishes. Believers in linear progress, we feel the need to keep moving forward. The more we endeavor to defeat nature, the more profoundly we land at the mercy of its deeper rhythms. Unlike the Navajo, we cannot withstand the temptation to try closing the circle ourselves and in the manner of our own liking. Yet we cannot avoid history’s last quadrant. We cannot avoid the Fourth Turning, nor its ekpyrosis. Whether we welcome him or not, the Gray Champion will command our duty and sacrifice at a moment of Crisis. Whether we prepare wisely or not, we will complete the Millennial Saeculum. The epoch that began with V.J.-Day will reach a natural climax—and come to an end.
An end of what?
The next Fourth Turning could mark the end of man. It could be an omnicidal armageddon, destroying everything, leaving nothing. If mankind ever extinguishes itself, this will probably happen when its dominant civilization triggers a Fourth Turning that ends horribly. But this end, while possible, is not likely. Human life is not so easily extinguishable. One conceit of linear thinking is the confidence that we possess such godlike power that—at the mere push of a button—we can obliterate nature, destroy our own seed, and make ourselves the final generations of our species. Civilized (post-Neolithic) man has endured some 500 generations, prehistoric (fire-using) man perhaps 5,000 generations, Homo Erectus ten times that. For the next Fourth Turning to put an end to all this would require an extremely unlikely blend of social disaster, human malevolence, technological perfection, and bad luck. Only the worst pessimist can imagine that.
The Fourth Turning could mark the end of modernity. The Western saecular rhythm—which began in the mid-fifteenth century with the Renaissance—could come to an abrupt terminus. The seventh modern saeculum would be the last. This too could come from total war, terrible but not final. There could be a complete collapse of science, culture, politics, and society. The “Western Civilization” of Toynbee and the “Faustian Culture” of Spengler would come to the inexorable close their prophesiers foresaw. A new dark ages would settle in, until some new civilization could be cobbled together from the ruins. The cycle of generations would also end, replaced by an ancient cycle of tradition (and fixed social roles for each phase of life) that would not allow progress. As with an omnicide, such a dire result would probably happen only when a dominant nation (like today’s America) lets a Fourth Turning ekpyrosis engulf the planet. But this outcome is well within the reach of foreseeable technology and malevolence.
The Fourth Turning could spare modernity but mark the end of our nation. It could close the book on the political constitution, popular culture, and moral standing that the word America has come to signify. This nation has endured for three saecula; Rome lasted twelve, Etruria ten, the Soviet Union (perhaps) only one. Fourth Turnings are critical thresholds for national survival. Each of the last three American Crises produced moments of extreme danger: In the Revolution, the very birth of the republic hung by a threat in more than one battle. In the Civil War, the union barely survived a four-year slaughter that in its own time was regarded as the most horrible war in history. In World War II, the nation destroyed an enemy of democracy that for a time was winning; had the enemy won, America might have itself been destroyed. In all likelihood, the next Crisis will present the nation with a threat and a consequence on a similar scale.
Or the Fourth Turning could simply mark the end of the Millennial Saeculum. Mankind, modernity, and America would all persevere. Afterward, there would be a new mood, a new High, and a new saeculum. America would be reborn. But, reborn, it would not be the same.
The new saeculum could find America a worse place. As Paul Kennedy has warned, it might no longer be a “great power.” Its global stature might be eclipsed by foreign rivals. Its geography might be smaller, its culture less dominant, its military less effective, its government less democratic, its Constitution less inspiring. Emerging from its millennial chrysalis, it might evoke nothing like the hope and respect of its “American Century” forbear. Abroad, people of goodwill and civilized taste might perceive this society as a newly dangerous place. Or they might see it as decayed, antiquated, an Old New World less central to human progress than we now are. All this is plausible, and possible, in the natural turning of saecular time.
Alternatively, the new saeculum could find America, and the world, a much better place. Like England in the Reformation Saeculum, the Superpower America of the Millennial Saeculum might merely be a prelude to a higher plane of civilization. Its new civic life might more nearly resemble that “shining city on a hill” to which its colonial ancestors aspired. Its ecology might be freshly repaired and newly sustainable, its economy rejuvenated, its politics functional and fair, its media elevated in tone, its culture creative and uplifting, its gender and race relations improved, its commonalities embraced and differences accepted, its institutions free of the corruptions that today seem entrenched beyond correction. People might enjoy new realms of personal, family, community, and national fulfillment. America’s borders might be redrawn around an altered but more cogent geography of public community. Its influence on world peace could be more potent, on world culture more uplifting. All this is achievable as well.
Conclusion
2020 was not the Climax; the Crisis of the Forth Turning in America. That still lies ahead of us.
I hope it never comes to this. In lieu, I can see the Balkinization of the country take place, sides would move to designated areas and set up permanent camp. There may be 2, 3 or more countries within the US before the dust settles.
-Survivalist Boards
A climax is a major event. It is typically marked by full-scale discord and absolute totality of full-scale war. That did not occur in 2020. That is not occurring now.
2020 was marked by a “pandemic”.
It was actually an intentionally released bio-weapon on China to “suppress it”, while unleashing a mild strain on Americans to inoculate them.
Most Americans (through their media) believe that either [1] it is a hoax, or [2] it is a new strain of flu that is sweeping the globe.
It is neither.
It is a bio-weapon attack on China by the neocon Trump administration, lead by John Bolton, gone terribly wrong.
Xi Peng and Putin do not get their intel from Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, and CNN. They get it from their Intel divisions. And both nations have a full picture of what is going on, has gone on and will go on further.
Both nations (China and Russia) filed a formal complaint against the United States for launching this bio-weapon (and all the others that it launched in late 2020). And while Americans ignored this complaint, pretending that it is meaningless, it did do something.
It marked the start of Russia and China teaming up militarily against the United States.
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United States. (With the UK, Canada, Israel, and Australia.) Today there is isolated America. Confused. Arrogant. Thrashing and moaning. Demanding all sorts of things.
The Rest of the World. And the rest of the world, lead by Russia, and China, that are very carefully and very precisely planning to stop all this nonsense once and for all.
Adjusting the dates
“It seems I always underestimate the ability of sociopathic central bankers and their willingness to destroy the lives of hundreds of millions to benefit their oligarch masters. I always underestimate the rampant corruption that permeates Washington DC and the executive suites in mega-corporations across the land. And I always overestimate the intelligence, civic mindedness, and ability to understand math of the ignorant masses that pass for citizens in this country. It seems that issuing trillions of new debt to pay off trillions of bad debt, government sanctioned accounting fraud, mainstream media propaganda, government data manipulation and a populace blinded by mass delusion can stave off the inevitable consequences of an unsustainable economic system.”
-The Burning Platform
Adjusting the Strauss and Howe dates to account for the delay in the catalyst, messes things up a bit.
There is a nice graphic that I composed for your purposes of planning out the next few years. I hope that it is helpful. Adding three years, gives us…
“Crisis catalyst” in 2008.
Climax in 2023.
Resolution in 2029.
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Of course, you could argue the 2020 was the “climax” simply because it was one Hell of a shitty year. But you all know, it was a shitty year for everyone on the globe. Not just Americans. I argue that it was just foreplay for bigger stuff to come.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
And America, well, it’s somewhere else. I mean. Really. It’s off somewhere in La-La-Land.
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You know, today I want to talk about discoveries.
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Discoveries like this note that was found taped to the back of a heating duct that the homeowner removed so that he could paint the grill…
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It’s beautiful outside.
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It used to be that I was always looked inside on beautiful days. It would be a beautiful day at elementary school, and sure as shit, I found myself locked inside. I would only look out the windows in wonder and day dream.
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Same was true in High school. Only it just seemed that I spent a lot of time in Study Hall, and there I just sat doodling on paper and looking out the windows.
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Then at work. Sure enough. it would be a beautiful day and I would be stuck inside.
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Here’s a view from my office right now.
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I don’t have to stay inside. I can get up and go out and walk about.
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But I am not.
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My oomph hasn’t got the push.
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I cannot express how tired I am right now. I just don’t feel like doing anything. At most, all I want to do is go sit on a chair and veg-out. I’ve gotten to this state where I could just use a beer, a bowl of chili and some crackers.
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I mean, don’t you know, like what I used to do when I worked in the steel mills. When the lunch whistle blew, we would all gather ourselves together and troop off to the bars across the street and get a fine bowl of chili, a couple of slices of Italian bread, and a beer or two. We all did that.
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A fine bowl of chili.
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Or, maybe a nice creamy bowl of cream of asparagus soup, and a club sandwich. And with a nice tall iced tea… and a beer.
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And what’s wrong with that? Did you know that when I worked at Delco Electronics (It’s who we are), which was a division of General Motors, that they had all sorts of rules on behaviors. And one of which was zero alcohol on your free time. If someone “snitched” on you for drinking a beer after work, or anything like that, you could lose your job.
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Yeah. I really did live “The Office Space” experience.
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A club sandwich…
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Now, reminiscing about beer… crackers… soups, and sandwiches sounds so trivial. But I can assure you that it is not trivial at all. If you take away these elements that make our lives important, and makes our lives precious, then what remains?
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Seriously. What remains if you take away all the small pleasures in your life? What if you cannot drink alcohol, smoke, walk around barefoot? What if you cannot take your dog with you when you go out for a stroll, and want to stop in at a diner for a cup of coffee and a monte cristo sandwich? What then?
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You start to miss out discovering the few precious things about life. That’s what.
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Monte Cristo sandwich.
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As I get older, I am starting to come to the realization that the most important things to me are the very simple little things that I have always taken for granted.
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It’s the free newspaper at the end of the counter in the diner.
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It’s the way that a well balanced screwdriver feels in your hand.
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It’s a cloth handkerchief in your pocket, and your favorite shirt that fits you like a well worn glove.
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And it’s those little discoveries that make your day.
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When I was younger, I was always in a rush. To go here, to go there. To do this, and to do that. And so I ate fast. I drank fast. I walked fast. I drove fast. It was always go, go, go.
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I didn’t savor anything.
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I consumed.
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For I was an American consumer….
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Now I wish to savor life. Live it in big gulps. Take it in. Splash it all over, and relish in it’s glory. I want to sing, and dance, eat, and cavort. And I mean to do so with gusto!.
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I am talking about serious cavorting, you all.
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Oh, were I to still have my orange GTO, I would pop some Boston in the 8-track player, and go out cruising. The trunk would be filled with Bud, Miller (pony bottles), Michelob, and Iron City beer. Two bags of ice to chill it all out, and a well used frisbee in the back with a library card to sort the wheat from the chaff.
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I miss my orange “goat”.
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But those days are gone.
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And they just evaporated. And in the rush (at the time) to build a life, make a career, and dream the big dreams it all sort of passed on like some kind of hazy dream. We were all living this weird state of mind. Life was some kind of Peter Frampton song “Do you feel like we do”, and we were all there. Living it.
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We didn’t savor.
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We didn’t appreciate.
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And life did move on.
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I do like my life now, but there are things that are gone and I probably will never experience them again. Like piling into a van at a keg-party when it started to rain at night. About thirty of us all jammed in the back. Led Zepplin cranked up loud and Alice Cooper singing that “School’s Out for Summer”.
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Party like it’s 1976!
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Our life is precious.
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Living it is important.
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Relishing in what we have… AT THAT VERY MOMENT… is of extreme importance. And if you see an opportunity to make your life better, or someone else’s life better, the go for it. Don’t be a “wall flower”.
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Note handed to a woman.
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Live life.
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Live it well.
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And discover what lies around you.
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And relish in the uniqueness of the moments presented to you. Like this…
Whassup?
Let’s face it: Budweiser was absolutely on fire when it came to advertising in the 90s. I still think about those three delightfully laconic frogs “Bud”, “Weis,” and “Er,” and even their less-popular frenemy the chameleons.
Then in 1999, Anheuser-Busch rolled out the “Whassup?” ad, which took their advertising dominance to new levels. The commercial won a Clio, the Oscars of advertising, and was even inducted into the Clio hall of fame. And everyone saw this commercial.
You know they did because everyone started saying whassup constantly, always making it raspier, longer, and more unintelligible.
I was a preteen at the time, and this meant that every person in my school said “whassup” every day—in the hallway, in the cafeteria, at recess. Then I would come home and my dad’s friends would be saying it.
It was the type of cultural wildfire that forced news anchors to learn the word ‘memetic’—a decade before they learned the word ‘meme.’
-Listverse
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Here, I discovered a precious comment. And I want to place it here. It’s… well… precious. It’s something you will never find in the United States media, but it ACCURATELY reflects how the rest of the world views China.
Comment by Ahino Wolf Sushanti
I’m from Malaysia.
China has traded with Malaysia for 2000 years. In those years, they had been the world’s biggest powers many times. Never once they sent troops to take our land. Admiral Zhenghe came to Malacca five times, in gigantic fleets, and a flagship eight times the size of Christopher Columbus’ flagship, Santa Maria. He could have seized Malacca easily, but he did not. In 1511, the Portuguese came. In 1642, the Dutch came. In the 18th century the British came. We were colonized by each, one after another.
When China wanted spices from India, they traded with the Indians. When they wanted gems, they traded with the Persian. They didn’t take lands.
The only time China expanded beyond their current borders was in Yuan Dynasty, when Genghis and his descendants Ogedei Khan, Guyuk Khan & Kublai Khan concurred China, Mid Asia and Eastern Europe. But Yuan Dynasty, although being based in China, was a part of the Mongolian Empire.
Then came the Century of Humiliation. Britain smuggled opium into China to dope the population, a strategy to turn the trade deficit around, after the British could not find enough silver to pay the Qing Dynasty in their tea and porcelain trades. After the opium warehouses were burned down and ports were closed by the Chinese in ordered to curb opium, the British started the Opium War I, which China lost. Hong Kong was forced to be surrendered to the British in a peace talk (Nanjing Treaty). The British owned 90% of the opium market in China, during that time, Queen Victoria was the world’s biggest drug baron. The remaining 10% was owned by American merchants from Boston. Many of Boston’s institutions were built with profit from opium.
After 12 years of Nanjing Treaty, the West started getting really really greedy. The British wanted the Qing government:
To open the borders of China to allow goods coming in and out freely, and tax free.
Make opium legal in China.
Insane requests, Qing government said no.
The British and French, with supports from the US and Russia from behind, started Opium War II with China, which again, China lost.
The Anglo-French military raided the Summer Palace, and threatened to burn down the Imperial Palace, the Qing government was forced to pay with ports, free business zones, 300,000 kilograms of silver and Kowloon was taken.
Since then, China’s resources flew out freely through these business zones and ports. In the subsequent amendment to the treaties, Chinese people were sold overseas to serve as labor.
In 1900, China suffered attacks by the 8-National Alliance (Japan, Russia, Britain, France, USA, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary). Innocent Chinese civilians in Peking (Beijing now) were murdered, buildings were destroyed & women were raped. The Imperial Palace was raided, and treasures ended up in museums like the British Museum in London and the Louvre in Paris.
In late 1930’s China was occupied by the Japanese in WWII. Millions of Chinese died during the occupancy. 300,000 Chinese died in Nanjing Massacre alone.
Mao brought China together again from the shambles. There were peace and unity for some time. But Mao’s later reign saw sufferings and deaths from famine and power struggles.
Then came Deng Xiao Ping and his infamous “black-cat and white-cat” story. His preference in pragmatism than ideologies has transformed China. This thinking allowed China to evolve all the time to adapt to the actual needs in the country, instead of rigidly bounded to ideologies. It also signified the death of Communism in actually practice in China. The current Socialism+Meritocracy+Market Economy model fits the Chinese like gloves, and it propels the uprise of China. Singapore has a similar model, and has been arguably more successful than Hong Kong, because Hong Kong being gateway to China, was riding on the economic boom in China, while Singapore had no one to gain from.
In just 30 years, the CPC have moved 800 millions of people out from poverty. The rate of growth is unprecedented in human history. They have built the biggest mobile network, by far the biggest high speed rail network in the world, and they have become a behemoth in infrastructure.
They made a fishing village called Shenzhen into the world’s second largest technological center after the Silicon Valley. They are growing into a technological power house. It has the most elaborate e-commerce and cashless payment system in the world.
They have launched exploration to Mars. The Chinese are living a good life and China has become one of the safest countries in the world. The level of patriotism in the country has reached an unprecedented height.
For all of the achievements, the West has nothing good to say about it. China suffers from intense anti-China propaganda from the West. Western Media used the keyword “Communist” to instill fear and hatred towards China.
Everything China does is negatively reported.
They claimed China used slave labor in making iPhones. The truth was, Apple was the most profitable company in the world, it took most of the profit, leave some to Foxconn (a Taiwanese company) and little to the labor.
They claimed China was inhuman with one-child policy. By the way absolutely recommended by the UN-Health-Organization at that time. At the same time, they accused China of polluting the earth with its huge population. The fact is the Chinese consume just 30% of energy per capita compared to the US.
They claimed China underwent ethnic cleansing in Xinjiang. The fact is China has a policy which priorities ethnic minorities. For a long time, the ethnic minorities were allowed to have two children and the majority Han only allowed one. The minorities are allowed a lower score for university intakes. There are 39,000 mosques in China, and 2100 in the US.
China has about 3 times more mosque per Muslim than the US.
When terrorist attacks happened in Xinjiang, China had two choices:
Re-educate the Uighur extremists before they turned terrorists.
Let them be, after they launch attacks and killed innocent people, bomb their homes.
China chose option 1 to solve problem from the root and not to do killing. How the US solve terrorism? Fire missiles from battleships, drop bombs from the sky.
During the pandemic, when China took extreme measures to lock-down the people, they were accused of being inhuman.
When China recovered swiftly because of the extreme measures, they were accused of lying about the actual numbers.
When China’s cases became so low that they could provide medical support to other countries, they were accused of politically motivated.
Western Media always have reasons to bash China.
Just like any country, there are irresponsible individuals from China which do bad and dirty things, but the China government overall has done very well. But I hear this comment over and over by people from the West: I like Chinese people, but the CPC is “evil”\’. What they really want is the Chinese to change the government, because the current one is too good.
Fortunately China is not a multi-party democratic country, otherwise the opposition party in China will be supported by notorious NGOs (Non-Government Organization) of the USA, like the NED (National Endowment for Democracy), to topple the ruling party.
The US and the British couldn’t crack Mainland China, so they focus on Hong Kong.
Of all the ex-British colonial countries, only the Hong Kongers were offered BNOs by the British.
Because the UK would like the Hong Kongers to think they are British citizens, not Chinese.
It’s a divide-and-conquer strategy, which they often used in their “Color Revolutions” around the world.
They resort to low dirty tricks like detaining Huawei’s CFO & banning Huawei.
They raised a silly trade war which benefits no one.
Trade deficit always exist between a developing and a developed country.
The USA is like a luxury car seller who ask a farmer: why am I always buying your vegetables and you haven’t bought any of my cars?
When the Chinese were making socks for the world 30 years ago, the world let it be. But when Chinese started to make high technology products, like Huawei and DJI, it caused a red-alert.
Because when Western and Japanese products are equal to Chinese in technologies, they could never match the Chinese in prices. First world countries want China to continue in making socks.
Instead of stepping up themselves, they want to pull China down.
The recent movement by the US against China has a very important background story.
When Libya, Iran, and China decided to ditch the US dollar in oil trades, Gaddafi’s was killed by the US, Iran was being sanctioned by the US, and now it’s China’s turn.
The US has been printing money out of nothing.
The only reason why the US Dollar is still widely accepted, is because it’s the only currency which oil is allowed to be traded with.
The US has an agreement with Saudi that oil must be traded in US dollar ONLY.
Without the petrol-dollar status, the US dollars will sink, and America will fall.
Therefore anyone trying to disobey this order will be eliminated.
China will soon use a gold-backed crypto-currency, and the alarms in the White House are going off like mad.
China’s achievement has been by hard work. Not buy looting the world.
I have deep sympathy for China for all the suffering, but now I feel happy for them.
China is not rising, they are going back to where they belong.
Good luck China.
Conclusion
My life today is quite different than it was fifty years ago, but there are charms all around us. You just need to take the time to appreciate them. Maybe I’m not jammin’ to Roy Buchanan, or Listening to the Alan Parson’s Project, Genesis, Peter Gabriel or quaffing GeneseeCreamAle (in the green cans), but I am loving what I have right now.
I’m going out.
I’m gonna eat some delicious Chinese food, and have some TsingtaoBeer.
And it might not sound exciting, but it will fill my belly, put a smile on my face, and make the day right.
This comment that I read was precious. And it’s unique for this moment in time. I just wanted to share it with you all, and remember that everyone contributes to make the world what it is today.
Be good you all.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
I mean absolutely, and positively surreal. China has decided to move at “warp speed”, and the insane level of advancement and building all throughout China has been stepped up to near frantic pace. It’s no longer just “fast”, it’s gone “hyper velocity”. Factories are all expanding, and international investors, flush with cash, and pouring into China to invest and get a “piece of the action” while the opportunity to do so exists.
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None of this is being reported in the Western media. It’s all “just the same song and dance”, and “dog and pony show”.
A songanddance.Alongandelaborate explanation or presentation. PrimarilyheardinUS.
Dog And Pony ShowMeaning of Idiom ‘Dog and Pony Show’ A dog and pony show is a presentation, marketing event, or any other event which has a lot of style and seems very polished and professional, but which has no real content. In a dog and pony show, no real information is presented, and nothing much is accomplished.
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And you can SEE the changes. You really can.
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And for me, who is used to the enormous tidal-waves of change within China, I find it nearly incomprehensible.
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I had a discussion with a friend of mine this afternoon. We shared a few smokes and talked about business over tea. He told me that one of our mutual friends is married to a woman who is now living in America.
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As is the case with many business owners. Once their business gets "off the ground", they send their families off to other nations "for a better life". I guess she thought that the USA would somehow be better. - I don't. I attribute this belief to be an emotional reaction due to a massively funded pro-America propaganda campaign that has been in place for decades.
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Anyways, she said that monthly checks are being cut by the US government every month, and handfuls of money are being handed out by the Biden administration to anyone who owns or runs a factory.
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I find that hard to believe. America is many things, but generous with money is not one of them. If any American MM readers can confirm or deny this impression, I would be very grateful.
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Never the less, there’s this belief that American companies are being given nearly “blank checks” for expansion, innovation and for hiring people. And since America is the same size as China, it means (in the minds of the Chinese) that “finally” America has decided to gear-up, and start trying to be really competitive on the global stage. And thus, here in China, the factory bosses, and owners are taking this very seriously.
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Their attitude is “OK, so America wants to compete. We will COMPETE.”.
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And everyone seems to be doing this.
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At least it just seems that way. And maybe there are other reasons for the expansion, for after all there are all sorts of directives regarding technology development, green energy, and domestic expansion that is going on right now.
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And as I mentioned earlier; you can see the growth, the changes, and all the many, many improvements.
Pollution
China as described by Western media.
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For instance. I have ranted on about pollution in my other posts. Most it is about how China is depicted as this smoggy filthy cesspool, and then I show pictures of what it is actually like. The narrative is not even remotely close.
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Did you know that the Chinese have the cleanest Coal-fired power plants in the world? Here’s a comparison between American coil-fired power-plants and Chinese ones.
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To better understand where China’s coal fleet is going, CAP compared the top 100 most efficient coal-fired power units in the United States with the top 100 in China. The difference is astounding.
Compared with the Chinese coal fleet, even the best U.S. plants are running older, less efficient technologies. Coal-fired power plants can generally be broken down into three categories:
Subcritical: In these conventional power plants, coal is ignited to boil water, the water creates steam, and the steam rotates a turbine to generate electricity. The term “subcritical” indicates that internal steam pressure and temperature do not exceed the critical point of water—705 degrees Fahrenheit and 3,208 pounds per square inch.
Supercritical: These plants use high-tech materials to achieve internal steam temperatures in the 1,000–1,050 degrees Fahrenheit range and internal pressure levels that are higher than the critical point of water, thus spinning the turbines much faster and generating more electricity with less coal.
Ultra-supercritical: These plants use additional technology innovations to bring temperatures to more than 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit and pressure levels to more than 5,000 pounds per square inch, thus further improving efficiency.
The U.S. coal fleet is much older than China’s: The average age of operating U.S. coal plants is 39 years, with 88 percent built between 1950 and 1990. Among the top 100 most efficient plants in the United States, the initial operating years range from 1967 to 2012. In China, the oldest plant on the top 100 list was commissioned in 2006, and the youngest was commissioned in 2015.
The United States only has one ultra-supercritical power plant. Everything else is subcritical or, at best, supercritical.
In contrast, China is retiring its older plants and replacing them with ultra-supercritical facilities that produce more energy with less coal and generate less emissions as well. Out of China’s top 100 units, 90 are ultra-supercritical plants.
Coal is one of my passions. I used to work in the mines in my youth, and I have numerous projects involving this most interesting of ores.
Anyways…
Here, I discovered another precious comment. And I want to place it here. It’s… well… precious.
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It’s something you will never find in the United States media, but it ACCURATELY reflects how the rest of the world views China.
Comment by FromSerbia
Thank you for clearly explaining the parallels between Euromaidan and the current upheaval in the USA.
Since very few Americans paid attention to what their government did across the globe, they cannot recognize the whole “what goes around comes around” now happening to them.
Donald Trump will not suffer from any of this.
He is obscenely rich, and the worst thing that can happen to him is that he won’t be president anymore. All this anti-Trump talk will disappear the moment he is gone. Who truly suffers from this new American helscape?
From the looks of it, small business owners and low paid employees. Poor and middle class folk. Their business and places of employment are getting looted and torched.
Not Mar-a-Lago (or w/e the spelling of it may be) nor Microsoft, nor Facebook or Twitter HQ. Not Ford plants or Boeing and Lockheed assembly lines.
Here’s an observation from my years in the USA.
I lived there long enough to gain a clear understand of the depth of depravity of its power structures.
I moved to Chicago circa 2007 and made many friends. I lived in a suburb, surrounded almost exclusively by white people.
Before learning how to drive over poor people’s heads by using the highway to get downtown, I drove from the suburb to downtown in a straight line almost, through the city.
The scenes along the way and the neighborhoods were surreal.
I started in a rich neighborhood, eventually entering a middle class neighborhood.
I can tell because houses get smaller along the way.
They still looked fancy and well kept.
Then into a neighborhood where poor white people live.
The state of their infrastructure made it clear that this is such a place. The faces I saw where mostly white.
Then comes the Mexican neighborhood. The state of their infrastructure was even worse, but they seemed to make the best of it. They decorated everything with colorful lights, there were street vendors and other people all over the street. Kids were playing everywhere and the atmosphere was generally positive. I had no qualms about stopping, parking the car and grabbing a bite to eat at local mom & pop restaurant.
Then come the black neighborhoods. I could not believe my eyes that people live like that in the USA. Their infrastructure looked worse than 1995 Bosnia. Most of you probably do not understand what that means, and I hope you never have to learn from personal experience. I believe that the correct term for their state of infrastructure is dilapidated. As in, all of it. Falling apart. There were no valuable businesses in these neighborhoods, save for an occasional McDonalds or Taco Bell, and a post office, free clinic and other such absolutely necessary establishments.
There were liquor stores *everywhere* and crowds in front of every one of them.
I’m not exactly sure what is the point of concealing a bottle of liquor in a paper bag anymore, but that tragically classic scene was on display throughout these neighborhoods. People, sitting on the curb, wasted, or getting there before nightfall.
The only word that can accurately summarize the state of Chicago’s black neighborhoods is “depression.” Total, permanent, and seemingly irreversible depression.
The solution to this catastrophe?
If we are to believe the current news cycle, the solution is to make the rest of USA look like those parts of Chicago.
I can’t tell you how many times I heard…
”Obama is in charge now, he’ll fix everything. My president is black, my lambo is blue, if you say anything against Obama, you’re not cool.”
This was before cancel culture swept across USA and I could still speak my mind freely.
I suppose the results are in and Obama didn’t fix anything.
I still read about Chicago war zones, 20 dead, 50 wounded every other weekend. This was common news in the years preceding the current upheaval.
There is something a friend of mine said back then that stayed with me to this day.
We were driving back home from a bar one evening and all of us were legally drunk. He was very careful to drive the speed limit. He was complaining about cops.
He said how even a few years ago, if cops caught you drunk driving, they wouldn’t make an arrest. They would drive you home, or, at least, have you call someone to come get you.
In a worst case scenario, you sober up in a local precinct and then you can go.
Sure, your car might get taken to a pound lot, but that was a low price to pay (about $150 to get your car back) for committing a felony.
I don’t know if this same treatment was afforded to minorities, but I can’t imagine that most cops wanted to cause a situation like what happened at that Wendy’s in Atlanta recently.
What happened Americans?
How did you get to the point where even rich white people now dislike cops? Well, I lived in Illinois long enough to gain some insights.
Simple answer – “politics”.
Democrats rule Illinois, and they have total control of Chicago.
For decades, they maintained this rule through sheer bribery. Of course, not in a classic sense.
They enacted laws and agreements where every state employee has privileges and benefits that most common folk can only dream to have.
High salaries, early and very generous retirements, top notch healthcare, and the works.
That whole mantra, repeated on every Hollywood cop show and movie, how it’s tough living on a cop salary – it is a massive load of bullshit.
Maybe, just maybe, grunts who just joined the force don’t have it that good. They will, eventually.
This was promised to everybody across the board.
Cops, firefighters, post office employees, clerks, politicians and their mistresses, etc.
Massive spending of monies they did not have.
By year 2000, USA was more or less completely de-industrialized.
Northern Illinois, once a prime target for a Soviet nuclear strike due to its high industrial production capacity, resembled scenes from apocalyptic movies and video games by the time I saw it.
The situation is the following: politicians made promises to gain power.
In order to maintain power, they kept those promises, spending money they don’t have.
So, they issued bonds and borrowed senseless amounts of cash.
Borrowed more than they needed to pay off all those promises.
Because, why wouldn’t they take some of that sweet sweet cash?
Sure, they didn’t pay it directly into their bank accounts. They took it by giving public and city contracts, totaling large sums of money, to their buddies and family business.
Some of these companies were formed, what, a day before they got the city contract?
My family left Serbia only to find the *exact same* method of political corruption permeating the USA.
Don’t take this as an indictment of Democrats only. I have no doubt that this is how Republicans also work. At least, most of them.
Eventually, the debts built up to the point where they could not service them with tax revenue.
So, they raised taxes on everything and invented new taxes.
However, that didn’t work.
What’s left to tax?
Walmart and McDonalds employees making $7 an hour? They certainly were not going to tax WalMart and McDonalds corporate profits.
The situation was growing dire.
So, the solution was to sic the police on the people. To squeeze every $ they could from poor folks.
$100 ticket for not wearing a seat belt.
Why?
If I want to risk my own life, what business is it of yours?
I say this as a person who needs no convincing to wear a belt. But why must you force me to do it?
DUI became a nightmare.
Instead of friendly neighborhood officer who wants to help you get home safe, we now have stalkers who want to ruin your life.
DUI arrest, jail, lawyer, court, trial, plea deal, maybe more jail.
All in all, a nightmare, a criminal record, lots of $$ spent on nothing.
I understand the dangers of drunk driving, but I also understood that the politicians were not thinking about the safety and well being of their communities when they enacted such laws.
I can only guess that there are many more such laws that flay the poor while the rich simply do not care.
It’s not like extra police patrols will be deployed to rich neighborhoods to catch drunk drivers or those not wearing seat belts.
So, what you have in the end is a mess made by corrupt and absolutely incompetent politicians, where the police force was used akin to how mafia bosses use enforcers to collect “protection” rackets.
Except, with the mafia, at least you can point the finger and say “that’s the bad guy.”
Of course, the police went along with it.
(It’s) Not like they were threatened.
And its not like they are wiling to risk their salaries, health benefits, and large retirement funds (either).
If people had to be flayed for $100 every time they didn’t put on a seat belt for a cop to guarantee his salary, so be it.
Why, I was even told by my peers that cops had quotas to keep!
As in, each of them had to issue at least $2000 worth of tickets and citations per month, or week, or whatever.
Now, when the situation reached a boiling point (with no small help from Soros & Co.) the politicians do what they do best. Lie, cheat, and steal.
They just blame the cops and story finished.
Media says it is so and the idiots on the streets eat it up.
They literally cannot see past that which is right in front of them.
Cop writes ticket = cop bad.
No matter the fact that cops enforce laws made by elected politicians.
The paid mercenaries revel in this orgy of stupidity as they lead those idiots into looting, burning, fighting, and generally destroying their own infrastructure and job opportunities.
I apologize for cursing again.
The system in the state of Illinois is such a tangled clusterfuck that there is no untangling it without changing the system.
The politicians in power will never allow this.
They will sooner disband the police and enact law of the jungle.
The survival of the fittest.
After all, Darwin’s teachings are now gospel in the USA. Why not live like that? Disbanding the police will also (possibly?) wipe off all of those enormous salaries, pensions, healthcare, and other obligations.
It’s a good thing American forefathers had the foresight to enshrine the 2nd amendment in the bill of rights.
One more observation, about the police.
I had interacted with police on numerous occasions. Most cops are decent folk, working a tough job in a terrible system.
The jerks among them are of all colors, not just white. There is one very common theme among cops, though.
Most are not well-educated.
I watched and worked with a lot of high-schoolers in the USA.
Also younger kids at times. I noticed a pattern.
Simply put, there are kids at these schools (I worked at public schools only) who are just bullies.
Violent for the sake of violent gratification.
I suspect that this is a result of decades-long indoctrination.
Back in 50s and 60s, kids watched as cowboys slaughtered “Indians” a word which makes me feel dirty every time I use it.
Then they watched war movies.
Then came the violence of 80s television and movies.
As the society went into 90s, violent video games were added to the mix, alongside increasingly violent depictions of fighting on TV and in movies. The tech allowed for portrayal of incredibly graphic violence. Guts and brains and alike.
I am not claiming that movies and video games incite violence.
I am claiming that such graphic depictions of violence make a bad situation worse.
Bullies became ever more violent.
I also noticed that these bullies were generally not intelligent. After free high school education, there was nothing left for them. What are they to do?
Three choices: work $7 an hour job; join the army; become a cop.
Joining the army is out of question. Them A-rabs shoot back. Hell, sometimes you don’t even see them coming. A bomb just blows up near you.
So, it’s either $7 an hour at WalMart or become a cop.
So, they join the police forces.
It is a job tailor made for a bully.
You can dish out abuse all you want, and if somebody dares fight back, shoot them dead.
No consequences.
If not shot dead, ruin someone’s life through arrest, criminal record, constant harassment.
Why not?
The politicians gave such power to them. Add to this mix the fact that they have to meet quotas for issuing tickets and a bully is in paradise.
Derek Chauvin certainly seems like a textbook example of this. I generally reserve my judgment. Not in this case. I can’t tell you how many Derek Chauvin’s passed before my eyes in USA high schools, planning to become cops.
I would also add racists to this mix. Being a cop in the USA is a perfect job for a creature scraping the barrel of human intellect.
A racist is given a free reign to do as he/she pleases.
I have no solution to offer to Americans. I am no genius. However, I do not wish to see the country disintegrate.
The worst case scenario is nukes falling into hands of green-haired, 16 piercings on face, gender-less lunatics. They will have no qualms about nuking those “like terrible racist privileged” people all across the USA, before they threaten the rest of humanity.
American people were pious folk once long ago, both blacks and whites and just about every color in between. The weight of our sins can never be greater than Father’s love and willingness to forgive.
Remember that before it is too late.
Conclusion
He had a lot to say. Perhaps the one thing that snagged my attention was this statement;
"Since very few Americans paid attention to what their government did across the globe, they cannot recognize the whole “what goes around comes around” now happening to them."
Well, it hasn’t even started yet.
America has been VERY, VERY BAD. And for things and karma to be just and fair, the real pain has yet to be felt.
I don’t know what is going on in the USA. Not really. I just get bit’s and pieces. Like this.
Would you believe that I actually used to stay glued to the “news” to absorb all this garbage. How many beers could I have drank? How many dates could I have shared with an attractive lady? How many pizza could I have eaten? How many parks and hiking trails could I have walked on? How many adventures could I have had? How many fish could I have caught? And how many new and exciting friends could I have made?
But…no.
I was seduced by the “dark side” and instead I was addicted to the “news” that colored the life that I would lead. And that “news” was always saying the same thing; America is great. the rest of the world is evil.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
I remember when I used fffound, before I discovered Tumblr.
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And then, abandoned it when Yahoo! bought it out, promising never to change it.
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Yeah. Right. Like that happened! Yeah NOT!
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And still reading the “news” on the Free Republic feeds. As if they were full of precious information that mattered in my life.
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Nope.
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It didn’t matter at all.
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It’s tough knowing one thing, and knowing how things really work, and then reading what passes for “news” out of the West. Especially the nonsense spewing forth out of America. Jeeze!
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Louise!
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Honestly, the American “news” is like a dog chasing it’s tail. And those that follow it seem dumber with each passing day. I will tell you all the truth, the longer that I am out of the United States and away, the more idiotic the American public appears to me. I am so sorry guys, and especially for many of the American MM readers, but I am just getting floored at the level of ignorance that exists inside of America today.
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You have John Bolton… hard-core neocon… known for his quote where he compared the Chinese to cockroaches that needed to be repeatedly stepped on to show them the superiority of “the American way”…
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…being put in charge of the US Military strategic bio-weapon agency in 2016.
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It’s just a coincidence!
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And then from 2016 through 2019 China experienced eight crop and livestock viruses, with the swine flu propagated by drones with parts manufactured using American tooling.
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Why, it’s just a coincidence!
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Ah, and then in 2020, the COVID20 appears on CNY eve (what a coincidence!), in the most populous area in China (what a coincidence!) that hit all of the nations living in the same dorm as the American troops at the Wuhan Olympic games (what a coincidence!)…
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…and all of the “enemies” of the United States getting hit with the COVID-19B, the super deadly R0=20%, while America and it’s allies getting the (cold and sniffle) version R0=0.01%…
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…and we’re expected to believe that it’s China’s fault? That they were clumsy to steal an American bio-weapon and mishandle it, at a facility that is open to the public on a major thoroughfare and unguarded too boot. Why, it’s just a coincidence!
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Ugh. Only a FUCKING MORON would believe anything promoted out of Washington DC these days. But you know, most American believe. And I must tell you all, MAJestic leadership was absolutely correct.
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Most Americans are corralled sheep with the brains of a potato.
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So imagine my pleasant surprise when I read this article by Fred Reed. He’s become one of my favorite writers, don’t you know, and this one had me waving my hands, spilling my precious alcohol on the desktop, and banging on the keyboard! Shouting Yes!
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Right!, That’s right!
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Over and over.
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You all have to understand. Here in China… you can actually SEE the changes… and if you have any association at all with industry, robotics, aircraft design, AI, or international finance you will see…
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…irregardless of what the American “news” prints, the rest of the world is turning towards China. It’s where the future of the human species resides.
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Here’s a reprint, shared using the regular disclaimers.
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A Dolorous Imbalance
America Makes Aircraft Carriers, China Makes Money
First, America increasingly relies on strong-arm tactics instead of competence.
For example, in the de facto 5G competition, Washington cannot offer Europe a better product at a better price, so it forbids European countries to buy from China.
The US cannot compete with China in manufacturing, so it resorts to a trade war.
The US cannot make the crucial EUV lithography equipment to make advanced semiconductors, as neither can China, but it can forbid ASML, the Dutch company, from selling to China.
Similarly, the US cannot compete with Russia in the price of natural gas to Europe, so by means of sanctions it seeks to keep Europe from buying from Russia.
This is not reassuring.
Second, the Chinese are a commercial people, agile, fast to market, cutthroat, known for this throughout Asia.
America is a bureaucratized military empire, torpid by comparison.
America has legacy control over a few important technologies, most notably the crucial semiconductor field and the international financial system.
Washington is using these to try to cripple China’s advance.
A consequence has been a realization by the Chinese that America is not a competitor but an enemy, and (this realization has resulted in) a subsequent explosion of investment and R&D aimed at reducing dependence on American technology.
There is the well-known 1.4 trillion-dollar five-year plan to this end.
One now encounters a flood of stories about advances in tech “to which China has intellectual-property rights” or similar wording.
They seem deadly serious about this.
Given that Biden couldn’t tell a transistor from an ox cart, I wonder whether he realizes that every time the US pushes China to become independent in x, American firms lose the Chinese market for X, and later get to compete with Chinese X in the international market.
The above beast, developed entirely in China, is the first to use high-temperature superconducting magnets to keep the train floating just above the rails.
HTSC magnets are a Big Deal because they can achieve superconductivity using liquid nitrogen as coolant instead of liquid helium for classic superconductivity, this costing, say the Chinese, a fiftieth of the price of using helium.
The use of HTSC is very, very slick.
The train will extensively use carbon-fiber materials to keep weight down, suggesting that the Chinese cannot distinguish between a train and an airplane.
Asia Times “China’s Hydrogen Dream is taking Shape in Shandong”
“A detailed pilot plan being worked out to transform Shandong, a regional industrial powerhouse, into a “hydrogen society” holds out much hope of delivering on the green promise.”
The article, hard to summarize in a sentence, is worth reading.
As so often, the Chinese do things, try things, while the US talks, riots, imposes sanctions, sucks its thumb, and spends grimly on intercontinental nuclear bombers.
The American budget. After all, America is a Military Empire.
“Huawei is Developing Smart Roads Instead of Smart Cars”
Keep that in mind when the American news reports on Huawei phones. The phone business is but a small part of the Huawei industrial segment.
“Multiple sensors, cameras, and radars embedded in the road, traffic lights, and street signs help the bus to drive safely, while it in turn transmits information back to this network-“
China read Ed Snowden’s book on NSA’s snooping, realized it had a problem, and set out to correct it. If this spreads to other countries—see below—much of the world could go black to American intel agencies.
Ed Snowden
The Chinese may have thought of this.
“…colleagues will further expand the network by working with partners in Austria, Italy, Russia and Canada. The team is also developing low-cost satellites and ground stations for QKD.”
The last sentence is interesting. If China begins selling genuinely secure commo gear abroad, it is going to make a lot of Western intel agencies very unhappy.
Did I mention that the Chinese are a commercial people?
Further:
“Chinese scientists achieve quantum information masking, paving way for encrypted communication application.”
My knowledge of this might rise to the level of blank ignorance after a good night’s sleep and three cups of coffee. However, the achievement made the American technical press, and suggests Chinese seriousness about gaining privacy.
The video below shows how China constructs high-speed rail lines as if painting a stripe on a highway. <sarcasm>Since they can’t innovate, they have to get by with inventing things. </sarcasm>
“Over 10,000 trains and 927,000 containers were forwarded via the China-EU-China route in 2020, China Railways has announced. The current volume of traffic has grown by 98.3% year-to-year, covering 21 countries and 92 cities in Europe.”
America makes aircraft carriers. China sells stuff.
NikkeiAsia: “What China’s Rapidly Expanding Nuclear Industry Means for the West”
One Chinese reactor in Pakistan just went live, with another expected in a few months.
Says Nikkei,
“The Karachi reactor is just the latest of these to come onstream, with the World Nuclear Organization listing a dozen different projects at the development or planning stage across a dozen countries from Argentina to Egypt in its recent survey. Many more are under discussion.”
In addition, says Nikkei, China intends to have the whole industry from technology to materials indigenous to China and outside of American sanctions.
See above, about forcing China to make things themselves.
“Summary. China is quickly closing the once formidable lead the U.S. maintained on AI research.
Chinese researchers now publish more papers on AI and secure more patents than U.S. researchers do.
The country seems poised to become a leader in AI-empowered…”
Some argue that Chinese patents are of low quality.
Maybe so…
But don’t bet the college funds on it.
“China begins construction of world’s longest superconducting cable project”
“China’s first 35 kV high-temperature superconducting cable demonstration project has started construction by State Grid in Shanghai and it is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
This is the world’s largest transmission capacity, the longest distance, 2000A current the highest commercial 35 kV superconducting cable project.”
Regarding the 5G War;
Trump could have bought 5G from Huawei, gotten a sweetheart deal, great prices, factories in America, and so on.
Instead he banned Huawei from the US and then twisted arms of the vassal states of Europe.
Thus neither America or Europe has the service, but China is rolling it out fast.
Brilliant, Don.
This gives China a running start on smart factories, smart cities, autonomous vehicles, and the like. As well as the rest of the world, while American allies are stuck with rapidly aging technology and substandard service.
“An almost entirely automated port in China, during unload of a container ship. “
“The port is an example of how operator China Merchants Group has been working to automate and mechanize more operations using ultrafast fifth-generation wireless technology.
By developing innovative ways to run the port as efficiently as possible, the company aims to accelerate overseas expansion.”
Aviation Week “Face It: The J-20 is a Fifth Generation Fighter”
Says AvWeek:
“Clearly, Chengdu’s engineers understand the foundation of fifth-generation design: the ability to attain situational awareness through advanced fused sensors while denying situational awareness to the adversary through stealth and electronic warfare.
The J-20 features an ambitious integrated avionics suite consisting of multispectral sensors that provide 360-deg. coverage.
This includes a large active, electronically scanned array radar designed by the 14th Research Institute, electro-optical distributed aperture system, electro-optical targeting system, electronic support measures system and possibly side-array radars.
“In a 2017 CNTV interview, J-20 pilot Zhang Hao said: “Thanks to the multiple sensors onboard the aircraft and the very advanced data fusion, the level of automation of J-20 is very high. . . . The battlefield has become more and more transparent for us.”
Most of the story is visible only if you have a subscription to AvWeek.
Asia Times: Tesla loses lead to local upstart in China’s EV market
The headline is kidding.
The car that is outselling Tesla is a $4,200 el cheapo for short-haul shopping and picking up the kids in the city.
Sexy as a truss ad, but…rather useful.
I’m telling you, put the college funds in this company, not truss ads. Made by an SAIC-GM partnership, majority owned by China, where it was designed and made.
It will be sold internationally.
“Unlike Tesla, which requires purpose-built charging stations, the Mini can be plugged into a home power system to charge, which takes about nine hours. It has a range of about 120 kilometers and a top speed of 100 kilometers per hour, according to the carmaker’s promotional materials.”
Designed and put into production in one year. (Did I mention that the Chinese are a commercial people?)
Reports Chinese design. How close it is to being ready for prime time is not clear, but it is flying. An inability to make high-end engines has been a problem for China.
China’s Y-20 strategic transport aircraft.
The WS’20 is a high-bypass turbofan of Chinese design.
Finally,
Global Times”, Beijing’s news site: “China’s trade volume increases 37% y-o-y in April, marking 11 consecutive months of positive growth”
Nuff said.
Conclusion
It’s difficult being an American in China. I see what is going on, and then I read the “news” out of America and its like some kind of parody of “Captain Hook”. It’s La-La-Land where everyone is in this real God-forsaken reality that just doesn’t exist.
People, the future belongs to China.
Do you know how easy it would be for me to make my children American citizens? Yup, I fill out a bunch of forms, show proof that I lived int eh USA for five years, provide documentation that my kids are genetically mine and then wait for Washington to approve after I pay the application fee. And Boom!
My kids are American citizens. All now subject to taxation no matter where they live, what they do, and tied to the the American government.
In twenty years…
…which nation will be healthier, stronger, and provide more opportunities in a safer environment?
The USA? Or China?
Do you really think so?
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Most people have never heard of the term “Rules Based Order” until the March 2021 meeting in Alaska between the United States and China. It was at that meeting where the United States demanded that China abide to American led, “Rules Based Order”, or suffer the consequences.
Well, up until that point in time, it was well understood that the world should follow the United Nations in global disputes. Every nation in the world would have their say at this one-world government body, and avoid conflicts, trade disputes and cultural errors.
The single outlier to this system has been the United States which has, since the 1970’s violated the UN charter at will. It has done so in the following manner;
If the UN agrees with American actions, then the USA will observe UN protocols.
If the UN disagrees with American actions, then America will ignore the UN.
This is known as “rubber stamping” in the United States. After a while it becomes the expected way of conducting business.
Rubber Stamp
A person or organizationthatautomaticallyapproves or endorses a policywithoutassessingitsmerit;also,such an approval or endorsement.Forexample,Thenominatingcommittee is merely a rubberstamp;theyapproveanyonethechairmannames , or Thedeangavehisrubberstamp to therecommendations of thetenurecommittee. Thismetaphorictermalludes to therubberprintingdeviceused to imprintthesamewordsoverandover.[Early1900s]
-The Free Dictionary
Which has been increasingly the case over the last few decades, accumulating to the Donald Trump administration which pretty much said that the UN was worthless and America will do what it it feels like, and the UN be damned.
The brash harshness of this reality was codified in American policy and made public at the March 2021 Alaska summit. Where as a “Rules Based Order” was demanded of China.
A Rules Based Order states…
America makes the rules.
You will follow and obey American rules.
You will not listen to the United Nations.
If you fail to obey American demands, America reserves the right to obliterate you.
…
Yikes!
It sounds so harsh.
Well… that’s because it is.
It is harsh.
But that’s EXACTLY what is going on, and thus it is no wonder why China, and Russia and the rest of the global community reacted so harshly to the fiasco that was the Alaska meeting.
A few weeks have passed, and people around the world are “getting their heads” around this situation. They have pretty much determined that the United States has decides to act on it’s own, and not follow the United Nations. This is known as “unilateralism“, and is very very dangerous. It is the thing that started World War I, World War II, and all genocides that has ever occurred in history.
Unilateralism
Unilateralism is any doctrine or agenda that supports one-sided action.
Such action may be in disregard for other parties, or as an expression of a commitment toward a direction which otherparties may find disagreeable.
As a word, unilateralism is attested from 1926, specifically relating to unilateral disarmament.
Thecurrent, broader meaning emerges in 1964. It stands in contrast with multilateralism, the pursuit of foreign policy goals alongside allies.
-Wikipedia
The following are three articles that describe what the rest of the world thinks of this posture by the Biden Administration in America today.
First Article.
This is a very timely and well written editorial that is “spot on” and demands reprinting. It’s one of those clear-as-day, and simple-as-shit, articles that takes a complex issue and spells it out in black and white as plain as day.
I enjoyed reading this, and couldn’t wait to post on MM. It was forwarded to me by a dear friend and it is truly worth every consideration. Of course, it comes from here, all credit to the author and please take note that it was modified to fit this venue for editing purposes. So without much fanfare, here’s the article…
Rules-Based Order’ Is Cover for Destructive Western Hegemonic Ambitions
Hegemony
...ascendancy or domination of one power or state within a league, confederation, etc., or of one social class over others
Editorial
The future of world peace and security depends on the vast majority of nations succeeding in upholding the UN against Western malign efforts.
Since Joe Biden became U.S. president, the new administration in Washington has made repeated references to “rules-based order” in international relations, accusing Russia and China of undermining this putative order.
This is as audacious as a poacher appointing himself to be the gamekeeper. For there is no power as rogue and reckless as the United States and its Western minions when it comes to eviscerating international law. The litany of illegal wars, destroyed nations, and inhumane economic sanctions is testimony to that.
However, what is going on here is a daring cosmetic facelift for the same old ugly conduct. The Biden administration’s lofty rhetoric is meant to distinguish the new administration from the previous Trump White House and its “America First” mantra.
President Biden and his aides are trying to project a seeming return to multilateralism as opposed to Trump’s in-your-face nationalism. And so we hear a lot about the U.S. vowing to uphold the rules-based order.
The difference is merely rhetorical.
The consistent reality is that the United States and its Western allies are seeking to pursue a unilateral approach to international relations. The Biden administration is just a little more adept compared with Team Trump at public relations and media spin to cover this reality of American hegemonic ambitions.
Lest we forget, hegemonic ambitions are anathema to a democratic world order based on equality among nations and universal respect for international law.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov nailed the charade this week in public comments following a meeting with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in Moscow.
“We noted that Russia sees some Western countries’ attempts to promote unilateral approaches in circumvention of the established collective mechanisms for developing international law-based solutions as one of today’s key challenges. We consider developing certain rules behind the back of the greater part of the international community and then imposing them on others as universal norms unacceptable and dangerous practice.”
Lavrov went on with more biting comments:
“We are witnessing situational coalitions and partnerships being created outside the UN, which arrogate to themselves the right to speak and act on behalf of everyone else”.
This was a veiled reference to the United States trying to deploy the G7, NATO, the Quad, Five Eyes, and so on, as hostile geopolitical instruments to hamper Russia and China.
What is happening at an accelerated rate under the Biden administration is highly corrosive to international law and threatening global security.
The United Nations and the global architecture of international relations established after the Second World War are being substituted by Western ad hoc definition of rules.
The so-called “rules-based order” is in reality rules defined by the U.S. and its allies which make others conform to their desired order.
As Lavrov points out, this is tantamount to usurping the United Nations, the UN Charter and the already existing body of international law by a wholly new Western-defined regimen which is then imposed on others.
Such an outcome would be a complete negation of the postwar order that has existed.
Far from “order”, it is a dive into disorder and confrontation, the like of which preceded the UN in the 1930s leading to world war.
Russia, China and other nations are well aware of the deception being perpetrated by the United States and its European and other Western allies.
Last week in an address to the United Nations Security Council, Lavrov elucidated further the bankrupt rationale of the Western powers.
It is worth quoting him at length. He said:
“Realizing that it is impossible to impose their unilateral or bloc priorities on other states within the framework of the UN, the leading Western countries have tried to reverse the process of forming a polycentric world and slow down the course of history…
“Toward this end, the concept of the rules-based order is advanced as a substitute for international law. It should be noted that international law already is a body of rules, but rules agreed at universal platforms and reflecting consensus or broad agreement. The West’s goal is to oppose the collective efforts of all members of the world community with other rules developed in closed, non-inclusive formats, and then imposed on everyone else. We only see harm in such actions that bypass the UN and seek to usurp the only decision-making process that can claim global relevance.”
The supreme irony is that virtue-signaling Western powers are accusing Russia and China of undermining international “order” when they are the ones who are wielding an axe at the only truly universal system of multilateralism – the United Nations and the UN Charter.
The Charter, established after the war in 1945, mandates all nations to respect equal sovereignty, to repudiate illegal military force without the authorization of the UN Security Council, and to desist from interfering in the internal affairs of other states.
The unilateral use of military force and imposition of economic sanctions against other nations has become a routine, egregious violation of the UN Charter by the United States and its Western allies.
If the United States and others really did believe in upholding rules and order then they would abide by the only universally recognized rules of international law that already exist as enshrined in the UN Charter.
It is because Russia and China are strong enough to insist on the UN Charter and international law…
…that the rogue states of the U.S. and its Western accomplices are compelled to make up other rules in order to satisfy their dictatorial hegemonic desires.
In attempting such a de facto coup against the United Nations, the Western powers are endangering global security. They are trying to turn the clock back to a law of the jungle era akin to the 1930s.
The future of world peace and security depends on Russia, China and the vast majority of nations succeeding in upholding the UN against Western malign efforts.
How paradoxical is arrogant Western propaganda.
Second Article
There’s a lot of nonsense on Zero Hedge, with a lot of “doom porn”, but many of the contributors have very good things to say. Many were refugees from the Free Republic platform that kicked them off for not touting a pro-America-always line in their articles.
The rapidly shifting international distribution of power creates problems that can only be resolved with real diplomacy. The great powers must recognize competing national interests, followed by efforts to reach compromises and find common solutions.
Over the past week the Biden administration has intensively reached out to Europe to revitalize the transatlantic alliance.
In the following on-topic interview, Professor Glenn Diesen explains how the United States is opposed to the emerging reality of a multipolar world because of its winner-takes-all ideology. In doing so, Washington is predisposed to antagonize and militarize relations, primarily with Russia and China.
The confrontational policy is aimed at driving a wedge between Europe on the one hand, and Russia and China on the other.
The problem for Washington is that such a confrontational policy is unfeasible in a multipolar world.
European allies are pressured to align with the U.S., but geoeconomic realities inevitably mean there is a practical limit to the American strategy.
Using rhetoric about “values” and “human rights” is just a ploy to gain a false moral authority over rivals.
The West’s unilateral use of sanctions is the corollary.
But such a strategy is only further forging multipolar reality which is leading to weakness and self-isolation for the United States – and the European Union if the latter chooses to go down that futile route.
Professor Diesen contends that without compromise and mutual respect among world powers, the ultimate risk could be catastrophic war.
And he says the onus is on the United States and Europe to recognize competing national interests beyond their own, followed by efforts to reach compromises and find common solutions.
Glenn Diesen is a professor at University of South-Eastern Norway. He is also editor of ‘Russia in Global Affairs’ and is a contributing expert at the Valdai Discussion Club. His research focus is the geoeconomics of Greater Eurasia and the crisis of liberalism. He specializes in Russia’s approach to European and Eurasian integration, as well as West-China dynamics. He is the author of several books: ‘The Decay of Western Civilisation and Resurgence of Russia: Between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft’ (2018); ‘Russia’s Geoeconomic Strategy for a Greater Eurasia’ (2017); and ‘EU and NATO relations with Russia: After the collapse of the Soviet Union’ (2015).
His latest two books are ‘Russian Conservatism’ (January 2021, see this link); and ‘Great Power Politics in the Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (March 2021, see this link).
* * *
Interview
Question: The Biden administration is making strenuous efforts at rallying Europe and NATO to take a more adversarial position toward Russia and China: what are Washington’s geopolitical objectives?
Glenn Diesen: Biden’s “America is back” and Trump’s “Make America Great Again” both aim to reverse the relative decline of the United States in the international system. While Trump believed that providing collective goods to its allies as the cost of a hegemon was making the U.S. lose its competitiveness, Biden believes the U.S. must rally its allies against rising adversaries. The geopolitical objectives remain constant: preserving a dominant position for the U.S. in the international system.
The main challenge to U.S. leadership position is geoeconomic as its rivals are developing alternative technologies, strategic industries, transportation corridors and financial instruments.
However, the U.S. has not been successful in converting the security dependence of allies into geoeconomic loyalty.
This is evident as the European Union uses Chinese technologies and capital, and Germany is working with Russia to construct the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
There are strong incentives for the U.S. to militarize a geoeconomic rivalry as it strengthens solidarity and loyalty among allies.
NATO is therefore a good instrument even though Russian tanks are not heading towards Warsaw and Chinese troops are not about to invade Paris.
Question: Will Washington succeed in pushing what appears to be a new Cold War drive?
Glenn Diesen: Washington is certainly worsening relations with both Moscow and Beijing, although it is not clear that they will get the Europeans to follow their lead.
The Europeans share many of America’s concerns, although they do not wish to retreat under U.S. protection in a new U.S.-China bipolar system.
The EU has defined its interest as pursuing “strategic autonomy” to develop “European sovereignty”.
U.S. efforts to rally the Europeans against Russia and China rely on rhetoric over security challenges or human rights issues, although it is meant to translate into reducing economic connectivity with the two Eurasian giants.
However, the interests of the Europeans and the U.S. diverge over China, and the Europeans are also growing more concerned over pushing Russia towards China.
Question: You’ve mentioned before how the United States’ goals are: a) to prevent Europe from partnering with Russia for energy trade; and b) to prevent Europe partnering with China for new technology, trade and investment. Is such a divisive U.S. aim possible to achieve in a multipolar, integrated global economy?
Glenn Diesen: U.S. policies aim to prevent the emergence of a multipolar order.
In my opinion, this is a misguided objective as Washington must adjust to the changing international distribution of power.
I have argued that the U.S. is confronted with a dilemma – it can either facilitate and shape a multipolar system where the U.S. is the “first among equals”, or it can aim to contain rising powers to extend its hegemonic position although then a multipolar system will emerge in direct opposition to the U.S.
By containing the rise of both Russia and China, the U.S. encourages Moscow and Beijing to define their partnership often in opposition to the U.S.
The global economy is subsequently fragmenting.
The geoeconomic dominance of the U.S. has rested on [1] its leading technologies that buttress its strategic industries, [2] control over the maritime corridors of the world, and [3] control over the main development banks and the world’s trade/reserve currency.
Russia and China have therefore developed a strategic partnership [1] to develop their own technological ecosystems, [2] new Eurasian transportation corridors by land and sea, and [3] new financial instruments such as banks, payment systems and de-dollarizing their trade.
The U.S. will therefore discover that the effort to isolate China and Russia will result in the U.S. isolating itself.
Question: You’ve also mentioned that the United States may be trying a re-run of the Nixon-era policy from the 1970s of forcing a division between China and Russia. Is such a U.S. objective possible today?
Glenn Diesen: It seems highly unlikely. Nixon was able to split the Soviet Union and China by reaching out to the weaker part, China, based on mutual misgivings towards the power of the Soviet Union. The U.S. therefore accommodated the weaker adversary to balance the stronger adversary.
Today, the stronger adversary is China and the U.S. would therefore have to reach out to Russia. Beijing has no reason to turn against Moscow as Russia does not pose a threat to the Chinese, and Russia’s partnership is vital for China’s geoeconomic rise.
Much can be gained from reaching out to Moscow, although it will be very difficult, and Russia will not turn against China.
The U.S. leading role in Europe is reliant on excluding Russia from the continent, and the anti-Russian sentiments in the U.S. make it impossible to find common ground. Also, it is hard to overstate the resentment in Moscow over relentless NATO expansionism towards its borders.
Future historians will likely recognize the historical blunder of not accommodating Russia in Europe. After the Cold War, Russia’s principal foreign policy objective was to be included in a Greater Europe. The remaining hopes for incremental integration with Europe ended in 2014, when the West supported the coup in Ukraine.
Russia is now pursuing the Greater Eurasia Initiative and its leading partner toward that end is China.
Reaching out to Moscow will enable Russia to diversify its economic relations and avoid excessive reliance on China, although Russia will not join any partnership aimed against China.
Question: The Biden administration’s overtures for a stronger transatlantic alliance and a more unified NATO appear to be lapped up by various European leaders. For example at the NATO summit of foreign ministers in Brussels on March 23-24, the French top diplomat Jean-Yves Le Drian gushed about a renewed alliance under Biden, declaring that NATO had “rediscovered” itself. Why are European politicians seemingly so ready to appease Washington even when it is at the cost of undermining their own relations with Russia and China?
Glenn Diesen: The Europeans only developed unity after the Second World War under U.S. leadership.
Europe has thus only existed as a cohesive sub-region within the larger transatlantic region.
During the Cold War this partnership was directed towards balancing the Soviet Union, and after the Cold War the trans-Atlantic partnership enabled collective hegemony. The Europeans have prospered under U.S. leadership and been able to develop regional European autonomy.
The multipolar system challenges the foundation for the internal cohesion of both Europe and the trans-Atlantic region.
On one hand, the Europeans want to align their policies with the U.S. to preserve solidarity within Europe and the West.
On the other hand, the Europeans desire “strategic autonomy” as they recognize that U.S. and EU interests diverge in a multipolar world.
Confronting Russia and China weakens the economic competitiveness of Europe and increases its dependence on the U.S.
Question: Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking during a visit to China this week, remarked that the European Union had unilaterally destroyed relations with Russia due to recent actions, presumably imposing sanctions. Would you agree that the EU has taken unprecedented harmful steps against Russia?
Glenn Diesen: Yes. The sanctions do not provide a solution, rather they undermine the possibility for a partnership to find common solutions. Sanctions are designed to force Russia to make unilateral concessions as opposed to finding mutually acceptable solutions through compromise.
It must be recognized that every conflict has two sides, yet Brussels tends to treat all conflicts as transgressions by Russia that must be punished and corrected by the EU.
I often make the argument that Russia is largely a status-quo power in Europe that reacts to Western revisionism.
Russia intervened in Crimea in response to the West’s support for the coup, and Russia intervened in Syria in response to Western efforts to topple the government.
The problem behind these conflicts is that Russian security interests were never included, and the sanctions are a mere extension of this hegemonic mentality.
The sanctions are condemning Europe to reduced relevance in the multipolar world. A divided Europe creates systemic pressures for the EU to retreat under U.S. protection, and Russia must similarly diversify its economy away from Europe and instead align itself closer with China.
Question: Do you see any prospect of the European Union waking up to the realization that the bloc needs to repair relations with Russia, and China for that matter? Presumably that would require the EU asserting geopolitical independence from the United States, and the question is: has Europe’s political class got the will or even the imagination for this?
Glenn Diesen: How can relations be repaired?
The source of all problems with Russia was the failure to reach a mutually acceptable post-Cold War settlement. Efforts to create a Europe-without-Russia inevitably became a Europe-against-Russia.
Initially, Russian apprehensions could be ignored as Russia was weak and did not have anywhere else to go. This is no longer the case.
The EU can either treat the underlying problem of excluding the largest state in Europe from Europe, or it can aim to treat the symptoms that include Russia’s pivot to the east – primarily China.
Both France and Germany have become more vocal about the folly of continuing to push Russia towards China. France has been more ambitious in terms of rethinking relations with Russia to resolve the underlying problems, while Germany has been more focused on treating the symptoms by maintaining economic connectivity with Russia.
What can the EU do?
Suspending NATO expansion towards Russian borders or ending anti-Russian sanctions would undermine both EU and NATO solidarity as it is opposed by the U.S. and certain Central and Eastern European countries. The EU and the West were not designed for a multipolar world and so risk its internal cohesion no matter what is done.
The EU is not demonstrating any intentions of altering its subject-object relationship with Russia, and seeking solutions through mutual compromise. When the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell went to Moscow last month, the effort to improve relations with Russia was therefore limited to lecturing Russia about its domestic affairs and transgressions in international affairs, which, it was inferred, Russia should correct in order to earn the EU’s forgiveness and improve relations.
Question: Finally, are you concerned that deteriorating international tensions could lead to war?
Glenn Diesen: Yes, we should all be concerned.
Tensions keep escalating and there are increasing conflicts that could spark a major war. A war could break out over Syria, Ukraine, the Black Sea, the Arctic, the South China Sea and other regions.
What makes all of these conflicts dangerous is that they are informed by a winner-takes-all logic.
Wishful thinking or active push towards a collapse of Russia, China, the EU or the U.S. is also an indication of the winner-takes-all mentality.
Under these conditions, the large powers are more prepared to accept greater risks at a time when the international system is transforming.
The rhetoric of upholding liberal democratic values also has clear zero-sum undertones as it implies that Russia and China must accept the moral authority of the West and commit to unilateral concessions.
The rapidly shifting international distribution of power creates problems that can only be resolved with real diplomacy. The great powers must recognize competing national interests, followed by efforts to reach compromises and find common solutions.
The only solution for this coming fiasco is for the rest of the world to come together and isolate the dangerous elements; the unilateral American nationalists from destroying the world.
Thus, now for this gem…
Centuries-old Washington’s ‘Rules-Based Order’ is COVER for Deceptive, Destructive, & Hypocritical Hegemonic Ambitions
SCFon
The future of world peace and security depends on the vast majority of nations succeeding in upholding the UN against Western malign efforts.
Since Joe Biden became U.S. president, the new administration in Washington has made repeated references to “rules-based order” in international relations, accusing Russia and China of undermining this putative order.
This is as audacious as a poacher appointing himself to be the gamekeeper.
For there is no power as rogue and reckless as the United States and its Western minions when it comes to eviscerating international law.
The litany of illegal wars, destroyed nations, and inhumane economic sanctions is testimony to that.
However, what is going on here is a daring cosmetic facelift for the same old ugly conduct.
The Biden administration’s lofty rhetoric is meant to distinguish the new administration from the previous Trump White House and its “America First” mantra.
President Biden and his aides are trying to project a seeming return to multilateralism as opposed to Trump’s in-your-face nationalism.
And so we hear a lot about the U.S. vowing to uphold the rules-based order.
The difference is merely rhetorical.
The consistent reality is that the United States and its Western allies are seeking to pursue a unilateral approach to international relations.
The Biden administration is just a little more adept compared with Team Trump at public relations and media spin to cover this reality of American hegemonic ambitions.
Lest we forget, hegemonic ambitions are anathema to a democratic world order based on equality among nations and universal respect for international law.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov nailed the charade this week in public comments following a meeting with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in Moscow.
“We noted that Russia sees some Western countries’ attempts to promote unilateral approaches in circumvention of the established collective mechanisms for developing international law-based solutions as one of today’s key challenges. We consider developing certain rules behind the back of the greater part of the international community and then imposing them on others as universal norms unacceptable and dangerous practice.”
Lavrov went on with more biting comments:
“We are witnessing situational coalitions and partnerships being created outside the UN, which arrogate to themselves the right to speak and act on behalf of everyone else”.
This was a veiled reference to the United States trying to deploy the G7, NATO, the Quad, Five Eyes, and so on, as hostile geopolitical instruments to hamper Russia and China.
What is happening at an accelerated rate under the Biden administration is highly corrosive to international law and threatening global security.
The United Nations and the global architecture of international relations established after the Second World War are being substituted by Western ad hoc definition of rules.
The so-called “rules-based order” is in reality rules defined by the U.S. and its allies which make others conform to their desired order.
As Lavrov points out, this is tantamount to usurping the United Nations, the UN Charter and the already existing body of international law by a wholly new Western-defined regimen which is then imposed on others.
Such an outcome would be a complete negation of the postwar order that has existed.
Far from “order”, it is a dive into disorder and confrontation, the like of which preceded the UN in the 1930s leading to world war.
Russia, China and other nations are well aware of the deception being perpetrated by the United States and its European and other Western allies.
Last week in an address to the United Nations Security Council, Lavrov elucidated further the bankrupt rationale of the Western powers.
It is worth quoting him at length.
He said:
“Realizing that it is impossible to impose their unilateral or bloc priorities on other states within the framework of the UN, the leading Western countries have tried to reverse the process of forming a polycentric world and slow down the course of history…”
“Toward this end, the concept of the rules-based order is advanced as a substitute for international law. It should be noted that international law already is a body of rules, but rules agreed at universal platforms and reflecting consensus or broad agreement. The West’s goal is to oppose the collective efforts of all members of the world community with other rules developed in closed, non-inclusive formats, and then imposed on everyone else. We only see harm in such actions that bypass the UN and seek to usurp the only decision-making process that can claim global relevance.”
The supreme irony is that virtue-signaling Western powers are accusing Russia and China of undermining international “order” when they are the ones who are wielding an axe at the only truly universal system of multilateralism – the United Nations and the UN Charter.
The Charter, established after the war in 1945, mandates all nations to respect equal sovereignty, to repudiate illegal military force without the authorization of the UN Security Council, and to desist from interfering in the internal affairs of other states.
The unilateral use of military force and imposition of economic sanctions against other nations has become a routine, egregious violation of the UN Charter by the United States and its Western allies.
If the United States and others really did believe in upholding rules and order then they would abide by the only universally recognized rules of international law that already exist as enshrined in the UN Charter.
It is because Russia and China are strong enough to insist on the UN Charter and international law that the rogue states of the U.S. and its Western accomplices are compelled to make up other rules in order to satisfy their dictatorial hegemonic desires. In attempting such a de facto coup against the United Nations, the Western powers are endangering global security.
They are trying to turn the clock back to a law of the jungle era akin to the 1930s.
The future of world peace and security depends on Russia, China and the vast majority of nations succeeding in upholding the UN against Western malign efforts.
How paradoxical is arrogant Western propaganda.
***
Conclusion
And there you have it. The United States has decided to act aggressively as the sole remaining Military Empire. It demands that the rest of the world do as it demands or it will devastate the targeted nation with it’s large and enormous military.
The rest of the world are rightly afraid.
They are waiting, apparently for some sanity to return to Washington DC, or barring that internal discord that will force the American government to focus on domestic matters at home.
But, the major governments are not taking any chances. You can rest assured that if the “mad dog” of the neighborhood breaks from it’s chain and starts biting the neighborhood children that the local “dog catcher” will be called in to put the rabid dog down. (Kill him completely.)
It’s a testy time for certain.
Do you want more?
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
'Murikans are just natural born retards. And arrogant ones at that.
Posted by: Et Tu | Apr 17 2021 18:06 utc | 1
As I have repeatedly stated, the most dangerous propaganda is the propaganda that you want to believe. And it is so very easy to control the narrative when you control all media, and suppress any alternative voices. Which is exactly how the American (and Western) press operates these days.
While I have mentioned these absurd articles in the past, I pretty much assumed that the reader would realize their sheer insanity. But later, when we watched Donald Trump and his cabal of neocon advisors actually believe the echo chamber that they created, it runs shivers down my spine. Just how stupid can people be?
Ai!
They can be pretty darn stupid. Ya!
Well, if all you know is what is presented to you, then you have nothing else to go by. And this is what is presented to you. The following is from BING Image Search.
It’s anti-China article after anti-China article focusing on XinJiang…
Well, if you have no other source of news, and the ONLY news you get is the absurd, then you tend to believe it.
No matter how bat-shit crazy it actually is.
You believe it simply because you have no other source of information.
Why the anti-China propaganda about the Uighur Muslims…
Xinjiang is a major logistics center for China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative. Xinjiang is the gateway to Central and West Asia, as well as to European markets.
The Southern Xinjiang Railway runs to the city of Kashgar in China’s far west where it is now connected to Pakistan’s rail network under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a project of the BRI.
The U.S. government is deeply hostile to this vast economic development project and is doing all it can to sabotage China’s plans. This campaign is part of the U.S. military’s “Pivot to Asia,” along with naval threats in the South China Sea and support for separatist movements in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Tibet.
The BRI must be stopped at all costs!
It connects Russia, Iran to China, and thus opens up a direct trade route to Europe that bypasses all naval shipping.
It bypasses all shipping by water.
Shipping that has had the sword ofdamocles on it ever since the USA placed assault carrier battle groups, and hunter-killer submarines there. All as a threat that China must do as America demands; the “rules based order”, or America will destroy all shipping.
The "swordofDamocles" is a modern expression, which to us means a senseofimpendingdoom, thefeeling that there is some catastrophic threat loomingover you.
That's not exactly its original meaning, however. The expression comes to us from the writings of the Roman politician, orator, and philosopherCicero (106-43 BC).
-What Did Cicero MeanbytheSword of Damocles?
So what is this “rules based order”? Why doesn’t China obey?
Well, the “rules based order” is very simple. America makes the rules. You obey them, and the UN is completely ignored.
No U.N. report on Xinjiang
The U.S. and its corporate media charge that the Chinese government has rounded up 1 million people, mainly Uyghurs, into concentration camps. News reports cite the United Nations as their source.
This was disputed in a detailed investigative report by Ben Norton and Ajit Singh titled, “No, the UN did not report China has ‘massive internment camps’ for Uighur Muslims.” (The Grayzone.com, Aug. 23, 2018) They expose how this widely publicized claim is based entirely on unsourced allegations by a single U.S. member, Gay McDougall, on an “independent committee” with an official sounding name: U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has confirmed that no U.N. body or official has made such a charge against China.
CIA/NED-funded ‘human rights’
After this fraudulent news story received wide coverage, it was followed by “reports” from the Washington-based Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders. This group receives most of its funds from U.S. government grants, primarily from the CIA-linked National Endowment for Democracy, a major source of funding for U.S. “regime change” operations around the world.
Here’s a fellow in Washington DC “rubber stamping” the use of a local proxy force to attack China with…
The Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders shares the same Washington address as Human Rights Watch. The HRW has been a major source of attacks on governments targeted by the U.S., such as Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Syria and China. The network has long called for sanctions against China.
The CHRD’s sources include Radio Free Asia, a news agency funded for decades by the U.S. government. The World Uighur Congress, another source of sensationalized reports, is also funded by NED. The same U.S. government funding is behind the International Uyghur Human Rights and Democracy Foundation and the Uyghur American Association.
The authors of the Grayzone article cite years of detailed IRS filing forms to back up their claim. They list millions of dollars in generous government funding — to generate false reports.
This whole network of supposedly impartial civil society groups, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks and news sources operates under the cover of “human rights” to promote sanctions and war.
CIA-funded terror
Central Asia has experienced the worst forms of U.S. military power.
Beginning in 1979, the CIA, operating with the ISI Pakistani Intelligence Service and Saudi money, funded and equipped reactionary Mujahedeen forces in Afghanistan to bring down a revolutionary government there. The U.S. cultivated and promoted extreme religious fanaticism, based in Saudi Arabia, against progressive secular regimes in the region. This reactionary force was also weaponized against the Soviet Union and an anti-imperialist Islamic current represented by the Iranian Revolution.
For four decades, the CIA and secret Pakistan ISI forces in Afghanistan sought to recruit and train Uyghur mercenaries, planning to use them as a future terror force in China. Chechnyans from Russia’s Caucasus region were recruited for the same reason. Both groups were funneled into Syria in the U.S. regime-change operation there. These fanatical religious forces, along with other small ethnic groups, formed the backbone of the Islamic State group (IS) and Al-Qaida.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, World Trade Center bombing, the very forces that U.S. secret operations had helped to create became the enemy.
Uyghurs from Xinjiang were among the Al-Qaida prisoners captured in Afghanistan and held in the U.S. prison at Guantanamo for years without charges. Legal appeals exposed that the Uyghur prisoners were being held there under some of the worst conditions in solitary confinement.
U.S. wars dislocate region
The U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and the massive U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 created shockwaves of dislocation. Social progress, education, health care and infrastructure were destroyed. Sectarian and ethnic division was encouraged to divide opposition to U.S. occupations. Despite promises of great progress, the U.S. occupations sowed only destruction.
In this long war, U.S. prisons in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq were notorious. The CIA used “enhanced interrogation” techniques — torture — and secret rendition to Guantanamo, Bagram and the Salt Pit in Afghanistan. These secret prisons have since been the source of many legal suits.
According to U.N. investigations, by 2010 the U.S. held more than 27,000 prisoners in over 100 secret facilities around the world. Searing images and reports of systematic torture and prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Bagram airbase in Afghanistan surfaced.
Exposing coverup of war crimes
In July 2010 WikiLeaks published more than 75,000 classified U.S./NATO reports on the war in Afghanistan.
In October of that year, a massive leak of 400,000 military videos, photos and documents exposed, in harrowing detail, torture, summary executions and other war crimes. Army intelligence analyst former Private Chelsea Manning released this damning material to WikiLeaks.
Based on the leaked documents, the U.N. chief investigator on torture, Manfred Nowak, called on U.S. President Barack Obama to order a full investigation of these crimes, including abuse, torture, rape and murder committed against the Iraqi people following the U.S. invasion and occupation.
The leaked reports provided documentary proof of 109,000 deaths — including 66,000 civilians. This is seldom mentioned in the media, in contrast to the highly publicized and unsourced charges now raised against China.
Prosecuting whistle blowers
The CIA’s National Endowment for Democracy pays handsomely for unsourced documents making claims of torture against China, while those who provided documentary proof of U.S. torture have been treated as criminals.
John Kiriakou, who worked for the CIA between 1990 and 2004 and confirmed widespread use of systematic torture, was prosecuted by the Obama administration for revealing classified information and sentenced to 30 months in prison.
Chelsea Manning’s release of tens of thousands of government documents confirming torture and abuse, in addition to horrific photos of mass killings, have led to her continued incarceration. Julian Assange of WikiLeaks is imprisoned in Britain and faces deportation to the U.S. for his role in disseminating these documents.
Rewriting history
How much of the coverage of Xinjiang is intended to deflect world attention from the continuing crimes of U.S. wars — from Afghanistan to Syria?
In 2014 a Senate CIA Torture Report confirmed that a torture program, called “Detention and Interrogation Program,” had been approved by top U.S. officials. Only a 525-page Executive Summary of its 6,000 pages was released, but it was enough to confirm that the CIA program was far more brutal and extensive than had previously been released.
Mercenaries flood into Syria
The U.S. regime-change effort to overturn the government of Syria funneled more than 100,000 foreign mercenaries and fanatical religious forces into the war. They were well-equipped with advanced weapons, military gear, provisions and paychecks.
One-third of the Syrian population was uprooted in the war. Millions of refugees flooded into Europe and neighboring countries.
Beginning in 2013, thousands of Uyghur fighters were smuggled into Syria to train with the extremist Uyghur group known as the Turkistan Islamic Party. Fighting alongside Al-Qaida and Al-Nusra terror units, these forces played key roles in several battles.
Reuters, Associated Press and Newsweek all reported that up to 5,000 Turkic-speaking Muslim Uyghurs from Xinjiang were fighting in various “militant” groups in Syria.
According to Syrian media, a transplanted Uyghur colony transformed the city of al Zanbaka (on the Turkish border) into an entrenched camp of 18,000 people. Many of the Uyghur fighters were smuggled to the Turkish-Syrian border area with their families. Speaking Turkish, rather than Chinese, they relied on the support of the Turkish secret services.
China follows a different path
China is determined to follow a different path in dealing with fanatical groups that are weaponized by religious extremism. China’s action comes after terror attacks and explosives have killed hundreds of civilians in busy shopping areas and crowded train and bus stations since the 1990s.
China has dealt with the problem of religious extremism by setting up large-scale vocational education and training centers. Rather than creating worse underdevelopment through bombing campaigns, it is seeking to engage the population in education, skill development and rapid economic and infrastructure development.
Terrorist attacks in Xinjiang have stopped since the reeducation campaigns began in 2017.
Two worldviews of Xinjiang
In July of 2020, 22 countries, most in Europe plus Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, sent a letter to the U.N. Human Rights Council criticizing China for mass arbitrary detentions and other violations against Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region. The statement did not include a single signature from a Muslim-majority state.
Days later, a far larger group of 34 countries — now expanded to 54 from Asia, Africa and Latin America — submitted a letter in defense of China’s policies. These countries expressed their firm support of China’s counterterrorism and deradicalization measures in Xinjiang.
More than a dozen member countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation at the U.N. signed the statement.
A further statement on Oct. 31 to the Third Committee of the U.N. General Assembly explained that a number of diplomats, international organizations, officials and journalists had traveled to Xinjiang to witness the progress of the human rights cause and the outcomes of counterterrorism and deradicalization.
“What they saw and heard in Xinjiang completely contradicted what was reported in the [Western] media,” said the statement.
The Head Scratchers…
Of course, no one is talking about the real “head scratchers”; why [1] American war machine is currently fighting eight wars against Muslims presently, would be wanting to help the Muslims inside of China. Or, [2] that the BRI, which connects Russia, Iran and China together goes right though Xinjiang. Or that [3] all the articles are all aligned with the Western five-eyes dissemination mills.
It’s an onslaught of the ridiculous for the idiotic to believe.
Here’s a work of “science fiction” which is being promoted as a true reality within China.
This is a great read… argumentum ad absurdum on a plate.
There are now so few Uyghurs left in Xinjiang now that they are dressing up Han Chinese to do dance performances for tourists.
Summary of the nonsense article…
Oh what amazing nonsense!
The CCP has run out of money to maintain its concentration camps and is now resorting to other means.
China has now moved on to the final solution.
The aim is to kill ⅔ of the population. About 10 Million people.
The number of Uyghurs detained and presumed dead now already exceeds the number of Jews killed in the holocaust.
In one county 80% of the population has disappeared.
Only 1/3rd of the Uyghur population is being kept alive for proof of life, forced labour, vaccine testing, organ harvesting and biological weapons testing.
Uyghurs in detention are divided for organ harvesting, biological experimentation and other purposes including simple extermination.
The government has gone to great pains to conceal the actual Uyghur population, downplaying the numbers and then gradually adjusting it upwards to conceal the fact that between 6-11 million people are unaccounted for.
They are using chemicals to dispose of the bodies rather than mass graves and destroying all evidence of previous identities.
Uyghur women are subjected to forced sterilizations, forced contraception and forced abortions.
(We already know that…) Females in detention are being routinely gang raped by guards as form of torture.
They are also using school children for vaccine testing.
All Uyghur language, religion and culture in the region is now gone.
The region has become like a deranged Disneyland, with paid actors performing the roles of genuine Uyghurs.
The government initially billeted Han Chinese to learn Uyghurs skills and then sent the Uyghurs themselves to concentration camps
The people you see in Xinjiang tourist attractions, the people you see singing and dancing and playing instruments, are Han Chinese but dressed up like Uyghurs.
Well, it seems that some sanity is returning….
From my email…
Read this….
Why is the West suddenly concerned about Uyghur Muslim ‘genocide’?
A motion by Senator Rex Patrick to label China’s treatment of its Uyghur Muslim minority as genocide failed to pass Australia’s Senate on 17 March.
Unusually, this leaves Australia slightly out of step with its main ally, the United States, and fellow “Five Eyes” country Canada, which have both labelled China’s policy in the Xinjiang region as genocide, starting with a declaration by former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and reiterated by his successor Antony Blinken.
The drumbeat in Australia against China’s policy continues.
However, as seen in the discussion on the ABC’s 15 April QandA program, when a questioner demanded Australia cut off trade with China over the issue, and a panelist compared China’s policy to Nazi Germany.
So why the sudden prominence of this issue?
The Citizens Party has had more than 30 years of experience in analyzing foreign policy and geopolitical issues.
We have opposed the dangerous lurch towards confrontation with Russia and China, including through proxy regime-change interventions, by the USA and UK and their allies, including Australia.
Elements of the Xinjiang allegations immediately raised suspicions.
Including the sudden concern being expressed for Uyghur Muslims by extreme right-wing US and UK neoconservatives who have spent decades demonising Muslims in their countries.
As well as championing wars that have killed millions of Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa.
Another cause for suspicion was the overlap between the “human rights” narrative about Xinjiang, and the similar human rights narratives against Syria and Libya starting in 2011.
Too similar for comfort.
Both of which were accused of atrocities against their own people.
Of course, omitting that the “rebel” groups opposed to those “regimes” were extremist jihadists either aligned with al-Qaeda or actual members of al-Qaeda.
The very terrorist organization blamed for 9/11 that our soldiers are supposedly fighting in Afghanistan.
The Office of the Legal Advisor at the US State Department has recently fueled more suspicion.
In effect, contradicting the current and former Secretaries of State by finding there’s insufficient evidence to call China’s Xinjiang policy genocide after all.
Original research
The Citizens Party has therefore conducted its own research into the Xinjiang issue, to situate the claims in their fullest historical and geopolitical context.
This research led to an eight-article series in the Citizens Party’s weekly magazine the Australian Alert Service in November 2020–March 2021.
The Citizens Party urges everyone who is concerned about this issue to download and read the whole package.
As the USA, UK and European Union…
—with applause from the Australian government—
…slap sanctions on China for alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang…
… and the weighty term “genocide” is thrown around without evidence…
… our series demystifies what is going on in and around Xinjiang, and why.
We expose the Anglo-American sponsorship of “East Turkistan” separatism.
As well as the Anglo-American fostering of radical Islamist terrorism, which hit China hard from the 1990s up to 2014 and prompted tough anti-terror programs.
We detail how al-Qaeda and its successors grew out of US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski’s program to strike at the Soviet Union’s “soft underbelly” in Central Asia.
He did this, even at the risk of nuclear war, by backing the Afghanistan mujaheddin against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in 1979.
Young ethnic Uyghurs from Xinjiang fought in Afghanistan and received US- and Saudi-funded training in Pakistan;
Some went back home to “destabilise China”.
Which is the exact the words of Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (ret.), chief of staff to former US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
We also recount the history of “Pan-Turkism” and its activation against Russia and then China after the breakup of the USSR.
The final two articles deal with the decades-long manipulation of the Uyghur diaspora by Anglo-American intelligence agencies.
This also includes those operating under the banner of “human rights”, like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
As with the so-called Captive Nations groups during the Cold War, the diaspora is exploited as a propaganda base.
Not only to destabilize or even fragment the targeted country, but also to set “thought rules” for public opinion and political circles elsewhere.
For example, in the USA or Australia.
Uyghur émigré groups uniformly oppose China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
They do so, even as it raises living standards in Xinjiang, all China and abroad.
Since China has recently been practically the sole engine of world economic growth…
… while cultivating scientific optimism in its education policies and a commitment to promoting classical culture…
… a strategic posture that exploits the Uyghurs of Xinjiang to attack China is insane.
Here are the chapter titles from our report. The first two pages of the Special Report PDF are a full, annotated table of contents.
Part 1. East-West gateway on the Silk Road
Part 2. The Arc of Crisis
Part 3. Xinjiang becomes a target
Part 4. Pan-Turkism
Part 5. The Anglo-American-Saudi promotion of violent jihad
Part 6. ‘Afghan’ jihadist terrorism come to Xinjiang
Parts 7 and 8. The ‘East Turkistan’ narrative
China detaining millions of Uyghurs? Serious problems with claims by US-backed NGO and far-right researcher ‘led by God’ against Beijing
Reprinted as found. All credit to the original author, and please kindly note that it was edited to fit within this venue.
Claims that China has detained millions of Uyghur Muslims are based largely on two studies. A closer look at these papers reveals US government backing, absurdly shoddy methodologies, and a rapture-ready evangelical researcher named Adrian Zenz.
It is legislation which calls for the Donald Trump administration to impose sanctions against China over allegations.
Allegations that Beijing has detained millions of Muslim-majority Uyghurs in the western region of Xinjiang.
To drum up support for the sanctions bill, Western governments and media outlets have portrayed the People’s Republic as a human rights violator on par with Nazi Germany.
Republican Rep. Chris Smith, for instance, denounced the Chinese government for what he called the “mass internment of millions on a scale not seen since the Holocaust,” in “modern-day concentration camps.”
The claim that China has detained millions of ethnic Uyghurs in its Xinjiang region is repeated with increasing frequency.
However, little scrutiny is ever applied.
Yet a closer look at the figure and how it was obtained reveals a serious deficiency in data.
The second study relied on flimsy media reports and speculation.
It was authored by Adrian Zenz, a far-right fundamentalist Christian who opposes homosexuality and gender equality, supports “scriptural spanking” of children, and believes he is “led by God” on a “mission” against China.
As Washington ratchets up pressure on China, Zenz has been lifted out of obscurity and transformed almost overnight into a go-to pundit on Xinjiang.
He has testified before Congress, providing commentary in outlets from the Wall Street Journal to Democracy Now!
As well as delivering expert quotes in the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ recent “China Cables” report.
His Twitter bio notes that he is “moving across the Atlantic” from his native Germany.
Before Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal questioned Zenz about his religious “mission,” at a recent event about Xinjiang inside the US Capitol, he had received almost entirely uncritical promotion from Western media.
The Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, which first popularized the “millions detained” figure, has also been able to operate without a hint of media scrutiny.
Washington-backed NGO claims millions detained after interviewing eight people
The “millions detained” figure was first popularized by a Washington, DC-based NGO that is backed by the US government, the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD).
In a 2018 report submitted to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination…
… often misrepresented in Western media as a UN-authored report…
… CHRD “estimate[d] that roughly one million members of ethnic Uyghurs have been sent to ‘re-education’ detention camps.
As well as roughly two million have been forced to attend ‘re-education’ programs in Xinjiang.”
According to CHRD, this figure was “[b]ased on interviews and limited data.”
While CHRD states that it interviewed dozens of ethnic Uyghurs in the course of its study, their enormous estimate was ultimately based on interviews with exactly eight Uyghur individuals.
This is all based on this absurdly small sample of research subjects in an area whose total population is 20 million.
The CHRD “extrapolated estimates” that
“at least 10% of villagers […] are being detained in re-education detention camps, and 20% are being forced to attend day/evening re-education camps in the villages or townships, totaling 30% in both types of camps.”
Applying these estimated rates to the entirety of Xinjiang, CHRD arrived at the figures submitted to the UN claiming that one million ethnic Uyghurs have been detained in “re-education detention camps” and two million more have been “forced to attend day/evening re-education sessions”.
“arbitrarily detain[ing] 800,000 to possibly more than two million Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and other Muslims in internment camps designed to erase religious and ethnic identities.”
“there [are] no so-called ‘re-education camps’ in Xinjiang at all. The vocational education and training centers legally operated in Xinjiang aim to help a small number of people affected by terrorist and extremist ideologies and equip them with skills, so that they can be self-reliant and re-integrate into society.”
In its mounting pressure campaign against China, the US is not only relying on CHRD for data; it is directly funding its operations.
Together, the two helped found the World Anti-Communist League that was described by journalist Joe Conason as “the organizational haven for neo-Nazis, fascists, and anti-Semitic extremists from two dozen countries.”
Lev Dobriansky, pictured below with Eisenhower & Reagan, invented Captive Nations Week in 1959, and got Yaroslav Stetsko his first visa to the United States in 1958 against the wishes of the CIA & the State Department. Reagan appointed Dobriansky to be Ambassador to the Bahamas. pic.twitter.com/NmOvsnvNmg
— Moss Robeson (@mossrobeson__) July 19, 2019
Today, Dobriansky’s daughter, Paula, sits on the board of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
A former Reagan and George HW Bush official and signatory of the original Project for a New American Century document, Paula Dobriansky has become a fixture in neoconservative circles on Capitol Hill.
From its office in Washington, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation agitates for regime change from Venezuela to the periphery of China.
Zenz’s politicized research on Xinjiang and Tibet has proven one of this right-wing group’s most effective weapons.
In September of 2018, Zenz wrote an article published in the Central Asian Survey journal concluding that
“Xinjiang’s total re-education internment figure may be estimated at just over one million.”
(A condensed version of the article was initially published by the Jamestown Foundation, a neoconservative think tank founded during the height of the Cold War by Reagan administration personnel with the support of then-CIA Director William J. Casey).
Like the CHRD, Zenz arrived at his estimate “over 1 million” in a dubious manner.
He based it on a single report by Istiqlal TV, a Uyghur exile media organization based in Turkey, which was republished by Newsweek Japan.
Far from an impartial journalistic organization, Istiqlal TV advances the separatist cause while playing host to an assortment of extremist figures.
One such character who often appears on Istiqlal TV is Abdulkadir Yapuquan.
He is a reported leader of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a separatist group that aims to establish an independent homeland in Xinjiang called East Turkestan.
“2013, thousands of Uighurs… have traveled to Syria to train with the Uighur militant group Turkistan Islamic Party and fight alongside al-Qaida,” with “several hundred join[ing] the Islamic State.”
The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) has been among the most recalcitrant forces operating in the Al Qaeda-controlled Idlib province, rejecting all ceasefire efforts while indoctrinating children into militancy.
TIP leadership has called on foreign Muslims to wage jihad in Syria, publishing an online recruitment video in 2018 that celebrated the 9/11 attacks as holy retaliation against a decadent United States awash in homosexuality and sin.
“called for armed jihad not only in China’s autonomous Xinjiang region but all over the world and described China as a nation of savages, worse than the Jews.”
The Istiqlal TV report relied on by Zenz published an unverified table of “re-education detainee figures” allegedly “leaked” by Chinese authorities, totaling 892,000 individuals in 68 Xinjiang counties as of Spring 2018.
(The Uyghur Human Rights Act recently passed by Congress mandates the US Agency for Global Media – the governmental parent of Radio Free Asia – to report on Xinjiang, including “assessments of Chinese propaganda strategies.”)
With his cobbling of questionable sources, Zenz extrapolates an extremely broad estimate
“at anywhere between several hundred thousand and just over one million.”
While admitting that “there is no certainty” to his estimate, he has concluded that it is nevertheless “reasonable to speculate.”
He attempted to evade personal responsibility for the figure’s questionable reliability, however, by stating
“[t]he accuracy of this estimate is of course predicated on the supposed validity of the stated sources.”
As time goes on, Zenz continues to inflate his speculative estimate of Uyghur detainees.
Speaking at an event organized by the US mission in Geneva in March 2019, Zenz stated,
“Although it is speculative it seems appropriate to estimate that up to 1.5 million ethnic minorities [have been detained by China in Xinjiang].”
Zenz bumped up his estimate again in a November 2019 interview with Radio Free Asia, claiming China was detaining 1.8 million people.
In an interview with Der Spiegel, Zenz claimed that China has effectively outlawed the practice of Islam in Xinjiang.
“Anyone in Xinjiang who engages in any type of religious practice, anyone who even has a single Koran verse saved on their mobile phone, will be subjected to a brutal process of reeducation without trial,”
He maintained.
These incendiary claims have vaulted Zenz to the status of international “expert” on Xinjiang, earned him invites to testify before US Congress and Canadian Parliament, and to deliver commentary in major US media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and Democracy Now!
“[l]inguists, document and Xinjiang experts, including Zenz, who reviewed the documents have expressed confidence in their authenticity.”
Given Zenz’s habit of speculation and the questionable reliability of the lone Istiqlal TV media report he relies on for his estimates, it is troubling that Western governments and media have accepted and promoted his claims without a trace of skepticism.
A closer look at Zenz’s own biases should magnify these concerns, as he is a full-blown evangelical End Timer who appears to be believe that God has sent him on a holy crusade against the People’s Republic of China.
Fundamentalist Christian ‘led by God’ in mission against China, homosexuality, and gender equality
This anodyne-sounding campus is actually the German base of Columbia International University, a US-based evangelical Christian seminary which considers the
Which makes you wonder WHY he would be so concerned about the plight of Muslims. Because according to his own religious belief only “born again” Christians will enter Heaven during the rapture.
“I feel very clearly led by God to do this,” he said. “I can put it that way. I’m not afraid to say that. With Xinjiang, things really changed. It became like a mission, or a ministry.”
Along with his “mission” against China, heavenly guidance has apparently prompted Zenz to denounce homosexuality, gender equality, and the banning of physical punishment against children as threats to Christianity.
Zenz outlined these views in a book he co-authored in 2012, titled Worthy to Escape: Why All Believers Will Not Be Raptured Before the Tribulation.
In the tome, Zenz discussed the return of Jesus Christ, the coming wrath of God, and the rise of the Antichrist.
Zenz predicted that the future fall of capitalism will bring to power the Antichrist within a “few decades.”
He identified the force that “will usher the Antichrist into power” as “the economic and financial fall of ‘Babylon,’ with ‘Babylon’ symbolically representing the world’s global economic system (capitalism).”
Along with the fall of capitalism, Zenz also views “postmodern relativism and tolerance thinking” and their apparent promotion of homosexuality, gender equality, and non-violent parenting to be threats to Christianity and “[t]he deceptive, leopard-like power behind the Antichrist.”
“It is very likely that the global persecution of true believers will center on the charge that they promote ‘intolerant views,’” Zenz wrote, “especially related to preaching against homosexuality.”
Zenz argued that “[h]ate crime and anti-discrimination laws will likely play a major role in the suppression of biblical Christianity” and formed part of an “anti-Christian ‘tolerance’ campaign” because they “forbid employers to discriminate based on gender or sexual orientations.”
“The outcome of this process is open rebellion against both God and God-given human authority structures”,
Zenz stated, decrying that
“[r]ising numbers of countries are banning all forms of physical punishment of children, the primary scriptural method for instilling respect for authority in the young generation and protecting them from rebellious tendencies.”
Zenz assures readers that
“true scriptural spanking is loving discipline and not violence.”
“Another important God-given authority structure that Satan is attacking through the postmodern spirit is that of gender authority structures”,
Zenz continued.
“Through notions of gender equality […] the enemy is undermining God’s unique but different role assignments for men and women.”
Given these obscurantist right-wing views, it is not surprising that Zenz’s proclaimed concern for the condition of Muslims in China does not seem to extend to Muslims elsewhere.
A search of Zenz’s Twitter profile returns no tweets concerning the rise of Islamophobia in the West, nor US wars and drone strikes against Muslim-majority countries.
The only Tweet by Zenz concerning Muslims that is unrelated to China is a denial that there is a double standard in how violence is judged when committed by white people compared to Muslims.
‘The End Times is a very fascinating topic’
In his December 10, 2019 testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Adrian Zenz took a victory lap of sorts for Congress’ passage of the Uyghur Human Rights Act the week before which placed new sanctions on the Chinese government.
Citing the bill’s success, he called for opening a new front against China with a US investigation into “involuntary labor in relation to Xinjiang.”
That same day, Zenz also appeared on a panel dedicated to Xinjiang that was hosted by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in the US Capitol Visitor Center.
On hand were Republican heavyweights like Sam Brownback, the ferociously anti-LGBT, anti-abortion former governor of Kansas.
Who is now the current US ambassador-at-large for religious freedom, as well as top staffers of Sen. Marco Rubio, the sponsor of virtually every China sanctions bill to be rubber-stamped by Congress in recent weeks.
During a question-and-answer session, The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal asked Zenz about his fundamentalist religious views and far-right politics.
Zenz did not distance himself from his past statements denouncing gender equality and “tolerance thinking,” or his advocacy for the “scriptural spanking” of children.
Instead, he asserted that there was no inconsistency between those views and the quality of his research on China’s Xinjiang region.
“I do have a diverse background and I have personal connections which I do not believe are inconsistent with my research,”
Zenz responded to Blumenthal.
“I do not support China’s authoritarian methods in any way, and I do believe there’s a God who is bringing judgment in different forms. The End Times is a very fascinating topic, a very complex topic, and I think, very relevant. And I think it’s good to live aware of that.”
Adrian Zenz is considered an expert in DC. His research influenced the Uyghur Human Rights Act that sanctioned China.
But he’s also a Rapture-ready evangelical who says he’s “led by God” against Beijing.
I challenged him on Capitol Hill.
More here: https://t.co/HPJUcHddlepic.twitter.com/czZtxxvXxO
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) December 22, 2019
Moments later, a visibly upset young man rose from his seat to “condemn the tankie Max Blumenthal.”
Unleashing a torrent of insults at Blumenthal, he made no attempt to refute the journalist’s line of questioning.
The rigorously enforced conviction on display in the politically hermetic chambers of the US Capitol also encompasses the whole of Western media, where even purportedly progressive outlets have provided Zenz with an uncritical platform.
From Washington’s halls of power to major newsrooms, few are willing to let inconvenient facts get in the way of a new, undeniably faith-based Cold War crusade.
More…
The Australia Citizens Party produced 8 original fact-based articles (with a lot of useful hyperlinks for researchers) on Xinjiang issues “Xinjiang: China’s Western frontier in the heart of Eurasia”: https://twitter.com/OcastJournalist/status/1383221132560531456
Oh, that first bullshit article… what a fun read. It’s nice to leave reality every now and then and smell the lollypop trees, pet the golden unicorns, and swim in the streams of icy-fresh beer.
But then, there are two more serious, well researched articles that crush the American anti-China narrative. I hope that you all found them enlightening.
It seems that the talks in Alaska were a turning point for china and Russia is also taking its cues from actions verses words moving forward here... the USA is like a runaway train, gone off the rails.... an accident in the process of happening... no one appears in command.... will be interesting to see where this ends up.. the fact china is giving the USA the cold shoulder is long overdue... same deal with Russia giving a similar response... at what point do they say enough is enough?? it looks like we are at, or close to that spot now..
Posted by: james | Apr 17 2021 18:38 utc | 4
What is truly frightening about all this is that there are many people who actually believe this nonsense.
I may be wrong but imho 99% of the work done in China is by Forced Labor!
Prove me wrong!
-13 posted on 10/24/2020, 10:16:25 AM by prophetic
Jeeze! Louise!
Just keep in mind that this noise is all just that…noise as the United States tries to gear up for efforts to destroy the gateway to the BRI; Xinjiang. China knows this.
It’s all the same “song and dance”. Get American all upset about some “evil” and then launch the American military into the region to “save it”.
Yes. Everyone knows. The United States are training terrorists to absolutely create destruction and mayhem in Xinjiang. And they are proud to fund it, and proud to be doing it. And they believe that it will be successful.
Ah.
Not THIS time, bucco.
Because…
China knows that the USA wants to inject military forces into Xinjiang to destabilize it. And this is why they have military forces in place for the American attempts to do so. And whatever proxy forces they establish to do the fighting.
The Chinese Do Not Play.
What do I mean?
Watch this little demonstration of the military in Xinjiang protecting the Uighur’s from the American proxy terrorists…
Check out this most interesting and telling video HERE, if it doesn’t load properly.
Do you want more?
I have more posts in my Uyghurs sub-index under my China index.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Uh oh. Yup. As if the last four years of “the fire hose of disinformation” wasn’t bad enough, It appears that the neocons on K-street in Washington DC are gearing up for “round two”. Ugh!
This model for propaganda is known as “the firehose of falsehood” because of two of its distinctive features: high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions. In the words of one observer, “...propaganda entertains, confuses and overwhelms the audience.”
A Senate committee has overwhelmingly passed the draft Strategic Competition Act in April 2021, which takes aims at China on multiple fronts, including military, economy and technology.
Of course, China will “take it on the chin“.
To "take it on the chin"
Meaning; this is a boxing metaphor meaning don't shy away from difficulty stand up for yourself don't complain get on with it be a man; be strong accept the challenge admit your mistakes andacceptcriticism
-Totake it on the chinmeaning
The United States is now the world’s most important powerhouse in technology, military might, and innovation. For China, being taken as a competitor by the U.S. is like to be chosen as a competitor by Mike Tyson, says Liu Baocheng.
The act is calling for over $1 billion to increase Washington’s already extensive global influence.
This includes over $650 million to fund foreign militaries in the Indo-Pacific region. The money would go to QUAD members to increase their size, train them to use American military equipment, and expand the size of their military bases so that American troops can use them.
It also includes some $450 million (in a separate budget element) for the Indo-Pacific Maritime Security Initiative. Which sounds really good. But is really funding to support US Navy operations in the South China Sea off the coast of China. Bases and facilities are being expanded to allow for American troops and equipment to be put in place prior to military excursions. This is what happened with Saudi Arabia prior to the Invasion of Iraq by America.
And yet another $300 million to counter Chinese influence around the world. Which is on all fronts, from direct bribes to various national oligarchies, to anti-China “message campaigns” to terrorist efforts, and of course the NGO’s that conduct “color revolutions”. In other words, to give money to terrorists, and instigators so that they would directly fight with Chinese as proxies instead of American CIA, and military troops.
Funding also covers investments to expand American exports to developing markets. Which means that since the primary export of America is military technology, this money would be used to get nations all over the globe to buy American weapons systems and locate”advisors” to help train, use and maintain the systems.
There’s a huge program to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Which of course includes generous propaganda efforts about “Uighur Muslims”, and efforts to create strife and war in that entire region.
And finally there are techniques (not so much in funding) to convince American companies leave the Chinese market. Such as telling McDonalds that it is more profitable to stop selling burgers in China, but instead sell them in Angola. Or telling Starbucks that the Chinese market isn’t going to grow and that they should invest in Iceland instead.
Liu says this type of ideological confrontation is really on the escalation, both [1] domestically in the U.S. (get American to hate China more), and that the U.S. is also trying to [2] persuade its allies to be against China (have the rest of the world hate China as well).
He said this act would hit China for a time being.
China relies very heavily on imports and exports, although it has the most self-sufficient industrial chains, and also is on its rapid transformation to be more self-reliant. As China plays a very important role in the international supply chain, this act will also hurt the world; particularly the U.S.
Now all this comes on top of the massive anti-efforts by Trump and his neocon friends from 2016 to present. What propaganda you might ask?
The fact that Western public opinion on China is marching in lockstep with the State Department’s call for Cold War aggression reflects the convergence of state, military, and corporate media interests which monopolize our media ecosystem. Behind the State Department’s bluster and the military “Pivot to Asia” exists a quiet, well-oiled machine that is busy manufacturing consent for war on China. Too often, the hawkish policy stances it enshrines are taken as objective ‘truth’ rather than as pro-war propaganda working in the interests of weapons corporations and political elites.
We call it Sinophobia, Inc.—an information industrial complex where Western state funding, billion dollar weapons manufacturers, and right-wing think tanks coalesce and operate in sync to flood the media with messages that China is public enemy number one. Armed with state funding and weapons industry sponsors, this handful of influential think tanks are setting the terms of the New Cold War on China. The same media ecosystem that greased the wheels of perpetual war towards disastrous intervention in the Middle East is now busy manufacturing consent for conflict with China.
By saturating our news and newsfeeds with anti-China messages, this media machine is convincing average people that a New Cold War is in their interests. In reality, the hype of an imagined ‘China threat’ only serves the interests of the political elites and defense industry CEOs who stand to profit from this disastrous geopolitical escalation.
-Manufacturing consent for Sinophobia
The cynical hypocrisy of the world’s No1 propagandist: US pledges $300mn to fund massive global anti-China media machine
Here's an article by Tom Fowdy, who is a British writer and analyst of politics and international relations with a primary focus on East Asia. this was written on 26 Apr, 2021 15:2, and reprinted here with editing to fit this venue. Of course, all credit to the author.
Chinese- and Russian-funded journalism is ‘disinformation,’ but when Washington spends millions on ‘independent’ news outlets and buying journalists to get favorable coverage of its policies, it’s called ‘spreading information.’
.
The US Senate last week passed a bumper anti-China bill titled the “Strategic Competition Act”.
Backed by Chuck Schumer (Dem – New York) as one of his biggest priorities since becoming the Majority leader, the 270+ page document contains scores of recommendations and provisions on formalizing America’s “geopolitical competition” against Beijing.
This is a very comprehensive bill including in the fields of military, diplomacy, technology, trade and more.
There’s little question it will be passed into law, having already cleared the Senate and with the anti-Chinese sentiment in Washington being routinely bipartisan.
The bill also notably pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in various capacities for media focused initiatives against China.
This includes up to $300 million in an openly described effort to spread information on the “negative impact” of China’s $1 trillion-plus Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in participating countries.
A complete network of “anti-Chinese influence” programs.
A scheme to “train journalists” with the goal of countering Beijing.
And of course, millions more in funding for Radio Free Asia. So that it can expand its coverage in the specified languages of Mandarin, Cantonese, Tibetan and Uighur.
In short, it’s a mammoth propaganda push.
Watch out!
All the time, we hear so much about “Chinese/Russian propaganda,” “disinformation,” etc, and often its impact is depicted in highly threatening or sensational ways. Yet rarely, if ever, is it reported how the west actively and openly engages in psychological warfare with the goal of changing politics and governments in targeted countries. Of course, all the while playing the perpetual victim.
Here it is in the new US bill in black and white.
It is as clear as crystal.
Yet very few will balk or take notice at the explicitly ambitious effort to attempt to attack China…
…to destabilize various regions of China…
…to promote unrest and…
…ideally, to “balkanize” the country.
This, of course, is not new; it’s what America has always done.
Western political thought is built on the assumption that it owns a monopoly over what is conceived as ‘political truth,’
That it is the source of all enlightenment and, in wielding that ‘monopoly,’ has a divine mandate to evangelize that ‘truth’ to others.
This draws up a binary logical distinction that everything the west advocates is always motivated by good faith, as opposed to self-interest.
And of course, and that everyone who opposes this agenda is always motivated by bad faith and evil motivations.
My main question is this: will we be able to determine which journalists have received State Department training? If so, will there be disclaimers added to the articles that were written by such journalists? 🤔
— bob742omb (@bob742omb) April 26, 2021
This underlines the mentality of western journalism, that it is the only impartial and verifiable source of the ‘truth’.
And that everyone who questions it is advocating ‘propaganda’ – a term which usually only emotionally resonates with “enemy states.”
This mindset distorts the more nuanced reality that all states engage in such behavior.
…And that the staple assumption of ‘western truth’ is subsequently used to shape the global narrative against designated targets.
…And to justify aggressive, self-interest-driven policies under the guise of “moral concern”.
…And to make people unable to question them.
The US has a long history of such psychological warfare, both explicit and implicit.
One of the most famous instances is what was revealed as Operation Mockingbird.
This operation was where the CIA secretly infiltrated the mainstream media at home and abroad, collaborating with journalists to push US foreign-policy interests.
Many journalists – including Pulitzer Prize winners – joined the CIA’s payroll.
They ended up intentionally writing fake stories to disseminate the agency’s agitprop.
And many were given falsified or fabricated information in support of the CIA’s mission.
This was during the Cold War.
But the program has never been officially discontinued, and why would it stop today in the wake of a new Cold War with China?
A “global discourse”
The Strategic Competition bill clearly illustrates that Washington places primary importance on dominating the “global discourse” in accordance with its interests, and it is arguably very good at doing this through a multitude of methods.
In addition to its efforts with journalists, America also has an army of think tanks funded by various interests.
Usually defense industries, who are designated to create studies in order to legitimize and market Washington’s foreign-policy goals.
Then they coordinate with the press which gives them favorable coverage.
They are capable of feeding terms, ideas and concepts to shape coverage in their favor.
Such as creating “talking points” such as “wolf warrior diplomacy,” “economic coercion,” “Indo-Pacific” and so on.
All of which don’t make arguments as much as they create “assumptions” to shape public thinking accordingly.
Then, of course, there’s the actual state media.
Instruments like “Radio Free Asia” (RFA) are never earmarked by social media as “state affiliated media”.
When it should be.
In the way the likes of CGTN and RT are described.
All this, despite the fact that RFA is a US government-funded tool directly spreading propaganda on behalf of Washington.
The bill’s text makes its purpose explicit: RFA will be utilized to promote unrest and resistance in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong and even within China itself, something which would be deemed a malign form of foreign interference if done towards the west.
Yet the shocking part about it is, this is not all for China itself.
The US wants to interfere and manipulate the politics (and minds) of the citizens of hundreds of countries against Beijing.
It is planning to do so by spreading deliberate “negative” information concerning the BRI, with, of course, no consideration of its upsides whatsoever.
This means the American propaganda effort will span Latin America, South-East and Central Asia, as well as Africa.
Yet many in the west are happy to pass this behavior off as normal or acceptable, because the west is deemed the source of “truth” and “enlightenment” with the responsibility to “save” the backwards non-west.
In this case, we definitely need to talk more about organized, American-led disinformation and pure, geopolitically motivated propaganda.
Notwithstanding the onslaught of daily negative coverage as it is, Beijing needs to be ready to combat this effort and desperately improve the efficiency and credibility of its own media, especially in pointing out this kind of agenda and helping people think more about what they are consuming.
The ten rules of war propaganda were set forth by the historian Anne Morelli in her book The Principles of War Propaganda.
Well, let’s look at these rules.
In doing so, we will see that our mainstream media follow them exactly.
Anyone who follows the media reports in the West must realize that our Western media, free, objective, and critical, are engaged in war propaganda.
There are 10 well-known rules of war propaganda that are easy to check.
Rule 1: We don’t want war
The West supposedly never wants wars.
Even so, the West wages more wars than all other nation states put together.
Germany is fighting in Mali to supply the French nuclear power plants with uranium (officially against terrorists, of course).
Germany fought in Afghanistan for 20 years, so long that most have already forgotten what it was all about.
Germany has been militarily active in Kosovo for over 20 years to build democracy, but the Albanian mafia still rules there under the protection of the Bundeswehr. And so on.
All of these – and also the other – wars of the US-dominated West in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and on, all have one thing in common: Of course, the West did not want them at all, but was forced to war by the evil rulers.
This is the official reading every time, and none of the “rulers” has ever attacked a country in the West.
It was always the other way around, the West attacked.
But: “We don’t want the war”
Rule 2: The opposing camp is solely responsible for the war
See point one. Assad is allegedly responsible for the war in Syria, although the media in the West consistently keep silent about the CIA operation “Timber Sycamore” with which the CIA started the war.
If this is new to you, it’s no wonder.
Der Spiegel, for example, has never reported on how you can find the term “Timber Sycamore” when you search the Spiegel archive.
The relevant documents of the CIA were published in Washington years ago. If this is new to you, check it out.
It is always done that way. So it was with Iraq, Libya and all other wars in which the West is fighting.
The blame was placed on the other side, concealing that the West started the wars itself.
Rule 3: The leader of the opposing camp has the face of the devil
This is the classic.
The choice of words is crucial.
Putin, Assad and whoever are “potentates”, “autocrats”, “dictators” who commit all the deadly sins of the world.
When a war is imminent, the media bring – in order to make the population ready for war – the inevitable formulations of the “Second Hitler”, from whom the world must be saved.
Of course, the enemies do not have “governments”, they are “regimes”.
With all these formulations the “enemy” is dehumanized, the public should feel hatred and be ready to overthrow such an evil person, even at the cost of thousands of lives.
This is what is called “hatespeech” in modern German and what the same media, that use this hate propaganda against unloved heads of government, always find very bad.
Rule 4: We defend a good cause and not special interests
Of course, the US wanted to bring human rights, democracy and prosperity to Iraq.
Of course, it wasn’t about the oil wells that US corporations have secured for themselves.
Not even in Libya, where France (one of the driving forces in the war) has secured many oil wells.
And Mali is about the fight against terrorism, not the uranium on which the French nuclear industry depends.
And of course Syria is not about oil or the only Russian naval base in the Mediterranean, it is only about democracy, human rights and prosperity.
Wherever a government is critical of the West and where there are also natural resources (or where one of the main enemies China and Russia can be harmed), the West finds democracy and human rights very important.
But if a government is pro-Western and allows the West access to natural resources, such as the absolutist Saudi dictatorship, then democracy and human rights are not so important.
Incidentally, this is the key to understanding why Russia, which was a political friend under Yeltsin, has become enemy number one again under Putin:
Under Yeltsin, Western corporations had secured control of Russian oil and gas.
Putin ended that by 2003, and suddenly he was the number one villain.
It doesn’t say that in the “quality media”, but it was actually so banal.
Rule 5: The enemy commits atrocities deliberately; on the other hand, when we cross the line, it is unintentional
We experience this one all the time.
If the US is undoubtedly bombing a hospital in Afghanistan, then that is “collateral damage” and it was an accident.
Nobody is punished, the “quality media” quickly forget it and do not ask for clarification.
On the other hand, it is enough if someone claims without evidence that Russia or Syria bombed a hospital and the media in the West are reporting not only for days, but also afterwards, so that the public does not forget who it must hate.
Rule 6: The enemy uses illegal weapons
That is also a classic.
We have all heard many times that Assad uses “barrel bombs”.
Nobody really knows what that actually is, but it sounds pretty nasty.
The USA constantly uses barrel bombs, except they are called “cluster bombs” and the “quality media” are almost always shyly silent about them.
Why? Well, because these weapons are internationally banned.
Whether Assad uses this weapon has not been proven at all, but as a precaution the media have come up with a separate word for it so that the readers don’t even get the idea that the West could also use such weapons.
“…But he does that all the time.”
Rule 7: We suffer only slight losses; the enemy’s losses are enormous
This rule only applies when the war has entered its critical phase.
Before the war it was the other way around.
Before the war it was reported that the enemy was aggressive and, for example, had killed so many of “our” soldiers again when violating a ceasefire.
This is to prepare the public for a war.
We have been seeing this in Ukraine for years.
The “quality media” always report when it gets “hotter” there that the rebels have killed so many Ukrainian soldiers.
In doing so, they keep silent about the fact that the mostly Ukrainian shelling of residential areas preceded them, in which civilians were killed.
But you don’t find out about that from the “quality media”, you have to read the reports of the OSCE.
The “quality media” did not consider the fact that the OSCE presented a report in November 2020 in which it stated that almost 75 percent of civilian casualties in Donbass were due to the Ukrainian armed forces.
Rule 8: The artists and intellectuals support our cause
Notice how often celebrities have their say in the media who think the Western wars are good for moral reasons.
Celebs have spoken out against Assad, Gaddafi, and Saddam in recent years.
This is particularly evident in the American media.
In 2019 a prominent “benefit concert” for Venezuela took place in the Colombian border town of Cucuta.
Famous artists appeared in the middle of the jungle to sing against Maduro. Conveniently right next to the US military base there.
And for Navalny, for example, Western celebrities wrote an open letter to Putin in April 2021.
It did not contain any truths and probably hardly anyone has read it.
It was just important to be able to name the celebrities in the headlines of the media who are against Putin.
There are innumerable examples of this method of war propaganda.
But none of this has anything to do with politics, after all, what politician is interested in a singer’s opinion?
These reports only have the purpose of giving the public the feeling that the position of the West is morally correct.
And thus the fans of the stars are to be influenced accordingly and to follow their idol.
It’s all about emotions, not the actuality.
Rule 9: Our concern is something sacred
Of course, after all, it is supposedly about the “holy” values of the West, that is to say about democracy and human rights.
You can also kill people for this.
This is probably the oldest means of war propaganda in world history.
In ancient Rome one had to bring civilization to the barbarians, of course it was not about the enrichment of the generals.
Caesar moved to Gaul as a practically bankrupt man and came back very rich.
Later the Spaniards had to bring the “savages” in America the right faith so that they would not burn in the hell to which the Spaniards sent them on the occasion.
It wasn’t about the gold, of course.
And the British Empire wanted to bring civilization back to the “backward” colonies, because the poor, backward people in the colonies couldn’t rule themselves.
What I am writing here so ironically is true.
You can read it in the documents from the corresponding periods.
There was always a “sacred” reason for urgently going to war.
And today the “holy” concerns are democracy, human rights, women’s rights and so on.
It’s still the same principle as in antiquity, only the “sacred” concern changes every now and then.
Rule 10: Anyone who questions our propaganda is a traitor
Today the word “traitor” is out of date.
Today you can choose to say “Putin understanders”, “Kremlin trolls”, “conspiracy theorists”, “Chicom”, “fifty center”, “anti-Americans” and whatever other names are currently circulating.
Anyone who disagrees is demonized and marginalized.
But all of these terms have one thing in common: They identify the named person as an opponent of “Western values” or democracy. Ergo: it’s a traitor.
It’s shocking, but the German media is actually doing war propaganda like in the darkest times in history.
And not just since yesterday, it happened in 1991 in the First Gulf War with the incubator lie and has not been less since then, on the contrary, it has become more, and the techniques have been refined more and more.
Do you think it is a coincidence that the media works exactly according to the propaganda textbook?
Since many good people have found themselves susceptible to the narrative that China is the global supervillain…
…conspiring to overthrow western Christian values by any means necessary…
… I believe some lessons should be brought to bear.
Anti-Nation state fanatic George Soros stated at the 2020 Davos Summit that China has become the greatest threat to his vision for Open Society (right behind Trump’s USA). This was echoed by Lord Malloch Brown’s 2020 Global Government Speeches.
China’s deep alliance with Russia and the increased integration of the Eurasian Economic Union with the 135 nation strong Belt and Road Initiative form the basis of an alternative multipolar paradigm has kept imperialists up at night for the past several years.
The prospect of a US-China-Russia alliance has been one of the greatest threats to empire which peeked in the weeks before COVID-19 arose onto the scene as the US-China Trade Pact successfully entered its first phase (and has since fallen into shambles) as well as Trump’s repeated calls for “good relations with Russia.”
Amidst the surge of anti-China media psy ops published across Five Eyes nations, countless patriots of a conservative bent have found themselves absorbed into a red-scare manic hysteria.
Understanding the nature of the current psy ops, and new red scare deflection underway…
… it is necessary to review some seriously underappreciated facts of recent history…
… and since former secretary of State Sir Henry Kissinger (a genuine Knight of the British Empire), figures prominently in this story, it is wise to start with his relationship with China.
Although he is celebrated for being an “enlightened” liberal politician who helped China open up to the west after the dark days of Mao’s Cultural Revolution by extending western markets to China…
… the truth is very different.
A devout proponent of world government and population control, Kissinger had been the tool selected during a particularly important period of human history to advance a new ordering of world affairs.
The Division of the World Into Producers and Consumers
Since the world was taken off the gold reserve system way back in 1971, a new age of “post-industrialism” was unleashed onto a globalized world.
Humanity was given a new type of system which presumed that both our nature and the cause of value itself were located in the act of consuming.
The old idea that our nature was creative, and that our wealth was tied to producing, was assumed to be an obsolete thing of the past… a relic of a dirty old industrial age.
Under the new post-1971 operating system, we were told that the world would now be divided among producers and consumers.
The “have-not producers” would provide the cheap labor which first world consumers would increasingly rely on for the creation of goods they used to make for themselves.
“First world” nations were told…
…that according to the new post-industrial rules of de-regulation and market economics…
… that they should export their heavy industry, machine tools and other productive sectors abroad…
…as they transitioned into “white collar” post-industrial consumer societies.
The longer this outsourcing of industries went on, the less western nations found themselves capable of sustaining their own citizenries…
… building their own infrastructure…
…or determining their own economic destinies.
In place of full spectrum economies that once saw over 40% of North America’s labor force employed in manufacturing, a new addiction to “buying cheap stuff” began, and a “service economies” took over like a cancer.
To make matters worse, the many newly independent nations struggling to liberate themselves from colonialism…
…were told that they would have to abandon their dreams of development…
…since those goals would render the formula of a producer-consumer stratified society impossible to create.
Those leaders resisting this edict would face assassination or CIA overthrow.
Those leaders who adapted to the new rules would become peons of the new age of “Economic Hitmen”.
China and the West: The Real Story
By the time Deng Xiaoping announced the “opening up” of China in 1978, Kissinger had already managed the economic paradigm shift of 1971…
…which transformed U.S. Foreign Policy from a pro-development orientation towards a new policy of depopulation.
One that ended up targeting the poor nations of the global south under the logic that the resources under their soil were the lawful possession of the USA.
The NSSM 200 (titled “Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for US Security and Overseas Interests”) outlined its objective “Assistance for population moderation should give emphasis to the largest and fastest growing developing countries where there is a special US and strategic interest”.
… which was begun in full with the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes to 20% …
…that ensured a vast destruction of small and medium businesses across the board.
Believing China (then still largely an impoverished third world country) to be desperate enough to accept money and short-term salvation…
…after years of trauma induced by the Cultural Revolution.
Under Kissinger’s logic, China would receive just enough money to sustain a static existence but would never be able to stand on its own two feet.
Unbeknownst to Kissinger, China’s leaders under the direction of Zhou Enlai, and his disciple Deng Xiaoping had a much longer-term strategic perspective than their western partners ever imagined.
While receiving much needed revenue from foreign exports, China began to slowly create the foundations for a genuine renaissance which would be made possible by…
…slowly learning the skills…
… leapfrogging technologies…
…and acquiring means of production which the west had once pioneered.
Zhou Enlai had first enunciated this visionary program as early as 1963 under his Four Modernizations mandate (Industrial, agricultural, national defense and science and technology).
And then restated this program in January 1976 weeks before his death.
This program manifested itself in the July 6, 1978 State Council Forum on the “Principles to Guide the Four Modernizations”.
Informed by the findings of international exploratory missions conducted by economist Gu Mu’s delegations around various advanced world economies (Japan, Hong Kong, Western Europe).
The findings of Gu Mu’s reports laid out the concrete pathways for full spectrum economic sovereignty.
A sovereignty with a focus on cultivating the cognitive creative powers of a new generation of scientists.
Scientists that would drive the non linear breakthroughs needed for China to ultimately break free of the rules of closed-system economics which technocrats like Kissinger wished the world adhere to.
Deng Xiaoping broke from the radical Marxism prevalent among the intelligentsia by redefining “labor” from purely material constraints and elevating the concept rightfully to the higher domain of mind saying:
“We should select several thousand of our most qualified personnel within the scientific and technological establishment and create conditions that will allow them to devote their undivided attention to research.
Those who have financial difficulties should be given allowances and subsidies…
We must create within the party an atmosphere of respect for knowledge and respect for trained personnel.
The erroneous attitude of not respecting intellectuals must be opposed. All work. Be it mental or manual, is labor.”
Over the course of the coming decades, China learned, and like any student, copied, reverse engineered and reconstructed western techniques as it slowly generated capacities that ultimately allowed them press on the limits of human knowledge outpacing all western models.
Project 863 focused on areas of space, lasers, energy, biotechnology, new materials, automation and information technology.
This project became the driver for creative innovation guided by the National Science Foundation and was upgraded to the 973 Basic Research Program in 2009 to: “1).
Project 973 supported [1] multidisciplinary and fundamental research of relevance to national development; [2] Promote frontline basic research; [3] Support the cultivation of scientific talent capable of original research; and [4] Build high-quality interdisciplinary research centers.”
The fruits of these long term programs was beginning to be felt and by 1996, discussion for a New Silk Road reviving the ancient trade routes connecting China to Europe and Africa through the Middle East and Caucasus was beginning with conferences hosted by Beijing under President Jiang Zemin.
One of the few western participants at these Chinese events was the Schiller Institute, whose founders delivered a full day seminar in 1997 describing the program that would finally come back to life in 2013 when Xi Jinping made it the focus of China’s foreign policy outlook under the Belt and Road Initiative.
Why did this program wait until 2013 to blossom onto the world stage when obvious momentum was already in motion in 1997?
George Soros and the Attack on the Asian Markets
From May 1997, George Soros’ targeting of the Southeast Asian “Tigers economies” of Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Laos, and Malaysia with…
…speculative short sales of their local currencies…
…and which resulted in months of vast anarchy across all of Asia and the world more broadly.
Currencies collapsed from 10-80% over the next 8 months and took many years to begin to recover.
Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohammed was brave enough to call out Soros’ economic warfare.
He did much to help his nation weather the storm by imposing capital controls to maintain some semblance of stability.
He ended up calling out the speculator saying:
“as much as people who produce and distribute drugs are criminals, because they destroy nations, the people who undermine the economies of poor nations are too.”
Chinese President Jiang Zemin followed suit calling Soros “a financial sniper” and stated he would not let the speculator enter Chinese markets.
“The ultimate target is China.
The British are particularly worried about the increasingly close collaboration between China and the ASEAN nations, which are being integrated into the massive regional and continental development projects initiated by China under the umbrella of the Eurasian Continental Land-Bridge program.
Such real development policies offer the alternative to the cheap-labor, colonial-style export industries of the “globalization” model
- the model that has led to the financial bubbles now bursting worldwide.”
The Tumultuous Years of 1997-2013
With the advent of the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management…
(whose meltdown nearly took down the world economy in 1999 if not bailed out by central banks),
…followed by the Y2K/tech bubble explosion of 2000, the world markets nearly collapsed on several occasions.
9-11 unleashed a new era of warfare which deflected attention from the rot of the financial system while derivatives were deregulated.
And ‘Too Big To Fail’ banking formed in short order growing far beyond the powers of any nation state to rein in.
Under this period of destabilization, wars, terrorism and easy money speculation, China and its Eurasian allies moved slower to rebuild the physical basis of their existence…
…with the creation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization…
… long term planning…
… and a slow but steady focus on real (vs speculative) economic activity.
The fact that China was among the only nations of the world to keep national controls over their central bank and maintain Glass-Steagall bank separation were not lost on the enemies of humanity…
…all of whom are still yearning for a world-wide bankers’ dictatorship.
This process continued until it became evident that the western unipolar agenda would stop at nothing…
…including nuclear war…
…in order to assure the total subservience of all nation states.
With Obama unveiling his Asia Pivot (air-sea battle) plans against China along with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) economic attack on China.
The veil was now lifted to the true ugly face behind the liberal fascist smiles and it became clear that the full spectrum dominance military encirclement of Russia’s perimeter was being fully extended to China’s perimeter as well.
The Revival of the New Silk Road
It was in the face of this existential threat that Xi Jinping emerged as the new leader of China.
And a historic crackdown of party corruption on all levels Federal, Provincial and Municipal was begun in force.
Although China is often accused of intellectual theft, the reality is that it has begun to clearly outpace western nations becoming a pioneer on every level of science and technology.
… since it is very well understood that it would become the basis for a new world system…
…as the old globalized paradigm comes crashing down faster than the Hindenburg.
The Real Perpetrators Laugh as a New Cold War Hysteria is Orchestrated
It is perhaps an irony that those figures who have been caught time and again attempting to destroy the foundations of both the USA, China and Russia have deflected attention from their own actions by promoting the idea that China is the USA’s natural enemy.
The reality is China is currently not only reviving the ancient silk road paradigm that focused on a harmony of interests and mutual self interest through economic and cultural exchange…
In this 1920 document China’s first President outlined the superiority of the American system of political economy which he studied deeply beginning in his early student days in the USA.
And upon which he explicitly modelled his new republican China and his three Principles of the People (premised on Lincoln’s principle of a nation for, by and of the people).
Sun Yat-sen (a Christian Confucian revolutionary) is not only the beloved founding father of the republic of China celebrated to this day, but stated his views pro-American views in the following terms
“The world has been greatly benefited by the development of America as an industrial and a commercial Nation.
So a developed China with her four hundred millions of population, will be another New World in the economic sense.
The nations which will take part in this development will reap immense advantages.
Furthermore, international cooperation of this kind cannot but help to strengthen the Brotherhood of Man.”
Both mainstream and alternative media outlets that tend to be sympathetic to conservative values have bit the bait…
…and are now blind to the fact that those oligarchical social engineers managing the World Economic Forum…
…and drooling over a new era of World Government…
… population reduction and technocratic feudalism…
…are laughing at all of those fish in their nets whose ignorance to history and other cultures are leading them to their own self-destruction.
…
Upon this backdrop we have this little interesting take on events…
U.S. Four Star Generals Ask DNI To Stop Lying
These folks have had it with the constant stream of baseless propaganda U.S. intelligence is spilling over the world:
Dear Director of National Intelligence,we, the the 4-star Generals leading U.S. regional commands all over the world, are increasingly concerned with about the lack of evidence for claims you make about our opponents.We, as true believers, do not doubt whatever judgment you make about the harmful activities of Russia, Iran and China. However - our allies and partners do not yet subscribe to the bliss of ignorance. They keep asking us for facts that support those judgmentsUnfortunately, we have none that we could provide.You say that Russia thought to manipulate Trump allies and to smear Biden, that Russia and Iran aimed to sway the 2020 election through covert campaigns and that China runs covert operations to influence members of Congress.Media reports have appeared in which 'intelligence sources' claim that Russia, China and Iran are all paying bounties to the Taliban for killing U.S. soldiers. Fortunately no soldier got hurt by those rumors.Our allies and partners read those and other reports and ask us for evidence. They want to know how exactly Russia, Iran and China are doing these things. They, of course, hope to learn from our experience to protect their own countries.Currently we are not able to provide them with such information. Your people keep telling our that all of it is SECRET.We therefore ask you to declassify the facts that support your judgments.*Sincerely
The Generals
----PS: *Either that or shut the fuck up.
The above may well have been a draft for the letter behind this report:
America’s top spies say they are looking for ways to declassify and release more intelligence about adversaries’ bad behavior, after a group of four-star military commanders sent a rare and urgent plea asking for help in the information war against Russia and China.The internal memo from nine regional military commanders last year, which was reviewed by POLITICO and not made public, implored spy agencies to provide more evidence to combat "pernicious conduct."
Only by "waging the truth in the public domain against America’s 21st century challengers” can Washington shore up support from American allies, they said. But efforts to compete in the battle of ideas, they added, are hamstrung by overly stringent secrecy practices.
“We request this help to better enable the US, and by extension its allies and partners, to win without fighting, to fight now in so-called gray zones, and to supply ammunition in the ongoing war of narratives," the commanders who oversee U.S. military forces in Asia, Europe, Africa, Latin America, as well as special operations troops, wrote to then-acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire last January.
“Unfortunately, we continue to miss opportunities to clarify truth, counter distortions, puncture false narratives, and influence events in time to make a difference," they added.
The generals must have been seriously miffed to write such a letter.
There have been a number of published intelligence judgments where the NSA had expressed low confidence in conclusions made mainly by the CIA.
The NSA is part of the military.
Between two bureaucracies such an accusing letter or internal memo is the equivalent of a declaration of war.
It is doubtful that the intelligence folks would win that fight.
That gives some hope that the Office of the DNI and the agencies below it will now lessen their production of nonsensical claims.
….
The CIA/FBI/17+ known/unknown agencies are clearly a security apparatus that’s gone out of control when even the USA’s “nine regional [four-star general] military commanders” are out of the loop and pleading to be better informed.
Worryingly, though, they ask for “ammunition in the ongoing war of narratives,” which they apparently are ready to go right along with.
Western news media, of course, has become but a compliant weaponized appendage of that security apparatus, and democracy, which depends on informed voters, is nowhere in control of any of this.
Down this slippery slope, lies fascism.
US needs a correct mindset to compete with China: Global Times editorial
It must be emphasized that it's the sacred right of all 1.4 billion Chinese people to have a better living standard through the country's development. The US elites fear and try to contain China's development, and turn the normal competition between the two countries into a zero-sum game. This is immoral and runs counter to human rights that they trumpet. Washington cannot say one thing but do another. Blocking the economic and technological progress of developing countries is the biggest sin of the 21st century. They need to bear in mind that it's not the privilege of the Americans and Westerners to live a decent life.
Around and around the water goes down the drain. Those in the water are desperately trying to throw out anchors and shoot flare into the night skies above. But no one is aware.
The warning alarms are ringing loudly
While the United States might believe that it represents the entirety of the “free world” and thus ALL nations that “matter”. This is a complete falsehood. The rest of the world is really, seriously getting fed up, and angry.
Since Joe Biden took over the White House on January 20, the US has been pushing for what it calls an allied approach against China on trade and other issues. So far, that approach appears to be gaining some traction, as the US and some of its allies, including the EU and Japan, are reportedly mulling harsher trading rules targeting China.
Chinese officials have repeatedly registered their displeasure with such an approach of forming small circles or clans among so-called democratic economies to harm other countries’ interests.
However, China’s legitimate concerns have been largely overshadowed by what appears to be a coordinated smearing campaign against China by the West and their media. Not many countries, including developing economies that may also be targeted by the West’s “tougher” rules against China, spoke up. Even if some did, their voices are often ignored.
But at the EU’s trade policy day this week, where EU officials repeated long-standing grievances against China’s industrial policies and the state-owned companies, the new head of the WTO offered a very powerful and pragmatic repudiation of the group’s approach to gang up on China.
“I’ll just be very open,” said Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who made history in March when she became the first woman and first African to head the WTO, as she warned against targeting China. “When China feels it’s being targeted and it’s only about China, then you get a lot of resistance.”
In the speech, Okonjo-Iweala went further to warn countries not to “use the WTO or trade as kind of a weapon to solve” political issues. She did not name names, but that is a reference to the plan pushed by the US, the EU and Japan to try to “weaponize the WTO” and international trading rules to serve their ill-willed, selfish political interests in containing China’s economic rise.
The WTO chief was eloquent and understandably diplomatic in issuing a dire warning against such a dangerous trend in global multilateral trading system. But in case some in the West might need a more straightforward reminder, here is the bottom line: The era when a small group of powers can decide others’ fate is long gone. The global multilateral system is no longer a tool that they can deploy at will.
Moreover, today’s China is no longer the same country that was easily invaded by the so-called Eight-Nation Alliance over a century ago. It is now the world’s second-largest economy, the world’s largest trading nation, and the biggest contributor to global economic growth. China will not be intimidated and pushed around by a few so-called advanced countries.
To put the WTO chief’s warning into more blunt terms, China will not sit idle and allow the US and its allies to use the WTO as a weapon against itself. Any such attempt should and will be met with forceful resistance.
And that resistance won’t just come from China.
The US and its allies might being targeting China directly, but whatever reform plans they push forward at the WTO will also hit other developing countries, which have similar economic policies and development plans as China. In fact, while the US and its allies may have put China on the spotlight, their true intention is to pull the WTO and global trading rules further into their favor and away from the developing economies.
The WTO, whose operations and authority have been seriously undermined by the US, is in dire need of reform. But any reform plan should be discussed and decided by all of its 150 or so members, not just by the US and its allies. The reforms should make the WTO more balanced to serve not only advanced economies – as it is in many cases – but also developing economies – which make up two-thirds of its membership.
Conclusion
Ok, so it’s really clear. Billions of dollars are pouring out of the United States towards the demonization of China, and towards instigation of internal strife and NGO-backed revolutions.
This will not happen quietly.
American readers will get the brunt of the propaganda. Most Americans, Brits, and Australians (as well as other member of the “Western Alliance”) will start seeing their news feeds clogged up with very healthy does of anti-China “news”.
Some of it will be subtle; existing real news with injections of anti-China phrases and content interspersed.
Some of it will be direct, in your face. It might consist of lies, or half-truths. All will be distortions.
Some of it will be directed at any nations that support China. If Cambodia does something in favor of the BRI, you can well expect a healthy dose of anti-Cambodia articles to start appearing as well.
But that’s not all.
The new funding is specifically directed at fomenting military operations inside of China itself.
There will be more attempts at “color revolutions”, “pro-democracy” actions, and covert insurgency operations.
There will be an increase in Social Justice Warrior interruptions; all designed to tear apart the strong Chinese social and familial value system.
There will be training to these ends, and clandestine efforts to stop China at all casts so that it collapses from the outer edges, and internally from the middle.
Every time you read an anti-China “news” article, realize that it is part of a triad of articles across different platforms all sending the same messages, and with that they interlock with your reading habits to interject, at key points, other anti-China screeds. All with the ultimate desire to have you (the reader) “foaming at the mouth” ready for war with China.
Here’s what they want the sheeple to turn into… (from my inbox)
Filthy Scumbag Communist Traitors are constantly trying to convince you that it’s normal to go through life living off handouts and dependent on the government for survival.
Communists want you to believe you are a victim and that others are to blame for your circumstances.
Communists employ censorship and violence to force their beliefs on you because they are incapable of forming valid arguments. Because there is no valid argument to convince you to accept that your prosperity must depend on the degree of your worship of the state.
You can not be convinced by logic or reason that you’re better off poor and powerless than rich and in control of your destiny.
Real Americans believe in and practice self-reliance. Real Americans accept responsibility for their circumstances and make the necessary sacrifices of their time and attention to improve the quality of their lives.
Real Americans Are Entrepreneurs. Real Americans create opportunity and prosperity. Real Americans are not victims because Real Americans Are Champions.My Fellow Americans Please Help To Make America Greater Than We Already Are And To Help Keep America Great By Starting Your Own Business Or Expanding Your Existing Business.Capital Funding And Comprehensive Training And Mentoring Are Available to All American Patriots Regardless Of Your Current Credit Score Or Current Or Past Circumstances.
This comes from a reader who admitted that they never visited China, never obtained a passport, but knows what China is because…
…well they said it’s “obvious”.
Sheeple. The United States Congress has decided to militarize the sheeple to ready them for war.
Last Minute additions
Video: US President Biden administration will provide US$300 million per year to promote fake news against China. 美國總統拜登政府將每年提供3億美元，以宣傳針對中國的虛假新聞.
Expect more hate crimes targeting Asian American in the coming months and years. 預計在未來數年內，將有更多針對亞裔美國人的仇恨犯罪。
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
It’s an exciting time. If you can ignore the howls of fright, and fear, from the oligarchy in the United States you can clearly see that the world is uniting and coming together. Roadblocks have been set aside. nations are unifying, sharing resources, and working together for the mutual benefit of all. And it’s long overdue.
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Key to this is the BRI. And all the nations that are connected to the BRI will profit handsomely. But here (in this article) we will concentrate on the main lines or corridors between the big three; Russia, China and Iran. Of course, everyone else near by stands to profit and benefit from all of this. Indeed, it’s a real exciting time.
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Here’s some “meat” as to what the BRI contains. Noting that much is still left out, the roads, the bridges, the tunnels, the high-speed rail lines, and the local community infrastructure. Indeed the scope of the BRI project is vast, just vast. It’s sort of like a major effort to go to the moon, kind of “vast”.
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The following is an article titled “How Eurasia will be interconnected”. I was written by Pepe Escobar. I edited it to fit this venue, and all credit to the author. You also might want to visit the UNZ where most of his articles reside and where there are many other articles of great interest.
The extraordinary confluence between the signing of the Iran-China strategic partnership deal and the “Ever Given” saga in the Suez Canal is bound to spawn a renewed drive to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and all interconnected corridors of Eurasia integration.
"Ever Given" saga in the Suez Canal
EverGiven is one of the largest container ships in the world. The ship is owned by Shoei Kisen Kaisha, and is time chartered and operated by container transportation and shipping company Evergreen Marine, headquartered in Luzhu District, Taoyuan City, Taiwan.
In April 2021, it blocked the Suez Canal for days leading onto weeks, and put a halt to most sea-traffic using the canal.
Iran-China strategic partnership
The Iran-China bilateral 25-year Comprehensive Strategic Partnership was signed in Tehran by foreign ministers Javad Zarif and Wang Yi on 27 March 2021.
While specific details of the agreement are unknown, the joint statement released on signing refers to strengthening political and parliamentary ties, the recognition and pursuit of mutual strategic interests, increased cooperation in defense training, equipment, technology, and intelligence, increased cooperation in counterterrorism and counter-narcotics, and expanded economic ties, especially in finance, mining, energy, agriculture, and infrastructure.
Infrastructure includes ports and railway networks and is linked to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
This is the most important geoeconomic development in Southwest Asia in ages – even more crucial than the geopolitical and military support to Damascus by Russia since 2015.
Multiple overland railway corridors across Eurasia featuring cargo trains crammed with freight (the most iconic of which is arguably Chongqin-Duisburg) are a key plank of BRI. In a few years, this will all be conducted on high-speed rail.
The chongqing duisburg railway.
ChinaandEurope: Reconnecting Across a New Silk Roaddigitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1129&context=facpub
Chongqing Duisburg BELARUS GERMANY POLAND Venice Athens GEORGIA ARMENIA AZERBAIJAN Colombo TRANS-EURASIA RAILROADThe 11,179-kilometre rail line is the most important connection to Europe.
Launched in 2011 by a joint venture with Germany, China, Kazakhstan, and Russia, the rail goes from the city of Chongqing in southwestern China to Duisburg,Germany.
The key overland corridor is Xinjiang-Kazakhstan. (As shown in the map below.)
And then onwards to Russia and beyond outbound to Europe.
The other overland corridor traverses Central Asia and Iran, all the way to Turkey, the Balkans and Eastern Europe. It may take time – in terms of volume – to compete with maritime routes, but the substantial reduction in shipping time is already propelling a massive cargo surge.
The Iran-China strategic connection is bound to accelerate all interconnected corridors leading to and crisscrossing Southwest Asia.
A visual comparison of maritime travel compared to rail travel.
Crucially, multiple BRI trade connectivity corridors are directly linked to establishing alternative routes to oil and gas transit, controlled or “supervised” by the Hegemon since 1945: Suez, Malacca, Hormuz, Bab al Mandeb.
HegemonyHegemony (UK:, US:) is the political, economic, or military predominance or control of one state over others.
In ancient Greece (8th century BC – 6th century AD), hegemony denoted the politico-military dominance of a city-state over other city-states. The dominant state is known as the hegemon.
In the 19th century, hegemony came to denote the "Social or cultural predominance or ascendancy; predominance by one group within a society or milieu". Later, it could be used to mean "a group or regime which exerts undue influence within a society".
Also, it could be used for the geopolitical and the cultural predominance of one country over others, from which was derived hegemonism, as in the idea that the Great Powers meant to establish European hegemony over Africa, Asia and Latin America.-Wikipedia
Black Ops for the Ever Given Blockage in the Suez Canal?
Informal conversations with Persian Gulf traders have revealed huge skepticism about the foremost reason for the Ever Given saga.
The Ever Given, the 200,000-ton cargo ship that became stuck in the Suez Canal on March 23, was finally freed Monday after blocking the waterway for nearly a week, according to the Associated Press. The ship garnered international media attention and has become the subject of online conspiracy theories.
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Merchant marine pilots agree that winds in a desert storm were not enough to harass a state of the art mega-container ship equipped with very complex navigation systems.
The pilot error scenario, induced or not, is being seriously considered.
Then there’s the predominant shoptalk: stalled Ever Given was…
No wonder cynics, addressing the whole episode, are asking, Cui Bono?
Cui BonoCui bono? (Classical Latin: [kui̯ ˈbɔnoː]), in English "to whom is it a benefit?", is a Latin phrase about identifying crime suspects.
Itexpresses the view that crimes are often committed to benefit their perpetrators, especially financially. Which party benefits may not be obvious, and there may be a scapegoat.
-Wikipedia
Persian Gulf traders, in hush hush mode, also drop hints about the project for Haifa to eventually become the main port in the region. This would be in close cooperation with the Emirates. It would connect via a railway to be built between Jabal Ali in Dubai to Haifa, bypassing Suez.
Back to facts on the ground, the most interesting short-term development is how Iran’s oil and gas may be shipped to Xinjiang via the Caspian Sea and Kazakhstan – using a to-be-built Trans-Caspian pipeline.
Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline (TCP) is a proposed pipeline which would transport gas from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan across the Caspian sea via an undersea pipeline.[1] It is also known as the South Caucasus Pipeline Future Expansion (SCPFX), due to its connection with the South Caucasus Gas Pipeline. It is similar to the proposed Trans-Caspian 2 Gas Pipeline.
In May 2019 a pre-FEED (front end engineering and design) study began for a plan to build two Trans-Caspian pipelines. The first pipeline would follow an expanded SGC route (South Caucasus Pipeline, Tanap and Tap) to a final destination of Italy. The Trans-Caspian 2 Gas Pipeline would follow the White Stream route from the Georgian coast, entering the EU in Romania and reaching western Europe via existing pipelines in Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Slovakia and onwards.
- Global Fossil Infrastructure Tracker, a project of Global Energy Monitor
That falls right into classic BRI territory.
Actually more than that, because Kazakhstan is a partner not only of BRI but also the Russia-led Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU).
From Beijing’s point of view, Iran is also absolutely essential for the development of a land corridor from the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea and further to Europe via the Danube.
It’s obviously no accident that the Hegemon is on high alert in all points of this trade corridor…
“Maximum pressure” sanctions and hybrid war against Iran;
An attempt to manipulate the Armenia-Azerbaijan war;
The post-color revolution environment in both Georgia and Ukraine – which border the Black Sea;
NATO’s overarching shadow over the Balkans;
It’s all part of the plot.
Now get me some Lapis Lazuli
Another fascinating chapter of Iran-China concerns Afghanistan.
According to Tehran sources, part of the strategic agreement deals with Iran’s area of influence in Afghanistan and the evolution of still another connectivity corridor all the way to Xinjiang.
And here we go back to the always intriguing Lapis Lazuli corridor – which was conceptualized in 2012, initially for increased connectivity between Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey.
Lapis Lazuli corridor
LapisLazuliisan international transit route openedin 2018 linking Afghanistan toTurkeyviaTurkmenistan, Azerbaijan andGeorgia. The name “Lapis Lazuli” isderived from the historic route that Afghanistan'slapislazuliand other semiprecious stones were exported along, over 2,000 years ago, to the Caucasus, Russia, the Balkans, Europe, and North Africa along the ancient Silk Road. The initiative will serve to reinforce the Afghan Government's Infrastructure and Connectivity Development, Energy, and Private Sector Development National Priority Programs. The Lapis Lazuli corridor is funded by the Asian Development Bank. Currently, the transit project’s budget is estimated at $2 billion.-Wikipedia
Lapis Lazuli, wonderfully evocative, harks back to the export of an array of semiprecious stones via the Ancient Silk Roads to the Caucasus, Russia, the Balkans and North Africa.
Now the Afghan government sees the ambitious 21st century remix as…
Departing from Herat (a key area of Persian influence),
Continuing to the Caspian Sea port of Turkmenbashi in Turkmenistan,
Via a Trans-Caspian pipeline to Baku,
Onwards to Tblisi,
And through the Georgian ports of Poti and Batumi in the Black Sea,
And finally connected to Kars and Istanbul.
This is really serious business; a drive that may potentially link the Eastern Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean.
Since Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan signed the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea in 2018, in the Kazakh port of Aktau…
…what’s interesting is that their major issues are now discussed at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), where Russia and Kazakhstan are full members.
Iran will soon be;
Azerbaijan is a dialogue partner;
and Turkmenistan is a permanent guest.
Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea ...Publish Year: 2019
Author: Rizal Abdul Kadir
Published: Apr 25, 2019
After twenty-two years of negotiations, in Aktau on August 12, 2018, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Russia, and Turkmenistan signed the Convention onthe Legal Status of the Caspian Sea. The preamble of the Convention stipulates, amongother things, that the Convention, made up of twenty-four articles, was agreed on by the five states based on principles and norms of the Charter of theUnited Nations and International Law.
The Iranian Caspian Sea Canal
Construction of a navigable channel linking the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf is underway. It is expected the project will be completed in the 2020s.
The project is particularly interesting for Russia due to the cold spell with Turkey, but European and post-Soviet states will also benefit from it.
But it seems the US is worried about this alternative to the Suez Channel.
"The West and Turkey have directly or indirectly tried to block the waterway [from being created]. As a matter of fact, the United States imposed sanctions" on companies that have been involved in the project, economic analyst Alexei Chickin wrote.
-Sputnik News
One of the key connectivity problems to be addressed is the viability of building a canal from the Caspian Sea to Iran’s shores in the Persian Gulf.
Another issue is the imperative transition towards container cargo transport in the Caspian.
In SCO terms, that will…
Increase Russian trade with India via Iran
As well as offering an extra corridor for China trade with Europe.
Now, with Azerbaijan prevailing over Armenia in the Nagorno-Karabakh flare up…
…while finally sealing a deal with Turkmenistan over their respective status in the Caspian Sea…
… impetus for the western part of Lapis Lazuli is now in the cards.
The eastern part is a much more complicated affair, involving an absolutely crucial issue now on the table not only for Beijing but for the SCO: the integration of Afghanistan to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
And then…
In late 2020, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan agreed to build what analyst Andrew Korybko delightfully described as the PAKAFUZ railway. PAKAFUZ will be a key step to expand CPEC to Central Asia, via Afghanistan. Russia is more than interested.
This can become a classic case of the evolving BRI-EAEU melting pot.
Crunch time – serious decisions included – will happen this summer, when Uzbekistan plans to host a conference called “Central and South Asia: Regional Interconnectedness. Challenges and Opportunities”.
So everything will be proceeding interconnected:
A Trans-Caspian link;
The expansion of CPEC;
Af-Pak connected to Central Asia;
An extra Pakistan-Iran corridor (via Balochistan, including the finally possible conclusion of the IP gas pipeline) all the way to Azerbaijan and Turkey;
With China deeply involved in all these projects.
Beijing will be building roads and pipelines in Iran, including one to ship Iranian natural gas to Turkey.
Iran-China, in terms of projected investment, is nearly ten times more ambitious than CPEC.
Call it CIEC (China-Iran Economic Corridor).
In a nutshell: the Chinese and Persian civilization-states are on the road to emulate the very close relationship they enjoyed during the Silk Road-era Yuan dynasty in the 13th century.
INSTC or bust
An extra piece of the puzzle concerns how the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) will mix with BRI and the EAEU.
Iran, Russia and India have been discussing the intricacies of this 7,200 km-long ship/rail/road trade corridor since 2002.
INSTC technically starts in Mumbai and goes all the way via the Indian Ocean to Iran, the Caspian Sea, and then to Moscow.
As a measure of its appeal, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Oman, and Syria are all INSTC members.
Much to the delight of Indian analysts, INSTC reduces transit time from West India to Western Russia from 40 to 20 days, while cutting costs by as much as 60%.
It’s already operational.
But not yet as a continuous, free flow sea and rail link.
New Delhi already spent $500 million on a crucial project: the expansion of Chabahar port in Iran, which was supposed to become its entry point for a made in India Silk Road to Afghanistan and onward to Central Asia.
But then it all got derailed by New Delhi’s flirting with the losing United States “Quad” proposition.
Mike Pompeo (USA) with Subrahmanyam Jaishankar (India).
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India also invested $1.6 billion in a railway between Zahedan, the key city in southeast Iran, and the Hajigak iron/steel mining in central Afghanistan.
This all falls into a possible Iran-India free trade agreement which is being negotiated since 2019 (for the moment, on stand-by).
Iran and Russia already clinched a similar agreement.
And India wants the same with the EAEU as a whole.
Following the Iran-China strategic partnership, chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, Mojtaba Zonnour, has already hinted that the next step should be an Iran-Russia strategic cooperation deal, privileging…
What Moscow is already seriously considering is to build a canal between the Caspian and the Sea of Azov, north of the Black Sea. Meanwhile, the already built Caspian port of Lagan is a certified game-changer.
Thisisbecause one of the twocanals connecting the Caspian Sea to the outside worldistheVolga–Don Canal, which links the Caspian Sea with the Sea of Azov. Russia hasused the Volga–Don Canal to move warships between the Caspian Sea andtheSea of Azov.
-Russian dominancein the Black Sea: TheSeaofAzov
Volga–Don Canal.
Lagan directly connects with multiple BRI nodes.
There’s rail connectivity to the Trans-Siberian all the way to China.
Across the Caspian, connectivity includes Turkmenbashi in Turkmenistan and Baku in Azerbaijan, which is the starting point of the BTK railway through to the Black Sea and then all the way from Turkey to Europe.
On the Iranian stretch of the Caspian, Amirabad port links to the INSTC, Chabahar port and further on to India. It’s not an accident that several Iranian companies, as well China’s Poly Group and China Energy Engineering Group International want to invest in Lagan.
What we see in play here is Iran at the center of a maze progressively interconnected with Russia, China and Central Asia.
When the Caspian Sea is finally linked to international waters, we will see a de facto alternative trade/transport corridor to Suez.
Himalaya Silk Road
Post-Iran-China, it’s not far-fetched anymore to even consider the possible emergence in a not too distant future of a Himalaya Silk Road uniting BRICS members China and India (think, for instance, of the power of Himalayan ice converging into a shared Hydropower Tunnel).
Himalaya Silk Road to the BRI.
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As it stands, Russia is very much focused on limitless possibilities in Southwest Asia, as Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made it clear in the 10thMiddle East conference at the Valdai club.
The Hegemon’s treats on multiple fronts – Ukraine, Belarus, Syria, Nord Stream 2 – pale in comparison.
21st Century Geopolitics
The new architecture of 21st century geopolitics is already taking shape, with China providing multiple trade corridors for non-stop economic development…
…while Russia is the reliable provider of energy and security goods, as well as the conceptualizer of a Greater Eurasia home…
… with “strategic partnership” Sino/Russian diplomacy playing the very long game.
Southwest Asia and Greater Eurasia have already seen which way the (desert) winds are blowing.
And soon will the masters of international capital. Russia, China, Iran, India, Central Asia, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Korean Peninsula, everyone will experience a capital surge – financial vultures included.
Following the Greed is Good gospel, Eurasia is about to become the ultimate Greed frontier.
…if left unencumbered.
The United States has a say…
The problem with the BRI is that it links Europe to Russia, Persia and China and permits local currency use instead of the USD and oceanic maritime trade. Over a period of time, the value of the USD will decrease due to it no longer being the global currency, and in order to maintain it’s value the United States would have to revert back tot he “gold standard”.
Which shouldn’t be a problem. Right?
I’m sure that the United States has 30 trillion dollars worth of gold stashed here and there. Somewhere. <\sarcasm>
Of course, it is in the best interests of the United States to prevent any kind of prosperity, or changes at any level from occurring in Asia. Any and all changes will have a negative effect on America at all levels. The only way that America can maintain it’s “rules based hegemony” (The USA makes the rules, and you either follow them or be destroyed) is for it to be the dominant and preeminent ruling structure on the globe.
Here is a couple of links to thorough, in-depth analysis </sarcasm> of this situation from America;
Nah. They pretty much say the same tired old thing. China is doing this because it is evil and wants to ensnare the world like a spider trapping a fly in it’s web. Yada, yada, yada.
The only way to stop this is militarily
And that, in itself open up a “whole can of worms”.
Rick0Sheaon April 10, 2021 · at 5:56 pm EST/EDT
I watched an excellent documentary on war a fews years ago. They talked about wars going back thousands of years to the present. When an army is going to attack, all the plans and logistics are carefully put in place. Once all the preparations have been made the only thing left is to trigger it off. The instigators do not want to be seen as the aggressors so they fabricate (false flag) something so they claim they were attacked first — and off they go. The war they planned and wanted so bad is underway.The Russian military would see all this unfolding – it’s on rails. But what could they do? The USA won’t be deterred. The only way this could have been avoided that I can see is that if the USA feared a nuclear war with Russia to the extent they would not take such ridiculously dangerous chance.
Here’s a great article by John Paul Roberts that is certainly worth a read regarding the sum total of military options that the USA has…
In Continuation of a Conversation with Paul Craig Roberts
Andrei Martyanov • April 7, 2021
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Here are few numbers, we’ll start with two: 447 million and 4.67 billion. These two numbers speak volumes, and are in the foundation of the America’s decline and increasingly irrational behavior which may, quoting Bachman Turner Overdrive’s famous hit, get us to the point of a proverbial ain’t seen nothing yet.
The first number is a population of European Union, while the second one is a population of Asia.
Second place in this count is taken by Africa, around 1.37 billion, and the third–by Latin America and Caribbean with respectable 659 million which is considerably larger still than the population of the European Union. The Northern America’s population is around 371 million, which in the larger scheme of things doesn’t look that impressive. In fact, it isn’t.
The history of colonialism—I deliberately omit here this qualifier “Western”, there were all kinds of colonialisms—as related to classic capitalism was more than just about exploitation of colonies for the benefit of metropole.
While images of extraction of natural resources from colonies and shipping those to metropoles are correct, they do not form a complete picture.
In the end, colonies were viewed as markets where metropole would sell its products. The larger the colony, the more numerous its population was, the larger was the market for products manufactured in metropole.
This all made a complete, however often bloody, economic sense in the times of a good ol’ industrial capitalism when metropole would get resources from colony and turn them into finished product and then will ship this finished product, with a huge value added, to be sold in colony.
For Native Americans who sold Manhattan to Dutch in 1626 for allegedly, and hotly contested by historians, $24 worth in finished goods, whatever was offered was a huge value for them because they could not produce those items, be that, as mythology states, shiny glass bids or whatever else much more technologically advanced Dutch would offer them.
That is how it worked more or less for centuries.
The more and better items one produced the richer one would become.
That is until FIRE economy and simulacrum of the post-industrialism were revealed to the world by people most of who would have difficulty passing a general contractor exam, not to speak of getting industrial engineering degree.
FIRE economyA FIRE economy is any economy based primarily on the finance, insurance, and real estate sectors.
Finance, insurance, and real estate are United States Census Bureau classifications. Barry Popik describes some early uses as far back as 1982. Since 2008, the term has been commonly used by Michael Hudson and Eric Janszen.
It is New York City's largest industry and a prominent part of the service industry in the United States overall economy and other Western developed countries.
-Wikipedia
Fast forward to May 2000 to the passage of House Resolution 4444 China Trade Bill. In one of the most profoundly mindless and ignorant statements of America’s foreign and economic policy, Bill Clinton proclaimed that:
“Today the House of Representatives has taken an historic step toward continued prosperity in America, reform in China and peace in the world. If the Senate votes as the House has just done, to extend permanent normal trade relations with China, it will open new doors of trade for America and new hope for change in China. Seven years ago, when I became president, I charted a new course for a new economy—a course of fiscal discipline, investment in our people and open trade. I have always believed that by opening markets abroad we open opportunities at home. We’ve worked hard to advance that goal of more open and more fair trade since 1993, all the way up to the landmark legislation I signed just a few days ago to expand trade with Africa and the Caribbean Basin.”
Cringeworthy in its sheer falsity and insufferable pathos…
…the economic equivalent of Chamberlain’s “Peace in Our Time” 1938 proclamation, after signing the Munich capitulation to Hitler…
…Clinton’s declaration rattled even those who otherwise wouldn’t even pay much attention to the economic affairs of the United States.
China, wasn’t upset; why would it be?
Both NAFTA and China’s accession to the WTO served as a massive vacuum cleaner sucking the life from American industries and, to be sure, these weren’t banking or financial consulting “industries” which were being shipped abroad.
American manufacturing started to leave its own shores.
America started to lose its only tool which was and even today remains the only valid mean to an end of economic prosperity—manufacturing capacity.
A concept which is beyond the grasp of most American economists and political pseudo-scientists most of who today wear Chinese tailored suits, carry iPhones manufactured in China and use laptops and PCs assembled there as well.
To be sure, America still produces some things—civilian aircraft, as an example.
But since the whole Boeing 737 Max affair, which can only be described in strongest profanity, the shining from the polished outward façade of Boeing is largely gone and the stalwart of the American commercial aviation has de facto lost competition to its EU rival Airbus.
Cars?
Sure. America still remains competitive at manufacturing trucks.
The rest?
America’s sedans are not competitive and lose out to Japanese and Korean car makers both domestically and internationally, enough to take a look at Ford losing Russian market to Asian, Russian and EU automakers, with the last Ford Focus plant closed in Russia recently.
In other, rather startling development, America’s main soft power export, Hollywood is losing its piercing power in China and in Russia.
In fact, it is not just losing it, it already lost it.
Hollywood’s “values” of a radical feminism, anti-male misogyny and promotion of the sexual deviancy are hardly in demand in largely conservative Chinese and Russian societies.
Sure, there are some items which the United States manufactures today which are in demand, or, if one gets to the reality of it all, forcefully imposed on customers—America’s hugely overpriced and dubiously effective weapon systems.
This is what remains of once America’s mighty industrial plant which could produce anything from socks and kitchen combines to good combat and excellent commercial aircraft.
Today this capacity is no more, since it is China who is the world’s consumer goods main manufacturer, and the only way the United States is capable to secure any market for its weapons is to retain Europe, NATO that is, as its main customer and vassal.
NATO will gladly (if not, color revolutions are a good tool for convincing those who have doubts) “buy” America’s weapons and “defense” of Europe…
… but America needs Europeans to believe that hordes of democracy-hating, only two-gender accepting, backward bearded Russian Ivans are ready to pounce to deny Europe her favorite values of a complete sexual depravity…
… her cities, also known as dirty multicultural cloacae…
…and declining economy for the reasons only Americans know…
So, to convince those 447 million EU’s residents that they need America’s protection and weapons, America needs Russia to get into the war in Ukraine.
And if it will end up with utter destruction, and it will if Russia really decides so, of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and, likely, Ukrainian statehood, so be it.
Americans never really cared how many aborigines die, as long as it works for the US bottom line.
Or, if one may, a condition of American condition…
… which is deteriorating steadily because not only the United States increasingly has very little of substance, that is of high value added, to sell to the world…
… but forming economic and military monster of Eurasia removes the United States from its (grossly exaggerated to start with), self-proclaimed status of global hegemon…
…to the status of, at best, one of the few big shots on the planet.
At worst, the United States is removed from Eurasia as a viable competitor and is relegated to a status of a regional power…
…still powerful relative to its continental neighbors…
…but not having a shot at this second number of 4.67 billion.
This is a big chunk of population and customers.
Now imagine if the United States loses EU.
Suddenly 4.67 billion become 4.67 billion + 447 million = 5.117 billion, it is 65% of Earth’s population.
It is a huge majority of world’s population and, most importantly, population much of which can pay for goods, unlike it is the case with gigantic population of Africa.
Moreover, this population is concentrated within a single continental mass which is insulated from the United States by two oceans.
The United States cannot allow this consolidation of the market to happen and the loss of Europe, Washington’s thinking goes, is tantamount to capitulation.
So, the United States must hold on to EU, or whatever it will become once EU inevitably collapses, and NATO remains the only tool to drive European weaklings into submission.
Making Russia obliterate Ukrainian Armed Forces is a perfect way to scare Europeans into abandoning any attempts to economically compete with the United States and deny them access to Russia’s energy.
Considering an extremely low level of Western scholarship in the field of practical geopolitics and its pseudo-scientific offspring—geoeconomics…
…which failed for the last 30 years to come up with even the fuzziest description of the emerging world…
… it doesn’t matter if the United States “retains” Europe or not anymore.
The reasons for the utter failure of those “academic” predictions and resulting policies are numerous but few of them are worth focusing on.
Europe is not anymore a crucial trade partner for Russia and mutual trade plummeted in the last few years. The trend will continue and it is not only due to America’s pressure, albeit that too, on EU but is a result of Russia steady change of both economic model and her reorientation towards Asia which is now largely complete. Russia simply doesn’t need anymore many goods she used to buy in the EU. The policy of import substitution on average is a success and Russia economically insulating herself from the West will continue.
A much-discussed pipeline of Nord Stream 2 is, actually, not a crucial economic project for Russia anymore. Russia can absorb losses if the project eventually sabotaged by the United States and its European poodles such as Poland, but for Germany, and EU in general, this sabotage will result in catastrophe, due to European greens’ suicidal energy policies which make European goods costs extremely energy-dependent. In realty, America’s attempts to sabotage Nord Stream 2 are primarily directed against EU in general, and Germany in particular, not against Russia per se.
The United States lost the arms race. America’s weapons acquisition process and military doctrine-mongering cannot be viewed anymore as a normal, that is logical and justified, process. While still being able to produce some state-of-the-art platforms and enablers, such as signal processing, combat computer and communications networks, recon assets, in terms of actual weapons the United States begins to lag behind Russia not just in years but in generations. As recent, February 2021, Congressional Budget Office report on missile defense admitted, the United States is defenseless against salvo of combination of new Russia’s cruise missiles and that there is nothing to stop them. There isn’t. US air defense systems lag behind Russian ones dramatically and the gap only grows with Russia’s S-500 getting into serial production and the latest S-350 already being deployed into the first line units.
The United States simply cannot develop modern supersonic anti-shipping missile and the US Navy is forced, incomprehensibly, to buy Norwegian Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile—an underwhelming subsonic missile which is no match for modern high supersonic and hypersonic strike weapons Russia deploys, and is not survivable in modern air defense and ECM environment.
Lastly, the intellectual level and the level of awareness of modern American elites is in a precipitous decline, which inevitably resulted in the embarrassment of America’s last elections, especially scandalous debate between two geriatric candidates in 2020, which paraded the US as Springeresque tawdry TV show. Resultant loss of a legitimacy and yet another confirmation of the America’s position as a non-agreement capable entity hardly serve as boosters for America’s already tarnished reputation as a big-mouth bully and its elites being uncultured and uneducated.
The United States already fails to meet a number criteria imperative for the status of superpower, among which a military one is crucial.
If some American military “strategists” still exercised a suicidal idea of fighting Russia conventionally in Ukraine in 2014, today in 2021 such an idea is downright mad, because the United States cannot win conventional war in Russia’s vicinity and any US force will be annihilated.
This leaves the United States only two options:
Indeed, believing its own propaganda, try to unleash mayhem in Ukraine, provoke Russia into a direct military operation and then introduce whatever the force US and NATO will muster into the theater of operations. Any such plan is bound to fail miserably because not only such a force will be annihilated but participating NATO nations will face the possibility of their military installations destroyed by stand-off weapons. That raises the possibility of US escalating to nuclear threshold which means that the United States may cease to exists as a country. This is an undesirable plan and majority of US policy makers, bar some severe cases of psychological Russophobic disorders which are numerous in the current Administration and America’s elites, understand what it means. So, while not completely impossible, a probability for such a plan being implemented is fairly low. Not to mention the fact that for the US to fight conventionally around Russia will require assembly of the force which will dwarf whatever was assembled for the First Gulf War. There, the United States had almost 6 months to do so.
So, what’s left realistically is to push Ukraine into the suicidal campaign with Russia being designated aggressor before even the first shots are fired. What the United States does not recognize is the fact that this unties Russia’s hands who already has an overwhelming escalation dominance not only over Ukraine, but whatever might be attempted in terms of “support” for irrational regime in Kiev. Russia has many options, the United States has one—it needs war in Donbass, which, Washington’s thinking goes, will allow to drive Europeans into submission, which allegedly should allow the United States to save her hegemonic status. It will not even if Europe is driven into submission.
United States today has the only one resource left which allows it to stay relevant—virtual reality of both money “printing” press and of the media propaganda which is increasingly ineffective.
One could hide America’s decrepit cities, mass riots, destruction of the education system, incompetence of political and military top echelons, suicidal social practices and breakdown of law and order, aggravated by huge lines to food banks for only so long.
Now it is in the open and even subjugation of Europe and, allegedly, opening Europe’s markets to those few items the United States can still provide for its clients there…
… does not change the fact that the United States as it exists today has no future with or without Europe…
…and that it still has to recon with China’s immense manufacturing capacity…
…and Russia’s advanced military might…
…which drive unification of the Eurasian market whether the United States unleashes war in Ukraine or not.
Even without EU this market dwarfs whatever the United States will be able to “salvage” in order to avoid relegation to a lower league.
It cannot stop a process which was ongoing for years now…
…once Russia, after, the bloody coup in Ukraine…
… understood that there is nobody to talk too in the combined West…
…which apart from losing its military and economic power…
… started to disintegrate from the inside due to Western societies becoming increasingly totalitarian…
…and unable to face the reality that we still live in the highly industrialized world which needs energy, industrial plant and weapons which will defend them.
Both China and Russia seem to accumulate all that and with it the fate of the United States is sealed.
Bill Clinton may have thought that he “charted the new course for a new economy” in 2000, too bad for him, and the US, the “new economy” turned out to be an old one.
What?
You didn’t think that jeans, smartphones and rocket engines grow on the trees, did you?
But let us go back to the collision of warships. Why would a diversity-admit junior officer open fire on China? Proximately, because he is frightened and panicky. A bit more remotely, because he has been told over and over and over that the Chinese are dangerous and aggressive and want to do terrible things, seldom specified. The military tells them this because you cannot prepare the troops for war by telling them that there is no reason for it.Why would a President allow a war, knowing (if in a lucid moment) that it would produce absolute unshirted havoc in the economy even if it didn’t go nuclear? He wouldn’t. That is, he wouldn’t all at once choose Armageddon. But he couldn’t afford to seem soft on China, not with the midterms looming, so he couldn’t back off. If in the ensuing shootout the Navy got trounced, he most assuredly couldn’t drop the matter, and would have to double down. So, of course, would the Chinese for the same sorts of reasons. Off to the races.Deeper in the forest of causation is that the pathologically aggressive, amoral, manipulative, and crafty tend to rise to power. We select as rulers those who are least fit to rule. In America this is often done a bit differently, with the unscrupulous and powerful choosing cardboard leaders whose strings they can pull. The effect is the same.Why would war seem reasonable? Because Americans have never seen one, and believe their forces to be invincible. If you think that you can’t lose a fight, why avoid one? And because those in comfortable circumstances know that a war in Asia would be fought by the lower economic classes, about whom they care nothing and don’t much like. American elites do not fight. Note the list of draft dodgers during Vietnam: Bush II, Cheney, Bolton, Trump, Biden.These men, knowing almost nothing of the military, war or, very likely, military history, are quickly hijacked mentally by the Pentagon. The firm handshake, the steely gaze, the clean shaven, confident, and patriotic warriors (if only via Powerpoint) are impressive to pols who…well, you know…haven’t done that. They project strength and realism, without necessarily having either. Listening to them, you can easily get a sense of being accepted into a special, manly club. They say that America has the most powerful, invincible, best trained, tra la, tra la, and if you haven’t been there it is easy to believe. The Chinese? A cakewalk. Iran? Coupla weeks.Another reason for easily blundering into a war poorly understood is the very low quality of American government. Congress and the President are chosen by popularity contests, not according to competence. A congressman who worked his way up the political ladder in Wheeling or Baton Rouge knows state politics. He is unlikely to know anything about the first Island Chain or what a terminally guided ballistic missile is. A friend in a position to know estimates that ninety percent of the Senate do not know where Myanmar is. No one without a grasp of geography has more than a child’s understanding of military, economic, or strategic reality. But they vote on these things.Sez I, we are well and truly screwed. But there is little we can do about it.
Conclusion
You all can believe what you want. I know full well what is going on. If China is surrounded by peaceful and successful trading partners, then China will be safe and secure from conflict, invasion or NGO-sponsored “color revolutions”. Like Switzerland, like Germany, like Italy, and like Finland are today. Its a belief in the win-win possibilities of long term planning, cooperation and leadership by merit.
And nations that make physical things, that provide physical services, and that partner for joint success for their peoples will invariably be more successful, and longer lasting than ones that retain their existence on supporting a small patricidal oligarchy leadership that makes nothing of substance, but trades in invisible vapor ideas, and numbers on large elaborate spreadsheets.
But, you know, the United States is ruled by idiots.
And no matter how much we can reason, we can pray, or we can justify our actions and ideas and thoughts, the wildcard of an insane morn like Mike Pompeo with his finger on the military operations is a serious and real danger….
…as opined by this commenter…
A. Daneon April 11, 2021 · at 9:24 am EST/EDTWhat will happen next?
In June, During the NATO exercise Defending Europe 21, the Ukro NAZIs or Turkish controlled head-choppers will launch a falls flag attack.
This could be a chemical weapon launched against Ukrainian soldiers, claiming that the attack was launched by the Donbass militia, and that the chemical weapon was supplied by Russia.
The western MSN will blame Russia for the aggression.
While Russia is busy defending itself against the unjust accusations from the so called international community, the NATO exercise will go live and invade Donbass, claimed as humanitarian intervention.
The only way this can be avoided is if the US really fears a nuclear attack on American soil.
As soon as the first falls flag attack occurs in Ukraine, Russia should launch a nuclear weapon on American soil.
A good target will be the HAARP facility located in desolate Alaska. The facility is operated by the private Global Elite, and hated world wide for its clandestine operations.
When the facility is reduced to rubble, and nuclear radiation is traveling the northern hemisphere via the Jet stream, the western MSN will go into hysteria, calling for a ceasefire.
Mass demonstrations against war and COVID Lock Down will quickly turn into Riots and civil war, devastating every major city in Europe and America.
If the NATO do not stop its invasion of Donbass by then:
Russia will send missiles against every NATO Command center located in Ukraine and Poland.
And then hell will break loose:
China will attack US Navy vessels in the South China Sea and invade Taiwan.
North Korea will attack South Korea.
Nationalist in Japan will attack US deployments in Japan.
The Philippines will attack US assets like Al Qaeda in the region and invade Indonesia.
The Taliban will attack US and NATO deployments in Afghanistan.
India will enter into war with Pakistan.
Iraq will attack the US deployment in Bagdad, and northern Iraq.
Iran will attack US-NATO vessels in the Gulf, ending all oil supply to the west.
Yemen will attack Saudi Arabia.
Somalia will attack all ships in the bay of Aden.
Egypt will close the Suez Canal.
Syria will launch an attack against Turkish troops in Northern Syria.
Russia will shoot down every Fighter jet and drone entering Syrian airspace.
Lebanon will attack Israeli forces in the Golan.
Hezbola will attack Israel from Gaza.
Libya will launch attacks against Turkish troops in Libya.
Armenia will launch major attack against Turkish forces in eastern Anatolia.
Greece will attack Turkish transgression of Greek airspace and Turkish vessels near Cyprus.
Civil war will erupt in the Balkan, Serbia will retake Kosovo, and enter war with Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Civil war will erupt in Spain, and Catalonia will secede from Madrid.
Paris will enter into chaos, and Macron will flee.
Al-Qaeda will launch a major attack on French troop in West Africa.
Venezuela will attack US navy vessels in the Caribbean sea.
Argentina will invade the Falkland Islands.
American Patriots will storm Washington for real. The National Guard protecting DC will defect.
CIA and FBI Agent will be hunted down by American Patriots. Many states will secede from the US.
Most western government will be forced to step down. The EU and NATO will disintegrate.
All Nordic Nations will enter into a Nordic defense Alliance.
As the American Fascist Empire collapses, the multi polar world will be reborn.
Do you want more?
I have more posts in my BRI sub-index within my China index…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
The world is moving ever forward. Such as this notice on MoA. This and these kinds of things are becoming more and more common in the West these days…
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/
Maintenance mode
Temporary Blog Closure
March 24, 2021 in Uncategorized by craig
In view of our understanding that the High Court has found some articles on this blog to be in contempt of court, and in view of the fact that the Crown Office had sought to censor such a large range of articles, this blog has no choice but to go dark from 15.00 today until some time after tomorrow’s court hearing, when it will be specified to us precisely how much of the truth we have to expunge before we can bring the blog back up.
This is a dark day for the entire team here. We will be looking to appeal this to the Supreme Court and if required (though we very much doubt it will be) to the European Court of Human Rights.
-Posted by: Bluedotterel | Mar 24 2021 16:46 utc | 1
Bang, bang, and then bang. One after another things have started to happen faster and faster. It began in Alaska with a stunning, just stunning insulting display of ignorance and rudeness from the United States. Followed quickly by the military, social, industrial, and cultural realignments between Russia and China. With then Iran getting on board, creating the combined enormous Asian block.
Belt and Road isn’t going away. China is making more rigorous lending decisions while focusing somewhat less on heavy-duty construction and more on digital technology, says a Council on Foreign Relations task force report released on March 23. The 190-page report, titled China’s Belt and Road: Implications for the United States, was written by Jennifer Hillman and David Sacks of the CFR based on the findings of an independent task force chaired by former Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and retired Admiral Gary Roughead.For the U.S., calibrating an effective response to Belt and Road is tricky. The Obama administration pursued constructive engagement with China. As Belt and Road ramped up and became more of a threat, the Trump administration was more confrontational, but without allies’ support. The Biden administration aims to build more of a united front of nations to counter Chinese influence. Reflecting the difficulty of striking the right balance, the Council on Foreign Relations report says the U.S. response “has been too little, too late,” but also says “its blanket condemnation risks alienating partners.”
The American leviathan has set up the pieces, and is going full bore toward international global conflict. All stops have been pulled. All fail-safes have been removed. And now, it’s a matter of getting the minions and toadies in line so that the wars can be fought on their national geography instead of inside of America.
Um…
It’s not going to happen that way, but you just cannot reason with idiots.
I always knew there was something fundamentally wrong with the world.
-Posted by: William Gruff | Mar 24 2021 19:57 utc | 36
The Article
This is a great article. Just great.
As Patrice says…
It's clear from the tone of the author, which mirrors much of independent, assaulted and outraged humanity, that many observers are waiting with bated breath...
...for the emergence of a powerful and invincible countervailing alliance...
...(one that is) capable of finally stopping the reign of brutal violence and disgusting hypocrisy imposed by the US empire.
And that alliance, perforce, as to be the sinorussian alliance.
The blood-curdling hypocrisy of the West leaves truly decent and sovereign nations no choice.
As Pepe Escobar puts it in this remarkable and indispensable dispatch:
One has to applaud the gall of the “Western partners”. It’s 18 years since Shock and Awe – the start of the bombing, invasion and destruction of Iraq. It’s 10 years since the start of the total destruction of Libya by NATO and its GCC minions, with Obama-Biden “leading from behind”. It’s 10 years since the start of the savage destruction of Syria by proxy – complete with jihadis disguised as “moderate rebels”. Yet now the “Western partners” are so mortified by the plight of Muslims in Western China!
This is a complete reprint of a most excellent article from Pepe, and reproduced from HERE. All credit to the author. Please kindly note that it was reformatted to fit this venue but aside from that left intact in all of it’s glory.
With a Russia-China-Iran triple bitch slap on the hegemon, we now have a brand new geopolitical chessboard
It took 18 years after Shock and Awe unleashed on Iraq for the Hegemon to be mercilessly shocked and awed by a virtually simultaneous, diplomatic Russia-China one-two.
March 2021: The FMs of the two greatest powers defying Washington meet for close strategic consultation.
How this is a real game-changing moment cannot be emphasized enough; 21st century geopolitics will never be the same again.
Yet it was the Hegemon who first crossed the diplomatic Rubicon. The handlers behind hologram Joe “I’ll do whatever you want me to do, Nance” Biden had whispered in his earpiece to brand Russian President Vladimir Putin as a soulless “killer” in the middle of a softball interview. [Conducted by ABC News maggot, George Stephanopoulos, although media stenographers and propagandists in the Western bloc are all fully interchangeable. —Ed]
Not even at the height of the Cold War the superpowers resorted to ad hominem attacks. The result of such an astonishing blunder was to regiment virtually the whole Russian population behind Putin – because that was perceived as an attack against the Russian state.
Then came Putin’s cool, calm, collected – and quite diplomatic – response, which needs to be carefully pondered. These sharp as a dagger words are arguably the most devastatingly powerful five minutes in the history of post-truth international relations.
In For Leviathan, it’s so cold in Alaska, we forecasted what could take place in the US-China 2+2 summit at a shabby hotel in Anchorage, with cheap bowls of instant noodles thrown in as extra bonus.
China’s millennial diplomatic protocol establishes that discussions start around common ground – which are then extolled as being more important than disagreements between negotiating parties. That’s at the heart of the concept of “no loss of face”. Only afterwards the parties discuss their differences.
Yet it was totally predictable that a bunch of amateurish, tactless and clueless Americans would smash those basic diplomatic rules to show “strength” to their home crowd, distilling the proverbial litany on Taiwan, Hong Kong, South China Sea, “genocide” of Uighurs.
Oh dear. There was not a single State Dept. hack with minimal knowledge of East Asia to warn the amateurs you don’t mess with the formidable head of the Foreign Affairs Commission at the CCP’s Central Committee, Yang Jiechi, with impunity.
Visibly startled, but controlling his exasperation, Yang Jiechi struck back. And the rhetorical shots were heard around the whole Global South.
They had to include a basic lesson in manners: “If you want to deal with us properly, let’s have some mutual respect and do things the right way”. But what stood out was a stinging, concise diagnostic blending history and politics:
The United States is not qualified to talk to China in a condescending manner. The Chinese people will not accept that. It must be based on mutual respect to deal with China, and history will prove that those who seek to strangle China will suffer in the end.
And all that translated in real time by young, attractive and ultra-skilled Zhang Jing – who inevitably became an overnight superstar in China, reaping an astonishing 400 million plus hits on Weibo.
The incompetence of the “diplomatic” arm of the Biden-Harris administration beggars belief. Using a basic Sun Tzu maneuver, Yang Jiechi turned the tables and voiced the predominant sentiment of the overwhelming majority of the planet.Stuff your unilateral “rules-based order”. We, the nations of the world, privilege the UN charter and the primacy of international law.
So this is what the Russia-China one-two achieved almost instantaneously: from now on, the Hegemon should be treated, all across the Global South with, at best, disdain.
An inevitable historical process
Pre-Alaska, the Americans went on a charming offensive in Japan and South Korea for “consultations”. That’s irrelevant. What matters is post-Alaska, and the crucial Sergey Lavrov-Wang Yi meeting of Foreign Ministers in Guilin.
Lavrov, always unflappable, clarified in an interview with Chinese media how the Russia-China strategic partnership sees the current US diplomatic train wreck:
As a matter of fact, they have largely lost the skill of classical diplomacy. Diplomacy is about relations between people, the ability to listen to each other, to hear one another and to strike a balance between competing interests. These are exactly the values that Russia and China are promoting in diplomacy.
The inevitable consequence is that Russia-China must “consolidate our independence: “The United States has declared limiting the advance of technology in Russia and China as its goal. So, we must reduce our exposure to sanctions by strengthening our technological independence and switching to settlements in national and international currencies other than the dollar. We need to move away from using Western-controlled international payment systems.”
Russia-China have clearly identified, as Lavrov pointed out, how the “Western partners” are “promoting their ideology-driven agenda aimed at preserving their dominance by holding back progress in other countries. Their policies run counter to the objective international developments and, as they used to say at some point, are on the wrong side of history. The historical process will come into its own, no matter what happens.”
As a stark presentation of an inevitable “historical process”, it doesn’t get more crystal clear than that. And predictably, it didn’t take time for the “Western partners” to fall back into – what else – their same old sanction bag of tricks.
Here we go again: a US, UK, EU, Canada “alliance” sanctioning selected Chinese officials because, in Blinken’s words, “the PRC [People’s Republic of China] continues to commit genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.” [sic]
The EU, UK, and Canada didn’t have the guts to sanction a key player: Xinjiang party chief Chen Quanguo, who’s a Politburo member. The Chinese response would have been – economically – devastating.
Still, Beijing counterpunched with its own sanctions – targeting, crucially, the German far-right evangelical nut posing as “scholar” who produced the bulk of the completely debunked “proof” of a million Uighurs held in concentration camps.
Once again, the “Western partners” are impermeable to logic. Adding to the already appalling state of EU-Russia relations, Brussels chooses to also antagonize China based on a single fake dossier, playing right into the Hegemon’s not exactly secret Divide and Rule agenda.
Mission (nearly) accomplished: Brussels diplomats tell me the EU Parliament is all but set to refuse to ratify the China-EU trade deal painstakingly negotiated by Merkel and Macron. The consequences will be immense.
So Blinken will have reasons to be cheerful when he meets assorted eurocrats and NATO bureaucrats this week, ahead of the NATO summit.
One has to applaud the gall of the “Western partners”. It’s 18 years since Shock and Awe – the start of the bombing, invasion and destruction of Iraq. It’s 10 years since the start of the total destruction of Libya by NATO and its GCC minions, with Obama-Biden “leading from behind”. It’s 10 years since the start of the savage destruction of Syria by proxy – complete with jihadis disguised as “moderate rebels”.
Yet now the “Western partners” are so mortified by the plight of Muslims in Western China.
At least there are some cracks within the EU illusionist circus. Last week, the French Armed Forces Joint Reflection Circle (CRI) – in fact an independent think tank of former high officers – wrote a startling open letter to cardboard NATO secretary-general Stoltenberg de facto accusing him of behaving as an American stooge with the implementation of NATO 2030 plan. The French officers drew the correct conclusion: the US/NATO combo is the main cause of appalling relations with Russia.
These Ides of March
Meanwhile, sanctions hysteria advance like a runaway train. Biden-Harris has already threatened to impose extra sanctions on Chinese oil imports from Iran. And there’s more in the pipeline – on manufacturing, technology, 5G, supply chains, semiconductors.
And yet nobody is trembling in their boots. Right on cue with Russia-China, Iran has stepped up the game, with Ayatollah Khamenei issuing the guidelines for Tehran’s return to the JCPOA.
1. The US regime is in no position to make new demands or changes regarding the nuclear deal.
2. The US is weaker today than when the JCPOA was signed.
3. Iran is in a stronger position now. If anyone can impose new demands it’s Iran and not the US.
And with that we have a Russia-China-Iran triple bitch slap on the Hegemon.
In our latest conversation/interview, to be released soon in a video + transcript package, Michael Hudson – arguably the world’s top economist – hit the heart of the matter:
The fight against China, the fear of China is that you can’t do to China, what you did to Russia. America would love for there to be a Yeltsin figure in China to say, let’s just give all of the railroads that you’ve built, the high-speed rail, let’s give the wealth, let’s give all the factories to individuals and let the individuals run everything and, then we’ll lend them the money, or we’ll buy them out and then we can control them financially. And China’s not letting that happen. And Russia stopped that from happening. And the fury in the West is that somehow, the American financial system is unable to take over foreign resources, foreign agriculture. It is left only with military means of grabbing them as we are seeing in the near East. And you’re seeing in the Ukraine right now.
To be continued. As it stands, we should all make sure that the Ides of March – the 2021 version – have already configured a brand new geopolitical chessboard. The Russia-China Double Helix on high-speed rail has left the station – and there’s no turning back.
Conclusion
Oh, Pepe said it so clearly and so wonderfully. Today there is a massive new Geo-political alignment, and it is the direct result of insanity and poor leadership from the West. And they are so very incompetent that they have no idea with the kind of “fire” that they are playing with.
Even with an enormous military, control of all media and communication, and some hidden ultra-powerful technology, the leadership is so seriously incompetent, the systems so hopelessly flawed, and the participants so absolutely corrupted that a catastrophic collapse of their government is imminent.
I hope and pray that I am wrong.
That all this will “blow over” and just go away, and I can fall into the “dust bin” with the rest of the “doom and gloom” predictors throughout history. Let’s hope the MM is wrong.
Meanwhile, the insanity of what the West is today is gearing up. It’s the same-old, same-old. Only on a bigger scale. So the carpet bombing of China by biological weapons dis not work. So the aggressive attacks on trade and technology did not work. So the enormous armada of ships to the South China Sea did not work. So the riots and revolution in Hong Kong did not work…
…and neither will “boots on the ground” in Xinjiang either.
…nor “saving” Taiwan from China.
…nor a strong QUAD.
But they still have dreams of conducting “the rape of Nanjing” in modern Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Shanghai. They still have dreams of invading and seizing Chinese held islands. They still have the dreams of sinking all cargo ships on the high seas. They still believe that all this can be ignored…
…as long as they control the American media.
EXCEPT…
Only Americans read American media.
They do not control the thoughts of the world. And the world is getting mightily pissed. Gosh! It’s going to be one fuck of a year.
As a reminder. This is what a “double tap” looks like. As this video from Boston, Massachusetts clearly shows…
Be careful of your neighbors when you shovel your driveway.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
America seems to be blissfully unaware of how it comes across to the rest of the world
