Tag: policy

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American Conservative Sleepwalkers wading into the dark South China Sea

LDNR authorities have identified the chemical substances US PMCs have brought to the cities of Mariupol, Krasnyi Liman and Avdeevka: botulinum toxin and dibenzoxazepine.  These chemical weapon were brought over from the USA by USAF contracted aircraft and are now deployed by 120 US mercenaries.

-False flag aborted in the Ukraine.

Jabber, jabber, jabber from the war-mongers in America about China and Russia. These people are deranged lunatics. And they are somehow delirious believing their invincibility and superiority. They have funded an enormous war machine, and they are pushing, pushing, and pushing towards WAR!

Just this week Congress passed a $7 billion dollar anti-China propaganda campaign to villainize China and to prevent Chinese news from ever reaching America. To put this in perspective, the 2020 budget of NASA is $20 billion dollars. So it’s roughly one third of the entire space budget of America. That’s how serious the USA is determined to garner the population on a war-footing.

Why bother? Americans already consider China the enemy. video 5MB

Fools.

Here’s an interesting discussion in the American Conservative circles discussing a war with China. It’s illuminating. Not only on the points of view being bantered about, but the lack of understanding on the true realities, and the absolutely horrific consequences involved.

Read and be enlightened.

Top American conservatives including AT’s David Goldman recently debated the risks of preparing for war with China

by David P. Goldman November 3, 2021

Whether the United States should prepare for war with China – and thereby make war almost inevitable – was the matter of a verbal brawl at one of the largest gatherings of American conservatives, the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Florida, from October 31 to November 2.

The same debate is ongoing in American opinion journals, where the war party is represented by the neo-conservatives of the American Enterprise Institute – Hal Brands, Dan Blumenthal, Gary Schmitt and Michael Mazza – and former National Security Adviser John Bolton.

I was a participant in the debate.

It would have been unseemly to have a polite exchange in a hotel ballroom a few miles from Disney World about the desirability of killing millions of people in a nuclear exchange.

So I wasn’t polite.

Although the arguments on both sides are well known, the Orlando debate merited publication of a lengthy edited transcript, for two reasons.

First, the exchange between former Trump adviser and war-hawk Michael Pillsbury on one side, and former Trump National Security Council official Michael Anton and this writer on the other, set the issues in poignant relief.

Second, the audience of conservative activists, the opinion and organizational leaders of the Republican Party, repudiated the war party by a margin of about three to one, by my informal poll of the audience.

Of the informal guess-timation of participants;

75% of the Conservative opposed a war with China.
25% of the Conservatives were neocons in favor of a war with China.

The American right doesn’t want war with China.

That doesn’t mean war won’t come. Christopher Clark’s magisterial account of the outbreak of World War I, The Sleepwalkers, recounts the intellectual corruption and grandiose irresponsibility of the statesmen who stumbled into World War I.

It’s an old story: If one side mobilizes, the other has to mobilize or be defenseless; if one side believes the other is likely to mobilize, it must do so first. Clark proved – contrary to the usual Anglophile account – that it was the Russian mobilization, urged by the French, that started the war.

By the same token, if the United States attempts to force the issue of Taiwan’s independence, China will pre-empt this by seizing the island. If the United States takes military measures – stationing troops on the island, mining the Taiwan Straits – China will have to consider pre-emptive action.

It’s August 1914 all over again, played as farce rather than tragedy. The European powers had existential interests to defend; the United States has nothing to lose but the perception that it can project its power anywhere in the world, including China’s coasts.

The American military wasted US$6 trillion and thousands of lives in misguided nation-building campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, while China built up a massive high-tech defense in and around its coasts.

This weakened America’s strategic position decisively.

The blunderers who vitiated America’s defense will risk war simply to save their reputations. The war hawks have shown scant interest in rising to China’s technological ambition, which presents a real challenge to America’s leading position in the world.

But they will roll the dice on war over issues that do not bear directly on American security.

America is in NO STATE to take on a war against the combined forces of Russia and China.

Compared to them, the sleepwalkers of 1914 were exemplars of enlightened statesmanship.

Transcript

There follows my edit of the transcript of the conference session on China. I have included all the points of substance, leaving out the ancillary discussion in the interest of space.

Video of the event will be available at the conference website.

Pillsbury: The Hundred-Year Marathon [Pillsbury’s best-selling book] was translated by the Chinese military. No royalties, but they had a little ceremony for me. They make fun of Biden. They say Biden is plagiarizing, it’s the Trump administration policy.

Trump loves to say, if Hillary Clinton had won the election, China would be surpassing us now. But it’s not going to happen on my watch. If you’re close watchers of Joe Biden’s TV interviews, four months ago, he said the exact same words.

China wants to surpass us, but it’s not going to happen on my watch. The Chinese reaction to that is to laugh. Because they don’t expect it to come that soon. But when they do surpass us, I think the level of arrogance they showed today is going to be something that we wish for.

When they do believe that they’re superior to us in a number of ways. We will wish that it was 1947 when the Soviet Cold War began, and we did was, we created the CIA by legislation. We created the Defense Department. We created the National Security Council.

There’s not a single new institution in our government to deal with China. I think there should be.

Goldman: We will spend these next few days complaining about how terrible things are. I hear very little discussion of what we need to do about it. My argument is very simple. We’ve done it before. We did it during the Reagan administration. We did it during the Kennedy administration, we did it under Franklin Roosevelt.

We need to rebuild the American economy and we can only do that with a visionary strategy that galvanizes the imagination of Americans like the Kennedy moon-shot, the Reagan SDI.

The numbers show that the Trump policy towards China was a catastrophic failure. We’re importing now more than 30% more from China than we did in January 2018, when Trump imposed tariffs.

And as for technology suppression?

China’s built 70% of the world’s 5G networks and is proceeding to build the applications on top of that, which constitute the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We can do better than China. We’re better equipped to innovate than China.

But we’re not because we’re crushed by a technocratic elite which has sucked the marrow out of the United States economy and generated enormous wealth doing things that, for the most part, harm us. Nothing short of an intervention by the federal government, namely an industrial policy, will turn that around.

That’s not a classically liberal view of things. Industrial policies are dangerous. They lead to rent-seeking behavior, corruption and too much state power. But that’s what you do in a war, and we’ve got the economic equivalent of a war going on.

The thing that worries me the most is the knuckleheads who spent $6 trillion on forever wars and gutted our military by frittering away our resources. If we’d spent a 10th of that on high-tech weaponry, we wouldn’t be worrying about China’s hyper-velocity missiles or anything else like that.

They will steer us into a confrontation with China that will lead to a war that nobody can win.

John Bolton is the most dangerous lunatic roaming the streets of the United States right now.

If you try to force the independence of Taiwan, any Chinese government that wants to rule China will use military action, Communist or not.

The Chinese Communist Party is Communist the same way the mafia is Catholic. They take it very seriously. But it has very little practical importance for running a Chinese empire. You have to suppress rebel provinces. The only thing we can do with Taiwan is to maintain strategic ambiguity, raise the price of the Chinese taking it by force, which we have no means to stop at this point short of a nuclear war.

We should dissuade them from doing it, maintain Taiwanese democracy and walk the fine line.

John Bolton (on the other hand) would call the question, and that gets a lot of people killed.

If you don’t believe me, read Admiral Stavridis’ marvelous thriller 2034. Spoiler alert: We blow up a bunch of their cities. They blow up a bunch of our cities and we’re back to square one.

Now let me talk about the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is what’s really critical here. Wars are not won by stealing data, they are not won by spies, they are won by logistics in depth and the willingness to prevail. The first industrial revolution began when James Watt sold his first commercial steam engine in 1776.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution began when China responded to the Covid-19 pandemic by using artificial intelligence applied to massive data sets to predict potential outbreaks. They are now proceeding to roll out the technologies associated with this. This is the real science fiction stuff we’re talking about – 5G permitting groups of industrial robots to communicate on the shop floor and program themselves.

Smart logistics allow individual objects to be tracked from mine to factory to warehouse to ship back to warehouse to truck loaded onto autonomous vehicles and controlled all the way. It allows AI servers to optimize urban traffic and match every passenger and package to a conveyance.

It allows sensors at the base of soybean plants to communicate with drones that deliver fertilizer and pesticides and direct autonomous tractors to harvest them. We’re talking about an explosion of productivity like that of the first and second industrial revolutions.

The main thing the Chinese stole from us was the great idea of the Reagan Revolution that you can have dual-use technologies, which both give you button guns and butter. They foster civilian productivity. They pay for themselves 10 times over, just like the Apollo program did, just like the Strategic Defense Initiative did.

Every single invention of the digital age. No exceptions started with the DARPA project. They were all funded by the Department of Defense.

The Chinese have stolen the American approach. They want to be Reagan in the Cold War against the sclerotic Soviet Union. Now, they’re not as good at it as we are.

My argument is we have nothing to learn; we only need to remember. We know all these things because we’ve done every single one of them.

We only have to dust off the old ideas and get the band back together, and what I put to you is that the conservative movement needs a part of a positive program, a set of solutions to galvanize the American people, capture their imagination, as Kennedy did when he pointed to the Moon, as Reagan did when he promised to defend the homeland against enemy ballistic missiles.

We need a positive view. We need a can-do approach, and we need to found it on the proven track record of the United States of America in pioneering the future for the world.

Anton: I’m just going to go through a couple of historical points to put this in context. In 1842, the Chinese ceded Hong Kong island to the British in perpetuity – in perpetuity. The Chinese regime at the time of Imperial China greatly resented it. And that resentment carried over through Republican China to Communist China, National, etc.

Why is this important?

This is something that was a thorn in the side of the succession of China as a civilization, not of one regime, not of the communist regime of China for 150 years. It bothered them very greatly. They look forward to the day when they could get it back. They were patient and they got it back.

Without conflict, without much of a struggle, with just some gnashing of teeth and hair, pulling and sighing and crying by the British, but they got it back.

A couple of quotes.

“To win without fighting is best.”

Some of you may remember recognize this.

The second one is:

“To destroy the enemy is not the acme of skill; to capture what you want from the enemy, whether that’s a city, a fortress, a ship, an army, that is the acme of skill.”

Those are both from Sun Tzu, a Chinese classic written about 200 BC. This very well encapsulates the Chinese strategy, I would say, with regard to Hong Kong and with regard to Taiwan.

Taiwan is a similar thorn in the psyche of China.

This would be the case, no matter what the regime in Beijing were. It could be, you know, the neocons’ fantasy of a liberal democratic China, and they would still really care about getting Taiwan back. It’s central to the regime’s conception of its territorial national integrity…

One very firm demand of the Chinese government on the international community is Taiwan can never be a full member of an international organization for which statehood is a member and as a requirement, and they make it very plain that they’ll go to war over that.

They’re very, very clear about this.

An Article five guarantee in the NATO charter, for instance, that is a treaty requirement that the United States has got to go to a nuclear war in defense of a place. [Our agreement with Taiwan] is a commitment of sorts. The full extent of it and what it legally obligates us to do is a bit ambiguous compared to an actual mutual defense treaty signed by both sides.

This comes up a lot, especially lately, because we are told constantly that crisis is brewing in the Taiwan Straits.

China’s been patient.

Patience may be running out.

Maybe they’ll try to do something soon.

What we’ve seen now is a pretty dramatic shift toward I still have a bipartisan consensus on China, but now it’s a bipartisan consensus to sort of beat up on them rhetorically not to take any actual action as far as I can see, except some of the things we talked about.

But what, where that rhetoric leads is, you know, we’re obligated to do something about Taiwan and it would be a stain on the national honor and so on and so forth.

And so if something happens, we’ve got to get into a fight.

China’s preference is still to take Taiwan without fighting for it. Time is on their side. Some are saying, some people who claim to know, are saying, Oh no, no, they’re getting impatient and they’re going to … they’re going to do something shortly.

I just have no basis to evaluate that.

But based on historical precedent, I think the Chinese would certainly like to do exactly what they did with regard to Hong Kong, tipped the balance of strategic power, economic power, political power so much against the possibility of continued Taiwanese independence that public opinion in Taiwan comes to accept the notion that we just have to make the best deal we can make.

And then you win without fighting.

You know, a nation of 24 million can only have so big a military and especially against a nation of 1.4 billion … China’s been building up [its military] for decades. The Taiwan-American combination has not caught up either in terms of sheer numbers and certainly not in terms of technology.

So that’s a way of winning without fighting if you have two or three decades to build up so much force on one side that the other side just looks at it and goes, “I can’t win that fight,” then the fight doesn’t happen unless the other side is delusional or crazy brave.

And the last point I will raise, I just want you to think about this.

I’ll tell you the last time a United States aircraft carrier was sunk. It was the battle of Midway, the USS Yorktown, June of 1942. Actually, we did lose an aircraft carrier last year, not a fleet carrier, a smaller carrier, you know why?

Because it burned in San Diego Harbor and the navy couldn’t figure out how to put out the fire.

And they had to scrap the ship, the USS Bonhomme Richard. Look it up.

The navy crashed four ships in 2017. Read the official reports from the Department of the Navy and the Congressional investigations on those crashes. They were marvels of esoteric writing to try to dodge the cause of what happened, while somehow revealing it between the lines.

If you’re Taiwan and you’re counting on the United States to defend you, what conclusion did you draw from Afghanistan this summer? Did you get the conclusion that here is a great power that knows what it’s doing, that keeps its promises, and that can execute the things that it wants to do?

American military flee Afghanistan just like they fled Vietnam.

Plausibly, if not certainly, the Chinese have had an ability to sink a fleet carrier for the last decade.

And now… ask yourself how the nation would take it.

Right now, there seems to be a massive amount of group think. We’re only allowed to think about this one way. Only one way.

Nobody is allowed to bring up any of the counterfactuals or any, you know, any other outlying considerations.

And when policy is made on that basis, horrible blunders and catastrophes result.

So before the United States commits itself to some policy or before we, whoever we broadly understood as being in this room are right of center conservatives, intellectuals, nationalists want the best for our country, who want the best for our military, who want to maintain our alliance structure with credibility.

But before we commit ourselves to a policy, are we in this room?

Take a stand in favor of X or against Y and make recommendations that other people may read and listen to.

We should be at least thinking about all of these considerations and, in my view, the conversation as it has. I don’t mean this conversation. I mean, the broad conversation on Taiwan has taken insufficient account of the things that I mentioned and others.

Goldman: The most important fact about any country is its people. Taiwan, according to the CIA World Factbook, has the lowest birth rate of any political entity in the world … China does have a demographic crisis, but Japan, South Korea and especially Taiwan are much worse.

So if you simply. Kick the can down the road, maintain strategic ambiguity. What the Chinese will get if they eventually get Taiwan is a bunch of old people. It’s simply, in my view, not worth having a nuclear war over.

The ideal situation is to maintain the status quo as long as possible. Anything else means a war, and the possible loss of American cities. I ultimately don’t care about China. I care about the United States of America. I’m a nationalist and I want what’s best for us.

We can’t abandon Taiwan because it makes us look weak and we lose important economic advantages and leverage against China. We can’t force the issue and start a war.

The Chinese have hundreds of anti-ship missiles.

Michael Pillsbury and I have something in common. He for many years, and I briefly, worked for a great man at the Pentagon, Andrew Marshall, head of the Office of Net Assessment.

Andy told me in 2013 that the Chinese missiles could (and would) sink an American carrier.

Anton: I think the core answer, it is the best outcome is the status quo for as long as possible because any attempt to change the status quo will be worse than the status quo.

There are only two alternatives to the status quo.

One is Taiwanese independence. Well, Taiwanese independence will start a war. Taiwan becoming part of China would be net bad for us. Obviously, if it becomes a part of China through military action, that’s worse than if they just make a deal.

So for as long as the status quo can be maintained, that’s, unfortunately, the best possible scenario. And I just say unfortunately, because it’s an inherently unstable scenario, and it’s also by its very definition, it’s not permanent. The status quo isn’t going to last forever, so let’s stretch it out for as long as we can, and that’s unfortunately about the best we can do.

Pillsbury: President Trump once asked me, How did we used to defend Taiwan? He saw me as the in-house historian who knew all this ancient stuff. Nobody else in the room knew.

So I finally spoke up.

We used to have atom bombs there. We used to have them attached to jet fighters ready to go to hit the mainland with the Chinese made sure that Kissinger took them out in ’74. We used to have a treaty with a garrison and 30,000 troops and a war planning unit underground in Taipei.

Now it’s an art center and a Mongolian barbecue restaurant …

So what do the paranoid group in charge today say when they hear someone like Michael Anton say, oh, we can’t get it in a war, you know, they think that this is American deception.

Of course, the Americans are going to get into a war, which is why they’ve been increasing the deployments and we are moving closer to a nuclear war with China.

It’s not just me saying this, quite a few other people inside the government are saying this as well.

The head of our strategic command in charge of all our nuclear forces, he’s given two interviews. He says the Chinese are engaging in a strategic breakout of their nuclear weapons, including ICBMs, which they are doubling or tripling.

This is the four-star admiral who commands our nuclear forces.

Quite a few other people are talking this way – very different from Michael Anton. They’re more like Churchill. Bill Buckley, the long tradition of Americans like Barry Goldwater …

So I’m going to have to go home to Washington.

So yes, I went to the conservatism conference. A bunch of the people there on the panel said surrender Taiwan. We don’t want to go to war with China. That’s appeasement. Michael and I should clarify his remarks in my humble opinion.

Anton: If they can sink an aircraft carrier and if the only way to stop an invasion of Taiwan is to deploy the forward-deployed aircraft carrier…

…and Yokosuka…

and maybe send one or two others out there, which as far as I know, is the only way for the United States to effectively defend the island if the Chinese decide to invade it and they sink one of these 12 to 14 billion dollar behemoths with 6,500 men on board.

What’s the US response going to be at that point?

Pillsbury: Well, we could turn to you and say, I surrender.

Anton: What would you do if you were either the secretary of defense, the president, the head of a Pacific Command and sitting there in Pearl Harbor?

Pillsbury: I’ve been working on this for 30 years. More recently, the US has gotten a much more detailed picture of what it could do.

Exactly which targets inside China could be struck.

What would happen the first morning?

…

New York “concrete jungle” cleared of the underbrush.

More and more work is being done on both sides about how a war would happen and both the Chinese and American military have come to a conclusion.

It would be a long war.

Okay, maybe two or three years – I haven’t read.

There’s a brand new book by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Pentagon under Trump [Elbridge Colby’s The Strategy of Denial, featured in a June 2021 Asia Times webinar].

There’s a whole chapter on how to recapture Taiwan after it’s been partially taken by the Chinese military.

This is the state of the art thinking.

There’s a new piece of legislation, the Taiwan Defense Act … They say, please, Pentagon, give us a plan for how to avoid a fait accompli taking place on Taiwan. The Pentagon is drafting their response.

We’re moving closer to a war.

It doesn’t help for you to tell conservatives, oh, if we lose an aircraft carrier, what are we going to do then? What would Winston Churchill say?

Goldman: What, Winston Churchill? Just before the fall of Singapore in 1942, according to Andrew Roberts, Winston Churchill said in the event of war “the Japanese would fold up like the Italians because there were the wops of the Far East.”

Winston Churchill, when it came to Asia, was an absolute idiot, and we bailed him out. He was as stupid as Nicholas II who lost the Russian fleet at Tsushima [in 1905].

Bridge Colby has been a dear friend for 20 years who is now hallucinating about what the United States might do to take Taiwan back.

This is crazy.

Anton: Following the logic of what you said – because I haven’t read whatever STRATCOM put out – I have read certain analyses: not even analysis. There’s speculations that the Chinese are increasing the size of the nuclear arsenal in this underground network of tunnels that we can’t follow and so on.

The official estimate that we have some confidence in is that the Chinese nuclear arsenal is at least 300 warheads, right?

None of which have to be air-dropped anymore.

That means all [delivered by] ~~ICBM~~ hyper-velocity AI-guided missiles. And if you read their doctrine, unlike ours, they formally take a doctrine of minimal deterrence.

That is to say, they have no kind of nuclear warfighting doctrine at all.

They just have city killers.

And if they feel that the territorial integrity of China or the survival of the state is at stake, they’re willing to use those 300 missiles or some portion of them on American cities. The largest 300 American cities would be blasted into radioactive rubble.

The largest surviving American city would be New Bedford, Massachusetts. With it's five gas stations, and two strip malls. -MM

In fact, once as I’m sure you remember in the far-off year of 1996 on one of the more tense moments in the Taiwan Strait, a Chinese general was quoted as saying, “I don’t think the Americans will do anything at the end of the day. They won’t want to trade Los Angeles for Taipei.”

Their nuclear arsenal is now triple what it was.

And they’re going on a more offensive posture with nuclear weapons and this thing ends up going to nuclear war.

How that fits into the seeming “recommendation” you just gave, I have to admit, being somewhat dim, I don’t see because it would seem to make the danger greater.

And I also would ask: What do you think the American people’s response to losing a fleet carrier would be?

My own estimate is it would be the greatest psychological shock we’ve had in a generation, arguably greater than 9/11.

Unquestionably, getting one single city nuked would be the greatest psychological shock the American nation has ever had in its history.

So how do we deal with something like that, given that Taiwan is orders of magnitude more important to China, and they’re willing to do that over this, as they have said, than it is to us?

From a Chinese point of view, Taiwan is like the US "Statue of Liberty". Destroy it and the Chinese would sacrifice their first born in revenge.

From an American point of view Taiwan is a news item that fits in the bottom of a news feed. Nestled somewhere between a Viagra ad and a cute cat video. -MM

Well, I’m going to be the dove here and say that it’s possible to avoid a nuclear war, whether it be over Taiwan or any other place.

I’d kind of prefer to do that.

If that makes me an outlier, I’m at least I’m in good company with that other famous nuclear dove named Ronald Reagan.

Goldman: [to the audience] Who volunteers to be in the first city that gets nuked? Any takers?

Pillsbury: One wonderful book shocked the hell out of me. It came out of the Hoover Institution 1962. It’s called Wall Street and Hitler. It’s by a professor who went through the Nuremberg war trials after the war.

I didn’t know Henry Ford’s photo was in Hitler’s office.
I didn’t know the Nazis gave prizes to different American businessmen.
I didn’t know that the Nazis knew they lacked synthetic oil production and that they got the technology from America.

It’s a long book and it goes to in great detail what Wall Street was willing to do even as late as 1938-1939. We had a huge debate about getting involved in Europe … A big group in our country in ’38, ’39 wanted to surrender to Hitler – for lack of a better word; surrender.

Anton: What are they trying to do? I mean, the Soviet Union had to be contained because the Soviet Union was very explicitly an expansionist power.

We know the Chinese would like to expand and take Taiwan.

I’m not aware of the Chinese wanting to expand and take other people’s territory.

They want to exert dominance in East Asia and in the western Pacific, and some of that dominance they will exert in ways that will be deleterious to American interests.

That’s irrespective of our ability to be able to prevent and stop that. But I think there are certain things we could probably be doing better that could push back against some of those influences. But it’s not as if unless, you know, Michael Pillsbury could tell me differently.

Like the Chinese after Taiwan, they’re going to invade South Korea and they’re going to invade Japan, and then they’re going to invade Vietnam.

I don’t know. I don’t get the sense of that from them, nor in the sources that I read. Granted, I can’t read Mandarin. They don’t say that they want to do that.

Pillsbury: Specifically, specifically on Japan and in India … the Chinese think this is part of the key.

They hope the Americans don’t do it.

The Japanese stick to 1% of their GDP on defense, which is very, very low. Maybe that will double to 2% over the coming years.

That’s an alarm sign to the Chinese.

The Indians want to. They’re fiercely independent. The British poured poison in their ears as they left that the Americans are going to be a new colonial power.

You know, we don’t have a treaty with them. So we’ve got a long way with the Indians. We have quite a few military exercises … So slowly, we’re improving our military cooperation with India, other countries in the region.

Trump picked up the idea of the Quad as a magic word. Japanese say they invented it. Biden attacked Trump. You don’t, you know, you’re not seeking help from our allies. I think it was not true.

But the Quad, even under Biden, is starting to increase its consultations, mainly about China. So things are moving in the direction of your question.

Some videos describing what is not being said

It’s like a discussion over tea and crackers. Oh “Taiwan is sort of important to the Chinese, well we can convince them…” In your fucking wet dreams. The Chinese no longer has any tolerance for the United States BULLSHIT. Just like Putin has. These jackasses have no idea who they are dealing with.

I am gonna show you all.

History

Burned into the minds and soul of China. If you all think that China will allow an invasion by any one for any reason, you are very, VERY mistaken. They will rip apart your cities, gut your nations, and then burn it to the ground. They are a serious nation that does not play games.

Atrocities by the Japanese occupation forces 1937. video 6MB

Actual photos, actual sound recordings. Nasty shit. video 11MB

Atrocities by the Japanese inflicted on the Chinese. video 20MB

The Chinese are not individualists. they fight for their community! video 6MB

Defense of Shanghai. video 10MB

Chinese in the Korean war. Video 11MB

Modern Chinese Military

Serious. Dangerous. Well equipped. Superbly trained. video 3MB

Very dangerous. Not a music video. look at the equipment. video 6MB

You all think that American military can airlift and sea transport forces into Chinese waters safely to fight this formidable army? video 3MB

Reread the dialog

They are talking about a “long drawn out war” with China.

What would actually happen?

The moment a war starts, the USA GDP will fall to under 50% of what it is now. And that is just if there is another “regional police action”. Not a full-borne war. A full on war, would collapse the GDP to a fraction of what it is now. Perhaps in the single digits. Think 2% to 6%.
As such, inflation would skyrocket, and the value of the USD would approach zero. Think $25,000 for a can of Pepsi. That’s pretty pricy even for you Pepsi lovers out there.
99% of all medicines used in the United States come from China. How is America going to deal with providing hospitals medications, and supplies? That means ZERO MEDICINE. When a full 65% of the American population is on some kind of medicine, and you take that away… whether pain medicine, anti-depression medicine, heart or high blood pressure medicine, anti-biotics, aspirin, tums stomach medicine… what will happen? My guess is “Zombie apocalypse”.
How are the people going to react to all this? Bare store shelves? Insane prices for gas and heating oil? Electricity? And periodic internet if any? They will be very frustrated, angry and fearful. And they all will have lots and lots of guns…
America is a mess domestically. You cannot isolate the long drawn out fighting and overlook how it will affect the domestic population.

America is a mess domestically. video 3MB

And…

Any war with China is a war against Russia and China together. There is no fucking way that America is able to fight TWO (x2) above-peer military forces, let alone one. The result would be the destruction of ALL 13 core aircraft carriers, all major naval bases and staging locations.
How will the American public react to that.
And knowing so…

Conclusion

…America would “push the big red nuclear button”. But it would be too late. American cites would already be rubble.

Funny how NO ONE is addressing this very clear and always present danger. My guess is that they are all collectively idiots of the lowest caliber. And I am being generous.

Consider this memo to all the employees at McDonald’s.

Do you want more?

New Beginnings 2

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Glimpses of Chinese life during the nice slow Summer

This little article is a collection of images, videos, glimpses and thoughts of China this July 2021. Like all of my articles, you won’t see any of these glimpses outside of China. Instead you will get the same pre-manufactured agenda of hate and fear.

For us as a people, as a species, as humans we have to be able to communicate, experience things together and share. And that requires unrestricted, unbiased, glimpses into the totality of other cultures. And given the absolute strangle-hold that American and Western governments have over global media, that is a Herculean task.

This article is my little tiny contribution. I wish for all of us to better understand each other. I want us to see things as they are, and not be manipulated by others with evil corrupted intent.

Soon, a newly funded barrage of Anti-China media will be launched. (As if we aren’t soaked already) And this one, funded to the tune of millions of United States (freshly minted) dollars will interject hateful lies in just about every article coming out of the West. It will be all inclusive.

Here’s a short video of how the BBC “doctored” up one of an expats videos depicting China to make it look ugly, cold and grey. You MUST view this…

Not just simply lies and distortions, but intentional interjections of specific terms used to vilify China. Of course, the purpose is to “suppress” China, but it is also “setting the table” for a major war with China. Well, at least that is what the Washington K-street neocons desire.

I watch all of this in horror.

But, I can’t do much about it. All that I can do is open up some lines of communication and insight. As in all of my articles, click on the pictures to see the short movie. (All are very short, but gives a great overview of what is going on.)

First up…

Henan floods

The past week saw days of continuous heavy rainfall in central China’s Henan province.

According to the National Meteorological Center, the accumulated rainfall reached 622.7 millimeters in the provincial capital, Zhengzhou, between 2 a.m. Tuesday and 2 a.m. Wednesday, more than double the 24-hour threshold of 250 millimeters for extremely heavy rainfall.

Several factors, including atmospheric pressure, a typhoon and topography of the region, have contributed to the unusual downpour.

There have been numerous stories of how people helped each other out during the floods. Rufus’s engaged, and people working together as one. It is truly uplifting. More than 100,000 people had been evacuated by Thursday morning.

This massive effort was helped by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and the People’s Armed Police Force dispatching their servicemen and equipment to assist local police and firefighters in emergency rescue and relief work.

Do you see all those people running up to cheer on the fire and rescue staff? No, it’s not Hollywood. It’s what China is really like. You have no idea just how proud and patriotic the Chinese are.

Here we have the PLA mobilized and ready to help. One thing you learn when you are in China is how quickly China can mobilize and get things done.

And here’s another video. All in all, I find it particularly impressive.

From Richard Turrin

I have been following Richard Turrin on LinkedIN. He's a scholar and an author of numerous books and he has some very insightful and profound articles and points of view. His takes on issues within China are worth reading. Here is one of his introductions to an article from the economist. Which is a really strong pro-USA, anti-China screed.

This article dances around the edges of the recent tech crack-down in China. Calling out China’s efforts to reel in its tech companies while glossing over the details.

First, let’s broach something cultural, that should be evident by now. China’s regulators could care less about disturbing the short-term stock market value of their tech sector. That may strike many as shocking but it’s a fundamentally different take on their job. Compare it to regulators in the West who do everything possible not to disturb markets.

No better example of this can be found than yesterday’s hammering of education sector stocks following announcements affecting curriculum and profit status for after-hours private schooling.

Is it better, to have such disruptive regulators? No, not necessarily, but it suits China. China is changing at a pace that most in the West cannot conceive of. This is where I think this article goes wrong. Without these fast-acting regulatory circuit breakers, a fast-moving country like China would simply be out of control.

China’s regulators are fundamentally concerned about the direction tech is taking society and act decisively though not always swiftly to counter imbalances. China’s after-hours school programs are an example as they were causing disturbances and inequalities in the educational system.

Should they have caught it earlier? Certainly, and the same argument might be made for Ant. I talk about this in Cashless.

The Economist article raises an absurd issue of changing tech’s business models. For both the edutech sector and Ant a strong argument can be made that their business plans were contrary to the public good. Edutech stripping teachers from the classroom, Ant providing credit without limit. Changing tech’s business models is a good thing, if they are causing harm. Perhaps someone should take a look at Facebook.

As far as Didi seeking protection in the courts, we’ll have to wait to see whether this is warranted. Didi appears to have been advised to call off its IPO in a fashion similar to Ant. Certainly, a last-minute pull-back would have warranted howls, but in the end, both Didi and investors would have been better served.

It’s not a question of whether China’s system is better than the West’s at dealing with BigTech. China’s system works best for China, there is little likelihood its decisiveness will be exported.

That may be unfortunate, as big tech in the West appears beyond regulation regardless of the damage it causes. For all of the cries of foul in the markets, China is setting itself up for a better digital future while the West does nothing.

I know markets prefer the West’s approach, but society just might be better served by China’s.

Some Chinese food – Chinese / Vietnamese

Well, I tend to eat a lot of delicious Chinese food. I believe that the reason is because It is delicious. And it is cheap. And it is all around me. And… oh, all the pretty girls eat Chinese food. Well, at least in China they do.

Here is the interior of a local chain restaurant in a local mall. This one serves Chinese / Vietnamese food. If you read the BBC, CNN, or FOX “news” you might be under the impression that everyone in China is starving and just waiting to be “liberated” for democracy™ and freedom™. Not true. Not even remotely true.

Here’s the interior of the restaurant.

Inside the Chinese / Vietnamese restaurant.

And here’s some of what I ate.

The first thing that came to the table was this delicious fish. Instead of steamed, deboned, and served with lemon which is common in the states, this fish was gutted, filled with spices and baked. Then served with lime and some seasonings that you dip the tasty morsels into.

The next thing that was brought to the table was some curried meat. I said in the video that it was beef. No. It was chicken. Still quite tasty. Not everyone likes curried foods. But I do. It’s rich and thick broth is oh, so flavorful.

Our meal, was a typical Guangzhou style meal. One creature that swims, one that flies (or tries to), and one that walks on all fours. Which is the next dish brought up…

And then they brought out this pork meal. The pork is cut up in tiny, tiny morsels and mixed with green beans and spices. You then place a spoonful in the lettuce and you eat it like a taco. It’s a “finger food”, which is generally uncharacteristic of China. But it’s good, and goes well with the wine that we were drinking.

It was a great meal.

What’s up next?

Well, long time MM readers will recognize that I always associate delicious food with beautiful women. The two go hand in hand. Like Turkey and stuffing, or a cell phone and APPs. Or, perhaps a car and tires.

Some pretty Chinese Ladies…

On Tictok (Douxing) are all sorts of filters that work with AI to “enhance” your movie postings. One of the popular ones, for the attractive ladies, is for the face to be all messed up and colored and smeared with blue paint. Personally, I don’t really “get it”, but then again, I am from a different generation. In “my day” we were sensible with fads and fashion. We had “pet rocks“, “earth shoes“, and “Choker collars“.

Acting beautiful with a face smeared in blue.

And then we have this nice lass. She reminds me of a “Southern Fish Fry”, which is a kind of BBQ that you have in the South-East of the United States. She’s got all those “charms” that I find so personally attractive.

This girl here is most certainly a pizza-pie-lass. When I look at her, I can’t help but think of steamy hot pizza, right out of the oven, a nice tossed salad, some bread-sticks with a saucy dip, and lots of salt and hot peppers. I know, I know, you might argue that she is more of a bread with sausage called Focaccia con Salsiccia (in Italian) kind of girl. But let’s not quibble over these minor points.

This next girl is completely delicious. We see her in her house, probably her bedroom. And I can’t help myself. I just want to share a nice chicken soup, and a light bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich with her. And you know, what else? That’s right. A fine iced tea with some orange and mint.

She’s an afternoon, luncheon kind of girl.

This next girl is certainly a “Horn of Plenty” kind of girl.

China, like anywhere else, has people in all shapes and sizes. This is a more robust girl. She is a full meal. And While I have referred to her as a “Horn of Plenty” kind of woman, there is no question that she is as hearty as a pot roast with wine, and a round steak served with mashed potatoes.

Here’ a nice chocolate fudge kind of girl.

I really like fudge, but piping hot chocolate fudge on a nice tasty vanilla ice cream is one of my little pleasures in life. That and cats. Anyways, here’s a nice chocolate fudge kind of girl.

And a “stop traffic” kind of girl…

Though, I would refer to her as a chocolate Fudgsicle kind of girl myself. You know, the kind of girl that teleports you to your childhood when you were at the pool on a hot, hot Summer day. And you had this particular crush on one of the young lifeguards at the pool…

Fudgsicle kind of girl.

Temporary Ferry Building

Much of what you see in China are temporary constructions. These nice, clean and spartan structures are all going to be torn down in a year or two. As the new enormous structures are being built. It’s amazing, and unheard of in the United States.

What a difference 15 years makes…

China has devoted time, and energy to clean up it’s environment on every level. From enforcing change with the Corruption Police, to enacting clean standards, to planting plants everywhere, including on urban bridges, to a massive reforestation effort nationwide. An you can actually see the results.

It’s astounding.

Just like America is sinking millions of dollars in anti-China propaganda, China is putting money in promotion of being conservators of the environment. It’s everywhere. Take care of the world. Take care of the environment. take care of others. And then everyone can have a great life together.

You see this everywhere.

China’s war on poverty

We hear the headlines about how China has lifted over a billion people out of poverty. And we look at the stats, and we look at the results. And it is truly impressive. But that’s only a small part of the story. China is uniting. Everyone is contributing. Everyone is working together, and everyone is doing their part.

Like this singer…

We see glimpses of people on the lower social tiers eating a big heaping bowl of plain rice because that is all they can afford. Or an old man trying to sell some apples with a colostomy bag hanging on his back. We see the frustration and the trials and the strife of those who haven’t eaten in weeks, or who are going though strife and turmoil.

China, the people of China’s message to everyone, is “we will not abandon you”. You are not alone. The entire nation is coming together to the betterment of all.

China is a nation of Rufus.

Going on the defense…

With all the pro-war unity that is gathering in the United States for a war with China, don’t eve be under the impression that China is not aware of it. They are, and have been very busy strengthening their own military. And it is nothing like what is presented within the American (Western) media. It’s strong, powerful, ENORMOUS, and lethal.

And here’s another…

China’s military is strong, powerful, ENORMOUS, and lethal.

And here’s another…

Anyone who thinks that they can take on China militarily, on Chinese soil, is delusional.

Robots… robots… robots…

China leads the world in the development and production of robots. And since China is always cost sensitive, these expansive machines keep on going down in price. Here’s a nice video of a local ping-pong hall. It’s sort of like how we have “Pool halls” out in the United States. Check out the robots.

Some Dim Sum

Originally a custom in Cantonese cuisine, dim sum is inextricably linked to the Chinese tradition of yum cha or drinking tea. Teahouses sprung up to accommodate weary travelers journeying along the famous Silk Road.

Dim sum is an umbrella category for small Chinese dishes. Typical examples of this food are small dumplings, wrapped foods such as won tons and egg rolls, and other foods. In general, individual portions of dim sum are small, so that numerous dishes can be ordered and sampled by the table.

Dim sum is a large range of small Chinese dishes that are traditionally enjoyed in restaurants for breakfast and lunch. Most modern dim sum dishes originated in Guangzhou in southern China and are commonly associated with Cantonese cuisine. In the tenth century, when the city of Guangzhou began to experience an increase in commercial travel, travelers concurrently began to frequent teahouses for small-portion meals with tea called yum cha, or "drink tea" meals. Yum cha includes two related concepts. The first is "yat jung leung gin", which translates literally as "one cup, two pieces". This refers to the custom of serving teahouse customers two pieces of delicately made food items, savory or sweet, to complement their tea. The second is dim sum and translates literally to "touching heart", the term used to designate the small food items that accompanied the tea drinking.

-Wikipedia

Some pork served in a Dim Sum establishment.

And this is a Chinese salad.

No, it doesn’t look anything like the chunk of iceberg lettuce, one tomato wedge and a big dab of salad dressing that you find in most American restaurants. Oh, use, of course you can order a “cob salad”, or a “caesar salad”, or any other kind of specialized salads in the United States. But in general, if you order a meal, and it comes with a “salad”, all that “salad” is is just a chunk of iceberg lettuce.

And here’s one of my favorite dishes in China. It’s eggplant.

I know. It doesn’t look anything like the way eggplant is cooked in the West. It also doesn’t taste anything like it either. it is great, and I only wish that you could smell the aroma.

And one of my top favorites…

This is called Shao Long Bao. And it is just delicious. Xiao long bao is the most delicate Chinese dim sum on earth. It has a delicate skin with the savory meat filling and a high umami soup holding within the pleated pouch. You will be amazed by the treasure elixir oozing from the paper-thin skin when you poke it gently with the chopsticks.

High Speed Trains

America doesn’t have anything even approaching this. In fact, it just seems to me that all America is doing is just *nothing*. It’s a lot of talk, and churning out tons and tons of money that it manufactures out of thin air. Anyways, the trains are awesome!

Buying American Debt

The big news on the economic front last week was the frantic calls from America to China. At least four times China refused, and flatly refused, to buy any American debt. They are not stupid. America has a history of forcing, frightening, manipulating, or doing “dirty tricks” to get another nation to buy it’s debt. And then after a few years, America “pulls the rug out from under that nation” and their economy collapses.

China will not allow that to happen.

And since the debt is so astronomically enormous right now, everyone knows that it is impossible to ever pay back. So buying it is like chaining yourself to a heavy rock and throwing yourself into the ocean. China won’t have anything to do with it.

So what’s left for America?

Not much.

Raise the interest rates. If it does, it will severely cut in it’s ability to spend. Inflation would immediate skyrocket, and the stock markets would take some serious hits.
Cut back on everything; all forms of government programs at an extreme level. Military. Social. Basic services. Everything.
Start a war. Convince Americans to pay attention to it, and in the distraction reduce their quality of life. Then loot the losing nation. The American leadership avoids the guillotine, and a war in a far-away land with generate endless piles of money for defense contractors.

Given the funding priorities, which option do you believe will be taken?

“U.S. political leadership has doubled down on the status quo rather than adapt to the needs of the people. 

Instead of following through on widely supported policies such as universal healthcare, student debt relief and a living wage, the Biden administration has increased the military budget. 

Instead of reducing the prison population, the Biden administration has increased weapons transfers from the Pentagon to local police departments. 

It should come as no surprise that U.S. presidents struggle to maintain favorability ratings above 45 percent while Congress generally hovers at around half of such support. 

Change is hard to come by, even when such change is desired by most of the population and is required to preserve human life itself in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

China does not have such a problem. 

The Communist Party of China (CPC) maintains popular support because adaptation is a key pillar of its governance model. 

Many in the U.S. and the West have been taught that the CPC does not allow criticism, both inside and outside of the organization. This is categorically false.”

Bus stops in China

Listen to my narrative on a comparison between Chinese bus stops and American city bus stops. There really is a big difference. In America having an enclosed bus stop costs money, as does adding a bench, or a trash can. These are too expensive for most cities to accept. Not so in China.

On a ferry

Here’s a little video that I took on a Chinese ferry. Boy oh, boy does it show just how astoundingly different Chinese ferries are from their crappy-old American counterparts. Anyone who has been to China can see the difference. It is stark.

Fishing in China

One of the things that I love to do… when I encounter a “know it all” rabid anti-China fellow American… When they start to lecture me on all the prepackaged propaganda phrases that they regurgitate…

…I ask them…

“What you you think about the toll roads in China?”

And they look at me, like a deer in the middle of a road staring at the headlights of an approaching car.

Or, I ask them “tell me about what you don’t like about fishing in China”.

And they have no idea what to say, because both of those items are never mentioned in the propaganda barrage that controls the mindless slave-serfs.

This is what fishing in China looks like…

Some Chinese songs by 胡66

Hu 66, whose real name is Hu Rui, was born in 1998 in Fuyang County, Jiangsu Province, Chinese mainland female singer and network anchor.

In October 2017, she joined Cool Dog Live as a contracted network anchor.

In December 2017, the release of the song “Empty As Well” officially entered the acting world, in April, the release of the first single “Innately Difficult to Guess” , and in June, the release of the song “The Waveman” , with which the song won the Pop Music Annual Audience Favorite Singles of the Year Award on May 6, 2019

I hope you enjoy these two songs as much as I do.

泛舟长梦 - 胡66

浪人琵琶

Finally…

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Some more updates on Chinese technology and general news

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.

You can see the videos HERE.

A funny thing happened…

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 Enter Space Station

“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.”

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

China to Build World’s First Modular Mini-Reactor

“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.”

Not to worry. They can’t innovate.

Chinese boy scouts (and girls scouts too)

Check out the videos HERE.

Deep Sea Number one

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.

Self-developed.

Artificial Sun

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”

California unveils new woke math program, encouraging teachers to punish good students by holding them back

”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.

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The reason why the United States is pulling back from engaging China in it’s backyard

After four solid years (the Trump / Pompeo years) of beating the war-drums against China, and a fever-pitch of anti-China propaganda, along with Taiwanese nationalists clamoring for a War on Taiwanese soil (to be defended by the United States), and the Australian (Morrison) government demanding that Australia fight China with every effort…

…it all came to a screeching end.

Why?

Did they all come to their senses? Did they realize that any war with China will be a war that is unwinnable? Did they finally realize that starting a nuclear war will hurt their chances of reelection? What is going on?

Here’s a number of articles that might provide some insight.

The first article is a an American neocon publication. 
It essentially says that...

[1] Any war with China will be conventional. 

[2] That it will be fought either inside of China or in the neighboring lands next to China. 

[3] That American military cannot fight it at this time. It needs from five to ten years to prepare. 

[4] Preparation will require an enormous outlay of cash. 

[6] The cash would be used to upgrade the forces and weapons to "take on China". 

[7] And in five to ten years, the United States would be much stronger politically, militarily, socially, and culturally and thus a war would be welcomed by the American people.

[8] That the USA and it's allies will take on China, who will stand alone without any neighbor support.

I call bullshit on all these thoughts.

Well, for one thing, a war with China has been fought using Weapons of Mass destruction since 2016 when John Bolton launched the carpet bombing of China with Bio-weapons, and the BRI was attacked with a micro-nuke in Beirut by America using Israel by proxy.

So keeping the war conventional is off the table.

And the idea that American allies will want to battle China, their neighbor, is also a “pipe dream”. An the USA will not be fighting China alone. They will be fighting both China and Russia who share military treaties, and who have staff in both military headquarters.

I also must say that the “big elephant in the room” is completely and totally omitted from this dialog. Which is, of course, that China has forcefully and clearly stated (over and over again) that any attack on China; it’s people, it’s territories, and it’s borders will be considered an act of war, and will be responded to with the HARSHEST and MOST DANGEROUS MEANS available. And that means nuclear weapons.

Which is why China is now mass producing unstoppable MIRV warhead hyper-velocity ICBMs, with artificial Intelligence, and which are designed to blast America cities into glass and debris.

But, you know, just ignore the warnings… right?

But you do need to get into the minds of these people. And notice what they omit from their calculus, the assumptions that they make, and the published reactions to their madness on their internet platforms.

[1] Gradually and Then Suddenly: Explaining the Navy’s Strategic Bankruptcy

“How did this happen to a force that, as recently as two decades ago, dominated the world’s oceans to a degree perhaps unequalled in human history?”

Empire Woes

Christopher Dougherty

The U.S. Navy is on the verge of strategic bankruptcy. Its fleet isn’t large enough to meet global day-to-day demands for naval forces. Due to repeated deployments and maintenance backlogs, the fleet also isn’t ready enough to meet these demands safely, nor can it quickly surge in an emergency. Finally, the fleet isn’t capable enough to meet the challenges posed by China’s increasingly modern and aggressive People’s Liberation Army Navy. How did this happen to a force that, as recently as two decades ago, dominated the world’s oceans to a degree perhaps unequalled in human history?

The answer is gradually and then suddenly.

Myriad authors have responded to the Biden administration’s Fiscal Year 2022 defense budget request with a mix of confusion and consternation. Critics have directed their ire, in particular, at the budget’s treatment of the Navy, given the administration’s purported focus on China as a strategic competitor. However, the issues noted by critics aren’t limited to this budget, but reflect a persistent trend since at least the FY2019 request, which was the first defense budget request to prioritize China as a strategic competitor. Despite the need for “urgent change at significant scale” to meet the Chinese military challenge, the last four budget requests have offered only measured change at moderate scale.

Why is that?

The stock response is usually a mix of bureaucratic inertia, service parochialism, and congressional obstruction. Inertia and parochialism are powerful forces, but hardly insurmountable ones, especially when facing a clear and pressing challenge. While Congress certainly determines the final shape of the authorized and appropriated budget, it has less influence on the executive branch’s initial budget request. Moreover, the bureaucracy, the services, and key components of Congress all generally agree on the core precepts of the 2018 National Defense Strategy. Specifically, they recognize that China is the most pressing military challenge facing the United States; the U.S. military response should focus on deterring Chinese aggression against U.S. allies, partners, and vital interests in the Indo-Pacific region; deterring China rests on a credible ability to defeat its aggression or deny China its objectives; and that this form of deterrence will require new methods of fighting wars backed by modernized air and naval forces.

The real impediments to urgent change are a lack of consensus on the risks posed by China, a lack of a shared vision for the future of the fleet, and limited options for implementing a new vision. Even if the Pentagon and Congress could reach consensus on these questions, the U.S. military lacks mature defense programs and the industrial capacity to build them at scale. These gaps aren’t unique to the Navy, but it serves as a useful example for the rest of the Defense Department because its gaps are so glaring in the context of the current strategic environment.

Lack of Consensus

While the U.S. defense community mostly agrees that China is the “pacing challenge” for the Department of Defense, there is much less consensus on what kind of threat China poses, or when the risk of conflict will be most acute. Some analysts believe that China poses an immediate threat.

This position usually, but not always, correlates with a belief that competition below the threshold of war — like seizing unoccupied features in the South China Sea — represents a greater concern than the possibility of conventional war, such as over Taiwan.

Others are more concerned with America’s medium-term vulnerability due to China’s rapid military modernization and the increasing age of the U.S. Navy fleet.

This perspective tends to correspond with a belief that conventional war in five to 10 years is the most pressing risk.

Still others are most worried that Chinese investments in AI and quantum computing could allow it to “leapfrog” the United States in the long-term military-technical competition, thereby establishing itself as the world’s foremost military power.

Lack of a Shared Vision

Any strategist’s view of what the Navy should look like will be shaped by how that strategist assesses the challenges posed by China and the distribution of risk across time.

Someone focused on near-term day-to-day competition will tend to prioritize a large, highly ready fleet to maintain naval forces in key waters like the South China Sea.

Someone concerned about the risk of conventional war in the next five to 10 years would sacrifice some near-term readiness and capacity to build a force capable of winning a future conflict with China.

A defense planner or strategist who prioritized the long-term military-technical competition would eschew near-term investments in order to go all-in on next-generation systems with game-changing technologies that maintain the Navy’s technological advantage over the People’s Liberation Army Navy.

Further complicating this picture is the way that these risk assessments and future visions tend to correlate with different groups within the defense community.

Traditional Navy advocates tend to fall into the “near-term group,” as it aligns most closely with their strategic vision of the Navy as a force that sustains the global order and ensures peace through forward presence. In this view, the fundamental purpose of the Navy is to be “haze gray and underway,” showing the flag across the world’s oceans. Persistently maintaining this overt forward presence demands large numbers of highly visible surface vessels like frigates and destroyers.

Pentagon force planners, programmers, and analysts tend to worry about conflict in the medium term because that coincides with the five-year Future Years Defense Program, and conflict scenarios are a critical benchmark for the ability of the force to execute the defense strategy. From their perspective, a bigger fleet isn’t helpful if it lacks the capability to intervene directly in a war with China because it’s too heavily weighted toward surface vessels that are vulnerable to China’s arsenal of long-range missiles.

Meanwhile, the research and development community, technologists, and horizon-scanning organizations like the Office of Net Assessment typically fret about the long-term military-technical competition. From their perspective, the traditional navalists and force planners are dangerously shortsighted. Every outdated, non-upgradeable piece of equipment acquired today or in the near future could become a white elephant that the department can’t divest quickly enough when AI and other technologies transform warfare.

The competition between these visions plays out yearly with each program review and budget submission and is partly responsible for a raft of recent studies and white papers on the future of the fleet. In these debates, near-term navalists advocate for increased readiness spending and acquiring more small surface combatants to reach the Navy’s goal of 355 ships and increase its ability to meet the demands of the geographic combatant commands.

Mid-term force planners push for platform upgrades, additional munitions, more submarines and undersea systems, and longer-range carrier aircraft. Long-term technologists argue for greater research and development spending and investments in leap-ahead unmanned and autonomous systems to create a radical new fleet architecture comprising large numbers of unmanned and autonomous systems.

The result of this competition between perspectives is usually an unsatisfying compromise that creates a fleet that’s not big enough for navalists, not capable enough for joint force planners, and not farsighted enough for the futurists.

Some believe that the 2020 future naval force study represents a shared vision for the future fleet. Developed cooperatively by the Navy and the Office of the Secretary of Defense — particularly the Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation — this document presents a 30-year shipbuilding plan with purportedly realistic cost estimates.

There are reasons for skepticism, however. First, this plan was developed under the last administration, and it’s likely that the new team is closely reviewing its assumptions and analysis, especially regarding the budget and costs.

Second, the Navy has released countless “realistic” 30-year shipbuilding plans over the last 30 years, and none of them has ever come close to fruition.

Finally, the study doesn’t clearly articulate a vision of the future Navy, but instead lays out an overstuffed buffet of future forces with something for everyone. Navalists see a return to the glory years of Secretary John Lehman, the 600-ship Navy, and the 1980s maritime strategy.

The force planners get excited about the huge growth in undersea systems and the Combat Logistics Force — both of which would be critical in any conflict with China — and are sanguine about the possibility of a more distributed and resilient fleet architecture.

The futurists look at the huge investments in unmanned systems and have hope that the Navy has finally “gotten religion” about the disruptive potential of advanced technologies. The problem is that the Navy will never build all of these ships because the plan rests on overly optimistic budget assumptions and would require 30 years in which no major event intervenes to shift U.S. defense spending priorities.

Determining what gets cut when the budget axe inevitably falls depends a lot on the initial assumptions about risk and the overarching vision of the future Navy.

Lack of Options

The Navy’s FY2022 request suggests that the Biden administration will pursue a mix of the medium-term and long-term approaches, given its emphasis on advanced munitions and research and development alongside cuts to the legacy surface combatant fleet.

These proposed ship cuts, combined with the lack of replacements in the budget, are yet another shoal barring the Navy’s path to a fleet of more than 300 ships. It is the failure to address this persistent shortfall that has truly aggravated the Navy community.

Blake Herzinger summed up this position perfectly in War on the Rocks, writing that “The Biden administration’s Fiscal Year 2022 defense budget was an opportunity to arrest the Navy’s decline and recapitalize the fleet to address this uncertain future. Instead, its authors elected to perpetuate a status quo that would see the fleet continue to wither, while the competition surges ahead.”

The problem with this line of reasoning is that there are few credible short-term options to recapitalize the fleet. The Navy has been trying to retire its aging Ticonderoga cruisers for years without a proper replacement in the works since the cancellation of the next-generation cruiser (CG-X) program.

The proposed retirement of four littoral combat ships in the 2022 budget request seems to indicate that the Navy may have belatedly recognized that it is unsuited to the demands of competition and conflict with China. And yet the Constellation class frigate isn’t ready to swap out for littoral combat ships and won’t be a one-for-one replacement given its higher cost.

The lack of options becomes painfully acute if one ascribes to the mid- or long-term perspectives of the China threat. Further upgrades to the Arleigh Burke destroyers and Virginia submarines that comprise the backbone of today’s fleet will require new clean-sheet designs that are at least a decade away or more.

Unmanned surface vessels offer a way to increase the Navy’s capacity within reasonable budget constraints, but current ships are immature, as are the concepts and analysis needed to integrate them into the fleet. They simply aren’t a viable near-term option to backfill proposed cuts to the surface fleet. The Navy has become like a sports team filled with aging superstars. It knows change is needed, but its choices are limited to proven systems with long-term limitations, or immature systems with significant technical and conceptual risks.

Even in areas where mature designs exist, like the Burkes, Virginias, and Constellations, there isn’t enough capacity at the shipyards to enable a rapid fleet recapitalization or sustain a larger fleet. This reflects a longstanding trend to consolidate and rationalize the defense industrial base in search of efficiency.

The downside is a lack of slack capacity and the flexibility it enables. To his credit, Herzinger notes this limitation in his article, and other navalists such as Jerry Hendrix have frequently decried the state of the U.S. shipbuilding.

Still, the reality is that aggressive fleet recapitalization isn’t possible without major up-front investments in industry that would require additional time and money. From industry’s perspective, these investments require predictability — there’s no sense in building new facilities and hiring and training thousands of workers without an unambiguous long-term demand signal from the Pentagon and Capitol Hill.

Such predictability is impossible without a common perception of risk and a shared vision of the future fleet.

As though all of these hurdles weren’t enough, the Navy’s shipbuilding budget is hamstrung by the need to recapitalize the nuclear ballistic missile submarine (Columbia-class) fleet and the decision to purchase a “block” of two Ford-class aircraft carriers.

For nearly a decade, Navy budget observers have sounded the alarm that the Columbia would punch a huge hole in the Navy’s budget when it shifted from development to procurement. The block buy of the Fords saved the Navy money but arguably exacerbated this problem by committing so much of the Navy’s shipbuilding budget up-front.

The Heart of the Matter

A series of decisions (and indecisions) decades in the making have backed the Navy into a budget and force-planning corner. Even if the Navy were to receive a larger share of the defense budget — which Herzinger and others suggest — there simply is no way to build a bigger fleet quickly, and any attempt to do so might burden the Navy with ships of limited utility in the long-term strategic competition with China.

While perhaps unsatisfying, the Navy’s 2022 budget request is a product of these constraints. It prioritizes the ballistic missile submarines, munitions, auxiliary ships, and mature combatant designs, and divests older or less-capable ships.

At the same time, the budget attempts to rebuild readiness (again) and invest in research and development to accelerate next-generation capabilities like unmanned surface and undersea vessels.

It doesn’t rapidly grow the fleet for the same reasons that no budget request has rapidly grown the fleet in decades: There is no widespread agreement on why the fleet should grow; or how it should grow; and the underlying ideas, designs, and infrastructure needed for rapid growth have all withered.

The problems facing the Navy weren’t created in a single budget, and they won’t be fixed in a single budget. To get the Navy out of its force-planning doldrums, the next National Defense Strategy should clarify its assessment of the China challenge and serve as a forcing function to create a shared vision of the future Navy.

The 2018 defense strategy tried to prioritize modernizing the Navy to deter future war with China over building near-term fleet capacity to supply ships to service geographic combatant command requests for forward forces.

This prioritization got lost in implementation, as “Dynamic Force Employment” became shorthand for running the Navy ragged with repeated deployments, often to tertiary theaters like U.S. Central Command.

A clear assessment of the China challenge and a shared vision for the future fleet would help improve the gap between strategy and implementation that plagued the 2018 strategy.

Perhaps more importantly, it would enable Navy and department leadership to work with, rather than against, Congress to undertake a long-term program to rebuild the Navy and reinvigorate the maritime industrial base on which the Navy and the nation depend.

Achieving consensus on this won’t be easy, as there are good reasons why China observers vary in their assessments of the risk of conflict and why U.S. naval and defense strategists differ on their visions of the future fleet.

However, without this consensus and a concerted effort to reverse decades of drift, the Navy will continue its gradual slide toward strategic bankruptcy, and the risk of its debts coming due suddenly (and perhaps violently) will increase.

Source: War on the Rocks

Comments:

GMC

US Ships on top of the water and thousands of miles away from the mainland are for show or for attacking defenseless countries.Subs are where it is – I’d say. Plus the US Navy is into the space scene and that will scarf up all the monies. Even at 1.5 Trillion bucks a year , the US Military isn’t satisfied – Greed rules.
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I sense a cosmic event in the near future that the NWO is aware of – and they are preparing for it – They are preparing for – Not we are preparing for – big difference. Gut feeling .

Wilson Keep

The US has 800 military bases around the world, all need maintaining, all need McDonald’s vans and non-military operations funded out of the military budget. Policing an entire planet is very very expensive, and the US is running a massive budget deficit and its national debt is about to reach a critical tipping point. 

Compare that to Russia that has a military budget a tenth that of the USA but has no empire to police or maintain, most of the Russian money goes into military equipment & research. That is why the S400 and coming 500 missile defence systems make the US Patriot System look like a sling shot, and why it has hypersonic ICBMs, whilst the US is still failing or launch one successful hypersonic test missile. Add to that the USA’s failure to switch to their own service rockets for the ISS, humiliatingly still tethered to the Russians rockets who they are applying economic sanctions to. 

On top of this, you can add the strategic incompetence of the US spending $10 billion on huge aircraft carriers as the Chinese and Russians look-on with glee, at their new target practice opportunities. 

Then you realise that the US is slowly decaying as a military power. The worst thing that can happen now is that they engage in a serious war against a first world military, if they do, the whole edifice will be exposed for the knackered rust bucket it is.

Oilman

Reply to  Wilson Keep 
“Compare that to Russia that has a military budget a tenth that of the USA” … True but, for every dollar, the US spends on equipment, the Russian cost for the same stuff is around 0.15c

ken

“Some analysts believe that China poses an immediate threat.”

This is sort of like those covid con ‘experts’ telling us a 99.87% recovery rate is an immediate threat!

Here’s the skinny…. Remember all those production jobs? Remember all the products made in the USA? Remember nickel candy bars when the dollar had value?

Well, your selected parasites allowed the corporations to give all your jobs and production to the Chinese for more profits. Didn’t bother gov at first,,, they could just borrow (print) more currency to offset their losses.

You however went from a manufacturing economy to a service economy basically mowing each others lawns and maxing out credit cards.

All the while the Chinese were getting better and better at manufacturing. The produce some of the finest equipment in the world now. While their ‘knowhow’ was increasing the USA ‘knowhow’ was crashing. The last productive generation is retiring and dying out leaving behind younger generations of unskilled and uneducated Americans on the dole.

Bottom line,,, your government and its corporations is the cause of your poverty and is the cause of China’s advancement. You were sold out….

When you read about trade deficits you don’t hear that it is entirely caused by American corporations importing goods they produce in China.

Because we are no longer a manufacturing nation we can no longer afford the huge military nor do we have the expertise to maintain older equipment or design new equipment.

Don’t blame China,,, they took the ball Washington gave them and ran with it. So the ones to blame are the thieving bastards in government and corporations.

Raptar Driver

Navy’s are obsolete!

Oilman

In the past 25 years, the US spent huge amounts on trying to keep its air superiority while Russia and China were spending money to take away that superiority and Navy one by developing missiles to destroy them both and from a long and safe distance away.

Today, if a war broke out between the US and China, to repeat what RAND already stated, “the US would get their asses handed to them”.

The US dominance is over and they know it. The only thing that keeps them alive today is the dollar as a world currency. Saying that, with countries slowly getting rid of their dollars, it will come a time where it will become worthless hence replaced with either the Euro or the Chinese Yuan.

No empire lives forever. The US is falling and it’s because of their greed and bought and paid for politicians by big corporations. Same old story, same old result.

mijj

maintaining international military thuggery is expensive.

Ultrafart the Brave

There’s clearly something irrational about a country which is so addicted to its Navy’s ability to harass countries on the other side of the world, that it’s seemingly determined to bankrupt itself to continue doing so.

Some sort of a wakeup call might be needed to help them reassess their priorities.

A rude awakening, so to speak.

Dale F

Why not spend the money on America’s Infrastructure and make peace and not war with China and Russia?

edwardi

The author makes the same faulty assumptions as does the Naval planners, all that force projection onto other countries to attack them (at home or in their waters and shores), are futile, stupid and Imperialistic. And so will never happen.

Not to mention that game is over, period. 

The new missile technology has made surface ships irrelevant except for transportation in a non combat environment. 

China just test fired one of the new super fast ship killers from an airplane, thus extending it’s range of self defense to not the previous 1400 kilometers, 900 miles, but a much longer range now of 2,500 MILES. 

Game over. 

The US needs to focus on defense of it’s shores, and it’s only real remaining asset, submarines. 

The newly formed alliance/partnership of Russia/China is another game changer quickly improving all Chinese systems, the US is at least 10 years behind now, and that is assuming Russia stands still for 10 years, which won’t happen. 

It is game over, for Imperialism, time to bring our militaries home from everywhere and tell Uncle Sam to Please Shut His Trap ( his big mouth ) .

saoirse52

The problem with the US is the lack of intelligence in their political caste. In dumbimg down their own population, they’ve infected themselves with the same injudicious lethargic thought process. 

The US is never going to rival China, nor Russia, nor contain them nor be superior to them, militarily or otherwise. 

Their incoherent and disjointed thinking of being exceptional or indispensable has led to their moral and financal bankruptcy and unless they hastily beat a worldwide retreat from all their military bases and their illegal psychopathic war-mongering, they’ll face a total and excruciatingly humiliating collapse into ignominy

And there you have it…

As I said earlier, the neocons want to fight a war on Chinese soil and they want it BIG. And somehow they believe that it will be an “Afghanistan on steroids”, where a long remote war can be fought, they will get rich in the process, and the American people won’t know any better. They believe that the next war will be like all the last wars of the last one hundred years… fought far away, on American terms.

No.

It won’t be like that.

And everyone is trying to breech those high walls of the Ivory Towers that these morons live in on K-street. But they just aren’t listening. In their minds, the ARE the Powers-that-be, and they can do anything they want and no one will stop them. But bits and pieces, chunks and knocking can be heard on the walls of this “tower”, and so, we have articles like this coming about…

[2] Russian General Concludes China May Have More Nukes Than America And They Could Reach The US In Less Than One Hour!

By Dr. Peter Vincent Pry – All News Pipeline.

I would say within five minutes from a SLBM launched MIRV. - MM

Fiona Cunningham is to be commended for her report “Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications Systems of the People’s Republic of China” (Nautilus July 18, 2019).

Ms. Cunningham relies on unclassified sources to provide a well-researched summary of the mainstream view of academics, China scholars and even many military professionals of the PRC’s nuclear doctrine and C3 arrangements.

Unfortunately, this show that the mainstream [media and neocon view] is almost certainly wrong.

Western analysts consistently fail to understand that, for both Beijing and Moscow, nuclear war plans and C3 to execute those plans are national security “crown jewels” . Important aspects that they protect and ~~try to~~ conceal behind a bodyguard of lies and disinformation.

Trusting open sources and commentary — especially when they are intended to cast nuclear doctrine and C3 in the most benign possible way — is a BIG mistake.

For example, during the Cold War the USSR went to extraordinary lengths to disinform Western policymakers and the public that Moscow had a nuclear “No First Use” doctrine. This was intended to conceal their real nuclear war plans — that we now know entailed a massive nuclear first strike early in a conflict. The NFU disinformation campaign was also intended to mobilize Western anti-nuclear activists, in and out of government, to constrain U.S. nuclear programs and operational plans.

NFU = Nuclear First Use Doctrine

China’s alleged nuclear NFU doctrine, like the USSR’s during the Cold War, is almost certainly disinformation.

NFU for China does not withstand the test of common sense.

No conservative military planner would adopt NFU when, as Ms. Cunningham correctly observes, China lacks BMEWS and satellite early warning systems that would enable China to launch on tactical warning.

NFU would doom China’s nuclear deterrent to certain destruction by a U.S. or Russian conventional or nuclear first strike, or to a nuclear first strike by India.

China’s nuclear posture, especially the lack of early warning radars and satellites, is “use it or lose it” which logically should drive PRC military planners toward nuclear first use — indeed toward surprise first use early in a crisis or conflict, based on strategic warning.

To put it another way. China is set up strategically. 

The defense weapons are set up so that when it appears that a war with a major power is involved (the United States), China will go NFU. Simply because they are not investing any technology for detection of incoming missile attacks.

Thus they have a policy of simultaneous use of nuclear and conventional weapons to defend against aggression.

Regardless of the PRC’s declaratory NFU policy, it strains credulity Beijing’s political leaders would adhere to NFU if confronted with compelling political and military intelligence of an imminent U.S. attack.

Such strategic warning was the basis for the former USSR’s secret plans for a disarming nuclear first strike under their VRYAN (Surprise Nuclear Missile Attack) intelligence program, that nearly resulted in a nuclear apocalypse during NATO’s theater nuclear exercise ABLE ARCHER-83.

Just as Ms. Cunningham’s report would have benefited from greater skepticism about NFU, greater humility about what we know, and don’t know, about China’s nuclear posture is also advisable.

For example, how do we really know that China’s nuclear warheads are in storage, not mounted on missiles?

This would be a very grave vulnerability. China’s ICBMs and IRBMs are in cold launch canisters — we cannot see if they are armed, or not.

China’s DF-41 hyper-velocity, AI controlled, MIRV armed ICBM.

Ms. Cunningham seriously proposes that China gives such high priority to safeguarding against unauthorized nuclear use that their very costly ballistic missile submarine fleet may, in peacetime, carry no SLBMs.

All of the Chinese boomer subs are empty of SLBM’s? Really?

Perhaps she means they would carry no SLBM nuclear warheads. In either case, this defies common sense as it would render useless China’s SSBN fleet as a deterrent against surprise attack.

Chinese “carrier killer” hyper-velocity nuclear warhead missiles that the K-street neocons say would never be used. That China would instead try to attack American naval forces with conventional weapons.

The SSBNs would also become an escalatory liability in a crisis or conflict, as the process of uploading missiles or warheads would be very lengthy, highly visible, and so provocative as to invite a disarming first strike.

Undoubtedly, China will operate its SSBNs in peacetime as they are being tested now — loaded for bear, with SLBMs armed with nuclear warheads aboard.

For decades, Western analysts have almost certainly grossly underestimated China’s number of nuclear weapons as about 300 (compared to about 1,500 operational strategic nuclear weapons for the U.S. and Russia, or five times as many). This seems based more on wishful thinking than a realistic appraisal of China’s nuclear capabilities.

Russian Gen. Viktor Yesin, former commander in chief of the Strategic Rocket Forces, provided a more realistic estimate of China’s nuclear capabilities in an article published seven years ago “Third After the United States and Russia: On China’s Nuclear Capabilities Without Understatement or Exaggeration” (April 30, 2012).

China’s nuclear weapons are design to completely destroy cities. yet, American military doctrine believes that they would never be used, or if they were, the war zone would be confined to China and that these weapons would be used against Chinese cities, not American ones. I think that the entire group of neocons in Washington DC need lobotomities.

Gen. Yesin calculates China could have “10,000 nuclear munitions” based on the PRC’s estimated production of “up to 40 tons of weapons uranium” and “about 10 tons of weapons-grade plutonium” manufactured “as of 2011.”

However, based on China’s strategic and tactical delivery systems, Gen. Yesin concludes “there may be up to 1,800 warheads in China’s nuclear arsenal.”

Chinese nuclear and weapon technology is acknowledged to be ten years ahead of that of the United States. I argue that this in an underestimation and that it is more like twenty five years more advanced.

Contrary to the title of Gen. Yesin’s article, this would make China, with 1,800 strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, the second most heavily armed nuclear power, after Russia (3,500 operational strategic and tactical nuclear weapons) but before the U.S. (1,700 strategic and tactical nuclear weapons).

“China’s nuclear capabilities are clearly underestimated…

significantly higher than commonly believed in the Western expert community,”

- concludes Russian Gen. Yesin.

As the New Cold War heats up in the Pacific — the United States had better not bet its security on China’s “No First Use” pledge and a presumed five-to-one U.S. advantage in nuclear weapons.

This story was originally published here. Dr. Peter Vincent Pry served as chief of staff of the congressional EMP Commission and in the CIA.

Well some sanity…

I have to agree. All the assumptions made by American planners are really ignorant. Ignorant of the facts, ignorant of China, ignorant of history, ignorant of Intel, ignorant of American weapons capability, and shrouded in wishful thinking, greed, psychopathic personalities, visions of grandeur and illusions.

So maybe some of this is starting to filter out to the American mindless masses…

The following article [3] discusses neocon war-mongering religious nutcase Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton and his slow realization that maybe now is not the time to fight China….

…yeah, Ya don’t think?

He is being discussed on FOX News which is the Alt-Right conservative “news” media that spouts the government point of view to appeal to American conservatives.

[3] US Senator Cotton Casts Doubt on US Navy’s Ability to ‘Fight and Defeat’ China

by Daria Bedenko – https://sputniknews.com/us/202107141083380272-us-senator-cotton-casts-doubt-on-us-navys-ability-to-fight-and-defeat-china/

The US military has seen criticism from lawmakers in the recent past: for example, Republican Senator Ted Cruz happened to share a video comparing the American army and the Russian Army, suggesting that the American military is “woke” and “emasculated”.

Republican US Senator Tom Cotton in a Tuesday interview to Fox News voiced doubt about whether the US Navy is capable of defeating China in battle, pointing at how the American military has, in his opinion, shifted away from warfighting.

"Obviously, the Navy has a big and complex task, but the single most important thing we have our surface Navy for is to be ready to fight and defeat the Chinese Navy",

Cotton said.

"And right now, I have real problems -- real doubts – the Navy has instilled the kind of warfighting mentality that would allow us to accomplish that goal."

He also referred to a recent military report delivered to members of Congress that, according to Cotton’s earlier statement,

"found that a staggering 94% of sailors interviewed believe that the surface Navy suffers from a crisis of leadership and culture."

"It's coming from sailors, it's coming from the sailors and their chiefs and their junior officers, and in some cases, commanding officers who have lost confidence that the Navy's surface warfare component is ready to fight and win tonight",

Cotton told Fox News.

The senator asserted that the United States

"allowed China to steal a march on us that relates especially shipbuilding",

pointing at a

"massive shipbuilding campaign"

by Beijing and suggesting that Washington should follow their lead. He also said that changes are needed in the way sailors and officers are trained, noting that, according to the military report,

"in some cases" the soldiers are handed DVDs to watch in their spare time to train."

"We would never do that to a Navy aviator, we would never do it to a Navy nuclear engineer", Cotton argued. "We shouldn't be doing it to our surface warfare officers either. They deserve a lot better, and the sailors they lead deserve a lot better as well."

The delivery of “A Report on the Fighting Culture of the United States Navy’s Surface Fleet” was ordered by Cotton and some of his House counterparts, including GOP Representatives Jim Banks, Dan Crenshaw, and Mike Gallagher.

This is not the first time Republican lawmakers have questioned the readiness of the American military, the world’s largest by a significant margin. Many conservatives blast the US military for being “woke” and “emasculated”, particularly Texas GOP Senator Ted Cruz, who shared a video in which he compared the US military with the Russian army.

Some observers have criticized the American military for their rollout of so-called ‘woke’ ad videos or offering Zodiac horoscopes for soldiers, arguing that the focus should be on professionalism and not sexual orientation, gender, race, or even astrological aspects.

The sentiment, however, does not appear to be shared by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who noted in late May that he would not “lose one minute of sleep” over what Russia or China say about the US military, which he deemed “the best” in the world today.

Comments

It is time China established a naval base in Cuba. Then the Americans will retreat from the South China Sea

China sent one warship to the Coral Sea, then the Australian navy scurried back from the South China Sea

4Justice

So, a trillion dollar per year "defense" budget and hundreds of military bases around the globe aren't enough. Interesting how Russia and China, who spend 10 times less and have only a few external bases between them scare the US so much. They not only defend their countries adequately, but are also major threats offensively for 10 times less than what the US spends. I suppose the US answer to this will be to increase spending and build more bases.

NthrnNYker59

China's ships FAR outnumber fascist amerika's total number of ships that span all 7 seas....there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY the fascists can compete versus China in a regional battle or even war.

pepa in reply toSy.Gunson.NZ

@Sy.Gunson.NZ, 

I'm afraid he's only saying this in a drive to increase the navy budget...

Erikao

Translation we want more money. Oh and Mr. Austin since you are so confident wouldn't that mean that these countries do not actually pose a threat and we can stop bullying them?

Terranian

That's what ALL Pentagon simulations + assessments etc. say....but the total demented fascist psychopathic Neocons give a *F*, they would rather scorch the earth than giving up their lunatic wet dream...the result of their 'American Exceptionalism' Braindamages + Delusions of Grandeur and they are keeping on looting robbing plundering the taxpayer country + society blind.

Truth is, that China has no real interest in fighting anybody, unless provoked. Watching USA hype itself up for war is like watching a kitten chasing its own tail

OUTLANDER1968

Major General Smedley Butler told the Senate Arms Committee in 1935 - that - WAR IS A RACKET. And saying - what Al Capon was trying to do in 3 districts in Chicago - He was doing it on 3 continents (Asia, Africa, and South America, plus Mexico) - for the western mafia corporations. And it hasn't change. 

Check out the movie - The Pentagon Wars. 

Plus the latest report from the U.S Air Force regarding the F-35 joint fighter jet: The F-35 $1.7 trillion project has failed to meet expectations. And lets not forget about the 911 BS event, when the Senate Arms Committee was investigating the Pentagon for misplacing $2.3 trillion in 1999 and $1.1 trillion in 2000, and interesting that The ARMY/NAVY Financial Analyst Office was the office destroyed on that day, just like World Trade Center Building #7. ------ Pull My Finger, cause it speaks the same BS language.

CHINA is building a base on the Moon. soon USA will have to retreat from space too

KOURSK

it is sure that the big mafia and its NATO dependencies lose ground geostrategically *** 

it is excellent news if the billionaires who reign in Washington and Brussels can no longer impose their particular interests on the whole of the planet *** 

the rise of states and the Russian and Chinese public sphere, geostrategically and economically is not conquering *** 

it simply allows cooperation and development to countries which were subject to plunder when they were under the yoke of organized crime in Washington and Brussels *** 

Russia and china bring peace

Terranianin reply toSy.Gunson.NZ

@Sy.Gunson.NZ, 

Russia will join them as well, as on their Space Station because the ISS reach their End-Of-Life...

and in contrast to the US who blocked + excluded them from the ISS against the wishes of their partners, the Chinese welcome anyone to join them in cooperation as 'equals'. 

It's like with their ginormous FAST telescope, they literally invited scientist from all over the world and the US let their Arecibo telescope rot and decay and collapse because of neglect and ignorance.

keyboardcosmetics

It is ludicrous to even think that a mixed-race impoverished United States routed by Afghan tribesmen with rifles could offer any kind of threat other than bluster at a powerful armed to the teeth modern nation with a population at least 6 times greater than that of the US. What are those mulattos on?

BUY HUAWEI

hahhaha, the best in the world today? Defeated by Taliban with slingshot,

kohems

America. Military best in the world? Even the Taliban have defeated it and lost to the Vietnamese ragtag army. America can never defeat China or Russia in any war and they know that. The world will never support America and its allies in any with China or Russia.

mandrake

Sure, the morons been living in a bubble believing they are invincible, which they are not. 

First lesson they have failed to learn from is that wars fought in far away places against indigenous people are unwinnable. 

China would be such far away theater and they just wouldn’t stand a chance!

richard1950

After all its failed wars in the MiddleEast, and now being kicked out of Afghanistan, the Cowboys are now thinking of trying another war. 

This time they want to start a war in Asia, taking on the Chinese in their own backyard. 

Are these Cowboys nuts?

Hugo Boss

Don't you know that the Cabal is playing both sides: weakening the US and strengthening China, so that both may destroy each other and the Tribe rules?

Some Chinese Military Videos

I really do not know how much this can contribute tot he discussion, but I don’t think that it will hurt. Here’s some videos of Chinese military weapons and systems. I hope that they are interesting to you.

Download the video HERE.

And this one…

And the video HERE.

And this one…

And the video HERE.

And this video…

And the video HERE.

And here…

And the video HERE.

Conclusion

With every conceivable step pushing for war in place, it appears that the United States is starting to fall back and regain some sensibility.

It appears.

And I hope that it is true.

But if there is one thing that I do know, is that as nuts and crazy as the United States leadership are, they are crafty.

Crafty. Sneaky, Astute. Powerful. Dangerous.

And as an American I DO NOT TRUST THEM ONE BIT.

While it appears that the USA is pulling back from the brink of World War III, it just might just be another illusion. And instead, we could easily see a…

*** SNAP ***

And the entire world is engulfed in nuclear, flames, the worst biological weapons, and war on all theaters and in every conceivable way.

So…

Do not let your guard down.

Keep up on your affirmation prayers, and remain guarded and vigilant.

Final Thoughts

Keep in mind that America is a Police State domestically. A Military Empire Internationally. It’s government is an Oligarchy, and it’s people are dumbed down serf-slaves (roughly 60% serf / 25% felon slaves). The government controls everything inside of America, and wants to extend that reach internationally. This will not disappear, no matter what it appears to be.

America is a police state. Here are some police in a subway in New York City.

America is not the leadership. There are good people, capable people, and still intact systems that are capable of designing, working and building things. The only problem is that the government is so big, is so enormous, that it controls everything, and makes it difficult to get anything done, and impossible to enact change.

America is changing, and the military forces are wearing new uniforms and new systems. They are being prepared to fight a major war. No matter what you read otherwise.

America has new weapons systems too. And is developing more every day, and they do look impressive.

So with all this in mind, please take what ever you read in the American “news” cautiously. Be wary.

History has shown that the United States government lies, and is deceptive, and never moves away from it’s voracious appetite for power, control and domination. Never let up our guard.

And by the way, keep in mind that the American people are being manipulated and led by these psychopaths to behave in fearful and dangerous ways.

Check out this American woman, in Hong Kong of all places, yelling at a Chinese man. Telling him to get back to China “where you belong”. And he replies “You’re in China (now)”.

Full video HERE.

Do you want more?

Articles & Links

You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
You can find out more about the author HERE.
If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

The bottom just dropped out from the neocon pro-war faction that want a war over Taiwan

For those of you who are unaware, the k-street neocons (in Washington DC) have been promoting a war with China for over four years now. They started with [1] a war over “democracy” in Hong Kong, and when that failed, they started [2] with a war over Tibet with India, and when that failed, they started [3] with a war over the Uighur Muslims though Afghanistan, and that failed as well. The last group of beating drums has been [4] a war over Taiwan.

“Leaked” nonsense articles discussing Chinese plans to invade Taiwan are all over the Western press. Of course, if you go to the source of this Intel, you will see a glossy supermarket tabloid devoid of facts. Never the less, the drum beats have been a booming. And the neocons in Washington has even started laying out “tweets” using official Whitehouse websites…

…and Biden put a complete end to all this immediately.

Have you noticed how all the “fire hose” of media against China regarding Taiwan has ended? When was the last time you saw an article promoting American involvement in a war over Taiwan?

Why is this?

This is why…

Yup. This goes 100% against everything that Mike Pompeo and the rest of that ghoulish neocon cabal are saying.

What’s Next?

Well, the Morrison regime is still pushing for a war with China. Maybe they will try to perform amphibious landings on the coast of Shenzhen. Who knows? These people are that “bat shit crazy”!

This is a short article, but the content is significant.

America will stand down, and not get involved with any conflict over Taiwan. All those folk who are promoting war, more military spending and all other factors regarding a war with China over Taiwan has got their “wings clipped”.

Notice how none of this is being reported in any American “news”. The only way that you can tell that anything is going on is the lack of coverage regarding Taiwan.

Do you want more?

Articles & Links

You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
You can find out more about the author HERE.
If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

Some updates on Chinese technology and some breaking news for Uighur Muslims in China

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.

In May 2011 Congress banned scientific cooperation with China:

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.

From Global Times, describing activities of the newly arrived 3 taikonauts
Setting up Wi-Fi, unboxing deliveries – Taikonauts busy 'housewarming' on their 1st day in space
The Chinese progress wrt. space activities is very fast indeed. The US must be scratching their heads.

Posted by: Norwegian

The inside of the Chinese space station

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.

Another search produces a picture of Dong Jingwei. The line below it translates to:

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

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…

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A New Beginning; The death of the USA Would Cause Unacceptable Collateral Damage

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…

Which is why its vassals and even rivals are forced, for now, to try and keep it afloat

This article from the RI archives was first published on RI in August 2018 . Dmitry Orlov Tue, May 18 2021 | 1830 words 19,686  Comments

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…

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 29,386  Comments

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.

“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 Orlov Tue, Apr 13 2021 | 1900 words 9,773  Comments

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.

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 14,816  Comments

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.

“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 Orlov Sat, Mar 27 2021 | 1440 words 27,999  Comments

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.

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 Orlov Mon, Mar 22 2021 | 1610 words 46,492  Comments

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?

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A New Beginning; Observing the collapse of the American military empire

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.”

Yi had a point.

Ironically, most of the world believes that the U.S. represents a greater threat to genuine democracy than does either China or Russia.

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.

Putin Rewrites the Law of the Geopolitical Jungle

“Putin Rewrites the Law of the Geopolitical Jungle” found on UNZ. And written by Pepe Escobar on April 23, 2021. . Edited to fit this venue, all credit to the author, and the usual disclaimers retain.

Putin’s address to the Russian Federal Assembly – a de facto State of the Nation – was a judo move that left Atlanticist sphere hawks particularly stunned.

The “West” was not even mentioned by name.

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 19^th 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.”

The stunning developments of the past few weeks …

the China-US Alaska summit,
the Lavrov-Wang Yi summit in Guilin,
the NATO summit,
the Iran-China strategic deal,
Xi Jinping’s speech at the Boao forum

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

 “Greater Eurasia”.

“Tensions skirting wartime levels”

Now compare all of the above with the White House Executive Order (EO) declaring a

“national emergency”

“deal with the Russian threat”.

This is directly connected to President Biden …

… 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

By Mike Scrafton

May 20, 2021

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.

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.

Progress Report: US Encirclement of China

Brian Berletic
21st Century Wire

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…

Let’s take a look at what is going on right now inside of America.

If Everything Is Going To Be Just Fine, Why Do The Shortages Just Keep Getting Worse?

“If Everything Is Going To Be Just Fine, Why Do The Shortages Just Keep Getting Worse?” written on  May 18, 2021 by Michael Snyder. Edited to fit this venue, all credit to the author, and the usual disclaimers retain.

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…

If you found yourself in a situation like this, you can check the FDA’s drug shortage tracking system.

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.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Shortages just continue to get worse for the home building industry as well…

“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.

When asked about these shortages, one home building executive said that “it’s getting worse and worse every day”…

“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.

This is something that I discussed extensively in my recent article entitled “A Severe Computer Chip Shortage Will Last ‘A Few Years’, And This Could Plunge The Global Economy Into Utter Chaos”.

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.

If this is the “recovery”, what will things look like when the next severe economic downturn hits us?

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?

“Do You Get The Feeling That Events Happening Now Are Leading Us Into An Endless Global Nightmare?” written on May 11, 2021 by Michael Snyder. Edited to fit this venue, all credit to the author, and the usual disclaimers retain.

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.

On Tuesday, the skies above Tel Aviv looked like something out of a science fiction movie as Israel’s Iron Dome intercepted countless incoming rockets from Gaza. Could you imagine living in fear that a rocket could explode right next to you at any moment?

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.

But if you think that things are really bad now, just wait, because you ain’t seen nothing yet.

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

“It Took Just A Couple Of Days For Madness To Descend Upon America Once Gas Shortages Began” written on May 12, 2021 by Michael Snyder. Edited to fit this venue, all credit to the author, and the usual disclaimers retain.

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.

In fact, one energy expert said that this was “the worst panic buying for gasoline since the Carter Administration”…

“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.

At first we were told that 1,000 stations were out of gas, and then it was 2,000 stations, and finally we were told that more than 10,000 stations were out.

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.

Meanwhile, we just learned that Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is trying to shut down another important pipeline…

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?

Well, Governor Whitmer is apparently concerned that the pipeline “is too exposed to potential accidents”…

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.

Erased Alien Tech Proofs: Keshe Technology confirmed ‘Very Real’

Erased Alien Tech Proofs: Keshe Technology confirmed ‘Very Real’. Gordon Duff, Senior Editor written on April 6, 2021. Edited to fit this venue, all credit to the author, and the usual disclaimers retain.

… by Gordon Duff, Senior Editor, with Ian Greenhalgh

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…

[1] The result of reverse-engineering Alien hardware;

We further suspect that…

[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.

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:

Secret Space war XIII: Alien Partners tell Putin, “Don’t Worry, We’ve Got Your Back”

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.

But estimates are constructed using advanced algorithms on advanced computers to make estimates.

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.

Some military technology experts believe that the Sunburn is based on Alien ET back-engineered technology.

Why would they think this?

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.

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.

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. .

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.

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.

Some experts believe that the USAF (or the USN) has nothing that can adequately respond to the Sunburn.

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.

“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.

No, wait…

…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.

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.

…

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.

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.

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A Precious Comment by Ahino Wolf Sushanti

Lot’s of changes going on in the world now.

And America, well, it’s somewhere else. I mean. Really. It’s off somewhere in La-La-Land.

You know, today I want to talk about discoveries.

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…

It’s beautiful outside.

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.

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.

Then at work. Sure enough. it would be a beautiful day and I would be stuck inside.

Here’s a view from my office right now.

I don’t have to stay inside. I can get up and go out and walk about.

But I am not.

My oomph hasn’t got the push.

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.

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.

A fine bowl of chili.

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.

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.

Yeah. I really did live “The Office Space” experience.

A club sandwich…

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?

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?

You start to miss out discovering the few precious things about life. That’s what.

Monte Cristo sandwich.

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.

It’s the free newspaper at the end of the counter in the diner.

It’s the way that a well balanced screwdriver feels in your hand.

It’s a cloth handkerchief in your pocket, and your favorite shirt that fits you like a well worn glove.

And it’s those little discoveries that make your day.

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.

I didn’t savor anything.

I consumed.

For I was an American consumer….

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!.

I am talking about serious cavorting, you all.

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.

I miss my orange “goat”.

But those days are gone.

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.

We didn’t savor.

We didn’t appreciate.

And life did move on.

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”.

Party like it’s 1976!

Our life is precious.

Living it is important.

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”.

Note handed to a woman.

Live life.

Live it well.

And discover what lies around you.

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

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:

1. 1. To open the borders of China to allow goods coming in and out freely, and tax free.
  2. 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:

1. 1. Re-educate the Uighur extremists before they turned terrorists.
  2. 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 Genesee Cream Ale (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 Tsingtao Beer.

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.

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A Precious Comment by FromSerbia

Lately, life has been surreal.

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.

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 song and dance. 
A long and elaborate explanation or presentation. Primarily heard in US.

Dog And Pony Show

Meaning 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.

And you can SEE the changes. You really can.

And for me, who is used to the enormous tidal-waves of change within China, I find it nearly incomprehensible.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Their attitude is “OK, so America wants to compete. We will COMPETE.”.

And everyone seems to be doing this.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

And it’s all bullshit.

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.

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A New World Order where America Makes Aircraft Carriers, and China Makes Money

I’m old.

I remember when I used fffound, before I discovered Tumblr.

And then, abandoned it when Yahoo! bought it out, promising never to change it.

Yeah. Right. Like that happened! Yeah NOT!

And still reading the “news” on the Free Republic feeds. As if they were full of precious information that mattered in my life.

Nope.

It didn’t matter at all.

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!

Louise!

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.

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”…

…being put in charge of the US Military strategic bio-weapon agency in 2016.

It’s just a coincidence!

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.

Why, it’s just a coincidence!

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!)…

…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%…

…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!

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.

Most Americans are corralled sheep with the brains of a potato.

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!

Right!, That’s right!

Over and over.

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…

…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.

Here’s a reprint, shared using the regular disclaimers.

A Dolorous Imbalance

America Makes Aircraft Carriers, China Makes Money

Fred Reed • May 11, 2021 with 353 Comments

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.

Anyway, give Trump his due. He lit this fuse.

A few snippets

Prototype of China’s 385 mph maglev train

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-“

“Quantum Cryptography Network Spans 4,600 Km in China”

Quantum Key Distribution, QKD, allows unhackable communications.

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.

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>

China to Europe rail freight:

“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.

First China-Built DRAM Chip Reaches Market

DRAM, dynamic random-access memory, appears in almost everything electronic and is a juicy market.

Chang Xin Memory, which makes it, redesigned it slightly to remove American technology.

If Chang Sin can ramp up volume, which has yet to be established, guess what foreign companies won’t sell much of in China any more.

Duh!

See above, about forcing China to make things themselves.

Pingtang Bridge, recently opened. Well over a thousand feet high

Even in my short two weeks recently in China, I saw that the Chinese do not believe in vertical motion.

An American, encountering a mountain, would, sensibly enough, go up and over.

This is not the Chinese way.

They go through.

Similarly, on finding a valley, they do not go down and up.

They go across.

There may be some genetic abnormality behind this, or maybe interbreeding with space aliens.

But it results in hellacious bridges.

“Is China Emerging as the World Leader in AI?”

“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. “

America talks about 5G, China uses it.

NikkeiAsia:

“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?)

China’s Y-20 strategic transport aircraft gets key indigenous engine:

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.

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?

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