لقد سقط «النظام الليبرالي الدولي»، وهو الاسم الحركي لمنظومة الهيمنة الغربية، في غزة. لم يكُن سرّاً أن هذه المنظومة تعاني منذ أكثر من عقد، من أزمة مستعصية نتيجة تراجع قدرتها على السيطرة العسكرية بفعل الهزائم التي مُنيت بها في العراق وأفغانستان – ومن الممكن إضافة لبنان وغزة هنا -، وانحسار نفوذها الاقتصادي والسياسي مع صعود دور المنافسين غير الغربيين الكبار، كالصين وروسيا والهند، والمتوسّطين، كبقية دول «بريكس». غير أن مشاركة «الغرب الجماعي» في حرب الإبادة الصهيونية ضد الشعب الفلسطيني في غزة، وجّهت ضربة قاضية على الأرجح لمحاولات تجديد صدقية سردية «النظام الليبرالي الدولي» عن نفسه، ومزاعم «التفوق الأخلاقي» للديموقراطيات على ما عداها من الأنظمة السياسية. سعت إدارة جو بايدن إلى تجديد تلك الصدقية المترنحة نتيجة لسياسات إدارة دونالد ترامب، وما سبقها من حروب أميركية تلازمت مع ممارسات إجرامية بحق شعوب بأكملها، أضحت السجون – المسالخ في أبو غريب وغوانتانامو رموزاً لها، لكنها لن تتمكن من ذلك بعد محرقة غزة. فمشاهد جثث الأبرياء المتكدسة أو المتحلّلة أو المبعثرة إلى أشلاء، في شوارع القطاع وأزقته، وفي مستشفياته ومدارسه، وصيرورته أكواماً من الركام، ستحفر عميقاً في وجدان أغلبية وازنة من شعوب العالم، بما فيها الشعوب الغربية، وتكشف الوجه الحقيقي لـ«تحالف الديموقراطيات» العتيد.نحن في الواقع أمام منعطف فكري – سياسي حاسم، بالنسبة إلى نظرة قطاعات معتبرة من تلك الشعوب للولايات المتحدة وأتباعها، لا يقلّ أهمية عن ذلك الذي مثّلته حرب فيتنام في ستينيات القرن الماضي وسبعينياته. فقد أوضحت هذه الأخيرة، آنذاك، الطبيعة الإمبريالية العاتية لـ«الديموقراطية الأعرق»، ما أسهم في تشكل حركة معارضة شعبية عالمية وازنة لسياساتها، أدّت دوراً في تغيّر ميزان القوى الإجمالي لغير مصلحتها، وبقية القصة معروفة للجميع. صحيح أن «جثث الجنود العائدة بالأكياس» وفقاً للتعبير المستخدم حينها، كانت عاملاً أساسياً في انقلاب موقف الرأي العام الأميركي حيال الحرب، غير أن الصحيح أيضاً هو أن جلاء زيف المبررات الرسمية لواشنطن لخوضها دفاعاً عن «الديموقراطية وحقوق الإنسان في مواجهة الشيوعية ومشروعها الشمولي»، بسبب هول الجرائم التي ارتكبها جيشها ضدّ الشعب الفيتنامي، كان بدوره عاملاً مؤثراً في اتساع المعارضة وتجذّرها.
إسرائيل هي التي ترتكب الجرائم اليوم في غزة، لكنها تقوم بذلك بشراكة كاملة مع حليفها الأميركي أولاً، الذي لا يزال يرفض الدعوة إلى وقف إطلاق النار، ويمدّها بالسلاح والعتاد ويحشد الأساطيل ذوداً عنها. هو مدرك بكل تأكيد للتبعات الكارثية لمثل هذه السياسة على صورته ونفوذه على الصعيد الدولي والداخلي الأميركي، ما يفسّر محاولاته التمايز عن ممارسات حليفه الإسرائيلي من خلال حضّه على «احترام القانون الدولي الإنساني»، أو اقتراحه هدناً إنسانية، أو حمله على الانتقال إلى مرحلة جديدة من الحرب، تتخلّلها عمليات خاصة موجّهة ضد تنظيمات المقاومة حصراً. وهي محاولات لن تجدي نفعاً، لأن مسؤولية واشنطن عمّا وقع حتى الآن لا تخفى على أحد. الأسوأ بالنسبة إليها، هو أن تداعي صدقيّة سرديتها يأتي في سياق تحتاج فيه إلى أوسع إجماع داخلي أميركي وغربي حول استراتيجية المواجهة المحتدمة التي تعتمدها ضدّ روسيا والصين.
ربما ستجِد آراء وزير الخارجية الروسي، سيرغي لافروف، أحد أبرز الدعاة منذ سنوات طويلة لضرورة إقامة نظام دولي متعدد الأقطاب، آذاناً صاغية في أنحاء المعمورة، بما فيه في داخل الغرب، في الظروف الراهنة أكثر بكثير من ذي قبل. فقد حذّر لافروف، في مقابلة مع وكالة «تاس»، من أنه «ليس بإمكان أحد في العالم أن يكون متأكداً من الإفلات سالماً من المكائد الغربية في عام 2024. العواصف مستمرة في العالم، وأحد الأسباب هو أن الدوائر الحاكمة في الغرب تثير أزمات على بعد آلاف الكيلومترات من حدودها من أجل حلّ قضاياها على حساب الشعوب الأخرى». جهدت إدارة بايدن منذ اندلاع الحرب الأوكرانية، وهي حرب تشنّها بالوكالة على روسيا، لتوحيد المعسكر الغربي وإنتاج إجماع داخلي في بلدانه ضدّها باعتبارها عدواً ليس للأوكرانيين وحدهم، بل لكل القيم الإنسانية والسياسية المشتركة بين الديموقراطيات. المعركة في عرفها لم تكن جيوسياسية فقط، بل فكرية – عقائدية، ما يسهل إسباغ الطابع الوجودي عليها. وباسم هذا الطابع الوجودي، جرى تبرير ضخ عشرات مليارات الدولارات بصيغة مساعدات عسكرية واقتصادية ومالية لنظام كييف ضد «العدوان الروسي الغاشم»، وإقناع الشعوب الأوروبية باحتمال التداعيات الناجمة عن الحرب، وفي مقدّمتها التضخم المتزايد.
يأتي التورط الغربي في حرب الإبادة الإسرائيلية ضدّ أهل غزة لينسف تلك المبررات «القيمية/ الأخلاقية» من أساسها. قد يستخف البعض بهذا الأمر لكنهم مخطئون. فتبدُّد هذه المبررات، معطوفاً على الفشل الذريع في الميدان للهجوم المضاد الأوكراني، الذي حظي بتطبيل إعلامي – سياسي غربي باعتباره كفيلاً بدحر القوات الروسية، سيفضي بالضرورة إلى مراجعة الحكومات الغربية لحساباتها، وتخفيض سقف توقّعاتها بالنسبة إلى مستقبل النزاع الدائر هناك. سيكون من الأصعب على الحكومات المشار إليها المضيّ في حرب باهظة الكلفة، ومن دون «إنجازات ميدانية»، وفاقدة للمسوّغات بنظر شعوبها، ما يعزّز فرص البحث عن حلول سياسية تأخذ في الاعتبار المطالب الروسية.
المواجهة الاستراتيجية مع الصين، لكونها المنافس الاستراتيجي الأكبر للولايات المتحدة، ستبقى أولوية بالنسبة إلى الإدارة الأميركية الحالية وإلى أيّ إدارة قادمة. لكن المنافسة في ميادين التجارة والاقتصاد والتكنولوجيا لا تعني اتّباع سياسة الاستفزاز المتعمّد والمستمر، وصولاً إلى التدحرج نحو حافة الحرب. مايكل كلير، الخبير في الشؤون الاستراتيجية العسكرية والطاقة، رأى في مقاله الأخير على موقع «توم ديسباتش»، أن قمة سان فرنسيسكو بين الرئيسين الصيني والأميركي مثّلت «خطوة صغيرة إلى الوراء بعيداً عن حافة الهاوية». يشير كلير إلى أن الهدف من القمة بالنسبة إلى الرئيسين كان وقف الانزلاق نحو صدام كارثي والاتفاق على إدارة الخلافات «بطريقة مسؤولة»، غير أن القضايا الخلافية الأبرز، أي تايوان والجزر المتنازع عليها بين الصين وبعض دول جوارها لم تحظَ بالاهتمام الكافي خلالها. ستجرى الانتخابات الرئاسية في تايوان في 13 كانون الثاني 2024، وإذا ما انتصر مرشح «الحزب الديموقراطي التقدمي» الحاكم راهناً، وذو التوجهات الانفصالية، فإن هذا التطور سيعني مضاعفة التوتر مع بكين، وضغوطاً متعاظمة من الجمهوريين ومن الصقور الديموقراطيين على إدارة بايدن لزيادة تسليح الجزيرة والوقوف إلى جانبها في حال تدخّل الصين لمنع الانفصال. وأغلب الظن، فإنّ خيار الدخول في صدام مع الصين سيلاقي معارضة قوية من قطاعات شبابية كبيرة في الولايات المتحدة، في داخل الحزب «الديموقراطي» وفي خارجه، لم تعد مقتنعة بـ«التفوّق الأخلاقي» لحكومة بلادها على منافسيها الخارجيين نظراً إلى تورطها في حرب الإبادة ضد غزة. مستقبل إدارة بايدن لن يكون واعداً، وثمن دماء شهداء غزة سيكون باهظاً بالنسبة إليها وإلى طموحاتها في منطقتنا، وفي نواحي العالم الأخرى.
Former editor and writer for major news media organizations. He has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages
Forked-tongued American politicians should be repudiated until Washington actually begins to behave as a law-abiding entity.
Joe Biden’s penchant for tripping over his feet – and verbally – couldn’t have happened at a most unfortunate moment. Mocking China’s president as a “dictator” just when his administration attempted a big reset in U.S.-China relations has to rank as one of Biden’s clumsiest gaffes.
A day after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited China in a high-profile attempt to mend frayed relations, Biden kicked those efforts in the teeth by telling a crowd in California that Chinese President Xi was a dictator.
Beijing responded furiously, denouncing the American president’s “extreme” disrespect and lack of etiquette. China’s anger is no doubt reinforced because it showed magnanimity in receiving Blinken and affording him a top-level diplomatic meeting with President Xi Jinping.
Biden’s latest gaffe is made all the more absurd because he was referring to the incident of a Chinese weather balloon that had strayed over U.S. territory in February, which Biden ordered an F-16 fighter jet to shoot down with a sidewinder missile. Biden is still claiming that it was a Chinese spy balloon even though the Washington Post had reported earlier that it was a meteorological aircraft blown off course whose errant trans-Pacific course was being monitored in real-time by the Americans.
That crass overreaction by Biden resorting to a military attack over a balloon sent U.S.-China relations into a further tailspin. Blinken canceled a visit to Beijing in February in what was a cheap protest stunt against an alleged Chinese breach of U.S. national security. His trip last weekend was meant to signal a new reset in relations. There was much talk during the U.S. diplomat’s visit about improving communications between Washington and Beijing to avoid a military confrontation.
Then there came the crash, bang, wallop from Biden’s strange outburst insulting his Chinese counterpart.
During the California fundraising foray this week, Biden claimed that Xi knew nothing about the “spy balloon”, implying that he was being kept in the dark by Chinese intelligence officials as befitting a hapless “dictator”.
In reality, it looks like Biden is the one who is hopelessly benighted. Ordering the shoot-down of an errant balloon with million-dollar air-to-air missiles and to continue insisting that it was a spy vehicle shows an abject lack of judgment. Could anyone trust a balloon-popping commander-in-chief who has access to grabbing the nuclear football? This is Doctor Strangelove’s twilight stuff. All the more frightening because it’s real life, not a movie.
But on top of that, Biden then goes on to gratuitously insult the Chinese leader.
Biden’s loose tongue and legs at this frail stage in his half-century political career are beyond parody. Falling on the stairs of Air Force One and tripping over podiums is an embarrassing routine spectacle for this president.
His congenital bad manners of referring to Russian and Chinese leaders as “thugs”, “killers” and “dictators” shows Biden’s low class as a person, as well as extreme hypocrisy for a politician who is responsible for causing millions of deaths from promoting U.S. criminal wars down through the decades.
One good thing, however, is the impeccable clarity that all this provides (if that were needed).
China – and Russia– by now know beyond doubt that Washington cannot be trusted in anything it says. Biden is just the decrepit embodiment of the treacherous and duplicitous politics inherent in Washington. It is blinded and stupefied, incapable of meaningful dialogue because of Washington’s insufferable delusions, its arrogance, hubris, and self-righteous propaganda. And its total addiction to war for fixing its corporate capitalist junkie economy.
Top U.S. diplomat Antony Blinken went on a mission to appease China with ostensible declarations of wanting to normalize relations, avoid confrontation and professing adherence to the One China policy with regard to abjuring Taiwan’s independence and recognizing the island territory as being under China’s sovereign control. In other words, respecting international law.
China’s leadership warily shook hands with Blinken and appeared to give him the benefit of doubt for a public reset in U.S. bilateral relations.
Biden’s subsequent rush to the brain and his rash, churlish words demonstrate that Washington is not capable of adhering to decorum, decency and diplomacy, or anything for that matter, apart from a handrail on a staircase. And even that’s unreliable.
After Blinken’s smarmy visit to China, one can bet the farm that in the coming weeks there will be more provocative U.S. naval maneuvers in the Taiwan Strait; there will be more provocative U.S. multi-billion-dollar arms sales to Taiwan; and there will be more provocative U.S. political delegations ostentatiously traveling to Taipei in order to foment instability and the offensive notion of independence from China.
Thus, it’s altogether better that Beijing does not waste time by engaging Washington with disingenuous diplomacy. Forget smarmy, florid rhetoric about improving relations, and smiley handshakes. The only proof needed is deeds and practical compliance with already established legal treaties.
Washington says it respects the One China policy and three legally binding treaties that it has signed with Beijing since 1979 on that. That should mean the United States ending all interference in China’s sovereignty. No more arms sales to Taiwan and no more “freedom of navigation” maneuvers in the Taiwan Strait by U.S. warships.
It’s a rather straightforward obligation that avoids ambiguity and equivocation. It’s almost incredible that this has to be spelled out which illustrates just how rogue the United States is.
Moscow can make the same arguments and conclusions with regard to the U.S.-led NATO expansion up to its borders and the infiltration of Ukraine with NeoNazi proxies.
But here’s the deplorable rub: the United States is agreement incapable, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has caustically noted. Russian President Vladimir Putin has also recently lamented the complete dearth of American political integrity, at least for the past few generations.
Joe Biden figuratively falling down the stairs of the U.S.-China reset attempts is the latest confirmation that forked-tongued American politicians should be repudiated until Washington actually begins to behave as a law-abiding entity.
The Chinese-brokered agreement emerged in retaliation to the US as the latter continues to wage a series of provocations aimed at destabilizing China’s domestic stability with regard to Taiwan.
Under the auspices of China, Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to restore diplomatic relations on March 10. At the time of the deal’s announcement, US President Joe Biden said better relations between “Israel” and their Arab neighbors are better for everybody rather than relations with Iran. Better for “everybody” depends on what is meant for everybody. If it means the US financial classes and their Arab and Zionist comprador in the region, then Biden is spot on. However, for the masses of the Arab World that experience declining living standards, whether by peace or war, the US-Israeli aggression against them will not stop. What must be understood is that the aggression is necessary for Western wealth-making because it extracts regional resources, which should otherwise better Arab social conditions, and ships them to US-European markets in order to feed exponential growth and profits.
Moreover, the aggression, whether military or ideological, is itself an industry in its own right, which fuels wealth accumulation. At a first-principle level, the policies that dominate the air-waves, all aim to foment wars. To extoll the virtues of the market, erect a cultural identity that aborts the potential of labor as a historical agent, and push down the throat of indebted states policies of privatization and private property, leaves little resources for the peoples of the region and delivers them into inter-communal strife. The case of Sudan is one such blatant example. The wars visited upon the Arabs drive away their resources and are therefore a must for the global financial class.
However, capital or the principal social relation governing the remaking of the global order is a two-pronged process. At first, capital is of the same class fabric, and it initially aims at oppressing workers everywhere. This capital against labor is a first contradiction. A second but not secondary contradiction is the inter-capitalist competition for power, which determines the shares of the various circles of capital. For instance, the US sits atop the capital pyramid and receives a fallout in rent depending on its power standing. It would not want lower suzerains to catch more of the rents. It sometimes sacrifices its bourgeois allies to grab their shares. Saudi Arabia was one such candidate readied to be sacrificed along with some sections of its ruling class.
With the rise of China, the global balance of forces shifted, and bourgeois classes disgruntled with the US’s avarice for rents saw a window of opportunity to save themselves. After years of war with Yemen at the behest of empire to secure the Mandeb straits, it was left weakened and alone. Sensing the danger of bourgeois fratricide, the Saudis intelligently decided to maneuver into a position backed by Chinese guarantees of security. China builds capacity and détente abroad, which are measures anathema to US imperialism whose goal is to destabilize in order to snatch resources.
For the US, War Masquerades as Peace
In efforts to normalize relations between “Israel” and the Arab world, the US brokered a series of agreements called The Abraham Accords. They propose a strategy of forging alliances with “Israel” to counterbalance the Axis of Resistance. They base the rationale for joining Arab and Israeli forces on an alleged Iranian threat. Already, these Arab ruling classes were extensions of and under the purview of the US-Israeli ruling classes. Their coming out is nothing less than a sign of weakness to reposition forces around a strengthening Axis of resistance.
These Abrahamic shenanigans provide new venues for class allies to enhance their own aggressive capabilities through the purchase of arms from “Israel”. “Israel”, by the way, is the largest exporter of arms per capita in the world. So far, “Israel” normalizes with Oman, Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco and Sudan, in addition to the earlier trophies of peace, Jordan and Egypt. It shares an informal relation with Saudi Arabia and Doha. It for instance conducts diamond trade in Doha while Saudi Arabia has recently opened its airspace for Israeli commercial airplanes.
The so-called Abraham Accords are an unthinkable ‘promise’ for peace without Palestine and the right of return. They supposedly foster incremental developments with the GCC by precluding even the lowly option of a two-state solution which was endorsed by the Arab Peace Initiative (API). Saudi Arabia maintained that its position remains solely expressed through its commitment to the API, wherein normalization with “Israel” would only be conceivable once the conditions listed in the Arab-brokered initiative are fulfilled. But the fact that UAE, Sudan, Morocco, and Bahrain normalized their relations with “Israel” is indicative of consent by Saudi Arabia. As observed by Israeli writer Henrique Zimmerman, the signatories of the Accords “would not have signed the agreement without the approval of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is the most influential country in the Arab world.” So what would have really prevented an alliance between “Israel” and Saudi Arabia?
In a previous article, I showed how the US failed to fulfill its security commitments toward Saudi Arabia. Whereas Saudi Arabia has boosted the US status as a world hegemon by denominating its oil in dollars, the US has failed to stick to its side of the bargain by ensuring that the Saudi Kingdom has all its security needs, foremost its regime, or ruling class security answered. Fearing the tightening grip of the Axis of resistance around it, normalization with “Israel” went out of the window, while China provided the face-saving arrangement with Iran.
An agreement “Made in China”
Unlike the US, China needs peace to expand. The Chinese-brokered agreement emerged in retaliation to the US as the latter continues to wage a series of provocations aimed at destabilizing China’s domestic stability with regard to Taiwan. It is retaliatory because it presents a strategic threat to US interests and its hegemonic influence across the Arab region. It is also retaliatory because it threatens to undermine the petrodollar system upon which the dollar supremacy is based on. Since the Saudi-Iran agreement went into effect, it is only fair to characterize the scale of the changes that ensued following its implementation as unprecedented. Very much like a drop of water falling into a puddle, the agreement rippled across the region, bearing fruits in Yemen and Syria.
First are the developments that ensued between Yemen and Saudi Arabia. For eight years Yemen endured a US-sponsored war that has claimed the lives of nearly half a million people. On April 9, Saudi officials met with high-ranking officials from the Sanaa government for peace negotiations, and on April 14, the International Committee of the Red Cross announced that a massive prisoner exchange operation had kicked off. On April 29, senior member of the Ansar Allah political bureau Ali Al-Qahoum admitted that China played a pivotal role in the negotiations for restoring regional peace and warding off Western hegemony. Some challenges however remain with regards to US and UK interference in pushing for another escalation. Yet a positive outlook persist as officials from both sides mobilize efforts for dialogue.
Secondly, there has been the push to re-integrate Syria into the Arab League through the collective efforts of several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, which has in spearheaded the move. The US and the UK had on the other hand reaffirmed their commitment to remain opposed to the restoring of ties with Damascus but they would continue to work with Arab states that rekindle diplomatic relations.
Thirdly, there has been news of Saudi Arabia expressing an interest in holding talks with Hezbollah. Saudi Arabia was largely a precursor for designating Hezbollah as a terror organization both at the GCC level as well as in the Arab League. With a shift in policy that appears to be more driven from the Saudi side than from Iran, prospects for political stability in Lebanon are also looming. But the fact remains that Lebanon is sickened with a sectarianism fueled by geopolitical rents that easily plays into the hand of “Israel” and the US.
Fourthly, prospects for normalization with Hamas are likewise on the horizon as talks were recently held between Hamas and Saudi officials. On April 16, the two parties had met in Riyadh to hold discussions on the release of Hamas-affiliated individuals detained in Saudi jails. There are also hopes for relations to improve between Saudi Arabia and Iraq’s movement for resistance, the Kataib Hezbollah.
Finally, whether the deal restores relations between Turkey and Syria is still up to discussion. However, chances are they might broach the issue considering that the project of restoring peace in Syria is part of the wider Iran-Saudi deal agenda. Yet the presence of US troops in Syria remains problematic for two reasons: the first, US troops are stationed in Syria for the sole purpose of toppling the government of Bashar al-Assad. To loot Syria’s oil resources in the north is simply means towards that end; and secondly, because Saudi Arabia’s institutions are closely tied to the US, while the latter holds much leverage inside the Kingdom. As a key regional player, Saudi Arabia could exert pressure to restore Ankara-Damascus relations, but it is unclear how able it is to do so.
What now?
The US has been setback by the China-sponsored peace. Its “rules-based” world order hangs by a thread, while its dollar supremacy wanes. Doubtless, the blow was hard for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who just a month prior to the Iran-Saudi deal said that “Israel” and Saudi Arabia were planning to join forces on the basis of a common goal of stopping Iran. By more sober analysis, normalizing with “Israel” for any regime in the region is an act of suicide, unless the march of history eliminates the working classes as subject of history.
After all the Israeli-Arab war is a war of capital against labor. The principal lesson learnt so far is that regional peace is global-relations-derived peace. The saddest part of this is that Arab progressive forces still prioritize internal demands for higher working-class wages over struggles against imperialism. Without Arab national security, there is no working-class living security. While the region’s future and much of the Third World will depend on how China unseats the US hegemon, the Arab vanguard is fast asleep.
The Chinese are not only fully awake but fully cognisant of the Anglo-Saxons’ wiles in the debt, and semiconductor sectors, as well as in honey, Hello Kitty and all others.
“Let China sleep. For when she wakes, the world will tremble”. Although The Dictionnaire Napoléon attributes this apothegm not to the great Napoleon (who loved a good bon mot almost as much as he loved a good battle) but to British actor David Niven playing the British Ambassador during the Boxer rebellion in the 1963 Hollywood blockbuster55 days at Peking, it matters not.
China has arrived and she is shaking up the world to a degree not even her Japanese neighbour achieved during Japan’s recent years of economic glory. That being so, we must gauge the force of this Godzilla who, horror of NATO horrors, is not only brokering peace in the Middle East but, more to the heart of this essay, is honey-laundering atop a mountain of debt that has our NATO overlords sweating bricks.
First stop is honey. China has agreed to annually import some 50,000 tonnes of honey from sanctions-struck Iran, which needs every nickel and dime it can scrape together. Because the Iranian bee industry, as this informative article explains, has huge upside potential, I am happy China is helping Iran’s 140,000 beekeepers stay afloat. Whereas in Western countries, bee-keeping is generally a side product some farmers engage in, in Syria, and I imagine, in Iran, bee-keepers follow their nomadic bees about as they migrate from one locale to the other; as Iran, for example, has over four times the amount of flower species Western Europe has Iran, like Syria, is a veritable heaven on earth for bees. Although NATO’s Syrian war of extermination has severely disrupted Syria’s bees and Syria’s bee-keepers, this Sino-Iranian deal shows there is hope for the bee-keepers of Iran, Iraq and Syria and, for that, I could not be happier.
Allied to that, China, the world’s largest honey producer, is accused of dumping its own honey onto the international honey market and thereby undercutting the EU’s 60,0000 bee producers and, crucially, Ukraine, against which Western countries have no hope of competing, at least on price.
But, in China’s defence, it must be said that such activities are part and parcel of today’s international “rules based order” systems of trade. Here, for example, is a report of Irish farmers managing Saudi Arabia’s massive cattle farms. Global beef production has changed and one either goes for the quantity that Saudi Arabia and Bill Gates’ own mega farms represent or one goes for quality, for such things as Kobe beef, Irish whiskey and French luxury goods.
Irish whiskey, which is a much finer product than the cough mixtures sister Scotland palms off to an unsuspecting world, is important to our analysis as Ukraine’s rotund Ambassador to Ireland has demanded Ireland boycott its own Irish whiskey, boycotting being a tactic the Irish not only invented but excelled at. Leaving aside that ignoramus and all other considerations, if Ireland can grab back some of the market in China (and Russia) from the Scots, that would be a good thing because China, whether the CIA likes it or not, is the new Roaring 20s Japan.
That means the Chinese have a lot of money to splurge on Irish whiskey, French luxury goods and Hello Kitty. As the Japanese, during their golden years, accounted for over 70% of Louis Vuitton’s global sales, Irish whiskey producers, French luxury goods’ makers, Iranian beekeepers and the custodians of Japan’s kawaii culture cannot ignore China.
The Chinese pay for all their Hello Kitty merchandise, their Scottish cough mixtures and their French perfumes by exporting stuff, things like bullet trains that they reversed-engineered from Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Because China is growing so fast, there are opportunities galore there in everything from honey and Kobe beef to Volkswagen cars and aircraft carriers, all of which China, with its reverse-engineering hacks, can pay for with its export surpluses or by taking on some debt.
As with honey, so also is China a major agricultural producer in her own right and her farms range from the very primitive to state-of-the-art wonders that match anything the Netherlands, or even Bill Gates’ sinister mega-ranches have to offer. China’s main constraint in this respect is its waters are in the wrong place and it is not at all clear that the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, its traditional water source, will cover its future needs.
To tackle that and countless other development bottlenecks China, to accommodate the growing expectations of her countless masses, must invest heavily on a scale the world has never previously witnessed. And it must borrow heavily too as borrowing is a means of spreading investments one might not otherwise be able to afford over longer terms.
And that brings us to China: The Root of Madness, the CIA’s 1967 Cold War documentary “explaining” China through the CIA’s prism. But China must be explained through a Chinese, not an American prism and, if CIA spy Theodore H White, who produced that garbage, had bothered to read Chairman Mao, he would have come across far more references to ancient Chinese dynasties than he would to Karl Marx or Freddy Engels.
Because White’s Anglo-Saxons fret far too much about China’s debt policies rather than their own, we will now compare and contrast one with the other. Traditionally, there were two basic economic systems, the German-Japanese system where banks and borrowing were the financial engines of their sure but steady growth and the Anglo-American system where the riskier, roller-coaster stock market ruled the roost. China’s approach to debt, yet again, is best described as Japan’s on steroids.
In the United States, to coin a Napoleonic bon mot, debt has gone from the sublime to the ridiculous. The vultures’ Klondyke that was payday lending, where the Anglo-Saxon poor, living from pay cheque to pay cheque, paid unsustainable loan-sharking rates to their creditors, has been replaced with predatory smart phone apps, where poor Americans are now reduced to buying their meals on credit and paying through the nose for them, as Uncle Sam catches them in micro debt traps from which there is no escape.
At the macro international level, African and other nations have long been stuck in a similarly slick debt trap they too have no means of escaping, not least because the IMF and the World Bank, their supposed saviours, were tasked ab ovo with keeping them enslaved to Uncle Sam and his Anglo-Saxon partners in crime.
Whatever one may think about the Bible, Proverbs 22:7: gets it right when it proclaims that “The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is slave of the lender”. That has certainly been the case in Africa, as it is now in tiny Ireland, which was forced, almost at gunpoint, to take on over 40% of the EU’s debt, and Ukraine, which is currently fighting Russia on a maxed-out credit card.
That credit card will have to be cleared by Ukraine handing over its crown jewels to BlackRock, Vanguard and its other creditors and by paying interest on the mountains of debt it has racked up to fight its unwinnable war. Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, Halliburton and Uncle Sam’s other seasoned vultures are already in advanced discussions to run Ukraine’s energy industry and the leprechaun vultures of Vichy Ireland have pledged to exploit (“rebuild”, as they call it) Ukraine’s Rivne Oblast region as part of their reward for propping up Zelensky’s rump Reich and sniggering at those tens of thousands of young Ukrainians slaughtered to make these scams possible.
Rustem Umerov, who heads Ukraine’s State Property Fund (SPF), claims there are more than 3,500 companies which are listed as state-owned, with almost 1,800 of them bankrupt and non-functional. The list for a privatisation fire-sale to Zelensky’s Western allies includes distilleries and grain elevators, which could be of interest to investors, as well as hundreds of abandoned facilities, which will be given away for nickels on the dollar. Umerov is hoping to earn over $400 million by selling an elite set of companies ranging from a fertilizer producer to utilities, smelters and an insulin maker. Ammonia maker Odessky Pryportovy Zavod, titanium producer United Mining, Zaporozhye Titanium-Magnesium Plant, insulin manufacturer Indar, and power generator Centrenergo PJSC will be among the first to be sold at knock down prices and up to $200 million of state-owned land is ear-marked to follow shortly afterwards. Because Russian speakers have no rights in Ukraine, the Demurinsky Mining and Processing Plant, which develops reserves of titanium-zirconium sands and which is owned by Russian tycoon Mikhail Shelkov, is also scheduled to be sold. Rusal’s Nikolaev alumina refinery is also scheduled for “privatisation”, as is the confiscated property of Russians Vladimir Yevtushenkov and Oleg Deripaska.
The Chinese system, with its supposed Muslim, Tibetan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Hello Kitty issues, operates a trifle differently from Zelensky’s Ukrainian gangsters and there is no real point in getting our Chinese-made knickers in a twist about any of it. All of NATO’s faux Chinese concerns are blowbacks from the growth of China‘s economy and the end of the easy money that flowed from America’s property and dot.com bubbles. Because Easy Street is over, the Yanks must now re-discover The Zen of Working Hard even though, like their European vassals, they are no longer up to the task. The Chinese, like the Japanese workers of Toyota or the Koreans of Kia Motor Works, just plod on and on, accumulating wealth, Iranian honey and other delights for their children and, given her demographics, her children’s children. And good on them.
This is not to say that every Chinese, Japanese or Korean citizen has been a winner but their systems have been designed to give the greatest possible opportunities they can to the greatest number of their citizens. Though the Chinese love gambling, they have not followed Uncle Sam’s casino capitalism model but, like the post-War Japanese, they have instead worked hard and likewise pulled themselves up by the bootstraps.
And, just as Japan was once the major player in long-term sovereign debt, so now has that poisoned chalice passed to Beijing. If Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Mozambique, Zambia and Grenada wish to escape from the debt burdens Uncle Sam has saddled them with, they must look to Beijing. And while China has played hard-ball, they have been nowhere nearly as harsh as Elliott Investment Management and other American critics of China that picked Africa cleaner than might a flock of ravenous vultures.
But what of China, with its sweet tooth for Iranian honey, its Scottish cough mixtures and its Hello Kitty regalia? The Chinese government is tasked with allowing its citizens enjoy such fruits of their labour, whilst maintaining its armed forces to defend its citizens and instituting a system that allows China earn the wherewithal to pay for all such frivolities. Given China accounts for a fifth of the world’s population, that is a huge task, human resource and financial management on truly Biblical scales the world has never previously witnessed.
And, as with Japan during its golden years debt, albeit with Chinese characters, is an integral part of that process. Though personal, institutional and government debt in China are all huge, should we really be as concerned as our narcissistic Anglo-Saxon overlords are about it?
I think not. Debt, the Anglo-Saxon economists tell us, offers us more choice, the ability, for example, to get a mortgage loan on a house, rather than forever renting or living in a roadside wigwam. Debt, lots of it, allows Americans to send their kids to College which, depending on what they study, may or may not be a good investment. Of course, it also allows the Yanks to buy lots of Chinese goods from Walmart but let’s just take that as a given of Americans’ consumer fixations.
All the more so as China is also buying into the consumer craze. Chinese citizens are even hiring American women to bear their children which the CIA’s Heritage Foundation believe is a national security risk. Although it is fine and dandy for Americans to rent Ukrainian wombs, the burgeoning Chinese-American “rent-a-womb” industry, in which ageing Chinese couples draft fertile American women to give birth to offspring with U.S. citizenship is, they say, not playing to the CIA’s rules based order, whose lack of logic China’s economic ascent has placed under immense strain.
Surrogate babies are just one symptom. America is not only one gigantic debt mountain but its debt markets dwarf its stock markets, which are the world’s biggest. The Japanese (again) long saw this and that there were, for them, easy pickings to be had by lending to American states and cities on the correct presumption that the U.S. government would not allow those states and cities to go bankrupt. The Japanese who, like the Koreans and Chinese, are diligent savers, have been keeping the U.S. economy afloat for decades now with their soft loans which, like all loans, must be paid back eventually.
But what of the Chinese? U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen has acknowledged the threat China poses to U.S. hegemony (the rules’ based order as the Anglo Saxons call it) and the need to contain China by sanctions, by controlling intellectual property rights and by bad-mouthing them in NATO’s media over human rights and the plight of panda bears.
This is, again, a re-run of America’s post oil crisis attack on Japan because Japan has the art of car-making down to a tee. There is simply no way the Americans, the Germans or the Scandinavians can compete with the Japanese auto makers or, indeed, the Chinese, who are not only the new Japanese but who have entire armies of engineers improving the efficiency of cars and everything else they produce.
And that includes Taiwanese microchips, which Uncle Sam clings to as a drowning man might cling to a straw. As no country, from the Sumerians of antiquity to the Anglo-Saxons of our own era, has managed to monopolise a particular technology forever, Taiwanese microchips are, as the late Chairman Mao might have put it, a competitive paper tiger, childish Japanese origami that will vanish with a gust of divine wind.
Uncle Sam thinks differently and has ordered its Taiwanese and Korean colonies to stop selling semiconductor chips to China. America has also demanded that German companies Merck, and BASF, which supply Asian chip-makers with critical chemicals for production, follow the example of the Dutch who, on the Yanks’ orders, have severely restricted exports of their semi-conductors to the Middle Kingdom.
Though NATO, like Samson of old, hopes these export restrictions will cripple China’s ability to develop advanced technologies, as well as its capability to produce semiconductors, the tide of modern history, where competitive advantages cannot be held for long, suggest this pathetic boycotting will fail. Despite China being Berlin’s most important trading partner for the seventh year in a row now, because Germany remains a grovelling slave to America, we can assume the Pentagon will get their way here and further damage Germany (and the Netherlands). Talk about global supply chain hara kiri by those emasculated oafs!
NATO should, of course, have let China’s semiconductor industry sleep. Beijing has launched a national security review into Micron Dram, one of three dominant players in the global memory chip market alongside South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. As with Louis Vuitton, so also is it with Dram, where mainland China and Hong Kong generates 25 per cent of its $31bn annual revenue. If Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol accedes to Uncle Sam’s request to ban the sale of their microchips to China, then he is even more stupid than any Irish sniveller who boycotts Irish whiskey on the word of the obese Ukrainian grifter, who has the gig of loud-mouthed Ambassador to Vichy Ireland.
Although the Pentagon believes that their competitive edge in microchips will stave off the Chinese dragon, that is not where the true fight is. The fact of the matter is the United States and its puppet allies long ago exported the whole logistics chain to China and thereby made China the world’s logistical hub, its Middle Kingdom if you will. Not only is that almost impossible to undo but there are over a billion Chinese who have a vested interest in maintaining that emerging status quo that so upsets our Anglo-Saxon friends.
Gold, by way of illustration of that latter point, is the easiest of metals to work with and it is the first metal mentioned in the Bible (Genesis 2:11-12). And, though gold jewellery is almost universally popular, the North Italians are the world’s best at fabricating gold, simply because they have long held the logistical hubs, even from long before Romulus and Remus founded Rome.
Although American puppets like Ursula von der Leyen can threaten hell and damnation on the Chinese economy, German and French automakers are making more coin by producing cars in China than they are in Europe. Why? Because China has the logistical hubs and one part of China is not squabbling with another for the right to produce hub caps, as the various European states do with each other. Europe is an organisational mess and China, as with Japan’s Hello Kitty and auto industries, is not.
And, when we ask whether the Biden family’s control of the semiconductor industry can stop China, we have to conclude that it cannot and, again, Japan shows us why. When the Europeans first reached Japan, they brought muskets with them to The Land of the Rising Sun where such a technology was unknown but where the Europeans were amazed that Japanese steel was far superior to anything they had previously encountered in Borrell’s European garden.
The Japanese, who had never previously clapped eyes on a musket, not only solved the crucial European problem of how to stop rain destroying the gun-powder but, within six months of first clapping eyes on them, were exporting muskets throughout the rest of Eastern Asia. Following the 1904/5 Russo-Japanese war, the Japanese determined that they would have to match the German Leica company in terms of lenses. Not only did the Japanese match them but they far out-paced them in less than half of the time they had allocated to that objective. If the Americans think they can stop the Chinese semiconductor tide, they best import some more Chinese or Japanese brains because it is plain as day they have a critical shortage of grey matter, as well as a profound ignorance on how inter-connected the intermediate industries of China, Korea and Japan are.
The Chinese economy, their national pay packet if you will, continues to increase, by an impressive 4.5% in the first quarter of 2023, as it happens, meaning it is in a better position to pay off or roll over any outstanding debt and, of course, to buy more whiskey, more French perfumes and more Hello Kitty kitsch.
Yankee land, meanwhile, just prints more dollar bills and spends a staggering $500 billion annually servicing their debt, even as they imagine China would not develop a debt market of their own and thereby sink the American smoke and mirrors economy. For the fact of the matter is China’s debt is not a problem and will not be a problem as long as China can manage it. And so far, as with Japan, there is no sign of a major crisis. For the Good Ship China, it seems to be steady as she goes and to hell with Moody’s and the other partisan naysayers.
To illustrate China’s strength, let’s once again turn our eyes towards Japan, whose currency is the yen. Upon hearing that yen meant circle in English, American war lord Douglas MacArthur decreed that there would be 360 yen to the Yankee dollar. It is currently trading at 135 to the dollar, which is well within its recent trading band. The Chinese yuan is at 7 to the dollar and it too is within recent trading bands. China, however, is in a much stronger position than the U.S. or any of its satrapies to push the yuan, and therefore the dollar, any way it pleases. The boot is, in other words, increasingly on the Chinese and not the NATO foot.
Here, in conclusion, is 1900 footage of a French damsel in Saigon throwing Vietnamese children grain, like they were foraging chickens. The Anglo-Saxons should know that those days are, thanks to the armed might of South East Asians and their allies, gone and, thanks to the economic might of those countries, they are not returning. The United States, together with its German, Dutch and other vassals, best acknowledge and live with that fact or be prepared to take a turn at foraging themselves when their own stupidity collapses their own side of the global economic system. As for the Chinese, they are not only fully awake but fully cognisant of the Anglo-Saxons’ wiles in the debt, and semiconductor sectors, as well as in honey, Hello Kitty and all others.
Viktor Mikhin The talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which took place in Moscow, were a great success. The Russian leader emphasized that substantial progress in the Syrian Arab Republic’s battle against international terrorism has been made possible by the nations’ combined efforts and the vital role played by the Russian Federation Armed Forces. Syria is making steady progress toward eradicating the negative consequences of the civil war unleashed by the West and the Gulf states, thanks to significant efforts on both sides.
At the same time, Beijing made a significant contribution, allowing the Iranian-Saudi agreement, which is critical for Syria, to be concluded. Syria’s president praised the agreement to reestablish diplomatic relations, calling it a “wonderful surprise.” Bashar al-Assad has made it clear that his country is no longer a battleground in the Saudi-Iranian conflict, as it was at one point, and that Riyadh took another direction in its relations with Damascus several years ago.
Syrian government applaud Beijing’s stance on Syria and the new role China appears to be playing in the Middle East. Beijing not only mediated the agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but it also publicly accused Washington of plundering Syria and demanded that the United States leave the country. Both of these issues have a long history with long-term consequences, indicating that the Syrian situation is likely to develop in unanticipated and positive ways as a result of Russia and China’s efforts.
China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian recently accused the USA of “major and continued pillaging” of Syria at a recent press conference. Zhao said that US intervention, especially military intervention, has resulted in “major losses among civilians and immeasurable economic losses. It also displaced millions of people.” The United States imposed harsh coercive measures that deprived Syrians of their basic needs. Control of 80 per cent of Syrian oil by US forces further compounds the humanitarian crisis. “The US measures of aggression, sanctions and support of terrorists rendered a once prosperous nation that welcomed refugees into a destroyed country that resembles a large refugee camp,” he concluded.
This unprecedented Chinese attack on the USA has two goals. The first is the report that Beijing, which has used its veto power six times in favor of the Syrian regime against the opposition, is also an ally of Damascus. It is also an organic partner of Russia, which actively supports President Bashar al-Assad. And unlike the stances of the majority of other nations, who, under American pressure, demand that the Syrian government agree to some sort of political solution before establishing relations with Damascus, this relationship will continue.
Syrian political analyst Ayham Rifaat contends that China aims to prop up the Syrian regime by removing sanctions and ending the global boycott of the regime. That is why he is actively and justifiably trying to blame the USA for the tragedies that have occurred in Syria over the past 12 years. The Syrian opposition was shocked by the Saudi Iranian agreement, which was initiated by Beijing, and found it to be more alarming than China’s criticism of Washington. The deal opens the door for the reestablishment of diplomatic ties between Iran, a steadfast ally of the regime, and Saudi Arabia, the biggest backer of the opposition. The Syrian government enthusiastically embraced the agreement and applauded China’s “sincere efforts,” while the opposition voiced concerns.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry made a statement that “this action will strengthen security and stability in the area” and expressed optimism that similar initiatives would continue. The agreement is also expected to strengthen ties between Syria and Saudi Arabia, eliminate economic restrictions on the Syrian government, and pave the way for a larger Arab normalization, according to the government.
Iran has aided the Syrian regime in its protracted conflict for 12 years, much like Moscow. Via Iranian, Iraqi, and Lebanese militia, Tehran supported war operations financially and militarily. This had some effect on Syria’s political and military choices. Saudi Arabia, a major backer of the overthrow of the Syrian government, gave the opposition political and military assistance in the meantime. Both the opposition and the government are unsure whether Saudi Arabia or Iran will change their stances on the Syrian crisis as a result of this agreement, or the Syrian situation will be omitted and nothing will change because it is a “sensitive matter” for Washington.
China’s efforts come at a time when USA-China relations are very tense, especially after Chinese balloons were spotted over US territory and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled a trip to Beijing that would have helped mend bilateral relations. Congress debates China’s danger to US hegemony abroad while tensions over Taiwan remain high. Washington is also strengthening relations with China’s neighbors by building anti-Chinese alliances, particularly with Japan, Australia and India. Washington threatened sanctions if Beijing gave Moscow the armaments it needed to fend off Western aggression against Russia in Ukraine.
The deal also comes at a time when relations between the USA and Saudi Arabia are at an all-time low, especially in light of the latter’s decision to cut oil production in violation of American recommendations that it not do so. Yet, all of this is taking place while Russia-Saudi Arabia relations have significantly improved, and both countries’ oil policies have been aligned to equitably export their oil and carbon resources. Ironically, it is now the producing countries that choose the export policies of their vital raw materials for the entire world rather than the West.
Some in the Syrian opposition believe that Iran will struggle to keep its end of the bargain and will continue to provide substantial support to Bashar al-Assad’s legitimately elected government, including by keeping its advisers and Hezbollah volunteers in Syria. However, all of these specific requirements were spelled out in the agreement with Saudi Arabia.
The more optimistic opposition camp believes that a Saudi-Iranian agreement will bring the region’s controversies to an end. If the deal is implemented, it could be used to “put out the fire,” reducing tensions between the main opposition supporters and the official authorities. This might compel everyone involved in the Syrian conflict to abide by international resolutions pertaining to a political settlement in the nation.
“It is a victory for China to impose itself as a strategic player in the Gulf region,” according to Syrian researcher Mahmoud Othman. The deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran represents a geopolitical challenge for Washington in the 21st century, an unprecedented historical turning point, opening not only the era of China, but also of Russia in the Middle East, and possibly worldwide. This means “any Iranian aggression against Saudi Arabia will be deterred by China not the US. More accurately, Gulf security in general, and Saudi security in particular, has become China’s responsibility when in the past it was Washington’s.”
What will occur in Syria next is hard to foresee. It would be challenging for Saudi Arabia to abruptly change sides and back the Syrian government and President Bashar al-Assad, who was duly elected to office. The Iran deal is one thing, but one with the regime is quite different and needs to be based on a lot of other considerations and calculations. Yet, it is certain that China, which has attacked the US presence in Syria and started the agreement to reconcile Iran and Saudi Arabia, has entered a new stage in its efforts to establish itself as a significant political force in the region. Russia and China stand at the forefront to ensure the security of the entire region, not just Syria.
This is what was implied during the Russian-Syrian talks in Moscow. It is quite obvious that the multipolar world policy, developed and actively promoted by Moscow, is really making its way even in such a turbulent region as the Middle East.
Chinese President Xi Jinping with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Photo: Presidential Executive Office of Russia, via Wikimedia Commons)
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak out”. Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website iswww.ramzybaroud.net
The final exchange, caught on camera between visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian host and counterpart, Vladimir Putin, sums up the current geopolitical conflict, still in its nascent stages, between the United States and its Western allies on the one hand, and Russia, China and their allies, on the other.
Xi was leaving the Kremlin following a three-day visit that can only be described as historic. “Change is coming that hasn’t happened in 100 years and we are driving this change together,” Xi said while clasping Putin’s hand.
“I agree,” Putin replied while holding Xi’s arm. ‘Please take care, dear friend,” he added.
In no time, social media exploded by sharing that scene repeatedly. Corporate western media analysts went into overdrive, trying to understand what these few words meant.
“Is that part of the change that is coming, that they will drive together?” Ian Williamson raised the question in the Spectator. Though he did not offer a straight answer, he alluded to one: “It is a chilling prospect, for which the west needs to be prepared.”
Xi’s statement was, of course, uttered by design. It means that the Chinese-Russian strong ties, and possible future unity, are not an outcome of immediate geopolitical interests resulting from the Ukraine war, or a response to US provocations in Taiwan. Even before the Ukraine war commenced in February 2022, much evidence pointed to the fact that Russia and China’s goal was hardly temporary or impulsive. Indeed, it runs deep.
The very language of multipolarity has defined both countries’ discourse for years, a discourse that was mostly inspired by the two countries’ displeasure with US militarism from the Middle East to Southeast Asia; their frustration with Washington’s bullying tactics whenever a disagreement arises, be it in trade or border demarcations; the punitive language; the constant threats; the military expansion of NATO and much more.
One month before the war, I argued with my co-writer, Romana Rubeo, that both Russia and China might be at the cusp of some kind of unity. That conclusion was drawn based on a simple discourse analysis of the official language emanating from both capitals and the actual deepening of relations.
At the time, we wrote,
“Some kind of an alliance is already forming between China and Russia. The fact that the Chinese people are taking note of this and are supporting their government’s drive towards greater integration – political, economic and geostrategic – between Beijing and Moscow, indicates that the informal and potentially formal alliance is a long-term strategy for both nations”.
Even then, like other analysts, we did not expect that such a possibility could be realized so quickly. The Ukraine war, in itself, was not indicative that Moscow and Beijing will grow closer. Instead, it was Washington’s response, threatening and humiliating China, that did most of the work. The visit by then-US House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan in August 2022 was a diplomatic disaster. It left Beijing with no alternative but to escalate and strengthen its ties with Russia, with the hope that the latter would fortify its naval presence in the Sea of Japan. In fact, this was the case.
But the “100 years” reference by Xi tells of a much bigger geopolitical story than any of us had expected. As Washington continues to pursue aggressive policies – with US President Joe Biden prioritizing Russia and his Republican foes prioritizing China as the main enemy of the US – the two Asian giants are now forced to merge into one unified political unit, with a common political discourse.
“We signed a statement on deepening the strategic partnership and bilateral ties which are entering a new era,” Xi said in his final statement.
This ‘no-limits friendship’ is more possible now than ever before, as neither country is constrained by ideological confines or competition. Moreover, they are both keen on ending the US global hegemony, not only in the Asia and Pacific region, but in Africa, the Middle East and, eventually, worldwide as well.
On the first day of Xi’s visit to Moscow, Russia’s President Putin issued a decree in which he has written off debts of African countries worth more than $20 billion. Moreover, he promised that Russia is “ready to supply the whole volume sent during the past time to African countries particularly requiring it, from Russia free of charge ..,” should Moscow decide “not to extend the (grain) deal in sixty days”.
For both countries, Africa is a major ally in the upcoming global conflict. The Middle East, too, is vital. The latest agreement, which normalized ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia is earth-shattering, not only because it ends seven years of animosity and conflict, but because the arbitrator was no other than China itself. Beijing is now a peace broker in the very Middle East which was dominated by failed US diplomacy for decades.
What this means for the Palestinians remains to be seen, as too many variables are still at work. But for these global shifts to serve Palestinian interests in any way, the current leadership, or a new leadership, would have to slowly break away from its reliance on western handouts and validation, and, with the support of Arab and African allies, adopt a different political strategy.
The US government, however, continues to read the situation entirely within the Russia-Ukraine war context. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken responded to Xi’s trip to Moscow by saying that “the world should not be fooled by any tactical move by Russia, supported by China or any other country, to freeze the war (in Ukraine) on its own terms.” It is rather strange, but also telling that the outright rejection of the potential call for a ceasefire was made by Washington, not Kyiv.
Xi’s visit, however, is truly historic from a geopolitical sense. It is comparable in scope and possible consequences to former US President Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing, which contributed to the deterioration of ties between the Soviet Union and China under Chairman Mao Zedong.
The improved relationship between China and the US back then helped Washington further extend its global dominance, while putting the USSR on the defensive. The rest is history, one that was rife with geostrategic rivalry and divisions in Asia, thus, ultimately, the rise of the US as the uncontested power in that region.
Nixon’s visit to Beijing was described by then-Ambassador Nicholas Platt as “the week that changed the world”. Judging that statement from an American-centric view of the world, Platt was, in fact, correct in his assessment. The world, however, seems to be changing back. Though it took 51 years for that reversal to take place, the consequences are likely to be earth-shattering, to say the least.
Regions that have long been dominated by the US and its western allies, like the Middle East and Africa, are processing all of these changes and potential opportunities. If this geopolitical shift continues, the world will, once again, find itself divided into camps. While it is too early to determine, with any degree of certainty, the winners and losers of this new configuration, it is most certain that a US-western-dominated world is no longer possible.
History and the present show that an imperial republic like the United States needs vassals, not partners, especially in current times in which the empire is going through its irreversible decline.
Between March 28 and 30, the Second Summit on Democracy will take place in Washington DC. Wednesday, March 29, will be the day of the plenary meeting. The event is convened by the United States government through the State Department but, as usual, it will have some “associated governments” that will also summon the meeting and whose mission is to disguise that the Summit is entirely a Washington project. The goal is crystal clear: to recover ground in the dwindling international prestige of American democracy, heavily damaged by the increasing levels of popular dissatisfaction with the functioning of democracy (over fifty percent of the surveyed population), as revealed by a host of public opinion polls; and by the unprecedented incidents surrounding the storming of the Capitol, the seat of the U.S. Congress, in Washington on January 6, 2021.
As announced, the Summit for Democracy has ”five co-hosts: the United States, Costa Rica, Netherlands, Republic of Korea, and Zambia and representatives of their governments will officially kick off the Summit, with each co-host leader hosting a live, fully virtual, thematic.” The day before, the Department of State will host a panel session, chaired by Secretary Antony Blinken, about the need for a “Just and Lasting Peace in Ukraine” featuring President Volodymyr Zelensky as its main speaker. Supposedly, Zelensky and Secretary Blinken will discuss, alongside Foreign Ministers from a regionally diverse group of countries, the steps to be taken to reach a ceasefire and a “lasting peace” in Ukraine, although all the policies promoted by the Biden Administration run exactly in the opposite direction. Apparently, gone are the days when the European, and partly American, press characterized Ukraine as the most corrupt country in Europe and Zelensky himself as a despotic and equally corrupt leader. In 2015, the British newspaper The Guardian described it as such. Almost a year after the start of the war in Ukraine other press reports said that “the war with Russia hasn’t changed that.”
Unfortunately, at the time of writing these lines, the complete list of the countries invited to the Summit was unknown. However, an indication may be offered by the fact that the day after the plenary session, dedicated to digital technologies for the advancement of democracies and the dangers of digital authoritarianism, the keynote speaker will be no other than the Minister of Digital Affairs of Taiwan, Audrey Tang. This is a frontal attack on China because the guests at the Summit are supposed to be representatives of independent countries, and Taiwan certainly is not. It is not even recognized as such by the US government itself, but the intention is clear: to promote Taiwanese separatism, harass China, and provoke it into having a military response that would then justify US aggression.
We Latin Americans know very well that if there is a government in the world that cannot give lessons on democracy, it is precisely the government of the United States. Since the beginning of the American imperial expansion the U.S., has been renowned for its permanent attacks against the establishment of any democratic government in the region. When Cuba and Puerto Rico were leading a liberation struggle against Spanish oppression, during the so-called “Spanish-American” war, the United States captured Cuba in 1898 after the Treaty of Paris and spoiled the Cuban victory. If we make a list of coups sponsored or directly carried out by the United States in our countries, we would run the risk of turning this note into a voluminous essay. We are just going to mention a few cases.
In Argentina, the bloody military coups of 1966 and 1976 were sponsored and protected by Washington. In Chile, the brutal coup and subsequent assassination of Salvador Allende, perpetrated on September 11, 1973, was directly orchestrated from Washington by President Richard Nixon himself and his National Security adviser, and later Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. The coup d’état that took place in Brazil in 1964, and which lasted until 1985, had the enthusiastic support of Washington, as did the 1973 military coup in Uruguay, which also lasted until 1985 when Washington realized that its undisguised support for the ferocious Latin American dictatorships was damaging its international image and that the time had come to bet on democracy, but taking due precautions. We should not forget that Washington prepared an armed confrontation that lasted ten years (1979-1989) against the Sandinista government and used all the means at its disposal to destabilize the government of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front in El Salvador, in recent years
The worn-out democratic rhetoric of the United States is not enough to disguise the wicked intentions of its new strategy based on the possibilities opened by the use of “soft power” and the new devices to put pressure on progressive or left-wing governments: from the World Bank and IMF “conditionalities” to the oligopolistic control of the media and the indoctrination of judges and prosecutors to put into practice “lawfare” ploys to eliminate undesirable leaders for the empire from the field of the electoral politics, such as Lula in Brazil, Correa in Ecuador, Cristina in Argentina, Lugo in Paraguay, Zelaya in Honduras, Evo in Bolivia and just a few months ago Pedro Castillo in Peru.
History and the present show that an imperial republic like the United States needs vassals, not partners, especially in current times in which the empire is going through its irreversible decline. At times like these, democracies, as an expression of popular sovereignty and self-determination of nations, could not be more dysfunctional for the empire. That is why the Summit for Democracy will be one more farce, a propaganda montage whose real objective is to consolidate a “new cold war” divide between the friends and allies of the United States, who will be considered as democratic, and the adversaries of Washington, demonized as perverse autocracies that will be necessary to fight against by all available means.
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
Posted on February 26, 2023 by uprootedpalestinians
A significant increase in geopolitical and economic ties with China has offered West Asian states an alternative to the US, which has traditionally been the region’s security guarantor.
F.M. Shakil is a Pakistani writer covering political, environmental, and economic issues, and is a regular contributor at Akhbar Al-Aan in Dubai and Asia Times in Hong Kong. He writes extensively about China-Pakistan strategic relations, particularly Beijing’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
The prospect of a US-China war has entered the realm of reality. Increased provocations from US military and political officials regarding the status of Taiwan – which China considers to be part of its historic territory – have heightened the possibility of confrontation in recent years.
With only 13 out of 193 UN member states recognizing the government in Taipei as a separate entity, the global community’s reaction to a Washington-led assault over Taiwan’s status remains highly uncertain.
Today, the reaction of strategic West Asia to a hypothetical conflict between the two superpowers is up for grabs. However, given the region’s reluctance to take sides in the Russian-US stand off, it is likely to be equally hesitant to do so in the event of a US-China conflict.
In a memo released on 27 January, US General Mike Minihan, chief of the Air Mobility Command, wrote: “My instinct tells me we will fight in 2025.” General Minihan’s views align with Taiwanese Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng’s statement in 2021 that China will be capable of launching a full-scale invasion of Taiwan by the same year.
In response to General Minihan’s remarks, Mike McCaul, chairman of the US House Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, told Fox News: “I hope he is mistaken but I believe he is correct.” Adding fuel to the fire, US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on 29 January, “The chances of conflict in the relationship with China over Taiwan are very high.”
A lot of hot air
Days after the US general issued a warning that Washington may engage in combat with Beijing in the next two years, tensions between the two countries were further exacerbated by the spoof-worthy Chinese spy balloon incident.
According to some senior Republicans and US military leaders, there is a growing concern that a full-scale conflict between the two superpowers is imminent, with the Asia-Pacific (AP) and South Asia (SA) regions likely to be the primary theaters of the conflict.
Jan Achakzai, a geopolitical analyst and former adviser to Pakistan’s Balochistan government, tells The Cradle that:
“The possibility of a war between the United States and China puts everyone on edge, especially the regions that are intricately linked with the US or China. Some nations will be compelled to choose between allying with the US in the case of war or keeping the status quo to lessen the possibility of hostilities.”
Russian involvement in West Asia
Despite nominal trade and geopolitical relations with Moscow, West Asian countries did not support Washington’s position in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. However, Russia’s veto power at the UN Security Council does have a positive impact on its relationship with regional states, particularly for its ability to prevent expansionist and anti-Arab policies by other permanent council members.
Security and trade remain the two primary pillars of the relationship between Moscow and West Asia, and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s image has played a significant role in shaping these ties.
The UAE serves as a major financial hub for Russia, and Moscow may attempt to leverage its influence in the region to urge the UAE to reconsider US-imposed banking restrictions, if it feels that its interests are being compromised.
In addition, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Lebanon, and Egypt are among the countries that purchase wheat from Russia, which further solidifies economic ties between Russia and the Arab world.
Moreover, since joining the expanded Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC+) in 2016, Russia and Saudi Arabia have worked closely to regulate oil output and price adjustments as part of OPEC+ agreements.
Putin’s public image has, in part, contributed to a surge in support for Russia in the kingdom. In 2018, when Riyadh faced international criticism over the Saudi-orchestrated murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Russian president made headlines by high-fiving and grinning at the then-isolated Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) during the G20 summit in Argentina.
Likewise, his prominent role in thwarting the NATO proxy war in Syria – a geopolitical game changer that, arguably, ushered in global multipolarity – has gained Putin fans across a region that has long suffered from western imperialist designs.
Where will West Asia stand?
Although still a hypothetical scenario, it is worth considering how West Asia would respond to a direct US-China conflict. Many prominent geopolitical analysts have speculated that if West Asia, and particularly the traditionally pro-US Arab states of the Persian Gulf, did not toe the US line against Russia – a significantly smaller regional trading partner than China – its loyalties to Washington in a potential US-China confrontation could be further strained.
Compared to Russia, China has significantly larger investments throughout West Asia. In 2021, bilateral trade between Beijing and the region amounted to $330 billion, with approximately 50 percent of China’s energy supply coming from the energy-abundant Persian Gulf.
China has conducted over $200 billion in trade alone with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. From 2005 to 2021, Beijing invested $43.47 billion in Saudi Arabia, $36.16 billion in the UAE, $30.05 billion in Iraq, $11.75 billion in Kuwait, $7.8 billion in Qatar, $6.62 billion in Oman, and $1.4 billion in Bahrain.
In addition to its investments in trade and energy, China has also invested enormous sums of money in West Asian and North African infrastructure and high-tech development projects via its multi-trillion dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Beijing has entered into strategic cooperation agreements with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Algeria, Egypt, and Iran, and has enlisted a total of 21 Arab nations in its ambitious, decade-long effort to revive the historic Silk Road and export its goods to markets throughout Europe and Africa. Currently, infrastructure developed by Persian Gulf nations serves as a transit point for two-thirds of Chinese exports to these continents.
Egypt is a crucial hub for the BRI, with the Economic-Technological Development Area in Egypt’s Suez Canal Economic Zone, near Ain Sokhna, representing one of the major projects for which the two nations signed contracts totaling $18 billion in 2018.
Iraq, the third-largest oil supplier to China after Saudi Arabia and Russia, has also received $10.5 billion from Beijing for BRI-related energy projects, and just this week, agreed to replace its dollar trade with Beijing for the Chinese yuan.
In West Asia, the US plays second fiddle to Beijing
Chinese collaboration with West Asia and North Africa is not confined to trade and economy; Beijing also provides defense equipment to several Arab nations. Since 2019, China and Saudi Arabia have reportedly collaborated on the production of ballistic missiles, and China also sells Saudi Arabia its HQ-17AE air defense system.
Chinese Wing Loong drones have been purchased by the UAE, and Iraq has placed an order for CH-4B drones. Jordan purchased CH-4Bs in 2016, while Algeria acquired CH-5s – the next generation of the CH-4B type – to expand its aviation capabilities in 2022. In addition, Saudi Advanced Communications and Electronics Systems Co. and China Electronics Technology Group are partnering to build a drone factory for local UAV production.
While US President Joe Biden’s administration’s relationship with Riyadh has been strained due to disagreements over human rights and energy policy, China is making significant strides in strengthening its ties with the country.
As Beijing draws closer to Saudi Arabia, the message to Washington from Riyadh is unambiguous: “The people in the Middle East [West Asia] are tired of other countries’ interference because they always come with troubles.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping received a royal welcome in Riyadh last December, marking a seismic shift in Sino-Arab relations and boosting China’s image throughout the Arab world. In contrast, US President Joe Biden’s visit to Jeddah in the summer of 2022 received a lukewarm reception. This may suggest that a recalibration of West Asian geopolitical alliances may be on the horizon.
Despite these trends, analyst Achakzai tells The Cradle that West Asia will behave similarly to the way it did during the Russian-Ukrainian conflict – even given China’s increasing business and military presence in the region. and the US’s declining control over the oil-rich Arab monarchies.
“Depending on the current situation, the motives of the various states in the region may change and divide into two distinct groups: those who would support the US and those who would support a neutral position.”
China values economy over war
In the Asia-Pacific region, the US and its allies are engaged in a contentious relationship with China regarding maritime boundaries, international trade, human rights, and strategic security issues. Despite signing numerous security pacts with regional players, China appears to prioritize building and strengthening economic ties over military cooperation with Asian-Pacific states.
Due to a history of hostile confrontations and divergent geopolitical objectives, both the US and China seek to increase their military presence in the region. In response to China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, the US has expanded its military footprint by signing commercial and defense agreements with the Asia-Pacific region.
The two nations have also been at odds over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which many viewed as an effort to contain China’s economic and strategic influence in its own backyard. Additionally, tensions have escalated between Beijing and its neighbors, particularly over territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas.
These efforts have been emboldened by the 5-member Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), which is an informal strategic dialogue between the US, India, Japan, and Australia that seeks “to promote a free, open, and prosperous Indo-Pacific region.” According to Achakzai:
“Countries that have extensive defense agreements with the US, such as Japan, South Korea, and Australia, are most likely to help America. These nations, which have long benefited from their close connections to the US, must now contend with Chinese territorial ambitions in the region and the South China Sea. The nations having an informal security partnership with the US, such as the Philippines, are likely to back the United States in a confrontation.”
The analyst explained that Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia are expected to remain neutral during the conflict due to their strong business and investment ties with China.
“Other countries in the Asia-Pacific region may feel obligated to support the US if China initiates the conflict. This may apply to countries like Indonesia and Vietnam, which have recently been under Chinese pressure and may need to choose a side to protect their own security,” he noted.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
Beijing says US media and politicians used the balloon incident “as a pretext to smear China.”
A balloon in the sky over Billings, Montana, in images taken February 1 (AFP)
Pentagon confirmed, on Saturday, that a Chinese “spy balloon” has been tracked over Latin America, one day after a similar aircraft was seen in US skies.
At the time, Pentagon Press Secretary Pat Ryder said the Chinese research balloon that accidentally breached US airspace on Thursday poses no threat to people on the ground.
A senior defense official told reporters that at US President Joe Biden’s request, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and top military officials considered shooting the balloon down but decided that doing so would endanger too many people on the ground.
“Clearly, the intent of this balloon is for surveillance,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, considered.
The Pentagon added that the first balloon was now heading eastward over the central United States.
Later Friday, Ryder said, “We are seeing reports of a balloon transiting Latin America.”
“We now assess it is another Chinese surveillance balloon,” he stressed, without specifying its exact location.
Meanwhile, Beijing’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, via a spokesperson, that China regretted the unintended breach of US airspace in reference to the accidental entry of a Chinese unmanned airship into US airspace on Friday.
“The airship is from China,” the statement read. “It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes.”
The big picture
The discovery of the aircraft comes just days before an expected visit to China by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, following a meeting last November between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 summit. The visit was supposed to be Blinken’s first trip to an Asian country since 2018.
Blinken postponed his trip to Beijing over the incident, hours before he was supposed to depart for China.
Simultaneously, China’s Foreign Ministry released another statement addressing Blinken’s announcement.
“China… never violated the territory and airspace of any sovereign country,” it said.
“Some politicians and media in the United States used the (balloon) incident as a pretext to attack and smear China,” it tersely stated.
Furthermore, the Ministry affirmed that maintaining communication channels at all levels was important, “especially in dealing with some unexpected situations in a calm and reliable manner.”
The statement further said in reference to Blinken’s trip, which was to have begun Sunday and had been widely publicized in the United States, “As a matter of fact, neither China nor the United States has announced any visit.”
“It is the United States’ own decision to release the relevant information and we respect that,” the statement concluded by saying.
Relations between the US and China have deteriorated particularly over Taiwan, with Washington selling arms to Taipei, as Biden has said he would help protect the island in case of an alleged Chinese attack.
Tensions over Taiwan reached a peak last year when Nancy Pelosi, then-speaker of the US House of Representatives, visited the island in a provocative move. After Republicans gained control of the chamber in January, questions have been raised over whether her successor will make a similar trip.
by Pepe Escobar, widely distributed on the Internet and posted with the author’s permission
Sit back, relax and enjoy a race to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The only question is who will get there first: the EU, NATO, or both.
One may be excused to imagine all sorts of amusement games unrolling at the HQ of the Russian General Staff as The Empire and NATO go literally bonkers. What crazy stunt will they come up with next – short of WWIII?
Here is a delightful put down of NATO’s dementia praecox. Everything so far has failed, from “crippling sanctions” to all sorts of wunderwaffen, while the whole Global South marvels at the exploits of Wagner PMC – now configured as the planet’s top urban fighting machine.
CIA mouthpiece Washington Post duly released how Washington, once again, had the Liver Sausage Chancellor Scholz for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The idea was floated by Secretary of State Tony Blinken: let’s announce we will deliver M1 Abrams to Ukraine in a hazy, unspecified future, thus providing cover for Scholz to release the Leopards now.
Don’t you just love German sovereignty in action?
Every military analyst with an IQ over room temperature knows all those Leopards will be duly incinerated – or better yet, captured, and dissected by Russian military specialists.
So what happens next is yet another vector of the – very successful so far – U.S.-unleashed German de-industrualization racket: the Americans will invade the German industrial military complex with their “much improved” Abrams – which may perhaps arrive in 2024, when only a rump Ukraine may still exist, or never arrive at all. So no need for the Abrams to prove themselves in actual combat – as in being captured and/or incinerated.
Rumors in Washington advance that the U.S. “strategy” in Ukraine – extensively detailed by endless think tank reports – had to be adapted. It’s not about “defeating Russia” anymore, but providing Kiev with the means to “scare” Russia. The Russian General Staff must be trembling in their boots.
Meanwhile, in real life, nearly every possible scenario gamed in Washington and Brussels finishes with NATO like a giant, armoured version of Wile E. Coyote plunging to the depths of the Grand Canyon. And that happens even if the much ballyhooded “Big Arrow” Russian offensive starts in a few days or weeks, or never starts at all.
Arguably the Russian General Staff has concluded a long time ago there’s no point in reducing Ukraine to rubble in a matter of hours – something they could easily accomplish. Thus the fabled mincing machine approach – offering no excuses for NATO to “escalate” (which they continue to do anyway, as Jens “War is Peace” Stoltenberg is so fond of parroting).
The trick is that NATO’s escalation overdrive, as it happens, is somewhat controlled by the Russian General Staff, which is always calculating which optimal maneuvers will consume NATO’s military hardware faster. Call it a Russian version of the popular axiom “frog in a boiling pot doesn’t realize it’s being cooked until it croaks.”
Attacking Russia-China-Iran
Absolute desperation is now graphically extrapolating into attacks on Iran. Both Russia and China have Iran as their key ally in West Asia for the whole, complex process of Eurasia integration; strategic partnerships interlink the trio.
So attacking the Ministry of Defense in Isfahan with drones – total fail – and bombing an IRGC convoy of humanitarian aid crossing from Iraq to Syria is a serious U.S.-Israel-coordinated provocation.
Essentially these are also attacks against Russia and China. Israel cannot lift its hand or foot without U.S. permission. Iranian intel may be able to establish how the Straussian neo-con and neoliberal-con cabal in charge of U.S. foreign policy authorized if not ordered these attacks, which of course are directly connected to NATO’s desperation in Ukraine.
When in doubt, just come back to Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski: “Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia and perhaps, Iran, an ‘anti-hegemonic’ coalition united not by ideology but by contemporary grievances. It would be reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge once posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc.”
And mirroring Ukraine/Russia there’s of course Taiwan/China.
As Credit Suisse strategist Zoltan Pozsar has extensively explained, if Taiwan manufactures chips for U.S. missiles Washington then sends to Taiwan for its “self-defense”, but Taiwan needs to wait because the missiles are needed in Ukraine instead, or chips can’t be shipped to the U.S. owing to a possible sea and air blockade imposed by China, the Americans will be operationally ill-equipped to support their two-front war against peer competitors Russia and China.
Bye bye Pax Americana. It’s the fear, actually paranoia, of a destroyed Taiwan – and the destruction in every scenario would be provoked by the Americans themselves – that has led the Straussian neo-con and neoliberal-con cabal to demand their chips be Made in USA.
On the energy front, since U.S. energy costs are low, Washington gambled that much of the deindustrialization of Germany would revert to American benefit. Yet since Iranian, Russian and Venezuelan oil prices are lower than the U.S., not much production may be shifting to the Hegemon: it will go to China.
To the bottom of the Grand Canyon!
The January 10 joint declaration between EU-NATO graphically shows how the EU is no more than the P.R. arm of NATO.
This NATO-EU joint mission consists in using all economic, political and military means to make sure the “jungle” always behaves according to the “rules-based international order” and accepts to be plundered ad infinitum by the “blooming garden”.
So in the end what’s left of “Europe”, when it’s NATO – actually Washington – that really rules?
“Europe”, according to relentless propaganda, means defending “our values” – as in peace, democracy and prosperity. The trick is that unelected elites forced the implicit identification of this imagined, practically sacred “Europe” with the European Union. And that’s how the EU has acquired a mythical identity.
Of course, in real life the EU – as in the real, politically organized “Europe” – has performed as a toxic instrument of division among European peoples.
Instead of peace, it has invested in all-out rabid war against Russia. The EU is arguably the most democratically irresponsible institution on the planet: spend a day in Brussels and you understand everything. And instead of prosperity, the EU has institutionalized austerity.
So sit back, relax and enjoy a race to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The only question is who will get there first: the EU, NATO, or both.
The Aztec Empire, also known as “the Triple Alliance” or “the Empire Mexica,” was one of the most powerful blocks in pre-Columbian America. At their peak, the Aztecs controlled much of present-day Mexico and parts of Central America. Then, at the dawn of the 16th Century, 11 shiploads of Europeans arrived.
Despite the Aztecs’ supreme confidence in their spiritual, technological, and economic lizardry, their Empire of 500 tribes —or 3.2 million people—ultimately collapsed due to political infighting, foreign interference, immigration of young men from Europe, and, above all, the ridiculous ‘Welcome Policy’ of the idiot Aztec ruler Moctezuma II.
IMAGE 0 Some Say, Woke King ‘Mocti’ Moctezuma II Single-Handely Dropped the Aztecs, the Mayans, and the Incas
Contrary to common belief, the Aztecs were not an Ancient civilization on par with, say, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Xia Chinese, or the Hindu Guptas. The Aztecs under Moctezuma II were still a relatively young, recent “Empire” that lasted 170 years (about 1350 till 1521), comparable, perhaps, to the first unified German Empire under Wilhelm I, but which only lasted 47 years (1871-1918) [and could be #stillweeping from its shallow grave, not sure].
In most history books today, it is written that the Aztec Empire’s fate was sealed when the Spanish megalomaniac Hernán Cortés arrived in Mexico in 1519. We read stories, always repeated by the same clique of Western scholars, about how the Aztecs initially “welcomed the Spanish as possible representatives of the god Quetzalcoatl”—as if the Mexica people were that illustrious and funny. Moctezuma’s ‘Welcome Policy’ and collaboration with the first batch of sextourists “led to a fatal misunderstanding,” we are told; the misunderstanding being that the foreign invaders probably did not want your land, your gold, and your ladies.
IMAGE 1 Left Cortez Enters the Lizardman City Right Aztec Dictator – As Imagined in Tabletop Wargaming in the West
At last, “Conquistador Cortés” [literally: “Corti the Conqueror”] and his 500 men force-clarified the misunderstanding. He ultimately praised Moctezuma II for “his commitment to the Spanish ‘Inclusion, Diversity and Multiculturalism-Act’, as pronounced by the late Pope Clement the VII or whomever in Rome, Italy.” The Spanish occupiers used Mocti as a puppet governor, much like the American occupiers used Tirard to govern the German Rhineland in 1918.
Well, we all know that the Germans rose up against the foreign occupation. This ended badly for the Germans, leading to the greatest bloodshed the world had ever seen, World War 2 and Germany’s spectacular downfall.
Believe it or not, the Aztecs did the exact same thing, just 400 years earlier, which led to their own unique, spectacular demise. It so happened that a dictator rose against the Spanish occupation. He was Moctezuma’s own brother, Cuitlahuac—someone we today would call Un fascista—who declared himself the Leader and said he “would drain the swamp” and “make Aztecs great again.” He expelled the foreign money lenders, geared up the Aztec war economy, and declared a brand-new 1000-Years-“AztecReich”. Symbols matter big time. He didn‘t consider the rolling Swastika, though, because Buddha wasn’t a thing yet in the drenches. Thus, he picked the moving Ollin, basically an eye of cunning Toad-God Xolotl.
IMAGE 2 The Ollin Eye of Toad Xolotl (Way Cooler Than The Buddha Wheel)
Sadly, the 30,000 men strong Aztec army was too blase, too friendly, and no real match for the Spanish refugees who by now had European-sponsored 30 horses, 100 guns, and 3 advanced cannons. Worse, the Spanish were no longer just Spanish, but also Portuguese, Italian, slave Negroes, other European mercenaries, and allied Mexica turncoats.
The Aztec Empire’s fall was impressive. If you trust the history books (don’t!), an estimated 95% of all Aztecs “disappeared.” The Europeans, to this day, insist that they did NOT mass-murder, starve, or brainwash the Mexica into infertility in any way, shape, or form. Rather, just like with all the other Mesoamerican civilizations conquered, the Europeans claimed that the Aztechnicians simply “had zero immunity to the diseases brought to you by our modern sailors,” sorry! [We come back to that in a minute.]
Part II. The Clean Sweep
In modern times, Aztec parallels can be drawn with the situation in Europe. Of course, the European Union did not start as a “Triple Alliance,” but as a “Sextuple Alliance” between Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rome, Luxembourg, and The Hague. Under US occupation and US-NATO expansion, the Alliance grew eastwards and to an impressive 27 members. But those new members are not at all native Germanic tribes, and not at all loyal. It is a bit as if we added to the Aztecs also the Olmec, the Incas, the Mayas, and —while we are at it— the Apache, Comanche, Cherokee, Seminoles, and all those other “Native American tribes,” collectively known as “the missing Indians.”
Europe is of course politically unified; I am not denying that. However, Europe is also being militarily, culturally, and economically occupied by the US Empire of Sanctions [and Lies], partly since 1918, totally so since 1945. The United States made sure to reward pro-American traitors, install pro-American puppet regimes in Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rome, Luxembourg, and The Hague, and to punish any nationalist uprising (Nazis! Communists! Terrorists! Racists!…)
The modern times “Moctezuma” in Europe was Angela Merkel, the German chancellor from 2005 to 2021. She collaborated with the US foreign occupiers, the international money lenders, and various other foreign interest groups and, finally, in 2015, she initiated the “Open Borders” policy for Germany and all of Central and Northern Europe. Syria alone sent 1.5 million “conquistadors”—men of military age. Once the foreign men arrived, they were instructed to ask their siblings, parents, uncles, and even multiple wives to join them. Germany steadily grew by 1 million Muslims and/or Arabs and Africans each year, while 500,000 native Germans a year left for better shores. If today you visit the city centers of Berlin, Duisburg, Cologne, Dortmund, Essen, Bochum and hundreds more, they clearly look decapitated and Oriental.
IMAGE 3 Germany‘s Insane Welcome Refugees Mass Hypnosis and Open Borders Madness
The 2015 invaders were euphemistically called “poor refugees” and the next round of settlers in 2018 were tarnished as “cultural enrichment.” They quickly subjugated the locals and dominated schoolyards, shopping malls, swimming pools, and New Year parties. The next five million foreign invaders, from 2020 onwards —were called Facharbeiter, figuratively: “trained experts.” And while in any other country in the world, work permits for foreigners are often extremely hard to get by, Germany actually pays 5,000 euros a month [$5k] to the invaders for not working. After a while, the bred-and-fed migrant forces also demanded more land, better housing, easy women, positions of power, and, always always, privileged treatment.
Just as the deluded Aztec leadership “welcomed the Spanish as possible representatives of their gods,” the retarded German leadership welcomed the poor refugees with open arms as if they were sent by Jesus the Christ. The Germans even gave away their apartments, schools, gym halls, free transport, free medicare, and expenses accounts to these poor, strong foreign men. It felt so good to “share wealth” and to “give back” to complete strangers. In return, those strangers looked so pretty with their dark hair and caramel-chocolate skin, and everything German they touched they made “a better person” indeed. Said the Aztec Social Democrat Martin Schulz from the European El Dorado, in 2016: “What the migrants bring us is more valuable than gold!”
The parallels are hilarious. The indigenous Germans pay for their leaders’ betrayal just like the indigenous Aztecs did. They already live a slave-like existence and must part 50% of their incomes to the rulers. With the rest, they pay rent, charges, fees, arbitrary fines, transport to work. They pay income tax, property tax, consumer tax, solidarity tax, inheritance tax, tax on tax. And the rulers take all that unearned money, send most of it to America and the money lenders, and the rest they trickle into the pockets of the “New Germans.”
In effect, the classical Germanic tribes, the “Old Germans,” the Teutons, the Franks, the Saxons, the Goths, the Norse, and so on, are now economically drained, dispossessed, and spit on their racist graves. And, would you believe it, many Germans now apparently die “suddenly and unexpectedly,” due to “the lack of immunity from some foreign-born virus,” you’ve heard that scholarship before.
With new masters in town, you cannot simply arrest the new masters, right? Police, courts, and political parties were ordered to tiptoe around them and turn a blind eye on the crimes and misbehaves of the new settlers, and prosecute the indigenous people more for being “a witness and a nuisance to the alienation and Great Replacement.”
The official German narrative is that of the invaders being just innocent, traumatized victims, having found their deserved Eden Europe, “where everyone wants to live,” we are told, because “we Europeans are so nice and tolerant to everyone.” [Interestingly, the King of Spain, Charles I, back then in 1521 said the same about “the nicest and most tolerant Mexica people.”]
And just as Moctezuma collaborated with hostile outsiders, so did Angela Merkel collaborate with the historic adversaries of the Germans, which led to a number of irreversible consequences, including the rise of right-wing populists (the resistance movement) and, increasingly, anti-immigrant sentiments. These, of course, would be crushed ruthlessly. This “torture” of the indigenous Germans had commenced much earlier, in the 1960s, with birth control, the destruction of the family, and miscegenation policies [interbreeding]. However, 2015 was the critical tipping point, when the center of gravity passed outside of what the few remaining Germans could support as “Vaterland”—land of thy fathers. Between 1977 and 2015, the number of German babies born had halved. For every two comrades I had in my childhood, one is not born today. The Germans born in 2022 have no comrades. They sit opposite one Oriental and another Asian usurper, who turn increasingly antagonistic.
IMAGE 4 Germans, Know, When It Is Time To Give Up
Example 1. The Turkish diaspora in Germany’s industrial belt of North-Rhine Westphalia alone now numbers in the 4.5 million. Those “German-Turks” still have their motherland, Turkiye, which has 85 million inhabitants, more than Germany. Do not fall for the “official” German regime statistics, they are totally fake and manipulated. For example, one year they just list 1.2 million Turkish nationals, while in reality, another 3.3 million Turks in North-Rhine Westphalia are “sleeper Turks” with German passports.
If the US Empire of Sanctions [and Lies] one day so decided to punish Berlin for disobedience, like not joining the war against Iraq, Russia, or China, far away Ankara, also a US-NATO satellite, could be asked to mobilize the 4.5 million Turks in Germany and break up most of the Ruhr region, and turn cities like Hagen, Wuppertal, and Hamm complete hostile. You don’t believe it? A ‘color revolution’ is easily provoked. For instance, “German authorities are desperately suppressing Turkish language and culture!” You didn’t know that? This message could make global headlines tomorrow morning. This is totally out of control from the German leadership. The German US-puppet regime wants to keep the German-Turks largely out of power, understandably, but how long, you think, this can last, once the Zionist sow first discontent? The Turks want what is theirs, now, in 10 years, or in 30 years. Doesn’t matter when, but it will matter if—blackmail! Already Berlin reckons another 2,200 mosques will have to be built in West Germany by 2040. Islam is now everywhere. So, just wait and see.
Example 2. Over 60% of children born in 2020 in major German cities like Berlin or Frankfurt now have a so-called migration background. They are non-white. Naturally, the non-whites call the remaining white Germans “racists” and “anti-foreign,” and demand so-called “people of color” to replace the hateful German natives in public offices, in the police force, in hospitals, in nurseries, in schools, on company boards, but also on TV and in advertising and film. The German rulers must persecute the Germans to get favors from the invaders… until the invaders will usurp the rulers. It is that simple. Ask Moctezuma II. He gave his last shirt and favorite daughter to Cortés.
In two or three generations, most remaining German women will either choose a dominant migrant man with so-and-so-many privileges and god-like status to procreate with… OR she will have no children at all with defeated, emasculated, and disenfranchised native men. Ask Hernán Cortés. He took 20 more Aztec spouses and forced thousands of childless indigenous men to slave on his brand-new foreign plantation.
Part III. The Turnover
“Not too fast,” objects the German regime. “There is one big difference between the two situations,” so the defenders of inclusion, diversity, and multiculturalism exult: “The Aztecs,” they say, “were overwhelmed by a technologically superior military force!” And, this: “The European Union is a developed and affluent continent!” So, they claim, in essence, that the millions of migrants from Africa, South-East Asia, and the Middle East are unfit and below Europe.
That is a rather risky position for any government to take worldwide, though, because it rates the ambitions, intelligence, and creative prowess of half-whites, non-ideal whites, and associate-whites as subpar too. Weren’t the Irish to America once pisspoor and considered mental gretchins? Even if the Ghanaian, Afghans, or Iraqis really were mentally inferior and without guns, all it takes is one intelligent leader, right? As to the guns, Germans bear no weapons either. The United States disarmed the Germans, starting in 1948. Besides, didn’t the American history books just tell us that 95% of the Aztecs did not die from gunfire but from diarrhea and Spanish measles?
The defenders of total subjugation further argue that present-day European countries are more equipped to handle and integrate our immigrants than the Aztecs were capable of appeasing their immigrants. But that argument is prejudiced, too. It says, in so-and-so-many other words, that if it’s a monkey, we have European rules for monkeys to follow. The “monkey’s now boxed, Madam Merkel!”
And isn’t this “boxing” of all creatures, stuff, and thinking the very imperialistic quintessence of European control —that dehumanizing bureaucracy! Even without saying “foreigners” or “monkeys,” most of us know exactly what a ‘migrant economy’ entails. The ‘migrant economy’ in Germany is worth 100 billion euros, more than the war in Ukraine costs [which, by the way, brought us another 2 million refugees, this time Slavs]. It entails soulless human farming. The regime just promoted slave laborers to laboring expert Facharbeiter slaves or whatnot. The basis of such downplaying of [the trope of] ‘helpless victim migrants’ is that the Europeans somehow believe that other races cannot conquer them, at all, because Europeans are so well organized, technologically advanced, and intellectually superior. Tell this to the organized, advanced, and very superior rulers of Athens in Greece who were run over by dilapidated barefoot Spartans on Persian subsidies. Hence the Greeks transpired the important lesson of ὕβρις ‘hubris’—Latinized, this: @#$%&! Outrage”!
This @#$%&! probably was the last Mesoamerican cry of defiance, too; and that of the superior Sinitic and Hindu and Roman civilizations before them: “We can handle any foreign barbarians,” Empress Dowager Cixi once boasted. “We are so brilliant! We are the El Kitai for gold-diggers! See, they come to us, because we are the richest and bestest! It is evident!” she bragged. Then, three summer solstices later, Qing China broke to pieces… @#$%&! Outrage.
So what?—better domesticate your people: No pride, No patriotism, No Honor! This is really happening in Germany, since I was born and can remember. They have been telling us since childhood that bloodline, hereditary, and history are but grotesque “Hitlerian” ideas and concepts— and very antisemitic and undemocratic! “You must unlearn them!” As to the motive of (childless) tyrant Merkel, her case is proven clear: Forget about the horrible ideas of homeland and ancestry. “Everyone who lives here,” she told the leaders of the world, “is the People.” Which is exactly what Moctezuma also said, back then. He said: “Aztecia is a land of immigrants!” That’s what he said, yes! [He couldn’t write, though.]
IMAGE 5 German Merkel Gave Total Control To Washington and the Iews Then Finished The Germans
With a backstabbing leader like this, who needs foreign invaders with primitive bullet dispensers? Modern migrants are handed advanced weapons such as US smartphones, foreign interest groups cheering you on, your family networks, US intelligence support systems, massive globalist propaganda media, and US-NATO military to protect your migrant human rights interests. What can ordinary Germans do against this, nothing! It is over.
The Merkel retired in 2021, but the Germans are so finished. She is respected by all foreign powers in the world, just like Moctezuma was hailed ‘the God of Rainbows’ and ‘Him who held us all together’, just not his own people whom he sold down the river. Merkel even prognosticated that all 10 million aliens in Germany would be handed German passports soon, probably by 2024! And isn‘t that exactly what Mocti did in Tenochtitlan? When his councilors said, “Look, the Spaniards raped chief Xhotl’s daughter, and gave her the flu, too,” the Emperor smacked them over their heads and cried: “You fools, there are no Spaniards here, we are all Tenochtitlans!”
Diversity is our strength, Inshallah! If I were to draw an unfair comparison, I would say that the 900,000 Muslim “experts and skilled workers” being cheap-bussed, container-shipped, and air-trafficked into Bonn, Stuttgart, and Nuremberg every year since 2018 are far more effective and better equipped for total take-over than the illiterate 30 or so Spanish conquistadors back then in Inner Aztec City. People without a university degree just read too many textbooks. They have no clear idea about how many people are required to do what exactly? Example: 9 people left in charge by Cortés made speech laws for 140,000 Tenochtitlans. Another example. Cortés was never just once assaulted by his unhappy 3,000 workers slaves. It just takes one to rule many, in all situations, each and every time.
If you are still unsure about the severity of the German transformation, because Washington, Brussels, Berlin, and the US-NATO media propaganda machine are lying to you non-stop and saying you’ve got nothing to fear from the 60 million migrants from Ham and Eden ready to march into EU-Idiotistan, consider this: They are telling you “The 60 million refugees have nowhere else to go because of climate change.” Just how naïve you have to be…, for there are 1.4 billion of Ham and Eden people who stayed home… also because of climate change!
There is one time-proven, sure-fire test to find out how “outraged the Greeks truly are”: If in “the most tolerant and diverse Europe of all time,” you cannot criticize US endless wars, regime changes, and the deliberate attack on our civilization, and if that would make you instantly a right-wing extremist Aztec conspiracy theorist, that means that 95% of you will probably die in the next 100 years. Just saying.
Which brings me to my final issue with history textbooks for today. Think! If 95% of the Mexica people REALLY disappeared, how come they grew from 3 million in 1519 to @#$%&! 132,354,424 in 2023? It’s a hoax, that’s what it is.
Let me explain this phenomenon about those allegedly missing people in world history: What the 95%-propaganda historian really wanted to disguise was ‘the turnover’. A former Aztec people in (almost) its entirety was simply turned over to a new, Spanish historian. It’s a metaphor.
So, this new historian, figuratively speaking, erases 95% of the Aztec Empire’s stock there, and adds them to his Spanish Empire here. And every corrupt scholar hence simply repeated this outrageous numbers hoax. European History, which is World History really, is actually a set of heterogeneous [varying] data with vast amounts of legacy source [say, Christianity] still using the LATIN alphabet on pressed cellulose fibre (books). Aztec history, on the other hand, was conspicuously burnt absent or never found. What you think you’ve read about pre-European Mesoamerican history is actually postconquest rewrite. You don’t believe that court historians are bullshitting us, and all the time? Here’s just twelve academic textbooks purporting to the 95% Aztec/Mesoamerican “extinction hoax” (see image):
IMAGE 7 The Fake 95 Percent Extinction Myth Perpetuated By Court Historians
Likewise, it is perfectly “scholarly” to say that “the Germans as a civilization are finished,” with 95% of them likely to go extinct (as did Professor Sieferle alluded to in his Finis Germania), while the next ‘EU reset-historian’ is pining for a whopping 100-million-people-strong Centerland. No contradiction here, just a new, “trusted” court historian at the black board. Who was the first person a few thousand years ago who added or subtracted negative numbers; was it a Greek, or a Brahmin, or a Mandarin? Well, let me tell you this… a “little secret,” if you will… about our bought-and-paid-for ‘textbook academicians’: Those manipulators regularly add or subtract negative people. [You didn’t know this, did you?] It is perfectly academic to write that 3,000,000 Mesoamericans were massacred there, and show up again here.
IMAGE 8 Systematic Demolition of Reich (Realm), Germanness, Christianity, and Historic Persons
Any cry from the negative natives for help, any lament from the negative native women, any fight of resistance against the positive dark hordes from the East, is now persecuted as “unforgivable racism and despicable hate crime.” Our new court historians will make them the Process.
Conclusion
The public discourse is thus closed on this matter. The old historians who protected you died. The two truly evil psychopaths, Moctezuma and Merkel, who destroyed their countries and their people without remorse, so much alike in bringing forth the downfall of their wonderful civilizations, simply declared that “the migration crisis and the policies to deal with it are too complex and too multifaceted to discuss, and […] with no clear resolution anyway, and so it would not be right to draw a direct parallel between the collapse of the Aztec empire and the current collapse of Europe.” And that’s that. The court gets a new court historian. Yuval Noah Harari, perhaps?
IMAGE 9 Crackdown and Persecution The Victims Of Conquest Will Be Called The Racists
The very name “Deutschland” (land of the Germans) is non-inclusive, discriminatory, and outright offensive to the 25 million non-German people who now live here. Away with “Deutschland”! And so is the distinction “das Volk” (the People), because it is former Nazi-speak and evokes strong nationalism. Away with “das deutsche Volk”!
The Spanish conquistadors never recognized any Aztec realm. It had to be dismantled. An Aztec nation would really be racist and offensive. Similarly, American conquerors couldn’t allow a sovereign German realm to exist. I‘m not saying what follows will not be important. Just saying there’s a turnover, and things will first get a lot more messier. The Germans, as well as the Europeans, already possess neither Germany nor Europe.
Uncensored Scandal Interview Leads To China-Wide Arousal
by Thorsten J. Pattberg for the Saker blog
[Take a seat and look over your shoulder. This is hilarious and funny: Everything you knew about China was a Western Umph. “China Studies” is untenable and must die!]
IMAGE 0 Western China Studies, Chinese Religions, and Chinese Philosophy Are Western Fabrications – China has 2000 Years Of Wenming, Ruxue and Sixiang
Interview (Uncensored) by Guancha Network with Dr. Pattberg. The Chinese of course made their pick and changed it. Here is what I really said…
…On New Imperialism And Taiwan Studies
IMAGE 1 Western China Studies Is A Fetish Of The Colonial Past
Guancha: In your opinion, the so-called “China Studies” major in the Western Universities is manufactured and serves as an imperialistic tool. Scholars, experts on China, under the threat or coercion from governments, have to sell their anti-China stances in order to make a living/career.
Dr. Pattberg: China Studies is pure fiction for our Western rulers to control, manipulate, and create the China they want. Of course, it is an imperialistic tool. Think of Taiwan Studies, which is offered at Oxford University in the UK or Tübingen University in Germany. This discipline was invented to facilitate the myth of Two Chinas.
…On How The UK Runs The Biggest Anti-China Racket In The World
IMAGE 2 Shove Your Democracy Up Your Ass Goes Viral in Taiwan
Guancha: In your essay [Shove Your Democracy Up Your Ass], you talked about how the British authority has been cooperating with tens of thousands of people from Taiwan and Hong Kong, in order to provide a false legitimacy to so-called “China Studies” majors in Western universities, and reinforce UK government’s stance on China. Could you explain these efforts in details?
Dr. Pattberg: I encourage you to buy three books for your collection: First, Press Soldiers. It is about how Western journalists subvert and sabotage China. Second, The Xin-Civilization. It is about the Chinese can and cannot do. These two works should stand in every library. And if you really want to be terrified, there is a third, Finis Sinarum. It is about how Peking University and Tsinghua University are run by Americans.
As to the personal question about when I was offered a Hong Kong scholarship, I was at Edinburgh University in 2001. Scotland is a proud nation, but it is part of the United Kingdom. So, of course, China Studies students are sent to Taiwan and Hong Kong, because those are British/American colonies.
When I refused to go to Hong Kong and instead contacted, on my own, Fudan University in Shanghai, and was accepted, my supervisors fumed with rage. I was away in Shanghai and Beijing for two years, at Fudan University and Peking University, and when I returned to the UK in 2004, those two academic years abroad were dismissed. They said (studying in) Chinese mainland was not OK.
…On How Western Academia Is At Full War With China
IMAGE 3 History Shows The Western Powers Will Never Stop Until China Is Dismantled
Guancha: As you point out, the West has been fabricating lies on China through the leverage of their hegemony in global media and narratives. They even see it as a culture war on China with existential consequences. How would the sensible people from around the world respond to this? Professor Zhang Weiwei from Fudan University in China proposed the idea and discourse of “Civilizational State”, which facilitated the breakup of hegemonic status of Neo-Liberalism. What’s your take?
Dr. Pattberg: You mentioned Professor Zhang Weiwei from Fudan University. He is a brave man. See, the West has no concept of wenming. So Western scholars call it “civilization” or “nation”. Wenming is neither. Wenming is guaranteed not invented in the West, haha! Wenming is the China realm and it cannot be translated. Wenming is wenming.
I recently got commented on by political commentators Wu Qina and Wang Mengyuan. They long suspected there was something wrong with Western China Studies, especially all the fabricated lies about Xinjiang, the Confucius Institutes, and even coronavirus and the zero-Covid policy. All I can say is that the West is now terminally sick. And sick people lash out at the world. For example, Washington is planning a war with China. I live in Tokyo, and we have German Eurofighters and US warships here. West Germany and Japan are US vassal states. So the South China sea is a very militarized zone.
The West demands two things from China: Regime change and, at the same time, trade as usual for our Western multinationals. Under such pressure, considering that World War Three has already started with the US-NATO destruction of Russia, how can we expect China scholarship to remain clear-headed and academic? Evidently, academia is now heavily politicized. This leads to reactance.
Let me briefly explain this concept from psychology, because it is so important in international relations: Reactance means that if a person, group, or nation is pressured to behave in a certain way, it will almost invariably do the opposite, out of pure spite. So no matter what Chinese people are telling Western aggressors to “please stop, be reasonable,” the Western aggressors will never stop and will never be reasonable.
Washington or London will never adopt, consider, or even mention Wenming, Tianren-Heyi, Hexie Shehui or any other Chinese alternative worldview, sorry. We tried for decades. Not gonna happen. Read my book about it. It is called Knowledge is a Polyglot.
…On Chinese Students In the Fake UK
IMAGE 4 Getting A Western Degree Is The Ultimate Upgrade For The Chinese
Guancha: By insisting on studying China and sticking to your principles, you’ve been threatened and harassed by the anti-China agencies from UK, US etc, which cost you dearly. Yet, you broke up the obstacles and came to China, eventually earned your PhD degree from Peking University. Would you be willing to share with us the hardship you’ve experienced? What is it that keeps you moving on?
Dr. Pattberg: Everyone has his own survival story. I had two fellow students who committed suicide over Christmas in the past. One was Chinese, a law student. He just jumped off the eighth floor of his Edinburgh University Dormitory.He felt that UK degrees are fake. UK universities expanded into degree factories for Asians. Asians pay any price for a Western degree. So UK universities set up fake 1-year fast-track MA in Law Backscratching degrees for desperate Chinese. They even have their own dormitories, away from the real British students. My profs warned me that if I went to China, I would destroy my career. China is best studied at Cambridge or SOAS London School, not in Beijing or Shanghai, they said.
Western education is a misnomer. It is not about education, it is about privilege. If you have no affiliation with the West, you are a nobody. So by studying for a “Boshi” degree China, in the eyes of the Western elites, I lowered myself. When I briefly returned to Germany in 2019, my PKU doctoral degree became worthless, so I must stay in Asia permanently, currently I am in Japan.
…On Western Sanctions On Chinese Degrees
IMAGE 5 The West Already Infiltrated Chinese Top Universities
Guancha: Based on your descriptions, let’s say, for a young student in the US or UK, if he/she is interested in China, and seeks a career of studying China, what are the pressure or obstacles from the society, schools and professors? You mention your own experience in waking up from the big lies about China. Yet, many young people in the world, including those in China, are still facing such a challenge. What would be your suggestions to them?
Dr. Pattberg: Do you ask my advice for Western students who would love to come to China and get a Chinese degree? That is not advisable. The EU for example will not accredit your Chinese credentials. So you will have to go with a governmental-approved exchange program. For example, American planners are training their future “China experts” at Schwarzman Scholars (Jewish) at Tsinghua University or at Yenching Scholars (Harvard) at Peking University. Most Western universities have some form of official exchange programs with China, but unfortunately, about 95% of them are just fake ‘Chinese for Foreigners’ language courses, so be careful.
If you really want to study like a Chinese person at a Chinese University, you will immediately have American CIA, British M-6, or German BND agents blowing up your neck.I describe how it works in my books. Journalists are in this, too. My Institute a Peking University was run by the Harvard professor Tu Weiming. He had briefly worked for the CIA before, which is unavoidable in the USA as a Taiwanese Chinese.
He invited other Harvard professors, Ezra Vogel, Roderick MacFarquhar, and so on, also with CIA background. It is not a secret. He hired me, accidentally, because I was also at Harvard and because his latest wife was a Tiananmen activist and thought I could use money they got from Swiss-German Catholics (Christians) to do the German translations for them. It is not about studying China, but about how to crack China and take over.
Such activities are normal here, and the PKU deans and dons know this. I guess it is best to keep your enemy close, but that close? See, I am studying “language”, alright. And “language” is sacred to all governments, but especially to the US government, to which language is a weapon of US global hegemony. The Americans obviously want the world to speak American (English). No Chinese loanwords!
So when I published the Shengren – Avove Philosophy and Beyond Religion, these silly Harvard people canceled me. Over 700 Western publishers and media rejected my articles. The Economist magazine plagiarized it, but never mentioned the source. It is surreal, but they have that much clout. So this power clique is probably my deadliest match-up, but we shall see.
The Chinese still have a lot of winning chances, with their 30 million diaspora and above-average intelligence (compared to Europeans). But for the next two or three generations or so, I reckon, all our Chinese scholars will tremble in fear of the Americans. It is the American professors and journalists who create the heroes and martyrs for China, not the Chinese.
Real scholarship is still possible, but you will probably go underground and live in abject poverty. If you want to avoid cold-blooded politics and power-grabbers, you should probably avoid Beijing, Taipei, and Hong Kong.
I would go as far as to say that normal unbiased scholarship is now almost impossible. The West says NO to Chinese names, brands, and concepts. I said it before, I say it again, and I hope you’ll print it: Western ‘China Studies’ is wrong, incorrigible, and has to go. BUY THE SHENGREN.
…On Future Misunderstandings and Hostilities
IMAGE 6 Chinas Only Strategy Is To Lay Low And Survive
Guancha: With China embracing the world, the Chinese government, media and scholars face one major headache in communicating with the outside, i.e. how to convey their ideas and messages precisely. Sometimes, due to differences in cultural background or narratives, it may even create misunderstandings or hostilities. As someone who comes from Germany and studies China, understands China, what’s you take on this problem? What are your advice to both parties (the Chinese side, and the foreign side)?
Dr. Pattberg: Thank you for this question, which is the most important for the Chinese government and media. First, you must buy this book: The Human Hierarchy – With an Essay about a Place for China. You must understand World History, how it works, and who creates it. After that reading, you will understand all those Chinese difficulties and Western hostilities your just so alluded to.
My advice is just this: survival. Just try to stay alive. Everything the West tells China is delusion and lies. Take “democracy”. It obviously didn’t work for the Greeks or the Romans. Hitler Germany was a democracy. The White House is a democracy, haha. What a rubbish. Under democracy, the Americans enslaved the Negroes, wiped out the Indians, and conquered the Mongolian races. Think about that. Democracy means whatever reason they kill you for.
Only a thorough information campaign throughout humanity can save us. There are 300,000 Chinese students in the USA and 100,000 Chinese students in the UK. Obviously, they are incapable of producing a work like Shengren. So either something is wrong with them or they didn’t buy The Human Hierarchy. Britain ruled India with one person. The Crown. We have 6 scholars from Harvard who run China. The West will never tolerate Chinese media. All is blocked in the West. Don’t ask me. Wake up. And do what you have to do. Persevere！
Thorsten J. Pattberg, PhD, ex-Peking, ex-Harvard, ex-Tokyo scholar
IMAGE 1 Those who deal with the Chinese will lose their laughter
by Thorsten J. Pattberg
Thousands of China collaborators are under surveillance. Some are on the brink of ruin, others don’t even know what’s in store for them
There comes a time during or shortly after the academic training of every “Student of China” when he frequently runs into one of the many agents of Western anti-China state security.
They are adverse hostile forces, they run a complete background-check on you, and then they‘ll make you a simple offer: You either produce anti-Chinese content for the West, or they‘ll mark you as anti-democratic and enemy of freedom, a traitor. In that case, you’ll never find work in the West again.
And if you make a big fuss about it and cry coercion or blackmail, they are gonna start decomposing you.
Like most young students back then, I, too, was completely ignorant about the inner workings of Western world hegemony. And, like the idiot I always was, I threw myself heedlessly into “China Studies” at a respective University in the United Kingdom, Edinburgh to be exact.
Immediately, the conceited profs and lecturers, they taught us the horrors of Han chauvinism, the horrors of Qing China and the horrors of the Maoists and the horrors against the poor people of Tibet, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
When I looked it up, those were all former British colonies and/or places of interest to the British Crown. We were told LIES by the very British people whose soldiers raped, looted and colonized China, and were now angry that China somehow stood its ground and survived.
I do not expect you to believe at first what I am about to tell you. I would not have believed it myself, back then I mean, before I joined some of the many “Studies” invented by the Western Empire of LIES.
“China Studies” is not about China. It could be, but it is not. It is warfare against China. To keep China down. To sabotage her. To control her people and her history.
In this war, it is the West or you perish. Joining the enemy, China, is a capital crime. Have you ever wondered why there are no pro-China talking heads in the books, in the papers or on telly? It is because pro-China people in “China Studies” were the enemy. They didn’t make it through graduation, they weren’t hired, etc..
Our common sense is often betrayed by what sociologists call ‘the survivor bias’: We believe that since all we hear or read about China is negative, this must be sure proof that China is a very nasty place. What we fail to see, however, is that all the negative stuff we heard and read about China was the product of just 1 “China Studies” graduate for every 1,000,000 people or so of the general Western population. Nobody who was pro-China survived the selection process or came anywhere near central power.
Everyone the UK authorities detect who doesn’t match the profile of “a future China-basher” is not selected for graduation or a top post. It is as simple as that.
When I decided to expand from “Sanskrit Studies” and do my own research on Buddhism in mainland China, I must have triggered UK anti-China state security. I spare you the whole process; safe to say it was unpleasant. To their credit, they tried to talk me out of it. I declined an exchange year in US-Taiwan, even for money. Then they gave me a scholarship to British Hong Kong, but I declined that as well. I wanted to go to mainland China, on my own.
This was the end of my career in the humanities before it started. I see it now clearly, in hindsight. I didn’t stand a chance. But back then, I did not believe human beings, intelligent scholars, could be so violent and cruel. I had no idea.
Unbeknownst to me back then, I landed on anti-China state security lists of the British MI6, the German BND, and the American CIA. It basically amounts to flying with SSSS ‘Secondary Screening Security Selection’, the complete banishment from Western clubs, organizations, the media and so on. They spread rumors, call your employers. It is no fun. Edinburgh put me on the watch list, sent me huge bills, and put my degree on hold for two years.
My supervisors and lecturers turned from sweet and caring people into monsters. And my classmates began to disassociate from me, of course, to save their skin. That is normal survival mode, I guess. That said, none of them turned out to be a particularly happy fellow either. They wanted to study China for their Love of China. Now they were made to hate it, hate it, hate all about it. [Some made peace with China, but the dreadful indoctrination at ‘anti-China University’ can never be fully erased.]
See, in Britain the students often think they are some kind of free spirits. They spent 20 to 24 years locked away in compulsory education, because a university degree is, after all, very much compulsory! So they graduate with an MA or PhD in “China Studies” and they think like Uh, ah… China bad! But that isn’t so brilliant, is it, free spirit? British compulsory higher education feels exactly like the compulsory BBC, exactly like the compulsory Monarchy, exactly like compulsory taxes.
“China Studies” is one of the many Western-invented “Studies” that were tools during the Imperialist era and today probably shouldn’t continue. However, this ingrained, state-sponsored, all-consuming British hatred for China and the China-hands truly stands out, I think, and the pressure on Western students to conform to the British version of Chinese history is damaging and painful.
To cement London’s claim to British world empire over the Chinese, the government is shipping and flying in hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong Chinese and Taiwan Chinese and Token Chinese. In the government’s twisted calculations, this will also lend “China Studies” its fake legitimacy.
It would be better if the English send hundreds of thousands of Englishmen to Mongolia and Shanghai and Sichuan and what not, you know, just like when the English back in the days took Jamestown or Sydney. But this one with the Chinese in England now is different, you see.
You don‘t believe it? Well, the servile nature of the Chinese is well documented and universally acknowledged in Britain and the West. We have 500 years of experimenting with Chinese in our colonies. The Chinese diasporas in America and Europe are so well-behaved and… well, demoralized, they do not pose any serious threat to Western hegemony. [As long as we eliminate any emerging leaders.]
What does pose a real threat, however, are Western intellectuals. One single complainant British, one single bold German, one single cunning Jew are far more dangerous than tens of millions of Chinese ingrates. In short, the Western overlords fear internal revolt, never an external one.
That’s why Western anti-China state security is directing most of its violence internally. The City of London and the Government in Westminster, for example, give billions of their war budget for the creation of extremely few Western “China Experts” who torture their peers, assassinate their critics, and cannot be removed.
In the entire world, there are perhaps 50 to 100 such Western “China Experts.” They form the real Government of China, and they live outside of China. You have read that correctly: That government in China over there in China, the “Communist Party of China” or CPC, is considered illegitimate in the West. The West’s ideal “Government of China” is a Western government, and it is run by Western “China Experts,” administered by Western agents and bureaucrats, and it is plentifully staffed with pro-Western Chinese serviles.
I know, it shouldn’t be like this. But it is, it is.
IMAGE 2 Those who help China will be terrorists by association
That is why China’s influence on “China Studies” is not tolerated. China isn’t even consulted. China’s own degrees [for Western students] are not even accredited in Britain or elsewhere in America and Europe. What, you didn’t know that?
We basically learn from the cradle of “China Studies” that the Chinese are oppressed, that the Chinese commit genocide, that the Chinese are evil communists, or evil tyrants, or backward people who eat dogs and kill little girls.
Our “China Studies” professors are state officials [in Germany: Staatsbeamte, in Britain: Public Servants]. They are part of the anti-China state security apparatus. They wished they would also be selected and globally exaggerated as one of the “China Experts,” but few are ever given that much power. Most of them live in constant fear of internal investigation, intelligence surveillance or meeting with Chinese people. So they must prohibit their students of “China Studies” to study in China [unless supervised by the powers in Washington, Berlin, Brussels, London]. Oh and, yes, they also ban Chinese newspapers in their institutes.
Chinese leaders cannot be discussed, at all. Everything has to be reduced to one evil autocrat. Chinese influence is a no-no [except the plight of Chinese dissidents]. British crimes in Asia are anathema. Instead, they basically tell us that all that Chinese leaders are doing is reading Lenin and Karl Marx. Then, they prohibit the mentioning of Lenin and Marx being Jews, an even bigger no-no. Then they tell us that the Chinese are putting other Chinese, who are called Uyghurs, in penal camps for no reason other than manufacturing fake foreign brands. As a general rule, Western students are trained to hate China, hand over fist.
And then there is the paranoia about the Chinese language, oh boy! None of the Professors of “China Studies” speak fluent Chinese. So they discredit fluent Chinese speakers. “Knowing Chinese does not qualify for a British degree in China Studies,” they kept telling us.
This “anti-China language diplomacy” worked well for the British for 99 years in their colony Hong Kong. No Englishman of rank had ever lowered himself to the study of Cantonese. The Americans, too, do not learn the languages of their conquered people. It is just one of those mental illnesses.
Chinese names are considered incorrect and must be put to Western order. Chinese terms are considered eye-sore and must be shunned. Gigantic government-sponsored propaganda campaigns are under way in America and Europe that warn their population that Chinese language is polluting the brains of our young children.
This was a University of the British Crown, mind you. There are intelligent lecturers and researchers around. Lots of Chinese house slaves. Yet I found, to my horror, that none of them can be a friend or hand of China. Not in the West. It is too dangerous. And nobody trusts anybody. It is the same with our China-journalists and China-businessmen. Western anti-China state security and its informants are everywhere. Colleagues inform on colleagues.
China is now the professed enemy of the West. It doesn’t matter whether you live in the UK, in Canada, in the USA, in Australia, Germany or France. Those Western governments cling to world hegemony and are going to intensify the purges of pro-China persons in our universities, in the professions and on the Internet. How much time do you think YOU have left until they put your name and whereabouts on a China-hands watch list?
Now, let us assume that back then in Britain, I had impeccable foresight, and that I was able to set into motion country-changing events. I knew I would not survive this. Yet, I could have planted all this that is about to come forth and unfold.
And this is you now, too.
You must have that foresight. Prepare for the worst. Because if I contact you, that means they have a file on you too…
Xi‘s China To Be The First Civilization In The Galaxy To Dispense Confidence By Decree
By Thorsten J. Pattberg
Why The Renewed Urgency?
Before we explain Mr. Xi Jinping’s much underreported but now revived ‘Confidence Doctrine’, a word about this week’s anti-lockdown demonstrations in China:
IMAGE 1 White Paper Revolution in China But Probably Not
East Asians declared Corona a state religion. They have a genetic streak for submission and agreeableness. Much like females in the West. They are also lighter than Western females. Then, there is an environmental factor, for East-Asians are trained to be less aggressive, confrontational, and meek in character. There is no threat to the West coming from China. If you check your sources, you will see that all the alleged threats coming from China were in fact written by Western agitators.
IMAGE 2 Western China Experts swarm to Twitter and LinkedIn
We Western people speak for the Asians. It is our duty. Read about the first missions to China. Read George Hegel or Edward Said. Read Immanuel Kant on the End of History, or Bertrand Russell on the Problem of China. It is just a fact that Asians cannot create. God said: Not you, sorry! God then chose the Iews, then said Christians… also good. There are no Chinese in the Bible. Read the American Constitution. It says America, not China.
In Japan, everyone is walking around with their C-membership retard badges. In Taiwan… well… these people have an authoritarian streak and are the descendants of traitors, war criminals, and the triads, so they love cult and fascist masquerading. All this is not reported in the West, because Taiwan and Japan are useful anal toys.
IMAGE 3 Double-Standard Taiwan and Japan are as insane but are not demonized at all
China central of course gets all the hate. Did you see the German President praising the brave demonstrators? Well, he called demonstrators in Germany Nazi-scum and terrorists and destroyed their livelihood. Or did you see the Canadian Premier warning the Chinese government against taking actions against peaceful demonstrators? Well, he prosecuted EVERYONE in Canada for peacefully protesting his tyranny. British unelected Prime Minister, a brown person from India or Pakistan, I forgot, said China was doing genocide. This, while London is genociding white Englishmen and killing their culture.
IMAGE 4 Unbelievable Double Standards Of Our Unelected Leaders
China, like Russia, has no agency in the world any more. It became… autistic? It wants to be left alone from the Western bullies. Had Beijing not declared its Zero-Covid policy and now had 6 million Covid-deaths to mourn (the USA has 1.2 million deaths), the Western hate press would have called Mr. Xi the bloodiest despot since Mr. Mao.
While ugly anti-Western nations cocoon themselves in, hoping enslavement will pass, hoping to transform into new creatures of beauty, Western powers are making all the decisions for them about air, space, water, food, energy, rights, education… that will affect all beings on this planet. So, while the West starts wars in Ukraine and Taiwan, Western planners already make decisions about the cutting up of Russian and China.
No Conquest, No Confidence?
If the Asians do not unite and reign into the Western psychopaths who currently torture the world with bio-weapons and mind-control, above all the puppet regimes in London, Berlin, and Washington, then your funny cocoons will be trampled on and squashed.
Anyway, now to the main thread. Largely ignored by the Western media because it didn’t involve racism, violence, and boobs, China mandated the Chinese to build a giant cocoon of confidence, crawl inside and reform itself as a strong terracotta pot plant army that no criticism can defeat.
Confidence is just a new old discourse that every five years or so concerns Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party of China (CPC). And just as anticipated, the theme emerged again, in this fall of 2022 in fact, when the 20th National Party Congress revived the discourse about “the ebbs and tides” of what global historians describe as the “Cultural Confidence” of Great nations.
What’s a “Great nation”? Most people don’t care about Great nations because they do not live in one and never belonged to any. They have no idea what it means or what advantages it can give to their lives. For example, the people in the Philippines, also an ex-US-colony, could all just die and the world would probably be better off [because of over-population, food scarcity, and pollution, etc.]. Or, they could apply for a job at MacDonald’s, buy an iPhone with the Google app, watch Elon Musk videos on Youtube, learn American English, get an US college degree, and work for a Western multinational. That is their only way to become useful and participate in World History.
China is obviously more ambitious. It still has…well… City Wok fast food… I guess, Xiaomi phones, Youku, a powerful Mandarin script with 40,000 letters, and excellent schools. It also has plenty of global companies. So, in a way, China hopes to keep its state economy and not be privatized by Western powers like it was in the 17th Century, and then again in the 19th Century, and again in the 20th Century, and is now threatened with regime change again… and it isn’t even a quarter into the 21st Century.
Prove It That You Met Your Maker!
Earlier this year, in May 2022, during the 39th group study session of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, the government allocated scholarly efforts to the tracing of the origins of the Chinese civilization. The underlying idea is to desperately show the world and prove to the Chinese that they are in fact a pre-Biblical super civilization that was just forgotten to be mentioned in the Bible and during Science.
IMAGE 5 More or Less 5000 Years Trust the Science Or dig for It
Catalysts for the Cultural movement were, among other research findings: the discovery of hundreds of archaeological excavation sites, the human genome project on the origins of the Chinese civilization, and the catalogization of Ancient relics, for example pottery and stone tools from the Zhou Dynasty (770 BC) unearthed in China‘s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.
There were no mummies or that kind of reminiscences, just pots and stones. But mass hypnosis shall suffice if you throw in fancy DNA terminology, also a Western invention, that the Chinese, against all negative Western stereotyping, did indeed create and were creators.
The Cultural Confidence discourse [Wenhua Zixin] is a continuation of the ‘Confidence Doctrine’ [Zixin Lun] formulated during the 18th Party Congress in November 2012. President Xi Jinping marked the doctrine of “Confidence in Chinese Culture” as the natural continuation of the doctrines of “Chinese Dream” and the “Rejuvenation of China.”
Now you could argue, what’s left of the “Chinese Dream” when the world is told to hate China, but that is beside the point. What’s there to rejuvenate? Feudalism? The Manchu queue? Pillow girls?
Another tide of Cultural Confidence came in in 2017, during the 19th Party Congress. The doctrine was to expand into “globally recognizable cultural images of China,” “Chinese language teaching through the Confucius Institutes,” the “Key Concepts of Chinese Thought and Culture” program, and “rapid economic and technological development” as the Four Characteristics of Confidence to build, quote: “a multidimensional China for the world.”
Again, not much enthusiasm left from that period either. The West has rejected the Confucius Institutes. Chinese names and concepts are still banned in Europe. Telecom giant Huawei, Social media TikTok, e-commerce Alibaba, super-application WeChat, shipping firm Cosco, drone supplier DJI,… Chinese banks, electric cars, airplanes, newspapers… all blocked.
The Ebbs and Flows of Confidence
China during the last two centuries has experienced both extreme humiliations and extreme successes. Humiliations at the hands of Western Imperialist powers and Japan, which led to chauvinism—a sense of moral superiority even after physical defeat. And Successes under the Leadership of the CPC when China overtook all those Western Imperialist powers and Japan, and became the biggest trading nation in the world, which led to an inferiority complex—a sense of doubt and feeling like an impostor.
The range of Chinese emotions between callousness and grandstanding, between inferiority and hubris, has been matter of Western ‘China Studies’ since its conception as an academic discipline in the 18th Century. Generally speaking, Western missionaries were Western spies who reported back to Rome, Paris, and London that China was backward and needed Christianity and a strong Western Leadership. Did you know that the most famous book that was ever written on China is Mr. Arthur Smith’s Chinese Characteristics? Well, it is pretty much like the Protocol of the Elders of Zion, just from the dip shit end of world conspiracy.
What followed was the coordinated invasion of China and the semi-colonization of several parts and ports, notably Shanghai by the French, Macau by the Portuguese, Formosa by the Japanese, Tsingtau by the Germans, the Canton by the British and so on and so forth. I spare you the details of “a hundred years of humiliation,” as every Asian learns about it. However, few people in the West are taught this history.
Naturally, a strong introspection of the Chinese psyche took place since the fall of the last Chinese Dynasty, the Qing, in 1911. Even in defeat, Chinese sages imagined a spiritual victory. Wrote the poet Gu Hongming: “It is a well-known fact that the liking – you may call it the taste for the Chinese – grows upon the foreigner the longer he lives in this country.” That was in 1922.
In other words, even when their armies were clearly defeated and their nation conquered, their poets turned “a disastrous beating” into some form of spiritual victory and moral triumph. Almost like the biblical “Turning the other cheek…”
An East-West dichotomy reemerged. The ebb must follow the tide, the unjust brings forth the just, and so on. Said the chairman Mao Zedong: “I believe that the international situation has now reached a new turning point. There are two Winds in the world, the East Wind and the West Wind.” That was in 1957.
Without Confidence, a civilization, a nation, a family and even an individual will succumb to the hostile forces of nature and man, and will fall victim to cruelty and conquest.
It is therefore of essence to our survival, that we must combine forces, serve the people, and be assertive and vigilant against outside invaders.
Evolutionary Sciences seems to support this claim. A recent study in ‘Current Biology’ in July 2022 suggests that the now extinct Native Americans had Chinese DNA traces in their bones.
This was 14,000 years ago in North America. The Europeans wiped out the Native Americans as soon as they “discovered” them in 1492. China lost contact with North America, and could not help. The core Chinese Civilization today traces its origins back “only” 5,000 years. But still, it has survived the Ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, lived in peaceful coexistence with the Indians and Japanese, and, for the longest time, regarded itself—erroneously—as Zhong Guo, the Center of Nations.
As a Nation Thinks
Today, China’s Cultural Confidence is again caught in between two extremes. The pro-Western forces say China cannot achieve a multipolar world and must accept total Westernization [or suffer US embargo, containment, and military intervention like Europe, Japan, the Middle East, and Russia]. The pro-China forces say China must revive Confucianism, groom its own economic champions, and become a center of the world again.
IMAGE 6 Confidence and The Xin-Civilization
Governments do well by carefully weighing in and listening to the traditionalists as well as the progressives, but ideally, they should never again become push-overs to foreign dictate.
Did you read how the American President’s favorite propaganda media like New York Times or Wall Street Journal reported on China’s “censorship on information about the Covid demonstrations”? Well, America owns or dictates all global media, owns global big tech, and controls the world wide web commonly known as the Internet. It is Americans who control and censor all of us. And if China objects to the American world dictatorship, it will be called a terrorist, a rogue state, and a censorship regime.
Some commentators have argued that Xi Jinping and the CPC still should not subsidize “writers and artists.” They say things like “Art should be for art’s sake” or “Don’t draw a moon, build a spaceship.” In other words, the government in Beijing is believed to focus too much on technology and infrastructure, hard power, not on arts and culture and the mighty word, soft power. To which we reply that all nations in the world want to improve their material circumstances, yet it is only those who seem to stride effortlessly and possess a magnificent Culture who succeed.
CNBC reports that US is pressuring Dutch ASML not to send chip manufacturing equipment to China while the Netherlands does not seem keen on stopping exports to one of the largest chip markets.
An ASML cleanroom (ASML)
Amid the global struggle between powers, mainly China and the US, to gain tech superiority and establish world dominance in the industry, CNBC news outlet reported on Monday that the US “has its eyes” on the Netherlands.
The European country seems to be at the center of Washington’s attention as it is the home of one of the most vital technologies to manufacture semiconductors in the world.
Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography or ASML is a dutch company that specializes in producing not the semiconductors, but the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines that manufacture the chips.
ASML has a global monopoly on EUV production, being the only company in the world to make them, and supplies its products to the world’s largest chip maker, Taiwanese TSMC.
The report adds that China, the second largest economy, is eager to gain access to the product.
However, according to the news outlet, the US dissuaded the Netherlands from trading the machine with China for now, however, the latter does not seem excited to be cut off from one of the world’s most demanding chip markets.
EUV machines have not been shipped to China since 2019 following a number of export restrictions adopted by the Dutch government, said a spokesperson of ASML, noting however that it is anticipated that, “the direct impact of the new export control measures on ASML’s overall 2023 shipment plan to be limited.”
According to the news report, China currently possesses no EUV systems, and the United States is concerned that if ASML exports the high-tech machines to China, it would start producing “the most advanced semiconductors in the world” which has “extensive military and advanced artificial intelligence applications.”
CNBC mentions in the report that Washington’s pressure on the European country started in 2018 during the term of former US president Donald Trump.
Reuters published a report in 2020 stating that the authorities in the Netherlands revoked ASML’s license to send EUV machines to China following heavy US pressure.
Trump launched a trade war with China that evolved into a tech fight for supremacy between the two superpowers, as the US aimed to prevent Chinese companies from accessing high-tech machines and equipment.
The former president also issued an export blacklist on American tech companies against China’s largest chip producer SMIC.
However, his successor current US president, Joe Biden, increased the tech hostility against Beijing.
Earlier in October, the Bureau of Industry and Security of the US Department of Commerce passed a rule that forces American companies to get attain a special license in case they intended to sell certain semiconductors or chip manufacturing machines to China.
Dutch ASML ordered its staff in the US to deny services to Chinese clients following this decision.
The report added that US pressure on the Netherlands is ongoing.
According to the news outlet, the undersecretary of commerce for industry and security at the US Department of Commerce Alan Estevez, in addition to the senior director for technology and national security at the US National Security Council Tarun Chhabra held talks with Dutch officials earlier this month.
“Now that the U.S. government has put unilateral end-use controls on U.S. companies, these controls would be futile from their perspective if China could get these machines from ASML or Tokyo Electron (Japan),” Pranay Kotasthane, head of the high-tech geopolitics program at the Takshashila Institution, told CNBC.
“Hence the U.S. government would want to convert these unilateral controls into multilateral ones by getting countries such as the Netherlands, South Korea, and Japan on board.”
Earlier last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised the “growing convergence in the approach to the challenges that China poses,”, especially with the EU.
However, the report added, the Netherlands does not seem to be exactly in line with Blinken’s statement.
“Obviously we are weighing our own interests, our national security interest is of utmost importance, obviously we have economic interests as you may understand and the geopolitical factor always plays a role as well,” said the Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation of the Netherlands Liesje Schreinemacher last week.
Beijing is “an important trade partner,” she added.
Filed under: China, EU, Europe, Taiwan, USA | Tagged: ASML, Netherlands | Comments Off on US pushes Dutch chip firm to halt China exports, Netherlands not happy
صحيح أن تسونامي، أو أمواج عاتية، من التحليلات والتعليقات التي تدور حول موضوع مناورة القاذفات الاستراتيجية الروسية الصينية المشتركة، التي جرى تنفيذها في أجواء بحر الصين الشرقي وبحر اليابان يوم امس الاول، الاربعاء ٣٠/١١/٢٠٢٢، إلا أن أهمية الحدث تجعل من الضروري الإضاءة، بشكل افضل، على جوانب وأبعاد أكثر عمقًا وأوسع تأثيراً من المناورة الاستراتيجية، التي تم تنفيذها بنجاح كامل، ودون ان تقوم هذه القاذفات العملاقة، وما يرافقها من مقاتلات اعتراضية روسية، من طراز سوخوي ٣٠ وسوخوي ٣٥، ومقاتلات اعتراضية صينية ، بمخالفة القوانين الدولية او اختراق المجال الجوي لأي من دول المنطقة، على الرغم من قيام اليابان بتنفيذ خطوة استعراضية، عندما أطلقت مقاتلات يابانية، من طراز إف ١٦ لمرافقة التشكيلات العسكرية الروسيه الصينية المشتركة، عن بعد طبعاً. إذن، وبالنظر الى أهمية تفاصيل هذه الطلعة الجوية الاستراتيجية، التي تحمل العديد من الرسائل للغرب الجماعي، وليس فقط للولايات المتحدة، فإننا نرى ان من بين اهم الرسائل التي حملتها هذه التدريبات المشتركة، هي:
عملية هبوط القاذفات الاستراتيجية الروسية في قاعدة جوية صينية، في اقليم شي جيانغ / ، وهي القاعدة التي لا تبعد سوى خمسمئة كيلومتر عن عاصمة الجزيرة الصينية المنشقة، تايوان، وهبوط القاذفات الاستراتيجية الصينية في قاعدة: اوكراينكا / الجوية الروسية، الواقعة في مقاطعة آمور في جنوب شرق روسيا، على بعد ٢٨ كيلومتراً من مدينة: بيليغورسك / الروسية.
ومن الجدير بالذكر أن هذه القاعدة الجوية الروسية هي أكبر القواعد الجوية، المخصصة للقاذفات الاستراتيجية القادرة على حمل أسلحة نووية، وهي مجهزة لاستيعاب اربعين قاذفة استراتيجية في الوقت نفسه.
كما لا بد من الاشارة الى ان هذه القاعدة تقع بالقرب من مدينة روسية، في اقليم آمور (نسبة الى نهر آمور الذي يجري في تلك المقاطعة، وهي مقاطعة حدودية مع جمهورية الصين الشعبية، التي تتشارك مع روسيا الاتحادية بحدود يبلغ طولها: أربعة آلاف ومئتين وتسعة كيلومترات. ثانيا: إذاً، وبالنظر الى مواقع القواعد الجوية، الروسية والصينية، المستخدمة في عمليات الهبوط المتبادل، للقاذفات الاستراتيجية من البلدين، فلا بد من النظر الى ان مثل هذه العمليات تستدعي تنسيقاً فنياً عملياتياً متقدماً جداً، يشمل عمليات التزود بالوقود وما يمكن أن يلزم من عمليات صيانة وتجهيز وتذكير، لهذه القاذفات العملاقة.
أي أن الأمر لا يقتصر على زيارة مجاملة، بل هو يضع الأسس لعملية تنسيق وتكامل استراتيجي، بين القوات الجوفضائية الاستراتيجية لكلا البلدين، خاصة أن مواقع القواعد الجوية التي استخدمت في هذه العملية هي قواعد جوية قريبةً من مسرح العمليات في بحار الصين، الجنوبي والشرقي وصولاً الى بحر اليابان، القريب من اليابان نفسها وما فيها من قواعد عسكرية اميركية، جوية وبحرية، وكذلك بقربها من جمهورية كوريا الديموقراطية (الشمالية)، وما يعنيه ذلك في ضمان الاستقرار الاستراتيجي ليس فقط لهذه المنطقة وإنما لكامل منطقة جنوب شرق آسيا وصولاً الى بحر الفلبين وغرب المحيط الهادئ، حيث تقع القواعد الجوية والبحرية الاميركية في جزيرة غوام.
ولا بد، في هذا السياق، من الاشارة الى قرب دخول القاذفة الاستراتيجية الصينية، من طراز الى الخدمة الفعلية، وهي القاذفة التي تتمتع بميزات عالية ليس آخرها المدى الذي يمكنها الوصول إليه والبالغ عشرة آلاف كيلومتر، وما لذلك من تأثير في تعزيز قدرات الردع الاستراتيجي، للدول الرافضة للهيمنة الأميركية، في منطقة جنوب شرق آسيا وفي العالم أجمع.
ثالثا: وعليه، فإن جمهورية الصين الشعبية وجمهورية روسيا الاتحادية قد أقامتا خط دفاع جديداً ضد الهيمنة الاميركية، في جنوب شرق آسيا، اضافة الى خط الدفاع الاول، في وجه الغرب الجماعي، الذي تتولى الدفاع عنه القوات المسلحة الروسية، على الجبهة الغربية لمنطقة أورو آسيا، اي على الجبهة الاوكرانية.
كما أن هذا التدريب الجوي المشترك، للقاذفات الاستراتيجية الروسية الصينية، يشكل رسالة غاية في القوة للغطرسة الاميركية في جنوب شرق آسيا، والتي تجلت مؤخراً في تنفيذ سلاح الجو الاميركي مناورات جوية مشتركة، مع عملائه في كل من اليابان وكوريا الجنوبية، شاركت فيها مئات الطائرات الحربية، من البلدان الثلاثة، ليجيء الرد الروسي الصيني بالقاذفات الاستراتيجية، تعبيراً عن استعداد موسكو وبكين، للذهاب الى أبعد الحدود، في الدفاع عن مصالحهما المشتركة، في تلك المنطقة وفي العالم أجمع. وهذا ما يدحض المزاعم الغربية حول موقف الصين، من المواجهة الروسية الاطلسية على الجبهة الغربية (اوكرانيا) والتي تزعم وجود خلافات بين الصين وروسيا، في ما يتعلق بتلك المواجهة.
رابعا: كما لا بد من الاشارة الى ان هذا التعاون الاستراتيجي، بين موسكو وبكين لن يقتصر على منطقة جنوب شرق آسيا فقط، وانما سيشمل ايضاً تعاوناً مماثلاً سيصل الى منغوليا وكازاخستان، على حدود الصين الشمالية والشمالية الغربية، وغيرها من دول آسيا الوسطى، التي تتكامل مع الجمهورية الإسلامية الإيرانية، التي تخوض مواجهة استراتيجية مع قوى الإرهاب الدولي، المموّل والموجه من واشنطن وتل ابيب، والذي يستهدف في ما يستهدف ايضاً، فتح جبهة جنوبية ضد روسيا، يتطلع الغرب الجماعي في ما يتطلع، الى استنزاف القدرات العسكرية الروسية من خلالها، وصولاً الى تغيير موازين القوى الميدانية الاستراتيجية، في مسرح العمليات الأوكراني، حيث تواصل القوات المسلحة الروسية الإمساك بزمام المبادرة الاستراتيجي هناك، وتدير المعركة بحِرَفية عالية جداً، وتستنزف قدرات الغرب الجماعي، المالية والعسكرية، الأمر الذي يؤكد فشل المخططات الغربية، في استنزاف القدرات الروسية، الاقتصادية والعسكرية، وإخضاع روسيا والسيطرة على مقدراتها وإعادة عجلة التاريخ الى الوراء.
It matters not how much you, gentlemen, bend down before them, You will never gain Europe’s recognition: You will always be for them, Not servants, but serfs of their enlightened disposition. F.I. Tyutchev, Russian diplomat and poet, May 1867
To be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal. Henry Kissinger
Ditching the Ukraine
It is now dawning on the US elite that they totally underestimated Russia in all respects. For instance, on 25 March 2014 the arrogant Obama contemptuously called Russia ‘a regional power, threatening others out of weakness’ (sic!). (Clearly, he was talking about the USA). As a result, blinded by hubris, some in the US are now admitting that the Ukraine, the most corrupt country in Europe, is a dead duck, the game is simply no longer worth the candle. Apart from being a black hole for Western money and military equipment, the Ukraine is no longer the problem. It is a sideshow, a distraction, a mere symptom of something far more important. The real problem is what is now happening worldwide under Russian leadership – the ending of the unipolar world, of US global hegemony, camouflaged beneath the more innocent-sounding term ‘globalism’.
Following Russia’s decision and ability to stand up to the world’s bully, the whole Non-Western world is now also standing up to him. For example, at the recent G20 meeting in Indonesia, the debate was not about the Ukraine, but about whether or not to continue to accept American Fascist rule (‘the rules-based international order’). All the Latin American and African and four Asian countries said no, it’s finished, the world is now multipolar. Taiwan will inevitably be Chinese and soon – and wait till Chinese troops appear in Mesopotamia to take control of Iraqi oil and gas and rebuild that tragic country. Freedom beckons. Long-deluded Western elitists must be shocked: other ‘regional powers’ are now also standing up to the bully. Perhaps also out of weakness? Zelensky must have suspected that his boss, until now the self-imagined master of the universe, is going to get rid of him. He is a loser and the Yanks cannot stand losers.
As the US realises that the free nations of the world are turning against it, it will not hesitate to blame the Kiev regime. The US must save face. Kiev has been warned: it will have to start negotiating with Russia again. Zelensky had better plan his escape now, because Ukrainians will not forgive him for stringing them along with a pack of lies. Regardless of Zelensky’s delusional assertions that there will be no negotiations with Russia and that it will re-occupy Russian territories, including the Crimea, there are three reasons for him to throw in the towel now, before it all gets much, much worse.
Three Reasons To Surrender Now
Firstly, Russia has now reluctantly moved closer to the US ‘shock and awe’ strategy of destroying infrastructure, as the US did in Germany and Japan (World War II) and then Serbia and Iraq. Power stations and power networks, bridges and ‘decision centres’, such as certain government buildings in Kiev are being targeted. Russia is one or two mass missile strikes away from the knock-out blow which will disable the Ukrainian electricity, water and rail systems. With 50% of Ukrainian electricity infrastructure knocked out by the first three strikes on the electricity grid, demonstrations are starting against the deteriorating situation, with Zelensky sending in the hated and dreaded Ukrainian Secret Police, the SBU, to break them up. He is also banning coverage of them in his heavily-censored media. The electricity system has entered a stage of ‘arbitrary and uncontrolled imbalance’. Ukrainians have been told to leave the country for the winter. Where to? Who wants them anyway? And does this include the military too?
Secondly, once the infrastructure has been incapacitated, Russia’s 380,000 regular and newly mobilised troops will be fully incorporated into the Allied forces in eastern Ukraine. Even without them, Russian forces are continuing to advance in the Donbass. A winter offensive by some half a million troops will make huge gains on the whole front, advancing hundreds of kilometres and multiplying Kiev’s – and NATO’s – staggering losses. After success here, President Putin’s generals have the option of moving a serious force into the western Ukraine from Belarus in order to cut off NATO supply routes from Poland. This could easily lead to the total collapse of the already ravaged Ukrainian forces and their mercenaries. Now Russia is going all the way to Lvov and the Polish border. It has been forced to. The Kiev regime has brought it on itself. All Russia wanted was security for the Crimea and the Donbass and a neutral, non-nuclear Ukraine. It could all have been so simple.
Thirdly, Western countries, including even the brainless Stoltenberg, is suffering from Ukraine fatigue. The Ukrainian flags have nearly all come down in Europe. Support has waned as reality has dawned. NATO countries’ arms stocks have been seriously depleted and strikes and ensuing social chaos have appeared in Europe, This the result of double-digit inflation and economic recession, brought on by suicidal Western sanctions, yes, those ‘against Russia’ (!). ‘We are cold and hungry in our own country because you gave everything to that bunch of losers in Kiev and the Ukrainian freeloaders you invaded our country with’. The foul-mouthed thug Nuland has achieved her aim in Europe. All this makes Russia the strategic winner and is forcing the US/UK/EU to call on Zelensky to talk again. The British financier PM Sunak (who cares little for and knows even less about politics) used a modest British aid package, announced during his recent visit to Kiev, to tell Zelensky that bankrupt London can no longer pay. Kiev must negotiate with Moscow. Following this, there has been a delay in the fourth round of missile strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure. President Putin is waiting to see if Zelensky will cave in and start realistic talks before Russia unleashes the last assault on Ukrainian infrastructure and the winter offensive.
Ditching Zelensky
At least some in the Biden regime are realising (though not Biden himself, he is in no fit state to realise anything – a clear case of elder abuse) that they are going to have to drop the Jewish billionaire as the fall-guy for the Ukraine’s defeat. Just as they have done to countless Latin American, Middle Eastern and Asian tinpot dictators and gangsters in past decades, the US will also do the same to him in his Monsanto/Cargill banana republic. Can Zelensky still entertain any illusions about it? Of course, the US will deny that the war in the Ukraine was ever between the US and Russia and declare it was only ever ‘an internal conflict’ between the Ukraine and Russia. (Ukraine only supplied the cannon fodder for its transatlantic masters, who have controlled the country since their coup in 2014).
Ukraine’s former CIA asset, the actor Zelensky, has now acted up. The Ukrainian missile strike on Poland and the Ukrainian President’s insistence that it was a Russian strike, despite the clear evidence to the contrary, has hit Zelensky’s credibility. The intentional Ukrainian false flag strike on Polish/NATO territory, designed to provoke NATO or at least pathetic Poland into entering the war, is a pathetic embarrassment. Even compared to all of Zelensky’s other ridiculous staged false flags, like Bucha, which venal Western journalists were paid to report, this one has gone too far. The West is getting fed up with Zelensky’s antics. A bullet in the head is much cheaper than continuing to subsidise this clown.
Some are waking up to Zelensky, who is willing to unleash nuclear war in order to avoid negotiating. Some may now even understand that his crazy claims that President Putin always wanted to occupy all the Ukraine and restore the USSR, if not conquer all of Europe, are fairy-stories. These stories are told by Kiev to Western infants only in order to get military and financial aid and above all to draw NATO into the war. (The half-American Churchill spent all of 1941 trying to get the US into Britain’s war against Germany; unlike Zelensky, Churchill succeeded by emphasising his racial compatibility and dangling the Pacific Ocean carrot in front of the Yankees. Zelensky cannot offer either of those). President Putin has clearly stated on more than one occasion that: ‘He who does not regret the USSR has no heart, but he who wants to restore it has no brain’. A desire to restore the failed Soviet Union is a Western propaganda myth used by arms merchants and lying politicians to justify their greed and ambition.
Three Reasons To Run Now
Since NATO has categorically refused to send troops into the Ukraine and since there is no such thing as a ‘coalition of the willing’, apart from a few Polish and Baltic fanatics who are currently being wiped out as mercenaries in the Ukraine, what can Zelensky do? He could urge the Ukrainian commander-in-chief, General Zaluzhny, to open a last (yes, last) offensive in Donetsk or Zaporozhie in order to reboot support from the West. However, General Zaluzhny is fed up with sending his troops to commit suicide. He is, after all, a professional military man. Zelensky, on the other hand, is a White House court jester, who cares only about his own survival. Zaluzhny has other considerations. Here there is potential for a coup d’etat, a palace revolt in Kiev.
On the one hand, the self-deluded and murderous Neo-Nazis in the Ukraine who surround Zelensky and were all given power by the US, will not tolerate surrender. On the other hand, ordinary cold and hungry Ukrainians will ask why was not all of this avoided in the first place by agreeing to Ukrainian neutrality and fulfilling the Minsk 2 promises with their Russian brothers? (A good question, which should be asked of all the Western leaders who also rejected it). So Zelensky is stuck between the Neo-Nazis and the moderate Ukrainian people, between a rock and a hard place. It is lose-lose for him. Russians do not hate Ukrainians, they are brothers. But they do hate Nazis. They are enemies. The Nazis can expect no quarter from the Russians and they know it. The USSR cleared out its part of Germany of Nazis, liberating their German brothers. It is the same now in the Ukraine. With the Russian liberation of the whole of the Ukraine (not originally intended by Russia, but now necessary), a new wave of Ukrainian ‘refugees’ is going to hit Western Europe, maybe even before Christmas. This could be the last straw for a Europe full of refugees from other equally stupid and unnecessary wars of the US Empire: Iraqis, Afghans, Syrians, Libyans, Albanians and now Ukrainians. Europe cannot take it any more. It is collapsing in waves of social unrest and even Britannia cannot rule those waves.
The clueless Stoltenberg (him again) has declared that the defeat of the Ukraine means (yet another) defeat for NATO. Actually, the superfluous NATO was long ago defeated, but Stoltenberg is too clueless to have seen the writing on the wall and join the long queues of now unemployed ex-slaves of the US, Afghan and Iraqi interpreters among them. The US and its NATO vassals must now backtrack. Some statement like: ‘We were let down by those vodka-drinking surrender-monkey Ukrainians (what can you expect from those Slav subhumans?), but we have won the greatest victory in our history because we have triumphed in stopping the brutal Russian beast at the Polish border. Mission accomplished’. That would do the job. The US and its vassals cannot save face, but, since they only care about PR, they can at least pretend to save face – by blaming Zelensky. They could, conveniently, have him assassinated, so he does not tell the truth about what has really been happening behind the scenes over the last few years (he knows far too much), blaming it on ‘extremists’ and making him into a new Jewish martyr. If I were Zelensky, I would leave for Tel Aviv today. Does the Ukraine have any planes left?
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 