https://www.unz.com/pescobar/why-bri-is-back-with-a-bang-in-2023/
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Why BRI Is Back with a Bang in 2023
Pepe Escobar • January 6, 2023
The year 2022 ended with a Zoom call to end all Zoom calls: Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping discussing all aspects of the Russia-China strategic partnership in an exclusive video call.
Putin told Xi how "Russia and China managed to ensure record high growth rates of mutual trade," meaning "we will be able to reach our target of $200 billion by 2024 ahead of schedule."
On their coordination to "form a just world order based on international law," Putin emphasized how "we share the same views on the causes, course, and logic of the ongoing transformation of the global geopolitical landscape."
Facing "unprecedented pressure and provocations from the west," Putin noted how Russia-China are not only defending their own interests "but also all those who stand for a truly democratic world order and the right of countries to freely determine their own destiny."
Earlier, Xi had announced that Beijing will hold the 3rd Belt and Road Forum in 2023. This has been confirmed, off the record, by diplomatic sources. The forum was initially designed to be bi-annual, first held in 2017 and then 2019. 2021 didn't happen because of Covid-19.
The return of the forum signals not only a renewed drive but an extremely significant landmark as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in Astana and then Jakarta in 2013, will be celebrating its 10th anniversary.
BRI version 2.0
That set the tone for 2023 across the whole geopolitical and geoeconomic spectrum. In parallel to its geoconomic breadth and reach, BRI has been conceived as China's overarching foreign policy concept up to the mid-century. Now it's time to tweak things. BRI 2.0 projects, along its several connectivity corridors, are bound to be re-dimensioned to adapt to the post-Covid environment, the reverberations of the war in Ukraine, and a deeply debt-distressed world.
Map of BRI (Photo Credit: The Cradle)
And then there's the interlocking of the connectivity drive via BRI with the connectivity drive via the International North South Transportation Corridor (INTSC), whose main players are Russia, Iran and India.
Expanding on the geoeconomic drive of the Russia-China partnership as discussed by Putin and Xi, the fact that Russia, China, Iran and India are developing interlocking trade partnerships should establish that BRICS members Russia, India and China, plus Iran as one of the upcoming members of the expanded BRICS+, are the 'Quad' that really matter across Eurasia.
The new Politburo Standing Committee in Beijing, which are totally aligned with Xi's priorities, will be keenly focused on solidifying concentric spheres of geoeconomic influence across the Global South.
How China plays 'strategic ambiguity'
This has nothing to do with balance of power, which is a western concept that additionally does not connect with China's five millennia of history. Neither is this another inflection of "unity of the center" – the geopolitical representation according to which no nation is able to threaten the center, China, as long as it is able to maintain order.
These cultural factors that in the past may have prevented China from accepting an alliance under the concept of parity have now vanished when it comes to the Russia-China strategic partnership.
Back in February 2022, days before the events that led to Russia's Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, Putin and Xi, in person, had announced that their partnership had "no limits" – even if they hold different approaches on how Moscow should deal with a Kiev lethally instrumentalized by the west to threaten Russia.
In a nutshell: Beijing will not "abandon" Moscow because of Ukraine – as much as it will not openly show support. The Chinese are playing their very own subtle interpretation of what Russians define as "strategic ambiguity."
Connectivity in West Asia
In West Asia, BRI projects will advance especially fast in Iran, as part of the 25-year deal signed between Beijing and Tehran and the definitive demise of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – or Iran nuclear deal – which will translate into no European investment in the Iranian economy.
Iran is not only a BRI partner but also a full-fledged Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member. It has clinched a free trade agreement with the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), which consists of post-Soviet states Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
And Iran is, today, arguably the key interconnector of the INSTC, opening up the Indian Ocean and beyond, interconnecting not only with Russia and India but also China, Southeast Asia, and even, potentially, Europe – assuming the EU leadership will one day see which way the wind is blowing.
Map of INSTC (Photo Credit: The Cradle)
So here we have heavily US-sanctioned Iran profiting simultaneously from BRI, INSTC and the EAEU free trade deal. The three critical BRICS members – India, China, Russia – will be particularly interested in the development of the trans-Iranian transit corridor – which happens to be the shortest route between most of the EU and South and Southeast Asia, and will provide faster, cheaper transportation.
Add to this the groundbreaking planned Russia-Transcaucasia-Iran electric power corridor, which could become the definitive connectivity link capable of smashing the antagonism between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
In the Arab world, Xi has already rearranged the chessboard. Xi's December trip to Saudi Arabia should be the diplomatic blueprint on how to rapidly establish a post-modern quid pro quo between two ancient, proud civilizations to facilitate a New Silk Road revival.
Rise of the Petro-yuan
Beijing may have lost huge export markets within the collective west – so a replacement was needed. The Arab leaders who lined up in Riyadh to meet Xi saw ten thousand sharpened (western) knives suddenly approaching and calculated it was time to strike a new balance.
That means, among other things, that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) has adopted a more multipolar agenda: no more weaponizing of Salafi-Jihadism across Eurasia, and a door wide open to the Russia-China strategic partnership. Hubris strikes hard at the heart of the Hegemon.
Credit Suisse strategist Zoltan Pozsar, in two striking successive newsletters, titled War and Commodity Encumbrance (December 27) and War and Currency Statecraft (December 29), pointed out the writing on the wall.
Pozsar fully understood what Xi meant when he said China is "ready to work with the GCC" to set up a "new paradigm of all-dimensional energy cooperation" within a timeline of "three to five years."
China will continue to import a lot of crude, long-term, from GCC nations, and way more Liquified Natural Gas (LNG). Beijing will "strengthen our cooperation in the upstream sector, engineering services, as well as [downstream] storage, transportation, and refinery. The Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange platform will be fully utilized for RMB settlement in oil and gas trade…and we could start currency swap cooperation."
Pozsar summed it all up, thus: "GCC oil flowing East + renminbi invoicing = the dawn of the petroyuan."
And not only that. In parallel, the BRI gets a renewed drive, because the previous model – oil for weapons – will be replaced with oil for sustainable development (construction of factories, new job opportunities).
And that's how BRI meets MbS's Vision 2030.
Apart from Michael Hudson, Poszar may be the only western economic analyst who understands the global shift in power: "The multipolar world order," he says," is being built not by G7 heads of state but by the 'G7 of the East' (the BRICS heads of state), which is a G5 really." Because of the move toward an expanded BRICS+, he took the liberty to round up the number.
And the rising global powers know how to balance their relations too. In West Asia, China is playing slightly different strands of the same BRI trade/connectivity strategy, one for Iran and another for the Persian Gulf monarchies.
China's Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with Iran is a 25-year deal under which China invests $400 billion into Iran's economy in exchange for a steady supply of Iranian oil at a steep discount. While at his summit with the GCC, Xi emphasized "investments in downstream petrochemical projects, manufacturing, and infrastructure" in exchange for paying for energy in yuan.
How to play the New Great Game
BRI 2.0 was also already on a roll during a series of Southeast Asian summits in November. When Xi met with Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha at the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) Summit in Bangkok, they pledged to finally connect the up-and-running China-Laos high-speed railway to the Thai railway system. This is a 600km-long project, linking Bangkok to Nong Khai on the border with Laos, to be completed by 2028.
And in an extra BRI push, Beijing and Bangkok agreed to coordinate the development of China's Shenzhen-Zhuhai-Hong Kong Greater Bay Area and the Yangtze River Delta with Thailand's Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC).
In the long run, China essentially aims to replicate in West Asia its strategy across Southeast Asia. Beijing trades more with the ASEAN than with either Europe or the US. The ongoing, painful slow motion crash of the collective west may ruffle a few feathers in a civilization that has seen, from afar, the rise and fall of Greeks, Romans, Parthians, Arabs, Ottomans, Spanish, Dutch, British. The Hegemon after all is just the latest in a long list.
In practical terms, BRI 2.0 projects will now be subjected to more scrutiny: This will be the end of impractical proposals and sunk costs, with lifelines extended to an array of debt-distressed nations. BRI will be placed at the heart of BRICS+ expansion – building on a consultation panel in May 2022 attended by foreign ministers and representatives from South America, Africa and Asia that showed, in practice, the global range of possible candidate countries.
Implications for the Global South
Xi's fresh mandate from the 20th Communist Party Congress has signaled the irreversible institutionalization of BRI, which happens to be his signature policy. The Global South is fast drawing serious conclusions, especially in contrast with the glaring politicization of the G20 that was visible at its November summit in Bali.
So Poszar is a rare gem: a western analyst who understands that the BRICS are the new G5 that matter, and that they're leading the road towards BRICS+. He also gets that the Quad that really matters is the three main BRICS-plus-Iran.
Acute supply chain decoupling, the crescendo of western hysteria over Beijing's position on the war in Ukraine, and serious setbacks on Chinese investments in the west all play on the development of BRI 2.0. Beijing will be focusing simultaneously on several nodes of the Global South, especially neighbors in ASEAN and across Eurasia.
Think, for instance, the Beijing-funded Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway, Southeast Asia's first: a BRI project opening this year as Indonesia hosts the rotating ASEAN chairmanship. China is also building the East Coast Rail Link in Malaysia and has renewed negotiations with the Philippine s for three railway projects.
Then there are the superposed interconnections. The EAEU will clinch a free trade zone deal with Thailand. On the sidelines of the epic return of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to power in Brazil, this past Sunday, officials of Iran and Saudi Arabia met amid smiles to discuss – what else – BRICS+. Excellent choice of venue: Brazil is regarded by virtually every geopolitical player as prime neutral territory.
From Beijing's point of view, the stakes could not be higher, as the drive behind BRI 2.0 across the Global South is not to allow China to be dependent on western markets. Evidence of this is in its combined approach towards Iran and the Arab world.
China losing both US and EU market demand, simultaneously, may end up being just a bump in the (multipolar) road, even as the crash of the collective west may seem suspiciously timed to take China down.
The year 2023 will proceed with China playing the New Great Game deep inside, crafting a globalization 2.0 that is institutionally supported by a network encompassing BRI, BRICS+, the SCO, and with the help of its Russian strategic partner, the EAEU and OPEC+ too. No wonder the usual suspects are dazed and confused.
(Republished from The Cradle by permission of author or representative)
• Category: Economics, Foreign Policy • Tags: BRICs, China, Iran, New Silk Road, Russia, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping
'Fragmented World' Sleepwalks Into World War III
Everybody Wants to Hop on the BRICS Express
Exile on Main Street: The Sound of the Unipolar World Fading Away
Michael Hudson: A Roadmap to Escape the West's Stranglehold
All the Young Dudes, Carry the (Russian) News
"Why BRI Is Back with a Bang in 2023"
enlightened says:
Doesn't look good for the controlling west. Their recent paper on how they proceed to total world domination just hit a serious road bump. China, Russia, India and Iran have everything they need to take down the usual suspects behind the dummies in DC and City of London.
Looks like the ONLY option for them is nuclear destruction. That's all they have to combat what is definitely going to happen in the East. If the bankster cabal can't have it then nobody will.
WaaaAaaAaaa!!
• Replies: @Scot1and
, @JR Foley
, @Doug Ryler
, @Liosnagcat
Looks like the end of the road for the Hegemon passes thru the East and the BRICS+ countries. These "serious as a heart attack" players have everything they need to stop the west from implementing their recent Plan for world domination lol.
The ONLY option these dummies in DC and the City of London have is nuclear. If we can't have it then nobody will have it mentality. I'm taking my bat and ball and going to hell whaaAaaa!
• LOL: chris
, @Petermx
Notsofast says:
perhaps it is good that hubris and stupidity go hand in hand, for those that the cosmos wishes to destroy, it first makes stupid. the world owes a bill of thanks to the idiot zioneocons, for destroying the unstoppable imperial death star in a mere two decades.
compare the fortunes of the u.s. and russia, for the last 22 years. putin took a shattered and throughly looted russian economy and delapidated military and completely rebuilt both to the point that russia is not only solvent (with a flat 10% income tax) but could pay off their national debt off with their foreign reserves and gold holdings even after the west illegally seized what they could grab. their military is now two or three generations ahead of the u.s. in hypersonic missiles and antiballistic missile systems, while spending a tenth of bloated hegemons military budget.
• Agree: Joe Levantine, Realist, dogbumbreath, Alternate History
Terrific docu on somewhere in Chile
https://ok.ru/video/3283786140222
Another strange one by Marker.
• Replies: @Badger Down
Scot1and says:
@enlightened
I agree especially if India commit, that is what I believe will be the end of the dollar. We know already things are on such a fine balance and the collective west in my view know the game is up. You can already tell by the media press release as a Brit living in the Netherlands. I see the same media on off pathetic stories of lies. Best one today on Dutch.nl was a cry to punish Iran more ? With all issues happening here you know exactly what is going on. Fear in the government and they know it's tik tol tik tok
• Thanks: Alternate History
• Replies: @Miro23
, @HbutnotG
The US freeze and pending seizure of $300 billion in Russian assets was in a way a gift to the Chinese. Now no one wants to do business with America, who isn't their vassal that is. BRI just got a helluva lot more interesting to independent and developing nations. The sun is setting on the West. Russia will be the only consequential European player in the future. Right now is a great time to start learning Russian now if you want to escape the hellhole that the West is quickly becoming. Удачи товарища!
• Agree: Alternate History
John1955 says:
"East is East, and West is West,
And never the twain shall meet"
It is simply return to normal.
The philosophical concept of "East-West Dichotomy" crystallized 2000 years ago.
There are a couple of books exploring this subject in detail.
Ancient Rome plans to conquer the whole f… world were often unsuccessful.
Funniest example was when the richest realtor of Rome Mark Crass ventured abroad to add Military Glory to his Immense Riches.
Persians ( such a rowdy piglets 😁 ) captured him and poured molten gold down his throat.
Ancient Rome is gone with the wind yet Persia (modern Iran) and Baktria (modern Afghanistan) endure…
Modern Neocons don't deserve even that. Gold is precious.
Public display in cages and opportunity to urinate on them for a modest fee would be enough.
• Thanks: littlereddot, Justrambling
• LOL: Alternate History
, @Kratoklastes
, @A B Coreopsis
omegabooks says:
Put into historical context, all of this makes sense…when in history over a few hundred years time frame has power not shifted? Started in middle-east/central Asia (inlcuding Egypt, Sumeria, Assyria, Israel/Judah, etc), shifted west (Greece, Rome) then shifted back to central Asia (Mongols/Tatars, Khazaria, Huns, etc) then Ottomans, then west again (Europe) then west again (north America, but also including Aztecs/Mayans/Incas), then US vs. Soviets, and now shifting east to China/Russia/etc….folks, that's the way it is. Empires fall because they can't help themselves what with all the corruption…deal with it! Started in Middle East…will end in the Middle East… end times, doncha know…
Where does it leave the "Petro-Ruble"?
Re. "usual suspects": a) Jewhai aka Shanghai, b) "Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange platform" – who forms what? Does the Hai (ger. shark) mine hydrocarbons or add digits to inflate what for whom? The devil is in the detail. "Financial Markets" never add but take value.
Where does it leave Venezuela and South America in general?
Is the attack on cryptos related to the energy-trade (e.g. Russia-Venezuela)?
Greetings to the Hussein (of Kenia?):
@John1955
Every time I see the depiction of the Persians in 300 (spartans), I curse Hollywood yet again.
It is no accident that they are depicted as such. Same as every time China is mentioned in a western MSM news outlet, its is accompanied by an image of a menacing commie soldier or something similarly nefarious.
, @Tom Welsh
, @showmethereal
I wasn't aware the camel herders called Saudis had an ancient and proud civilization. Please tell me more.
• Agree: Pop Warner, Alternate History
• Replies: @Passing By
I go on my knees & pray to both Tao & Dao to start a process ending with breaking the back of MICC & the corrupt financial elite leeching us dry.
Meanwhile we ordinary souls need to do everything in our power to expose the anti-China propaganda & psyops.
Maybe… Just maybe we can one day turn the tide of zio-turning point USraHell & make it into a sincere America First movment.
God protect & strenghten the Chinese ppl!
• Agree: A B Coreopsis
Does that mean you have not been confronted by the likes of "Shen Yun" creating a "spiritual atmosphere" against todays China?
Shen Yun ("the beauty of dancing entities"), New York, "the worldbest company for classic Chinese dance & music, founded 2006 by refugee artists who left China in search for religious freedom" is showing the good (colorfull with plenty of blue ribbons) versus the bad (red) China.
8 tour companies will visit 180 cities on all continents; in Europe 20 cities in 13 countries to promote "Chinese spirituality" versus the bad red communist regime with that stern Xi suppressing 1,4 billion otherwise highly spiritual, colourful Chinese people. The Epoch Times, 31.12.2022, advertising Shenyuncreations.com and praising its Christmas performances (as alternative to Christmas).
While the attempt to butcher Russia kosher is up and running, China is being prepared in the JewWest for coming onto the slicing machine once Russia's blood is drained and the Russian corpus ready for Jewish consumption (China would be next in line).
, @byrbo
Rabbi Shlomo says:
This article is like anudda Shoah!
There really should be only two countries between the Mediterranean Sea and Iran, one made of a union of Lebanon, Palestine and Syria, and the rest becoming a renewed Baghdad Califate.
Tom Welsh says:
I recommend Gore Vidal's superb historical novel "Creation". Set in the heart of the Axial Age, it is told by a Persian nobleman who is a childhood friend of Xerxes the Great King. Sent as a roving ambassador to the East, he tours India and China, meeting some of the great sages. Then, after Xerxes' death, he is sent by a less sympathetic king to end his days as ambassador to Athens. In sharp contrast to the conventional Western worship of all things Greek, he relates how hideous he finds his life. The Greeks are backward, uncivilised, untruthful, dirty, and incompetent. They are forever squabbling, betraying one another, and fighting wars. In a marvellous touch – so typical of Vidal – his only mention of Socrates is as the hapless young stonemason who completely fails to fix any of the many whistling draughts in his house.
• Agree: john-hopelo
It depends on how you interpret that statement. The Arabic civilisation as a whole certainly fits the bill.
If you choose to point out that the Saudi royal house is relatively recent and uncivilised, well and good. But that same criterion perilously cuts off present-day Europe and USA from most of the Western tradition too. How much does 21st century Britain have in common with Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Locke, Newton, Hume, Burke, or Adam Smith? Similar questions might be asked about France, Germany, Italy, and of course the USA.
• Agree: A B Coreopsis, RadicalCenter
• Replies: @HbutnotG
Each new economic development milestone which China adds to the second and third world only serves to increase the chasm separating its and the US's (military base encirclement of the planet) approaches to world cooperation vs. domination.
The Western desperation about this contrast was best highlighted when the EU lackey von der Lying announced something like 200B EUR immediate investment in the 3rd world last year, which only helped to highlight the hypocrisy of all those previous years when they did nothing comparable.
You forgot to include Canada !!
Robert Magill says:
I wish the Eastern bloc well, but wonder, where in all this positive forward thinking, lies one inch for fate of the Biosphere and continued life on this Planet. All that financial utopia seems no more likely to head off coming doom than US television offers, Pepe.
• Thanks: Thor Walhovd
• Replies: @Thor Walhovd
Nick Kollerstrom says:
May I take a theosophical view here? About what Pepe calls the Quad, whose collaboration could blossom into a glorious new cultural focus bringing new hope to the human race in this 21st century. Theosophy affirms there is some interconnection between the different world religions.
China is Confucian, it has no transcendental deity, but it has the Tao which flows through all things. It is non-dualistic and does not believe in any 'final battle.' Russia is Christian with especial and characteristic reverence for the divine Sophia or the Blessed virgin. India is polytheistic with belief in the wheel of rebirth ie repeated earth-lives. Both India and Iran are noted for beautiful and graceful women. Iran is Muslim but behind that is the ancient Zoroastrian religion, about the eternal cosmic battle between Light and Darkness and its a fire-worshipping religion. So can these four ancient cultures show the world that they can get on together, can they affirm that there is some Meaning to their differing versions of reality? In contrast the Axis of Evil US-UK dedicated to Eternal War has no feminine aspect to its religion and has drawn its power very much from the evil OT god. Ok, well, thanks for listening!
• Thanks: Ann Nonny Mouse, A B Coreopsis
• Replies: @showmethereal
Skyler the Weird says:
We need China to import more diversity before it's too late.
• LOL: HbutnotG
, @Bill Jones
Miro23 says:
@Scot1and
You can already tell by the media press release as a Brit living in the Netherlands. I see the same media on off pathetic stories of lies. Best one today on Dutch.nl was a cry to punish Iran more ?
Agreed that it's pathetic. The lies are no longer even coherent. They're just a daily dump of whatever piece of deception currently appeals to them. So it's all going down with a giant FU to the public, but in a world of entertainment and 3 second attention spans who even cares?
Charles Carroll says:
You can bet that Putin understands history from the French Revolution perspective. When Napoleon III was ELECTED to be Monarch by a great margin of the common people in the mid 1800s, the Royal families of Europe waged wars against France and forced his replacement by a Parliamentarian Oligarchy. That is the story of the European and Anglo empires. They fight tooth and nail to retain rule by the few. Russia and China are in their way, and it is obvious that they are committed to conquest of these countries. That is why Putin is facing a much bigger problem then the Ukraine, and he is probably preparing for the Grand War.
Napoleon III enacted universal male suffrage, confiscated the vast holding of the Church and distributed it to the rural people which worked out well, started work training programs for French people and generally expanded citizens rights. French Royalty started the Franco-Prussian War and colluded with Bismarck to occupy and oppress France's own citizens. Then Parliament reversed Napoleon's progress and Parliament could overrule their Constitution. Macron is the prime example of a ruler who runs the country only for the one percent. The Yellow Vests are fighting to restore a representative g0vernment. Royalty fears them and has their police treat them viciously. This is global, and the media blacks out the Yellow Vests.
January 7, 2023 at 3:06 pm GMT • 1,000 Words
The BRICS, thus the BRI, are an afterglow. Big plans, few prospects. Certainly the physical prerequisites for industrialization are available, but their societies reject some vital aspect of industrialization, and thus reject industrialization. China and the Soviet Union are prime examples of that: they both took on Western industries, produced quite a bit, use the capabilities to exploit and ruin much of their farmland and water supplies and population, were unable to modernize or even replace the capital equipment they bought, got into serious trouble when the capital goods wore out, and have or are in the process of retreating to a "royal economy" that produces only for the Roi, the government. The effort will end as did Argentina's: it will produce everything but success.
It's the manager's version of the engineer's nightmare: the test/control equipment says everything is working, but the actual machine has clearly failed. I once interviewed with a spun-off research lab that had supposedly produced several tens of billions of dollars in successful new products, none of which were accepted by its aerospace parent firm but which did produce profits for independent "spin-off" firms. The parent firm did not say that its executives were screw-ups who didn't know their job, but did stop sponsoring the labs.
How did a general failure of industrialization happen? You have to look at some history to understand that.
The West broke out of Europe ~AD 1500. By 1920, every other political form on Earth except those in the Andaman Islands had collapsed or changed its form under Western competition. This included China, which was was "forced into unequal treaties" by sailing ships and expeditionary forces from the other side of the planet and had its last Emperor, Africa, the Americas, Australia.
The peoples whose political form was changed were not happy about the change. They still aren't. They tried to import Western industrialization, but they did not like Western ways of doing things, and they did not like Westerners. Their efforts failed (See: Gregory Clark, below), even when Western non-coms were brought into their infantry and Western supervisors were brought into their factories. The troops/workers and officers/owners ignored the middle level Westerners. You can see something similar happening in US cities, now that they have Black Mayors, white politicians, and Black populations.
The Western countries themselves are at most in revolt against Western political forms and at least unable to defend Western political forms. As of AD 2023, without a serious Western challenge, the world is slumping back into its pre-Western form.
Industrial society was a late invention of the West; the Industrial Revolution did not start until ~AD 1800, ~200 years after the breakout. The scientific revolution arguably started earlier, ~AD 1600, with Galileo, 100 years after the breakout.
The proximate cause of the was Industrial Revolution of a several century long selective breeding experiment unintentionally carried out in England (see: Gregory Clark, _A Farewall to Alms_) that raised general IQ. The plenty resulting eventually from the Industrial Revolution (starting ~1850) was another selective breeding experiment that national reduced IQ (see: Dutton, _The Genius Famine_). We, all of us, are slowly retreating back to pre-industrial societies because we don't the populations can't support the intellectual work (or the "smart guys") required to have an industrial society. This slippage had become obvious by 1997 (van Crevald, "The Fate of the State") and has since continued.
"Postmodernism" and its popular child "Wokeness" is simply a way of getting rid of the "smart guys" and giving the majority, the rest of the population", the chance it thinks it deserves. The "rest of the population", given a chance, produces mass organizations staffed with people who can't do necessary work but can (with the support of other "rest of the population") fake it. See Musk's report on Twitter's staffing before Musk's takeover. The staff had appointed itself zampolits and were disguising their own uselessness by accusing everybody else with anything the zampolits could think of. That's not uncommon in today's Western society.
In the long term, the result is a "put a dressing on that skin cancer and it will heal itself" approach to problems, an approach that fails. Do stupid people with college credentials need jobs? Give them patronage jobs shutting down the fossil fuel sector, and pick fossil fuel shutdown because only stupid people would consent to participating in such a lunatic endeavor and you want to keep the smart people out because "they don't need help". Take the Armed Forces and make service members take debilitating injections in order to drive out the smart people, because you want the smart people out, they don't need help and you hate and fear them. Note that DoD says that the injection is still mandatory for National Guard troops, which would be the bulk of population control forces.
Staff organizations of all sorts with credentialed dumb people, claiming "equity" as a justification.
And industry becomes impossible.
If industry is grafted on to a civilization that did not industrialize itself, then the same thing happens to the grafted on industry.
This is just a variation on the Dow theory of organizational ageing that has long been accepted to account for the failure of old organizations. Organizations and societies don't stay young forever. They accumulate deadwood and they die.
So the BRICS, long term, have no chance at remaining industrialized.
But when societies die, they often leave successor societies / populations behind them. Not always, the Denisovans are with us only in genetic traces, but often. Industrialized areas will leave descendants also.
It looks like we're seeing a retreat of industry to areas that will support industry. Those areas are fairly small — maybe Germany/Russia and Texas. Non-Western descended societies, China included ( https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinas-trillion-dollar-research-funds-mostly-spent-on-travel-and-leisure-chinese-state-media_4672564.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge ), are all losing industrialization.
Note that this is just a variation of the theory of organizational aging ( https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w19428/w19428.pdf ) applied to society as a whole. I twice worked for an aged corporation, and was very lucky to escape with my life; many people there did not. This left me with some scars, but I can recognize an aged organization when I see one, more so when I'm immersed in one.
• Thanks: Thomas Faber
• Replies: @Thomas Faber
, @Astuteobservor II
, @Brian Damage
Thor Walhovd says:
@Robert Magill
It is a puzzle. So much of the world is still in love with industrial models of endless growth, car culture, cheap plastic disposable crap, living life through a glass screen, hideous degenerate art and architecture, plus druggie hoodlums looting the place and chewing off the faces of the elderly at 2:30 in the morning.
Maybe living in shame, poverty and privation over here on the unfashionable, sparsely populated part of the planet for a few generations might not be so bad after all. Hard times making strong and happy people, as the saying goes. And a pretty good template for moving forward in the Constitution, Bill of Rights and SF-born original UN Charter still written down in old dictionaries the literate among us can find in all the thrift shops.
That is, if we still have a functioning biosphere that allows food, animals and children to grow and flourish.
I hereby pronounce, the BRI dead and buried … it's like the two welterweight fighters dreaming to beat the reigning heavyweight of the world. Pepe is smoking some good shit!
• Troll: RadicalCenter
Epoch Times, the mouthpiece of the CIA / NED supported Falungong movement is a useful thing…. monitoring it it gives us an idea of what the enemy is up to .
BTW, have you ever met a Falungong practitioner? I have, they are pretty scary stuff. Fixed intense gazes and extremely focused humorless personalities. I would never let my daughter date one of these crazies.
As for cultural amusements, I pretty like these guys …. extremely creative and entertaining. And I love their ancient Chinese instruments costumes.
English subtitles are available by turning on the CC function.
Agent76 says:
JUNE 16, 2022 CHINA DOUBLES DOWN ON VISION WITH RUSSIA
The most animating template of the West's "information war" lately against Russia is, perhaps, its distorted projection of the China-Russia relationship in the context of the Ukraine crisis. This dubious enterprise has practical implications for the "endgame" in Ukraine, the West's efforts to "erase" Russia and the US' struggle with China — above all, it is fraught with consequences for the emerging world order.
https://www.indianpunchline.com/china-doubles-down-on-vision-with-russia/
Oct 22, 2022 'Dare to struggle, dare to win', China's Xi says as Communist Congress ends • FRANCE 24 English
China's five-yearly Communist Party Congress wrapped up on Saturday with President Xi Jinping set to emerge from the event as leader for an unprecedented third term.
@Tom Welsh
Thanks! I must look out for this book.
@Skyler the Weird
No need to import diversity when China already has 55 indigenous ethnic groups.
Petermx says:
I hope you are right. It does appear the US has some serious problems. It has now fallen behind in high tech (chip manufacturing, etc), after being surpassed in auto manufacturing, steel production and other industries forty years ago. We still have the world's most influential media (which is actually Jewish), and social media sites and Google, but if I was a foreign country (including all of Europe), I would cut off access to these sites in my country. These are propaganda websites used to foment revolutions, spread lies that benefit a very small but influential minority, and encourage sick and demented social changes such as sex change operations. Other countries can create search engines and social media sites too.
It is amazing how fast things changed. Now that the USA and Europe have destroyed their competitiveness, maybe some repair work can be done and rebuild. It would require a change in attitudes of people. If Europeans don't want to live like third world shitholes they will have to put serious people in charge that want to improve their countries economies and throw out the trash
that puts foreigners above their own people, stop the filth's social changes and stop the endless wars promoted by neo-con Jews, Americans and Brits. The first thing that should be broken up is NATO. It's as broken as the EU. Then rapprochement with Russia, but first the sick leftists have to be thrown out of power.
Thomas Faber says:
I think you are definitely on to something – however, it also seems that the current Chinese system is quite meritocratic. So long as that is true, I think they will be capable of maintaining a substantial level of industry. And the human potential is there, for certain – there has been high culture in China for long periods of time.
, @Hulkamania
@Thor Walhovd
I wouldn't worry about the biosphere. Human civilization will break long before the biosphere does. Rat burger, anyone? 😉
byrbo says:
Or hopefuly two invented monsters- israhell and ukraine going to ever lasting hell. I pray.
America will wind up with only one "true" ally – Israel. And just watch Israel, after having ruined America, will try to move on to become "buddies" with China. Of course, the Chinese are totally wise to the Jews – the Chinese have seen what happens to anyone who clasps that serpent to one's bosom — the same old story —a poisonous bite. "Why did you expect any different end result – after all — we are the serpent?"
• Replies: @dogbumbreath
What a load of hogwash. As for Epoch Times, it's rabidly anti China.
For more than a year it called covid 19 "china Flu". Now we see it was America all along.
Read some history, learn how the west and the whole world owes so much to the Indians, Arabs and Chinese and I will not deny it, to the Europeans too. Half assed rants don't impress well read people
• Agree: Deep Thought
Astuteobservor II says:
Jeez, this retarded anon quotes epochtimes.
Gisele MacKenzie – Buttons and Bows (1962)
• Replies: @John1955
And doesn't look good either for those controlling the West.
http://biblicisminstitute.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/how-the-ashkenazi-jews-conquered-the-west/
• Replies: @Telimektar
huooakkssays says:
more dis ease?
? yawn..
we want slivversteins' dissappearing air force
Abdul Alhazred says:
And of course the conception of the Belt and Road Initiative, the New Silk Road, and the BRICS "Survivors Club" was the Lyndon LaRouche back in the 1990's, ideas whose pedigree goes back to President McKinley and President Lincoln, reflecting the economic outlook of the American System of Economics as distinguished from British Free Trade.
Those days are no more my friend. 80-100 years ago every mobster and bank robber wore a hat, white shirt, a tie and a 3 piece suit. Look up the pics of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker for example. A picture-perfect couple in front of Ford Model A, Clyde Barrow wears a crewcut, a vest, white shirt and full auto Browning Machine Gun… Look up the pics of John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Ma Barker, Pretty Boy Floyd, Legz Diamond, Al Capone etc etc
Now if you start wandering around our beloved inner cities wearing a crewcut and dressed like that you will cause quite a consternation. People will silently stare at you in wild wonder, with Disadvantaged Youth hissing "Hiii-yaaa Mistah Pohhh-liiiiice !"
If modern woman in a fit of madness puts on gloves and veiled hat erybody will assume they shoot movie for AMC
And it is not because people are struggling and can't afford decent clothes. It is because those f..ng people dont give a flying f…ck about anything.
HbutnotG says:
If memory serves me right, those goony people on the Arabian peninsula were too busy shaking dust off their prayer rugs in their desert clubhouse, on the day when Standard All (or whoevah it was) came in and discovered the mother lode of petroleum while those Saudis were standing there scratching their assholes, observing them, thinking "All? What's dat?"
And, it wasn't Saudis who designed and built those modern day castles there.
But I give them credits for somehow knowing how to "control" money. "Not in the club? You don't get very much" Women locked in the house with their mouths taped shut was another good idea – just now becoming glaringly apparent in the West.
• Replies: @Tom Welsh
Brian Damage says:
Blah blah blah…. Full of BS. Pretty hard to read. Didn't China was supposed to collapse in October? New GDP growth numbers just came out. close to 5% despite lockdowns. Evergrande supposed to tank China's economy, what happened? Quoting Falun Gong's Epoch Times who's funded generously by CIA and partners in crime is quite funny.
I wonder when people like you realize that wording your way out of reality doesn't work anymore. It used to work when the Anglos had total global dominance.
@Miro23
"The lies are no longer even coherent". Agree with you that the "quality" of the lies is diminishing while, unfortunately, the quantity is increasing. Looking back at just a few lies that the world should have immediately seen through but instead were accepted as factual:
1. The Ghost of Kiev story was preposterous but nevertheless rolled through Western media with nary a doubt expressed.
2. Same with the dead, defiant heroes of Snake Island whose families were given medals at a highly publicized ceremony, only to receive medals themselves as living heroes when the Russians returned them about a month after their surrender.
3. And the most preposterous lie of all….. the claim that Russia blew up its own gas pipelines. Absolutely nothing about that lie made any sense but yet the Western media wrote as if it was a real possibility.
It certainly is worrisome to realize that I live in a country that has so many gullible people who are easy marks for a government eager to deceive their constituents to maintain their control and power.
• Agree: Miro23
"If India commit"
Of course. It's the population – not the standard of living.
It's dollars & cents – sales.
You couldn't give away a 19″ portable TV these days yet 60 years ago in the most developed part of the world they were flying off the shelves. A house with two shithouses was well worth a new mortgage – even if your car had a rust line up to the door handles. A family of 7 needs two shithouses. Dinner and that susequent iliocolic reflex which will wait for nobody?
You have to make & sell zillions of computer boards to just 100 transistor radios to even keep the lights on. Old Econ 101 stuff.
The West is "there" already. No place else to go.
Telimektar says:
@Doug Ryler
They'll manage, they always did it, they'll switch side and profit like they always did. Jews had a community in China for a very long time, the Japanese helped them to have a stronger grip and presence there, they also helped Mao just to be sure, they always support and fund both/all sides, once the (((Western World))) is gone they'll find other hosts (even Iran is scared shitlesss to name their role in history).
You forgot the 'Russia killed the Nazis from Mariupol just as they were singing', lie, and THOUSANDS of others. While Satan is the Father of Lies, his Ukronazi and Western minions have outdone even their diabolical father during this fiasco.
@Brian Damage
Western racists (pardon the redundancy)hate China for the usual reasons-deranged delusions of racial and cultural supremacy, pathopsychologies of death worship and the glorification of dominance, pillage and destruction etc, that have made the Western world a curse on humanity, including themselves, for five hundred years.
But worse is that China has so COMPREHENSIVELY outdone the decaying West in EVERY way. The magic White skins don't work with victims as strong and far more productive than yourselves. China is NOT some 'shitty little country' to be '..thrown against the wall every few years.', to slake Western blood-lust. And THAT realisation has driven Western 'elites' raving mad with genocidal vengefulness. Even worse, they seem actually to believe the filthy lies that they invent to slander China.
• Replies: @Pop Warner
, @Anonymou
Parand says:
After the invasion of Persia (Iran) by Arab in 7th century, the Persian culture and language continue to live, even greatly influenced the Arab administration, culture and language. The influence of Persian continued until 1000 AD. The Arabs adopted the pattern of the Sassanians for the administration of their state. Edward Browne theBritish Iranologist said:
[Politically, it is true Persia ceased for a while to enjoy a separate national existence, but in the intellectual domain she began to assert the supremacy to which the ability and subtlety of her people entitled her.(Browne,2002)
]The Arabo-Islamic historian Khaldun (1332-1406 AD) is ranked among the best in history
bn Khaldun has tabulated the mighty legacy of the Iranians in Islamo-Arabian civilization in his text, the Muqaddimah. Regarding the Iranian legacy in Islamo-Arabian civilization, Ibn Khaldun declares that:
"…It is a remarkable fact that, with few exceptions, most Muslim scholars…in the intellectual sciences have been non-Arabs…thus the founders of grammar were Sibawaih and after him, al-Farisi and Az-Zajjaj. All of them were of Persian descent…they invented rules of (Arabic) grammar…great jurists were Persians… only the Persians engaged in the task of preserving knowledge and writing systematic scholarly works. Thus the truth of the statement of the prophet becomes apparent, 'If learning were suspended in the highest parts of heaven the Persians would attain it"…The intellectual sciences were also the preserve of the Persians, left alone by the Arabs, who did not cultivate them…as was the case with all crafts…This situation continued in the cities as long as the Persians and Persian countries, Iraq, Khorasan and Transoxiana (modern Central Asia), retained their sedentary culture."
The Influence of Persian Culture on Arabic Culture – prof Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila
@Thomas Faber
The biosphere is already breaking. A sixth mass extinction event is underway. A climate forcing of greenhouse gases of a magnitude and rapidity not seen for at least fifty-five million y years is accelerating, with an 'hot-house Earth' catastrophe unfolding. Pollution of every imaginable type is ubiquitous and worsening. The Earth system WILL break, then repair itself over millions of years, without the pestilent infestation that drove it to ruin any longer extant. Just how the little metastases manage to close their eyes to reality will be one for alien investigators to ponder in the future.
, @SteveK9
Great influence of Persian music on other music including Indian.
The Indian singing styles including Qavali, Ghazal, Tarana and so on are all rooted in Persian music.
Classical Persian musical instruments
A great classical Persian singer, PARISA, who uses classical Persian poetry in her song
Give China time, and eventually those worker bees (gowned and masked and wearing dissection scope lenses) that put together those intricate circuit boards will eventually be replaced by clerks in China, just like in the West these days – and they wait for the day. The stuff actually being built will then come from Bihar state or Madagascar.
Ever see masonry on a new suburban house anymore? "Brick to the peak… what the hell is that?" they ask? Any old woman can screw Masonite boards to a pre-fab frame. Bricklaying is something entirely different. A lost art north of Ciudad Juarez. ( The modern dago – American sells plastic replacement windows and Pergo at Home Depot and his wife works coding – at home, if he insists on some semblance of a dinner cooked from scratch). Modern 'murican "skilled trades."
Pop Warner says:
This comment really hammers home how much of this site – especially Pepe Escobar readers – are driven by little more than racial resentment. It's always the faraway white devil who is the cause of humanity's suffering. We have this 3rd worldist victim mentality in the US too, and it get pathetic to listen to. Especially when Western leaders parrot the same white-hating nonsense and exaltation of victimhood.
• Replies: @Brian Damage
The magic White skins don't work with victims as strong and far more productive than yourselves.
That is why they "annexed victimhood". Wokeness is the answer. Just pushed aside true historical grievances and use the same M.O. to spearhead gender identity, feminism..etc… The need to claim moral superiority has come to a point where they are scraping the bottom of the barrel. Pretty sad. Previously, it was the "ingenuity" and the "rule of law" by Anglos that "emancipated" the "non-Whites".
Just another " BRIC " in the wall, lol. 😄
Wake me when Escobar has anything worthwhile to say. A broken clock is at least right twice a day, which is two times more than Escobar.
I know some people think CO2 is a problem, Mumblebrain. I am not convinced, though. The climate has always been changing. And it is not something I worry about – certainly, human organisation is more fragile than the biosphere, by orders of magnitude. Perhaps you prefer rat soup? 😉
Joking aside, I agree with you that we would do well to take better care of our environment, including by taking care not to pollute and destroy various ecosystems. But I am certain that it will be a problem for humans before it becomes a problem for life on Earth itself.
@Pop Warner
Actually, the historical victimhood was from the Africans, South Americans…etc East Asians other than the few Anglo pets, never succumbed to counting on victimhood. That's why they are doing so freaking good. It is so pathetic to see these Anglos acting all so superior for a couple of centuries lowering themselves down to African-victimhood. Sad and pathetic.
Kratoklastes says:
One book that is a decent effort is "Why The West Rules – For Now" by Ian Morris.
I was given that book as a gift the year it was published (2010), and actually read the bloody thing on paper like some sort of caveman.
I've since acquired e-book versions so that I can more easily make notes and what-not.
Well, that's my excuse… the actual reason is so that I can read it in a font size more suited to my shitful eyesight – plus, not having to hold a 750-odd page paperback open while reading in bed (instead, reading on the TV at the end of my bed, using a trackball mouse for navigation).
There's no audiobook – unlike "Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East" by James Barr – the Audible version is narrated by Peter Noble, who does a terrific job. I was tempted to say that Noble is to Barr's work what Jonathan Cecil is to Wodehouse… but that would be well outside of the big, broad, flexible outlook, old egg.
Nabatea.
Probably the most important trading bloc in the world at the time, which is why places like (Petra and its environs) are so breathtaking.
When Nabatea was at its peak (2ndC BCE-~100CE), the inhabitants of Pretannia and Germania were illiterate barbarians who could not into agriculture or writing, and who failed to understand the blessings being visited on them by the US of the day (i.e., the Roman Empire)… who wanted nothing more than to help the barbarians develop.
(That's the analogy to the US State Department/Peter Zeihan view of post-WWII US hegemony… where US Navy force-projection was driven not by a desire to intimidate everyone – especially China since 1972 – but rather was a gigantic act of altruism to protect global shipping lanes. Kipling's "White Man's Burden", but with CBGs instead of redcoats.)
Seriously though. If you haven't heard of Nabatea and you're an adult, you probably don't have any genuine interest in Arabia or the Arabs – which is perfectly OK.
The "Fall of Civilisations" channel on YouTube did a reasonably informative job in its video entitled "15. The Nabataeans – The Final Days Of Petra". It's 2 hours long, but it's not bad as a potted history.
• Thanks: Justrambling, littlereddot
Bill Jones says:
I think the Tribe's modus operandi is gonna hit a wall.
I can't see "Fellow Yellow People." going down too well.
A B Coreopsis says:
A thoughtful and defensible course of action. Public display of wild beasts always draws crowds.
A perfect example of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing". From "I twice worked for an aged corporation" to "I'm an authority on world civilization, past, present and future". Dunning Kruger strikes again.
jef says:
As long as the "new world order" that Pepe keeps outlining continues to allow capital to do what capital does, i.e. force its way into any and all streams of revenue skimming off a substantial cut for the owners while they sleep, nothing has to change, no nukes needed.
Sure the 99% in the west will continue to suffer great loss and death but the owners don't give a rat's patootie about them anyway, never have, never will.
If this new multipolar world makes moves to restrict capital flows of the current owners in all the new infrastructure and resource production then it will be gloves off, knives out, every possible response is on the table.
It is in the realm of banking/finance that the great game is now being played and make no mistake it is for all the marbles.
SteveK9 says:
I thought at first this was some kind of joke, of the Babylon Bee variety.
Jamali says:
January 8, 2023 at 3:09 am GMT • 1,100 Words
[.. part of the 25-year deal signed between Beijing and Tehran and the definitive demise of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – or Iran nuclear deal – which will translate into no European investment in the Iranian economy.]
Mr. Escobar, you are right. JCPOA was a FRAUD designed to weaken Iran using FAKE 'negotiation' and JCPOA never intended to lift the illegal sanctions, but to destroy Iran from within. JCOPA like MINSK agreement never intended to honor the agreement. Former German Chancellor Merkel admits the Minsk agreement was merely to buy time for Ukraine's arms build-up ready for the WAR.
The United States and its Western partners use economic terrorism as an important tool to weaken or bring their competitors to their knees.
In this regard, the targeted countries are finding new business and economic partners strengthening economic ties with close partners, thus these sanctions made Iran and Russia to come together to strike a strategic cooperation to fight back. 'The Foreign Policy' wrote: Iran and Russia are closer than ever. They have put up a strong front against Western powers for decades, although the relationship historically has been characterized as mistrust, The war in Ukraine have changed everything, forcing Moscow to accept Iran as one of its foreign partners in order to get the equipment needs from Tehran and find a lifeline for its sanctioned economy.
'The National Interest' also made the claim that the purchase of Sukhoi-35 aircraft by Iran is more dangerous than you people think, and wrote: The purchase of Sukhoi-35 is not only a simple defense deal, but also a sign of the depth of strategic cooperation between Tehran and Moscow.
Also, Forbes military magazine wrote: Iran, after delivering 24 Russian-made Sukhoi 35 aircraft, plans to build its remaining needs (probably up to 60 aircraft) inside Iran with the cooperation of Russia. Buying this number of fighter jets, and receiving the technology to make it inside Iran is a great victory for Iran. On the other hand, these strategic cooperations are not only in the field of defense and military, and after the signing of the Eurasian Economic Zone Agreement and the launch of the North-South Corridor, which brought the trade relations between Iran and Russia into a new level. Iran and Russia, where have been increasingly moving towards a strategic alliance in recent years, are seeking to create a new water-rail route with the aim of bypassing Western sanctions for their exports.
The $25 billion trade project between Iran and Russia is proof of the failure of the Western sanctions. In this regard, Bloomberg wrote: Russia and Iran are building an intercontinental trade route with billions of dollars of new investment that will stretch from the eastern edge of Europe to the Indian Ocean, a 1,860-mile passage, that is beyond the reach of any foreign interference. The two countries are spending billions of dollars to speed up the transportation of cargo along the rivers and railways connected to the Caspian Sea. The Bloomberg also stated that under the severe pressure of sanctions, Russia and Iran are turning not only towards each other but also leaning towards the East. According to data of the Bloomberg news agency, this route starts from the Sea of ​​Azov (the northern part of the Black Sea), including the main port of Mariupol in Ukraine and the mouth of the Don River, and by crossing the Caspian Sea, it extends to the Persian Gulf and finally ends in the Indian Ocean. This rail-water route that crosses the rivers and railways of the two countries shows how the two countries are trying to use all their capabilities against their enemies and the pressure that West exert.
Ship tracking data collected by Bloomberg shows that dozens of Russian and Iranian ships, including those subject to sanctions, are using this route. It is said that about 25 billion dollars will be invested to increase the volume of trade in this rail and water corridor. The new route is a continuation of the North-South corridor, and parts of this trade route overlap with the previous corridor, and therefore many of its infrastructures are ready, and the two countries will not have much difficulty in building this corridor.
With the signing of new contracts and the launch of rail and water corridors, it is expected that the level of trade between the two countries will reach more than 5 billion dollars in the near future. Even according to the agreements recently signed in Tehran by the authorities of the two countries, a ceiling of 40 billion dollars has been considered for bilateral interactions in the future.
Due to hijacked US foreign policy on Iran, by the Jewish mafia where design and implement many illegal sanctions against Iran using Iran LEGAL nuclear program to destroy Iranian economy in order to extract more sanctions to weaken Iran, then Iran had to seek different path to develop its economy. Israel has weaken the United States exerting too much influence on US foreign policy. The sanction regime weaken US economy. The same criminal TRIBE is responsible for the assassination of General Soleimani who defeated ISIS. It is the time American people rise and cut the influence of the Jewish mafia on US policy and put the mafia in its proper place. The United States, is worried about any agreement between Iran and Russia and considers it a threat to it's interest, is trying to prevent the realization of these plans. Biden should be waken up to force the Tribe out to bring the foreign policy under control and seeks Americans' interest not Israel's interest.
Robert Malley, the US representative for Iran affairs, said: "This is an extremely harmful and reckless decision that they have made. It's important to draw attention to it to show the world that they can't hide anything from us."
James O'Brien, the top U.S. sanctions official, said after the new sanctions were announced last week targeting Russian railroad executives: "This is an area that we are watching very carefully, both these issues and the relationship between Iran and Russia in general." . "We are concerned about any attempt to help Russia circumvent sanctions."
It is interesting to note that the developments of the last few months showed that the more the Western pressures against Russia and Iran increases, the more the will of these two countries to increase their cooperation against the Western pressures.
• Thanks: Justrambling, Ann Nonny Mouse
• Replies: @Johnny Rico
Liosnagcat says:
Does no one allow for the possibility that the "usual suspects" have a controlling interest in China?
, @Thomas Faber
@Kratoklastes
-There's no audiobook-
My friend – there IS audiobook narrated by Anthony Ferguson.
IMHO – no offense meant – dem damn Brits, although being ultra-clever and super-smart, speak English with horrible accent. But when audiobook is good after 1/2 hour of listening one stops noticing and concentrates on the content.
The biggest abomination I ever listened to (half-thru) was "The History of the American People" by Paul Johnson read by Nadya May. I not an enemy of women. Sometimes I am their best friend – but come on…
• Replies: @Kratoklastes
@A B Coreopsis
-wild beasts-
Neocons don't deserve that title. Dementia Joe ? Mike Pence so crooked that if he swallows the nail he will shit the corkscrew ? Rabid Senator Chuck Schumer (All American 😁 ) ? Triple chinned pudgy Senator Lindsey Graham who wants to assassinate Vlad (mind you – from the safety of his home and not by going to Moscow and doing it himself) ? Fragile cunt Ursula von DER f..ng Leyen ? All NATO Ministers of Defense – fat ugly harebrained women ?
Bunch of pathetic disgusting f…cks.
At least Marc Crassus was captured on the battlefield. There is a painting in Louvre "The Torture of Marc Crassus" dated 1508.
Molten gold down the throat of Marc Crassus
Urine shower for caged Neocons.
America will wind up with only one "true" ally – Israel. And just watch Israel, after having ruined America, will try to move on to become "buddies" with China.
Doesn't look like Israeli Government is betting the farm on the USA. One thing is certain, Israel is committed to Jews and their future in Israel. Perhaps G20 members can begin to think for themselves (Multi-Polar):
https://www.silkroadbriefing.com/news/2022/04/21/israel-adds-chinese-rmb-yuan-to-its-central-bank-holdings-reduces-us-dollar-and-euro-assets/
Saba says:
There is a brutal war in Yemen since 2015 and no one in the West is talking about it. But, everyone in the West is talking about Ukraine where Neocon waged the war. There is at least one post on this website about Ukraine and Russia every day. But nothing on Yemen. Thousands of children have been killed and thousands more are dying of hunger. Biden regime hide the war in Yemen selling billions of dollars of weapons to butcher MBS to keep him satisfy so MBS can serve the Israelis' interests in the region. Biden and the West are cashing in billions of dollars from the butcher MBS and UAE selling them WMD to kill the children of Yemen and destroy their country . Many western countries including Sweden, France, Britain are selling arms to bring CASH in and to support their zionist servant, butcher MBS with no shame.
The Lebanese newspaper, 'Al-Akhbar' analyzed the latest crisis in Yemen on Saturday and wrote: While Yemen is still in a state of neither peace nor war, the National Salvation Government of Yemen has recently announced that It does not accept this situation and will not allow to continue.
There was a large Yemeni march against the aggressors, Saudi Arabia. "We are waiting for the return of war at any time and we are ready for it," These statements and marches were warning messages to Saudi aggressor coalition. In the same context, relevant sources in Sana'a in a conversation with Al-Akhbar stated that "if this time a satisfactory response is not given to the "humanitarian demands" from the aggressor Saudi coalition) the situation will escalate. In the end, Al-Akhbar wrote: In the meantime, America should not be ignored, as an influential factor on Saudi Arabia, it creates an obstacle, because the administration of President Joe Biden is trying with all its might to maintain the state of neither war nor peace, because He benefits from this situation. If MbS doesn't change course, all his dreams will go up in flames. Yemen is much stronger today that it was a few months ago.
In the end, Al-Akhbar wrote: In the meantime, America should not be ignored as an influential factor on Saudi Arabia, because the US President Joe Biden's government is trying to maintain the state of neither war nor peace, because he benefits from this situation.
Seyed Mohammad Marandi
If MbS doesn't change course, all his dreams will go up in flames. Yemen is much stronger today that it was a few months ago.
Mass rallies in Yemen demand an end to the Saudi-imposed siege on country@Ymawryy reports from Yemen. pic.twitter.com/Q4uDuFWlah
— Highlights (@highlightsnews1) January 7, 2023
• Thanks: Ann Nonny Mouse
showmethereal says:
Well yeah now its the menacing commies…. but before it was "Fu Manchu" or Ming from Flash Gordon or Dr. No from 007…. The Chinese menace changes outfits by the decade.
@Nick Kollerstrom
Good point… Well materially we see what is happening. Xi just went to Saudi Arabia to much fanfare… And then just in the past few days a major development for Iran is now China has begun to ship directly to its Chahabar port (which India was supposed to develop…). Saving time and money in the Iranian trade. So materially the answer is already "yes"…
https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/480298/China-launches-direct-shipping-line-to-Iran-s-Chabahar-port
Epoch Times is run by Falun Gong religious cult and the NED…. Don't take anything it says about China at full value.
That's the port for Santiago de Chile. Here's another time-travel vid (Barcelona):
Hands up anyone who has writing on their clothes.
Not me. I reckon it's the first sign of madness.
You musta forgot about Skripal and Novichok. Why shoot the bad guy when you can deliver enough poison to kill 100,000 people? British propaganda at its dumbest.
Thanks for pointing out the existence of the audiobook; I had only searched on Audible, and that was a long time ago. [My preferred torrent/magnet site] tells me that two versions were uploaded in 2017, but there are currently no seeds for either torrent, which is annoying.
I struggle to listen to audiobooks where the narrator is a woman. Nothing against them – The Lovely is a woman – but I can't imagine a woman doing justice to the sorts of books I listen to (non-fiction, but also some sci-fi – Peter Watts, William Hertling etc – and of course Wodehouse and Douglas Adams).
I listened to Hertling's "Kill Process" – in which the protagonist is female and so is the narrator – but found it the least believable of his books.
Still, it was 50,000× better than Neil Stephenson's "Fall: or Dodge in Hell", which was worse than the holocaust. It wouldn't matter who read it: it's dreck.
The history of European aggression, imperialism, colonisation, and neo-imperialism through the Washington Consensus enforced by the IMF, WTO, World Bank etc, is IRREFUTABLE. The West is rich because it stole the wealth of the rest of humanity and the natural world. And arrogant racists like you revel in that larceny.
Climate change, as you observe, is constant, but the rate and degree of change drives mass extinctions, including of humanity. At present the rate and degree of climate destabilisation is greater, by at least one order of magnitude, than at any other time in the last 55 million years. Life on Earth will be devastated as never before, particularly when all the nuke power-plants melt-down, but after a few million years of recuperation, things should be thriving again.
• LOL: Tom Welsh
@Liosnagcat
Only deranged, paranoid, Judeophobic morons who have NO understanding of China.
Anonymou says:
Look, dumbass. Here's the message in a sentence:
Almost everybody, West included and except for a very few regions, is about to lose industrialization.
Why you should think that this is a message of Western superiority is a mystery to me, unless you think that everything is a claim to Western superiority.
@HbutnotG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age
Also please note that "Women locked in the house with their mouths taped shut" was standard in classical Greece – except for Sparta, where women had equal rights and exercised naked with the men.
Yah – it's possible, though I have seen no clear-clear evidence.
What speaks for it is: China is not against the UN, which is a creation of the usual suspects. China believes in the CO2-"consensus", without mentioning the unscientific travesty of this "consensus". China has not been using Ivermectin and HCQ on a mass scale to fight Covid, instead preferring to hew to the "scientific consensus" of the West. Communism/Marxism is a jew-mafia creation. Communist Jews were active in China before and during the revolution. American/Western industry and production was moved to China, on a massive scale some 20-30 years ago.
It's possible that Chinese patriots of sorts have taken over the ball, and are rolling with it. It's also possible that various Chinese officials have been "helped" to power, and are controlled through various blackmail schemes. Or perhaps a mixture of the two. Hard to say.
Two points:
Even if it is correct about that rate of change, 55 million years is a small fraction of the Earths age – and therefore this is not in itself a convincing proof of human-activity-CO2 being the cause.
Nuke meltdowns seem somewhat overrated. The area around Chernobyl, which melted down some 40 years ago, is now teeming with wildlife and plants – largely unaffected by what radiation there is. See: https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/how-chernobyl-has-become-unexpected-haven-wildlife
Life is resilient and hardy, Mumblebrain. More so than we may think. It has, after all, evolved under extremely adverse conditions.
John1955 says: • Website
The book I originally I had in mind is "East-West Dichotomy" by German philosopher Thorsten Padberg:
Also I noticed strange thing. 4 years ago I archived "East-West Dichotomy" Wiki article. It was like mini-book, with maps, pictures, diagrams…
Current Wiki article has none of that and lost 90% of text.
Mr Padberg's book is not mentioned either.
@Anonymou
Why you should think that this is a message of Western superiority is a mystery to me,
Because in that message, everything that was non western was derided. They were portrayed as dependent and inferior to the west. I suggest you go read the originating message again.
Since man can affect the climate, presumably he can also act to correct this climate change. Many here claim the US is using weather warfare to give Europe a warm winter and the US a very cold one, with weather disasters killing people from New York to California. So, if this is true, the same type of weather modification could be used for peaceful purposes to counter the global warming and climate change you're so hysterical about.
Padberg is active on http://www.thesaker.is. He has written a lot about censorship on things pertaining to China, and of his own work in particular (it's mainly what he writes about, it seems).
I recommend that you save webpages you want to keep onto your computer.
Satya says:
FAKE NEWS, FAKE NEWS, FAKE NEWS, FAKE NEWS, FAKE NEWS, FAKE NEWS
The Jewish mafia and its members, Mark Dubowitz from FDD, a terrorist foundation where is responsible for ASSASSINATION of General Qassem Soleimani, are using mafia's influence on US foreign policy pressuring Biden to stage a military attack on Iran, like this tribe forced Trump to ASSASSINATE General Soleimani for the interest of Jewish mafia with NO price to Israel. This is the time to topple the Mafia down.
The Mafia is angry since their staged PROTEST in Iran did not lead to a favorable result, and some of their agents in Iran and abroad were identified and killed, now they are making FAKE news to challenge the Iranian government. German officials are nothing but stooges of zionism. The Jewish mafia terrorist members will use their pawns, the Kurdish terrorist groups, to stage false flag operation anywhere including Germany to accuse Iran.
Mark Dubowitz Retweeted
Iran International English
@IranIntl_En 4h
{{A 32-year-old Iranian man has been arrested in Germany on suspicion of planning an attack with deadly chemicals, officials said Sunday. The man is suspected to have planned a serious attack motivated by Islamic extremism, for which he had obtained potent toxins cyanide and ricin.}}
Shame on you Dubowitz. Iranian soldiers were attacked by German and US provided chemical weapon to Saddam, but the Iranian government refused to reciprocate chemical attack to her enemy. soldiers. Why should Iranian government do it now? Liar, liar, liar.
Arrest the mafia propagandists now.
You're right. The history of European conquest and success is irrefutable. The West is rich because the industrial revolution began there, not whatever communist 3rd worldist fantasy you have where everywhere except Europe was a prosperous, utopian society where manna fell from the skies and the rivers were as clear as a mountain spring. The colonies were more costly than they were profitable, Europe would have been better off leaving them in the dust while they reached new heights. Whining and crying about being a poor oppressed victim of ebil whitey doesn't change the truth. You will always be in the shadow of Europe, and the sooner you can accept that fact the less pitiful you'll be.
, @unzrocks
Alternate History says:
Thank you, Mr. Escobar for making a complex dance into an understandable two-step.
He has his own website pattberg.org
It is fun to watch how INVISIBLE HAND nurtures or kills Wiki articles. While "East West Dichotomy" shrunk to the point of invisibility "Miscegenation" had all hard science facts and historical references removed yet ballooned 20-fold nonetheless.
Let's miscegenate !!! Yay !!! Let's do it right now !!!
Thanks but no thanks.
I kept all newspaper articles about one particularly sad case of Miscegenation with fatal (literally !) consequences.
250lbs Great Dane O.J. Simpson miscegenated with 0.5lbs Teacup Poodle Nicole Brown Simpson.
European colonization happened because of all the depleted resources in Europe… and the wars and the famines and the plagues. You think those expeditions happened because they were bored??? NO! They wanted resources. And now they are getting out-maneuvered for resources…. Which is what this story is about… Others are doing it without colonizing.
• Agree: Brian Damage
• Replies: @Commentator Mike
The Chinese population is as you say it is, smart and with a high level of culture. It is also highly competitive, and highly ingenious.
Further, the Chinese thorium project, if successful, would provide the energy source that industrial society everywhere on Earth needs to tide it over the next century or so. This project seems to be a fairly straightforward extension of nuclear engineering, the remaining problem apparently being corrosiveness of the thorium solvent. Of course, in engineering there is always the unforeseen problem.
There are several reasons to think that Chinese will not retain industrial society. Many of these reasons also pertain to the United States and the West.
First, innovation is not left to the innovators. The Chinese Thorium Project (let's call it) is government funded, and was approved by government. The approval was most likely due to US work on thorium reactors in the 1940s, which was abandoned because the US Federal Government needed plutonium and the thorium reactors generate no plutonium. It would thus have seemed low risk to a government committee, and for once the committee may be correct.
In general, however, dependence on group approval for innovation gives wrong answers. (See: _The Innovator's Dilemma_, _Parkinson's Law_, https://www.thoughtco.com/the-seven-voyages-of-the-treasure-fleet-195215 ). The Chinese water transfer projects appear to have failed so far, and are enmeshing China in conflict with India as China tries to take the headwaters of the Ganges for use in China.
Second: Chinese society does not favor innovators.
a) Historically, the innovation has been taken over by government and often declared a secret. Because it is a secret, no other innovators can build on the secret innovation, and the original innovation is lost when the current dynasty fails.
b) Individual Chinese are more interested in a stable career than on a risky innovation.
c) China has no philosophical / religious doctrine corresponding to Thomism. Legalism simply states that law is law, with no relation to abstractions. Confucianism lists duties and rituals, with no concept of "abstract truth". Taoism denies that reality can be usefully described:
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
Or, in common English: Reality is ineffable, so don't try to eff it.
That is, Chinese culture believes that the western sciences are either uninteresting or in some basic way false. Experimental science has no more prestige in China than catatonia. Much the same is true for the upper/upper middle classes in the US, of course, but that's a post-WW II development, not a foundation of the US culture.
That's where the Falun Gong citation comes from. China has not developed its manufacturing equipment, it has bought that equipment, and cannot replicate most of it. If China spends money to develop Western capabilities, the money will have no effect because its students will dutifully learn algorithms and acceptable essays, but will consider them to have no relation to their lives or physical reality.
And here is another example: https://www.businessinsider.com/china-has-finally-figured-out-how-to-make-ballpoint-pens-2017-1?op=1
Much the same is true for the rest of the Non-Western world. The Greek philosophers invented the idea of abstract truth, and only Greek descended cultures believe in abstract truth. Everyone else believe in mystical truth or political truth or social truth. The Jewish faith, in particular, is perhaps best thought of as a class action suit against the Jewish God, an attempt to emulate Jacob who "fought God and won". It also is uninterested in absolute truth, more in contract language.
So, what you can expect in most of the world is a gradual rejection of all but the most basic manufacturing as equipment wears out. Some parts of the West may continue to produce advanced machines, but that will depend, ultimately, on deep Christian faith and Thomist theology. It will not be at all common.
If you want a literary analogy, think of the relations between IX and the Empire in the Dune series.
@showmethereal
Others are doing it without colonizing.
Immigration is colonisation. And probably worse, as most of the White colonists left, or were expelled from, the colonies but it is questionable if the immigrants will ever leave, and they are in fact adding to their numbers daily, both by procreation in their colonies (countries of settlement) and by bringing in new immigrants.
Otherwise, I agree with the first part of your comment.
Hulkamania says:
These white American conservatives in the future will be living in cardboard boxes with their mulatto grandchildren talking about how the Chinese can't innovate because they're insects who don't understand capitalism. Pay these low IQ retards no mind.
I think, between Taoism and Confucianism, it is a solid philosophical foundation – if properly understood. Taoism, in particular, I hold in high esteem – I consider it a workable and highly advanced spiritual system. And the Chinese seem very pragmatic to me. I am not convinced that you are correct in asserting that they cannot maintain the technology they now have – it seems that they are developing it further, even.
I think, if they will have trouble, it will be because they cannot keep the power base sufficiently coherent. Maintaining high levels of industry requires large societies, and large populations. Whether the political situation will be stable enough is the deciding factor, is my guess.
We shall see, perhaps.
Chinese society does not favor innovators.
What would happen if the Chinese government declares "innovation is glorious" and puts national emphasis on it?
Decades before, China shifted its national direction and declared "to get rich is glorious". The result is 30 years of astounding economic growth.
China is no stranger to innovation. It can reclaim if it considers it important enough.
Or, in common English: Reality is ineffable, so don't try to eff it..
I would translate it slightly differently: The ultimate cannot be confined, so do not try to define it.
Just as trying to define China would not be helpful to it. Allow it to flower.
• Agree: showmethereal
unzrocks says:
Wrong. That's not the whole story. Did you sleep through history class?
1) China historically has lead the world for the past 5000 years (they practically invented civilization)
2) The Portuguese was the first great global shipping empire (they sailed around Africa, up through India and all the way to Macau in China) staying close to the shoreline in order to chart a sea route to trade with China 500 years ago. This is the beginning of European capitalism.
3) This lead their major rival the Spanish crown to hire an Italian named Christopher Columbus who was living in Spain at the time to find a shorter, more direct route to China (which he did by sailing out west into the open seas at a time when everyone thought the planet earth was flat, that the sun moved around the earth and the earth was the center of the universe, that you will fall off a cliff and die if you sail too far from shore). No one knew what gravity at the time until many years later when a genius by the name of Isaac Newton discovered the theory of gravity during the Scientific Revolution of the 16th century (which was the most important and miraculous revolution in the history of planet earth)
4) When Columbus reached land in the Caribbeans, he thought he landed in India which was why he called the natives Indians initially
5) At this moment in time, the Europeans were at roughly the same level as the Chinese and East Asians (not much difference in wealth and resources and living standards)
6) With the Portuguese and Spanish spear-heading the great exploration and discovery of the new world from Mexico all the way down to Argentina (why do you think they speak Portuguese in Brazil and Spanish every where else?)
7) The British, French, Dutch, Belgium then joined in the age of exploration and colonization and conquest (with the British and French and Dutch mostly dividing up North America), as well as taking a big chunk of Africa, the Middle East, Asia, etc.
8) This in turn spear-headed the great Western European breakthrough of the 16th century that ushered in the modern world (the Scientific Revolution which launched critical thinking, research and development, and spurred entire new fields of modern science). It was this breakthrough that also created the capitalist racism (white supremacy due to modern science and new discoveries)
9) During this stage of development, it was colonization and exploitation of the rest of the world through slavery and brute force (guns and bullets and germs) that helped the Europeans to get wealthy
10) The Industrial Revolution only started in London in the 18th century (200 years after the Scientific Revolution) but it was the Industrial Revolution that enabled England to become the largest Empire in history (larger than the Mongol empire 800+ years ago). The Industrial Revolution enabled the wealth creation and consumption of the middle class. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, there wasn't much of a middle class at all. Most people were peasant farmers and fishermen.
The thing about the modern world though, is that it's almost darn impossible for someone decades or centuries behind to catch up. Hi-tech / modern technology moves at lighting speed and if you are five years behind, that is like a lifetime and you will struggle to play catch up. Modern science means the rich get richer and the poor get poorer because the poor are left behind and cannot compete / catch up to the top monopolist dogs.
For example, do you think you can sell your house, use that money to start your own company to create a new operating system that will put Microsoft (windows server and desktop), Apple (IOS) and Google (Android) out of business? Good luck with that since your chance of success is near zero percent. Even Linux and other Unix variants (billion dollar operating system that wizard programmers have contributed for decades) cannot compete and is simply a niche market at best.
The third world are poor because they are way behind in the technology curve and anything they invent or create are years behind the best of the best so they can't compete and go out of business. It's a dog eat dog world.
@Commentator Mike
I would say that the difference between colonisation and immigration is whether the newcomers have political power or not.
Plenty of white immigrants coming to my country. They set up their own enclaves/neighbourhoods, eat at their own restaurants, celebrate their own holidays (halloween…Oh my!).
But I wouldn't call them colonisers (today), they keep pretty much to themselves and don't try to take over the government.
In the UK the immigrants have political power right to the top: PM is an Indian, London Mayor is a Pakistani. It all starts with shops and restaurants, but what many neglect is that many of these small businesses are just fronts for criminal and money laundering operations, and the criminal profits are used not only to expand businesses but also to fund politicians from the local level right up to the top. Often the immigrant criminals double up as businessmen and, make that triple up, as politicians. Now you can say that the indigenous White businessmen and politicians are also criminals, engaging in similar operations, and probably you wouldn't be too wrong in such an observation.
Yes, of course too much immigration would lead to political power. But for it to reach such a stage, it would mean either a
real INTENTION by the host country to allow such immigration,
or a NEGLECT by the host country resulting in such immigration.
Either way, sure the immigrants bear some of the blame for congregating in a host country, but I feel the larger share of responsibility must go to the host country itself.
I give an analogy. Supposing a person is kind hearted (I have the highest regard for such souls) and he gives generously to all he meets. Over time, greedy grasping people will start to notice and make a bee line for this kind hearted person, eventually bankrupting him.
Now, who bears the greater blame?
The greedy graspers? The world will always have an abundance of these.
Or the kind hearted but naive person? ….Who lacked the wisdom to take care of his purse?
I take no pleasure in seeing the kind hearted person being preyed upon, but it is something that he had to go through in order to learn his lesson and be wiser.
Why do I say "he had" to go through such pain? Because if the kind hearted person's friend had tried to advise him otherwise, the friend would have been rebuffed as a "cynical and stingy bloke".
Unfortunately in our times, most people only learn through pain.
Now all I have discussed appears all moralistic and almost primitive in its simplicity. But there is some truth to the fact that many, if not the majority of Brits (Westerners in general) actually feel the same way as the "kind hearted" person.
From the perspective of an outsider, there is a certain naivete in the intellectual state of the Western man-in-the-street. I have my own speculations why this is so, but I will leave it for another day.
You are going to have to be more specific than that. I describe reality as far as I can make it out; if you want denigration, go elsewhere.
In Left jargon, you're being Eurocentric (or "Western-centric"). Describing cultural diffusion is not denigration. The conquest and disintegrations are not Western denigration — the conquered and disintegrated countries themselves won't shut up about them. The importation or refusal to import the Western experimental science is also well documented.
Where you go wrong is trying to compare different cultures with a Western viewpoint.
Islamic, especially Sunni Islam, is quite proud of its adherence to Allah and rejection of "Western materialism". It always has been, even back when Islamic forces bought Hungarian cannot to batter down the walls of Constantinople. Western toys, in the Sunni view, are unimportant compared to Islam.
Hindus are quite proud of the realization that reality is an illusion.
Chinese are quite proud of the Chinese way of doing things, their devotion to ritual and the here and now rather than wasting their lives in "abstract thought about reality".
If you regard describing the consequences of that, loss of industrialization for example, as denigrating other cultures, you might try talking with radical environmentalists (REs) in your own culture. You will find yourself condemned as a murderer of nature, and the above cited cultures as praised as heroes who (by losing industrialization thanks to their basic values) will save the world. For the REs, losing industrialization is worthy of praise.
But let's ignore that for the time being. If "denigrating" cultures is bad, and if saying that other cultures reject industrialization is denigration, than why do you denigrate the West? If you are part of the West, you would be denigrating other societies that rejected an obvious good. If, then, you are not part of the West, and denigrating other societies is always wrong, why do yo denigrate the West?
I'm reminded of a Gilbert and Sullivan lyric:
"And there's that idiot who praises with enthusiastic tone,
every Century but this and every country but his own."
Your thought process goes all over the place. Nobody can follow you are saying. I suggest you make one point at a time.
A zionist terrorist, Roya Hakakian, from FDD, announced that:
Roya Hakakian
@Roya
United Arab Emirates says it will teach Holocaust in schools – The Washington Post
{{DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The United Arab Emirates will begin teaching about the Holocaust in history classes in primary and secondary schools across the country, the country's embassy in the United States said.
In the Holocaust, Nazi Germany systematically killed 6 million European Jews during World War II. Israel, founded in 1948 as a haven for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust, grants automatic citizenship to anyone of Jewish descent.}}
Fuck UAE who are serving the interest of the Jewish mafia in the region. Expose the lies of the zionists about the holohoax. FAKE history, Fake holocaust. Milking UAE by the Jewish mafia.
@unzrocks
This is one excellent summary. Thanks! I am going add come of my comments.
China was well respected by the West until the 19th century when the West blew past China in advancements. China's arrogance did it in. Japan was able to catch up in rather short amount of time and there is no reason China couldn't.
Yup. that's why there are so many Portuguese enclaves dotted around the coastlines of the world.
Europe was up and coming around that time. Wealth wise, China still controlled most of the world's GDP. Until perhaps the mid 19th century things turned around dramatically.
Brazil could be speaking Spanish if not for Napoleon pushing the Portuguese royalty out to Brazil and the monarchy with the support of Spain and other European countries ruled in Brazil until a military coup kicked out Pedro II late 19th century.
Very true. Also, the discovery of oil and later products made from oil derivatives had a major impact in the 20th century. Plastics, synthetic rubber, food preservatives, anesthetics..etc. Assembly line and mechanized productions took hold in early 20th century which made holding on to colonies not as profitable as before.
Most of Europe was traditionally a serf-lord system. It was until Western Europe became wealthy because of their colonial possessions that the middle class came about, this system was dismantled. Serfdomship was pushed to the colonial subjects and the previously low class serfs were put in school in order to be able to help manage the vast colony.
And China was locked out of sharing academic research data or contribute, collaborate in the scientific field. China did the right thing to reverse engineer technology to leapfrog decades of scientific advancements. Just like what the US did when it was behind the eight ball. Pretty much copied the British and then the Germans.
The third world are poor because they are way behind in the technology curve and anything they invent or create are years behind the best of the best so they can't compete and go out of business.
Unfortunately, the current high tech advancements, not many countries can compete even if they copy China's method of catching up. Even India, supposedly to be the next China (for the last 40 years) can't do it. Only East Asia (China, Korea, Japan) and Europeans can do it. So that's the world today and as it was for the last two thousand years. Romans and Hans.
• Replies: @unzrocks
Agree with all your additional comments as well.
• Thanks: Brian Damage
LOL!. He cherry pick events spanning from 2023 to 10,000BC to prove his points. That's why it is all over the place.
• Thanks: littlereddot
I'm not clear by what you mean by immigrants – and in which lands..
Hon, it was "standard" as long as men still had a heavy large ball sack and nobody critiquing their foreskinned dik.
We've come a long way baby!
Great overall comment. But to 8) the Scientific Method was harnessed the best by Western Europeans but they didn't actually originate it. It started in West Asia (aka middle east).
As to the last part – Microsoft and Google and Apple actually control the markets for operating systems through collusion. Many operating systems that are rated "better" than Microsoft simply don't become popular because of collusion in the tech industry. Most techies hate using Windows or Google Android. Though they like Apple's much better.
But brain power and discipline counts for a lot. North Korea with limited budget can create powerful weapons (asymmetrical ones)… and Cuba can develop its own medicines. They just don't have the capacity to do everything because of their size – and can't trade easily because of coercive embargoes
But again – overall great comment.
I asked for clarification in my other comment but I see you made it to someone else. Well I must disagree. Illegal immigration can be seen as that (many Mexicans cross the border into the U.S. say they are only reclaiming their ancestors territory). But legal migration can't be colonization. Legal migration are people who move to a country within the confines of said countries laws. Now if a country is a democracy and lets in many foreigners – well of course the foreigners will eventually get political power. But that's not colonization. That is working within the system. Witness the wealthy Gulf Arab states. Their native populations are far outnumbered by foreigners… But since they are not democracies the foreigners have zero political power and have to remain within the confines of the Gulf Arab states.
Colonizers are different. Colonization is something that happens by force and imposition.
The end result is what counts, not how it is achieved. Nobody asked the people of those countries if they wanted the immigrants, they were imposed on them by the governments. Old style colonialism wasn't illegal either as once a country was conquered the laws became those of the conquerors which allowed for further colonisation.
Yup. Cuba and North Korea proved that sanctions, embargoes and being poor are not obstacles to being able "to do things". There are so many countries without sanctions and embargoes that can't climb out of their own sh1th0l35. So many of them are blessed with over abundance of resources, arable land and huge working age population and still, they can't do it. IQ and delayed gratification counts.
Unfortunately, the current high tech advancements, not many countries can compete even if they copy China's method of catching up.
IMHO, it takes a confluence of hunger for development, national discipline, and a good leadership to make that happen.
There are some very interesting places I have my eye on. They seem to be on the right track….Rwanda (very surprising no?) and Iran are at the top of my list.
Iran, for sure. Rwanda is just doing things properly at the moment, so things are running the way they should be. I doubt Rwanda can even do low tech stuff let alone cutting edge tech. The most it can do is to mimic India. All show but no dough. Malaysia had decades of trying to getting into tech with billions invested to promote local tech. It can't even make a simple IC board that mom&pop Aliexpress stores are selling for $5 without having foreign companies coming in to show them how to do it. Rwanda if it play its cards right can be like Malaysia/India, importing tech components and assemble them into products for domestic use and call it a domestic tech success.
Even Vietnam has its limits. I predicted years ago, Vietnam is the perfect candidate to take over China's low cost manufacturing because the people are hard working and very smart but will hit a tech ceiling. So far only East Asians and Europeans (Iranians are Caucasians by the way) can break that ceiling.
• Thanks: littlereddot, showmethereal
January 10, 2023 at 9:16 am GMT • 1,400 Words
OK, I'd forgotten how specialized my method of analysis is, or how separate from the Western mainstream (although it is well established Western philosophy). Here's the argument in conversational English. I'm sure that I'll repeat things you know, but "I don't understand" is a very general complaint, so I can't be very specific in a reply of short length. And thanks for your moderate response.
There are enough points in my statement that splitting it into different posts would be unweildy. I've done the next best thing, though: I've numbered the elements of the argument. If you don't follow this post, please give the paragraph number or numbers where the argument become unclear or wrong, with some statement of how it is unclear or wrong.
SUMMMARY: You might think that industry is good and that I'm "denigrating" other societies that won't accept industrialization. Rejection of industrialization is well documented, even for the UK. I am not talking about "good" and "bad", I am talking about "will be" or "won't be".
1) My history really did happen:
The West did destabilize the rest of the world. The rest of the world remembers that, and is still angry over it (see Chinese propaganda re; "Century of humiliation", BLM propaganda, African "reparations" propaganda, Indian "reparations" propaganda, etc. Saying so is probably not denigration, since the destabilized ethnic groups say the same thing.
2) Most societies think of industrialization as "nice to have", and no more.
You think industrialization is more important than anything else, typical of Western Europeans and White Americans. The rest of the world regards other things as more important than industrialization. It is willing to buy capital goods from the West and do odd jobs for the West, but is not prepared to tolerate the intellectual substrate of industrial society. For an example at unz.com, consider: "https://www.unz.com/isteve/white-guy/#comment-5746906"
This is the attitude of almost the entire world: you study applications of Calculus to physical phenomena so that you can be a practicing engineer, they say "Would that those hours had been spent volunteering or participating in a community of the living," or "why did you not spend the time getting income for your family?" or "Your thoughts do not support our political program to protect (some group, including the politicians), so you are guilty of murder", or maybe just "You are in the wrong group; whatever you do is wrong". Abstract thought, "what is true no matter what people want to believe", is though of as an evil.
3) Industrialization requires the idea of "abstract truth", which most ethnicities reject.
You can make a case that the Greek philosophers invented the idea that abstract thought is valuable. For example, Greeks developed a logical system of geometrical theorems, compiled most famously by Euclid. Previous civilizations had not seen the need to go past the heuristics needed to settle boundary claims. Present civilizations, most of them, also see no need for abstract systems of thought.
4) Abstract systems of thought are necessary for industrialization. Understanding mechanical and structural engineering requires understanding the material in Calculus courses. Running a chemical plant requires understanding the material in Thermodynamics courses. A person from a society that regards abstract systems of thought as bad can learn to solve problems on tests (especially today's simplified test intended more for retention that teaching), but cannot relate them to the physical world. That is, they can pass tests, but cannot develop enough understanding to apply the principles that were supposedly taught in the course.
Abstract "truth" was an invention, and as human history goes it was a recent invention. It turned out to be highly adaptive for several Centuries, leading to Thomism [1], which eventually led to experimental science and mathematically based engineering (Galileo), which eventually led to Newtonian Physics, and then to present day quantum mechanics and General Relativity. That chain got the West through several cycles of industrialization, which you might loosely call: mechanical, chemical/electrical, microelectronics/materials science/software/electronics.
5) Sustained industrialization requires the primacy of "abstract truth". Note that industry changes. If it cannot change, it dies or stagnates from resource exhaustion. That death/stagnation is what faces the West today. Our science is essentially that of a past Century, the 1930s to be exact, and our engineering is, in terms of energy production, back in the 1800s steam era (still burning fossil fuel to generate mechanical motion [2]).
If a society is incapable of valuing abstract truth and the abstract thought that underlies abstract truth, then its industry stagnates and eventually dies.
EXAMPLES: This has happened in China several times: Imperial government takes results of an era of invention, makes it a state monopoly, forbids all competition, and then the dynasty goes and most of the inventions are lost. That's how China never did invent the coal fired mine pump that pulled England into the Industrial Revolution.
For that matter, England got caught in the Steam era of industrialization, while Imperial Germany under Bismark's guidance invented the chemical industry. The UK never did understand the chemical industry (until the 1930 or so you had to learn German and study in Germany to understand it), and that arguably caused the World Wars when the old Empire tried to crush the new empire. And note that there is no guarantee that industry can find a change that keeps it viable. China, for example, is trying to get its bureaucracy to find such a change. Bureaucracies freeze, they don't innovate, and China's attempt to have its own Chinese industry is doomed. It will develop instead a record of bureaucratic actions that show nobody is to blame.
Back before Xi became the new Emperor, innovation was assigned to the private sector, which succeeded only in becoming the West's workshop using capital goods from the West. Contrast that with Germany's challenge to the UK by inventing the chemical industry.
6) Is/Ought dichotomy ("is" is cut off from "ought to be").
My "is" and your "ought" are fundamentally different.
Is saying this a denigration of non-Western societies?
Abandoning industry just might be a good thing. Industry isn't as important as survival. Ask any environmentalist, or Biden, about shutting off fossil fuels.
Hume pointed out a long and bloody time ago that what "is" can be measured, but what "ought to be" cannot, and that you can't reason your way from one to the other [2]. Hegel generalized that to historical events. You can say that the Assyrian Empire was bad, but the Assyrians thought it was good, and there is no telling who was right. I'm sticking to "is" rather than "ought". Your "denigration" term is an "ought" term, you think that a country "ought" to have industry, so saying that it will not is a violation of an "ought". If the country involved disagrees with you, or refuses to do something necessary for industry (e.g. builds electric cars but not electric generating plants and transmission lines), there is no way to settle the disagreement between you and the country. An "is" argument between me and the country, however, would establish that the electric cars will see little use in the "electric cars" case above, and can be settled by observation and abstract thought. (in real life, the country simply switches to an "ought" argument and ignores the "is" argument. And then loses its car industry and much more besides).
7) From the standpoint of survival, the present West cannot survive lost of industry and "abstract truth". Other countries, even the Russian Federation, could limp along without it. If industry vanishes world wide (which it really might when globalization ends), the West might very well vanish but the rest of the world continue on as they have done throughout history. If that's "denigration", I don't see how it is.
8) If your objection is to the assertion that the non-West rejects of abstract truth, give me some reason to believe that other than your say-so. Try Internet searches for " 'religion name' absolute truth"
For books, start with:
Robert Reilly, _The Closing of the Muslim Mind_ (actually only about Sunni Islam).
Concerns how "The Incoherence of the Philosophers" came to dominate Sunni thinking, and how religious truth over came abstract truth.
Tom Holland, _In the Shadow of the Sword_.
Concerns how it is that the Hadiths can overrule the Koran in sharia, and how religious truth was established.
1] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Chinese_Stories/Calling_a_deer_a_horse
2] https://www.atlassociety.org/post/is-ought-dichotomy
, @antibeast
OK, guys, games over.
You do not want to understand, you want to prevail. Your tool for this is your own invincible ignorance, which ignorance will simply destroy you.
I suggest that you marry a tortoise, maybe one of the big ones from the Galapagos Islands to make the actual mating easier, so that your offspring will combine the physical protection of the tortoise with your own unflinching stupidity. They might last a bit longer in life than you will.
Thank you for your civil reply. I am afraid, we may be comparing apples and oranges. To be sure we are discussing the same thing, we must go further back. I trace the conversation to the logical start point:
Message no. 50, and I append it below for convenience
But worse is that China has so COMPREHENSIVELY outdone the decaying West in EVERY way. The magic White skins don't work with victims as strong and far more productive than yourselves. China is NOT some 'shitty little country' to be '..thrown against the wall every few years.', to slake Western blood-lust. And THAT realisation has driven Western 'elites' raving mad with genocidal vengefulness. Even worse, they seem actually to believe the filthy lies that they invent to slander China
In this message, the author is simply saying that the West is arrogant and considers everyone else inferior.
To which you replied in Message 84:
Which I interpret as you saying that the West DOES NOT claim to be superior, and DOES NOT look down/denigrate other cultures.
Do I interpret your meaning correctly?
Obsequious says:
Pepe is being very optimistic. According to Peter Zeihan China has just 10 years left.
, @nokangaroos
January 10, 2023 at 12:29 pm GMT • 300 Words
Illegal and immoral are two different things. Old style colonialism was never considered moral by those that suffered. But again if a government imposes something – what can the populace do? As I mentioned the Gulf Arab states I have zero clue how the locals feel – but since in general their standard of living is hire – I don't think they mind as much because again the foreigners have no political power and have to obey local custom (see this past World Cup where even visitors had to for the most part)…. If someone lives in a democracy then what's the point of voting???? But maybe that's the problem – most supposed democracies are fake. But some fee the whole globe should be nothing but democracies. But that's another matter. My point is all forms of government have a social contract. Whether a monarchy a republic a representational democracy or a socialist or communist one party state. Colonization was done with violence by foreigners. Immigration can't be colonization. Those are simply migration patterns. Look at Singapore. That is where "littleredot" lives it appears. Singapore is a result of Chinese migration to Malaysia. There were no laws stopping migration – but the Chinese did not go and take any territory there by force. Malaysia actually began to oppress the Chinese migrants when they became too wealthy. Singapore is a tiny piece of land in the huge Malaysia. The compromise was to give the Chinese their own state. Secretly the expectation was that they would fail…. But one cannot say the Chinese colonized Malaysia. The Chinese faced violence and discrimination. They prospered in spite of it. Human beings always migrated but humans didn't always colonize …. Think of a wolf pack. A loan wold that joins a pack is like a migrant. A wolf pack that goes and kills the alpha pair of the neighboring pack and takes their territory is a colonizer
Oh sorry, I don't know what my fingers clicked. Anyways my reply is on Message 122
@Obsequious
China has been forecast to collapse umpteen times since 40 years ago. I am too weary to count how many.
I would however, love to wager with anyone who says it will collapse in 10 years, Zeihan or anyone else.
I would also add unity. When the majority of a society "buys in" they can overcome those outward pressures too. Iran has survived because in spite of the protests – the majority of the society is united. And yes of course Iran has a lot of STEM
Seriously? You obviously have mental issues that need to be taken care off. Have you been outside your country? Whatever you typed is not reality and never was true. Go travel, go interact with people especially those outside your country. Get to see how things are. You will be surprised how advanced many countries are.
To me Iranians (Persians) are not any different from the traditional Europeans when it comes to science. The Persians were the original pioneers of the Scientific Revolution. It was the Persians and Arabs who spread science to Rome and the rest was history.
antibeast says:
Here's a good summary of how Westoids commonly misconstrues China's scientific culture:
http://davidpublisher.com/Public/uploads/Contribute/5ea4fe9706820.pdf
My point is all forms of government have a social contract. Whether a monarchy a republic a representational democracy or a socialist or communist one party state.
I have come to a realization that constitutional monarchy democracy is the best model going forward. When I said "constitutional monarchy", I do not mean the British kind where it has zero power except for extreme emergencies. I meant the kind practiced by Thailand and Malaysia. The democracy part in these countries have lots of room to improve but the monarchy provided a stability that no external regime change agents can topple the government that easily. Every change in government must be approved by the reigning monarchy. "Color revolutions" will not work.
There is a reason despite multiple attempts to destabilize Cambodia, it remained standing. The monarchy was abolished in 1970 and Cambodia went through a period of extreme chaos and mayhem. The reestablishment of the monarchy in 1994 stabilized the kingdom since then.
That is why I support the reinstitution of China's monarchy. I bet the living ancestors of the Manchurian Qing dynasty will not be well received. I wonder if there are any direct descendants of Ming dynasty. I would change the commie red flag to the one below. Just my mental ranting. There is also an active group of Monarchists in France.
nokangaroos says:
Zeihan also predicts Russia will unconditionally surrender before the end of
january so we won´t have to wait ten years for proof of concept.
It was supposed to collapse last October.
Indeed that is true. Some from the west will say your last sentence is false. But it is true indeed that is where the scientific method started
I understand your perspective. I honestly believe it depends on each individual society and what the culture is. But it is naive and hubris that some believe that all nations must become democracies after western tradition. But at least there are some democracy proponents that note the education of the overall populace is key. But then educational systems also goes back to customs..
Interesting thoughts on China. I can't say I see it happening but I get your point. The irony is the CPC after trying to previously destroy everything related to past monarchies is actually spending money to rehabilitate sites and also do archaeological studies of the grandeur of past monarchies …. So who knows – anything is possible
I saw one like that the other day cataloguing in 2022 how many headlines said Russia was about to run out of weapons. …. Any day now (face palm emoji).
Yep, definitely with a tortoise. You could have children invulnerable to any physical assault and any persuasion.
January 11, 2023 at 11:15 am GMT • 1,500 Words
1) The Western political establishment looks down on China. No question about that. OTOH, they look down on everybody and everything, including you and me. On the other other hand (OTOOH), the Western political establishment appears to be on the way out — the US suzerainty has been failing since 1991 when it metaphorically lost the wall it had been leaning against, and visibly when Bush committed US forces to Afghanistan, "the graveyard of Empires", at a cost of about a million dollars/year/soldier deployed. He then tried to destroy the "culture" by educating women. That doesn't work with Islamic societies, consider the Western nature of women in Turkey under Ataturk, vs. today's Islamic Turkey (or however the name is spelled now). In Turkey, the Islamic society simply out-populated the Westerners and took control. Bush never had a chance.
2) The academic West did not look down on China before the 1970s.
Back in classical times, there was a consensus that Rome and Persia were "the eyes of the world", and that it would not be right for one or the other to be conquered. If Europe/Levant had the knowledge of China we have today, they would have considered it another eye. It is definitely a great civilization, one of the few with a scholarly tradition. Moreover, its basics at least appear to be durable durable.
China did attract considerable attention as part of the West's study of itself. China never did industrialize enough to independently develop the steam engine, or the extremely large cannon that made stone curtain walls obsolete. This despite having a paper currency, a fairly advanced iron working industry, and the Grand Canal system of water transport. From the standpoint of Clarke's _A Farewell to Alms_, China even had meritocratic population selection, with a fiercely competitive village culture that permitted only the economically successful to get enough resources to have children.
Answers ranged from "The Yellow River's frequent and large course changes meant that only very large, imperial, governments could survive the population disturbances consequent to a course change, and the central government quashed innovation" through "The sheer population pressure put China (and India) into a "Malthusian trap" that made human labor cost about the same as the cost of food for that labor, and that the low cost of labor made machines uneconomic (note that the US immigration policy has done the same for stoop labor — it's cheaper to hire immigrants than to use machinery for some crops – and that the immigrant labor is making some harvesting machines uneconomic).
However, at present nobody knows why China didn't industrialize [1]. For that matter, nobody knows why England industrialized when it did. Ignorance isn't denigration, however.
3) Generally speaking, the West has historically tried to understand and (if possible) copy other societies. The British, for example, imported the Chinese civil service exams more or less intact, changing only the reference books from Chinese to English authors. When Japan became a serious competitor to the US automobile industry, the popular reaction was to study Japan, which was held up as an example. China's success was less well received, perhaps because the US was beginning to realize that its political/economic system was failing, which almost looked like an attack, but the popular attitude was to resent China rather than denigrate it. The current political strife in the US is being conducted without much reference to China, and considerable reference to US systemic failures; note the structural reforms being advocated and supported by "conservative" Republicans.
You could condemn the West for "cultural appropriation" (previously "cultural diffusion" that holds both ways for any two cultures in physical contact), but that seems to contradict "distain". Why appropriate distained social institutions?
4) The West does denigrate other cultures when it finds itself in direct competition or conflict with them. This helps win the fights by increasing unity of action. Prior to WW II the US had considerable respect for Japan, and was more puzzled by China than distainful. For that matter, prior to WW I, the US had a great respect for Germany, which vanished during the war.
An example of resistance to encroachment would be the "Chinese exclusion acts" [3]. If these acts had not been made law, there is a good chance that California would have ended up like today's Hawaii, essentially non-Western. The US population wanted California for itself and its progeny, in much the same way as China, Korea, and Japan want to continue to occupy their current territories. You may observe considerable Chinese resistance to Japanese encroachment, for example, and North Korea takes "resistance" to a very high level.
That the US has not resisted encroachment since the 1960s is shown by US demographics, and the decline of life expectancy for the descendants of the population that fought WW II, known as "The good war" in popular culture until about AD 2000.
While such conflicts might very well end civilized life in nuclear war, they seem to be endemic to humankind rather than a singular property of the West. Further, abandoning such contests appears to be very bad for the abandoning populations. Accordingly, I'd expect them to continue and be universal. How to have "resistance to encroachment" without nuclear war is, as the Russian Federation/Ukraine/NATO conflict shows, an unsolved problem.
Generally speaking, the West has historically tried to understand other cultures / countries / civilizational zones rather than simply dismissing them as inferior, or "denigrating" them. This changes when the West is in conflict with the other cultures. During conflict, the West tends to partially [4] unify into an effort against the other culture, and that unification is supported by denigration.
5) The "denigration" assertion appears to be from Marxist thought, where it is assumed that human relations are always exploitative (so that a farmer whose children do chores and thus learn how to farm is "exploiting" them), and that the "oppressor" always tries to "otherize" the "oppressed". Note that this is an assumption, perhaps a "postulate", and appears to be a derivative of Jewish theology and experience, just as Thomism is a consequence of Greek thought and of Christianity, and "The Incoherence of the Philosophers" is a consequence of Sunni thought and experience [5]. If you reject the assumption, as I apparently do, you find that you can do without it.
6) Not that simple rejection makes everything nice and good. Life is a bruising/deadly affair. Nobody gets out alive, and conditions for the Western population (and for that of every industrial country on Earth) are so bad that the Westerners / industrialized people are dying younger [6] from diseases of despair and have a fertility rate below replacement. Personally, I've seen death all around me: friends, casual acquaintances, relatives. These people were typically well educated and should have been successful: the one who, for example, killed himself by destroying his brain using a 38 caliber slug from a pistol on Christmas Eave was an electrical engineer just fired by a major defense company. His nurse wife had left him for a physician, but his girlfriend was at a party he was throwing. Or the hippo like women in lower level supervisory jobs, put there by feminism, paid as supervisors, but grossly unhappy and morbid. Or like my siblings: my parents offspring had 75% casualties and 50% mortality in my generation, not counting a stillbirth. I'm something like a fugitive from the law of averages, surviving by luck and ability. Perhaps I put things abstractly to avoid emotional paralysis, abstraction being better than weeping, but I, and you also, must remember that we are not playing with counters here, but with actual people. Westerners who have "distain" for other groups are actual people, in actual trouble as I described above. I suppose some degree of what is now called "otherness" and used to be called "detachment" is necessary, but it can be dangerous.
OTH, I have no friends on in opposing groups, as has been demonstrated to me many times, even when I am unware of the contest.
1] My own guess is that Confucius made a mistake when he said "There is no old man in the sky", inadvertently closing off any chance that China would develop some analog to Thomism, but you could correctly point out that the early British industrial revolution owed little or nothing to science. The Newcomen steam engine [2] would be a prime example of intuitive physics coupled with great ingenuity and a ready market for an engine to save partially flooded coal mines.
2] http://scihi.org/thomas-newcomen-steam-engine/
3] https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/chinese-exclusion-act
4] Only partially unify, however. The West has nothing like North Korea's, or Maoist China's, level of unification against the enemy of the year. There is always an "anti-war" party. For example, during the 1500s Martin Luthor his own self said that Islamic conquests of Christian lands were the punishment of God, and should not be resisted ( "He argued that fighting against the Turks would be the same as fighting against God's judgment for their sins." from https://www.zwemercenter.com/martin-luther-on-islam-and-the-turks/ ).
5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incoherence_of_the_Philosophers
also see the most famous counter, rejected by Sunni Islam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incoherence_of_the_Incoherence
6] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/20220831.htm
Maybe instead of hereditary monarchy, how about a monarch that is elected, and his term is for life? …. Not unlike the Doge of Venice.
That way the people can choose a wise, moral, and able leader, who once elected, does not need to pander to populism every 4 years and can do what is truly good for the country.
Well, it appears that we are generally in agreement about the West and its attitudes towards "the Rest". There are only a few things I comment on:
When I speak of West, I do not limit it to a segment of its society such as its academia. I mean the general attitude prevailing in the population at any point in time.
When I use the word "denigration", I use it in its purely colloquial sense and not with any Marxist connotation. I mean that the West does not bother to properly learn about the Rest before forming an opinion. They are satisfied that their MSM or other news sources paint an accurate picture of the world and take it at face value.
A monarchy that is elected will be like your Singaporean president. Just a figure head for diplomatic events but will never raise the emotions and loyalty of the populace. A resurgence of a symbolic emperor in China would allow so many things to happen. Even the Taiwan issue is less complicated. Taiwan can just swear allegiance to the monarchy but have a separate political system. Same with Hong Kong. The CCP can be the government but can never rule the people and future changes of the government system will be much smoother.
After the death of the previous King of Thailand, Thai people were unsure of how the incoming King would be. The current King was seen as a spoilt playboy. The West took this opportunity by using its media to blast all over the world about his exploits. Like his fake tattoos in Bavaria, his dog Foo-Foo being a general, his various women, and his refuge during covid lockdown in a German hotel with multiple women. The red shirts were mobilizing and getting aggressive. What happened? The monarchy still prevailed even though the current King is less respected than the previous King. Thailand now is copying Hong Kong's security law to stop foreign NGOs (NED, USAID and others) from causing problems. Good for them.
Noticed that every Southeast Asian country that is a republic (other than Singapore) had "regime change" done to them by the West? Indonesia (Suharto) , Philippine's (Marcos), Burma (Aung San Suu Kyi ), Vietnam ( read the Vietnam war), Cambodia 197o abolition of the monarchy (General Lon Noi).
Non-Western countries should not just expel Western NGOs, they should grab the leading Western operatives and put them on trial, then, after they are found guilty of subversion and sentenced, expel them. Give the arrogant, racist, scum a fright. Particularly 'Amnesty' and 'Human Rights Watch'. Issue arrest warrants and rewards for those overseas.
Why would the Chinese change the most successful form of Government in history?
In India, the English presided over a series of Great Famines that killed tens of millions. While people died, or were given rations in exchange for labour, lower in caloric content than those at Belsen, the English continued to export food, as in Ireland during their Great Famine. The last Indian famine was in Bengal during WW2, overseen by Churchill, where ten million died, as food was exported. A proper little 'White' Nazi racist aren't you. You do know that the non-White world is EAGERLY awaiting your fall, don't you.
Johnny Rico says:
@Jamali
"Buying this number of fighter jets, and receiving the technology to make it inside Iran is a great victory for Iran."
Wow. That's really exciting, man. What are you doing to celebrate? Gonna take the kids out for ice-cream maybe?
• LOL: Sean
I would not attribute China's success to the government. Technology helped but it is the capable people that made it possible. Same can be said about Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Europe, North America….. All the governments need to do are to provide stability and their capable people can then prosper.
A monarchy that is elected will be like your Singaporean president.
Kinda like our prime minister too. LOL
Noticed that every Southeast Asian country that is a republic
IMHO, I don't think that being a republic is the problem per se. I think it is because republics mostly use democratic elections as an means to select leaders. I am convinced that democracy is itself fatally flawed. It inevitably is eventually controlled by the cunning and self serving.
Ironically, it is only republics that are "flawed" (by Western standards) by autocratic strongmen that are able to negate the worst effects of democracy. The difference between a well run country and a shithole, I feel, is whether that autocratic strongman works for the benefit of the country OR himself.
Yes, a monarchy can go some ways to mitigate the degenerative tendencies of democracy, but even a monarchy is susceptible to being inherited by the weak, corrupt or inept. Perhaps what is needed is a mechanism where bad monarchs can be replaced without a bloody revolution.
To be fair India had periodic famines before the population explosion which took off under the British Raj. Who deserves the credit for the enormous rises in agricultural productivity that has kept on feeding Indian since independence?
You can't imagine any improvements?
IMHO, democracy only works if the income per capita reaches a certain threshold. To reach that income level, the government has to be top notch and incorruptible. There must be enough intelligent people who can rationalize coherent policies, manage things efficiently, competent technologically, and compete economically.
That's how difficult it is for democracy to work. Democracy can work in Western countries, East Asia and a few lucky countries. Other than that, forcing democracy to countries is the best way to make these countries susceptible to foreign influence and corruption. I feel autocracy, theocracy or monarchy are more suitable for poor and/or vulnerable countries.
True enough. However, remember that we are dealing with bulk humanity here. The bulk of humanity, no matter where, West or whatever, does not bother to learn about anything before forming an opinion. The criticism of the West in this case is a criticism of humanity.
In support of this assertion, I'd add that anthropology and past study of other cultures was a Western innovation. Persia adopted quite a bit of Greek rationalism, but never developed either anthropology or an explicit study of other cultures. China didn't do either. The West has, historically, been more interested in other cultures than those cultures have been interested in the West or each other. (I'm not speaking of current "cultural studies", which simply re-play the French Philosophe trick of writing accounts of people on other continents (American Indians, for example) repeat the ideas and criticisms of the author as if the author's ideas were their own. The only difference is that the ides are Marxist or US ethnic.
Consider the idea that maintaining a civilization (any civilization, Western, Persian, Indian, Chinese) is a full time job for the entire population, and occasionally requires flights of genius, as in the mathematical achievements of the West prior to the 1930s that made our present engineering marvels possible. Most of the population has little choice but to accept the "existing consensus" as true. Even de Tocqueville, who asserted that there was less independence of mind in the US than elsewhere, came from a country where the freedom of mind boiled down to following Descartes' or Rousseau's school of thought, and were thus by 2023 standards Western bigots.
IMHO, and this is just a weak hypothesis, the above is why civilizations have to collapse down to communities that cannot support any of the previous civilization's social structures [1] before something really new can develop. If Imperial Rome hadn't run into a climate change that quite possibly was triggered by a single massive volcanic eruption, we'd still have Roman government today. As it was the Holy Roman Empire, the final attempt to at least grab the residual legitimacy of the real Roman empire in ~800 AD, lasted until AD 1806, only 200 years ago,
The above is fairly pessimistic, but I've seen the decline since WW II from the inside, and I can't see any other likely course of events. In the meantime, ideas like "educating the proles" (from _1984_) have been tried [2] without much success.
The current Western system is based on the political party, the "political machine", that Plunkett describes ( https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2810 ) . Marxist/Postmodernist ideas are pasted on to the "political machine" as a way of randomizing the popular vote so that whatever coalition controls the political machine can retain control with a small number of captured voting blocks (such as feminist women in the 1980s). And that's it. It's going to be political machines until the machines don't have the money/control they need to control the vote, let their majority slip away (as it almost did when Trump won), and fade from history (which fading happened in the US Era of Good Feelings/Civil War divide).
I'd like to see some idea that could end the above cycle, but so far, no luck.
1] For example, the Greek Polis was an invented social form that had to find some social form other than the god-kings and hideous punishments of the preceding Bronze Age. The Polis had to find something else because they didn't have the economic surplus (from large scale irrigation or, later, military empires) that supported the god-kings.
2] The idea is from the Chartist movement, UK, 1838-1837: "you must educate your new masters" was part of its slogans. https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Chartist-Movement/ Note that the Chartists were part of the Industrial Revolution, and appeared only after the working classes had gained enough surplus income to participate in politics.
There must be enough intelligent people who can rationalize coherent policies, manage things efficiently, competent technologically, and compete economically.
That is certainly true.
Unfortunately for democracies there is another element that is crucially important, but all too rare….diligence or vigilance. The problem with the democracies in the West now, is that the populations have gone to sleep. They assume that they have the best form of government, or best system ever and have stopped paying attention. They are lulled by sweet words like "exceptionalism" and "Western values of freedom and liberty", and allowed the crooks to take over their governments.
My take is that the oft complained about Jews, may simply be a symptom of the rot, and not the cause of it.
The criticism of the West in this case is a criticism of humanity.
Perhaps so. But the other cultures do not seek to impose their values on others, or at least not in the same degree as the West, and so the impact of a misinformed opinion is localised.
For example, the Chinese have certain beliefs about statecraft. They never sought to impose it on others. If others like the Koreans wanted to adopt the Chinese style of governance, they would be pleased, maybe even flattered. But they never imposed their ideals on others. Now we look at the American export of democracy, and wokeism, and we can see all the difference.
"Jews" is the go-to all too convenient bogeyman when Western exploitations don't work. Jews disproportionately represent Western elites perhaps due to their high IQ, industriousness, and traditional culture. There is a parallel between Judaism and Confucianism. When Western systems failed, as usual there was no reflection as to why it failed, instead the general Western masses tend to blame the Jews for it. Also, when atrocities perpetrated by the West were pointed out, they can be conveniently blamed on the Jews when the "spoils of the war" of such atrocities benefited more non-Jewish Whites than Jews. Now, this boogeyman went international and cross cultural. Victims of Western hegemony blame the Jews too. Blacks are blaming them too. The perfect Red Herring. It also doesn't help when Israel, the homeland of Judaism pursues Zionist extremism aided by American Zionist lobbies.
"The more I learn the less I know". It all is "amazing". I think I go now and chop some more wood, since I have to heat with wood because Jewermany has made Russian gas unaffordable…
As you (?) said somewhere else (about Singapore?) "just do things and do them well".
Yes, and so do they. But the basic structure of meritocracy free from corruption by private interests, with an increase in the common wealth the overriding goal, and, latterly, the building of an 'ecological civilization' (proof of ongoing improvement)is far preferable to the corrupt fraudulence and moral perfidy of 'liberal democracy'.
If you read 'Late Victorian Holocausts' by Mike Davis you will see that previous famines were far smaller and less destructive because the rulers like the Mughals kept vast supplies of grains in storage for just such an eventuality, whereas the English preferred immediate sale for profit.
India's current hunger problem is as severe as Sub Saharan Africa. Modern medicine and such things like inoculation is what keeps those populations growing. But they aren't really well fed
My take is, East Asians have a problem with cults. It doesn't have to be a religious cult, it can be a money cult or any other cults. I suspect it is from people of the left side of the bell curve. The low IQs. It is more intense for the Chinese than Korea and Japan. Throughout Chinese history, major civil wars always had something to do with cults. Sorta like the dumb ones rebelling for not being able to compete. Tell me, are the FLG practitioners you met are intelligent? More like down and out scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for a way out, right?
FLGs are the perfect CIA stooges. Going around protesting about Organ Harvesting, Slave Labor, Killings (all untrue, maybe somewhat true in the 60s and early 70s) for more than two decades when China just simply moved on to bigger and better things. Chinese lives improved by leaps and bounds. These FLGs only achieved to create an illusion for the West into thinking that China is organ harvesting, committing genocide, putting people in Gulags, manufacture cheap shoddy goods with slave labor to be exported to the West, while China is spearheading A.I., space technology, agritech, robotics, EV tech and more.
For example, the Chinese have certain beliefs about statecraft. They never sought to impose it on others.
Not quite true universally. The Chinese could be said to have attempted to impose their values on the Uyghurs, the Tibetans, and the Vietnamese. It is possible that China has not imposed their values on the Uyghurs or Tibetans, but simply attempted cultural or perhaps physical genocide.
The US has done much the same thing, that's true also.
Note that both countries have tried to impose governmental values on their own populace. The Chinese switch from Maoism to "To Grow Rich is Glorious" and then back to something like Imperial rule under Xi is an example of two impositions, and the US hardly needs a description of its attempts at cultural genocide of the generation that fought in WW II.
Unfortunately, China and the US are far from the only examples of value imposition, but I'll stop with them as they are the two mentioned thus far.
My real concern, which was the subject of my first essay, is the danger of losing industrialization, which would involve a reduction of Earth's population to something well under a billion. To put it another way, some 7 billion people would die during the changeover. Humanity would become just another species, with a life span of ~a million years, and half of that gone. Worse, the world would return to the very bloody imperial stage, that being the most complex form that a non-industrial world could support.
Accordingly, it seemed a bit annoying when that point was missed entirely by attempts to defend non-Western countries [0]. The essay's theme was that the West was losing industrialization and that no other civilization was was picking up enough of industrialization's infrastructure to remain industrialized over the long term.
The world has seen at least two regressions in which almost everything was lost (Bronze Age collapse and Classical collapse, both of which were experienced by China), and may be looking at a third [1]. Of course, there may be a recovery, but the "takeoff" resources needed for the Steam Age might just not be available next time around [2].
Few may share my long term concerns, but most readers of this text (and its author) are already involved in the initial stages of de-industrialization, which has already threatened their livelihood and may next threaten their lives.
0] You might notice the US Establishment's attempt to establish a "permanent Green" economy around wind and sunlight and wave. Being non-engineering / non-scientific people, they have specified an unworkable Green system ( https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301757797_Energy_Return_on_Energy_Invested_ERoEI_for_photovoltaic_solar_systems_in_regions_of_moderate_insolation ), or California's mandate to use electric vehicles and make no other changes when their generating / transmission infrastructure, can't support the vehicles they already have ) with maximum opportunity for graft.
The Western/US Establishment is trying to define something like the irrigation canals back in the Bronze Age — a dominant capital equipment that only the Establishment government can operate and that will last beyond anybody's planning horizon. The attempt will fail, there is no permanent solution given current scientific / engineering knowledge, but the intent remains as an attempt at a "hydraulic empire" first described by Wittfogel. Th "modern" Green system, together with its "hydraulic empire" implications, is an old one, going back at least to H. G. Well's _The Sleeper Awakes_, 1899/1910, see Project Gutenberg for a copy if you want to read it.
1] This time around, we might see something more like the 30 years' war than the previous collapses The 30 Years War resulted in the "Westphalian" form of unlimited national sovereignty that the UN effectively outlawed after WW II in favor of "collective action" to "outlaw aggression", and which has evolved into the present situation.
A 30 years' war analog waged today might allow regional industrialization to survive, which would support a population of considerably more than a billion people (~1900 level). A 30 years war analog would be nothing to for those now alive to look forward to, however. I'd guess that it it wouldn't so much involve fighting as it would civil casualties caused by the end of global trade and consequent reduction in global productivity. In some areas, industrial activity would be uneconomic and would cease entirely. The large cities of the US are current examples of this case, and may be incapable of retaining so much as grocery stores ( https://nypost.com/2022/01/22/why-shoplifting-is-soaring-in-the-us-and-will-get-worse/, https://www.city-journal.org/smash-and-grab-retail ).
However, something like the 30 years' war is nothing to look forward to.
2] The general idea of "no restart for industry" is that there are no more shallow oil deposits, no more Mesabi iron range, no more almost-surface coal deposits. Without a cheap supply of raw materials, civilization would be limited to perhaps the 1700s European/Chinese level, wind and wood for energy, plus canals and sailing ships for shipping bulk goods and long distance transport.
Western populations do not control their governments.
The invention of the urban "political machine" in the late 1800s put control of government in the hands of organizations of full time professional politicians. The general idea was: if elections are 85/115, then assemble a coalition of paid (welfare, patronage jobs) or ideologically/religiously/ethnically disciplined (feminist/Jewish/Black) coalition of 20%, and you can get a reliable 105/85 majority and run the country. The idea of "will of the people" vanishes, and government is run to maximize income of the professional politicians. That's why Senators can make 12% reliably on the stock market, and Representatives can retire as millionaires. Again, look up "Plunkitt" in gutenberg.org, and he will tell you about Tammany Hall, which is the ancestral form of current Western governments.
If you don't include professional government by political machine in your analysis, you're wasting your time.
Tell me, are the FLG practitioners you met are intelligent? More like down and out scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for a way out, right?
I'll admit it never got that far. They really creeped me out, so I didn't stay around long enough to chat with them. But what was apparent is that they had big chip on the shoulder and a huge axe to grind.
I will put it this way, there is a certain kind of angry, resentful person, who if they are born into a muslim society, they become jihadis. If they are born in a Western society, they become skinheads. If they are born in China, they become FLG…..LOL.
Industrialization isn't the cause of overpopulation where the human race never went beyond 1.5 billion people for 100,000+ years to 8+ billion in the past 300 years.
1) the reason why the human population exploded exponentially was primarily due to the Scientific Revolution (which introduced modern medicine and pharmacy) and allowed people to survive childhood and live longer
2) prior to modern medicine (with doctors/hospitals/pharmacy/medicine/vitamins/minerals), the human race had high birth rate, high death rate, and low live expectancy which is why there was never over population because if you have 10 children, 8 out of 10 will die before they reach adult age and the ones that do will die by age 40 or less
3) with modern medicine and industrialization, this allowed the human race to live a much more comfortable live centered on mass consumption
4) so with high birth rate, lower death rate, and longer life expectancy, the human population exploded (now all 10 children will survive into adulthood and also live longer lives) and if you combine this with rapid industrialization and mass consumption, you also end up with global climate change due to billions of people enjoying a standard of living that even the greatest emperor and kings of the past cannot imagine.
5) a single middle class person today consumes more wealth and resources and also waste more resources than the greatest emperor or king of the past (heck, more than entire kingdoms and villages and towns of the past) because no one in the past have electricity, doctors, hospitals, medicine, nurses, health care, computers, internet, planes, trains, automobiles, flush toilet, heating, venting, air conditioning, refrigeration, piping and plumbing systems and waste sewage disposal, cell phones, shopping malls, escalator, elevators, cell phones, etc.
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