Russia warns NATO about response to ‘terrorism’
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova © Ekaterina Chesnokova; RIA Novosti
RT | September 4, 2024
Russia will give an immediate and painful response to further acts of terrorism committed by Kiev, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned on Wednesday, directing her comments to EU and NATO leaders.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Vladivostok, Zakharova stressed that Western leaders are “losing touch with reality” and are “absolutely not thinking about the risks of further dangerous escalation of the conflict, even in the context of their own interests.”
“We would like to warn such irresponsible politicians in the EU, NATO and across the ocean, that if the Kiev regime takes corresponding aggressive steps, Russia’s response will follow immediately,” Zakharova said, adding that this response will be “extremely painful” and that “much of this” has already been visible in recent days, apparently referring to Russia’s recent long-range strikes on targets across Ukraine.
Over the past several days the Russian Defense Ministry has reported carrying out a number of massive strikes on Ukrainian energy and defense-industry facilities, and claimed to have destroyed a number of buildings being used for the production and repair of aircraft, missiles, and UAVs, as well as storage sites, and deployment points for “nationalist formations and foreign mercenaries.” It also reported destroying a training facility housing foreign instructors.
During her address, Zakharova also suggested that Western officials have been ignorant of the potential consequences of their continued support of Kiev.
”I think the Europeans don’t fully understand what they are being dragged into,” the spokeswoman said. “They are being dragged in by the US, the Anglo-Saxons. It seems to me they haven’t yet understood what a plague they have created with their own hands in the form of the terrorist Kiev regime.”
Zakharova warned that the battalions that will be created from Ukrainian citizens recruited from Europe will eventually also strike back at Western European countries themselves. “They have fattened up there, sat it out, and recovered. They will strike in the same way as all international terrorist cells previously created by the West did,” she said.
“For the first time in history, Europe itself has given birth to an international terrorist cell,” the spokeswoman said, warning that “this terrorist monster will operate all over the world” and will strike Western Europe because “they always return to those who created them.”
Carrier Blues: Even the Mainstream is Waking Up
By Bill Buppert | The Libertarian Institute | September 3, 2024
The ice is breaking on the stonewalling of the defense community and external observers to have an honest conversation on the aircraft carrier; they may be getting the message on how indefensible and anachronistic this extraordinarily expensive weapons system is.
The Aircraft Carrier Industrial Base Coalition has already removed me from their Christmas card list.
More and more of the Coprophile Media is reluctantly waking up to the apparently intuitively obvious conclusion. The defense journalism industry, like the cultural critics in Hollywood, tend to be sycophantic and are very careful with criticism because then they lose the public relations contacts and open doors to the trillion dollar defense industry.
Thank goodness for the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and General Accountability Office (GAO) documentation and data palaces that show the keen observer what is really going on (even though I think the ground truth tends to be far worse than we even imagine).
I do wish a foundation with deep pockets or even Elon Musk would create a clearinghouse/analytical cell that goes through these mountains of data and evidence to show just how bad the American (and by extension, the Western) military establishment is. The US is not prepared to conduct a peer or near-peer war much less more than one conflict at the same time. And the trillions of dollars unaccounted for is another issue altogether.
Hence, America’s obsession with expensive and cumbersome aircraft carriers. The United States has not only committed to this weapons platform, but it has become a cultural symbol. That is why the cult of flat tops has taken hold to such a degree that to even point out that great state rivals, such as China and Russia, as well as the proxies for these nations, such as Iran or North Korea, have developed highly effective countermeasures is considered unpatriotic or worse, heretical. But this fixation on the carrier as more than just a weapons platform, as a cultural icon, is precisely what makes it such a terrible weapon to rely upon.
And then they say something in the major media that you dear readers know already.
Thus, Washington’s current war plans play right into China’s and Russia’s anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) strategies. If actual war erupts between the United States or any of its major rivals, these forces will do what they must to win the war—and that means going-for-broke and trying to sink US carriers before they can become a serious threat to their forces and interests.
One way or another, thanks to the advent of hypersonic weapons and anti-ship missiles, such as China’s DF-21 series, American aircraft carriers will not be as effective against targets defended by these A2/AD systems.
In the history of human warfare, large exquisite platforms always attract plenty of attention from the Roman destruction of Gallic fortresses before the birth of Christ to the use of longbows to defeat very expensive heavy horse at Agincourt to the Maginot Line and battleship dead-ends in the twentieth century.
And everything in between throughout history. The carrier is the crossbow and chariot of the 21st century.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/aircraft-carrier-age-could-end-disaster-us-navy-209915
The U.S. Navy’s other Pacific-based carriers are in port or in their maintenance availability period. Out of six carriers in the Pacific, the USS Carl Vinson recently participated in RIMPAC 2024, the USS Nimitz recently completed a six month planned incremental availability period for maintenance, the USS Ronald Reagan recently completed a homeport shift to Naval Base Kitsap, and the USS George Washington will remain in San Diego until the crew and equipment swap from USS Ronald Reagan is complete.
At least the carriers in port will be sunk in shallow water.
US Seeks “Super Weapons” to Reign as Sole Superpower
By Brian Berletic – New Eastern Outlook – 03.09.2024
The US openly declares that it seeks to maintain a monopoly over shaping the “international order” following the Cold War and America’s emergence from it as the sole superpower.
This policy is not new.
The New York Times in a 1992 article titled, “U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop,” would note that the Pentagon sought to create a world, “dominated by one superpower whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behavior and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy.”
This policy set the stage for decades of US wars of aggression, political interference, regime change, US-sponsored terrorism, economic sanctions, and a growing confrontation directly between the US and a reemerging Russia as well as a rising China, all of which continue playing out to this day.
Emerging from the Cold War as the sole “superpower,” the US carefully cultivated public perception through likewise carefully chosen conflicts showcasing its military supremacy. While the US still to this day cites its wars with Iraq in 1990 and 2003 along with the toppling of the Libyan government in 2011 as proof of its uncontested military power, in truth, both targeted nations were not nearly as powerful or as dangerous as the Western media claimed at the time.
This facade has crumbled since. “American primacy” is now not only facing serious challenges, the premise it is based on – the notion that a single nation representing a fraction of the global population can or even should hold primacy over the rest of the planet – has been revealed as wholly unsustainable, if not self-destructive.
Not only is US military and economic power visibly waning, the military and economic power of China, Russia, and a growing number of other nations is rapidly growing.
The special interests within the US pursuing global primacy, do so in perpetual pursuit of wealth and power, often at the expense of many of the purposes a modern, functional nation-state exists to fulfill. Often this process includes the deliberate plundering of the key pillars of a modern nation-state’s power – industry, education, culture, and social harmony. This, in turn, only accelerates the collapse of US economic and military power.
Ukraine Lays Bare American Weakness
Washington’s proxy war in Ukraine has laid bare for the world to see this fundamental weakness. US weapons have proven less-than-capable against a peer adversary, Russia.
America’s expensive precision-guided artillery shells, rockets, and missiles were built in smaller numbers than their conventional counterparts, supposedly because they could achieve with just one round what several conventional rounds could. A single US-made 155 mm GPS-guided Excalibur artillery shell, for example, is claimed by Raytheon to achieve what would otherwise require 10 conventional artillery shells.
This myth of quality over quantity has unraveled on and over the battlefield in Ukraine. Russia is not only capable of producing vastly more conventional weapons than the US and its European proxies, it is able to produce vastly more high-tech precision-guided weapons as well, including its own precision-guided artillery shells (the laser-guided Krasnopol), precision-guided multiple launch artillery systems (the Tornado-S), as well as larger quantities of ballistic and cruise missiles (Iskander, Kalibr, and Kh-101).
In other areas, Russia possesses capabilities the US does not have. Russia fields two types of hypersonic missiles, the Kinzhal hypersonic ballistic missile and the Zircon hypersonic cruise missile. Russia also possesses air and missile defense as well as electronic warfare capabilities the US cannot match – not in quality, not in quantity.
If the US is unable to match or exceed the military industrial output of Russia at the expense of losing its proxy war in Eastern Europe, how will US design to encircle and contain China along China’s own coasts unfold?
Growing Disparity and the Super Weapons Sought to Overcome it
The US military fears that any conflict with China would leave the US unprepared and vulnerable. A recent article in Defense One titled, “The Air Force wants to build lots of bases around the Pacific. But it still needs to determine how to protect them,” admits that US air and missile defense systems are too expensive and too few in number to defend the growing number of US military bases being established ahead of potential war with China.
It should be remembered, however, that shortages of US air and missile defense systems, particularly the Patriot missile system, began before the US began sending the systems to Ukraine. US military industrial output was unable to keep up with the demands of just Saudi Arabia amid its conflict with Ansar Allah in Yemen.
Similar concerns exist regarding the number of US military aircraft, naval vessels, and the missiles each will depend on in any potential conflict with China in the Asia-Pacific.
Understanding the large and growing disparity between US ambitions toward global primacy and its actual military means to achieve it, Washington and US-based arms manufacturers are seeking a new design and production philosophy to produce a new generation of cheaper and more numerous munitions.
At the forefront of this effort are “start-up” arms manufacturers, including Ares and Anduril. Both companies believe the US is capable of out-innovating China, based on the notion that the US is somehow inherently more innovative than China. However, their attempts to address this growing disparity reveal how disconnected US foreign policy is from the actual world it seeks to dominate.
Ares: Cheaper but More Numerous Missiles…
The War Zone in an article titled, “New ‘Cheap’ Cruise Missile Concept Flight Tested By Silicon Valley-Backed Start-Up,” explains how Ares seeks to augment America’s existing arsenal of expensive but scarce long-range precision guided missiles with smaller, cheaper, and more numerous missiles.
The smaller, cheaper missiles will be less capable than their more expensive counterparts, including Raytheon’s Tomahawk cruise missile and Lockheed Martin’s Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM), but are meant to be produced in larger quantities. The cheaper Ares-built missiles will be used for lower-priority targets, while their more capable but less numerous counterparts are used for critical targets.
The article claims:
Ares does not yet appear to have released any hard specifications, current or planned, but says that it is targeting a $300,000 unit cost for its missiles.
In addition to how far off from reality Ares’ missiles actually are from seeing the battlefield, even the stated goal of building these missiles for $300,000 each seems to fall far short of the sort of revolutionary innovation required to meet or exceed even Russia’s military industrial production, let alone China’s.
This is because according to even Ukrainian-based media, Russia itself is already producing far more capable missiles for as cheap as $300,000 per unit. Defence Express in a 2022 article titled, “What is the Real Price of russian Missiles: About the Cost of ‘Kalibr’, Kh-101 and ‘Iskander’ Missiles,” would place the cost of a Kalibr cruise missile somewhere between $300,000 and $1 million – vastly cheaper than comparable missiles produced in the West.
While the 2022 article was easy to dismiss at the time amid Western headlines claiming Russian missile stockpiles were exhausted, since then it has been admitted by the same Western media that Russia is firing over 4,000 missiles at targets across Ukraine each year. This suggests Russian missile production is as economical as it is vast.
Thus, even before Ares produces its first missile, the very premise of what it is trying to achieve falls far short of what Russia’s military industrial base is already doing on a vast scale, saying nothing of what China’s military industrial base is capable of.
There is also the reality that in addition to higher-end munitions costing as little as Ares’ proposed lower-end missiles, both Russia and China are perfectly capable of augmenting their existing arsenals with cheaper, less-sophisticated munitions as well.
Russia’s deployment of its UMPK-fitted FAB series glide bomb is a perfect example of this. The guided glide bombs went from concept to mass production over the course of the Special Military Operation, with improvements made based on their performance in combat, providing a cheaper, more numerous, yet still effective alternative to more expensive long-range precision-guided munitions.
In many ways, what Ares is attempting to do is a poor imitation of what Russia and China have already done and will continue doing.
Anduril: Out-Innovating China and Russia…
Like Ares, US-based arms manufacturer Anduril imagines cheaper and more numerous systems can help even the odds as Russia out-produces the West amid the conflict in Ukraine and as China’s production of warplanes, ships, and missiles surpasses the US and its European proxies.
Anduril proposes achieving this through “software-defined manufacturing,” a process it claims allowed electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla to build better and more numerous vehicles than legacy car manufacturers by building its vehicles around its own in-house software and electronics.
The advantage is clear. Legacy car manufacturers build the physical cars themselves, but many of the subsystems are outsourced to other companies, including the operating systems used by modern cars, as well as sensors and other electronic components and systems. Often this collection of software, sensors, and other components is outsourced to a large number of different companies. Any change in the car’s design requires working with this large number of companies, making modifications and improvements cumbersome.
By including all subsystems within a single in-house developed software and building the hardware around it, changes can be done faster and larger quantities of higher-quality cars can be made more rapidly as a result.
Anduril imagines using this same process to build vast numbers of drones, missiles, and other weapons and munitions, matching or even outpacing China. The problem for Anduril is that software-defined manufacturing is already extensively used by China’s vast and advanced industrial base. With this “advantage” rendered moot, the US finds itself again at a severe disadvantage. Not only is China capable of producing conventional military arms, ammunition, and equipment in vastly greater quantities than the US, it is also able to build advanced, rapidly improved, software-defined systems like drones and missiles.
This means anything the US attempts to do, China is capable of doing better and on a vastly greater scale.
Flawed Premise, Doomed Outcome
The premise Ares and Anduril operate from is fundamentally flawed. Both companies, like the circles of special interests they serve on Wall Street and in Washington, believe the US is inherently superior to adversaries like Russia and China. In their collective minds, any disadvantage the US finds itself with is incidental and overcoming it merely a matter of summoning sufficient political will. Russia and China having larger and more capable industrial bases is seen as a temporary lapse in America’s own political focus and willpower, and by taking steps to expand America’s own industrial base, the US will inevitably find itself on top again.
In reality, Russia and China’s industrial bases are larger than America’s because of a number of factors, including factors no amount of American political will, can overcome. China in particular has a population four times greater than the US. China graduates millions more each year in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics than the US, and the physical size of its industrial base – military or otherwise – reflects this demographic disparity.
Even if the US had the political will to reform its military industrial base, stripping away profit-driven private industry and replacing it with purpose-driven state-owned enterprises, even if the US likewise transformed its education system to produce a skilled workforce rather than squeeze every penny from American students, and even if the US invested in its national infrastructure – a fundamental prerequisite for expanding its industrial base – it still faces a reality where China has already done all of this, and done so with a population larger than it and its G7 partners combined.
The premise that the US, representing less than 5% of the global population, should maintain primacy over the other 95% is fundamentally flawed.
Unless Americans were truly, inherently superior to the rest of the world, which they are not, achieving primacy over the world can only be done by dividing and destroying the other 95% of the world’s population. In many ways, this is what has defined generations of Western hegemony over the planet and is what Washington has set out to do today.
Despite this, the rest of the world has caught up in terms of economic and military power, precisely because the US is not inherently superior. Western hegemony was a historical anomaly, not proof of the West’s superiority. With the rest of the world having caught up in terms of economic and military power, and with numbers on their side, the next century will be determined by a multipolar world.
For this emerging multipolar world, the factors that have given it rise – a geopolitical balance of power built on cooperation over conflict, industry and infrastructure driven by purpose over profit, and progress built by practical education and hard work over the blind pursuit of power-must be firmly cemented as the fundamental principles of this new world.
Should the multipolar world weather US attempts to divide and destroy it and continue investing in the principles that gave rise to it in the first place, no type of US-made super-weapon can overcome it.
Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.
Germany faces political upheaval after historic AfD win
By Dénes Albert | Remix News | September 3, 2024
While the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is the big winner in Sunday’s German state elections, but it is unlikely to change the course of Germany on the national level over the short-term, even if the AfD’s policies could gain ground locally. Still, there are reasons to believe we could see long-term changes on the horizon.
While the AfD is still contained behind the firewall, the results in Thuringia and Saxony effectively “toppled” the governing coalition, and alongside the AfD, a new party, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) has also become visible on the political scene.
Bence Bauer, director of the Hungarian-German Institute, explained this by saying that both the AfD and BSW agreed on most of the three major issues. These are the migration issue, Germany’s misguided Ukraine and arms transfer policy, and the economic policy vis-à-vis the German government.
With the German government in a very bad position, the AfD and BSW parties were able to ride the social discontent very well, to formulate an alternative.
“This is especially a great success for Sahra Wagenknecht, whose party is eight months old,” Bence Bauer stressed.
Based on initial statements, she would be willing to cooperate with the CDU, but Sahra Wagenknecht is demanding a very high price.
“It’s essentially about changing the CDU’s war policy,” said Samuel Ágoston Mráz, head of the Nézőpont Institute. However, he added, it could be a ploy on her part, as she has no intention for the CDU to actually accept her proposal. In short, it may not be an acceptable demand from the CDU just to form a state government.
Wagenknecht knows that the CDU is looking to 2025, and the east is not their top priority. After all, a Thuringia of only 2 million in a Germany of 80 million cannot be so important that it jeopardizes its showing next year in federal elections.
Another reason to not ultimately strike a deal with BSW is the fact that if BSW gets into government at the state level, this party could take root in the German system. Sahra Wagenknecht is now in two state parliaments, and if she gets into government, that will give her great potential for growth.
“I expect a protracted government formation,” added Mraz Ágoston Samuel. In this context, he recalled the claims that “the German economy will be ruined if the AFD comes close to power.” That is why Samuel believes the “firewall” will remain in place against the AfD.
“There will certainly be protracted coalition talks, I agree that the firewall will remain,” said Zoltán Kiszelly, director of political analysis at the Századvég Centre for Public Policy Studies. As he told our paper, the recent state elections in Germany seemed to be dominated by national issues, showing how dissatisfied voters are with the government. Of the mainstream parties, the CDU has held up best, but it remains to be seen what kind of alliances they will find.
Anti-Establishment Parties Have Triumphed in Germany’s Regional Elections
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 02.09.2024
The Eurosceptic party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), won a regional ballot for the first time, surpassing Scholz’s ruling coalition.
AfD secured 32.8% in Thuringia, leading the race, followed by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) with 23.6%, according to exit polls.
In Saxony, the Eurosceptic party garnered 30.6%, losing to the CDU by a narrow margin.
The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) claimed third place in both races, with 15.8% in Thuringia and 11.8% in Saxony.
Scholz’s “traffic-light” coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens, and the Free Democrats (FDP) performed poorly. The FDP failed to reach the 5% threshold required to enter either regional legislature, and the Greens did not make it into the parliament in Thuringia.
SPD received 6.1% and 7.3% in Thuringia and Saxony, respectively.
“We are ready to take on government responsibility,” AfD leader in Thuringia, Bjorn Hocke, declared, celebrating what he called a “historic victory.”
Omid Nouripour, co-leader of the Greens, lamented the outcome and described it as “a profound turning point” in German history.
The AfD’s victory sparked a heated debate, with mainstream Western media warning that Germany’s political center is “crumbling” ahead of the next federal election in September 2025. Some outlets noted that Scholz have been “humbled” by the German right-wing party.
Others highlighted the rise of anti-establishment parties in Germany, acknowledging that both AfD and BSW, which advocate halting arms supplies to Ukraine, and imposing immigration controls, have performed notably well.
Point of No Return in Middle East & Ukraine
Odysee
John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen | August 30, 2024
I had a discussion with Professor John Mearsheimer and Alexander Mercouris about the political West being on the brink of two major wars. Both Israel and Ukraine are fighting wars they cannot win, both are doubling down through reckless escalation, and neither is pursuing a diplomatic path to a peaceful resolution.
Consequently, both Israel and Ukraine are desperately seeking to drag the US into a wider war as the only solution. With incremental escalation, no diplomacy and the absence of serious discussions about the deep trouble we are now in – both Israel and Ukraine are successfully getting the US increasingly involved.
Mali Alarmed That Weapons Supplied to Ukraine Fuel Terrorism in Sahel Region – Envoy to UN
Sputnik – 30.08.2024
UNITED NATIONS – Mali is alarmed that the weapons supplied to Ukraine by the collective West are ultimately fueling terrorism in the Sahel region, Malian Ambassador to the United Nations Oumar Daou said in Friday.
“The government of Mali would like to express its alarm with regard to the supply of weapons to Ukraine, because it’s been clearly established that a good part of the weapons … end up fueling terrorism and crime in the Sahel,” Daou said during a meeting of the UN Security Council.
The Malian ambassador also said that the weapons deliveries carry the risk of further destabilizing countries in Africa and exacerbate the suffering of the Malian people, who have already been “sorely tested by several years of conflict with dramatic consequences.”
French media, citing a Malian military source, reported in early August that terrorists from the Malian armed separatist groups traveled to Ukraine to receive training there.
Iran urges elimination of atomic weapons, end to nuclear tests
Press TV | August 30, 2024
Iran’s ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations Office in Geneva has called on the international community to work towards ending nuclear tests and eliminating atomic weapons.
Ali Bahreini made the remarks in an X post on Thursday, on the occasion of the International Day against Nuclear Tests.
“Nuclear testing is a threat to our planet and future generations,” he said.
“On the International Day against Nuclear Tests, let’s pledge to protect our world by advocating for a complete end to nuclear tests and total elimination of NWs,” he added, referring to nuclear weapons.
“Each nuclear explosion is a step backward in the journey towards a world free of nuclear weapons. Today, more than ever, we need a global commitment to the complete elimination of nuclear weapons,” Bahreini wrote in a separate post on X in Persian.
In 2009, the UN General Assembly declared August 29 the International Day against Nuclear Tests by unanimously adopting Resolution 64/35.
The document calls for increasing awareness and education “about the effects of nuclear weapon test explosions or any other nuclear explosions and the need for their cessation as one of the means of achieving the goal of a nuclear-weapon-free world.”
The United States is the only country on Earth that has used nuclear weapons in wartime.
On August 6, 1945, the US dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing thousands instantly and about 140,000 by the end of the year. Three days later, it dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki, killing another 70,000.
Sullivan-Xi Meeting Won’t Improve US-China Relations
By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 29.08.2024
On Wednesday, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan visited China, meeting with President Xi Jinping and other high-ranking Chinese officials. The meeting is expected to be followed up with a call between Xi and US President Joe Biden in the coming weeks.
The meeting was reported as an attempt to improve relations between the world’s two largest economies and militaries, but is unlikely to move the needle in any perceptible way, scholar, journalist and geopolitical analyst specializing in the Asia-Pacific KJ Noh told Sputnik’s Political Misfits.
“I don’t think it’s really in the cards. If you look at the Chinese readouts [of the meeting], they essentially focus on the Chinese desire to get along with the United States. Their point is [that] we can’t be enemies and cooperate. [The US has] to make a decision,” Noh began. “They always come back to the Bali agreements, even the ‘Five Nos’ – no Cold War, no hot war, no regime change, no block forming, no support of secession… They want the US to affirm that. And the Chinese explicitly mentioned that in their readout. The US [readout] does not mention that.”
Despite occasional public overtures by the United States, its actions have been consistently aimed at limiting China’s growth and influence. The United States saw itself fit to insert itself in territorial disputes in the South China Sea. It has also supported Chinese separatists in Taiwan, held military drills in the region, flown spy planes right on China’s borders, and stationed troops just a mile off of China’s coast.
Then there is the economic warfare. “If you recall, when they initially rolled out these [micro]chip sanctions, [influential think tanks] crowed that they had essentially destroyed China’s economy. They said they had China in a four-point chokehold and they were strangling with intent to kill, that this was a declaration of war. They never walked back those statements,” explained Koh. “Jake Sullivan emphasized in the readout that the US will continue to take necessary actions to prevent advanced US technology from being used to undermine national security, that means they’re going to continue the tech war against China.”
Despite the United States’ hand-wringing about national security and election interference, Koh suspects the real reason for the tech war, particularly on Chinese tech giants Huawei and ByteDance, is to maintain the US “monopoly control over the backbone of the internet and social media companies for geostrategic reasons.”
Huawei is the world’s largest supplier of telecommunication equipment that makes up the backbone of the internet, like routers and servers. ByteDance owns TikTok, one of the most popular and fastest-growing social media platforms, boasting 170 million users in the United States and more than a billion worldwide.
The upcoming call between Xi and Biden will be to let China know that if Harris wins in November, the Harris administration is “essentially going to keep our policies as is.”
“I think they want to position themselves as a better alternative than [former US President Donald] Trump who the Chinese are weary about because he’s so unpredictable despite his kind of transactional neo-mercantile approach to China,” explained Koh. “But what we do have to note is anything that Trump did in terms of escalating against China, the Biden administration has maintained and then took it up several notches. All you have to do is look at the tariffs [and] you’ll see that the Biden administration has been much, much, much worse.”
Koh speculated that Sullivan wanted to stabilize relations between the countries before the election but afterward “the escalation against China will continue.”
“Right before this meeting, there was a massive high-level delegation of DPP Taiwan separatist officials who came to the United States. Right after this meeting is over, there will be further meetings with high-level separatists. And so, there’s always this doubled-edged message that the US is sending.”
So from a Chinese perspective, there are no good choices in November, Noh contended. “I don’t think they’re making plans for either administration. The Chinese outlook is just literally the long term. They believe that if they can avoid war, and if they can avoid nuclear war, then eventually, things will stabilize and the United States will hopefully find a modus vivendi.”
Kamala and the Deadly Perils of Sham Idealism
By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | August 26, 2024
As the presidential race enters the final stretch, politicians are recycling the usual cons to make people believe this election will be different. At last week’s Democratic National Convention, sham idealism had a starring role, accompanied by ritual denunciations of cynicism.
But idealism has a worse record in Washington than a New Jersey senator. “Idealism is going to save the world,” President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed shortly after World War I left much of Europe in ruins and paved the way for communist and Nazi takeovers. Wilson’s blather provoked H.L. Mencken to declare that Americans were tired “of a steady diet of white protestations and black acts… they sicken of an idealism that is oblique, confusing, dishonest, and ferocious.”
The same verdict could characterize today’s political rogues. On the closing night of the convention, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg promised that “we will choose a better politics, a politics that calls us to our better selves.” And how can Americans know they are fulfilling their “better selves”? By swallowing without caviling any hogwash proclaimed by their rulers in Washington.
Kamala Harris is being touted for bringing idealism back into fashion after the supposedly tawdry Trump era. But we heard the same song-and-dance with Barack Obama.
Obama declared that America’s “ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience sake” in his first inaugural address. But one of Obama’s most shocking legacies was his claim of a prerogative to kill U.S. citizens labeled as terrorist suspects without trial, without notice, and without any chance for the marked individuals to legally object. Obama’s lawyers even refused to disclose the standards used for designating Americans for death. Drone strikes increased tenfold under Obama, and he personally chose who would be killed at weekly “Terror Tuesday” White House meetings which featured PowerPoint parades of potential targets.
Year by year, Obama’s lies and abuses of power corroded the idealism that helped him capture the presidency. As a presidential candidate, he promised “no more illegal wiretaps”; as president, he vastly expanded the National Security Agency’s illegal seizures of Americans’ emails and other records. He promised transparency but gutted the Freedom of Information Act and prosecuted twice as many Americans for Espionage Act violations than all the presidents combined since Woodrow Wilson. He perennially denounced “extremism” at the same time his administration partnered with Saudi Arabia to send weapons to terrorist groups that were slaughtering Syrian civilians in a failed attempt to topple the regime of Bashar Assad. Obama helped establish an impunity democracy in which rulers pay no price for their misdeeds. As The New York Times noted after the 2016 election, the Obama administration fought in court to preserve the legality of defunct Bush administration practices such as torture and detaining Americans arrested at home as “enemy combatants.”
When Donald Trump won the 2016 election, idealism was temporarily roadkill along the political highway. After Trump was defeated in November 2020, the media scrambled to portray Joe Biden as a born-again idealist and to put the federal government and Washington back on a pedestal. A Washington Post headline proclaimed, “Washington’s aristocracy hopes a Biden presidency will make schmoozing great again.” The Post quickly changed its initial headline to “Washington’s Establishment” but “aristocracy” remained in the body of the article, which assured readers that “the classic friendly-rivals dinner party will be back, likely bigger than ever.” That same aristocracy hoped that idealism would provide the magic words to make the peasantry again defer to their superiors.
But Biden’s idealism was difficult to distinguish from his rage at anyone who resisted his power. Rather than a new Camelot, Biden’s reign vindicated historian Henry Adams’ assertion that politics “has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.”
Regardless, the same media outlets that slapped a halo over Biden’s head are now hustling to saint Kamala Harris. Amazingly, the prime evidence of her idealism is the fact that she was a prosecutor. And since prosecutors claim to work “for the people,” her record of wrongful prosecutions, tormenting parents of truant children, and detaining convicts after their sentence ended (California needed extra firefighters) is automatically expunged.
Idealism long since surpassed patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel. Idealistic appeals were used by Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon to vindicate the Vietnam War, by President Bill Clinton to sanctify the bombing of Serbia, and by President George W. Bush to dignify the devastation of Iraq. The mainstream media is almost always willing to help presidents shroud foreign carnage with pompous claptrap. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius declared in late 2003 that Bush’s war on Iraq “may be the most idealistic war fought in modern times.”
Idealism encourages citizens to view politics as a faith-based activity, transforming politicians from hucksters to saviors. The issue is not what government did in the past—the issue is how we must do better in the future. Politicians’ pious piffle is supposed to radically reduce the risk of subsequent perfidy.
Soviet Union dictator Vladimir Lenin used the term “useful idiots” to describe foreign sympathizers who dutifully repeated Soviet propaganda. Nowadays, we have “useful idealists”—pundits and others who mindlessly praise politicians as if they were more trustworthy than other serial perjurers.
The more deference that idealists receive, the more deceitful idealism becomes. Ideals become character witnesses for the politician who tout them. No matter how often a politician has been caught trashing facts, he is still credible on idealism. One freshly-flourished ideal expunges a decade of perfidy. The media exalts: “He has seen the light! He invoked an ideal!”
In Washington, idealism is an incantation that expunges all past warnings about political power. Nowadays, idealism is often positive thinking about growing servitude. Americans cannot afford to venerate any more Idealists-in-Chief hungry to seize new power or start new wars. Any doctrine that begins by idealizing government will end by idealizing subjugation.
Hungary May Defect – Part Nineteen of The Anglo-American War on Russia
Tales of the American Empire | August 29, 2024
Most Europeans know the United States provoked the conflict in Ukraine, profits from banning Russian oil and gas, and remain uneasy about the mysterious destruction of the Nordstream pipelines. The American government promoted a mindless NATO expansion strategy that caused a disastrous war and weakened NATO nations, who were pressured to donate billions of dollars and much of their military equipment to Ukraine, even though it isn’t a member of the NATO alliance.
Eastern European states were excited to join NATO and the European Union economic block, called the EU, but were soon pressured to boost military spending to buy American weaponry, accept foreign migrants, host foreign troops, and donate money and arms to a lost cause in Ukraine. Profitable trade and tourism with Russia sharply declined while energy costs soared, causing economic decline.
The people of some European nations have already decided that joining NATO and the EU was a bad idea. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban openly states his dislike of EU mandates to allow mass immigration and continued trade sanctions on Russia. EU leaders denounce Orban and threaten sanctions because they can abuse Hungary since it is landlocked and surrounded by Ukraine and EU members.
But if Russian troops reach Ukraine’s western border, Hungary may defect. Conquered Ukraine would become a close Russian ally and allow access to energy pipelines to import cheap Russian oil and gas, and permit rail and road access to Russia and all of Asia. There are several neighboring nations who may also defect from the American empire. This explains why NATO is considering sending forces to secure western Ukraine to keep its vassal states captive.
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Related Tale: “The Destruction of Libya in 2011”; 
• The Destruction of Libya in 2011
“Slovakia, Hungary say Ukraine has halted Lukoil’s Russian oil transit”; Jason Hovet; Reuters; July 18, 2024; https://www.reuters.com/business/ener…
“Kyiv Will Face Retaliation”; EU nation Slovakia has issued an open threat to Ukraine amid war with Russia. Slovakia said it would take retaliatory measures against Ukraine if Kyiv continues to stop Russian oil transiting via the Druzhba pipeline.; “Times of India”; July 25, 2024; • ‘Kyiv Will Face Retaliation…’: NATO…
“MEPs call to strip Hungary’s EU voting rights amid Orbán’s ‘peace missions’”; Steb Starcevic; Politico; July 16, 2024; https://www.politico.eu/article/lette…
Related Tale: “The Destruction of Yugoslavia”; • The Destruction of Yugoslavia
Related Tales: “The Anglo-American War on Russia”; • The Anglo-American War on Russia
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Germany’s gun grab? Saxony-Anhalt begins disarming AfD members
Remix News | January 6, 2025
Authorities in Germany have begun withdrawing gun ownership licenses from Alternative for Germany (AfD) members, who are deemed a “danger to public safety.”
So far, five AfD members have received a notice that their gun license would be revoked, while another member voluntarily returned his license after a revocation procedure was initiated. Another 51 cases are currently being examined by authorities, according to data released by the Saxony-Anhalt Interior Ministry in response to a request for information from the Left Party.
Hunters and sport shooters will also have their gun licenses canceled by authorities. … continue
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