@snoopydawg
What goes around, comes around.

By pushing countries together with Russia and China by insisting that they accept IMF loans and destroy their middle class and beggar their poor those countries are now looking to join with China because they invest in their countries instead of destroying them as we insist they do. And the Russian sanctions are driving up prices around the globe. Psakiopath said that Americans are gladly paying the price so that Ukraine can fight for freedom and democracy. Bull sh*t, Jen. No one asked me if I wanted to support Nazi extremists in Ukraine. I do not.

3rd world problems coming your way

While most of the world’s attention is focused on the Ukraine, there are events happening in Sri Lanka that should alarm everyone. Sri Lanka is a small independent island nation off the southern tip of India. Relatively insignificant in the global context it may prove to be the “canary in the coal mine” that portends a wider global and economic crisis. A long corrupted and badly run country, it has announced that it can no longer meet its international debt obligations. Like so many others, Sri Lanka was devastated by Covid, without tourism and trade its lacks the foreign currency essential to pay its debt. With some $56 billion in foreign debt it has been forced to return to the IMF to seek further loans to pay for imports of food, energy and medicines.

Chaos and riots are widespread throughout the country and on Monday Prime Minister Majinda Rajapaska stepped down. The resignation failed to quell the riots and protestors are also demanding the President, Gotabaya Rajapaska, the former P.M.’s brother also step down. On Tuesday 10th, the Government ordered troops to shoot anyone looting public property. The Government also ordered thousands of Army, Navy and Air Force to patrol the streets of Colombo, the capital. Eight people are reported dead and more than two hundred wounded. Houses belonging to the Rajapaskas and other Ministers were torched. It is not the country’s first economic crisis, but is by far its worst and the long beleaguered people have reached breaking point. There are shortages of everything, inflation is rampant and the healthcare system has broken down. Enter the IMF.

The IMF as always has a plan for such situations. Structural reform, usually involving feeding money in so that the interest on the debt can continue to be serviced although never repaid. It will also involve cutting any Government spending on essential services and the privatising of any remaining public assets. As we may imagine none of these measures will be popular with the people who as always will suffer the most. Not that the concerns of the ordinary people will worry IMF or the investor class it represents. Debt must always be serviced before the people eat. These are the rules of the “rules-based order”.

….
Since 1945 and the implementation of the Bretton Woods agreement the world has been held hostage by a financial system that was designed to benefit a small minority in the capital class. Poor countries were to be kept poor and any real economic development was to be discouraged. It is a financial system that trades in human suffering and misery. It was the new face of empire, financial neo-colonialism. The vast resources of the American military were deployed around the world to ensure that no nation strayed from the plantation. Yet even the power of the military cannot be expected to quell the anti-Western momentum that is happening now. To quote Napoleon, “there is something more powerful than all the armies in the World, that is an idea whose time has come”. That time has come. Which country will be the first to completely repudiate its foreign debt and start again with an honest financial system, we don’t know. What we do know that it will base its new system on one demonstrated so capably by the Chinese, based on growth and development. Any one country alone making such a move can expect to incur the full wrath of the Empire, yet a number of like-minded countries working in concert will have strength in numbers. All indicators suggest this is now happening.

Once just regarded as third world problems, chronic food and energy shortages together with unmanageable inflation are coming to the west. Scenes recently witnessed in Sri Lanka may soon be repeated on the streets of Europe and America. Hard times are coming for all in the short term, yet a world freed from the clutches of the Empire promises a brighter future for all mankind.

Good luck with the Great Reset, Klaus.

After Obama’s brutal coup in Ukraine the IMF loaned them money and then insisted that they put crushing austerity measures on their citizens. Pensions and lots of other programs were gutted. I doubt the citizens signed up for that.

If you can’t reach the site I’ll post more. Strategic Culture is hit and miss. They have been having a battle with the state department because of what they write about there. Some journalists have been hit with fines or threatened with them if they don’t stop. Yeah so much for the 1st amendment.

Also there’s no way that Germany or Europe can refuse Russian oil because that would not only destroy their economy, but would have dire consequences all over the world.

Long and detailed article on this. Almost every oil factory is built to receive Russian oil and building new ones would take at least a decade and by that time there would be no industries left standing to use it.

Democrats will get wiped out in the midterms and republicans will once again take control. Rumors are that one of the 1st things they are going to do is raise taxes on we the people. Democrats will surely help them do it.

@ggersh
to put an end to the proliferation of neo-Nazi fascists in Ukraine:

NATO membership is surprise surprise, a WEF "Young Leader". So yes people
the "Great Reset" is being thrust upon us

This is from Automatic Earth

https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2022/05/debt-rattle-may-15-2022/

https://geopoliticsandempire.com/2022/05/13/guy-mettan-ukraine-is-the-fi...

Guy Mettan discusses the deep thousand year history of Russophobia which informs the current Ukraine crisis. Europe had divided in two parts along religious lines which can still be seen in Ukraine today. He traces Russophobia from medieval Germany to France to Britain and back again to Germany and today the U.S. and EU. Brzezinski outlined the importance of conquering Ukraine because it’s the pivotal power of Europe. Ukraine is the first battle of the Third World War. It won’t be a total war, it will be a global unlimited war, unlimited in space and time where everybody will be affected. He agrees that there is a neo-totalitarian trend in the West and that democracy is a false flag. He’s pessimistic regarding the future development of our world as the U.S. and EU develop into a totalitarian new empire. But he’s optimistic that the light of the truth can’t be extinguished.

Nazi bad, nope Nazi good

EDIT: BTW gas hit an all-time high of $4.99 per today. Joementia and the monopolies
did that, not Vlad

@Blue Republic

...right out of the DC Think Tanks — who channel their own nazi-imperialist fever dreams — and know nothing about Chinese culture and civilization.

with mainland China (and an overwhelming majority do not under current circumstances) then they should not have to - any more than Donetsk or Luhansk or Crimea should be required to 'reintegrate' with Ukraine. It would make about as much sense and be about as morally justified as say, Spain deciding to retake Cuba. Maybe less so since with the exception of two years or so two post-WWII Taiwan has not been under the control of a mainland government since the last decades of the Quing Dynasty - some years before the Spanish-American War.

As far as that goes, Spain also gained control of Cuba over a hundred years (early 1500's versus 1686) earlier than the Quing invasion and annexation of Taiwan.

It seems to be pretty generally accepted here that the US is trying to weaken and dominate both Russia and China. But is that actually the case?

Consider the 80's. Reagan. Star Wars. Make the Russians attempt to keep up with US 'defense' expenditures and bankrupt them. OK, the Soviet Union goes broke and semi-collapses. Yay! We win!

But did we? Or did the Soviets just go broke *first*? Yes, we weakened them, but started a process of debt, decline and expansion of the MIC that has profoundly damaged ourselves.

So now the US, the Europeans and the various junior partners are out to weaken Russia - but the weakening is mutual, as people are starting to find out.

Question is, who benefits from this? I submit that it is the PRC. How does it stand to benefit them?
Well, the classic geopolitical standards: power and resources.

Doesn't that fly in the face of the close relationship between China and Russia? Not necessarily. The current relationship is mainly one of mutual convenience, driven in no small part by American hostility (especially sanctions) toward Russia. In the longer term strategic and cultural perspective they have traditionally been very much rivals. China's desire for control of the vast resources of Siberia and the Russian Far East are of very long standing - as are Russia's determination to hang on to them and concern about how to do so. (See Baikal-Amur Main Line)

A weakening of America/Nato and associates *and* Russia would - PRC leadership probably correctly conclude - leave them not only with the chance to take Taiwan at minimized risk, but to be the dominant power still standing - a bit like the situation the US was in at the end of WWII.

Those with warm and fuzzy feelings toward the PRC will be comforted by the fact that (USAF Ret.) General Robert Spalding does not feel that Taiwan is defensible. But maybe less so about his reading of the Chinese leadership's strategic aims and how they pursue them.

From Chapter 1 of Spalding's most recent book "War Without Rules: China's Playbook for Global Domination" (April, 2022)

So what is China up to? What do they want? And how are they working to get it?

According to too many of our politicians and business leaders, China doesn't want much, and it isn't acting against us at all. Conversations on this subject that take place in the Pentagon are usually steered by the view from the top. In some fashion, the views of the president and his most senior advisers and cabinet members set the tone for how the meetings would go. In my tours in both the White House national security staff and the Pentagon, the required view was that if you said China was an enemy, you could be out of a job. Outside the formality of those rooms, my colleagues and I had screaming arguments about exactly that subject.

When I arrived at the Pentagon as the China adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2014, the instructions from the Obama administration were clear: We were not going to do anything in public to antagonize China as their relationship is too significant financially. The narrative was that the two most powerful countries in the world had to cooperate to solve greater challenges like a nuclear-armed North Korea and climate change. That stance was built on the absurd idea that China wants to fix either of these issues. (It doesn't.)

Over those years I came to two key realizations. First, the number one goal of the Chinese Communist Party is the survival of the Chinese Communist Party. And second, the number one threat to achieving that goal is American democracy. We may not see them as our enemy, but they surely see us as their enemy. An existential one.

The basis of globalization that was agreed to in the wake of World War II was the principles of the Atlantic Charter, which underlies the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and other bodies. There are four keys: free markets, democratic principles, rule of law, and self-determination. This is what the global elites who convene in places like Davos believed the Chinese were moving toward. In fact, the exact opposite was true. As we later learned, the Chinese Communist Party regards those exact principles as a fundamental threat to its existence.

Good interviews with Spalding at Epoch Times: Part 1 Part 2

Robert Spalding retired from the U.S. Air Force as a brigadier general after more than 25 years of service. The author of Stealth War, he is a former China strategist for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, as well as a senior defense official and defense attaché to China. He earned his doctorate in economics and mathematics from the University of Missouri and is fluent in Mandarin.

Or here:

@Blue Republic
publication produced by the Falun Gong religious group that produces extensive disinformation about the Chinese government.

China Genocide fabricated by Epoch Times fake News and NY Times disinformation

The New York Times recycled flimsy claims by a right-wing apocalyptic extremist to accuse China of “genocide,” in an op-ed by an American with 1/8th Uighur heritage who worked for Epoch Times, a far-right, pro-Trump outlet backed by cult Falun Gong.
...

What is The Epoch Times?
Dangerous Propaganda Masquerading as News

If you have watched a YouTube video in recent weeks, you have probably noticed the incessant wave of advertisements by a media company calling itself The Epoch Times. Their ads are so dominant right now on that site, it almost feels like they are the only company buying them, or that they are somehow being funded by YouTube. That’s not the case, they just have millions of dollars to spend, and aren’t shy about spending it. The content of these advertisements presents a picture of a media company trying to gain an audience by promoting news that is factual and without bias, but at the same time makes no effort to conceal its agenda of extremism, which is both disturbing, and dangerous to the public sphere. It is important that the general populace knows exactly who these people are.

The Epoch Times was started by John Tang in the year 2000 as a Chinese language newspaper. John Tang is a graduate of Georgia Tech who publicly supports the Fulan Gong, a Chinese religious order that opposes communism and as such is banned from practicing in China. The newspaper started as an anti-propaganda of the Chinese state, but quickly transitioned to other languages and although it actively promotes anti-communism (even gathering signatures for a petition to “stop the Chinese Communist Party on its homepage), much of its content is focused on hard right spinning of the news and promotion of conspiracy theories that actively spread false information.
...

The Dark Propaganda Strategy of Epoch Times
Progenitor of fake news delivers to local doorsteps

Last month, many local residents were amongst the thousands of Southern Californians who received a copy of The Epoch Times in their mail boxes — the newspaper “freedom loving people wanting news without spin prefer to read.” What The Epoch Times doesn’t tell you is that it’s connected to and has the same function as the long-running Chinese performing arts show, Shen Yun. You probably recognize the show from the ubiquitous billboards promoting the show. Shen Yun is the public relations — some say propaganda — arm of Falun Gong, a controversial spiritual movement which has been banned in China.
...
Despite the locally disseminated paper being printed in El Monte, CA, The Epoch Times is not a local newspaper. It doesn’t even pretend to be. Its content is largely supplied by writers in every other part of the country but California. And despite its claims that its content has “no spin,” the world it depicts in its pages is upside down, emblematic of a Trumpian-worldview.
...
The news organization was founded with the aim of attacking China’s Communist government in support of the Falun Gong movement. As the government ramped up its repressive efforts against the movement, the movement started looking for allies wherever it could find them — perhaps thinking the enemy of my enemy is my friend. This led to the movement linking arms with far-right groups around the world particularly in Europe and the United States and participating in the manufacture and dissemination of the kind of fake news you’re likely to see in online forums and fake-news websites, except it’s putting it in print. The publication is funded by several non-profit organizations that are not transparent as to who is supporting them.
...
Higdon’s solution sounds like a process that would require a great deal of education, time and political uplift in order to make that happen. But also, I can’t help but be reminded of Ron Suskinds’ 2004 New York Times piece about the Bush presidency in which he quotes a senior advisor saying:

People like you are still living in what we call the reality-based community. You believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you are studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors, and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

Protecting American democracy and ensuring that reality is moored by facts and science won’t wait for the exposure of every bit of fake news or until every American achieves media literacy. The world in which we live today is vastly different from the one inherited by the Trump administration.

with mainland China (and an overwhelming majority do not under current circumstances) then they should not have to - any more than Donetsk or Luhansk or Crimea should be required to 'reintegrate' with Ukraine. It would make about as much sense and be about as morally justified as say, Spain deciding to retake Cuba. Maybe less so since with the exception of two years or so two post-WWII Taiwan has not been under the control of a mainland government since the last decades of the Quing Dynasty - some years before the Spanish-American War.

As far as that goes, Spain also gained control of Cuba over a hundred years (early 1500's versus 1686) earlier than the Quing invasion and annexation of Taiwan.

It seems to be pretty generally accepted here that the US is trying to weaken and dominate both Russia and China. But is that actually the case?

Consider the 80's. Reagan. Star Wars. Make the Russians attempt to keep up with US 'defense' expenditures and bankrupt them. OK, the Soviet Union goes broke and semi-collapses. Yay! We win!

But did we? Or did the Soviets just go broke *first*? Yes, we weakened them, but started a process of debt, decline and expansion of the MIC that has profoundly damaged ourselves.

So now the US, the Europeans and the various junior partners are out to weaken Russia - but the weakening is mutual, as people are starting to find out.

Question is, who benefits from this? I submit that it is the PRC. How does it stand to benefit them?
Well, the classic geopolitical standards: power and resources.

Doesn't that fly in the face of the close relationship between China and Russia? Not necessarily. The current relationship is mainly one of mutual convenience, driven in no small part by American hostility (especially sanctions) toward Russia. In the longer term strategic and cultural perspective they have traditionally been very much rivals. China's desire for control of the vast resources of Siberia and the Russian Far East are of very long standing - as are Russia's determination to hang on to them and concern about how to do so. (See Baikal-Amur Main Line)

A weakening of America/Nato and associates *and* Russia would - PRC leadership probably correctly conclude - leave them not only with the chance to take Taiwan at minimized risk, but to be the dominant power still standing - a bit like the situation the US was in at the end of WWII.

Those with warm and fuzzy feelings toward the PRC will be comforted by the fact that (USAF Ret.) General Robert Spalding does not feel that Taiwan is defensible. But maybe less so about his reading of the Chinese leadership's strategic aims and how they pursue them.

From Chapter 1 of Spalding's most recent book "War Without Rules: China's Playbook for Global Domination" (April, 2022)

So what is China up to? What do they want? And how are they working to get it?

According to too many of our politicians and business leaders, China doesn't want much, and it isn't acting against us at all. Conversations on this subject that take place in the Pentagon are usually steered by the view from the top. In some fashion, the views of the president and his most senior advisers and cabinet members set the tone for how the meetings would go. In my tours in both the White House national security staff and the Pentagon, the required view was that if you said China was an enemy, you could be out of a job. Outside the formality of those rooms, my colleagues and I had screaming arguments about exactly that subject.

When I arrived at the Pentagon as the China adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2014, the instructions from the Obama administration were clear: We were not going to do anything in public to antagonize China as their relationship is too significant financially. The narrative was that the two most powerful countries in the world had to cooperate to solve greater challenges like a nuclear-armed North Korea and climate change. That stance was built on the absurd idea that China wants to fix either of these issues. (It doesn't.)

Over those years I came to two key realizations. First, the number one goal of the Chinese Communist Party is the survival of the Chinese Communist Party. And second, the number one threat to achieving that goal is American democracy. We may not see them as our enemy, but they surely see us as their enemy. An existential one.

The basis of globalization that was agreed to in the wake of World War II was the principles of the Atlantic Charter, which underlies the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and other bodies. There are four keys: free markets, democratic principles, rule of law, and self-determination. This is what the global elites who convene in places like Davos believed the Chinese were moving toward. In fact, the exact opposite was true. As we later learned, the Chinese Communist Party regards those exact principles as a fundamental threat to its existence.

Good interviews with Spalding at Epoch Times: Part 1 Part 2

Robert Spalding retired from the U.S. Air Force as a brigadier general after more than 25 years of service. The author of Stealth War, he is a former China strategist for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, as well as a senior defense official and defense attaché to China. He earned his doctorate in economics and mathematics from the University of Missouri and is fluent in Mandarin.

Or here: