“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
Pablo Picasso

I have been fortunate to spend most of my life in an area with continuing infrastructure improvements over the past 120 years. Each new method of transportation and subsequent improvements brought burst of economic activity. Railroad arrived in 1911 with a station in Bend, Oregon. The train station gave an economic edge over the other communities and became a lifeline for economic prosperity to move goods.

Train travel disappeared over time. Only one Amtrak route serves Oregon with seven stops. The closest station in in Chemult about a 60 miles drive. The station boasts a covering over the platform servicing passengers. The stars are amazing at the station, very little light pollution.

China’s High-Speed Trains. America, Where are You? By Larry Romanoff, May 27, 2022

China has the world’s longest high-speed rail (HSR) network with some 38,000 kilometers in operation, (1) which comprises nearly 70% of all the world’s high-speed lines (2) and more than three times that of the entire European Union. (3) China has more than 2,500 high-speed trains in operation, more than all the rest of the world combined, (4) and it also has the fastest trains in operation anywhere, (5) with several generations now operating at speeds between 350 Km/h and 400 Km/h. Shanghai’s Maglev is still the fastest operating train in the world, (6) with sustained speeds of 430 Km/h. China’s rail system carries about 3.5 billion passengers per year, nearly 70% of these on high-speed trains. During the 40 days of China’s Spring Festival (Chinese New Year), passenger volume reached a peak of more than 400 million.
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It is now legendary that when the Chinese government set its mind to an objective, it doesn’t waste time. Everything you have read above has happened in only the past 16 years. “At the beginning of the 21st century China had no high-speed railways. Slow and often uncomfortable trains plodded across this vast country, with low average speeds making journeys such as Shanghai-Beijing a test of travel endurance. Today, it’s a completely different picture. [China] has . . . the world’s largest network of high-speed railways, and all have been completed since 2008.”
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It was widely assumed initially that there was no market for train travel, that the world would follow the North American model and rely primarily on the auto with the airlines as long-distance backup. But more than 40 years ago Chinese government officials saw the potential and disagreed, and began planning what would become the world’s largest HSR network, with enormous sums invested in the project. One expert wrote, “Chinese engineers have exhibited enormous ingenuity and creativity and are still aggressively pushing the rail technology envelope.” It is generally agreed that China’s success in high-speed rail development and its cost reduction, has resulted in “validating the feasibility of widespread adoption and greater affordability. Developing countries are particularly grateful that China has brought the cost of HSR to affordable levels.” One expert wrote, “It appears now that China will dominate the HSR market for the foreseeable future.”

And indeed, developing countries are increasingly attracted to the prospect of China’s affordable HSR trains as an impetus for their own economic development. At the time of writing, Chinese railway firms were building a high-speed line in Turkey linking Ankara and Istanbul, another project in Venezuela, and expecting contracts in Brazil, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Poland. Railway routes in China are expanding to mesh with new routes in Vietnam and Thailand, and there are plans to extend a route all the way to Singapore. Chinese rail officials are in the planning stages of a high-speed rail route passing through Xinjiang Province in Western China, through Kyrgyzstan and other ‘Stans’, connecting with lines in Turkey and proceeding Westward into Europe. It may soon be possible to travel by HSR all the way from Shanghai to London – at a fraction of the cost of flying, and with far more comfort and the ability to see maybe 15 countries on route.
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Whenever the subject of technology transfer arises, there seems to always surface a flurry of accusations about copying or stealing. Readers should carefully note that China did not “steal” anyone’s rail technology; instead, it was all purchased. China paid billions of dollars for that transfer of technology. It is the same in all important industries today. China has the money, and is willing to pay handsomely for technology it needs to further its development.

To compensate for a late start, the Chinese government began (in only 2004) by purchasing rail technology abroad, signing agreements with Alstom and Kawasaki to build HSR train sets for China in cooperation with local firms. Kawasaki, who designed the original Hayate bullet train, signed a deal with the Chinese ministry of Railways for the transfer of a full spectrum of HSR technology. They began with Kawasaki manufacturing 50 HSR train sets in Japan and exporting these to China fully-assembled, then progressed to establishing factories in China where Kawasaki helped the Chinese manufacturers to produce another 50 train sets locally. China also paid Kawasaki for the training of manufacturing staff first in Japan and then at the factories in China. This process carried a heavy price; the arrangement with Kawasaki cost China around $800 million, plus countless millions for training and many technology updates. The contract with Kawasaki included “the transfer of the whole spectrum of technology and know-how for the bullet train”, so that these trains became in fact Chinese-owned IP.
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But it wasn’t all gravy because the Chinese rail companies paid billions of dollars for was in fact old technology from those four companies. Knowing the Chinese wanted to produce trains based entirely on their own IP and technology, Kawasaki and Siemens in particular refused to sell their more advanced products and would sell China only rail technology that was already two or even three generations old. These foreign companies were actually planning to take full control of China’s vast market for HSR transportation, expecting to fully supply the “the most ambitious rapid rail system in history”, with rewards in the billions.
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China’s HSR system is built to an intense high quality. Chinese high-speed trains run on special dedicated, often elevated tracks laid on deep and heavily-reinforced beds of high-density concrete with vertical and horizontal deviations measured in millimeters, these tracks supported by massive columns of high-strength concrete spaced very closely. With high-speed trains there is no chugging uphill and racing downhill; HSR tracks are, insofar as is humanly and technologically possible, a straight and level line. Typically, a horizontal elevation is selected for a particular route, with the rail bed maintaining this throughout the route. Depressions and valleys are filled in with bridges, and mountains and hills are met with tunnels.
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Due to its unique government structure, China is able to plan and amend its entire travel infrastructure as a whole, considering air, rail and road, taking into account only the benefits to the entire country rather than having to appease a multitude of private interests. HSR trains have cut travel time so dramatically that airline services on many routes have been suspended in whole or in part. The airlines may not always be pleased, but China’s transportation system is designed for the maximum overall benefit to the nation, not to serve specific private interests or friends of the Administration.
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It is critical to note that economic development follows transportation. Countries like Canada and the US would never have developed without the cross-country transportation systems being in place. But it is almost certainly too late for both Canada and the US with high-speed rail, too many decades of auto-dependent development condemning both countries to irreversible transport deficiencies. In the US, General Motors (aided by a few others) managed to convince the individual states to abandon all investment (and maintenance!) in railways and other public transport, and instead make huge public expenditures on highways that were useful only to those who owned private automobiles, effectively stranding all other citizens at home with no way to go anywhere and virtually forcing everyone to buy a car. This is not trivial, but instead a critical historical narrative. One observer wrote that “A theme likely to be emphasised in history will be the enormous strategic error made by both the US and Canada in enslaving themselves to individual motorized transportation.”
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“Most American (rail) infrastructure was built in the early to mid-20th century (1920-1950), the continent having been simultaneously wired for electricity and phone service while constructing the interstate highway system along with thousands of bridges, tunnels and more. But the US has spent almost no money on maintenance and repairs on any of this infrastructure for almost 60 years now. The situation today is dire and, in many instances, critical, but money is no longer available (except for Israel and Ukraine). Derailments and other accidents occur almost daily on America’s dilapidated and unsafe rail network which, like the highways, has received only urgent patching rather than proper maintenance and repair.” (18) (19) (20)

“In June of 2013 an Interstate bridge on a main commercial corridor between Seattle, Washington and Vancouver, Canada, collapsed and fell into the river below after being hit by a truck. This was not a high-speed collision; the truck simply bumped one of the main support pillars at low speed, but the weakened and dilapidated pillar broke from the strain and, without that extra bit of support, the entire bridge immediately collapsed.
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However, unknown to the world at large, America does indeed have a “high-speed train”, Richard Branson’s new ‘Brightline’, that runs 100 Kms from Miami to West Palm Beach in Florida. According to the promotions, these are “sleek, neon-yellow trains, which travel at speeds of up to 127 Kms/hr (!!!)”. To be fair to the Americans, they initially promoted this as a “higher-speed train”, a small but worthy concession to reality that quickly disappeared. To be fair to the sleek, neon-yellow train, it is quite unable to reach its advertised top speed and in fact seldom reaches even 100 Km/h, faster than a freight train, but not by much.

Also unknown to the world, this American version of HSR has, in its first few years since inauguration, had numerous derailments, scores of accidents, and caused well over 100 deaths. In what should have been a surprising development, several of the accidents and deaths occurred during the train’s initial test run, after which it was inexplicably cleared for service. But perhaps no matter because Brightline assured us that “safety remains the company’s top priority”. Interestingly, the US Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) data show 60% fewer deaths than the media reports of actual fatalities because (if you can believe this) they inexplicably (and almost certainly unjustifiably) classify most of the deaths as “possible suicides”, and then sanctimoniously impose “reporting restrictions intended to safeguard privacy”.
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In only one or two decades, China has become a world leader or at least a peer in so many areas – IT, telecommunications, high-speed trains, quantum communications, DNA synthesising and mapping, green energy sources, space exploration, astronomy, mind-machine interfaces, small drones, aircraft production, 3-D printing. The Chinese have built their own space station, photographed every square meter of the moon, launched their own GPS system, built the deepest deep-sea submersibles, and much more, to say nothing of all the massive engineering projects. None of this was an accident and none of it happened overnight; all were the result of planning begun 20, 30, and even 40 years ago, the results only now becoming evident.

For many Americans cars are an essential part of life. Started driving on the roads at 12, when reached the age to legally move farm vehicles on public roads. The old Chevy truck was considered a farm vehicle when moving equipment from one property to another. Still drive an old, gas guzzling truck (now a Ford) to move stuff around for the ranch. The primary town car is an electric hybrid. Hydrogen car a little out of my price range and fuel availability issues.

Americans and Automobiles: Capitalism and Propaganda
By Larry Romanoff, May 28, 2022

In terms of environmental effect, the production of hydrogen from methane is more damaging than is driving gasoline-powered cars, since the hydrogen extraction process actually releases more CO2 into the atmosphere than does the burning of gasoline, on a per-liter basis. In addition, hydrogen is much less efficient than direct battery power and fuel cell autos will be almost twice as expensive as pure electric cars. The only advantages of a fuel cell are the prospect of longer range and shorter refueling times, but battery development will no doubt remove these differences in time.

There is also the aspect of economic and political control, which is not a small thing. The small cabal of European bankers and industrialists who beneficially control most of the world’s international oil companies are on public record as stating that “If you control the oil, you control the world’s economies, and if you control the food, you control the world’s populations”. This is what is at stake; it is not merely their petroleum profits but their political and economic control of nations, that are severely threatened by the move away from petroleum fuels. Consider the fierce economic attack on Russia and Venezuela in late 2014 and 2015 by the dramatic depression in the price of oil, meant almost exclusively to collapse Russia’s petroleum-based economy. Such ‘sanctions’ would be equally successful if the world moves to methane-based hydrogen auto fuel, but would be futile with electric cars.

The matter is even more serious than mere control of the economies of other nations. Recall again that the US military is on record as determined to obtain “full-spectrum domination”, one reason the Americans have been making such a fuss about China’s island installations in the South China Sea. The US military has been counting on the power of its naval fleet to cut off China’s petroleum supply routes in the event of a war, and a Chinese military presence in that area might inhibit US domination of the sea lanes. A military without fuel is no military; all those ships and planes become immobile useless hardware, as Japan discovered in 1940 when the US engineered a total embargo on oil to Japan, setting in motion the strike on Pearl Harbor. But more than that, if China moves to fully electric autos, its domestic petroleum supplies might be sufficient for the military, thereby denying the US a major advantage. Thus, the push to hydrogen fuels is as much about political and military domination as about bankers’ profits.
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There are many other such crimes against the American people, inflicted upon them by the same group, our by-now famous International Cabal of Gangsters (ICG) operating ultimately out of the City of London. One of the most insidious is the US FED [11], a blood-sucking vampire that badly needs a stake driven through its heart. The American health care system is another of the most obvious, [12] as is education, [13] [14] but there are more. If Americans understood their true predicament, and the fundamental causes, there would be a revolution before morning.
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Due to its unique government structure, China is able to plan and amend its entire travel infrastructure as a whole, considering air, rail and road, taking into account only the benefits to the entire country rather than having to appease a multitude of private interests. HSR trains have cut travel time so dramatically that airline services on many routes have been suspended in whole or in part. The airlines may not always be pleased, but China’s transportation system is designed for the maximum overall benefit to the nation, not to serve specific private interests or friends of the Administration.
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China has not succumbed to the sometimes-intense privatisation pressure from Western bankers and has retained control of its infrastructure, an enormous blessing for rapid and efficient development. Chinese leaders recognised from the beginning that economic development follows transportation, and thus maintaining control of the transportation infrastructure derives from a determination to distribute the benefits of development to the entire nation. The reality is that not all infrastructure is destined to be financially profitable – profitability being the only measure by Western standards.

Do I believe this article from January? - It doesn't matter.
If Russia and Chinese believe the concept described it becomes significant.

NATO's new global doctrine reminds reincarnation of Third Reich pravda.ru Jan 6, 2022

In order to understand the essence of the process, one needs to understand how NATO sees this notorious "confrontation". Perhaps the best definition of this phenomenon was made by analyst Vladimir Pavlenko. In his article What new NATO strategy Jens Stoltenberg unveils he wrote:

"The strategy of the Western nations is to unite and maximize all of its bridgeheads on the Eurasian periphery — from Europe to Turkey, Israel and the Middle East and further to India, South Korea and Japan in transit through ASEAN."

Pavlenko uses the "anaconda ring" term. Indeed, this image suits the pseudo-European bloc that wants to turn into a global structure — a military dictatorship ruling over the US and the European Union.
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Jens Stoltenberg exposed the content of the new NATO 2022 doctrine in his interview for The Financial Times on October 19, 2021. In a conversation with an American journalist, he once again emphasized that it was China and Russia that posed one big threat to the world. He also revealed to the world that, from the point of view of the NATO leadership, all the differences between China, Russia, the Asia-Pacific region and Europe were conditional.

"This whole idea of distinguishing so much between China, Russia, either the Asia-Pacific or Europe — it is one big security environment and we have to address it all together. What we do on readiness, on technology, on cyber, on resilience matters for all these threats. You don't put a label,” he told the FT.

Stoltenberg's rhetoric echoes Nazi eloquence of 80 years ago, does it not? After all, it was Hitler who came up with the "complex solution to the problem": in his dictionary it is designated as "the final solution." Back in those years, the solution was about the destruction of the Soviet Union and the extermination of the Jews.
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Finally, the concept of "security" is interpreted as the need to keep "the door to membership in the Alliance open to all European democracies that meet NATO's standards."

This suggests that it is up to NATO to decide which state meets the standards and which does not. In fact, NATO justifies its further expansion to the East.

In conclusion, we can say that the Third Reich has reincarnated before our very eyes. The Jews have been replaced with the Russians and the Belarusians, whom this new reich recognizes as outcasts. They can be persecuted, their property can be destroyed, their money can be taken away from them, they can be deprived of the right to open accounts and seek jobs, they can be humiliated and insulted in all possible forms.

The new NATO strategy is designed to consolidate the status quo as the only way for inclusive capitalism to survive is to conquer Russia and its allies on the continent.

The confrontation has become global. Russia must be prepared for a long and difficult struggle — there is no other way.

I was going to include some information on the changing media dialog regarding Ukraine. Moon of Alabama did an excellent recap Friday. Just reading the headlines is a showcase of propaganda techniques.
How Russia, And Putin, Are Weaponizing, Losing And Running Out Of ... Everything

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