Forward Observer: Why the Battlefield Is Everywhere

Intelligence analyst Sam Culper of Forward Observer talks about China and cyber warfare in Why the Battlefield Is Everywhere.

Good morning. It’s Sam Culper with this week’s Forward Observer Dispatch.

Last week, I wrote about the reasons why conflict is virtually certain to escalate with China, leading to either a shooting war or a financial, monetary, and cyber conflict, which could lead to a shooting war. The history lesson is that monetary wars lead to military wars.

Either way, this is going to be a messy 10-20 years.

I’m picking my way through another chapter of Unrestricted Warfare, the 1999 essay/manual written by two People’s Liberation Army officers.

I want to share a key takeaway from the chapter:

The authors discuss how technology is changing the nature of warfare, from a “line” to an “area” and eventually to the entire world. Here’s the money quote:

“Just think, if it’s even possible to start a war in a computer room or a stock exchange that will send an enemy country to its doom, then is there [a] non-battlespace anywhere?”

“Where is the battlefield?” the authors ask. “The answer would be: Everywhere.”

The authors go on to write that, in light of this, the future protagonist of war is not the professional soldier, but the hacker.

This is exactly the kind of mindset and activity we’re seeing today, re: Chinese hacking campaigns.

At some point in the next four years, perhaps coinciding with the 2024 election, the U.S. could be forced to decide and act on going to war with China over Taiwan. I’m not advocating for or against it, but simply pointing out that a decision will be made.

This is one reason why Trump tried to pull U.S. Forces from the ends of the Earth.

Chinese military leaders privately say they’re within two years of being able to invade Taiwan.

The commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command is requesting missiles be deployed to Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines to counteract what he describes as a shifting balance of military power that has become “more unfavorable” for the United States.

I want to encourage you, if haven’t already, to consider how prepared you are for systems disruption. If we go to war with China, we’re going to feel the effects here at home: disruptions to power, internet, communications, transportation, the stock market and financial services, etc.

According to Unrestricted Warfare, the key to beating the United States is to make them prioritize self-preservation ahead of geopolitical goals. Prepare accordingly.

Always Out Front,

Samuel Culper

See also, Yahoo!’s ‘We’re going to lose fast’: U.S. Air Force held a war game that started with a Chinese biological attack

Financial Times Admiral warns US military losing its edge in Indo-Pacific

Organic Prepper: Food Shortages Hit China

Adding to recent warnings about food shortages, here is an article from The Organic Prepper which discusses shortages in China. Food Shortages Hit China: There Is “not…enough fresh food to go around”

Over the past few weeks, I have been writing articles regarding a coming food shortage. I’ve been pointing out that the food shortage is going to hit the United States hard but that it is also going to hit the rest of the world.

A worldwide fit of hysteria over COVID, resulting in the shutdown of the world’s economy, interruption of the supply chain, and the destruction of food products, as well as international trade wars and natural disasters, are going to collide with one another and make this winter one of the toughest on record.

China is publicly acknowledging a coming food shortage.

But while many have dismissed my claims, I’d like to draw your attention to the fact that China is now publicly acknowledging a coming food shortage. (And as noted in this article, when they admit there’s a problem, it’s a BIG problem. ) In fact, China even has an anti-food-wasting campaign going on across the country right this minute encouraging people to eat half portions or at least make sure to finish their plates.

In an October 5, article for the New York Times entitled “China’s mealtime appeal amid food supply worries: Don’t take more than you can eat,” Eva Dou writes,

On the surface, China’s campaign to encourage mealtime thrift has been a cheerful affair, with soldiers, factory workers and schoolchildren shown polishing their plates clean of food.

But behind the drive is a harsh reality. China does not have enough fresh food to go around — and neither does much of the world.

The pandemic and extreme weather have disrupted agricultural supply chains, leaving food prices sharply higher in countries as diverse as YemenSudanMexico and South Korea. The United Nations warned in June that the world is on the brink of its worst food crisis in 50 years.

“It’s scary and it’s overwhelming,” Arif Husain, chief economist of the United Nations World Food Program, said in an interview. “I don’t think we have seen anything like this ever.”

Those are strong words, to say the least.

Right now, the food products in China that are facing the toughest situation are corn and pork. China’s pork industry was hit hard by African Swine Fever (at least we are told) and flooding ruined a large portion of China’s corn crops. But it’s not just those two products that are at risk. Fresh food of every kind is in short supply for the same reasons as the United States, i.e. insane shutdown policies.

China is claiming that it is not in a food crisis currently and it is attempting to reassure the population that it has enough wheat in reserve to feed everyone for a year. But the reality is different from the claims, as China’s pork prices rose 135 percent in February, and floods killed so many vegetable crops.

You may wonder how this shortage in China affects us.

Ironically, China is dependent on the United States to bridge its corn shortfall. Despite the fact that we are allegedly in a trade war with China and the fact that Americans will soon be facing a shortage of food of their own, it’s likely that the good ol’ USA will tell its citizens to take one for the team yet again and help stabilize the brutal Communist dictatorship that Americans built by shipping their jobs overseas with Free Trade.

Political unrest goes hand in hand with food insecurity.

And it’s true that China’s government may not view the food crisis as the biggest concern. Instead, it views political unrest as the biggest threat. Political unrest, unfortunately for the Chinese Communist Party, is a direct result, especially in China, of food insecurity.

Both of its major political disruptions – the 1950s and 1980s – came at a time when food was in scarce supply.

But, for now, China is attempting to convince its population to embrace austerity voluntarily and through social shaming (like America’s masks) in order to stave off the crisis a little longer. Dou describes the “Clean Plate’ push in her article by writing,

Beijing’s solution has been a sunny “Clean Plate Campaign” launched in August, with the aim of curbing food use without prompting public alarm. Like the American Victory Gardens of World War II, the campaign is as much about trying to unite the country around a patriotic mission in a time of hardship as it is about securing the food supply.

Restaurants across the nation are dishing out “half-servings” in line with the drive. Some, such as the upscale Peking duck chain Quanjude, have instructed servers to nag diners not to waste. Other restaurants are fining people for leaving too much on their plates.

At one elementary school in southern China, students must send teachers short videos of their dinner each night to verify they are cleaning their plates, according to the state-run People’s Daily. A number of university canteens are giving away fruit and other small gifts to students who finish their lunches.

Even billionaire Jack Ma, founder of the online retail giant Alibaba, has been filmed trying to save food. A recent viral video shows him asking for his unfinished crab and lobster to be boxed up to go.

“Pack it up, pack it up, pack it up!” he says in the video. “I will eat it on the plane.”

Government officials are, of course, forbidden from holding lavish banquets during this period.

This is a global problem.

World Food Program economists have already estimated that 270 million people globally are suffering from hunger this year. That’s more than twice last year’s amount. That number does not include China, the United States, and Europe as they are all considered food-secure countries.

Given what everyone can see with their own eyes on American shelves and the recent “clean plate” campaign in China, the term “food secure” is being used liberally these days.

While we may get lucky and dodge the bullet, we strongly encourage you to prep while you can.  Even if no major shortages occur, you’ll be hedging your bet against food prices that will almost certainly increase dramatically over the next few years.

Imprimis: Facing Up to the China Threat

Imprimis has published an adapted speech by Brian Kennedy, president of the American Strategy Group, titled Facing Up to the China Threat.

We are at risk of losing a war today because too few of us know that we are engaged with an enemy, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), that means to destroy us. The forces of globalism that have dominated our government (until recently) and our media for the better part of half a century have blinded too many Americans to the threat we face. If we do not wake up to the danger soon, we will find ourselves helpless.

That is a worst-case scenario. I do not think we Americans will let that happen. But the forces arrayed against us are many. We need to understand what we are up against and what steps must be taken to ensure our victory.

Our modern understanding of Communist China begins during the Cold War, with President Nixon’s strategic belief that China could serve as a counterweight to the Soviet Union. This belief seemed to carry with it two great benefits. First, the U.S. wouldn’t have to take on the Soviet Union by itself: Communist China was a populous country that bordered the Soviet Union and shared our interest, or so we thought, in checking its global ambitions. Second, by engaging with China—especially in terms of trade, but also by helping it develop technologically—we would help to end communism as a guiding force in China. This second notion might be called the China dream: economic liberalism would lead to political liberalism, and China’s communist dictatorship would fade away.

At the end of the Cold War, pursuing the China dream appeared a safe course of action, given that the U.S. was then the world’s preeminent military power. The 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks reinforced the notion that superpower conflict was a thing of the past—that our major enemy was now radical Islam, widely diffused but centered in the Middle East. Later that same year, China was granted “Most Favored Nation” trading status and membership in the World Trade Organization. Little changed when the Bush administration gave way to the Obama administration. The latter’s “pivot to Asia” was mostly rhetorical—a justification to degrade our military capabilities vis-à-vis China, integrate even further the U.S. and Chinese economies, and prioritize the Middle East above all else.

Under both administrations, the U.S. failed to build a military that could challenge Communist China’s aggression in the Pacific—specifically its building of a modern navy and its construction of military installations on artificial islands in the South China Sea—and acquiesced in the export of much of the U.S. manufacturing base to China and elsewhere.

History will record that America’s China policy from the 1970s until recently was very costly because it involved a great deal of self-deception about the nature of the Chinese regime and the men who were running it.

Communist China Today

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has a population of 1.4 billion. They are governed by the Chinese Communist Party, which has 90 million members, and by an elite class of approximately 300 million additional Chinese who are deeply invested in the regime’s success. Not all of them may believe in every aspect of what the party calls “socialism with Chinese characteristics”—an admixture of Maoist, Marxist, and Leninist communism—but they actively support the regime. The system benefits these elites, whose businesses, mostly state-owned enterprises, are privately run with active participation by the CCP. Once a business reaches a certain size, it will take on board a cadre of party members who serve as a direct liaison between the business and the government.

However inefficient this may sound, understand that the CCP operates a massive global intelligence network through its Ministry of State Security. This network does its part to assist Chinese business and industry through industrial espionage, cyber warfare, and economic coercion. This type of state capitalism or neo-mercantilism has led to the creation of a modern economy that rivals that of the U.S. We might like to believe that communism in China cannot be sustained and will lead to the collapse of the regime. And it well may someday. But the CCP has proven extremely capable in building an empire that can govern 1.4 billion people. This required the conquest of a large number of peoples who were not willingly subjugated, as well as the physical mastery of a territory not easily managed. Doing this in such a short period of time and in such a ruthless and determined way is an achievement unparalleled in the known history of the world.

Today the PRC has a military of two million men, including the world’s largest navy. This military may not be qualitatively on par with the U.S. military, but quantity has a quality of its own. In the last five years of U.S. naval war game simulations, in which the U.S. is pitted against China, the U.S. has failed to come out victorious. We do not have enough ships and munitions to defeat China’s navy absent the use of nuclear weapons. And while it is often said that the Chinese do not have a nuclear arsenal to challenge the U.S., the fact is we don’t know what the Chinese possess. We know they are capable of building nuclear weapons and advanced missiles and rocketry. We know they stole or otherwise obtained advanced U.S. technology involving warhead miniaturization and guidance systems and that they have had the industrial capacity to build these for nearly two decades.

On our side, we know that the U.S. has not tested a nuclear warhead since 1992 and has not built the kind of advanced arsenal that might be required to deter China. And we know that Chinese President and CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping adheres to the beliefs of Mao Tse-tung, who held that the U.S. was a “paper tiger” that possessed nuclear weapons but would not use them. There is also the rather disturbing belief, also a favorite of Mao, that even if we did use our nuclear weapons, we could not kill all of them. Such is the way a nation at war thinks.

As for China’s air force, it possesses and is building today advanced fighter aircraft that rival anything the U.S has built. They may not yet have the quantity, but that will come with time. As for proficiency in war fighting, that is something that likewise can be acquired. For all of our nation’s military superiority, we have not been in combat with a peer competitor for half a century. As good as we may be, history contains many examples of militarily inferior nations developing military superiority. If we think that this is not what Communist China is seeking to do today, we are mistaken.

Unrestricted Warfare

There is a famous book, Unrestricted Warfare, written in 1999 by two People’s Liberation Army colonels. It argues that war between the PRC and the U.S. is inevitable, and that when it occurs China must be prepared to use whatever means are necessary to achieve victory. This includes economic warfare, cyber warfare, information warfare, political warfare, terrorism, and biological warfare, in addition to conventional and nuclear warfare. The book’s purpose was not only to shape Chinese policy, but also to plant the idea in the minds of U.S. policymakers that China will consider nothing out of bounds. The book itself is an act of information warfare. Understanding the lengths to which the PRC is willing to go, might the U.S. prefer some kind of accommodation in lieu of building a military capable of challenging China’s strategic designs?

In thinking about the implications of the word unrestricted, it is useful to look at the CCP’s treatment of its own people.

Estimates put the number of those killed at the hands of the CCP—whether through war, starvation, or execution—at roughly 100 million. The mass murder committed by the party and its Red Guards during the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) alone resulted in some 70 million dead. And these numbers do not even take into account the forced abortions stemming from China’s one-child policy. That number is conservatively estimated to be 500 million—500 million children murdered in the womb.

The Chinese government today is perfecting a system of social credit scoring that relies on constant monitoring of its people using the tools of social media, with the aim of grading each individual based on his or her support of the regime. This exerts a chilling effect on the people, who seem to have decided to go along with their communist masters lest they be excluded from whatever benefits they might enjoy from China’s economic modernization.

Many of us have heard of the CCP’s imprisonment in concentration camps of one to two million Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang province. Fewer of us are aware of how the Chinese government facilitates the abduction of Uyghur women for sexual use by Chinese soldiers—or even worse, if that were possible, how the government harvests the organs of the Uyghur population for sale both in China and abroad. This latter atrocity has become a multi-billion dollar industry: the Uyghur organs, since they are uncorrupted by alcohol or pork, are especially desirable to wealthy Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The ability of Westerners to avert their eyes from such abject horrors is clearly illustrated by the new Disney movie Mulan, parts of which were filmed mere miles from some of these camps. Disney went so far as to thank the Turpan Municipal Bureau of Public Security, responsible for imprisoning the Uyghurs, for its help during filming.

As an indication of the CCP’s treatment of Christianity, Chinese school textbooks are now promoting a false account of Christianity and of Jesus’s life and teaching. In the Chinese version of the story from the Gospel of John about the adulteress threatened with stoning, for example, Jesus explains that he too is a sinner and then stones the woman to death after the crowd disperses. Despite this and the CCP’s long history of persecuting Christians, Pope Francis will be renewing his agreement with the CCP that gives it effective control over how the Catholic Church, or what passes for it, is run in China.

The CCP operates a vast intelligence network in the U.S as well. It is made up not merely of intelligence operatives working for the Ministry of State Security, but also a myriad of business and industry officials, Chinese scholar associations, Confucius Institutes operating on American campuses, and 370,000 Chinese students attending American universities. Every one of these Chinese citizens is subject to Article 7 of the PRC’s National Intelligence Law of 2017, which requires that “any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work.” Students and others must report to handlers in Chinese consulates and embassies about who they meet, the research they’re working on, and whatever else is demanded.

It should not be surprising that a combination of the efforts of this network and of China-based cyber criminals yields $500 to $600 billion of intellectual property theft annually. Also aiding the effort is China’s Thousand Talents Program, which seeks to recruit the brightest Chinese and American professionals to support Chinese science and industry. This has proved to be a real problem for the U.S.—consider the recent arrest of Harvard chemist Charles Lieber for not disclosing his ties to the Chinese government and the firing of the Chinese-American CIO of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, who had invested CalPERS funds in Chinese corporations tied to the People’s Liberation Army.

Perhaps the greatest threat to the U.S. posed by the CCP is its corruption of America’s business and financial elites, who view the economic benefits of dealing with China as more important than America’s national interests. If there is a single group committed to the globalist project and the delusory China dream, it is Wall Street. Our great investment banks are now selling trillions of dollars in debt and equity in Chinese corporations to American investors and retirees. They are literally betting on the success of China at the expense of the U.S.

The People’s War

Over the past decade alone, the PRC has stolen almost $6 trillion of U.S. intellectual property, including tech innovations coming out of Silicon Valley and Seattle, entertainment coming out of Hollywood, and medical research and development coming out of New England and elsewhere. Properly understood, this is China stealing the wealth and future wealth of the American people. It is only recently that our government began trying to combat this theft in a serious way. At the same time, the U.S. has begun a strategic military buildup—including the creation of a new branch of our armed services, the U.S. Space Force, sending a signal that the U.S. would not cede the strategic high ground of space to China, which is already active in militarizing space.

In response, on May 13, 2019, the PRC, through the Xinhua News Agency—which is controlled by the CCP—declared a “People’s War” against the U.S. This was specifically in response to U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods, which themselves were a response to restrictions of access to Chinese markets and China’s failure to negotiate in good faith on the theft of intellectual property.

What was meant by this declaration of a People’s War? Was the phrase essentially rhetorical or did it signal a fundamental shift or escalation in Chinese thinking?

I would not go so far as to say that the COVID-19 virus that originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology was part of this People’s War. But the virus did set into motion a radical reorientation of American society that had grave economic and political consequences...(continues)

Coronavirus Updates

Update 8/26/2020: Confirmed cases 24,111,616 with 824,702 fatalities. The US has 5,961,971 cases with 182,635 fatalities. Washington state has 71,705 cases and 1,876 deaths, Benton Franklin Health District has 7,871 cases with 177 fatalities; the largest number of cases by age range is the  20-29 age range with nearly one thousand cases. Yakima Health District has 11,490 cases with 224 fatalities. Relief workers for flooding in South Asia say that coronavirus restrictions are hampering relief efforts. Brazil has reported over 3.6 million cases and 112,000 fatalities. India reports over 3.2 million cases and nearly 60,000 fatalities.

Update 8/7/2020: Confirmed cases 19,319,011 with 718,765 fatalities. The US has 5,036,881 cases with 162,873 fatalities. US daily fatalities may have begun to decline again. The Univ. of Washington forecasts 300,000 US fatalities by December 1st. Washington state has 62,709 cases with 1,657 deaths. Benton Franklin Health District has 7,044 cases with 145 fatalities. The Prosser School District expressed concerns at their board meeting this week about low fall enrollment as parents choose other schooling options and over budget deficits. Yakima Health District has 10,742 cases with 203 fatalities. Brazil is nearing three million cases with over 98,000 fatalities. India has passed two million cases with 41,912 fatalities. South Korean study finds that asymptomatic Covid cases can carry as much of the virus as those with symptoms; transmission role undetermined. Iran reported case and fatality numbers found to be falsely reported; Iran government records show 451,024 cases with nearly 42,000 fatalities as opposed the health ministry’s publicly reported 278,827 cases with 14,405 fatalities. Cases are surging in Spain, leading to a lockdown in the northwestern parts of Castile and Leon.

Update 7/29/2020: Confirmed cases 17,300,759 with 672,366 fatalities. The US has 4,590,809 cases with 154,364 fatalities. Florida added 9,956 new cases and a record 252 deaths yesterday. Arizona also set a record for daily deaths. Daily new cases in the US may be tapering off as re-openings were rolled back, but daily deaths are still increasing as expected from the lag between new cases being identified and the deaths therefrom. Former Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and former Presidential candidate Herman Cain passed away from COVID complications today. Italy recorded its largest new daily cases since early June. Hong Kong also set a new record for daily cases. Melbourne, Australia set a new daily record almost 40% higher than its previous record. Germany’s new cases are at a six week high. Poland also recorded a new daily record. In Harare Central Hospital in Zimbabwe, seven babies were stillborn on one day earlier this week attributed to staffing shortages due to COVID; one doctor said, “These are not isolated incidents. This is repeated every day and all we can do is watch them die.”

Update 7/18/2020: Confirmed cases 14,242,950 with 600,487 fatalities. The US has 3,773,089 cases with 142,105 fatalities. New cases in the US have been steadily increasing over the past month, recording numbers over 72,000 for the past three days — more than double the daily highs during the April/May wave. While fatalities remain lower, they have started increasing over the past few days as well. Washington state has 46,506 cases with 1,442 fatalities. Benton Franklin health district has 5,372 cases with 129 fatalities; 15 of the deaths have been recorded in just the past week. Yakima Health District has 9,275 cases with 179 fatalities. Continue reading “Coronavirus Updates”

Global Research: Toward a US-China War and One World Government?

William Engdahl at Center for Research on Globalization writes Towards a US-China War? The Creation of a Global Totalitarian System, A “One World Government”? in which he opines about the rapid emergence of China and growing concerns over conflict.

If we step back from the details of daily headlines around the world and try to make sense of larger patterns, the dominant dynamic defining world geopolitics in the past three years or more is the appearance of a genuine irregular conflict between the two most formidable powers on the planet—The Peoples’ Republic of China and the United States of America. Increasingly it’s beginning to look as if some very dark global networks are orchestrating what looks to be an updated rerun of their 1939-1945 World War. Only this time the stakes are total, and aim at creation a universal global totalitarian system, what David Rockefeller once called a “one world government.” The powers that be periodically use war to gain major policy shifts.

On behalf of the Powers That Be (PTB), World War II was orchestrated by the circles of the City of London and of Wall Street to maneuver two great obstacles—Russia and Germany—to wage a war to the death against each other, in order that those Anglo-Saxon PTB could reorganize the world geopolitical chess board to their advantage. It largely succeeded, but for the small detail that after 1945, Wall Street and the Rockefeller brothers were determined that England play the junior partner to Washington. London and Washington then entered the period of their global domination known as the Cold War.

That Anglo-American global condominium ended, by design, in 1989 with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union by 1991.

Around this time, with the onset of the Bill Clinton presidency in 1992, the next phase– financial and industrial globalization– was inaugurated. With that, began the hollowing out of the industrial base of not only the United States, but also of Germany and the EU. The cheap labor outsourcing enabled by the new WTO drove wages down and destroyed one industry after the next in the industrial West after the 1990s. It was a necessary step on the path to what G.H.W. Bush in 1990 called the New World Order. The next step would be destruction of national sovereignty everywhere. Here the USA was the major obstacle.

A little help from our friends…”

For the PTB, who owe no allegiance to nations, only to their power which is across borders, the birth of the World Trade Organization and their bringing China in as a full member in 2001 was intended as the key next step. At that point the PTB facilitated in China the greatest industrial growth by any nation in history, possibly excepting Germany from 1871-1914 and USA after 1866. WTO membership allowed Western multinationals from Apple to Nike to KFC to Ford and VW to pour billions into China to make their products at dirt-cheap wage levels for re-export to the West.

One of the great mysteries of that China growth is the fact that China was allowed to become the “workshop of the world” after 2001, first in lower-skill industries such as textiles or toys, later in pharmaceuticals and most recently in electronics assembly and production. The mystery clears up when we look at the idea that the PTB and their financial houses, using China, want to weaken strong industrial powers, especially the United States, to push their global agenda. Brzezinski often wrote that the nation state was to be eliminated, as did his patron, David Rockefeller. By allowing China to become a rival to Washington in economy and increasingly in technology, they created the means to destroy the superpower hegemony of the US.

By the onset of the Presidency of Xi Jinping in 2012, China was an economic colossus second in weight only to the United States. Clearly this could never have happened–not under the eye of the same Anglo-American old families who launched the Opium Wars after 1840 to bring China to heel and open their economy to Western financial looting–unless the Anglo-Americans had wanted it.

The same British-owned bank involved in the China opium trade, Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC), founded by a Scotsman, Thomas Sutherland in 1865 in the then-British colony of Hong Kong, today is the largest non-Chinese bank in Hong Kong. HSBC has become so well-connected to China in recent years that it has since 2011 had as Board member and Deputy HSBC Chairman, Laura Cha. Cha was formerly Vice Chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, being the first person outside mainland China to join the Beijing Central Government of the People’s Republic of China at vice-ministerial rank. In other words the largest bank in the UK has a board member who was a member of the Chinese Communist Party and a China government official. China needed access to Western money and HSBC and other select banks such as JP MorganChase, Barclays, Goldman Sachs were clearly more than happy to assist.

Socialism with Xi Jinping Characteristics…”

All told until 2012 when Xi took charge of the CCP in Beijing, China seemed to be willing to be a globalist “team player,” though with “Chinese characteristics.” However, in 2015 after little more than two years in office, Xi Jinping endorsed a comprehensive national industrial strategy, Made in China: 2025. China 2025 replaced an earlier Western globalist document that had been formulated with the World Bank and the USA, the China 2030 report under Robert Zoellick. That shift to a China strategy for global tech domination might well have triggered a decision by the globalist PTB that China could no longer be relied on to play by the rules of the globalists, but rather that the CCP under Xi were determined to make China the global leader in advanced industrial, AI and bio-technologies. A resurgent China nationalist global hegemony was not the idea of the New World Order gang.

China:2025 combined with Xi’s strong advocacy of the Belt Road Initiative for global infrastructure linking China by land and sea to all Eurasia and beyond, likely suggested to the globalists that the only solution to the prospect of their losing their power to a China global hegemon would ultimately be war, a war that would destroy both nationalist powers, USA AND China. This is my conclusion and there is much to suggest this is now taking place.

Tit for Tat

If so, it will most likely be far different from the military contest of World War II. The USA and most of the Western industrial economies have “conveniently” imposed the worst economic depression since the 1930’s as a bizarre response to an alleged virus originating in Wuhan and spreading to the world. Despite the fact that the death toll, even with vastly inflated statistics, is at the level of a severe annual influenza, the insistence of politicians and the corrupt WHO to impose draconian lockdown and economic disruption has crippled the remaining industrial base in the US and most of the EU.

The eruption of well-organized riots and vandalism under the banner of racial protests across the USA has brought America’s cities to a state in many cases of war zones resembling the cities of the 2013 Matt Damon and Jodie Foster film, Elysium. In this context, anti-Washington rhetoric from Beijing has taken on a sharp tone in their use of so-called “Wolf Diplomacy.”

Now after Washington closed the China Consulate in Houston and China the US Consulate in Chengdu, both sides have stepped up rhetoric. High tech companies are being banned in the US, military displays of force from the US in the South China Sea and waters near Taiwan are increasing tensions and rhetoric on both sides. The White House accuses the WHO of being an agent of Beijing, while China accuses the US of deliberately creating a deadly virus and bringing it to Wuhan. Chinese state media supports the explosion of violent protests across America under the banner of Black Lives Matter. Step-wise events are escalating dramatically. Many of the US self-styled Marxists leading the protests across US cities have ties to Beijing such as the Maoist-origin Revolutionary Communist Party, USA of Bob Avakian…(continues)

Click here to read the entire article at Global Research.

Liberty Blitzkrieg: Chinagate Is the New Russiagate

Michael Krieger at Liberty Blitzkrieg writes about the current nonsense of blaming China for the US (and other countries’) lack of preparedness and the reasons behind it (dodging responsibility for incompetence by local, state, and federal politicians and bureaucrats, coupled with the need to extend the national security state and the flow of spice money). Who didn’t see China lockdown a few hundred million people and think, “Whoa, this looks serious” — apparently politicians. They must have just thought, “I wish I could do that.” Chinagate Is the New Russiagate.

I’ve become convinced the next major event that’ll be used to further centralize power and escalate domestic authoritarianism will center around U.S.-China tensions. We haven’t witnessed this “event” yet, but there’s a good chance it’ll occur within the next year or two. Currently, the front runner appears to be a major aggressive move by China into Hong Kong, but it could be anything really. Taiwan, the South China Sea, currency, economic or cyber warfare; the flash points are numerous and growing by the day. Something is going to snap and when it does we better be prepared to not act like mindless imbeciles for the fourth time this century.

When that day arrives, and it’s likely not too far off, certain factions will try to sell you on the monstrous idea that we must become more like China to defeat China. We’ll be told we need more centralization, more authoritarianism, and less freedom and civil liberties or China will win. Such talk is nonsense and the wise way to respond is to reject the worst aspects of the Chinese system and head the other way.

– From my 2019 piece: Two Paths Forward with China – The Good and The Bad

As the clownish farce that is Russiagate slinks back into the psyop dumpster from which it emerged, an even more destructive narrative has metastasized following the U.S. government’s incompetent response to covid-19.

It was clear to me from the start that Russiagate was a nonsensical narrative wildly embraced by a variety of powerful people in the wake of Trump’s election merely to serve their own ends. For establishment Democrats, it was a way to pretend Hillary Clinton didn’t actually lose because she was a wretched status quo candidate with a destructive track record, but she lost due to “foreign meddling.” This allowed those involved in her campaign to deflect blame, but it also short-circuited any discussion of the merits of populism and widespread voter dissatisfaction (within both parties) percolating throughout the land. It was a fairytale invented by people intentionally putting their heads in the sand in order to avoid confrontation with political reality and to keep their cushy gravy-train of entrenched corruption going.

Russiagate was likewise embraced by the national security state (imperial apparatus) for similar reasons. Like establishment Democrats, the national security state also wanted to prevent the narrative that the status quo was rejected in the 2016 election from spreading. It was incentivized to pretend Hillary’s loss was the result of gullible Americans being duped by crafty Russians in order to manufacture the idea that U.S. society was healthy and normal if not for some external enemy.

Another primary driver for the national security state was to punish Russia for acting like a sovereign state as opposed to a colony of U.S. empire in recent years. Russia has been an increasingly serious thorn in the side of unipolarism advocates over the past decade by performing acts such as buying gold, providing safe harbor for Edward Snowden, and thwarting the dreams of regime change in Syria. Such acts could not go unpunished.

So Russiagate served its purpose. It wasted our time for much of Trump’s first term and it helped prevent Bernie Sanders from winning the Democratic nomination. Now we get Chinagate.

When the premier empire on the planet starts blaming external enemies for its internal problems, you know it’s almost always an excuse to let your own elites off the hook and further erode civil liberties. While it appears the novel coronavirus covid-19 did in fact come from China, and China tried to discourage other countries from taking decisive action in the early days, our internal political actors blaming China for their own lack of preparation and timely reaction is patently ridiculous.

If Stacy and myself were able to see the situation clearly and respond early, why couldn’t our government? This isn’t rocket science. The Chinese were acting as if the world had ended in cities across the country and we’re supposed to believe U.S. leaders simply listened to what the CCP was saying as opposed to what they were doing? How does that make any sense?

It makes even less sense considering the Trump administration has been in an explicit cold war with China for almost two years. This concept that the American national security state just took China’s word for what was going on in the early days is preposterous. So what’s going on here? Similar to Russiagate, the increased focus on directing our ten minutes of hate at the Chinese provides cover for the elites, but Chinagate is far more dangerous because the narrative will prove far more convincing for many Americans…(continues)

Click here to continue reading at Liberty Blitzkrieg.

Organic Prepper: China’s Control of Pharmaceuticals

In this article from The Organic Prepper, Daisy Luther discusses China’s corner on the pharmaceutical market – 80% of pharmaceutical ingredients are made in China – and recent threats (or merely boasts?) that China would or could cut off drug exports to the US.

As China allegedly conquers the spread of the Covid-19 outbreak that began in Wuhan, it appears that they’re right back to considering the United States an enemy. On Xiahuanet, the Communist Party news outlet, they threatened to withhold all medical exports to the US, at the same asking for an “apology” from the US and “gratitude” from the rest of the world.

This comes at the most crucial point of an outbreak that originated in their own country.

Why is China angry with the US?

Xinhuanet is the biggest news agency in China, and very “influential.” The outlet is the official state-run press agency, so anything found on the website is straight from the Chinese government. An article titled, “The World Should Thank China,” which was published on March 4, covered the outbreak of Covid-19 in the United States.

The article suggests that the US’s data is suspicious because all cases of coronavirus must be confirmed by the CDC. (I can’t disagree with them that our numbers are questionable.) It shows a photograph of people praying in the White House to underline how “nervous” President Trump is about the virus. (This photo was actually of a meeting that the Vice President had about the rapidly spreading virus, as opposed to the President.)

Xinhuanet goes on to tout the control they have taken over the outbreak, saying that Trump admires their handling of the crisis and that his “remarks came from the bottom of his heart.”

At the same time, Xinhuanet criticized the US’s perceived mistreatment of China, citing the travel ban and the evacuation of American citizens from Wuhan, the heart of the outbreak. This caused, according to Xinhuanet, other countries to also “isolate” China from the rest of the world, causing them economic harm.

A translated version of the article says:

These practices in the United States are very unkind. They can be described as falling into the ground and killing people while they are ill. (source)

And now, if it is to be believed that China has contained the outbreak and they’re back to business as usual, they may want to exact some vengeance for this “unkindness.” (And of course, this remains the question – do they even currently possess the capability to manufacture these medical products or is this all a way to save face because their workforce is decimated and the virus is actually not contained at all?)

How did China threaten the US?

In the article, China suggests that they could easily get even with the United States for their perceived mistreatment of China during the outbreak by cutting off medical supplies while we are in the midst of our own outbreak.

If China retaliates against the United States at this time, in addition to announcing a travel ban on the United States, it will also announce strategic control over medical products and ban exports to the United States. Then the United States will be caught in the ocean of new crown viruses.

According to the US CDC officials, most masks in the United States are made in China and imported from China. If China bans the export of masks to the United States, the United States will fall into the mask shortage, and the most basic measures to prevent the new crown virus are Can’t do it.

Also according to the US CDC officials, most of the drugs in the United States are imported, and some drugs are imported from Europe. However, Europe also places the production base of these drugs in China, so more than 90% of the US imported drugs are Related to China. The implication is that at this time, as long as China announces that its drugs are as domestic as possible and banned exports, the United States will fall into the hell of the new crown pneumonia epidemic. (source)

In the next paragraph, Xinhuanet basically says, “Nah, don’t worry. We are filled with love.”

However, there is a great love in the world. The Chinese people and the Chinese government have never done so. They have not insulted the United States, nor have they banned the export of masks and medicines to the United States. (source)

Then the article suggests that the United States, if not the entire world, owes China an apology due to our media coverage of the outbreak in Wuhan and comments made about the outbreak by government officials like  Secretary of Commerce Rose, US Secretary of State Pompeo, and US White House Economic Adviser Navarro. They say these officials “gloated” about the coronavirus outbreak and saw it as an opportunity to pull US manufacturing out of China…

Click here to read the entire article at The Organic Prepper.

Doom and Bloom: Coronavirus

The Altons at Doom and Bloom medical have a short article up on what is a coronavirus and basic prophylaxis. The article was published on Jan. 22nd, so the numbers of confirmed cases and deaths have risen.

Masks Mandatory in Wuhan

Last week, we reported on a mysterious ailment first reported Dec. 8th, 2019, in Wuhan, China. Wuhan is the seventh most populous city in China with 11 million people. The previously unknown disease is now identified as a type of coronavirus. Medical officials are currently classifying it as a “class B” disease, which puts it in the same category as HIV/AIDS and Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

The rapidity and spread of the disease is impressive: When I began writing this article earlier in the day, there were 440 cases and 9 deaths, up from 200 cases last week. Later in the day, 555 cases and 17 deaths have been verified and other provinces in China are beginning to report cases.

(Note: I first reported on Ebola in early 2014, when 86 cases were reported. The epidemic eventually reached a total of 28,000 cases and 11,000 deaths.)

Chinese authorities have taken the drastic measure of placing the entire city of Wuhan under quarantine, including the suspension of train and airline service, a step that suggests that many more cases are still unreported.

(1/23 update: Several U.S. airports are now conducting health screenings)

Although little is known at this point about the virus, it is certain that the disease is respiratory in nature and that human-to-human transmission (including medical personnel) is likely. For most respiratory infections, contagion is usually by airborne particles.

The first U.S. case has just been identified in a 30-year-old man from the state of Washington who recently arrived from China. Similar coronavirus victims have been found in Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, and South Korea, almost all traced to an origin in Wuhan.

ABOUT CORONAVIRUSES

Fever may not be present in all patients including: young, elderly, immunosuppressed or taking fever-reducing medications; many only have respiratory symptoms

The Wuhan virus is from the same family of coronaviruses as SARS, which killed over 800 people worldwide in an outbreak toward the end of 2002. It is also similar to Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), another epidemic disease. Although not officially named, the new virus is designated 2019-nCOV.

Coronaviruses are viruses made from RNA genetic material. One of the larger RNA viruses, coronavirus is so named from the Latin “corona” (crown or halo), from projections on the virus which give the appearance of a crown.

Coronaviruses are thought to be responsible for a large number of common colds in humans. Coronavirus colds seem to be associated with more major symptoms like fever or sore throat than colds caused by rhinoviruses, another common cause. 2019-nCOV seems to cause even worse respiratory symptoms than the typical coronavirus. Coronaviruses can also lead to pneumonia, either directly or through a secondary bacterial infection due to a weakened immune system.

ABILITY TO CONTAIN THE VIRUS

Coronavirus has crown-like projections

Chinese officials are probably wise to enact quarantine orders, as there is only one lab (called a Biosafety Level 4 lab or BSL-4) in their entire country with the capability of handling severe outbreaks. Luckily for them, it is located in Wuhan. The facility can care for victims of highly contagious diseases like SARS, Ebola, etc.

Personnel in a BSL-4 lab are subject to the strictest protocols: They must change their clothing on entering and shower upon exiting. Full-body hazmat suits must be worn while working in the lab and decontaminated afterwards. The facility is required to be a separate building or a wing properly isolated with separate air filtration systems.

The chances of spread of the new coronavirus is increased by the upcoming Chinese New Year, when it is thought that millions of Chinese citizens will be traveling throughout the world.

(1/22 Update: China has just issued a travel ban for the city of Wuhan; public transportation in the city is also suspended)

Having learned lessons from our experience with Ebola, the United States is better prepared to deal with highly contagious outbreaks of infection.

HISTORY OF RECENT VIRAL OUTBREAKS IN CHINA

masks

The presence of any biosafety 4 lab (BSL-4) inside China at all is due to the 2003 viral SARS outbreak. SARS reached epidemic proportions quickly, with 8000 cases leading to 750 deaths worldwide. Chinese authorities hope to have 7 such units built by 2025, but only the Wuhan lab is operational.

Although the use of face masks is common (and wise) in China, Wuhan has declared their use manadatory while in crowded locations. This requirement is causing a shortage of masks in the area, which could eventually lead to the same worldwide.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT CORONAVIRUS AND OTHER VIRUS OUTBREAKS

As of yet, no cure nor vaccine is available to combat coronavirus. Treatment at present focuses on treating symptoms and supporting a victim through the infection, while protecting the healthy from the disease.

Contagious illnesses like coronavirus, however, may morph into epidemics, or is widely distributed enough, pandemics. If you are preparedness-minded, you might consider a personal protection “pandemic kit” (or several) and plan out how you would care for a person with a contagious disease if the hospitals were full. Have you thought about what goes into putting together an effective epidemic sick room?

The CDC recommends:

  •  Washing your hands with soap and water frequently
  •  Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth with dirty hands
  • Avoid close contact with sick people

If you are sick, you can protect others by:

  • Staying home until fully recovered
  •  Avoiding close contact with others
  • Cover your nose and mouth when sneezing or coughing
  • Keep objects and surfaces in your home or workspace clean and disinfected (bleach mixed 1:10 with water will do)

Alhough the CDC isn’t recommending this as of yet, having a supply of N95 face masks isn’t a bad idea.

By the way, while I was writing this, I received a notice sent to all physicians in the state of Florida, warning about….coronoavirus.

Doom and Bloom Medical: Coronavirus: The Next Pandemic?

 

The Medic Shack: Coronavirus, 2019NcoV. Do We Need to Be Worried?

Organic Prepper: Pandemic Preparedness

Daisy at The Organic Prepper has an article up about the Wuhan Coronavirus and what you can do now to prepare. From what is currently known, this coronavirus has approximately a 2% mortality rate. That is considerably lower than some other viruses that have made the news over the years, but while it is low it is about the same as the Spanish Flu pandemic that killed millions around 1918. Should you be worrying? It’s too early to tell right now. We don’t know if containment will be achieved or how easily it may spread. But if not this one, at some point another pandemic will sweep the world causing mass casualties, so it is good to have some preparation for the event.

…In Wuhan, supermarket shelves were empty and local markets sold out of produce as residents hoarded supplies and isolated themselves at home. Petrol stations were overwhelmed as drivers stocked up on fuel, exacerbated by rumours that reserves had run out. Local residents said pharmacies had sold out of face masks.

“When I saw the news when I woke up, I felt like I was going to go crazy. This is a little too late now. The government’s measures are not enough,” said Xiao, 26, a primary schoolteacher in Wuhan, who asked not to give her full name.

Few pedestrians were out and families cancelled plans to get together for the new year holiday. Special police forces were seen patrolling railway stations. Residents and all government workers are now required to wear face masks while in public spaces. Most outbound flights from the city’s Tianhe airport were cancelled. (source)

Those who wish to be prepared should note the speed at which quarantines were put in place in China. Don’t delay placing orders for supplies, fueling up your vehicle, and adding last-minute preps to your stockpile. You may already have many of the supplies you need, so be sure to do an inventory before panic-buying.

However, if you discover you do need supplies, get them now. If you wait until a quarantine is announced, you’ve waited too long and you’ll be out there fighting for resources with everyone else in your area.

Whatever your plan is, don’t delay taking action. Otherwise, you might find yourself in the same situation as 20 million Chinese people who were suddenly quarantined.

Click here to read the entire article at The Organic Prepper.

First Confirmed US Case of New Coronavirus in Everett, WA

Earlier we posted an article about a new coronavirus originating in China which was now believed to be spreading from person to person. A few hours later, the first confirmed US case was made public, the person who had returned from travel in China is being treated in Everett, WA.

Update 1/22/20: Deaths from this coronavirus have gone up to 17 (yesterday the number stood at 9) and there are now suspected cases in Mexico and Russia.

From the Everett Herald:

The first case of Wuhan Coronavirus reported in the United States is a Snohomish County man in his 30s who traveled to China, federal and local officials announced Tuesday.

The patient was reported to be doing well and in stable condition at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, according to the Snohomish Health District.

The outbreak of the mysterious, pneumonia-like virus originated in Wuhan, China, and is linked to a large seafood and animal market, suggesting it is possibly of animal origin. At least nine people have died — all in China, most 60 or older, including at least some who had a previous medical condition. Hundreds have been sickened worldwide.

This week Chinese officials concluded it can spread from person to person. How easily it spreads is unknown.

As of Tuesday, the Snohomish County man was in a special isolation unit, where he was expected to stay for at least the next two days.

“We are grateful that the patient is doing well, and that he’s currently not ill, and that he has been so cooperative,” said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “… Our first priority was clearly making sure that this patient was healthy and being appropriately treated as we move on to the next phase.”

The man is a Chinese immigrant who was visiting his home country. He’s a legal permanent resident of the U.S., Gov. Jay Inslee said Tuesday afternoon at a news conference at the state Public Health Laboratories in Shoreline. The man transferred flights at least once before arriving at Sea-Tac Airport on Jan. 15, but an exact itinerary hasn’t been released.

At that time he showed no symptoms, health officials said.

“In this case, we don’t believe even if we had active screening at the airport that this patient would have been picked up, because at the time we don’t believe the patient had any symptoms of the fever,” said John Weissman, the Washington state secretary of health.

On Sunday, four days after the man returned to Washington, he started to feel ill. He went to a medical clinic in Snohomish County. Staff advised him to go home and stay isolated, while lab tests were conducted.

“We were in communication with the CDC Emergency Operations Center, coordinating specimens that were shipped overnight and had the results the following day,” said state epidemiologist Dr. Scott Lindquist. “Incredibly fast.”

The man was transported to the north Everett hospital Monday, according to the state Department of Health.

Now the top priority for officials is tracing his contacts, to determine who is at risk. The man was traveling alone but took group transportation home from Sea-Tac. He lives by himself. Health officials described the number of possible contacts since he got back to the U.S. as small. State officials said he’s been very helpful in identifying people he’d contacted over the past few days. Those people will be monitored for fever and respiratory symptoms.

“Providence is contacting the small number of staff and patients who may have come in contact with the patient at one of our clinics,” a hospital news release said. “We are also implementing a screening system in our electronic health record to identify patients at risk for this infection.”

The Snohomish County case was announced nationally Tuesday by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“No one wants to be the first in the nation in these types of situations, but these are the types of situations that public health and its partners train and prepare for,” said Dr. Chris Spitters, health officer for the Snohomish Health District. “Because of this, everything has been going along quite smoothly.”

The CDC had implemented public health entry screening at airports in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles. This week Atlanta and Chicago are being added. Anyone flying from Wuhan to the United States will be funneled through one of those airports. Officials around the world are conducting similar airport screenings elsewhere, with the goal of containing the virus during the busy Lunar New Year travel season.

There were 440 cases reported worldwide Tuesday, and the U.S. joined a growing list of places outside mainland China reporting cases, following Thailand, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Federal officials consider the risk to the American public at large as low. However, Dr. Messonnier expected to see more cases in the U.S. and around the world in the coming days.

Travelers wearing face masks gather at Hong Kong International Airport on Tuesday to get squirts of antibacterial lotion after the outbreak of a new coronavirus that has reached Snohomish County — the first confirmed case in the U.S. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Travelers wearing face masks gather at Hong Kong International Airport on Tuesday to get squirts of antibacterial lotion after the outbreak of a new coronavirus that has reached Snohomish County — the first confirmed case in the U.S. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

In general, it can take two weeks for symptoms to show up, state health officials said Tuesday. The coronavirus family includes those that cause the common cold, but some found in bats, camels and other animals have evolved into more severe illnesses like SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, and MERS, Middle East respiratory syndrome.

Initial symptoms of the new coronavirus include fever, cough, tightness of the chest and shortness of breath.

Click here to read the entire article at Heraldnet.com.

The Organic Prepper: Wuhan Coronavirus Hits the US: What Preppers Need to Know

WSJ: New Coronavirus Spreading Person to Person

Antiseptic being sprayed at Incheon International Airport

A novel (new) coronavirus appeared in China in December, 2019. At that time, it appeared to be spreading from infected animals to humans who spent time around the infected animals. Now, the virus appears to be spreading with human to human contact. There has been a total of 310 confirmed cases of the infection with six deaths. This virus is believed to be much less deadly than SARS, another coronavirus strain.

Wall Street Journal: China Virus Kills Two More Patients as Authorities Step Up Control Measures

A newly identified virus originating in China killed two more people, infected dozens of others and jumped across the Taiwan Strait, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to more than 300 and prompting authorities across Asia to step up control measures.

The coronavirus, which causes pneumonia-like symptoms, has now killed six people in China, authorities said Tuesday, since it first appeared last month in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

It has also spread beyond the country’s borders to Japan, Thailand and South Korea. On Tuesday, health authorities in Taipei confirmed the self-governing island’s first case of the new coronavirus, a 50-year-old Taiwanese woman who had been working in Wuhan.

Chinese health authorities acknowledged Monday that the coronavirus is being transmitted between humans, heightening concerns that it could spread quickly as tens of millions of Chinese people travel across the country and abroad for the Lunar New Year holiday later this week

Medical workers have themselves been infected. Fourteen medical staff that authorities previously confirmed to have been infected came in contact with a single patient with the coronavirus in Wuhan, said Zhong Nanshan, who is one of China’s most highly regarded epidemiology experts and is leading an expert committee on the outbreak for the National Health Commission.

Wuhan will take more stringent measures to prevent transmission of the disease, including canceling what it considers unnecessary large gatherings, setting up a prevention and control center, and strengthening protection of medical staff, China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency said Tuesday.

Xinhua reported that officials in Wuhan, a sprawling city of 19 million people, would work to minimize public panic by informing citizens about the outbreak in a “timely, open and transparent manner…”

Click here to read the entire article at The Wall Street Journal.

Liberty Blitzkrieg: Three Major Imbalances – Financial, Trust, Geopolitical

Somewhat related to yesterday’s article from Chris Hedges which touched on how no one in America trusts anyone in the D.C. establish at all any longer is this article from Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg. In Three Major Imbalances, Mr. Krieger discusses the teetering financial system, the lack of trust in institutions, and rising tenstions between the U.S.A. and China, Russia, and elsewhere.

But greed is a bottomless pit
And our freedom’s a joke
We’re just taking a piss
And the whole world must watch the sad comic display
If you’re still free start running away
Cause we’re coming for you!

– Conor Oberst, “Land Locked Blues”

It’s hard to believe 2020 is just around the corner. If the last ten years have taught us anything, it’s the extent to which a vicious and corrupt oligarchy will go to further extend and entrench their economic and societal interests. Although the myriad desperate actions undertaken by the ruling class this past decade have managed to sustain the current paradigm a bit longer, it has not come without cost and major long-term consequence. Gigantic imbalances across multiple areas have been created and worsened, and the resolution of these in the years ahead (2020-2025) will shape the future for decades to come. I want to discuss three of them today, the financial system imbalance, the trust imbalance and the geopolitical imbalance.

Recent posts have focused on how what really matters in a crisis is not the event itself, but the response to it. The financial crisis of ten years ago is particularly instructive, as the entire institutional response to a widespread financial industry crime spree was to focus on saving a failed system and then pretending nothing happened. The public was given no time or space to debate whether the system needed saving; or more specifically, which parts needed saving, which parts needed wholesale restructuring and which parts should’ve been thrown into the dustbin. Rather, unelected central bankers stepped in with trillions in order to prop up, empower and reward the very industry and individuals that created the crisis to begin with. There was no real public debate, central bankers just did whatever they wanted. It was a moment so brazen and disturbing it shook many of us, including myself, out of a lifetime of propaganda induced deception.

It’s ten years later and central banks still can’t walk back anything they did over the past decade…

While massive and global, the financial system imbalance is just one of several. Another big one is a trust imbalance, which manifests as a widening disconnect between established institutions and the people living under them. As the ruling class has been forced to resort to increasingly desperate measures over the past decade to keep their gravy train going, they’ve exposed themselves more explicitly. What was once derided as conspiracy theory rapidly becomes conspiracy fact, and an increasingly significant number of humans have begun to simply assume (for good reason) that whatever comes out of the mouths of authority figures like intelligence agencies, politicians, mass media, corporations and think tanks, etc., are lies.

This situation isn’t getting any better either. It seems every day we wake up to new in your face revelations of how craven and dishonest the ruling oligarchy and its institutions really are. For example, this past weekend we learned how a Newsweek journalist quit because his bosses at the paper refused to let him publish about OPCW whistleblowers who dispute the official conclusion that Assad launched a chemical attack in Douma, an event that increasingly looks like a false flag event which led to the U.S. bombing Syria…

The trust imbalance between rulers and the ruled has become so massive it’s all but guaranteed to detonate in a variety of unexpected and consequential ways in the years ahead. The election of Donald Trump was just the first pubic manifestation of this well deserved lack of trust…

The other major imbalance I want to highlight is the geopolitical one. It’s something I’ve been writing about a lot lately as it’s come into clearer focus that the nexus of this tension will center around the U.S. and China. At the root of this imbalance is a U.S. national security state desperate to turn back to clock to the 1990s when the U.S. was the world’s sole superpower and could essentially call the shots on all matters of international significance with little to no pushback. Certain foreign power centers, led by China and Russia, have made it explicit they will not be rewinding the clock and are have focused their foreign policy around ushering in a multi-polar world. Like the other imbalances, the geopolitical imbalance becomes more volatile and less manageable with each passing day…

Everything being done today centers around propping up and extending a decrepit paradigm in order to further enrich and empower a ruling class that has lost the respect of the people. As the actions taken to sustain such a system become more desperate and mendacious (“this is NOT QE”), the more the veneer of credibility disappears. The more the veneer of credibility disappears, the more unstable these major imbalances become. Generational change is on the horizon, keep your eyes wide open.

Click here to read the entire article at Liberty Blitzkrieg.

Related:

Kunstler: Two for One Holiday Special

Hillary Clinton sure got her money’s worth with the Fusion GPS deal: it induced a three-year psychotic break in the body politic, destroyed the legitimacy of federal law enforcement, turned a once-proud, free, and rational press into an infernal engine of bad faith, and is finally leading her Democratic Party to an ignominious suicide. And the damage is far from complete…

Breaking Defense: US Loses Badly in Wargames with Russia/China

In the article US ‘Gets Its Ass Handed To It’ In Wargames: Here’s A $24 Billion Fix, Breaking Defense reports that the US’s advanced military technology have some major Achilles’ heels which Russia and China have, intelligently, designed their military responses to take advantage. Many people in the US wrongly assume that American military technology is so far advanced that there is no comparison with Russian and Chinese forces. Unfortunately, that view overlooks the fact that smart opponents will devise tactics and techniques which target the weaknesses of an opponent. The US is extremely good at projecting offensive power, but after decades at the forefront of military technology the US has lost sight of the importance of defending anything from strikes. It’s like America has spent twenty years perfecting the jab and right cross, but is incapable of dodging or blocking a punch. In effect, Russia and China do not need to have more advanced weapons than the US (though they may have an advantage in missile technology) because the US cannot protect their weapons from being destroyed before they can be used.

The US keeps losing, hard, in simulated wars with Russia and China. Bases burn. Warships sink…

“In our games, when we fight Russia and China,” RAND analyst David Ochmanek said this afternoon, “blue gets its ass handed to it.” In other words, in RAND’s wargames, which are often sponsored by the Pentagon, the US forces — colored blue on wargame maps — suffer heavy losses in one scenario after another and still can’t stop Russia or China — red — from achieving their objectives, like overrunning US allies.

No, it’s not a Red Dawn nightmare scenario where the Commies conquer Colorado. But losing the Baltics or Taiwan would shatter American alliances, shock the global economy, and topple the world order the US has led since World War II…

F-35 stealth fighters are hard to kill in flight, but lined up on the runway, they’re easy targets.

big airbases on land and big aircraft carriers on the water turn out to be big targets for long-range precision-guided missiles. Once an American monopoly, such smart weapons are now a rapidly growing part of Russian and Chinese arsenals — as are the long-range sensors, communications networks, and command systems required to aim them.

So, as potential adversaries improve their technology, “things that rely on sophisticated base infrastructure like runways and fuel tanks are going to have a hard time,” Ochmanek said. “Things that sail on the surface of the sea are going to have a hard time.”

…Worst of all, Work and Ochmanek said, the US doesn’t just take body blows, it takes a hard hit to the head as well. Its communications satellites, wireless networks, and other command-and-control systems suffer such heavy hacking and jamming that they are, in Ochmanek’s words, “suppressed, if not shattered…”

Click here to read the entire article at BreakingDefense.com.

China: 100 Christians Snatched in Raids on Underground Church

From South China Morning Post, 100 Christians snatched in overnight raids on underground Chinese church. China has begun harshly cracking down on churches this year, with an estimated 100,000 Christians arrested in 2018 compared to 3.700 in 2017. Churches are required to mount facial recognition cameras on the pulpit directed toward the congregation so that they can be monitored by the government.

About 100 worshippers at an unofficial church in southwestern China were snatched from their homes or from the streets in coordinated raids which began on Sunday evening.

Chinese authorities targeted members of the Early Rain Covenant Church across various districts of Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, in what appeared to be an effort to close down one of the country’s most prominent Protestant house churches…

“The police said our church is an illegal organisation and we cannot attend any more gatherings from now on.”

The Early Rain Covenant Church is one of China’s few unofficial house churches – Christian assemblies that operate without state sanction – and this is not the first time Wang and other members of the church have been detained.

While most of China’s Protestant house churches operate underground to avoid attracting official attention and control, the Early Rain congregation openly practises its faith, posting sermons online and evangelising on the streets.

Many house churches have been closed this year in China’s harshest religious suppression in decades…

 

 

China Cracking Down on Religion — Destroying Crosses and Bibles

From AP News, 9/10/18, Officials destroying crosses, burning bibles in China,

China’s government is ratcheting up a crackdown on Christian congregations in Beijing and several provinces, destroying crosses, burning bibles, shutting churches and ordering followers to sign papers renouncing their faith, according to pastors and a group that monitors religion in China.

The campaign corresponds with a drive to “Sinicize” religion by demanding loyalty to the officially atheist Communist Party and eliminating any challenge to its power over people’s lives…

From CBN News, 9/14/18, One Nation Under Xi? This is why Christian Persecution in China is Escalating

…Chinese Christians report authorities have urged church leaders to remove pictures of Jesus from their sanctuaries and replace them with patriotic posters, or posters of President Xi instead. They’ve suggested hymns be replaced with patriotic songs about the “wonderfulness of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Nettleton also said Chinese authorities are using advanced artificial intelligence software to monitor church attendees. “One pastor in Beijing not long ago was told by the government, ‘pastor we don’t mind if you continue holding your services, we just want to put this camera on your platform looking out at the audience and it’s attached to facial recognition software so that we can tell who comes to church on Sunday and who’s there and what they are doing and how involved they are,'” he said…