Population Control

We Need Humane Population Control

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He said that Egypt has to lower its annual births to 400,000 from the current more than two million for the country to efficiently provide jobs and social services to its citizens.

Al-Sisi also faulted remarks by Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, Egypt’s health and population minister, that “having children is a matter of complete freedom”.

“Leaving their freedom to people who potentially do not know the extent of the challenge? In the end, it is the whole of society and the Egyptian state which will pay the price,” said al-Sisi.

“We must organise this freedom otherwise it will create a catastrophe,” he added.

“We need 400,000 births per year,” al-Sisi told the Global Congress on Population, Health and Development (PHDC), which opened in Cairo on Tuesday. 

“I do not agree with your idea that having children is a matter of complete freedom,” the president said, addressing Health and Population Minister Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, as quoted by AFP.

“Leaving their freedom to people who potentially do not know the extent of the challenge? In the end, it is the whole of society and the Egyptian state which will pay the price,” al-Sisi said. “We must organize this freedom, otherwise it will create a catastrophe.”

He cited the example of China, which “succeeded in their population control”by imposing a harsh one-child policy in the 1970s. Beijing abandoned the policy in 2015, but has since encouraged population growth.

According to PHDC conference materials, population growth can “put a strain on resources and infrastructure, leading to health and social challenges.” A rapidly growing population “compromises the availability and quality of basic services including, health, education, social security” and contributes to the “rapid depletion of natural resources,” the documents said.

The gathering, which began on Tuesday and is scheduled to run through September 8, is sponsored by multiple UN agencies, USAID, and several major pharmaceutical companies.

Egypt is by far the most populous Arab nation, with an estimated 113 million residents. It recorded almost 2.2 million births in 2022. Al-Sisi has pointed to the economic pressures the population growth has placed on the country, which has been reliant on importing food from abroad.

#Egypt

@africaintel

Military Affairs

World War III – More Signs of Escalation

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There are more signs every day that the West is gearing up for war against Russia and China. It is not yet imminent, these preparations take time, several good years, but the window for reconciliation and negotiations is closing. The drums of war are sounding louder. The rearming of the West with a new generation of weapons based on the experience of the Ukraine war is in full swing. The shift from the peace-time economy to the war economy is underway. 

All these signs lead one to believe what Danilo said. We are exiting the period of the hybrid war and entering the phase when the West is now openly and irreversibly marching in lockstep readying its war machine.

We are looking at 10 – 15 years of existential confrontation between the giants, dragging all the rest of us into the mayhem. Some 10  to 15 years of world war lies ahead of us.

Is the West likely to win?! Perhaps NOT.

We will continue to update “more signs of escalation”.

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Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Bogdan Danilo:

“If someone thinks that World War III has not started, then this is a big mistake. It has already begun, a certain time is going on in the hybrid period, and now it has entered an active phase. And if someone thinks that this is a showdown between Russia and Ukraine – this is a mistake, everything is much more complicated”.

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Sergei Markov:


“If Kim visits Russia, then with a high probability, the lifting of Russia’s sanctions against the DPRK will be announced. This will open up the possibility of supplying a huge number of shells from the DPRK and food supplies to the DPRK and the transfer of a number of military technologies by Russia to the DPRK. It is high time. Donbass is waiting for Korean volunteers.”

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Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene reveals that her “biggest concern” is Joe Biden initiating the outbreak of World War III. “Warmongers are crazy enough to put American troops in Ukraine to fight Russia.”

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Lil Estonia’s Defense Minister Pevkur:


“EU ready to double production of shells to help Ukraine. We see that European industrial capacities have grown, so this is a positive trend. By the end of the year, or beginning of next year, we will be able to produce almost twice as much as we produced in Europe a year earlier. ” 

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 Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden plan to design a new tank together

The project is said to be led by German defense conglomerates Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (kmw) and Rheinmetall. German business daily Handelsblatt  reported that the partners in the deal were planning to apply to the European Defense Fund for funding amounting to a three-digit million euro sum, adding the project would also involve Sweden’s Saab and Italy’s Leonardo. It did not identify which Spanish company would be involved.

So far the German defense ministry has not commented on this news.

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It is no coincidence that recently General Surovikin, “General Armageddon”, has been appointed Head of the Coordination Committee for Anti-Aircraft and Anti-Missile Defense of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

 In addition to promises to supply Ukraine with F16 aircraft, the West declares preparation for attacks against Russia by a swarm of almost 200,000 (that’s two hundred thousand) kamikaze drones, as well as the possible delivery of long-range missiles to Kiev.  Frequent drone attacks against Russian territory probing the Russian DAA, always in the presence of NATO reconnaissance aircraft, prove this. [category military affairs]

 The attack by a swarm of drones in combination with missile bombings must, according to NATO experts, cause not only military, but political effects, provoking fear and discontent in the population…

 There is still time to prepare for this “Air Counteroffensive.”  And it is very logical that Surovikin is entrusted with building a new line of defense, but now – an anti-aircraft line of defense.  And at the CIS level.  That is, a common defense, together with Russia’s allied countries within the framework of the Collective Security Treaty (CSTO).  With Belarus, at front end.

 Recently, the Minister of Defense, Shoigu, carried out an inspection of plants producing anti-aircraft and electronic warfare systems, announcing a considerable increase in production of this equipment.

 The Russian leadership is confident that General Surovikin has enough time and will have enough means to organize a Collective Anti-Air and Anti-Missile Defense Line against a collective “Air Counteroffensive” of the West.

Military Affairs

Judge Napolitano, Col. Doug MacGregor on the Widening of the War

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Original Thinking

The End of the End of History

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by Claudiu Secara

The problem with trying to solve the world’s problems is that most people, especially in the West, are bound by traditional principles of thinking. One is that the Earth is flat and another is that we are moving in a direction of linear extrapolation, in an eschatological way.

Not only does the man on the street think this way, but our politicians and intellectual elites think the same. We discuss and search for the best solution. But today’s solution is bound to be tomorrow’s problem in a dialectical, dynamic cycle of contradictions.

We argue over what is “the best system.” Serious people believe in this system or that system. The free market was one such mantra for decades, if not longer. Socialism is another magic solution. We argued ad nauseam about the success story of Singapore vs the Soviet Union, or the United States vs China. Which system is best?

But we know at least since the Classics that everything is transient. What is born today must die tomorrow. The world moves in cycles.

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

Or as Giambattista Vico describes it in Aristotelian socio-political terms.

The classical Aristotelian account on the matter of political cycles distinguishes five forms of public government: monarchy, aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny.

In the beginning there were what Giambattista Vico called (1)domestic monarchies9 – the rule of the supreme sovereign over all of a nation’s life. His absolute power and the general equality of all his subjects are, however, only of relative endurance. Slowly, an invisible process of stratification takes place. This process consolidates itself into (2) the constitutional monarchy. The absolute rule of the autocracy is, at first, diminished by an emerging power-sharing compact made with the growing class of the (3) oligarchic aristocracy. This is meant to consolidate a common defense against the growing ranks of the poor, but classical class warfare is the sorrowful consequence of the new compromise. Soon, the new order explodes into violence and the (4) reign of the popular government begins.

Unstable from the beginning, the self-empowered legislature of the many soon extends to all in an inexorable evolution toward social dissolution, from democratic participation to generalized anarchy. Yet this unbearable result and the obvious collapse of former social structures call for the reinstallment of the rule of order and unity through the (5) civil (presidential) tyrant. For Aristotle, tyrants arose “from among the common people and the masses, in opposition to the notables, so that the demos should not suffer injustice at their hands. . . The great majority of the tyrants began as demagogues, so to speak, and won confidence by calumniating the notables. — The New CommonWealth. From Bureaucratic Corporatism to Socialist Capitalism p. 258.

For centuries Russia was a backwater, a hopeless, sclerotic giant with feet of clay. Today, Russia is one of the most dynamic societies on Earth, with the energies of its millions of citizens engaged in finding and developing innovative solutions in technology and creative thinking. Yesterday, the United States, as the workshop of the universe, was building a New World, but today it is a gerontocracy choking from lack of exercise and run by morons.

The very success of the American open system has caused the paralysis of today. At the same time the monolithic command system of the vast landmass of Russia now enables the mobilization of its vast resources in one swoop.

We are misled in engaging in this competitive existential struggle to overcome the other, the challenger to our way of life, as if this would guarantee our security and happiness until the end of the world. Our minor successes today are only tactical, while strategically the battle goes on forever.

The discovery of bronze tools gave an insurmountable advantage to the lucky few . . . until some other lucky ones came up with iron tools.

The idea that our struggles have a terminal point, are finite and we can achieve our goal, is a fallacy, like the mirage at the end of the horizon. This fallacy gives us motivation as the target seems near and reachable, but at the same time it causes the aggressiveness and the sense of impunity, the impression that our adversaries are just about to be wiped off the face of the Earth. It’s a rat race, a hamster wheel, it’s like driving on the highway always trying to pass that one last car in front of you.

The US has lived for the past 70 years in such an ideological mirage, proclaiming itself the ultimate hegemon, based on full-spectrum domination of the rest of the world.

The problem here is not so much one of technological shortcoming but of philosophical immaturity. The naivety of such a crazy belief defies credulity, but the leaders and the man on the street really believe that the United States has reached the end point of history, the end point on its flat Earth.

More mature societies who have had their share of highs and lows are a bit more humbled by the experience, but not the United States. And that is a cause of trouble for the rest of the world.

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Claudiu Secara is the author of The New CommonWealth. From Bureaucratic Corporatism to Socialist Capitalism (1998) and Time & Ego. Judeo-Christian Egotheism and the English Industrial Revolution (1997)

Original Thinking

Agenda 2030 Conundrum – Updated

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by Claudiu Secara

The biggest conundrum in describing the current conflict in Ukraine is how to reconcile the many arguments for the Ukraine war as a fake war (see The Fake War) with the arguments that the world is sliding into WWIII (World War III is Coming).

1. Neither of the principals, that is the US or Russia, is deploying its serious weapons, although some prototypes are being tested. As Putin said, “We haven’t even started yet.” But the same can be said about the US. None of the most advanced weapons has been used yet. Both sides are using obsolete, almost World War II vintage hardware, disposable overstocked weapons, although they may be surreptitiously testing partial subsystems of the new weapons.

2. The focus is on Ukraine as a very isolated battleground; there’s no palpable threat of escalation to make everyone fear an imminent worldwide conflagration, which is carefully and declaratively circumscribed. “Don’t worry, this is only about Ukraine,” and frankly, how many people are losing sleep over the Ukrainians and their backwater country? The Western European population has very little sense of Ukrainians as being in any way part of their common history, common heritage, historical shared belonging. Yes, the mass media campaign is relentless in whipping up pro-Ukrainian emotions, but the man on the street couldn’t care less. Ironically, even the East Europeans have little appetite for the boorish Ukrainians. The Poles mostly covet Lvov, the Hungarians salivate for Transcarpathia, the Romanians have claims on Bukovina, and even the Slovaks dream of Zakarpatska. They all would like to see a weaker, much diminished, and even humiliated Ukraine.

3. The sanctions that never bite are another sign of a fake war. How amateurish are the Western epigones in using sanctions against their Enemy Number One, sanctions that backfire on their own economies 100 percent while, as a matter of fact, strengthening Russia’s economy? Ms. Annalena is a jurist by trade, Joe Borrell is an aeronautical engineer, Macron is a banker’s accountant; none of them has any background or experience in international economics, history, diplomacy, military affairs, anything relevant to strategic planning and policy making.
None of them was educated as a statesman, laboring as an apprentice in the shadow of his/her elder mentor with years of experience. While the Klaus-Schwab-school of WEF agents helped their careers and skipped years spent as students of world affairs (or at least of the last 100 years of history), obviously they are still simple sycophants with no standing or understanding of their own roles.

4. Such nincompoops are given the command of the Western Crusaders. In a real war, there would be charismatic leaders to electrify their nations and inspire a surge of warmongering, as in the lead-up to World War I, or even like the Franco-German war of 1870, when the young were exalted and drawn into the frenzy of the romantic killing fields, in the muddy trenches of Europe. Not even Zelensky’s theatrical talents can convince the Ukrainian population that this is a war of survival for the Ukrainian nation. Instead, millions upon millions of young people (5, 8 million ?) have abandoned their own country under “existential threat” rather than feeling motivated to volunteer for the front.

5. This also ties in with a similar sanitized version of the war on Russia’s side. No massive war preparations, not much hardship inflicted upon the population. Life goes on in Russia just as before, in fact a bit better. Imports are defying the sanctions and the economy is growing. How does that compare with the utter suffering the nation went through in any of the previous wars? No mass mobilization with a great campaign and festive parades. Rather, the new combatants are contract workers, this time army workers with good pay and all the perks. Mr. Putin himself seems more concerned with visiting schools and sharing past stories with school children rather than making fiery speeches to the mobilized at the front. Let’s have a good education and even a better culture and good manners.

6. There are other signs that are incompatible with preparation for an existential war by the West. The obsessive focus on climate “change.” “Climate change?” Is is warming or cooling?! Hmm, both. — So, the West is de-industrializing and is destroying the very basis for the West’s war economy, is diminishing the access to the sources of all the inputs for Western industrial powerhouses, and is focusing on polar bears while a slow-growing army of unemployed is getting more and more desperate and restless. Desperate and restless? Like the working classes in the 1930s? Is there any parallel between the 1930s and the 2020s?

7. We come now to the topic of the Covid pandemic that wasn’t. That was the wake up call.

8. We learned that there is a concern about overpopulation, about the limits of our natural resources, about the need to reduce the global population. Come China and India on the development train, joined by a number of other Asians — the Indonesians alone are a lot; then the explosive population in Africa, Latin America and the Arab countries — how is that going to work? Is there enough oil in the ground to last forever and provide a high living standard for 8 billion, 9 billion, 10 billion+ humans? — That’s the question that the leaders at the Davos conclaves are discussing.

9. They don’t lose sleep over Ukraine, but they do lose sleep over the West’s diminishing leverage over the direction of the world and the inescapable rush to hit the wall of resource depletion and resource allocation. This is nothing new in the history of mankind. Every technological or scientific advance has caused a population explosion. Especially in resource-poor but innovative Western Europe.

10. There is an irony in that the more a nation is struggling to survive, the more innovative it is in finding ways to overcome the penury of resources. From inventing and developing intensive agriculture to inventing and developing a whole new art of industry and technology, pioneering sectors of human activity never seen before, the West has led the way for the rest of the world.

11. Unfortunately, every new leap ahead brings short-term relief, as it is followed by a new population explosion which soon nullifies the success. Sometimes a new solution is found, but sometimes a population adjustment is needed on an emergency basis. In the best cases this adjustment was made through the old-fashioned colonization of new settlements. From the time of the Greek colonies to the waves of emigration to the newly discovered continents of Americas and Australia, that was a time-honored relief valve for overpopulation.

12. And then, there is war.

13. On some level, the causes of war are described as the fight over resources, whether land or raw materials. From the Roman Empire’s population explosion and the ensuing need for more grain (and silver and gold), to the Mongol or Gothic migration, they all were preceded by a population explosion. World War I involved the emerging powers, Germany and Russia, challenging England and at the same time clashing with each other over Eastern Europe and especially over control of the Bosporus Strait — But on a different level, it was the increased population that required more resources and more living space for all of them. In World War II, this was even more explicitly formulated by Germany as the need for lebensraum. Without more people to occupy the new lands, what use would that space have been?

14. The West’s population is stable right now – actually, it is declining quite dramatically. It is the developing world that has a population problem and it is invading the West, by peaceful means for now. That is a fact. And here we have the seeds of the next war. If the West cannot control this secular, long-term population explosion in the developing countries, and that includes China, India and all the rest, potentially Russia too, the West, the laboratory of modern societies, will become a wasteland, like Rome spoiled by the invaders from outside.

15. What’s significant is that the world, but mostly the West, has transitioned from exuberant development to a mood of pessimism about the future and a feeling of foreboding and expectations of some major events and upheavals and decisions to take place.

16. The West is faced with extinction; unless, on Western terms, it takes extreme action to stop and reverse this multilevel trend. And it is clearly actively preparing to do just that. On the same multiple level basis. Using bio warfare, or direct slaughter. It takes time to line up all the chips. — That’s why the West called it Agenda 2030, that’s the deadline.

Note for Those Who Need Help: The West is cornered and is desperate. Desperate and cornered animals act aggressively and attack the more powerful. The West is in a dire predicament and it will go to the brink. There is no evidence of self restrain or retraction. It will escalate and trigger World War III. All the signs converge to the same conclusion: The Long War is underway and it will change everything we know. — The West cannot win, but neither can the developing world continue its expansion.

That’s the conundrum.

Watch this:


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Claudiu Secara is the author of The New CommonWealth. From Bureaucratic Corporatism to Socialist Capitalism (1998) and Time & Ego. Judeo-Christian Egotheism and the English Industrial Revolution (1997)

Military Affairs

Sarmat on Combat Alert: Russia Activates World’s Heaviest Nuclear ICBM Unit

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via Military Watch Magazine

The Russian Armed Forces have placed the new RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental range ballistic missile system on combat alert, following an announcement by President Vladimir Putin in February that combat duties would begin later in the year. Head of the Russian state owned space corporation Roscosmos Yuri Borisov confirmed the operationalisation of the new missile system. The Sarmat was first test fired in April 2022, and is intended to replace the R-36M2 Voyevoda system that became operational in 1988. President Putin previously commented that the missile “is capable of overcoming all modern means of anti-missile defence. It has no analogues in the world and won’t have for a long time to come,” referring to it as a “truly unique weapon [that] will strengthen the combat potential of our armed forces.” This echoed similar statements from across figures in the government and defence sector. The new missile is the heaviest in the world at over 208 tons, and is deployed from fortified silos rather than mobile launch vehicles unlike the complementary but much lighter Yars missiles which can deploy from both as they are around a quarter of the size.

Yars ICBM on Mobile Launch Vehicle

Activation of the first Sarmat unit comes five and a half years after the system was announced alongside other important asymmetric weapons systems by President Putin in early March 2018, with the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle designed for the Sarmat and the Voyevoda also having been announced at the time. Avangard vehicles are deployed by missiles in their terminal stages to more reliably evade interception, and have no near peer analogues elsewhere in the world. The activation of the Sarmat unit has further widened the gap between Russian and the United States in the capabilities of their ground based strategic missile forces, with the American ICBM arsenal being by far the oldest and least sophisticated in the world comprised of Minuteman III missiles from the 1970s which have seen relatively few updates to their capabilities. The Sarmat unit’s activation has occurred as growing warnings emerge from within within the Western world that escalation of tensions between NATO and Russia could result in a more open conflict, as the Western alliance has continued to increase its military involvement in the Russian-Ukrainian War from deployment of active combat units to the frontlines to provision of access to its vast satellite network. The Sarmat has an 18,000 km range and carries up to 15 multiple independent reentry vehicles, compared to the Yars system which carries just 4-6 warheads and has a much shorter range which limits the trajectories on which it can approach the American mainland. A single Sarmat is potentially able to devastate an area greater than the size of France or Texas.

Original Thinking

World War III is Coming

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by Claudiu Secara

Is the war in Ukraine going through its last convulsions before the Ukrainian army is blown out of existence by Russian firepower? The opposition-to-the-war-in-Ukraine party within the US, now personified by Tucker Carlson and his new buddy Victor Orban of Hungary, the Trumpists and a certain alternative media, Scott Ritter and all, are singing the-end-is-here, the Ukrainians are toast, the Russians cannot be defeated. The Ukrainians didn’t even make it through the “crumple zone”, didn’t even reach the Russians’ first line of defense, etc.

But let’s make a sober analysis of the situation. It seems to me that we are heading straight into the pre-planned WWIII. Just like that.

At the moment, the Ukrainians are being used by the Americans to probe and map out as much as possible of Russia’s defensive dispositive systems – the locations and capabilities of all their remote sensing capabilities, response time, and countermeasures, etc. The Ukrainians, as sacrificial scouts, are sent in to test the defensive capabilities, first on the front line, then further afield, 300 Km, then 700 Km, and so on, all pre-planned by the US strategic warmongers. This is very similar to what they did in the Gulf War with Saddam Hussein’s defenses. For a number of years there was a no-fly zone, then partition of the North, where the Kurds were used by the US to probe the Iraqi army, and then the South, where the Kuwaitis were used to allow the US army close monitoring of Saddam’s capabilities. We are now in that pre-preparation timeframe.

But can the comically inept and demented Biden lead the West into a WWIII? NO WAY!

Let’s think again. WWII started in about 1932 with the ascension of Hitler as Chancellor of Germany, under the old and decrepit President of Germany, Hindenburg. It took almost another 10 years of German industrial mobilization, then the mobilization of the people, war propaganda, secret transfer of military technology from the U.S. side (such as radar technology) and so on before everybody figured out that all of that meant War.

Biden’s role today is the same as Hindenburg’s. He’s just a decoy, a deceptive clown, not a serious adversary.

But meanwhile the Western Axis is forming and building up minute by minute. Oh, Orban assures us, Russia is a people of 145 million, unified around the soul of Mother Russia, they are not moved by illusory propaganda like liberty, or democracy. Their central focus is the security of their people, the defense of their ancestral lands, the centrality of their nation. Add to that 1.4 billion Chinese, plus some Central Asia people, Iran, etc.

Can the US fantasize about defeating such a colossus, close to 2 billion people armed to their teeth?

Yes, they can fantasize, and the outcome is not a foregone conclusion. Yes, the nuclear option is one possible complicating factor, but let’s do some more math.

Almost 350 million Americans, 450 million Europeans, 70-80 million Canadians and Australians, plus 100 million Japanese, 50 million South Koreans – that is already an army of 1 billion. And they are first-class nations, unlike the still mostly rural, “developing” challengers. There are a few fence-sitters like the 115 million Philippines, the 275 million Indonesians, Central Americans, etc. And how about the Indians who alone can match by number the Chinese? And they are worked up assiduously by the Western Axis.

As far as advances in war technology, there is much to be discovered by the public and acknowledged by the secret weapons developers. Advances on all sides are made almost on a daily basis.

On the political theater, Trump is just as much of a charlatan as Biden is a crooked politician, good material for public distraction. Now, Trump the candidate is against the war in Ukraine and is against the masks and the vaccine mandates as supposedly employed by the Bidens to block Trump’s chances of re-election. But remember, it was Trump the President who introduced the lockdowns and the masks, who appointed the Judas goat Fauci, who spearheaded the “warp-speed” vaccine development, etc. It was Trump who introduced the first sanctions against Russia and then against China. Biden or Trump, it makes no difference. Maybe only for Israel Trump is preferable.

So what is the alternative for the West, if not War? The West is bankrupt, the speed of industrialization taking place outside the West is mind blowing. China just announced the breakthrough in designing and producing the 5G chipset, the last stronghold of American technological dominance. In the race in space, even India has leapfrogged the US and together with the other majors, Russia and China, they all are fast moving out of sight.

So what alternatives does the West have for protecting their beautiful garden? In the previous two world wars, it maneuvered to set the rest of the world on fire and have it self destruct. That is something that could possibly be a game changer for the West. No war? Death with certainty. Even worse. Sooner or later, tribunals are looming. But a devastating war creates a new ground-leveling environment and those who are the Master Arsonists can hope to get away and ahead.

It doesn’t mean that the next war will be like a video game of the Gulf War. No, not by any means. It doesn’t mean that the West is the sure winner, or even the favorite. — But who has the best chance in such a war? one wants to know. But it is the exact business of the war to determine that. A war is only possible when both sides are equally strong, or at least when each side believes it is capable of winning. And sometimes only pure chance can turn the balance in one’s favor, as in the case of the huge typhoon which saved the Japanese navy from defeat by the Mongol invasion in 1281.

It only means that the West has no other option between slow death or going to an all-out war. The time for a negotiated compromise has passed. The long historical line of crimes and lies cannot be kept under wraps. Hence the Black Lives Matter and the anti-“white supremacy” cover-up fallacy. But even the Africans can see through and demand justice. The Moon landing, 9/11, the Covid genocide are the lies, and the crimes – the coups and the colonial atrocities and centuries-long crimes against most of humanity – are high on the agenda of a potential upcoming tribunal.

Not so long ago, that dilemma of war or compromise was mostly theoretical. But we have now come to the historical crossroad, when this is no longer an academic debate. The preparations for war are very far advanced and the deadline is near.

And it looks like we will be going to all-out war. Soon.

Economics/Statistics

Huawei Breaks the 5G Blockade, Russia’s First Homemade SuperJet

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via Moon of Alabama

Just a few month back I argued that the new economic protectionism the U.S. is pushing for will fire back:

Last week Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen gave a speech on the U.S.-China economic relationship. I called it a declaration of war.

Yesterday National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan held a speech on ‘Renewing American Economic Leadership’ which touched on some of the same themes as Yellen’s speech.

Sullivan argues that the U.S. must change course from opening markets and liberalization to targeted protectionism and subsidies for specific sectors. The main argument for it is ‘national security’ but the real aim seems to be the suppression of competition from others.
…
Sullivan’s whole speech is an argument against free markets and for protectionism and sector subsidies. It does away with the economic framework the U.S. had build after the end of the second world war. This is supposed to be replaced it with bilateral and block wise agreements that are to the advantage of the U.S., to the disadvantage of its agreement ‘partners’ and which exclude China and other ‘hostile’ economies.

The so called ‘decoupling’ or ‘de-risking’ from China is actually an attempt to isolate it. It creates a dynamic that will lead to import replacements in China.

This will lower exports to China from the U.S. and its allies. The whole scheme will thereby eventually work to China’s advantage.

Three years ago the U.S. prohibited domestic and foreign companies to stop the provision of 5G chips to Huawei. Thus a milestone of import replacement was revealed yesterday when Huawei announced a brand new 5G phone with Chinese made chips:

Huawei Mate 60 Pro has been silently launched in China. The successor to last year’s Huawei Mate 50 Pro, brings several major upgrades including satellite calling support and an LTPO AMOLED display. The handset sports a 6.82-inch AMOLED display with an adaptive refresh rate that ranges between 1Hz and 120Hz and a 300Hz touch sampling rate.

The U.S. pushed to stop supplies of 5G chips to Huawei. That led to a campaign to develop Chinese replacements. Huawei has also developed a graphic processor that is as fast as Nvidia’s A100 GPU which is used for high performance computing and AI development. The new 5G chip the phone is using has been confirmed as being genuine.

The $300 billion import of chips to China has shrunken as the country is fast in developing domestic replacements.

On the same day Russia increased its autonomy with the first flight of the new SJ-100 SuperJet which is based on the replacement of systems that previously came from foreign suppliers but are now produced domestically:

United Aircraft Corporation CEO Yury Slyusar also highlighted the broader implications of the project, declaring it a “testament to Russia’s technological self-sufficiency.” Slyusar added, “Our primary aim now is to obtain full Russian certification for the plane and initiate regular shipments to airlines.”

The launch of the plane and of Huawei’s new phone came on the same day U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo ended her visit to China. It was certainly meant as a point.

Today’s Global Times Editorial is rubbing it in:

Chinese companies will inevitably break through the blockade and move forward. This is the result of China’s overall development and close integration with global interests. In this era of globalization, the idea of kicking Chinese companies out of the industrial chain will only encounter increasing resistance because it goes against the law of development. The resurgence of Huawei smartphones after three years of forced silence is enough to prove that the US’ extreme suppression has failed. This also serves as a microcosm of the US-China tech war, reflecting the entire process and foreshadowing the final outcome. Recently, some American media outlets have been enthusiastic about hyping up things like Huawei is building a “secret” chip factory. Ultimately, these are all due to a failure to see or a refusal to believe in the general trend, and they hold on to outdated thinking that Chinese companies’ technology is all “stolen.” Essentially, it is Washington’s technological arrogance, and the US will definitely pay the price for this arrogance.

As China is training more engineers and researchers than the U.S. and Europe combined, it will eventually take the technological lead in many fields. Other countries will have to either become more specialized or close their markets to imports from China.

The later will in the longer run cause a less competitive environment that will come with higher costs and can only be sustained for a relatively short time.

Fabricated Narratives

Over 1,600 Scientists Sign ‘No Climate Emergency’ Declaration

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by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times

International scientists have jointly signed a declaration dismissing the existence of a climate crisis and insisting that carbon dioxide is beneficial to Earth, contrary to the popular alarmist narrative.

Children take part in a climate change protest in Montreal on Sept. 26, 2020. (Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press)

“There is no climate emergency,” the Global Climate Intelligence Group (CLINTEL) said in its World Climate Declaration (pdf), made public in August. “Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.”

A total of 1,609 scientists and professionals from around the world have signed the declaration, including 321 from the United States.

The coalition pointed out that Earth’s climate has varied as long as it has existed, with the planet experiencing several cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age only ended as recently as 1850, they said.

“Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming,” the declaration said.

Warming is happening “far slower” than predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools,” the coalition said, adding that these models “exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases” and “ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.” For instance, even though climate alarmists characterize CO2 as environmentally-damaging, the coalition pointed out that the gas is “not a pollutant.”

Carbon dioxide is “essential” to all life on earth and is “favorable” for nature. Extra CO2 results in the growth of global plant biomass while also boosting the yields of crops worldwide.

CLINTEL also dismissed the narrative of global warming being linked to increased natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, and droughts, stressing that there is “no statistical evidence” to support these claims.

“There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. Go for adaptation instead of mitigation; adaptation works whatever the causes are,” it said.

“To believe the outcome of a climate model is to believe what the model makers have put in. This is precisely the problem of today’s climate discussion to which climate models are central. Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science. Should not we free ourselves from the naive belief in immature climate models?”

Climate Models and Sunlight Reflection

Among the CLINTEL signatories are two Nobel laureates—physicists John Francis Clauser from the United States and Ivan Giaever, a Norwegian-American.

Mr. Clauser has made a significant addition to climate models to dismiss the narrative of global warming: the visible light reflected by cumulus clouds which, on average, cover half of the earth.

Young demonstrators hold placards as they attend a climate change protest opposite the Houses of Parliament in central London on Feb. 15, 2019. (Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images)

Current climate models vastly underestimate this aspect of cumulus cloud reflection, which plays a key role in regulating the earth’s temperature. Mr. Clauser previously told President Joe Biden that he disagreed with his climate policies.

In May, Mr. Clauser was elected to the board of directors at the CO2 Coalition, a group focusing on the beneficial contributions of carbon dioxide in the environment.

“The popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people,” Mr. Clauser said in a May 5 statement.

“Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience. In turn, the pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other unrelated ills.”

“It has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists. In my opinion, there is no real climate crisis.”

False Doomsday Predictions, a Presidential Issue

CLINTEL’s declaration against the climate change narrative counters propaganda spread by climate alarmists who have long predicted doomsday scenarios triggered by global warming—none of which have ever come true.

In 1970, some climate scientists predicted that the earth would move into a new ice age by the 21st century. Pollution expert James Lodge predicted that “air pollution may obliterate the sun and cause a new ice age in the first third of the new century,” according to The Boston Globe.

Participants hold placards as they take part in a demonstration demanding the government take immediate action against climate change in Sydney, Australia, on Jan. 10, 2020. (Mohammed Farooq/AFP via Getty Images)

In May 1982, Mostafa Tolba, then-executive director of the United Nations environmental program, said that if the world did not change course, it would face an “environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible, as any nuclear holocaust” by 2000.

In June 2008, James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Sciences, said that within five to 10 years, the Arctic would have no ice left in the summer.

As climate alarmists continue to spread propaganda about global warming, the topic has become an issue in the 2024 presidential race, with multiple candidates openly dismissing it.

In a July 13 post on X, Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that climate change “is being used to control us through fear.”

“Freedom and free markets are a much better way to stop pollution. Polluters make themselves rich by making the public pay for the damage they do,” he said.

During the first 2024 GOP presidential debate, candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called climate change a “hoax.”

“The reality is, the anti-carbon agenda is the wet blanket on our economy. And so the reality is, more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change,” he said.

High Temperatures, Biden’s Appliance Crackdown

Climate activists have insisted that global warming is responsible for the soaring temperatures across the United States, even claiming that temperatures are hitting record highs.

In a recent interview with The Epoch Times, John Christy, a climatologist and professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, dismissed the narrative of record high temperatures.

“Regionally, the West has seen its largest number of hot summer records in the past 100 years, but the Ohio Valley and Upper Midwest are experiencing their fewest,” he said.

“For the conterminous U.S. as a whole, the last 10 years have produced only an average number of records. The 1930s are still champs.”

Climate change policies have been used to justify sweeping lifestyle changes across the United States by the Energy Department, like restricting home appliances, and sometimes, even outright banning them.

In June, the Energy Department proposed rules that would require ceiling fans to become more energy efficient, a development that could lead to manufacturers having to shell out $86.6 million per year in “increased equipment costs.”

In February, the DOE proposed energy efficiency rules targeting gas stoves that would affect half of all new models of such stoves sold in the United States while making most of the existing ones noncompliant.

In July, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission proposed a policy that would remove nearly all existing portable gas generators from the market.

The Biden administration has already implemented a ban on incandescent light bulbs, which came into effect on Aug. 1.

Cultural/Ideological Divide

On the Russian Soul

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“Even if Russia expands its possessions at the expense of neighboring colonies, unlike other colonial powers, it gives more to its new acquisitions than it takes from them. This is not because it is driven by some kind of philanthropy or anything like that. The initial aspirations of all empires are not much different, but wherever the Russian man appears, everything miraculously takes a completely different direction.

Developed in the Eastern Slavs since pre-Christian times moral norms do not allow the Russian man to rape someone else’s conscience. More often out of the ineradicable feeling of compassion rooted in him he is ready to give his last shirt than to take it away from someone. Therefore, no matter how victorious Russian weapons are, in purely mercantile terms, Russia always remains a loser.

Those defeated by it or taken under its protection usually win in the end, keeping intact their way of life and spiritual institutions, despite their apparent insufficiency for progress, as one can easily be convinced after getting to know them more or less thoroughly, increasing their material wealth and significantly advancing on the path of civilization.

Estland (the northern part of Estonia – note) and the Caucasus are illustrative examples of this, for example, they have been despised and raped by their neighbors for centuries, but have taken an honorable place among the nations and achieved incomparable prosperity under the patronage of Russia, while the situation of the Russian people, i.e. the native population of Russia, has not improved at all as a result of the acquisition of Estland and the Caucasus. The latter seems to us a paradox, but this is the reality, the root causes of which lie, undoubtedly, in the peculiarities of Russian morality”.

Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, speaking at a crowded rally against Britain’s entry into the Crimean War famous Scottish scientist-geologist, who named the periods of the early Paleozoic era: Silurian, Devonian and Permian (after the names of the places where he conducted his research). Year 1853.