The Rockefellers and their fake medicine have been in China since the early 1900s, and Wall Street created Communist China. I'm not sure China's new leaders are patriotic nationalists. How can one tell?
I lived in China and I'm not going to celebrate. No, not at all.
As for Chinese intelligence, the Chinese had naval superiority long before anyone else and had huge treasure vessels sailing the southern seas long before Europeans and their dinky caravels. Their strategy was commerce, not belligerence. In fact, they spent so much on their naval trading fleets that it led to widespread depression and revolt in the early 1400s, at which point the new rulers buried the entire record of their forays into far off lands and closed the country off. Thus Chinese isolation policy for 400 years. (Gavin Menzes. 1423: The Year the Chinese Discovered America)
It's those days I look to with nostalgia. Those days of exploration and small Chinese colonies in unknown lands far away from the motherland.
Could you back up that part about Wall Street creating communist China? I don't know about that.
As for me celebrating, my optimism is meant to be somewhat sarcastic - "hey, look on the bright side of WWIII!" but honestly, I think China *might* be a better ruler of the world than the Anglo-Americans. How many wars have they started this century? How many coups have they sponsored? Do they use a strategy of tension involving terrorist attacks against innocent people to foment unrest?
I'm an anti-racist which means I don't think that the Chinese are in any way morally superior to Europeans - people are people - but I think we can expect them to employ different techniques of statecraft than we're used to. I'm hoping for the best. I'm an optimist.
I've made a mental note of 1423: The Year the Chinese Discovered America... That sounds fascinating! I'm very into alternative archaeology and pre-Columbian trans-Pacific ocean travel is something I'd like to know more about.
I agree with Tobin Owl's comment. Globalism really is global and China is not outside that system. The criminocrats have had their tentacles in China since the Opium Wars. I wrote this a few months back: https://paulcudenec.substack.com/p/china-is-globalist
Okay, but what does that mean, exactly? Globalism is global, sure, and China is globalist, definitely. But do the interests of the CCP and George Soros align? What about the state of Israel? Is it in the interests of the CCP to back Israel's increasing belligerence? Wouldn't it be more strategic to ally with the Muslim world? I don't see what the U.S. is getting out of their relationship with Israel at this point. It seems like more of a liability than anything else.
I believe that your understanding of geopolitics is superior to my own, so your comment will give me occasion to rethink things, but I do think that political power derives from violence, not from money. I think that the Brettons Wood system, which created the IMF, World Bank, and the Bank of International Settlements, needs to be replaced. I think that's what the Great Reset ultimately refers to.
I suppose that I see the global financial system as something like New York's Mafia Commission, through which five crime families settled disputes. There are different blocs of power within what might appear to be a monolithic system. I'm not saying that China isn't globalist, but that their power has surpassed that of the European banking elite.
To me, one of the biggest questions right now is whether the global financial system can survive the collapse of the U.S. dollar. I think what we're experiencing might just be collapse of globalism, and that the global economy might break down into separate blocs.
A related question is what the new global reserve currency will be. Perhaps it will be the petroyuan, perhaps it will be Brettons Woods 2.0 involving Special Drawing Rights & CBDCs, or perhaps it will be Bitcoin. Or perhaps it will be gold, the only money that has stood the test of time. Or perhaps there will no one global reserve currency due to competition amongst different players with their own interests. But I don't see why the CCP would co-sign Israeli expansionism.
But I don't really know. Maybe I've been overconfident in my assertions. Constructive criticism is welcome!
I'd say that political power is the use of ("legitimate") violence in pursuit of more power and the money associated with power. Israel and China have developed very close links over the last 30 years or so (particularly in relation to the Belt and Road Initiative - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25765949.2020.1808378) - and it is clear to me that they both form part of the criminocratic global system. I am sure Iain Davis would agree with that - and his geopolitical knowledge is greater than mine. Yes, we are seeing an eclipse of US-centred power in favour of a Chinese/BRICS base, but this is really just an internal reorganisation of the criminal global governance, similar to the transfer of their power base from Britain to the USA in the mid 20th century. Bear in mind that China - with its ultra-industrialism, totalitarian surveillance and social credit system - is the model for the Fourth Industrial Revolution/New World Order championed by the WEF.
I'll check out that link. I know some stuff about the Zionist-China relationship, such as how Israel transferred U.S. military secrets to China, but do you not think that China has noticed how the Zionists treat their "allies"?
I just can't fathom why the CCP would go along with their plans, especially when they're behaving so recklessly and belligerently.
Notice that all countries ( power centers), the UN, the ICC are not doing anything to help the Palestinians. Other than slow rolling a feigned concern for their genocide. Genocide is not uncommon in history. Palestinians will survive as a race, just not with a country. Sad fact.
Israel is playing for their seat at the table and the US is enabling them to make their immediate neighborhood comfortable. All this brisling of arms (outside Gaza) is posturing and theater. Due to advanced military tech there will be a stasis reached as each great power recognizes the destructive capability they possess and the uncertainty against peers and near peers. Kinetic warfare tools will only be used to adjust populations. Mostly defenseless populations if other methods lag or prove impractical.
I get the impression that the US, GB and other money centers really believe they can survive on financialization. Especially with reduced and surveilled populations. Those resource rich countries and those straddling trade routes will do OK in the reset. And big dog China will add the value and keep it all under control.
So here's a quote from Sutton's Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution. This is from a section that summarizes what has been discussed earlier in the book. (The discussion of China does not go into great detail because the focus is mainly on the Bolsheviks.)
"We also identified documentary evidence
concerning. a Wall Street syndicate's financing of the 1912 Sun Yat-sen revolution in China, a revolution that is today hailed by the Chinese Communists as the precursor of Mao's revolution in China. Charles B. Hill, New York attorney negotiating with Sun Yat-sen in behalf of this
syndicate, was a director of three Westinghouse subsidiaries, and we have found that Charles R. Crane of Westinghouse in Russia was involved in the Russian Revolution."
So Wall Street was funding Sun Yat Sen early on. Elsewhere I read that the syndicate decided that communism would be best for China (that is, within the framework of what would work well for certain Wall Street interests.) Sun Yat Sen was interested in communism and even sent and envoy to Moscow to study. But later Sun Yat Sen learned things about communism that made him recoil. The Wall Street syndicate that had been supporting him pulled away and began supporting Mao instead. These are things I have read. But it would be up to someone more thorough to investigate and verify. Sutton is very thorough, but his books focus mainly on Wall Street and the USSR. He also has a book on Wall Street and Hitler and another on FDR and another on the Skull and Bones Society.
Anyway it seems that the syndicate got what they aimed at: a communist China. Whether that worked well for them (Wall Street that is) I don't know, but I suspect to some degree it did.
It's hard to tell who's running who in these convoluted relationships. Things can be set in motion that have unintended consequences for all parties. I lean more towards that as an explanation for world events, at least in their extreme form. Things just get out of control. Nothing anyone can do about it, regardless of how much power and influence they imagine they have. Who saw Putin coming, for example? Who thought Yemen would stand up to Israel, or that Israel would set out on such a self-destructive path? None of this looks like a plan, or at least one with any chance of working.
I think the people in control would like us to think they're in control. Most of the time they are, but when they drop the ball they do it in a big way. I think that's what we're seeing now.
Someone, perhaps it was Iain Davis, pointed out a difference between Russia's methodical, step by step approach, such as in the Ukraine operation, as contrasted with that of the West, which is basically to act radically and dramatically and see what happens next.
Isoroku Yamamoto commenting on Pearl Harbour said "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve"
Substitute sleeping bear for sleeping giant and you've just about captured it. Unfortunately there's no one in the US military with the stature and insight of Yamamoto to notice the obvious parallel.
I hadn't heard that coming from Mao, but Lenin and Stalin said similar things, giving the impression of how naive Wall Street was in supporting their projects so generously. (Anthony Sutton. The Best Enemy Money Can Buy)
Could it be that Mao stole it from Stalin who stole it from Lenin who stole it from Marx?
I couldn't find an attribution, but Lenin is said to have written this:
"They [the capitalists] will furnish credits which will serve us for the support of the Communist Party in their countries and, by supplying us materials and technical equipment which we lack, will restore our military industry necessary for our future attacks against our suppliers. To put it in other words, they will work on the preparation of their own suicide."
Which is a round-about way of saying the same thing.
I think it was you who mentioned the ideal of 1400’s America. Do you have a reference for that? I’d like to look into that more. You’ve written a lot in the past regarding leaderless systems and I’m trying to get my head around hierarchy in living organisms, how it develops and usefulness (or lack of) to the energy management (power) and healthy function of an organism or system. And does a need for hierarchy give rise to leadership and all the good or bad that can bring?
I think that part of the problem with the word hierarchy is that it confuses two very different types of social organization - dominance hierarchies and democratic hierarchies / competence hierarchies.
The difference boils down to whether the arrangements are voluntary or whether they are imposed by force.
Social hierarchy appears to have a strong biological basis and can be observed in other mammals (and non-mammals, for that matter).
Some anarchists now prefer the term voluntarist because it emphasizes that the essence of anarchism is social relations based on voluntary cooperation rather than coercive force.
A core tenet of anarchism is voluntary association, meaning the ability of human beings to associate and disassociate themselves at will. This is one thing people don't understand about anarchism - unlike proponents of other ideologies, we're not trying to take over the world. Some people will choose to live with dominance hierarchies for a whole variety of reasons. We just want to be allowed to live our lives how we want without being the subjects of systems of rules we didn't consent to. This means that the ability to leave group and join others (fission/fusion) is key. We're for fission-fusion societies where social mobility between groups is possible.
Thanks for that explanation. I’ve probably been a closet anarchist all my life. Initially drawn to it because someone said it’s bad, you don’t want to go there, and we need authoritarian systems that we must respect. Since I had a respectable career I searched in vain for authoritarian systems worthy of my respect. No more. I’m coming to realize I should have followed my intuition and pre-indoctrination reasoning instead. Sometimes it takes a lifetime to work through the programming and life diversions with rational logical thought.
I like this comment. In particular the term 'competence' hierarchy. This isn't really a 'hierarchy' in the traditional sense of course - it's a social group in which people adopt the roles for which they are best suited.
This is the kind of system (call it a genuine meritocracy) which would indeed arise if we had 1/ benevolent people in the role of 'social decision-maker' and 2/ an exceptional education system.
You will notice that the strategy of the monsters has always been to prevent both 1/ and 2/. An educated masses, after all, would never put up with this upside down hierarchy because it's not a meritocracy. I.e. they would demand a 'voluntary' system, as you put it. If only they were to realise their superiority in numbers, if married with solidarity, could do it tomorrow if the will was there.
The other thing we have to think about here is psychology. Or rather 'psychological maturity' (which can be encouraged and enhanced by a good education system). Also 'emotional maturity' (emotional intelligence, say). In a psychologically mature social group, everyone would indeed naturally tend towards a 'competence hierarchy'. Although like I say it's not really a hierarchy - at least, not to the members of the group. It might superficially seem that way to an outsider, in the sense that they would observe 'social decision-makers' who 'appear' to be 'in control', but blink and they might miss the point that those people are in those positions because they are those best suited to that role.
But here's the 'socialist' element (or 'egalitarian' might be a better word) - in a psychologically/emotionally mature social group, every role is seen as valuable in its own right - whether social decision-maker or toolmaker or weaver or cook or whatever.
I don't like using the word communism - it's become too loaded a word and the likes of Marx especially intentionally poisoned the word in order to discredit the very idea of genuine socialism (competence hierarchy).
If we're thinking about China - this is not 'natural' communism - we can tell because they don't satisfy 1/ and 2/ above. A genius born in the provinces will never become top social decision-maker - those roles will be taken up by members of the 'clique'. I.e. it's just another dominance hierarchy. Whether we give it the label 'communist' or 'maoist' or 'state capitalism' or 'fascism pretending to be socialism' (like Bolshevism) is merely academic. It is what it is. Consequently, the members of the clique satisfy the same psychological profiling as members of the clique who rule the western empire. I think that's a good, psychological explanation of how it can be believable that 'they're all in it together' - if they order their 'social identity group' by psychological type, then they are the same. And we are the 'other'. That's certainly how it turns out in practice, anyhow.
I think the Chinese like to think of themselves as 'psychologically mature' what with Confucius and the way of Tao and all that, but I think that is their version of the 'wise scripture' they hide behind to conceal the fact that they are not much different from any other wannabe dominant group. Stoicism might be more useful for the vast majority of ordinary Chinese, just as it may well be for the vast majority of any people anywhere living in a dominant hierarchy.
That's the irony about Stoicism - it's only necessary in an unequal, feudalist society. In an egalitarian, free social group, it's no longer required.
I think it's going to be a very, very long time coming before humanity can truly live in a perfect, utopian competence/benevolent meritocracy - why? Because the monsters have carried out a systematic psychological and spiritual attack on humanity for thousands of years, and humanity for the most part has effectively been dumbed down and made into a fearful creature, easily manipulated and scared off from actively realising its potential.
Humanity had that once. But not anymore.
Absent some catalysing event - I think it's going to be a long long time...
This comes as a surprise to me as well. I grew up around boats (both my parents were in the Royal Navy) and I worked on ships as young guy. As I kid I built many model ships, most of them sailing vessels from the exploration days, and read everything I could about those times - Nordhoff and Hall, Stevenson, etc. but I never came across anything about a Chinese navy.
My father served on a destroyer during the Korean war, and one of their tasks was intercepting arms smugglers who typically used fishing junks in their operations. Once they captured a junk and got the crew aboard they'd tow it behind the ship until it broke up, thus validating the name junk, which those ships basically were. Not very stable, hard to steer as they couldn't sail close to the wind, slow, so very dangerous in a following sea, etc. I'm curious to know how they overcame those problems, or did they just lose a lot of ships? The South China sea is not a friendly place to be sailing at all. The weather comes up very quickly in that part of the world.
Is this a question about the 15th century treasure ships I mentioned? They quit building them after that.
The author, Gavin Menzes, is a ship captain. He does a lot of investigation and is a good storyteller, but some people pooh pooh what he says. They can't believe the Chinese had such navigational prowess so long ago.
I've only read one of his books (1423: The Year China Discovered America). It's a big book. To me its fascinating and reads like a novel almost. He's written other related books. I'd encourage you to check them out. You may like them.
Oh, and yes they did loose some of their vessels, even the big ones.
Whether it is the Great Reset Cabal or BRICS, I think that banking crime families are involved. Both cabals have many of the same goals, like CBDC's, censorship, universal ID track tracing, social credit score and toxic vaxx jabs...Kman, DIGILEAK News Not Noise
True. I don't have a good answer to this. But I find it unlikely that the Chinese would remain the pawns of European powers once they gain military and economic supremacy.
Why would they do everything that you would need to do to take over the world and then not take over the world?
I did not say they were a pawn. China may want to steer this ship to disaster, but it does not give that indication as yet. They're having enough trouble micromanaging themselves. Kissinger, in my perspective, got the ball rolling and the technology trade for cheap labour was established. The common denominator is control of everything using technology. The fly in the ointment is that the global parasites seem to have a disconnection with nature, compassion, love and humour as well as a firm belief in eugenics. Whether the Global Cabal are human or not, they have lost their way...Kman, editor, Digileak News Not Noise
I agree but it’s China dictating to the WEF. The elephant out in the back yard. They’ve played it brilliantly. Everyone else in the world scurrying around for seats at the table. And there will be no military action over Taiwan. We’re seeing the last of peer to peer war in Ukraine. There won’t be any stocks of convention weapons left in the west afterward. Warfare is moving into a new era of technology. Which China will dominate. Too bad humanity just can’t make the leap to not have it at all.
Personally I've started believing that the WEF is an elaborate exercise in misdirection... ever wonder why Klaus Shwab seems more like a Bond villain than a real powerbroker?
When you look at people facing politics of states from this perspective a lot of what doesn’t make sense or seem rational becomes clearer. Note WEF policies immulate China policy.
I have a theory on large state leadership. All leadership candidates to be advanced must demonstrate their ability to act against natural law. Including the ability to kill life forms without conscience. They must be able to deal with the consequences to their psyche. Assistance will be provided to promising candidates as necessary (secret societies). There is a screening program from early childhood (aptitude tests or past family service to the state). Pedigree elevates you in the hierarchy. Bureaucrats are in training. State leaders are selected (voting does not matter, it’s part of the theater). All are on a scale of ego traits such as hedonism, narcissism, sociopathy or psychopathy. All easy to manipulate from a state power perspective but difficult to deal with or corrected at a personal level. Best to be avoided. Better to come at as a collective.
Governments, many of those with recent generational wealth, and corporations (public private partnerships, stakeholders) are all middle managers.
I like that this article ends on a positive note, so I will keep the good vibes going by pointing out that at least this time the master races has great food. Keep your boiled potatoes, Lord Soggybottoms VIII! Spare me the schnitzels, Herr Fahrvergnügen! I say, pass me another plate of dumplings, Chairman Win E. Xi Pooh, and let the good times roll!
They eat dogs, cats, weird sea penis looking things that live in conches (no disrespect to penises), live mice, live chicks, basically anything. While I like to eat many kinds of raw meats and raw eggs and raw milk and I approve of food sovereignty, I’ll take a hard pass on those menu items.
Hey, we do things that are weird and gross to them too, I'm sure. When Turtle Islanders went to Europe they were appalled that Europeans burnt people alive... but the Europeans were scandalized by their practices of human sacrifice and (in some places) cannibalism.
The only reason we won WWII was that we had more people and a bigger technology and manufacturing base. The Chinese now have more people, have mulitiple ports, and have allies that we've alienated.
Now that the US government is alienating White men, I doubt anyone will fight for them.
The real question is: Will White men fight the Chinese, or will they sit and bide their time?
Noooo, you're not rich! Your life will be lived in a chinese sweatshop factory with total surveillance, even in the toilet. When the US goes under the Chinese will be saying 'now YOU make OUR fucking trainers, gwai lo, or no sesame credits!'
...and they'll keep the good dumplings. Why waste good dumplings on big-noses?
Well, we don't have much choice in the matter, do we? No one can say the West didn't have it coming. We thought we would always be on top, but we weren't always on top. Europes ascendancy began because the Mongols decimated China & the Muslim world... and then Europe plundered the new world, killing tens of millions in the process.
We've got no moral high ground and no right to complain if the Lords of Karma decide to give us a taste of our own medicine.
I have a feeling there won't be revenge. The best way to deal with psychopaths is to make sure they have no power to harm anyone but themselves: irrelevance is the future.
I like that this article made it to my inbox, and wasn't "suicided" by the - heretofore - Zionazi ruling class and it's CIA assassination arm. Difficult to imagine how ANYONE (let alone China), could possibly be worse, or even AS vile, as the Anglo American empire. Thanks for this!
I agree, the flicking on and off of onboard lighting would hardly account for a total loss of control of the vessel. In fact, it has been clearly stated by many industry experts, that even in the case of a complete loss of power.. the ship can still be controlled, anchored and steered. There’s only one thing that doesn’t quite fit… The container ship in question (the Dali) was built by South Korean company Hyundai Heavy Industries … it’s owned by Grace Ocean Private Ltd, flies a Singapore flag and had been chartered and was under the command of the Danish (European shipping company) ‘Maersk’ at the time of the incident.
I didn't know that. Could you point me in the direction of the most detailed information about the ship's owners please?
Personally I figure that they could have multiple layers of plausible deniability, but I'll admit that I haven't dived too deep on the question of the ship itself.
I've been paying attention to the Belt and Road Initiative for some time now and can clearly see that the Chinese strategy is about ports, steel and container shipping (among other things).
I knew this was coming. Blaming the Chinese for the Baltimore bridge. No waiting for any kind of investigation, no application of Occam's Razor, just the instantaneous conclusion-jumping of an idealist; in this case straight to the same conclusion that has been screamed by one branch of the Republican Party, and of our MIC, for many years.
You need to study Chinese history, bud. It's a long one, and takes some real effort, but there are easily recognizable patterns which go back 4000 years. China expands to about the borders it has now, but any attempts to expand further are always resisted by the central government out of fear that such expansion will create dynamic new leaders who are a potential threat to its own stability.
The Chinese are increasing their influence by trade, and by building things for those with whom they wish to trade, not by destroying their infrastructure. Their current leadership is aware of the dangers of turning inward, so they are focused outwards, but always to increase stability at home, and always cautiously.
I'd be more worried about our own government trying to recreate the authoritarian Chinese censorship and social control system here than the Chinese themselves if I were you.
As for all of you going on about the CCP and Communist China, China hasn't been Communist for nearly 50 years now. They're a mix of state and private capitalism, with lots of state welfare programs and investment in infrastructure. You don't have to like it, but if you don't realize this, you don't know what you're talking about when it comes to China.
I'll admit that I'm not an expert in Chinese history. Far from it. Could you point me towards any resources that you think are particularly valuable for understanding the present situation?
I have read Mao, though, which I think is more relevant than ancient history. I've also read Sun Tzu's The Art of War.
Even if I'm wrong about the Baltimore bridge collapse, my argument that the CCP is now the dominant military power on the planet seems beyond dispute. Do you agree or disagree with that statement?
I suppose the question of "Who Rules the World?" is a complicated question in a globalized world where all countries are enmeshed in a complex web of interdependent relations. I don't think that multipolarity is just a propaganda construct. I think it's an accurate term.
Nevertheless, some players are surely more powerful than others, and the CCP is the most powerful state actor on the world stage today. Next is Russia, probably followed by Turkey. Next would be India, Brazil, NATO, Mexico, and whoever got Gadhafi's gold.
(Am I missing anyone? I don't include Japan and Korea on this list because although they are economically powerful, their power is dwarfed by that of their neighbours.)
Personally, I believe that states are simply extortion rackets. That's all they are. And what would a Mafia loanshark be without debt collectors willing to use violence? Why would anyone pay their debts? The reality is that statecraft is institutionalized violence. That's why Mao said that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun".
Ultimately, the U.S. Empire is an extortion racket backed up by the threat of violence. If they don't have military supremacy, their days are done.
““China’s massive purchase of T-bonds since the 1990s seems to be part of a tacit agreement whereby China floods the United States with vast quantities of underpriced consumer goods, on a tab they’re aware the United States will never repay... [This] probably draws on a very ancient Chinese political tradition of flooding dangerously militaristic foreigners with wealth as a way of creating dependency."
As for China not being "real communists", you could also argue that the U.S. isn't "real capitalism. Pure ideologies exist only on paper. Reality is messy. But it is indisputable that the ideology of the CCP draws heavily on Marxism.
Quoting Graeber again:
"I suspect the simplest explanation of why China is willing to accept existing arrangements is just that its leadership were trained as Marxists, that is, as historical materialists who prioritize the realities of material infrastructure over superstructure. For them, the niceties of financial instruments are clearly superstructure. That is, they observe that, whatever else might be happening, they are acquiring more and more highways, high-speed train systems, and high-tech factories, and the United States is acquiring less and less of them, or even losing the ones they already have. It’s hard to deny that the Chinese may be onto something."
".... my argument that the CCP is now the dominant military power on the planet seems beyond dispute. Do you agree or disagree with that statement?"
Allow me to butt in here. What can I say? I finished planting that tree I mentioned and have some spare time.
China has the most men under arms, but that's more to keep young men out of trouble (given the shortage of women) than anything else, plus it provides a ready source of manpower for dealing with natural disasters, which China has a lot of.
As far as their ability to fight a modern combined arms war, they're no match for Russia, neither are the combined forces of NATO, which at this point are a standing joke. China's military is for defence only, including what they consider to be their territorial waters, and territory like Taiwan, which goes without saying.
The reality of modern warfare as it's currently playing out in Ukraine: Ground combat is limited to small units because as soon as you amass any amount of troops or armour in one place you'll be hit hard, no matter how far in the rear that is. Your only protection is a sophisticated AA system and only the Russian systems are up to the task.
Every move you make on the ground can be seen from above, either by satellite or drone. Speaking of drones, modern infantry are equipped with small suicide drones that can actually hunt you down and kill you. I've seen video on Telegram of Ukrainian soldiers desperately trying to outrun those things. They'll follow you right into a bunker, so you don't have a chance. This is why the war is going slowly because you simply can't mount large scale operations anymore. Russia could in principle run roughshod over Ukraine, but they don't because they'd loose too many guys and they don't want to or need to do that. Until recently they've just sat behind their defensive positions and picked off anything that came at them with drones, missiles or artillery. Speaking of artillery, modern systems are guided now, so you don't need spotters to correct your fire.
Missiles. They're now so accurate and deadly that they can pick you off from a great distance. One example, about a year ago there was a barracks of some 200 mercenaries on a base somewhere outside Lvov I believe. They got hit and only a few survived. Fact is, Russia can target anything in the European continent and there's little you can do to stop that. You might shoot down one or two incoming missiles, but numbers three through five will get through, and that's all it takes.
This is also true for surface ships, which are just sitting ducks at this point. There's no defence against long range hypersonic missiles which can hit ships from a thousand miles away... even further if they're air launched. Only Russia has them at present. The US has tried and failed several times to produce these and are probably ten years behind Russia in their development. What that means is that the minute a real war breaks out, NATO loses all its carrier groups. The only naval vessel that's safe from attack today is a submarine, and while Russia has fewer than NATO, many are newer and more deadly.
I would make this observation. The combined West should thank their lucky stars the Russians are sensible people, because if they were really as bellicose as we're portraying them, we'd be completely fucked, and that's no exaggeration. If they took the same view as Stalin in the Great Patriotic War, which was victory at any cost, we'd be finished by the end of next week. They'd be hurt badly as well, but they'd survive because they've planned for that. Everything from apartment buildings built to withstand tank rounds to subway systems so far underground even a nuclear explosion won't affect them. People marvel at the spacious boulevards you encounter in Russian cities. So open, so pleasant to walk through. Well, not if you're an armoured or infantry unit. You're a sitting duck from fire directed from nearby buildings which your tanks cannot penetrate. Even if you locate the firing positions, by the time you've dialed them in, they've moved to the next building using the tunnels that connect every building, and that have prepositioned ammunition so you don't ever risk exposure doing resupply.
The USSR took the threat from the West seriously and prepared for it. Russia inherited those preparations and after 2007 when it was clear there'd be no rapprochement with the West, continued building and improving those systems. What else would you expect from a nation that's been constantly invaded over centuries, and where the last one cost them over 20 million lives?
Watch this video with English subs. It tells you everything you need to know about Russia's attitude towards people who try to invade or otherwise interfere with their sovereignty.
All of this speaks to why I don't expect a direct war between Russia and NATO. The politicians can say whatever they like, but the people who are really in charge have far more to lose than to gain. What I see over the next few years is grudging acceptance of the fact that world domination is off the table, probably for good. We're going multipolar whether they like it or not, and the sooner they get on board the better it is for them and us as well.
Here's some theme music to go with that thought...
This is one of the most helpful things I've seen you post. To be honest, the Ukraine-Russia is a bit of a weak spot in my analysis - there's a reason I never comment on it in detail. The propaganda is so thick it's very difficult to cut through... and I have enough on my plate interpreting the fall of the American Empire, which is a foregone conclusion at this point if you ask me.
The money is controlled by European bankers. That's my point. I think it's the end of the age of the supremacy of that system. Money is a social construct. The petrodollar system is on life support and is being kept afloat by America's enemies.
The Great Reset is arguably Jubilee - at a certain point, all debts will have to be cancelled and a few financial system will have to take the place of the existing one.
China consumes somewhere between 725 and 995 million metric tons of steel domestically, leaving somewhere around 300 million metric tons as exports if you use the low figure, which is probably more accurate. It's still a large number in terms of exports, but you have to look at the total picture. More than 80% of the iron ore used in steel production is imported, so any disruption in that supply chain puts China's steel industry in a tight corner. The same is true for the energy required to produce the steel, most of which has to be imported.
I recall in the 80's the alarm being raised about Japanese domination of world steel production, then the attention turned to Korea as they started to catch up. Now it's China's turn, with the same argument that the Chinese govt. subsidizes steel production, as if that was implicitly a bad thing. You see this subtext in all western critiques of nations that out-compete western producers - the government subsidizes X, therefore we must impose tariffs. That's one way to deal with the problem I suppose, the other is to copy their example and stop relying on private enterprise to produce items of critical national importance.
When we visited China in the 80's they were near the beginning of the 4 modernizations period started in 1977, and heavily promoted by Deng Xiaoping. Didn't look too modern at the time. Run down buildings, old soviet made trucks and buses, still running steam locomotives in some areas, but the significant data point was the rural to urban population ratio which stood around 80% rural. Today that number is less than 50%. That is to say, far more of their steel production went into improvements in domestic housing and transportation than was sold as exports, which also drove the migration to industrial centres which provided jobs and a much better standard of living than in the countryside. (as a side bar, urbanization has also resulted in declining birthrates, in line with my earlier argument on Malthus's failed predictions)
The flip side of exports is of course the amount of imports China needs, especially food and energy. China may lead in steel production, but only to the degree they can secure the raw materials and energy to do so, which means maintaining friendly relations with their key suppliers, and so much the better if those are also their major customers.
Frederic Bastiat said “when goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.” Likewise, David Ricardo proposed the theory of comparative advantage in global trade, which suggests we should focus on what we do best, let others do likewise, then trade to our mutual benefit. As an example, Jamaica has ample supplies of bauxite, but very little electrical capacity to turn that into aluminum. It thus makes more sense to mine the ore and export it than to try and create a domestic aluminum industry and keep foreign produced aluminum out using tariffs, which are a blunt instrument and likely to result in retaliation.
One thing I would point out about China, as their standard of living improves so does the demand for better wages, and social services. Over time that puts them at a disadvantage as a cheap labour source and pushes them to move up the so-called value chain - that is to say, put more effort into quality than volume. Clearly they understand this, and the quality of the high-end goods they produce has risen dramatically in recent years, just as it did with Japan when they faced a similar problem in the late 70's.
Look at the 'made in' label when you buy clothes or shoes. Vietnam, Bangladesh and Indonesia are now competing with China on the low wage/cost end, and it wouldn't surprise me if India starts taking some of the steel market away from them as well.
Personally, I think arguments that China is out to conquer the world are highly misleading, but par for the course coming from western sources who themselves have had that on the agenda for the last 300 years and can't see the world in any other terms. Well, how is that working out?
More and more, nations are now breaking free of western economic and military dominance, led by Russia, China and Iran, who have vastly different cultures but who all hew to the same political line: a concert of sovereign nations engaging in mutually beneficial trade, while spreading the wealth to developing nations such as in Africa, using that same model of comparative advantage Ricardo talked about.
During the Cold War you used to hear a lot about the 'captive nations' of Eastern Europe, which was true to the extent the USSR had a major interest in having friendly nations along its frontiers, given their long history of being invaded and having to fight costly wars. Well, the shoe is on the other foot now, and the captive nations are the EU and British empire satraps such as Canada and Australia, all of whom are subjugated to a western based global financial cabal that is rapidly losing its dominant position in the world. As such, you can expect all sorts of spurious arguments being put forth as to how China, Russia and Iran are our mortal enemies. It's such a tired canard at this point that it's a wonder anyone believes it anymore, but unfortunately people are easily mislead by alarmist propaganda. Our job as free thinkers is to not be among them.
I was an independent stock trader for 20 years, until 2008 when I finally hung it up because it was getting too risky. Still, after 20 years of doing economic and financial research it's not something you just stop doing, even though at this point I have no 'skin in the game' as Nassim Taleb would say. Today, if I had to invest capital (and wasn't thwarted by globalist sanctions and other obstacles designed to limit the free movement of capital) I'd have half my money in Russia, and the remaining half divided between China, India and Iran, because that's where the future growth is.
As an afterthought, may I suggest that instead of trying to figure out what money is, focus on 'capital.' They're not the same thing, and I would argue the later is far more important in terms of the dynamics of national economies and international relations. What Bastiat said about goods is equally true of 'capital.' For example, if Russia was failing as badly as portrayed in the MSM, why would you need to erect barriers to investment in Russia? If the place really is a disaster, money won't go there. Capitalists may be greedy, but they're not stupid.
"Watch the video! Does that look like a fucking accident to you?"
Actually it does, but you knew I was going to say that right?
First some background. My first serious job was on oil tankers working as an apprentice engineer. I was 19 at the time and working as a TV repairman, which was a dying trade even back then (late 70s) so I took my new job very seriously as I was considering it as a career. Not only did I study ship engineering systems very carefully, I also spent my spare time on the bridge studying how that part of the operation worked, plus I did a spell as a deckhand, so I know a few things about ships. I actually looked into that Baltimore accident, which I'm sure it was. Here's why:
First point. Ship's captains aren't actually in command of the ship during port maneuvers. That's the job of the port pilot who guides ships in and out of port while the captain looks on. According to reports I read there were two pilots aboard. I assume one was in training as you only need one. In addition to the captain and pilots there would also be a helmsman and the officer of the watch, so five people in all. They'd probably have lookouts on each wing of the bridge as well, but I don't know that for sure. So the obvious question is how do you intentionally steer a ship into a bridge with that many people on the ship's bridge, two of whom would be unrelated to the other (minimum) 3 people present at the time?
A comparison of modern cargo ships to passenger liners and ferries is in order. Passenger ships have multiply redundant systems for safety. A minimum of two main engines, two screws, two rudders, several main generators, and so on. Cargo ships typically have only one main engine, rudder and screw, so pardon the pun, if you lose that engine you are screwed. This is done to save costs. No other reason. Modern cargo ships are cheaply built and thus prone to failure. For example it took several massive oil spills before double hulls were mandated on tankers.
OK, the main engine on the Dali (Dali...lol. can't make this stuff up) is of a type I'm familiar with as an earlier model powered one of the ships I worked on. With that engine type if you get into trouble and want to reverse the ship, you have to actually stop the engine, and start it running in the opposite direction because the shaft is directly connected to the screw. That takes time. That puff of black smoke you saw was probably them reversing the engine, alas too late.
As for the lights going out, that was likely a failure of the main generator, and the lights coming back on was the auxiliary generator kicking in. The main generator powers the hydraulics for the steering, whereas the auxiliary generator is smaller and just keeps the lights on. So if you lose the main generator, you lose the steering. That means that whatever position the rudder was in when that happened is where it stays until you get the main generator back. If they made a course correction to starboard at the moment that happened, then that's where the ship's going to go.
One thing stands out for me. There are at least two main generators on cargo ships, and they're both supposed to be running during port maneuvers in case one fails. There are actually four on the Dali, two of which I assume are dedicated to refrigeration for the containers. I don't know if they can be assigned to steering or are on their own circuit, but the ship should have had at least two running. I've heard nothing about that as yet, but I did hear that they had electrical problems while in port, so perhaps the main control board failed, which would have killed power to the entire ship regardless of how many generators were running, so that's a possibility. The captain reports that the electronics on the bridge went dark, so that's a sign of a control system failure rather than a single generator failure, although I wouldn't rule out that they were running on only one generator, perhaps with the other being out of service. That's not something the pilot would be aware of.
The other factor is wind. Container ships are notorious for being blown off course because of the huge amount of surface area above deck. The ship is basically a giant sail, so if you lose power you're going wherever the last rudder setting plus wind direction plus current takes you, in this case straight into a bridge support that was designed in the 70's when ships were typically half the size of the Dali.
So until I see solid evidence to the contrary, based on my own experience, I'm going with accident. Incidentally, one of the ships I worked on hit the side of the Canso Causeway between Cape Breton Island and Nova Scotia. Tankers sit very low in the water, but a breeze picked up and pushed us sideways into the causeway wall when were moving dead slow on the approach. It doesn't take much.
I seem to recall reading an article maybe a few years ago about an American military report saying China would 'overtake' the west by the year 2027.
At the time it occurred to me that if the Anglo-American Empire does nothing then they lose. Thus, they need to start ww3 before 2027, otherwise it's too late.
Your article suggests that point has already been reached. I'm not going to disagree. In fact, I think bed might be a better option.
It's already too late, that much I am quite sure of. I think that
Arguably, anarchists brought down the American Empire. Think about it. The Battle of Seattle was in 1999. The Quebec City protests were in 2001. Then September 11th put an end to the anti-globalization movement. See what I'm saying? For millennia, rulers have known that the best way to distract the people from the domestic sphere is to direct their area to the foreign sphere, usually through war.
9/11 was an inside job, we all know that. But why did they start it? Could it have been because an anarchist revolution was brewing?
The rulers of the world live in fear of anarchists, because we have God on our side. Statecraft is a matter of controlling the perception of the people so they don't realize that government is organized crime. For over a hundred years, they've done this by shoving secularism down our throats, teaching people that science means that intelligent people don't believe in anything holy, sacred, or pure. Statism is Satanic.
Do you know what Osama Bin Laden's alleged strategy was? Get the U.S. involved in a bunch of unwinnable wars to bankrupt the U.S. Empire.
The Rockefellers and their fake medicine have been in China since the early 1900s, and Wall Street created Communist China. I'm not sure China's new leaders are patriotic nationalists. How can one tell?
I lived in China and I'm not going to celebrate. No, not at all.
As for Chinese intelligence, the Chinese had naval superiority long before anyone else and had huge treasure vessels sailing the southern seas long before Europeans and their dinky caravels. Their strategy was commerce, not belligerence. In fact, they spent so much on their naval trading fleets that it led to widespread depression and revolt in the early 1400s, at which point the new rulers buried the entire record of their forays into far off lands and closed the country off. Thus Chinese isolation policy for 400 years. (Gavin Menzes. 1423: The Year the Chinese Discovered America)
It's those days I look to with nostalgia. Those days of exploration and small Chinese colonies in unknown lands far away from the motherland.
Could you back up that part about Wall Street creating communist China? I don't know about that.
As for me celebrating, my optimism is meant to be somewhat sarcastic - "hey, look on the bright side of WWIII!" but honestly, I think China *might* be a better ruler of the world than the Anglo-Americans. How many wars have they started this century? How many coups have they sponsored? Do they use a strategy of tension involving terrorist attacks against innocent people to foment unrest?
I'm an anti-racist which means I don't think that the Chinese are in any way morally superior to Europeans - people are people - but I think we can expect them to employ different techniques of statecraft than we're used to. I'm hoping for the best. I'm an optimist.
I've made a mental note of 1423: The Year the Chinese Discovered America... That sounds fascinating! I'm very into alternative archaeology and pre-Columbian trans-Pacific ocean travel is something I'd like to know more about.
I agree with Tobin Owl's comment. Globalism really is global and China is not outside that system. The criminocrats have had their tentacles in China since the Opium Wars. I wrote this a few months back: https://paulcudenec.substack.com/p/china-is-globalist
Okay, but what does that mean, exactly? Globalism is global, sure, and China is globalist, definitely. But do the interests of the CCP and George Soros align? What about the state of Israel? Is it in the interests of the CCP to back Israel's increasing belligerence? Wouldn't it be more strategic to ally with the Muslim world? I don't see what the U.S. is getting out of their relationship with Israel at this point. It seems like more of a liability than anything else.
I believe that your understanding of geopolitics is superior to my own, so your comment will give me occasion to rethink things, but I do think that political power derives from violence, not from money. I think that the Brettons Wood system, which created the IMF, World Bank, and the Bank of International Settlements, needs to be replaced. I think that's what the Great Reset ultimately refers to.
I suppose that I see the global financial system as something like New York's Mafia Commission, through which five crime families settled disputes. There are different blocs of power within what might appear to be a monolithic system. I'm not saying that China isn't globalist, but that their power has surpassed that of the European banking elite.
To me, one of the biggest questions right now is whether the global financial system can survive the collapse of the U.S. dollar. I think what we're experiencing might just be collapse of globalism, and that the global economy might break down into separate blocs.
A related question is what the new global reserve currency will be. Perhaps it will be the petroyuan, perhaps it will be Brettons Woods 2.0 involving Special Drawing Rights & CBDCs, or perhaps it will be Bitcoin. Or perhaps it will be gold, the only money that has stood the test of time. Or perhaps there will no one global reserve currency due to competition amongst different players with their own interests. But I don't see why the CCP would co-sign Israeli expansionism.
But I don't really know. Maybe I've been overconfident in my assertions. Constructive criticism is welcome!
I'd say that political power is the use of ("legitimate") violence in pursuit of more power and the money associated with power. Israel and China have developed very close links over the last 30 years or so (particularly in relation to the Belt and Road Initiative - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25765949.2020.1808378) - and it is clear to me that they both form part of the criminocratic global system. I am sure Iain Davis would agree with that - and his geopolitical knowledge is greater than mine. Yes, we are seeing an eclipse of US-centred power in favour of a Chinese/BRICS base, but this is really just an internal reorganisation of the criminal global governance, similar to the transfer of their power base from Britain to the USA in the mid 20th century. Bear in mind that China - with its ultra-industrialism, totalitarian surveillance and social credit system - is the model for the Fourth Industrial Revolution/New World Order championed by the WEF.
I'll check out that link. I know some stuff about the Zionist-China relationship, such as how Israel transferred U.S. military secrets to China, but do you not think that China has noticed how the Zionists treat their "allies"?
I just can't fathom why the CCP would go along with their plans, especially when they're behaving so recklessly and belligerently.
Isn't the petroyuan based on Saudi oil?
Notice that all countries ( power centers), the UN, the ICC are not doing anything to help the Palestinians. Other than slow rolling a feigned concern for their genocide. Genocide is not uncommon in history. Palestinians will survive as a race, just not with a country. Sad fact.
Israel is playing for their seat at the table and the US is enabling them to make their immediate neighborhood comfortable. All this brisling of arms (outside Gaza) is posturing and theater. Due to advanced military tech there will be a stasis reached as each great power recognizes the destructive capability they possess and the uncertainty against peers and near peers. Kinetic warfare tools will only be used to adjust populations. Mostly defenseless populations if other methods lag or prove impractical.
I get the impression that the US, GB and other money centers really believe they can survive on financialization. Especially with reduced and surveilled populations. Those resource rich countries and those straddling trade routes will do OK in the reset. And big dog China will add the value and keep it all under control.
"Could you back up that part about Wall Street creating communist China? I don't know about that."
That would be the Capitalists selling you the rope to hang them with, as Mao put it...lol.
So here's a quote from Sutton's Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution. This is from a section that summarizes what has been discussed earlier in the book. (The discussion of China does not go into great detail because the focus is mainly on the Bolsheviks.)
"We also identified documentary evidence
concerning. a Wall Street syndicate's financing of the 1912 Sun Yat-sen revolution in China, a revolution that is today hailed by the Chinese Communists as the precursor of Mao's revolution in China. Charles B. Hill, New York attorney negotiating with Sun Yat-sen in behalf of this
syndicate, was a director of three Westinghouse subsidiaries, and we have found that Charles R. Crane of Westinghouse in Russia was involved in the Russian Revolution."
So Wall Street was funding Sun Yat Sen early on. Elsewhere I read that the syndicate decided that communism would be best for China (that is, within the framework of what would work well for certain Wall Street interests.) Sun Yat Sen was interested in communism and even sent and envoy to Moscow to study. But later Sun Yat Sen learned things about communism that made him recoil. The Wall Street syndicate that had been supporting him pulled away and began supporting Mao instead. These are things I have read. But it would be up to someone more thorough to investigate and verify. Sutton is very thorough, but his books focus mainly on Wall Street and the USSR. He also has a book on Wall Street and Hitler and another on FDR and another on the Skull and Bones Society.
Anyway it seems that the syndicate got what they aimed at: a communist China. Whether that worked well for them (Wall Street that is) I don't know, but I suspect to some degree it did.
It's hard to tell who's running who in these convoluted relationships. Things can be set in motion that have unintended consequences for all parties. I lean more towards that as an explanation for world events, at least in their extreme form. Things just get out of control. Nothing anyone can do about it, regardless of how much power and influence they imagine they have. Who saw Putin coming, for example? Who thought Yemen would stand up to Israel, or that Israel would set out on such a self-destructive path? None of this looks like a plan, or at least one with any chance of working.
I think the people in control would like us to think they're in control. Most of the time they are, but when they drop the ball they do it in a big way. I think that's what we're seeing now.
Someone, perhaps it was Iain Davis, pointed out a difference between Russia's methodical, step by step approach, such as in the Ukraine operation, as contrasted with that of the West, which is basically to act radically and dramatically and see what happens next.
Yep.
Isoroku Yamamoto commenting on Pearl Harbour said "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve"
Substitute sleeping bear for sleeping giant and you've just about captured it. Unfortunately there's no one in the US military with the stature and insight of Yamamoto to notice the obvious parallel.
I hadn't heard that coming from Mao, but Lenin and Stalin said similar things, giving the impression of how naive Wall Street was in supporting their projects so generously. (Anthony Sutton. The Best Enemy Money Can Buy)
Could it be that Mao stole it from Stalin who stole it from Lenin who stole it from Marx?
I couldn't find an attribution, but Lenin is said to have written this:
"They [the capitalists] will furnish credits which will serve us for the support of the Communist Party in their countries and, by supplying us materials and technical equipment which we lack, will restore our military industry necessary for our future attacks against our suppliers. To put it in other words, they will work on the preparation of their own suicide."
Which is a round-about way of saying the same thing.
'Lenin is supposed to have made the following observation:
"If we were to announce today that we intend to hang all capitalists tomorrow, they would trip over each other trying to sell us the rope."
I don't think he ever said it. However, someone who really understood Lenin, Communism,
and capitalist ethics said it. This book shows how accurate an observation it is.'
Forward by Gary North to The Best Enemy Money Can Buy
I think it was you who mentioned the ideal of 1400’s America. Do you have a reference for that? I’d like to look into that more. You’ve written a lot in the past regarding leaderless systems and I’m trying to get my head around hierarchy in living organisms, how it develops and usefulness (or lack of) to the energy management (power) and healthy function of an organism or system. And does a need for hierarchy give rise to leadership and all the good or bad that can bring?
I think that part of the problem with the word hierarchy is that it confuses two very different types of social organization - dominance hierarchies and democratic hierarchies / competence hierarchies.
The difference boils down to whether the arrangements are voluntary or whether they are imposed by force.
Social hierarchy appears to have a strong biological basis and can be observed in other mammals (and non-mammals, for that matter).
Some anarchists now prefer the term voluntarist because it emphasizes that the essence of anarchism is social relations based on voluntary cooperation rather than coercive force.
A core tenet of anarchism is voluntary association, meaning the ability of human beings to associate and disassociate themselves at will. This is one thing people don't understand about anarchism - unlike proponents of other ideologies, we're not trying to take over the world. Some people will choose to live with dominance hierarchies for a whole variety of reasons. We just want to be allowed to live our lives how we want without being the subjects of systems of rules we didn't consent to. This means that the ability to leave group and join others (fission/fusion) is key. We're for fission-fusion societies where social mobility between groups is possible.
I refer you to this excellent series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJCUubQB8CE&list=PLU4FEuj4v9eARY5j9ooBMPNoct4NVtvUJ
Thanks for that explanation. I’ve probably been a closet anarchist all my life. Initially drawn to it because someone said it’s bad, you don’t want to go there, and we need authoritarian systems that we must respect. Since I had a respectable career I searched in vain for authoritarian systems worthy of my respect. No more. I’m coming to realize I should have followed my intuition and pre-indoctrination reasoning instead. Sometimes it takes a lifetime to work through the programming and life diversions with rational logical thought.
I check out your link later.
If you think you may be an anarchist, you probably are!
See David Graeber's excellent essay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6-027_d_8Y
There are only three types of people in this world, anarchists, shitbags, and people who insist in putting people into overly reductive categories.
If you ask me, the latter two types should be wiped off the face of the Earth.
I like this comment. In particular the term 'competence' hierarchy. This isn't really a 'hierarchy' in the traditional sense of course - it's a social group in which people adopt the roles for which they are best suited.
This is the kind of system (call it a genuine meritocracy) which would indeed arise if we had 1/ benevolent people in the role of 'social decision-maker' and 2/ an exceptional education system.
You will notice that the strategy of the monsters has always been to prevent both 1/ and 2/. An educated masses, after all, would never put up with this upside down hierarchy because it's not a meritocracy. I.e. they would demand a 'voluntary' system, as you put it. If only they were to realise their superiority in numbers, if married with solidarity, could do it tomorrow if the will was there.
The other thing we have to think about here is psychology. Or rather 'psychological maturity' (which can be encouraged and enhanced by a good education system). Also 'emotional maturity' (emotional intelligence, say). In a psychologically mature social group, everyone would indeed naturally tend towards a 'competence hierarchy'. Although like I say it's not really a hierarchy - at least, not to the members of the group. It might superficially seem that way to an outsider, in the sense that they would observe 'social decision-makers' who 'appear' to be 'in control', but blink and they might miss the point that those people are in those positions because they are those best suited to that role.
But here's the 'socialist' element (or 'egalitarian' might be a better word) - in a psychologically/emotionally mature social group, every role is seen as valuable in its own right - whether social decision-maker or toolmaker or weaver or cook or whatever.
I don't like using the word communism - it's become too loaded a word and the likes of Marx especially intentionally poisoned the word in order to discredit the very idea of genuine socialism (competence hierarchy).
If we're thinking about China - this is not 'natural' communism - we can tell because they don't satisfy 1/ and 2/ above. A genius born in the provinces will never become top social decision-maker - those roles will be taken up by members of the 'clique'. I.e. it's just another dominance hierarchy. Whether we give it the label 'communist' or 'maoist' or 'state capitalism' or 'fascism pretending to be socialism' (like Bolshevism) is merely academic. It is what it is. Consequently, the members of the clique satisfy the same psychological profiling as members of the clique who rule the western empire. I think that's a good, psychological explanation of how it can be believable that 'they're all in it together' - if they order their 'social identity group' by psychological type, then they are the same. And we are the 'other'. That's certainly how it turns out in practice, anyhow.
I think the Chinese like to think of themselves as 'psychologically mature' what with Confucius and the way of Tao and all that, but I think that is their version of the 'wise scripture' they hide behind to conceal the fact that they are not much different from any other wannabe dominant group. Stoicism might be more useful for the vast majority of ordinary Chinese, just as it may well be for the vast majority of any people anywhere living in a dominant hierarchy.
That's the irony about Stoicism - it's only necessary in an unequal, feudalist society. In an egalitarian, free social group, it's no longer required.
I think it's going to be a very, very long time coming before humanity can truly live in a perfect, utopian competence/benevolent meritocracy - why? Because the monsters have carried out a systematic psychological and spiritual attack on humanity for thousands of years, and humanity for the most part has effectively been dumbed down and made into a fearful creature, easily manipulated and scared off from actively realising its potential.
Humanity had that once. But not anymore.
Absent some catalysing event - I think it's going to be a long long time...
This comes as a surprise to me as well. I grew up around boats (both my parents were in the Royal Navy) and I worked on ships as young guy. As I kid I built many model ships, most of them sailing vessels from the exploration days, and read everything I could about those times - Nordhoff and Hall, Stevenson, etc. but I never came across anything about a Chinese navy.
My father served on a destroyer during the Korean war, and one of their tasks was intercepting arms smugglers who typically used fishing junks in their operations. Once they captured a junk and got the crew aboard they'd tow it behind the ship until it broke up, thus validating the name junk, which those ships basically were. Not very stable, hard to steer as they couldn't sail close to the wind, slow, so very dangerous in a following sea, etc. I'm curious to know how they overcame those problems, or did they just lose a lot of ships? The South China sea is not a friendly place to be sailing at all. The weather comes up very quickly in that part of the world.
Is this a question about the 15th century treasure ships I mentioned? They quit building them after that.
The author, Gavin Menzes, is a ship captain. He does a lot of investigation and is a good storyteller, but some people pooh pooh what he says. They can't believe the Chinese had such navigational prowess so long ago.
I've only read one of his books (1423: The Year China Discovered America). It's a big book. To me its fascinating and reads like a novel almost. He's written other related books. I'd encourage you to check them out. You may like them.
Oh, and yes they did loose some of their vessels, even the big ones.
Whether it is the Great Reset Cabal or BRICS, I think that banking crime families are involved. Both cabals have many of the same goals, like CBDC's, censorship, universal ID track tracing, social credit score and toxic vaxx jabs...Kman, DIGILEAK News Not Noise
True. I don't have a good answer to this. But I find it unlikely that the Chinese would remain the pawns of European powers once they gain military and economic supremacy.
Why would they do everything that you would need to do to take over the world and then not take over the world?
Seems like a lot of trouble to go to.
I did not say they were a pawn. China may want to steer this ship to disaster, but it does not give that indication as yet. They're having enough trouble micromanaging themselves. Kissinger, in my perspective, got the ball rolling and the technology trade for cheap labour was established. The common denominator is control of everything using technology. The fly in the ointment is that the global parasites seem to have a disconnection with nature, compassion, love and humour as well as a firm belief in eugenics. Whether the Global Cabal are human or not, they have lost their way...Kman, editor, Digileak News Not Noise
I agree but it’s China dictating to the WEF. The elephant out in the back yard. They’ve played it brilliantly. Everyone else in the world scurrying around for seats at the table. And there will be no military action over Taiwan. We’re seeing the last of peer to peer war in Ukraine. There won’t be any stocks of convention weapons left in the west afterward. Warfare is moving into a new era of technology. Which China will dominate. Too bad humanity just can’t make the leap to not have it at all.
Personally I've started believing that the WEF is an elaborate exercise in misdirection... ever wonder why Klaus Shwab seems more like a Bond villain than a real powerbroker?
When you look at people facing politics of states from this perspective a lot of what doesn’t make sense or seem rational becomes clearer. Note WEF policies immulate China policy.
I have a theory on large state leadership. All leadership candidates to be advanced must demonstrate their ability to act against natural law. Including the ability to kill life forms without conscience. They must be able to deal with the consequences to their psyche. Assistance will be provided to promising candidates as necessary (secret societies). There is a screening program from early childhood (aptitude tests or past family service to the state). Pedigree elevates you in the hierarchy. Bureaucrats are in training. State leaders are selected (voting does not matter, it’s part of the theater). All are on a scale of ego traits such as hedonism, narcissism, sociopathy or psychopathy. All easy to manipulate from a state power perspective but difficult to deal with or corrected at a personal level. Best to be avoided. Better to come at as a collective.
Governments, many of those with recent generational wealth, and corporations (public private partnerships, stakeholders) are all middle managers.
Bingo. All part of the theater.
I like that this article ends on a positive note, so I will keep the good vibes going by pointing out that at least this time the master races has great food. Keep your boiled potatoes, Lord Soggybottoms VIII! Spare me the schnitzels, Herr Fahrvergnügen! I say, pass me another plate of dumplings, Chairman Win E. Xi Pooh, and let the good times roll!
It's not all bad news! They've got amazing acrobats and they definitely know how to put on a good fireworks show!
They eat dogs, cats, weird sea penis looking things that live in conches (no disrespect to penises), live mice, live chicks, basically anything. While I like to eat many kinds of raw meats and raw eggs and raw milk and I approve of food sovereignty, I’ll take a hard pass on those menu items.
Hey, we do things that are weird and gross to them too, I'm sure. When Turtle Islanders went to Europe they were appalled that Europeans burnt people alive... but the Europeans were scandalized by their practices of human sacrifice and (in some places) cannibalism.
Oh no doubt. And I’ll take a hard pass on all of that too! Lol
The only reason we won WWII was that we had more people and a bigger technology and manufacturing base. The Chinese now have more people, have mulitiple ports, and have allies that we've alienated.
Now that the US government is alienating White men, I doubt anyone will fight for them.
The real question is: Will White men fight the Chinese, or will they sit and bide their time?
There's a pretty big morale question too. People believed in WWII. But this time is different.
Noooo, you're not rich! Your life will be lived in a chinese sweatshop factory with total surveillance, even in the toilet. When the US goes under the Chinese will be saying 'now YOU make OUR fucking trainers, gwai lo, or no sesame credits!'
...and they'll keep the good dumplings. Why waste good dumplings on big-noses?
Well, we don't have much choice in the matter, do we? No one can say the West didn't have it coming. We thought we would always be on top, but we weren't always on top. Europes ascendancy began because the Mongols decimated China & the Muslim world... and then Europe plundered the new world, killing tens of millions in the process.
We've got no moral high ground and no right to complain if the Lords of Karma decide to give us a taste of our own medicine.
I have a feeling there won't be revenge. The best way to deal with psychopaths is to make sure they have no power to harm anyone but themselves: irrelevance is the future.
I don't know. What does an accident look like?
Not like that!
I like that this article made it to my inbox, and wasn't "suicided" by the - heretofore - Zionazi ruling class and it's CIA assassination arm. Difficult to imagine how ANYONE (let alone China), could possibly be worse, or even AS vile, as the Anglo American empire. Thanks for this!
Glad you liked it! You new here?
I agree, the flicking on and off of onboard lighting would hardly account for a total loss of control of the vessel. In fact, it has been clearly stated by many industry experts, that even in the case of a complete loss of power.. the ship can still be controlled, anchored and steered. There’s only one thing that doesn’t quite fit… The container ship in question (the Dali) was built by South Korean company Hyundai Heavy Industries … it’s owned by Grace Ocean Private Ltd, flies a Singapore flag and had been chartered and was under the command of the Danish (European shipping company) ‘Maersk’ at the time of the incident.
I didn't know that. Could you point me in the direction of the most detailed information about the ship's owners please?
Personally I figure that they could have multiple layers of plausible deniability, but I'll admit that I haven't dived too deep on the question of the ship itself.
I've been paying attention to the Belt and Road Initiative for some time now and can clearly see that the Chinese strategy is about ports, steel and container shipping (among other things).
Don’t get me wrong… I’m largely in agreement with you on every point you’ve made. Here is a link to details on the vessel… https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/economy/what-to-know-about-the-cargo-ship-that-took-down-baltimores-francis-scott-key-bridge
I knew this was coming. Blaming the Chinese for the Baltimore bridge. No waiting for any kind of investigation, no application of Occam's Razor, just the instantaneous conclusion-jumping of an idealist; in this case straight to the same conclusion that has been screamed by one branch of the Republican Party, and of our MIC, for many years.
You need to study Chinese history, bud. It's a long one, and takes some real effort, but there are easily recognizable patterns which go back 4000 years. China expands to about the borders it has now, but any attempts to expand further are always resisted by the central government out of fear that such expansion will create dynamic new leaders who are a potential threat to its own stability.
The Chinese are increasing their influence by trade, and by building things for those with whom they wish to trade, not by destroying their infrastructure. Their current leadership is aware of the dangers of turning inward, so they are focused outwards, but always to increase stability at home, and always cautiously.
I'd be more worried about our own government trying to recreate the authoritarian Chinese censorship and social control system here than the Chinese themselves if I were you.
As for all of you going on about the CCP and Communist China, China hasn't been Communist for nearly 50 years now. They're a mix of state and private capitalism, with lots of state welfare programs and investment in infrastructure. You don't have to like it, but if you don't realize this, you don't know what you're talking about when it comes to China.
I'll admit that I'm not an expert in Chinese history. Far from it. Could you point me towards any resources that you think are particularly valuable for understanding the present situation?
I have read Mao, though, which I think is more relevant than ancient history. I've also read Sun Tzu's The Art of War.
Even if I'm wrong about the Baltimore bridge collapse, my argument that the CCP is now the dominant military power on the planet seems beyond dispute. Do you agree or disagree with that statement?
I suppose the question of "Who Rules the World?" is a complicated question in a globalized world where all countries are enmeshed in a complex web of interdependent relations. I don't think that multipolarity is just a propaganda construct. I think it's an accurate term.
Nevertheless, some players are surely more powerful than others, and the CCP is the most powerful state actor on the world stage today. Next is Russia, probably followed by Turkey. Next would be India, Brazil, NATO, Mexico, and whoever got Gadhafi's gold.
(Am I missing anyone? I don't include Japan and Korea on this list because although they are economically powerful, their power is dwarfed by that of their neighbours.)
Personally, I believe that states are simply extortion rackets. That's all they are. And what would a Mafia loanshark be without debt collectors willing to use violence? Why would anyone pay their debts? The reality is that statecraft is institutionalized violence. That's why Mao said that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun".
Ultimately, the U.S. Empire is an extortion racket backed up by the threat of violence. If they don't have military supremacy, their days are done.
““China’s massive purchase of T-bonds since the 1990s seems to be part of a tacit agreement whereby China floods the United States with vast quantities of underpriced consumer goods, on a tab they’re aware the United States will never repay... [This] probably draws on a very ancient Chinese political tradition of flooding dangerously militaristic foreigners with wealth as a way of creating dependency."
As for China not being "real communists", you could also argue that the U.S. isn't "real capitalism. Pure ideologies exist only on paper. Reality is messy. But it is indisputable that the ideology of the CCP draws heavily on Marxism.
Quoting Graeber again:
"I suspect the simplest explanation of why China is willing to accept existing arrangements is just that its leadership were trained as Marxists, that is, as historical materialists who prioritize the realities of material infrastructure over superstructure. For them, the niceties of financial instruments are clearly superstructure. That is, they observe that, whatever else might be happening, they are acquiring more and more highways, high-speed train systems, and high-tech factories, and the United States is acquiring less and less of them, or even losing the ones they already have. It’s hard to deny that the Chinese may be onto something."
".... my argument that the CCP is now the dominant military power on the planet seems beyond dispute. Do you agree or disagree with that statement?"
Allow me to butt in here. What can I say? I finished planting that tree I mentioned and have some spare time.
China has the most men under arms, but that's more to keep young men out of trouble (given the shortage of women) than anything else, plus it provides a ready source of manpower for dealing with natural disasters, which China has a lot of.
As far as their ability to fight a modern combined arms war, they're no match for Russia, neither are the combined forces of NATO, which at this point are a standing joke. China's military is for defence only, including what they consider to be their territorial waters, and territory like Taiwan, which goes without saying.
The reality of modern warfare as it's currently playing out in Ukraine: Ground combat is limited to small units because as soon as you amass any amount of troops or armour in one place you'll be hit hard, no matter how far in the rear that is. Your only protection is a sophisticated AA system and only the Russian systems are up to the task.
Every move you make on the ground can be seen from above, either by satellite or drone. Speaking of drones, modern infantry are equipped with small suicide drones that can actually hunt you down and kill you. I've seen video on Telegram of Ukrainian soldiers desperately trying to outrun those things. They'll follow you right into a bunker, so you don't have a chance. This is why the war is going slowly because you simply can't mount large scale operations anymore. Russia could in principle run roughshod over Ukraine, but they don't because they'd loose too many guys and they don't want to or need to do that. Until recently they've just sat behind their defensive positions and picked off anything that came at them with drones, missiles or artillery. Speaking of artillery, modern systems are guided now, so you don't need spotters to correct your fire.
Missiles. They're now so accurate and deadly that they can pick you off from a great distance. One example, about a year ago there was a barracks of some 200 mercenaries on a base somewhere outside Lvov I believe. They got hit and only a few survived. Fact is, Russia can target anything in the European continent and there's little you can do to stop that. You might shoot down one or two incoming missiles, but numbers three through five will get through, and that's all it takes.
This is also true for surface ships, which are just sitting ducks at this point. There's no defence against long range hypersonic missiles which can hit ships from a thousand miles away... even further if they're air launched. Only Russia has them at present. The US has tried and failed several times to produce these and are probably ten years behind Russia in their development. What that means is that the minute a real war breaks out, NATO loses all its carrier groups. The only naval vessel that's safe from attack today is a submarine, and while Russia has fewer than NATO, many are newer and more deadly.
I would make this observation. The combined West should thank their lucky stars the Russians are sensible people, because if they were really as bellicose as we're portraying them, we'd be completely fucked, and that's no exaggeration. If they took the same view as Stalin in the Great Patriotic War, which was victory at any cost, we'd be finished by the end of next week. They'd be hurt badly as well, but they'd survive because they've planned for that. Everything from apartment buildings built to withstand tank rounds to subway systems so far underground even a nuclear explosion won't affect them. People marvel at the spacious boulevards you encounter in Russian cities. So open, so pleasant to walk through. Well, not if you're an armoured or infantry unit. You're a sitting duck from fire directed from nearby buildings which your tanks cannot penetrate. Even if you locate the firing positions, by the time you've dialed them in, they've moved to the next building using the tunnels that connect every building, and that have prepositioned ammunition so you don't ever risk exposure doing resupply.
The USSR took the threat from the West seriously and prepared for it. Russia inherited those preparations and after 2007 when it was clear there'd be no rapprochement with the West, continued building and improving those systems. What else would you expect from a nation that's been constantly invaded over centuries, and where the last one cost them over 20 million lives?
Watch this video with English subs. It tells you everything you need to know about Russia's attitude towards people who try to invade or otherwise interfere with their sovereignty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6upLGdsduiA
All of this speaks to why I don't expect a direct war between Russia and NATO. The politicians can say whatever they like, but the people who are really in charge have far more to lose than to gain. What I see over the next few years is grudging acceptance of the fact that world domination is off the table, probably for good. We're going multipolar whether they like it or not, and the sooner they get on board the better it is for them and us as well.
Here's some theme music to go with that thought...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vXbK3g7cM8
This is one of the most helpful things I've seen you post. To be honest, the Ukraine-Russia is a bit of a weak spot in my analysis - there's a reason I never comment on it in detail. The propaganda is so thick it's very difficult to cut through... and I have enough on my plate interpreting the fall of the American Empire, which is a foregone conclusion at this point if you ask me.
Most of my analysis comes from Andrei Martyanov and Larry Johnson. Basically I'm just acting as a messenger here.
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/
https://sonar21.com/
This guy is also good:
https://substack.com/@simplicius76
"This is one of the most helpful things I've seen you post."
That's what Alexander Pope referred to as 'damning with faint praise' but that's OK. I'll take whatever I can get:)
Very enlightening, thank you
China is the new global model. The globalist set China up. China would have nothing without the globalist. Follow the money.
The money is controlled by European bankers. That's my point. I think it's the end of the age of the supremacy of that system. Money is a social construct. The petrodollar system is on life support and is being kept afloat by America's enemies.
The Great Reset is arguably Jubilee - at a certain point, all debts will have to be cancelled and a few financial system will have to take the place of the existing one.
That chart on steel production is misleading.
China consumes somewhere between 725 and 995 million metric tons of steel domestically, leaving somewhere around 300 million metric tons as exports if you use the low figure, which is probably more accurate. It's still a large number in terms of exports, but you have to look at the total picture. More than 80% of the iron ore used in steel production is imported, so any disruption in that supply chain puts China's steel industry in a tight corner. The same is true for the energy required to produce the steel, most of which has to be imported.
https://www.statista.com/topics/5695/steel-industry-in-china/#topicOverview
I recall in the 80's the alarm being raised about Japanese domination of world steel production, then the attention turned to Korea as they started to catch up. Now it's China's turn, with the same argument that the Chinese govt. subsidizes steel production, as if that was implicitly a bad thing. You see this subtext in all western critiques of nations that out-compete western producers - the government subsidizes X, therefore we must impose tariffs. That's one way to deal with the problem I suppose, the other is to copy their example and stop relying on private enterprise to produce items of critical national importance.
When we visited China in the 80's they were near the beginning of the 4 modernizations period started in 1977, and heavily promoted by Deng Xiaoping. Didn't look too modern at the time. Run down buildings, old soviet made trucks and buses, still running steam locomotives in some areas, but the significant data point was the rural to urban population ratio which stood around 80% rural. Today that number is less than 50%. That is to say, far more of their steel production went into improvements in domestic housing and transportation than was sold as exports, which also drove the migration to industrial centres which provided jobs and a much better standard of living than in the countryside. (as a side bar, urbanization has also resulted in declining birthrates, in line with my earlier argument on Malthus's failed predictions)
The flip side of exports is of course the amount of imports China needs, especially food and energy. China may lead in steel production, but only to the degree they can secure the raw materials and energy to do so, which means maintaining friendly relations with their key suppliers, and so much the better if those are also their major customers.
Frederic Bastiat said “when goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.” Likewise, David Ricardo proposed the theory of comparative advantage in global trade, which suggests we should focus on what we do best, let others do likewise, then trade to our mutual benefit. As an example, Jamaica has ample supplies of bauxite, but very little electrical capacity to turn that into aluminum. It thus makes more sense to mine the ore and export it than to try and create a domestic aluminum industry and keep foreign produced aluminum out using tariffs, which are a blunt instrument and likely to result in retaliation.
One thing I would point out about China, as their standard of living improves so does the demand for better wages, and social services. Over time that puts them at a disadvantage as a cheap labour source and pushes them to move up the so-called value chain - that is to say, put more effort into quality than volume. Clearly they understand this, and the quality of the high-end goods they produce has risen dramatically in recent years, just as it did with Japan when they faced a similar problem in the late 70's.
Look at the 'made in' label when you buy clothes or shoes. Vietnam, Bangladesh and Indonesia are now competing with China on the low wage/cost end, and it wouldn't surprise me if India starts taking some of the steel market away from them as well.
Personally, I think arguments that China is out to conquer the world are highly misleading, but par for the course coming from western sources who themselves have had that on the agenda for the last 300 years and can't see the world in any other terms. Well, how is that working out?
More and more, nations are now breaking free of western economic and military dominance, led by Russia, China and Iran, who have vastly different cultures but who all hew to the same political line: a concert of sovereign nations engaging in mutually beneficial trade, while spreading the wealth to developing nations such as in Africa, using that same model of comparative advantage Ricardo talked about.
During the Cold War you used to hear a lot about the 'captive nations' of Eastern Europe, which was true to the extent the USSR had a major interest in having friendly nations along its frontiers, given their long history of being invaded and having to fight costly wars. Well, the shoe is on the other foot now, and the captive nations are the EU and British empire satraps such as Canada and Australia, all of whom are subjugated to a western based global financial cabal that is rapidly losing its dominant position in the world. As such, you can expect all sorts of spurious arguments being put forth as to how China, Russia and Iran are our mortal enemies. It's such a tired canard at this point that it's a wonder anyone believes it anymore, but unfortunately people are easily mislead by alarmist propaganda. Our job as free thinkers is to not be among them.
I was an independent stock trader for 20 years, until 2008 when I finally hung it up because it was getting too risky. Still, after 20 years of doing economic and financial research it's not something you just stop doing, even though at this point I have no 'skin in the game' as Nassim Taleb would say. Today, if I had to invest capital (and wasn't thwarted by globalist sanctions and other obstacles designed to limit the free movement of capital) I'd have half my money in Russia, and the remaining half divided between China, India and Iran, because that's where the future growth is.
As an afterthought, may I suggest that instead of trying to figure out what money is, focus on 'capital.' They're not the same thing, and I would argue the later is far more important in terms of the dynamics of national economies and international relations. What Bastiat said about goods is equally true of 'capital.' For example, if Russia was failing as badly as portrayed in the MSM, why would you need to erect barriers to investment in Russia? If the place really is a disaster, money won't go there. Capitalists may be greedy, but they're not stupid.
"Watch the video! Does that look like a fucking accident to you?"
Actually it does, but you knew I was going to say that right?
First some background. My first serious job was on oil tankers working as an apprentice engineer. I was 19 at the time and working as a TV repairman, which was a dying trade even back then (late 70s) so I took my new job very seriously as I was considering it as a career. Not only did I study ship engineering systems very carefully, I also spent my spare time on the bridge studying how that part of the operation worked, plus I did a spell as a deckhand, so I know a few things about ships. I actually looked into that Baltimore accident, which I'm sure it was. Here's why:
First point. Ship's captains aren't actually in command of the ship during port maneuvers. That's the job of the port pilot who guides ships in and out of port while the captain looks on. According to reports I read there were two pilots aboard. I assume one was in training as you only need one. In addition to the captain and pilots there would also be a helmsman and the officer of the watch, so five people in all. They'd probably have lookouts on each wing of the bridge as well, but I don't know that for sure. So the obvious question is how do you intentionally steer a ship into a bridge with that many people on the ship's bridge, two of whom would be unrelated to the other (minimum) 3 people present at the time?
A comparison of modern cargo ships to passenger liners and ferries is in order. Passenger ships have multiply redundant systems for safety. A minimum of two main engines, two screws, two rudders, several main generators, and so on. Cargo ships typically have only one main engine, rudder and screw, so pardon the pun, if you lose that engine you are screwed. This is done to save costs. No other reason. Modern cargo ships are cheaply built and thus prone to failure. For example it took several massive oil spills before double hulls were mandated on tankers.
OK, the main engine on the Dali (Dali...lol. can't make this stuff up) is of a type I'm familiar with as an earlier model powered one of the ships I worked on. With that engine type if you get into trouble and want to reverse the ship, you have to actually stop the engine, and start it running in the opposite direction because the shaft is directly connected to the screw. That takes time. That puff of black smoke you saw was probably them reversing the engine, alas too late.
As for the lights going out, that was likely a failure of the main generator, and the lights coming back on was the auxiliary generator kicking in. The main generator powers the hydraulics for the steering, whereas the auxiliary generator is smaller and just keeps the lights on. So if you lose the main generator, you lose the steering. That means that whatever position the rudder was in when that happened is where it stays until you get the main generator back. If they made a course correction to starboard at the moment that happened, then that's where the ship's going to go.
One thing stands out for me. There are at least two main generators on cargo ships, and they're both supposed to be running during port maneuvers in case one fails. There are actually four on the Dali, two of which I assume are dedicated to refrigeration for the containers. I don't know if they can be assigned to steering or are on their own circuit, but the ship should have had at least two running. I've heard nothing about that as yet, but I did hear that they had electrical problems while in port, so perhaps the main control board failed, which would have killed power to the entire ship regardless of how many generators were running, so that's a possibility. The captain reports that the electronics on the bridge went dark, so that's a sign of a control system failure rather than a single generator failure, although I wouldn't rule out that they were running on only one generator, perhaps with the other being out of service. That's not something the pilot would be aware of.
The other factor is wind. Container ships are notorious for being blown off course because of the huge amount of surface area above deck. The ship is basically a giant sail, so if you lose power you're going wherever the last rudder setting plus wind direction plus current takes you, in this case straight into a bridge support that was designed in the 70's when ships were typically half the size of the Dali.
So until I see solid evidence to the contrary, based on my own experience, I'm going with accident. Incidentally, one of the ships I worked on hit the side of the Canso Causeway between Cape Breton Island and Nova Scotia. Tankers sit very low in the water, but a breeze picked up and pushed us sideways into the causeway wall when were moving dead slow on the approach. It doesn't take much.
I seem to recall reading an article maybe a few years ago about an American military report saying China would 'overtake' the west by the year 2027.
At the time it occurred to me that if the Anglo-American Empire does nothing then they lose. Thus, they need to start ww3 before 2027, otherwise it's too late.
Your article suggests that point has already been reached. I'm not going to disagree. In fact, I think bed might be a better option.
It's already too late, that much I am quite sure of. I think that
Arguably, anarchists brought down the American Empire. Think about it. The Battle of Seattle was in 1999. The Quebec City protests were in 2001. Then September 11th put an end to the anti-globalization movement. See what I'm saying? For millennia, rulers have known that the best way to distract the people from the domestic sphere is to direct their area to the foreign sphere, usually through war.
9/11 was an inside job, we all know that. But why did they start it? Could it have been because an anarchist revolution was brewing?
The rulers of the world live in fear of anarchists, because we have God on our side. Statecraft is a matter of controlling the perception of the people so they don't realize that government is organized crime. For over a hundred years, they've done this by shoving secularism down our throats, teaching people that science means that intelligent people don't believe in anything holy, sacred, or pure. Statism is Satanic.
Do you know what Osama Bin Laden's alleged strategy was? Get the U.S. involved in a bunch of unwinnable wars to bankrupt the U.S. Empire.
Fastforward 20 years. Guess what happened?