Tag: news

Authored by The Saker via The Vineyard of The Saker blog,

We all know that we are living in crazy, and dangerous, times, yet I can’t help being awed at what the imperial propaganda machine (aka the legacy ziomedia) is trying to make us all swallow. The list of truly batshit crazy stuff we are being told to believe is now very long, and today I just want to pick on a few of my “favorites” (so to speak).

First, of course, comes the “Novichok Reloaded” scandal around the alleged poisoning of the so-called “dissident” Alexei Navalnyi. I already mentioned this absolutely ridiculous story once, so I won’t repeat it all here. I just want to mention a few very basic facts:

• Navalnyi is pretty much a discredited non-entity in Russia. “Putin” (because this is how the imperial propaganda machine always personalizes the evils of Russia: “Putin” did this or that, as if Putin was personally in every alleged Russian evil deed) had absolutely and exactly zero reasons to harm Navalnyi in any way. I would even add that IF Navalnyi was poisoned in Russia (which I do not believe) then the FSB screwed up by not offering him 24/7 protection, especially in the current political climate (i.e. struggle for the completion of North Stream 2).

• The Empire always likes to produce a “sacrificial lamb” to symbolize the putative evil of the nation which dares to resist. In Iran it was Neda, in Kuwait the infamous “incubator babies”, in Syria anonymous kids killed by Russian gas, and in Russia it was Nemtsov (did not really work) and now Navalnyi (I wonder who the sacrificial lamb will be in Belarus (Tikhanovskaia?). The FSB should have seen this coming, especially after Nemtsov.

• There is exactly zero evidence that the mineral water bottle which the Germans claim contained traces of, what else, “Novichok”, ever was anywhere near Navalnyi or even that it ever was in Russia. No such bottle was found by, or mentioned to the Russian investigators. This bottle was, allegedly, hidden from the FSB by Navalnyi supporters, and secretly brought to Germany. What that means in terms of “chain of custody” is self-evident.

• As I have mentioned in my past article, if what the German authorities are claiming is true, then the Russians are truly the dumbest imbeciles on the planet. Not content to use this now famous “Novichok” gas against Skripal in the UK and after failing to kill Skripal, these stupid Russians decided to try the very same gas, only “improved”, and they failed again: Navalnyi is quite alive and well, thank you!

• Then there is this: according to the imperial propaganda machine, Novichok was so horribly dangerous, that the Brits had to use full biosuits to investigate the alleged poisoning of Skripal. They also said that they would completely destroy the dangerous Skripal home (though they never did that). The self same propaganda machine says that the Novichok used on Navalnyi was a more powerful, improved version. Okay. Then try to answer this one: why did the Russians NOT put on biosuits, why did not a single passenger suffer from any side effects (inside a closed aircraft cabin!)? How is it that this super-dooper Novichok not only failed to kill Navalnyi (who, allegedly, ingested it!) but also failed to even moderately inconvenience anybody from the many people Navalnyi was surrounded by on that day?

I could continue to deconstruct all this nonsense, but that would take pages. I will mention two thing though:

First, the Russians have requested any and all evidence available to the Germans and to the Organization for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons – but they got absolutely nothing in return. Yet the EU is demanding an investigation (which is already under way in Russia anyway!) as if the Russians did not want the exact same!

Second, Navalnyi apparently has an immunity to otherwise deadly Russian biological

After being exposed to an improved Novichok and after weeks in coma in intensive care, here is Navalnyi trotting down stairs feeling great agents, just take a look at him on this post-Novichok photo:

[By the way, the first time around the Brits also never gave the Russians *any* information, nevermind any kind of evidence. Apparently, to hide some super-secret secrets. Yeah, right!]

Next, I absolutely have to mention the absolutely insane situation around Belarus.

To make a long story short, the EU wants to sanction Russia for intervening in Belarus while that self-same EU is intervening in every possible imaginable manner: from the Poles who treat Tikhanovskaia as a modern False Dmitri the Fifth (see here for a summary of Polish-run False Dmitris), to the promise of a special “Marshall Plan for Belarus”, to the coordination of all the protests from Poland. The EU refuses to recognize Lukashenko as the winner (in spite of the fact that there is exactly zero evidence suggesting that Lukashenko lost) and refers to Tikhanovskaia as the “Leader of Belarus” (whatever that means).

As for our US American friends, having learned exactly *nothing* from the abject failure of their Guaido coup in Venezuela, they now want to repeat exactly the same with Tikhanovskaia in Belarus. As a result, Tikhanovskaia has been re-christened “Juanita Guaido”

But the worst are still the Europeans. Not only are they prostituting themselves to the leaders of the Empire, the following countries were the first to declare that they will not recognize Lukashenko as the leader of Belarus: Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia (which is no surprise, they all compete for the title of most pro-US colony on the planet), but also putatively mentally sane countries such as Germany, Czechia, Slovakia, Denmark. The case of Germany is particularly amazing, because Germany will now be placed under immense pressure to cancel North Stream 2, something which the entire German industry opposes. Eventually, the US, Canada, the Ukraine, the UK and the entire EU joined in and also refused to recognize Lukashenko as the leader of Belarus.

What is especially amazing to me is that these EU imbeciles apparently don’t care that without North Stream 2 they will have to purchase US gas, at much higher prices, which will make the EU economy less effective than the US one. And I thought that prostitutes are always acutely aware of the money they can make: not the European ones, apparently.

Still, I think that the “top honor” in this category goes to Poland which, while condemning some undefined Russian intervention in Belarus, runs the NEXTA Telegram channel which runs videos like this one: (in Russian – no, not in Belarusian, they *know* that 99.9999% Belarussians speak Russian):

Oh, but it gets better.

NATO seems to be trying to frighten Russia with maneuvers in Poland and B-52 flights over the Ukraine and the Black Sea (see here for a full analysis). As for the Poles and Ukronazis, they apparently believe that the Russian bear covered himself in poop and ran away at full speed.

What I am going to say next is not a secret, every military person who looked into this issue knows and understands this: NATO, and I mean the combined power of all NATO member states, simply does not have the hardware needed to wage a war against Russia in Europe. What NATO does have is only sufficient to trigger a serious incident which might result in a shooting war. But once this war starts, the chances of victory for NATO are exactly zero. Why?

Well, for one thing, while coalitions of countries might give a thin veneer of political legitimacy to a military action (in reality, only a UNSC resolution would), in purely military terms you are much better off having a single national military. Not only that, but coalitions are nothing but the expression of an often held delusion: the delusion that the little guy can hide behind the back of the big guy. Poland’s entire history can be summarized in this simple principle: strike the weak and bootlick (or even worse!) the powerful. In contrast, real military powers don’t count on some other guy doing the heavy lifting for them. They simply fight until they win.

Yes, the Europeans, being the cowards that they are, do believe that there is safety in numbers. But each time these midgets gang up on Russia and start barking (or, to use Putin’s expression, start oinking) all together, the Russians clearly see that the Europeans are afraid. Otherwise, they would not constantly seek somebody to protect them (even against a non-existing threat).

As a direct result of this delusion, NATO simply does not have the equivalent of the First Guard Tank Army in spite of the fact that NATO has a bigger population and much bigger budgets than Russia. Such a tank Army is what it would take to fight a real war in Europe, Russia has such an Army. NATO does not.

The other thing NATO does not have is a real integrated multi-layered air defense system. Russia does.

Lastly, NATO has no hypersonic weapons. Russia does.

(According to President Trump, the USA *does* have super-dooper “hydrosonic” weapons, but nobody really knows what that is supposed to mean).

I would even argue that the comparatively smaller Belarusian military could make hamburger meat of the roughly three times larger Polish armed forces in a very short time (unlike the Poles, the Belarusian are excellent soldiers and they know that they are surrounded by hostile countries on three sides).

As for the “armed forces” of the Baltic statelets, they are just a sad joke.

One more example: the Empire is now sending ships into the Black Sea as some kind of “show of force”. Yet, every military analyst out there knows that the Black Sea is a “Russian lake” and that no matter how many ships the US or NATO sends into the Black Sea, their life expectancy in case of a conflict would be measured in minutes.

There is a popular expression in Russia which, I submit, beautifully sums up the current US/NATO doctrine: пугать ежа голой задницей, which can be translated as “trying to scare a hedgehog with your naked bottom”.

The truth is that NATO military forces currently are all in very bad shape – all of them, including the US – and that their only advantage over Russia is in numbers. But as soon as you factor in training, command and control, the ability to operate with severely degraded C3I capabilities, the average age of military hardware or morale – the Russian armed forces are far ahead of the West.

Does anybody sincerely believe that a few B-52s and a few thousand soldiers from different countries playing war in Poland will really scare the Russian generals?

But if not – why the threats?

My explanation is simple: the rulers of the Empire simply hope that the people in the West will never find out how bad their current military posture really is, and they also know that Russia will never attack first – so they simply pretend like they are still big, mighty and relevant. This is made even easier by the fact that the Russians always downplay their real capabilities (in sharp contrast to the West which always brags about “the best XYZ in the world”). That, and the fact that nobody in the Western ruling classes wants to admit that the game is over and that the Empire has collapsed.

Well, they apparently can hide these truisms from most of their public opinion: Trump promises super-dooper missiles and big red buttons, and his supporters immediately wave (Chinese made) US flags! But I assure you that the Russians (political leaders and even the general public) know what the real score is.

Yet the Empire still refuses to deal with Russia in any other way except insults, bullying, threats, accusations, sanctions, and constant sabre-rattling. This has never, and I mean never, worked in the past, and it won’t work in the future. But, apparently, NATO generals simply cannot comprehend that insanity can be defined as “doing the same thing over and over again, while hoping to achieve different results”.

Finally, I will conclude with a short mention of US politicians.

First, Trump. He now declares that the Russians stole the secret of hypersonic weapons from Obama. This reminds me of how the Brits declared that Russia stole their vaccine against the sars-cov-2 virus. But, if the Russians stole all that, why is it that ONLY Russia has deployed hypersonic weapons (not the USA) and ONLY Russia has both two vaccines and 2 actual treatments (and not the UK)? For a good laugh, check out Andrei Martyanov’s great column “Russia Steal Everything”.

And then there is Nancy Pelosi who, apparently, is considering, yes, you guessed it – yet another impeachment attempt against Trump? The charge this time? Exercising this Presidential prerogative to nominate a successor to Ruth Ginsburg. Okay, Pelosi might be senile, but she also is in deep denial if she thinks impeaching Trump is still a viable project. Frankly? I think that she lost it.

In fact, I think that all the Dems have gone absolutely insane: they are now considering packing both the Supreme Court and the Senate. The fact that doing so will destroy the US political system does not seem to bother them in the least.

Conclusion: quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat!

We live in a world where facts or logic have simply become irrelevant and nobody cares about such clearly outdated categories.  We have elevated “doubleplusgoodthinking” into an art form.  We have also done away with the concepts of “proof” or “evidence” which we have replaced with variations on the “highly likely” theme.  We have also, for all practical purpose, jettisoned the entire corpus of international law and replaced it with “rules-based international order“.  In fact, I can only agree with Chris Hedges who, in his superb book the “Empire of illusions” and of the “triumph of spectacle”.  He is absolutely correct: not only is this a triumph of appearance over substance, and of ideology over reality, it is even the triumph of self-destruction over self-preservation.

There is not a big “master plan”, no complex international conspiracy, no 5D chess.  All we have is yet another empire committing suicide and, like so many before this one, this suicide is executed by this empire’s ruling classes.

Submitted by SouthFront.org,

On September 27, a new regional war in South Caucasus arose from the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Pro-Armenian forces captured the region in the early 90s triggering an armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Further development of the hostilities and the expected offensive by pro-Azerbajian forces were stopped by a Russian intervention in May of 1994. As of September 2020, the Nagorno-Karabakh region and nearby areas are still under the control of Armenian forces, de-facto making it an unrecognized Armenian state – the Republic of Artsakh (more widely known as the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic).

The 2018 political crisis in Armenia the led to a seizure of power in the country by de-facto pro-Western forces led by current Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan which did not strengthen Armenian positions over the territorial dispute. The double standard policy of the Armenian government, which was de-facto conducting anti-Russian actions but keeping public rhetoric pro-Russian, also played its own role. For years, Russia has been the only guarantor of Armenian statehood and the only force capable to rescue it in the event of a full-scale Azerbaijani-Turkish attack. Nonetheless, the Armenian leadership did pretty well in undermining its strategic partnership with its neighbor.

On the other hand, the political and economic situation in Azerbaijan was more stable. Baku also was able to secure good working relations with Russia. Together with the developing strategic partnership with Turkey, a natural historical ally of the country, and the strengthening of Turkish positions in the Greater Middle East, led to an expected attempt by Azerbaijan to restore control over the contested territories.

The Azerbaijani advance started on in the morning of September 27 and as of September 28, the Azerbaijani military said that it had captured seven villages and several key heights in the Fuzuli and Jabrayil areas. The military also announced that Azerbaijan captured the Murov height of the Murovdag mountain range and established fire control of the Vardenis-Aghdar road connecting Karabakh with Armenia. The Ministry of Defense said that this will prevent the transportation of additional troops and equipment from Armenia along the route in the direction of the Kelbajar and Aghdar regions in Karabakh.

The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry also claimed that over 550 Armenian soldiers were killed and dozens pieces of Armenian military equipment, including at least 15 Osa air defense systems, 22 battle tanks and 8 artillery guns, were destroyed. All statements from the Armenian side about the casualties among Azerbaijani forces were denounced as fake news.

Azerbaijan calls the ongoing advance a “counter-offensive” needed to put an end to Armenian ceasefire violations and to protect civilians. President Ilham Aliyev signed a martial law decree and vowed to “restore historical justice” and “restore the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan” Turkey immediately declared its full support to Azerbaijan saying that it is ready to assist it in any way requested, including military support.

In its own turn, the Armenian military admitted that Azerbaijan captured some positions near Talish, but denied that the Vardenis-Aghdar road was cut off. According to it, at least 200 Azerbaijani soldiers were killed, 30 armored vehicles and 20 drones were destroyed. The Armenian Defense Ministry also said that it has data about Turkish involvement in the conflict, the usage of Turkish weapons and the presence of mercenaries linked to Turkey. Earlier, reports appeared that Turkey was deploying members of its Syrian proxy groups in Azerbaijan. Arayik Harutyunyan, the President of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, openly stated that the republic is at war with both Azerbaijan and Turkey.

The Washington establishment that helped Pashinyan to seize power is also not hurrying up to assist its ‘new friends’ in Armenia. They see the Nagorno-Karabakh region as a point of possible conflict between Russia and Turkey (which is useful to promote the US agenda in the Greater Middle East). The instability in South Caucasus, close to the borders of Russia and Iran, also contributes to the geopolitical interests of the United States. Therefore, the Pashinyan government should not expect any real help from the ‘democratic superpower’.

On the other hand, the direct involvement of Russia and thus the Collective Security Treaty Organization on the side of Armenia is unlikely until there is no direct attack on its territory. Moscow would intervene into the conflict both politically and militarily, but only as far as necessary to prevent a violation of Armenia’s borders. Russia would not contribute military efforts to restore Armenian control over Nagorno Karabakh should the region be captured by Azerbaijan.

If the regional war between Azerbaijan and Armenia develops further in the current direction, Armenia could loose at least a part of its positions in the contested region. In the worst-case scenario for the Armenian leadership, Azerbaijan, with help from Turkey, will have a real chance to restore control over the most of the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Authored by Lawrence Franklin via The Gatestone Institute,

The United States is in a “Tech War” with China, the victor will control the global dissemination of information. The winner will also write the world’s rules and standards for emerging technologies in the digital economy.

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping threw down the gauntlet to the U.S. in a May 2017 speech, where he outlined the plan for establishing a Chinese-supervised “Digital Silk Road.” President Xi realizes that the information dimension of modern war is bound up with China’s apparent overall objective of unseating the United States as the leader of the existing liberal democratic world order.

Xi seemingly wants to secure a commanding lead in the emerging hi-tech disciplines to create a sense of inevitability about China’s rise to world domination. The U.S. still has the time, talent and resources to secure a victory over China in this contest for global leadership, provided that the U.S. has the will, self-discipline and flexibility to institute a total societal mobilization over decades.

China specialists such as Gordon Chang and policy officers in the Trump Administration have sought to educate the American public on how China came to emerge as a potent challenger to U.S. global primacy in hi-tech disciplines. Many of the methods by which China rose to contender status include stealing intellectual property on a massive scale, with the collusion, sadly, of many Americans; forced transfer of entrepreneurial secrets of U.S. firms as a prerequisite to operating in the Chinese market; meticulous, long-term planning to secure China’s national priorities; legal and illegal recruitment of foreign human talent, and lavish state support for Chinese hi-tech firms.

China may have unintentionally alerted the Free World to its present danger by revealing the CCP regime’s true face — not exactly the one presented by “A rising China is a … positive ­development not only for China, but for America” — as well as its global ambitions. China has revealed this true face by an abominable human rights record, underscored by its genocidal policy toward China’s Uighur minority in Xinjiang Province. China’s aggressive territorial expansion against Hong Kong and several of its Asian neighbors — not to mention how it deliberately exported the Wuhan virus internationally while closing transportation to limit its spread within China — has helped strip away its carefully orchestrated image as a responsible major power and has exposed a belligerent state controlled by the CCP.

Now, a Chinese physician and virologist, Dr. Yan Limeng, who fled China and is in hiding in the U.S., has said that China released the virus “intentionally” — perhaps, one surmises, as a way of torpedoing both President Trump’s prospects for re-election and his effort to alter trade deals that have favored China by $600 billion a year. Meanwhile, Twitter thoughtfully deleted Yan’s clearly important account.

China’s domestic implementation of advances in surveillance technology to control its own population also has contributed to the negative transformation of China’s international image. The CCP has employed these advances to create a surveillance state to monitor the actions of Chinese citizens, and many countries have purchased Chinese facial recognition products. These state customers run the gamut of political systems from dictatorships to democracies.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is another emerging technology where China is making inroads on the reported U.S. lead. China has set a goal of overtaking the U.S. in AI by 2030. AI is a scientific discipline that teaches machines to imitate human actions. Such applications have enormous potential to impact the efficiency and accuracy of modern weapon systems such as missiles. AI exercises have produced results as in assisting surgery and where machines have bested world-class Chess Masters and Go enthusiasts.

Five factors contribute to breakthroughs in AI and other emerging technologies: patents, investment, hardware, talented labor and academic research. Both China and the U.S. are improving the ability of AI to capture the nuance of languages.

China has now surpassed the U.S. in the number of published scientific studies, but there is a caveat: U.S. scientific publications remain, on the whole, qualitatively superior. These studies help keep the U.S. a step ahead in basic software such as computer data management, processing and in operating system software.

Another critical discipline where the U.S. maintains a clear advantage over China is semiconductor chip technology, necessary for the manufacture of various electronic devices. The Trump administration’s decoupling of China’s Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd from the American market has helped slow Beijing’s effort to catch up to the United States in semiconductor technology. The electronic materials, chemical gases, and lithographic technology — all components necessary for the production of the most advanced semiconductors — can presently only be produced in Free World states such as the U.S., Japan, and the Netherlands

Perhaps the most spirited and public manifestation of the U.S.-China “Tech War” is in space. This competition may recall the drama of the “space race” between an earlier generation of superpower rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union. Rather than the US-USSR rivalry to reach the moon, the focus in the current US-China contest is in space weaponry — and reaching Mars. China is making impressive strides in space operations by recently deploying the BeiDou constellation of 30 satellites, its rival to the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS). China also has plans to launch its own space station as an alternative to the International Space Station that highlights global cooperation, especially between the U.S. and Russia. Ominously, China appears to be doubling down on its effort to checkmate the West’s capability to use space-based systems during conflict. If China can successfully blind U.S. systems by offensive cyber operations or outright destruction of U.S. systems by anti-satellite attacks, the war-fighting advantage currently possessed by the West can be annihilated. China executed a successful anti-satellite strike as early as 2007; it showed its capability by destroying one of its own aging weather satellites.

Still another new technology with enormous potential for solving complex mathematical and scientific problems more quickly than today’s computers can is quantum computing. While the U.S. claims to have created the first quantum computer, China appears to be leading in the military application of this new science. China has already demonstrated the ability to create unbreakable encrypted messaging, an accomplishment that could keep other countries in the dark about planned secret Chinese military operations, such as, say, an invasion of Taiwan.

The U.S. still leads China in Research and Development (R&D) spending, but Beijing has made great strides in this area as well. In order to keep pace with China’s all-out effort to dominate emerging technologies, a well-disciplined, coordinated approach by the U.S. government, sort of a “Manhattan Project” in all of the key hi-tech areas, might help. The costs to the US of falling behind could well prove catastrophic.

After previously touting that his own daughter was among the first to take the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, standing in as a prominent early ‘guinea pig’ of sorts vouching for its safety, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he plans to receive it soon, according to a story in Newsweek on Monday.

Without specifying precisely when he would receive the vaccine, which was met with approval by government regulators in August, Putin reportedly indicated it would come before his next trip to South Korea. 

“Putin has not yet committed publicly to receiving the vaccine—the development of which has been financed by the state Russian Direct Investment Fund—but told South Korean President Moon Jae-in by phone Monday that he would have the shot before a planned visit to Seoul, Newsweek reports.

Moon personally invited Putin to come to South Korea during a call upon the occasion of the 30th anniversary of establishment of the Russian-South Korean diplomatic relations.

According to a summary of the call, Russian media sources indicate that Putin told Moon:

“I will come to South Korea… I will personally take the Russian vaccine and go.”

Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine was developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya research institute with help from the Russian defense ministry. It was tested at Moscow’s state medical university.

Initially met with broad global skepticism, Russia’s health ministry last month announced it expects to begin mass anti-coronavirus vaccinations by October, with the first rounds to be administered to front line medical workers as well as teachers.

Global critics have charged Russia appears to be ‘rushing’ out a vaccine amid the international race to come up with a preventative ‘cure’ for countries’ populations.

And apparently Putin plans to be among these front line early recipients of the Russian vaccine as well, given his international travel schedule. 

Authored by John Quincy Adams via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

About twenty years ago The Atlantic published a piece by Jeffrey Tayler named “Russia is finished” subtitled “The unstoppable descent of a once great power into social catastrophe and strategic irrelevance.” Not a very successful prediction was it? But what he did was fashionable at the time – he described what was happening in Russia in the nineties and made a straight-line projection from there. His error was assuming the continuation of the straight line – and he made the error because he thought Russia was only “Zaire With Permafrost”.

My purpose in this essay is to apply the points that the author made about Russia twenty years ago to the United States of America today and adopt a simple straight-line projection based on a corresponding view of American history. This is not so much because I think that America really is finished – after all, as Adam Smith observed, there is a great deal of ruin in a nation, and America has seen hard times before – but in order to illustrate the perilous position America is in today. As the author of the Atlantic piece must now understand, straight-line predictions are always risky because – as happened in Russia – other forces can appear to change the “unstoppable descent”. But a straight-line prediction from the American situation as of the autumn of 2020 does point to an “unstoppable descent” into “social catastrophe and strategic irrelevance”.

In my opinion, Tayler’s principal error, which constrained his estimation of what was possible, was his overarching view of Russia as a brutal, dysfunctional, backwards dictatorship.

The hostility that Russians feel toward their government comes not from some innate lack of civic duty but from the terror, violence, and deceit that have since the late Middle Ages characterized the way in which their rulers have treated them…

Byzantium was moribund, its religion having suffocated the intellectual traditions of the Hellenes.

Mongol khans, with all their pomp and cruelty, became the figures on which many Russian rulers would model themselves…

Muscovite czars, Ivan the Terrible foremost among them, destroyed all institutions that could rival their power, turning the nobility into servants, enslaving the peasants to the nobility, and employing Orthodoxy as their official ideology—for Orthodoxy proclaimed the czar God’s chosen representative on earth…

Russia, isolated and infused with a messianic sense of its own superiority over the West, suffered the predations of rulers bent on building a strong state…

Taking full advantage of Russia’s absolutist traditions, Joseph Stalin followed in the footsteps of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great and set about strengthening the state, enacting programs of industrialization and agricultural collectivization: he enslaved vast segments of his population to build industries, mine the earth, and gather crops…

Can only expect more of the same from a country with that past.

This is what might be called the Richard Pipes take on Russia.

Let us consider what would be predicted for the future of America if we were to take the Howard Zinn point of view.

That is to say, an America based on slave labor, the extermination of native peoples, exploitation of the poor by the rich under cover of an attractive but hollow ideology, predatory behavior in its neighborhood backed by merciless warfare wherever it doesn’t get its way. You could expect only more of the same.

Now the Pipes and Zinn views are not false, but they are partial. Russia is not nothing but a brutal dysfunctional dictatorship, it has its Father Zosimas too. Neither is America just a brutal, dysfunctional plutocracy, it has its spiritual values too. But, just as Tayler took a Pipes view of Russia, we will in what follows take a Zinn view of America. And just as Russia’s future turned out to be much better than Tayler/Pipes foresaw, let us hope that America’s future is better also. We will take the points Tayler makes about Russia, apply them to America and project the future from that point through Zinn’s perspective and see what we get.

Russian oligarchs.

the oligarchs rose to prominence not by building railroads and industries but by exploiting antiquated pricing systems, disorganized legal codes, and—most important—Soviet-era connections with the government.

The three richest men in America today – owning, it is said, as much as half the population – did not gain their wealth by railroads or industries; one runs a mail order store, one a software company and one is a speculator. The Forbes 400 are worth more than almost two-thirds of the country and COVID has made them even richer while, for the others, unemployment skyrockets. Not surprisingly, a 2014 study found that these plutocrats dominate the so-called democracy. “When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose.” All rather Zinnish, isn’t it? Difficult to see that trend ending by itself.

Russian contempt for politicians.

When Russians talk of their politicians, they frequently speak of “thieves,” “bandits,” and “swindlers”…

A recent Pew poll on American attitudes to their government shows similar disgust

Even larger majorities say the country is not performing well when it comes to the government being open and transparent (69% say this does not describe the country well), the tone of political debate being respectful (72%), people agreeing on basic facts even if they disagree politically (72%), elected officials facing serious consequences for misconduct (73%) and that campaign contributions do not lead to greater political influence (also 73%).

Russian military failure.

One of the most spectacular elements of the Soviet Union’s collapse has been Russia’s fall from military superpower No. 2 to a country whose army can be neutralized by bands of irregulars fighting with little more than the weapons on their backs.

No need to belabor this point – two decades in Afghanistan says it all.

Squandering wealth on weaponry.

Putin would do well to recall that high defense spending helped to bring about the demise of the Soviet Union.

Enough said – more, more and still more.

Russian population decline.

Over the past decade Russia’s population has been shrinking by almost a million a year, owing to a plummeting birth rate and a rising number of deaths from alcoholism and violence. Predictions are astonishingly grave: the country could lose a third of its population (now 146 million) by the middle of the century. This does not factor in new scourges—tuberculosis and HIV, in particular, which have been spreading exponentially since 1998.

America’s birthrate is now falling and deaths from opioid overdoses and suicides are rising.

Taking Tayler’s points one after another and comparing Russia with America today, we see it’s not Russia that’s looking bad in 2020.

• Oligarchs are losing power in Russia but gaining it in America.

• Confidence in government is rising in Russia but falling in America.

• Russia’ military achievements are rising while America’s are falling.

• Russia’s military expenditure is falling but America’s keeps rising.

• Russian population is stabilizing while America’s is starting to fall.

And we haven’t been nearly as negative about America’s future as we could have been. With the talk about ignoring the results of November’s elections, how close are we to civil war? Is there really a possibility of a coup d’état? There’s certainly talk of it. There already is a considerable amount of street violence in America now, how much worse will it get? What will the final effects of COVID be? Certainly not an increase in confidence about the American can-do spirit or competence. How many people unemployed by COVID will ever work again? How big can the budget deficit get before it all bursts? Can the US ever get its manufacturing dominance back? What happens to the “American Dream” as most people get poorer while a few become ludicrously rich – here’s a RAND study to put a number on the four-decade trend – trillions and trillions.

Tayler was extremely wrong in his estimation of Putin as many others were, seeing nothing but KGB.

Putin the Terrible… Putin had the security connections to protect them once Yeltsin left office… Putin needs pliant and adoring media to ensure an absolutist rule… Putin supported the reinstatement of a slightly modified version of Stalin’s national anthem… Putin has put forward plans that will only worsen his country’s plight,

But the Putin team changed the trajectory – again “Zaire with permafrost” blocked his mind. Would he expect that Biden/Harris will turn things around in America? (He doesn’t seem to think much of Trump.)

And how did this come to pass? Adams foresaw it – America brought the monsters home.

Russia by contrast is a model of stability, efficiency and prosperity. With a much better future too.

Following a two-month period which already saw a very noticeable uptick in Chinese PLA military drills in the regions of the Yellow, South China, and East China Seas, Beijing has announced the start of five simultaneous military drills which it says are “directed at Taiwan”.

It’s only the second time in recent months that this many exercises have been triggered all at once in four seas.

Reuters describes that “Two of the exercises are being held near the Paracel Islands in the disputed South China Sea, one in the East China Sea, and one in further north in the Bohai Sea, the Maritime Safety Administration said in notices on its website.”

And drills in the Yellow Sea are featuring live-fire exercises from Monday through Wednesday. The maritime notices issued by the PLA include bans on all civilian ships entering the areas where drills are being conducted. 

One month ago a major incident unfolded after an American U-2 spy plane allegedly entered a Chinese military ‘no fly zone’ in order to monitor PLA drills. Beijing had slammed the “naked provocation” and issued a veiled threat that in future exercises the US aircraft could be shot down.

According to Reuters, Beijing has specifically framed the new drills as in response to “threats” centered on Taiwan:

China has also held frequent military activities near Chinese-claimed Taiwan and has taken the usual step of declaring that such drills are directed at Taiwan. 

Washington has conducted two recent high level diplomatic visits to Taipei, with Taiwan’s military also recently updating its rules of engagement to say it has a right to “counterattack” Chinese warplanes. 

“In the face of high-frequency harassment and threats from the enemy’s warships and warplanes recently… the military clearly redefined the contingency handling regulations concerning the first strike as our right to self-defense and counter-attack,” Taiwan’s defense ministry said a week ago.

Authored by Leo Thuman via Campus Reform,

A University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student stepped down from leadership roles in the university’s graduate student union after admitting that she had dishonestly presented herself as a “person of color.”

In a letter published on the website Medium on September 6, University of Wisconsin graduate student CV Vitolo-Haddad apologized and admitted that she had been dishonest about her racial and ethnic background. 

“I am so deeply sorry for the ways you are hurting right now because of me.”  She also admitted that the feelings of betrayal people felt because of her were caused by her dishonest presentation of her racial-ethnic identity: “all of those things are a consequence of how I have navigated our relationships and the spaces we share.”

Vitolo-Haddad announced that she is trying to repair the damage her deceit caused, and that “the first step towards that, however, is to resign my position as co-president of the Teaching Assistants’ Association.” 

The Teaching Assistant’s Association is a labor union at UW-Madison representing graduate students who are employed in various capacities at the university, but mainly in teaching positions.  As of the time of publication, Vitolo-Haddad was not listed on the ‘Officers’ section of the union’s website.

Vitolo-Haddad also announced in her letter that she would resign from her position as a graduate teaching assistant at the university.

In a second letter, published on September 8 on Medium, Vitolo-Haddad confessed that she was not at all of Black ancestry, and was in fact Italian and Sicilian.  She acknowledged that she “should have never entered Black organizing spaces” and continued, saying: “they are not my place.” 

She attempted to portray her guilt as the cause of her admission, writing that “once realizing this, it wasn’t sufficient to just leave; I should have explained that directly to the people who invited me and clarified my identity.”

Further, Vitolo-Haddad admitted that she had identified herself as Black on multiple occasions.

“When asked if I identify as Black, my answer should have always been ‘No.’ There were three separate instances I said otherwise,” she wrote in the letter.

Vitolo-Haddad is a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications.

CNN reported that Vitolo-Haddad was previously offered a tenure-track position at Fresno State University in California. The university told the network that she would not be receiving the position. 

Vitolo-Haddad isn’t the first major public case of a white woman impersonating someone from a minority group. 

Campus Reform recently reported on a George Washington University professor who had similarly pretended to be black. That professor, Jessica Krug, also resigned from her teaching position.

Campus Reform was unable to reach Vitolo-Haddad for comment.

By now, it is common knowledge that technology stocks, the FAAMGs, are in one of the biggest bubbles in capital markets history. Investors have quickly pivoted to these fast-growing tech firms, with an unprecedented concentration in AAPL, MSFT, AMZN, GOOGL, and FB. With the US presidential election fast-approaching, momentum and valuation concerns have materialized for these high-flying stocks, as the world’s most sophisticated family offices and investors have recently described their investment outlook as “cautious,” according to a new Citi Private Bank survey. 

About three-quarters of all respondents, including ultra-high net worth individuals and family offices, described their 12-month investment sentiment as “cautious.” Many flagged the cautious mood, raised cash reserves, and increased direct investments due to the virus pandemic. 

The survey, which was administered in June and July to about 180 family offices and investors, had a quarter of all respondents worried about the surge of social unrest and violent crime spreading across the US. 

About 59% of respondents said they had or will increase their allocations to direct investments over the coming 12 months, with technology, healthcare, and real estate as their three top sector choices.

Stephen Campbell, Managing Director and Chairman, Private Capital Group, Citi Private Bank, said family offices and wealthy investors have survived the virus downturn and see more opportunity in private markets.

“Our findings capture the sentiment of respondents from all regions of the globe. We find that family offices and ultra-high net worth individuals have weathered the crisis well. They are positioned to deploy further capital as they see opportunities arise, especially in private markets. However, it cannot be ignored that the survey found liquidity to be at a premium, and clients often willing to sacrifice short to medium-term returns to maintain that,” Campbell wrote in the survey. 

The caution expressed by respondents comes as FAAMGs are clearly in a bubble. 

Half of the respodents said they expect total portfolio returns for the next 12 months to be in the 1% to 5% range. When asked about future reconfigurations to the portfolio, 56% said they are making “some tactical changes,” while only 14%” reported making “significant portfolio changes.”

Peter Clive Charrington, Global Head of Citi Private Bank, commented on the survey:  

“The results and analysis in this report give a rare insight into the thinking of some of the world’s most sophisticated family office executives and other leading investors. We asked them about their outlook for the global economy and financial markets, as well as what they are doing with the portfolios that they oversee. The answers about the opportunities and risks ahead – and the actions that respondents expect to take – provides Citi Private Bank the opportunity better to address the challenges and needs of our global clients. We have found to a surprising degree that our clients have remained closer to their Citi team as they navigate these uncertain times.”

In a separate survey, produced by UBS Global Wealth, they noted, the wealthiest of investors are waiting for a pullback in markets before they start buying. 

The question wealthy investors have on their mind: How deep will the pullback be? 

The Minneapolis Police Department announced Monday evening that they would be investigating allegations of ‘vote harvesting’ by supporters of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) following an explosive Project Veritas exposé.

“The MPD is aware of the allegations of vote harvesting,” tweeted the Minneapolis PD. “We are in the process of looking into the validity of those statements. No further information is available at this time on this.”

ALLEGATIONS OF VOTER FRAUD BEING EVALUATED. ✅ The MPD is aware of the allegations of vote harvesting. We are in the process of looking into the validity of those statements. No further information is available at this time on this.

— Minneapolis Police (@MinneapolisPD) September 28, 2020

O’Keefe’s latest video features Minneapolis resident Liban Mohamed – who brags on tape about illegally collecting some 300 ballots from Somali immigrants in an effort to help his City Councilman brother, Jamal Osman.

What’s more, the journalist teased a “cash-for-ballots financial transaction ON TAPE” in a Monday night Twitter poll.

We have the cash-for-ballots financial transaction ON TAPE.

Should we launch it tonight? #CashForBallots

— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) September 29, 2020

Mohamed called O’Keefe “Fake News” in a Monday tweet, according to the Daily Mail.

The Veritas video also featured Somali political operative Omar Jamal – who said he believes ballot harvesters are hired to take advantage of elderly members of the Somali community.

Omar spokesman Jeremy Slevin said the claims were “amplifying a coordinated right-wing campaign to delegitimize a free and fair election this fall undermines our democracy.”

President Trump took to Twitter late Monday evening, calling the allegations “totally illegal,” and that he hopes that “the U.S. Attorney in Minnesota has this, and other of her many misdeeds, under serious review.”

This is totally illegal. Hope that the U.S. Attorney in Minnesota has this, and other of her many misdeeds, under serious review??? If not, why not??? We will win Minnesota because of her, and law enforcement. Saved Minneapolis & Iron O Range! https://t.co/yete31P680

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 28, 2020

Authored by Omid Malekan via Medium.com,

As you’ve probably seen, DeFi on Ethereum is now the hottest thing in all of crypto, further establishing the platform’s first mover advantage, and firing what should be perceived as a shot across the bow of traditional financial services. The success of the movement is attributable to three fundamental properties of decentralized blockchain networks:

1. Composability: Any output of an existing solution — such as collateralized lending or automated market making — could easily be used as an input of a new solution. This means that developers can build on the work of others, mixing and matching existing services to create their own financial supermarkets (what the crypto kids call money legos).

2. Transparency: Every project is transparent, open-source and imminently replicable. Not only can developers look under the hood of successful projects, they can copy the code and introduce their own variation.

3. Permissionless: Anyone can do anything. There are no licenses to acquire, vendors to onboard, KYC procedures to follow or AML/CFT laws to be crippled by. Those who have innovative ideas build them and those who like the resulting service use them. Full stop.

Also aiding the boom is a growing cast of supporting infrastructure in the form of stablecoins, oracles and ramps to other platforms such as Bitcoin. All of this has been around for years, as have the earliest DeFi protocols. But the action didn’t take off until the arrival of liquidity mining earlier this year, an innovative incentive scheme best understood with an analogy: Back in the day, banks used to give away toasters for opening a new account. DeFi projects go one step further and give away equity, in the form of a governance token. The more users borrow, lend, provide liquidity or trade in a particular protocol, the greater the claim on future revenues and say in ongoing governance that they get.

Liquidity mining is the decentralized and community-owned ethos of the crypto universe expanded to financial services. There is no off-chain equivalent, but analogous to Robinhood giving away free stock to its clients based on usage. (RH would never do this, because the infrastructure can’t handle it and the regulators won’t allow it— yet another reason why the only real innovation in financial services is happening on the blockchain).

The introduction of liquidity mining set the DeFi world on fire. Even those who didn’t have an immediate need to lend, borrow or trade started doing so to earn a reward. This spike in activity created a virtuous cycle: the more people used a protocol, the more valuable the token it was giving away was perceived to be, so the greater the incentive for new users to join the party. In just three months, the value of assets involved with DeFi went up 10x, and fees on Ethereum surged as well.

All of this is great for adoption, energy and excitement. DeFi has reinvigorated the crypto ecosystem, attracted attention from outsiders and caused even greater agita for regulators still grappling with the difference between security tokens and tokenized securities. What it’s not great for is the value of the DeFi governance tokens themselves. This might be considered heresy in the most devout DeFi circles, but I would argue the vast majority of DeFi tokens are borderline worthless. Why? Because of what makes DeFi great in the first place. Put in crypto speak:

Composability + Transparency + Permissionless = No Moat

Put in plain English: If you build it, they will come, but then someone will build a replica, and they will leave. In a world where anyone can do anything, including copy your code, tweak your solution and parody your name, then every successful project will have imitators, and since there are no account signups, national borders or regulatory barriers, your customers can become their customer with a single click. This isn’t just speculation, it has already happened, with comical naming conventions to boot. The popular decentralized exchange Uniswap yielded Sushiswap which was then copied into Kimchiswap. Another popular service called Curve was forked into Swerve, and the robo-yield-farmer Yearn has spawned more copycats than one can keep track of.

At issue is the fundamental equation of trust. The main goal of a decentralized platform like Ethereum is the minimization of counterparty risk — a fundamental driver of financial innovation for millennia. The platform’s success in doing so makes it both easy to build new solutions and hard to monetize them, because everyone shares the most important edge. This is not the case in traditional finance. You can spend billions of dollars replicating the physical infrastructure of the NYSE or BoA, but end up with none of their customers, because you won’t have the licenses, reputations and relationships that make those entities trustworthy.

Ironically, that means the only lasting value any DeFi solution could have comes from the messy and more centralized stuff that you can’t just copy and paste, such as business development, VC backing and human talent. It also means that the oldest DeFi protocols who have the most sophisticated teams and weathered more than just a single season are the only ones worth owning at current prices. My favorites are MakerDao, Compound, Aave and Uniswap. Everything else is either too new, too unproven, too unused or too easy to copy (Maker increasingly seems like the only solution that’s truly fork proof, given Dai’s growing penetration into obscure corners of the ecosystem, and Latin America)

Even more ironically, the market currently values most of these protocols in the opposite order that I do. The DeFi aggregator Yearn, which would have no reason to exist if not for the base protocols it feeds, has a higher market cap than all of them. The synthetic asset maker Synthetix, whose sUSD stablecoin has less than $60m in distribution, is valued more than Maker, whose Dai stablecoin is approaching $1B. These disparities are the result of the crypto world’s never ending (and always embarrassing) desire for free money. Maker isn’t giving away any equity, while SNX is giving away plenty.

These disparities will eventually be resolved. The valuations of the core protocols will rise to the top while some of the current high-flyers will end up worthless. But even then, the upside will always be capped by the fact that competition is easy to build. The most sustainable winners will be the off-chain infrastructure providers, for the simple reason that you can’t fork USDC’s cash reserves or Bitgo’s cold storage.

And once again, the biggest winner of all will be Ethereum itself, as DeFi has only increased its value and cemented its first mover advantage. It is a mistake to assume that today’s astronomical transaction fees are anything other than a blessing. Demand outstripping supply is the best thing that can happen to any startup.