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The MoA Week In Review – OT 2019-50
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
The black block in Hong Kong, which consists of just a few hundred youth, is now back at rioting. Subway stations get vandalized and people pushed off the trains that the rioters use to ferry from one flash mob incident to the next one. Bricks and Molotov cocktails are thrown at police lines. Some protesters use baseball bats against the police, others have handguns. Today the police, for the first time, deployed water cannon trucks. One policeman fired a warning shot against the increasingly brutal mob. It is only of question of time until the first person gets killed.
The allegedly "leaderless" protesters even have a Dummy Guide for frontline rioters.
Miles Kwok aka Guo Wengui is a disgruntled Chinese oligarch. He is one of the men who finances the Hong Kong protests. Here he appears with Steve Bannon Miles Kwok & Mr Bannon: The 5 principles on Hong Kong’s matter (vid). But the NYT still claims that the nativist protesters' use of Pepe the frog is not a sign of alt-right influence.
Joshua Wong, one of the U.S. coddled students, compares the situation with 2014 Maidan riots in Ukraine. He is right in more ways than he says.
Khan Shaykhun and all surrounding villages are now liberated. There was little resistance left as most of the Jihadis had slipped out of the encirclement before it closed. The Syrian army is now concentrating forces to go further north towards Maarat al-Numan. The preparing bombing campaign is ongoing.
Last night Israel bombed a Hezbullah workshop south of Damascus. Three Hizbullah engineers were killed and two were wounded. Additionally an Israeli short-range drone landed on Hizbullah's media office in Beirut, Lebanon. A second drone, probably sent to destroy the first one, appeared and exploded. No one was hurt. The drone operators must have been relatively nearby, most likely on some boat off Beirut.
Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah addressed Israel in his July 12 speech: "You kill one of our own in Syria and we will respond and respond from Lebanon." Nasrallah, who tends to hold his promises, is due to speak today at 17:00 local time. Expect some fireworks …
Maj. Danny Sjursen: We're Listening to the Wrong Voices on Syria – TruthDig
Elijah Magnier reports that Israel is most likely behind this: Who is Behind Blowing up Ammunition Warehouses in Iraq? Iran is the Target. I still have my doubts about that.
The text of Mark Carney's Jackson Hole speech: The Growing Challenges for Monetary Policy in the current International Monetary and Financial System
Other issues:
Epstein:
Whitney Webb published another of her amazing pieces about the Epstein case: From “Spook Air” to the “Lolita Express”: The Genesis and Evolution of the Jeffrey Epstein-Bill Clinton Relationship – Mintpress News
Prof. Micheal Brenner looks into the lack of #MeToo outrage about the Epstein case: The Missing Howls of Denunciation Over Major Sex Trafficking – Consortiumnews – My take: It's an obvious class issues. The #MeToo establishment does not care about working class kids and women.
A Dead Cat, A Lawyer's Call And A 5-Figure Donation: How Media Fell Short On Epstein – NPR
Yemen:
The UAE supported southern separatists in South Yemen are not welcome outside of Aden. Some southern tribes mobilized against them as well as against the Saudis and the Houthi. The war to start all wars: Inside Yemen’s troubled south – Independent
Afghanistan:
There are no Afghan peace negotiations. There are peace negotiations between the U.S. and the (U.S. created) Taliban who will continue to fight against the (U.S. installed) government even while the U.S. wants the Taliban to fight the (U.S. installed) ISIS in Afghanistan. Robert Fisk: A century after the Anglo-Afghan peace treaty, the Fourth Afghan War is about to escalate – Independent
G-7:
The real G7, measured by nominal GDP, are: 1. USA, 2. China, 3 Japan, 4. Germany, 5. UK, 6. France, 7.India. When measured by GDP in Purchase Power Parity the list is different: 1. China, 2. USA, 3. India, 4. Japan, 5. Germany, 6. Russia, 7. Indonesia. At the G7 meeting in France today are the USA (2nd), Japan (4th), Germany (5th), UK (9th), France (10th), Italy (12th) and Canada (17th). Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif just arrived in Biarritz where the G-7 is holding their meeting. He will probably talk with Trump.
Media:
Who is providing your news? 15 Former Spooks Who Work At CNN And MSNBC Now –Daily Caller
Music:
Led Zeppelin cover by a Balalaika group: Stairway To Heaven (vid)
Use as open thread …
The American elite is fractured:
Business Groups Warn of Consequences as Trump’s Trade War Spirals
Joshua Bolten, the president and chief executive of the Business Roundtable, an organization representing the leaders of the largest American companies, said on Sunday that many C.E.O.s were already “poised right on top of the brake.”
There are two groups in American capitalist class: one anti-Russia and one anti-China.
The anti-Russia one is the “moderate” group, that still believes China can turn capitalist with due time; they go with Wolfowitz Doctrine, which states Russia, as the successor state of the USSR and heir of its nuclear arsenal, still represents American’s strategic enemy.
The anti-China one is the “far-right” group, which believe China is indeed socialist and will become more socialist with time (and, therefore, will transform the world around it socialist). Thy use Huntington’s “clash of civilization” doctrine as a screensaver to sell an anti-China rhetoric to the far-right indentured masses, but deep down know the true fight continues to be capitalism vs socialism.
Gramsci once stated that success begins with the correct analysis of the conjuncture. If that is true, then we already know who’s gonna win: the anti-China group.
But the Gordian Knot is this: the very existence of two doctrines in the core of the American elite is already evidence the USA is no longer the world’s sole superpower. If it was, then there would be no dilemma between the anti-Russia and the anti-China: there would simply be a unified, anti-Eurasia doctrine.
The very fact the American elite now must to compartmentalize its foreign policy is already a symptom of something that resembles a multipolar order: the USA is still the most powerful nation in the world, but now it is the first among equals (as opposed to being the king of nations, the “global cop”).
Meanwhile, the post-war alliance continues to crumble. Mark Carney has revived Keynes “Bancor”; this is a last, desperate attempt of the First World minus the USA to preserve their dignity. The IMF already has a currency basket, but the problem is that it cannot force any country to take its loans: nations are still sovereign, and can only be interfered by the IMF if they ask for its interference. What Carney is asking for is literally an institution with absolute governance over all nations, genuine executive powers. Will the American elite — who has the most formidable Military to date — accept to relinquish their own power? Spoiler alert: no.
China and Russia have time and peace on their side. All they need to do is wait and continue to do what they are already doing, while Western Civilization continues to degenerate. The problem with this tactic is that the Western elites are not stupid, and will go on the offensive someday.
Russia has another problem: who’s gonna succeed Putin after he retires? After the fall of the Romanovs, the Bolsheviks crushed the liberal army (“White Army”) and the Anarchist-Nazi army (“Black Army”) and were forced to found a new nation under a single party system (since all the other parties decided to form the White Army and fight a civil war, it had to do so because it was literally the only party left alive in Russia).
The intense and chaotic situation of the newly born Soviet Union and the premature death of Lenin resulted in a system with no clear path of succession. Stalin kind of created something that resembled a POTUS by reforming the office of General Secretary of the CPSU. But this was never official in the entire history of the USSR and each death of the de facto commander in chief was succeeded by a bloody palatial struggle. The system finally crumbled when Gorbachev — the first and last General Secretary to be born after 1917 — destroyed the CPSU and, with it, the entire USSR.
After the “democratization” (i.e. liberalization) of Russia (now “Russian Federation”), a bad carbon copy of the federal republic was created in a hurry in the vain hope imitating the capitalist system would make Russia as well organized and prosperous as the First World countries. But many mannerisms of the old system remains: there is no obsession in Russia with minority governments, much of the party divisions are artificial (mock liberalism) and, in practice, the important stuff is still decided between oligarchs, what is left of the State machine and the Military.
But now there is a high level of American infiltration in Russia. If, after Putin’s death, the liberals make a move to take the government and do a Yeltsin 2.0, it will be up to the Military (hopefully) to make a decision. Depending on how this trade war between China and the USA will be at that point, things could pend to one side or the other. My high-risk bet here is that, 10-20 years from now, there will be a chance Russia may speculate with going back to socialism but “with Chinese characteristics” (if China is “winning” the trade war).
Posted by: vk | Aug 26 2019 0:46 utc | 50
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