|
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2021-060
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
> While China has not publicly released a new nuclear posture statement that supersedes the 2006 White Paper, the construction of new missile silos configured to hold solid-fuel ICBMs possessing multiple warheads changes the nuclear posture options for China. The most likely change is to transition from a pure retaliatory strike capability (“counterattack in self-defense”) to a launch-on-warning posture, which means the Chinese missiles would leave their silos when an attack was detected instead of waiting for a nuclear attack to actually occur. Given China’s declared nuclear policy, a launch-on-warning posture allows China to retain its no-first-use policy while simultaneously ensuring the survivability of its nuclear forces. <
> Although Joe Biden has set a deadline for withdrawal of August 31, American defense sources told The Times that there was every intention to continue with the airstrikes after that date. <
—
> The taking of province capitals continues. On August 6 the Taliban took Zaranji (Nimruz province). Yesterday they took Sheberghan (Jowzjan). Today Kunduz (Kunduz) and Sar-e Pol (Sar-e Pol) have fallen though fighting on their peripheries continues. Fighting is currently ongoing within Taloquan (Takhar), Fayzaabd (Badakhshan) and Mazar-i-Sharif (Balkh).
The first thing the Taliban do in every large city they capture is to free prisoners and to seize truckloads of weapons from police and military headquarters before the U.S. can bomb those. They can thereby increase their numbers even while taking casualties. – b. <
—
Su-57 5th Gen Fighter @5thSu – 10:30 UTC 8. Aug 2021
So taliban will be the second largest “military force” in the world to operate #Oshkosh JLTV after #American forces😜😜
bigger
—-
Other issues:
Anti-China Lobby:
Dark Matter:
Woke Watch:
> To China watchers, what's going on in the U.S. is pretty familiar. A political faction that has been identified as dangerously disruptive and expendable is being purged. Main tool available is crime of insurrection under U.S. criminal code (10 years prison/barred from office) but unclear to me it will be able to nail El Trumpo let alone spade out his GOP sympathizers. Thoroughgoing purge easier with kind of tools the CCP has.
Maybe people who write longingly about a China coup can apply that state/party model to sorting out U.S. political headaches. The big no-no for the CCP today is dragging street action into factional politics a la Mao/GPCR (and Zhao Ziyang in 89). Upsets the applecart in a dangerous, uncontrolled way and takes things out of the elite comfort zone. U.S. is now developing a suite of legal/media tools to manage and channel street activism (BLM!) and suppress it as needed ("war on right wing extremism"!).
So instead of getting a cathartic and effective show trial where by previous arrangement the splittists recant and put the fear of G*d or at least quick and effective reprisal in the hearts of their followers, we get 1/6 performance art where the bad guys don't even show up. <
Use as open thread …
Below is a Xinhuanet post that is a bit long but quite well pointed, IMO
”
BEIJING, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) — A research report exposing the truth about America’s fight against COVID-19 was made public on Monday by three think tanks in Beijing.
According to the report titled “‘America Ranked First’?! The Truth about America’s Fight against COVID-19,” the United States is well deserved to be the world’s No. 1 anti-pandemic failure, the world’s No. 1 political-blaming country, the world’s No. 1 pandemic spreader, the world’s No. 1 politically-divisive country, the world’s No. 1 currency-abusing country, the world’s No. 1 turbulent country during the pandemic, the world’s No. 1 disinforming country, and the world’s No. 1 country advocating origin tracing terrorism.
The report was jointly released by the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies of the Renmin University of China, the Taihe Institute and the Intellisia Institute.
The following are some key points from the report.
FOR PARTISAN COMPETITIONS, NOT FOR THE LIVES
As of Aug. 7, 2021, the United States had reported 35,530,951 cumulative confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 613,658 deaths. In terms of both numbers, the United States ranks first in the world.
Behind the cold numbers lies the domestic politics of the United States — particularly the highly politicized partisanship, which has claimed the lives of many Americans “who need not have died.”
“It’s a slaughter,” said William Foege, an American epidemiologist.
ANTI-SCIENCE AND AGAINST COMMON SENSE
The U.S. government’s efforts in pandemic prevention and control, policy measures, and virus source investigation ran contrary to science and common sense, and are the direct reasons why the United States is a “failed country in fighting the pandemic.”
Serious violation of common scientific knowledge: The U.S. government spread false information on anti-intellectualism through various channels such as the White House press conference, mass media, and social media.
Covering up the truth: The first COVID-19 case in the United States was officially reported on January 21, 2020. However, increasing evidence suggests that the actual emergence of an outbreak in the country happened much earlier.
Presumption of guilt involving virus origin tracing: The U.S. government repeatedly encouraged its allies and hijacked the World Health Organization to hype the so-called “evidence” and “convict” China. According to a U.S. media report, senior White House officials pressured the intelligence community to link the COVID-19 virus to the Wuhan virology institute.
Suppression of scientists: To advance political goals on the pretext of the pandemic, the U.S. government has suppressed scientists and throttled professional opinions. Scientists who denied the “lab leak theory” have been subjected to online harassment. This has not only affected their normal work but also jeopardized their personal safety.
SYSTEM FAILURES RESULT IN UNMANAGEABLE PANDEMIC
“Disunited America” pattern of response to the pandemic: The federal system in the United States, plagued by excuse-making partisanship, led to a “disunited” response to the pandemic.
Power checks and balances become power games: During the pandemic, the horizontal separation of power evolved from a check and balance of power to a game of power under the manipulation of partisan disputes. The United States has so far had confusing data on the pandemic. On the one hand, it has not been treating confirmed cases with full capacity in a timely manner. On the other hand, it has wasted a lot of valuable medical resources due to the lack of unified and effective coordination.
Everything for the capital: Save the stock market but not the people. The Federal Reserve took “extraordinary” measures to increase money supply. In fact, the United States in a year and a half printed nearly half of all the dollars for more than 200 years. Countries around the world had to bear the burden of inflation, instability, and “bubble” pressures that they should not have suffered.
EXACERBATED SOCIAL GAP
Steep rise in unemployment and worsening disparity between the rich and the poor: The COVID-19 pandemic has seen U.S. business closures and waves of unemployment occurring faster and on a larger scale than expected. The lower class and other vulnerable groups are facing higher risks of unemployment. The gap between rich and poor further widened as wealth flowed into the hands of a few more quickly.
Intensification of racial conflicts: The conspiracy about the origins of COVID-19 has fueled bullying and hatred toward Asians. Asian-American discrimination cases nearly doubled in March 2021 alone.
Social unrest: Social unrest is a “chronic disease” in the United States. Sadly, the pandemic is acting as an “amplifier” to further exacerbate social tensions. This year, the U.S. topped the list of crime rates in developed countries, much higher than countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Spain, as well as many developing countries. Social unrest manifests itself in three main ways: guns out of control, hate crimes and political chaos.
The general public has a sense of anxiety and powerlessness: A report titled “Historic Shift in Americans’ Happiness Amid Pandemic” by the National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago, released in June 2020, shows that Americans are at their lowest level of happiness ever.
WILLFUL DESTRUCTION OF GLOBAL PANDEMIC RESISTANCE
Letting the virus be exported to act as a “spreader country”: In the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, more than 20 million U.S. citizens were still traveling abroad. The United States has continued to export the virus outside its borders, making it a veritable “proliferator.” The country has an inescapable responsibility for the spread of infections globally.
Rejection of international vaccine cooperation: In the early stages of promoting COVID-19 vaccination, the United States engaged in “vaccine nationalism” and created an “immunization divide,” politicizing vaccine cooperation and impeding global cooperation on vaccines, treatment, and joint prevention and control. Such actions made it difficult for poor countries to obtain vaccines, leading to an imbalance in the global vaccine supply.
Duke University’s Center for Global Health Innovation estimates that by the summer of 2021, the United States may have a surplus of 300 million or more doses of COVID-19 vaccine. The Wall Street Journal reported on May 17 that the United States had exported only 3 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine, less than one percent of its vaccine production.
Weaponizing the pandemic by blaming other countries: The United States has turned a global public health disaster into a major power tussle by politicizing scientific issues such as the anti-pandemic model, the origin tracing of the pandemic, and the effectiveness of the vaccine, shifting the blame to the outside world and misleading the international community.
The terrorism of tracing the origin of the virus: A “virus” even deadlier than the COVID-19 is the growing “retroactive terrorism” led by the United States. Washington has strongly promoted the so-called virus tracing in other countries, coercing the World Health Organization and some scientists to give up their objective and impartial positions in an attempt to make them bow down in front of hegemony and bullying.
”
Posted by: psychohistorian | Aug 10 2021 5:00 utc | 138
Uncle T, about CIA drug running:
Here’s a little story some might find interesting. When I first started flying right seat in 747s [copilot] many years ago, I was often teamed with a colorful senior captain. On those long flights, he would sometimes regale us with stories of his Air America years [in those days the 747 still had a flight engineer, sitting in the middle seat and responsible for the engines, and those four big throttle levers on the center pedestal].
He was a no-nonsense guy, and one of the best airmen I had the privilege to learn from. But boy could he tell a story! Unlike many who were former military, he came up from the private pilot ranks, flying all kinds of increasingly bigger ‘crates’ starting in his teenage years.
By the early 1960s he was flying around local businessmen in small twin engine piston-prop airplanes. Like everyone in his shoes, he was ‘building time’ and had his eye on the ultimate prize, the ‘big iron.’
One day a buddy gave him a tip about a job opening flying overseas. He gave him a Washington DC phone number, and a few days later got airline tickets in the mail to come in for an interview.
He was only barely into his twenties, but he had all the ratings…airline transport pilot, DC3 type rating etc. Long story short, a few weeks later he landed in Chiang Kai Shek’s Taipei, for ‘indoctrination’ and ground school.
The first eye-opener was what was then one of the world’s biggest aircraft maintenance hangars. It had been a gargantuan maintenance barge during the Chinese civil war that the US gave to Chiang. They eventually floated it across the straits to Taiwan when they fled the PLA.
At that time Air America was the second-biggest airline in the world, after Aeroflot—although its fleet consisted of a lot of small airplanes that could get into and out of jungle strips hacked out of the bush. A lot of those would end up wrecked and then rebuilt in that huge hangar, which was more like an aircraft factory.
Our wide-eyed young flyer was on the job for about two months, flying the ‘milk run’ from Bangkok to Ventiane, Laos, before he finally asked the C47 [military version of the DC3] captain sitting next to him, what exactly everybody means when they say ‘The Company’?
He knew that Air America was owned by Air Asia, which was in turn owned by the Pacific Corporation—which also owned Civil Air Transport. The latter a classy passenger-carrying outfit flying the modern new jets, mostly on the major city routes like Tokyo, Bangkok etc. These had a huge red and gold Chinese dragon painted on the nose [the pilots called it the ‘golden worm’], and came ‘equipped’ with drop-dead gorgeous Chinese stewardesses wearing those tight-fitting dresses with slits down either hip, called Cheongsams.
The C47 left-seater looked at him in disbelief. It was only then that our young hero found out he was working for the CIA!
They would fly into Laos with equipment and supplies and bring back crates of ‘rice noodles,’ wink-wink!
Btw, here is a neat aerial map of Laos put together by one of the guys who flew there in those years. You can click on any part for more detailed views, with the improvised airfields highlighted in red.
Prof Alfred McCoy wrote THE book on that ‘Golden Triangle’ business, as you mention—and the wikipedia article on the CIA drug trade has some nice quotes from him. I’ll just pull one here:
The CIA’s front company, Air America was alleged to have profited from transporting opium and heroin on behalf of Hmong leader Vang Pao, or of “turning a blind eye” to the Laotian military doing it.
This allegation has been supported also by former Laos CIA paramilitary Anthony Poshepny (aka Tony Poe), former Air America pilots, and other people involved in the war. It is portrayed in the movie Air America.
Air America shut down in 1975, after the final collapse of the Saigon puppet regime, and the infamous US embassy rooftop evacuation by helicopter.
But it didn’t take long for ‘The Company’ to get back in business, this time the coke trade in Latin America. While ‘The Gipper’ was telling everyone on TV how the evil communist Sandinistas were running drugs with Pablo Escobar, and Nancy was telling young people to ‘just say no,’ it was actually the CIA-directed contras that were running this enterprise. [See Danilo Blandon].
The DEA was earnestly trying to stop the flow of coke, but then things like this would happen:
U.S. Government Officials said in 1990 the Anti-Drug Unit of the C.I.A. “accidentally” shipped a ton of cocaine into the United States from Venezuela as part of an effort to infiltrate and gather evidence on drug gangs.
The cocaine was sold on the streets in the United States. No criminal charges were made in this incident, however C.I.A. officer Mark McFarlin resigned and another C.I.A. officer was disciplined. The CIA issued a statement on the incident saying there was “poor judgment and management on the part of several C.I.A. officers”.
The DEA wasn’t impressed by the ‘accidental’ screwup:
During a PBS Frontline investigation, DEA field agent Hector Berrellez said, “I believe that elements working for the CIA were involved in bringing drugs into the country.”
“I know specifically that some of the CIA contract workers, meaning some of the pilots, in fact were bringing drugs into the U.S. and landing some of these drugs in government air bases. And I know so because I was told by some of these pilots that in fact they had done that.”
So much of this has been exposed over the years, that there have been lots of government investigations and such—which were mostly toothless pro forma exercises, designed for PR.
Today we know that the CIA is heavily involved in the movie industry [also the Pentagon]. Some of these productions like the Tom Cruise movie American Made, are designed to whitewash this well-documented activity.
As for Afghanistan, there is little doubt the CIA is running the drug trade. The Taliban banned opium cultivation after they consolidated power in the 1990s. This chart from the UN tells the story.
The Afghan government still controls about a quarter of the country’s territory. The Taliban never held more than half the country, often less—until the recent offensive. So we know where the poppy fields were!
Posted by: Gordog | Aug 10 2021 17:39 utc | 182
|
