All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you
but first they must catch you.
The importance of foreign language ability:
In life you will learn many things, some will turn out to be important, others will not matter much; we learn all these different things because it is not certain, which exact skills we will require in a time of emergency, and then it will be too late to train them to standard. However, language ability just about always winds up being useful, at least somewhat.
Word of the Day: Thorough, Detailed, Exhaustive; tiefgehend, ausfuehrlich, weitgehend; détaillé, detallado, подробный, 详尽(pinyin: xiáng jìn). Tones matter!
Learn to Read. Learn Ciphers & Codes. “Not everyone can stick a spider in Washington” 学习注音符号。Eat Crayons.
GOOD TIMES BAD TIMES French, English, Russian, German, Polish. No disinformation.
CASPIAN REPORT English, German, Spanish, Russian less accurate than GTBT with some (unintentional?) disinformation. View critically.
Zelenskiy predicts Putin will be assassinated by his own people. Putin has already survived at least a half dozen assassination attempts during the past 20 years so. So… “Maybe!” Hope dies last.
Purge & Bakhmut: Zelensky-Purges-Commander
FRANCAIS
RFI La Chine détaille son plan de paix en 12 points pour la résolution de la guerre en Ukraine Aussi dans le monde mais paie wall
La Chine songe à envoyer des armes à la Russie, dit Stoltenberg (OTAN)
(AUDIO + Ecrit) Figaro la Chine envisage de produire des «drones kamikazes» pour la Russie aussie aussi dans La Parisien et Le Point et der Spiegel
Confer: washington post artillery
A Kiev, le front politique semble plus uni et décidé que jamais
Guerre en Ukraine : la guerre de retour en Europe, les politiques de défense doivent s'adapter
Vladimir-poutine-promet-la-mise-en-service-de-son-missile-sarmat-cette-annee
Zelensky-cet-humoriste-devenu-en-un-an-le-heros-du-monde-libre
Vladimir-poutine-les-obsessions-d-un-president-belliciste
Quels-sont-les-pays-qui-ont-le-plus-aide-l-ukraine-financierement (le Monde), pareil dans Nouvel Observateur
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/02/23/how-to-win-the-hot-war-in-ukraine-and-the-cold-war-that-will-follow-it (w/audio). War won’t end in truce or negotiation because neither side can compromise nor will they. Each deeply committed to mutually inconsistent ideas & maps. Putin lies constantly, breaks his word whenever he pleases, may no longer be a rational actor & in any case is no solid negotiation partner.
Quickest way to end stupid useless war? Kill Putin, Foster a Coup, Encourage a Russian Civil War. Alternative? A long grinding war of attrition with expensive oil, expensive grain, and a global recession I’m a can du kind o’ fella! This ends with Putin dead or in the docket for war crimes. If you want to get there as quickly and bloodlessly as possible I suggest following my lead.
Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) sets up “Hawk” (Yastreb) private military contractor to displace Wagner. The more dumb Russian gun bunnies traipsing about Ukraine with poor supply, worse leadership, and different uniforms they likelier they are to turn their guns on each other.
Wagner-boss PRIGOZHIN -slams-russias-top-military-leaders-for-alleged-treason
Vladimir Putin gives important speech: said Prigozhin NOWHERE TO BE SEEN…
Inbound Russian civil war (video)
Putin-lost-everything: Boris-Bondarev
Russia-intercontinental-ballistic-missile-test FAILED
russia-lost-half-its-tanks-in one-year
Why didn’t Ukrainian Authorities Foresee the War? (Russian, Video)
CHINA 中国
deterrence-failed yet makes war less likely. War is always possible but
deterrence+ collective security + free trade + cross border investment + functional institutionalism = world peace. I can get the Chinese Communist Party to say exactly that Good Ideas are persuasive, especially when you know the other guy’s ideas and language.
Zelensky-china-xi-jinping-russia-ukraine-peace-plan
China rolls back unconditional support for Russia
USA can’t keep pace w/ Chinese ship-building.
China’s New Era Security Statement
Russia Studies China’s New Security Plan
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Canada-discovers-chinese-buoys-in-the-arctic
PLA Navy destroyer Nanning leaves Abu Dhabi after defense exhibition (Video)
“Hidden in plain sight”. Purported Communist, billionnaire Jack Ma of Ant Financial, has been at least de facto party purged, is certainly sidelined as a political actor. We can see this reference to “zombies” as 1. referring to over-indebted real property interests, whether in Chinese ghost cities, Evergrand, and/or U.S. securitized real estate debt. It may also be referring to 2. “zombie” Maoists, and thus an indirect attack or criticism of 毛 宁 deputy director Ning of the Chinese Foreign Ministry. It may also be seen as a critique of the CPUSA, whch for decades fielded a man named Gus for President (Fun Gus). It may also be an intimation of further biological warfare research in China. During World War 2 China was subjected to extensive biological warfare attacks as well as bio-war experiments on human test subjects, most always fatal to the victims. This is why China does intensively research bio war. For Europeans it’s just a theory, well at least till 2019. For Chinese people bio war is a lived historic experience from World War II. The theme of insects (including Ant Financial) hiding in plain sight recurs across the straits in Taiwan.
Minnie Chan of the South China Morning Post agrees with me: china-wont-arm-russia-ukraine-war-dont-rule-out-third-parties-analysts-say
ukraine-war-1-year-what-lessons-has-chinas-military-learnedANALYSIS
18-27 months ago I was asking in no uncertain terms about nuclear non-proliferation & deterrence policies and strategies. Hopefully you now see Why. Putin's objectives in Ukraine are simply to conquer all of Ukraine. Then Transnistria, then Moldova, then Estonia, then the other Baltic republics, and then Finland and finally Poland in his effort to reconstitute the Russian empire with its borders under Empress Catherine the Great. Likeliest outcome: Russia will disintegrate into its constituent republics as a result of a second Russian civil war emerging from internecine conflicts between various mercenary groups and Russian armed forces' branches for supplies, blame, and political power. Putin likely deathly ill. Most recent speech characterized by constant coughing, behind the rostrum constant leg twitching, probably due to a failed assassination attempt using VX, SARIN or some other nerve agent. Putin has already survived at least two attempts on his life in just the past year. Unlikely to be assassinated. In the post Russian Federation expect Komi, Mari republics (Finno-Ugric) which will be aligned with Finland and Estonia; Turkic republics in Central Asia as well as Yakutia likely to align with Turkiye as are the various soon-to-be Islamic republics: Ingushetia, Dagestan, Bashkoristan. Marshall Plan 2.0 will be required with European participation, possibly including Chin. China will try to fill the power vacuum, already is with respect to Kazakhstan and other already independent former Soviet central Asian republics. However, natural affinities of language and culture (religion) explain why China less than likely to prevail in the scramble for military influence in Central Asia which will follow the collapse of the Russian Federation but likely to enjoy good trade & investment opportunities in central asia and ex Russian Federation. Russian nuclear forces will not be used because China has already prohibited that to Russia. Russian use of nuclear weapons would likely lead to Chinese invasion of Siberia, Kamchatka, to retake lands seized from China by the Russian Empire. China will not supply munitions to Russia, preferring cheap Russian oil and a favorable position in the post-war era. Even if Putin ordered nuclear release, Russian military likely to disobey and coup would ensue. Even if launch were ordered and obeyed, many rockets would not launch, of those which did some would fail to navigate to target, of those some would be destroyed by anti-missile defence, and of those that reach their target most would not detonate due to lack of maintenance. Putin knows use of nuclear weapons would mean his own death, one way or other. I knew full well Russia would invade, spent about 8 years preparing for it. I point out the likeliest end game to get their quickly. If you like the results I'm getting, then do as I suggest. Who waged 20 years of failed "war on terror", trying to turn deeply religious patriarchal tribal clan based subsistence economies ... into Sweden? Strategy in those wars was so clearly stupid. I took no part in them other than to try to limit your self-destructive torture festival. So ... do as I suggest, it will go much better for you (less blood, more money). Putin and most of his commanders as well as large numbers of troops truly expected to be greeted as liberators, which explains their inadequate numbers, over-ambitious goals, and hesitancy at first to use deadly force. Never believe your own propaganda. Always have contingency plans. Had Putin a contingency plan we might now be facing the bitter guerrilla war which we were planing for. This explains why our sabotage operations in occupied Ukraine and Russia are so effective. 义
CHINA AND WISHFUL THINKING In the real world it's entirely possible that the USA will "decouple" and China is already doing so ("internal circulation"). I'm ambivalent in that if the USA decouples I will not complain and if it does not I also will not complain. No amount of cross border trade or investment changes the fact: China is a dictatorship, a state capitalist mercantilist dictatorship. The CCP/PRC fully intends to replace the USA as global hegemon.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND NATIONAL SECURITY IN “THE NEW ERA”: CHINA’S POLITICAL WARFARE STRATEGY China claims we live in a “new era” of international relations; meanwhile, Western capitalists are claiming “the end of the post-cold war era”. That latter claim is illogical, think about it to understand why. Others claim “the end of the unipolar moment”. China’s claim is likely best founded, least illogical but itself rests on the wrong idea that peacetime politics continues war: blame Clausewitz and Mao. War is not the continuation of politics by other means. War is the failure of politics to reach peaceful productive sensible compromise. Killing people and negotiating with them are fundamentally divergent activities: thus war is not politics, political warfare is a rightist error, not opportunist, but contraries dialectical materialism. Our “new era” if it is one, most certainly isn’t that envisioned by the CCP, especially the Xi faction, in February 2022…
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intelligence-russia-us-ukraine-china
https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2023/02/23/1-this-damn-year
Experts predicted a wheat shortage after Russia invaded Ukraine. Why didn't it happen?
FREE eBOOKS https://books2read.com/u/brXDZY
The Devil’s Diplomatic Dictionary…
Peter Zeihan is Wrong: Here’s Why
Niall Ferguson Is Wrong about Empire, Ukraine, and a New Cold War: Here’s Why
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4312895
Sleepwalking To War? Stephen Walt Is Wrong. Here’s Why
More here: https://amazon.com/author/quizmaster
IF YOU WANT SOMEONE ELSE TO DO SOMETHING DIFFERENTLY YOU BETTER TELL THEM WHAT THAT OTHER THING IS AND WHY THEY SHOULD DO AS YOU SUGGEST AND HOW THEY MIGHT BEST DO THAT
In other words, what would you have differently, what better idea have You?
…but first they must catch you!