by Pepe Escobar (cross-posted with the Asia Times ) by special agreement with the author)
All roads seem to lead to Rome as Italy expresses its love for China’s Belt and Road Initiative
President Xi Jinping is due to arrive in Italy for an official visit on March 22. The top theme of discussion will be the New Silk Road, or the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
A day earlier, in Brussels, the EU is to debate a common strategy related to Chinese investments in Europe.
A substantial part of the EU is already linked de facto with BRI. That includes Greece, Portugal, 11 EU nations belonging to the 16+1 group of China plus Central and Eastern Europe and, for all practical purposes, Italy.
And yet it takes an undersecretary in the Italian economic development ministry, Michele Geraci, to tell the Financial Times that a memorandum of understanding supporting BRI will be signed during Xi’s visit, for all (White House) hell to break loose.
The FT is not shy of editorializing, calling BRI a “contentious infrastructure program.” BRI is a vast, far-reaching, long-term Eurasia integration project, and the only quasi-global development program in the market, any market. It’s especially “contentious” to Washington – because the US government, as I detailed elsewhere, decided to antagonize it instead of profiting from it.
A White House National Security Council spokesperson deriding BRI as a “made by China, for China” project does not make it so. Otherwise, no less than 152 – and counting – nations and international organizations would not have formally endorsed BRI.
China’s semi-official response to the White House, eschewing the usual diplomatic remarks by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, came via a scathing, unsigned editorial in the Global Times which accuses Europe of being subjected to Washington’s foreign policy and a transatlantic alliance that is not coherent with its 21st century needs.
Geraci states the obvious; the BRI link will allow more of Made in Italy to be exported to China. As someone who lives between Europe and Asia, and always discusses BRI while in Italy, I see that all the time. The appeal of Made in Italy for the Chinese consumer – food, fashion, art, interior design, not to mention all those Ferraris and Lamborghinis – is unrivaled, even by France. Chinese tourists just can’t get enough of Venice, Florence, Rome – and shopping in Milan.
Washington can build no case lecturing Italians that a BRI link undermines the US side in the trade war – considering that some sort of Xi-Trump deal may be imminent anyway. Brussels for its part is already deeply divided, especially because of France.
German business knows that China is the present and future market of choice; besides, one of the top terminals of the New Silk Road is Duisburg, in the Ruhr valley.
We’re talking about the 11,000 km-long Yuxinou container cargo train connection, active since 2014; Chongqing, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, all the way to Duisburg. Yuxinou (short for Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe), one of the key corridors of the New Silk Roads, is bound to be upgraded to high-speed rail status in the next decade.
Nearly a year ago I explained in some detail on Asia Times how Italy was already linked to BRI.
Essentially, it’s all about Italy – the number three European nation on naval trade – configured as the top southern European terminal for BRI; the entry door for connectivity routes from east and south while also serving, in a cost-effective manner, scores of destinations west and north.
Absolutely key in the project is the current revamping of the port of Venice – channeling supply lines from China via the Mediterranean towards Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Slovenia and Hungary. Venice is being configured as an alternative superport to Rotterdam and Hamburg – which are also BRI-linked. I called it the Battle of the Superports.
Whatever Washington, the City of London and even Brussels may think about it, this is something that Rome – and Milan – identifies as a matter of Italian national interest. And considering the undying Chinese love affair with all manifestations of Made in Italy, win-win, once again, wins.
A small note – We made an error at The Saker and initially the incorrect article was posted for Pepe Escobar. This is now the correct one, but comments on the incorrect article were deleted. Apologies for this error.
A small note – We made an error at The Saker and initially the incorrect article was posted for Pepe Escobar. This is now the correct one, but comments on the incorrect article were deleted. Apologies for this error.
We can now carry on ;-)
Phew – that’s a relief
This is the Pepe we know and trust. Facts and analysis both of which he is an expert in. This contrasts so vividly with the mentality of the other article and the hundreds like it pouring endlessly out of the corporate media lie machine – driven by nothing more than malevolence and hatred.
It is interesting to watch the emergence of what might become the start of Europeans learning to think for themselves.
Germany in recent days refused to send it’s navy to provoke Russia at Kerch, confirmed that they will continue to embrace Nordstream 2 and also said they do intend to trade with Iran using instex all three actions to the fury of the US.
Interestingly also, despite sanctions being the official German government policy, many German companies continue to trade with Russia and at least 2 giants – Volkswagen and Siemens – have moved major infrastructure plants to Russia. A Russian-German partnership would be a world game changer.
Italy has declared support for the “yellow vests” and is set to announce BRI initiatives as Pepe describes.
And Chinese deals with Italy do not involve destruction of it’s national sovereignty and the subversion of the culture and morals as the “full spectrum dominance” of the zionist owned EU does.
Hungary has said the EU might break up if the insane levels of immigration are allowed to continue and Euro-sceptic parties seem set for major gains in the upcoming elections.
The Brits are furious that the political elite operating within the two main – and heavily zionist controlled – identical parties has failed to effect a Brexit which the people voted for. Trouble is brewing over this. It signals to millions that British “democracy” is a complete sham.
Europeans in increasing numbers want their countries back and the Chinese interest in Italy is a good example of where they see the future in terms of achieving jobs and prosperity whilst the moribund EU dictatorship in Brussels has nothing to offer it’s totally disenfranchised population except totalitarianism and repression a al Macron.
There is definitely a wind of awakening blowing through Europe.
There are signs of a slow-motion revolt by the vassal states. Everything is economics. The world economy is slowing down. The US trade war with China is crippling commerce globally because of supply chains in so many nations being effected.
The EU is impacted by sanctions against Russia and Iran.
The NATO nations have been harangued by Trump into using $100 Billion for military expenditures. Most of those purchases benefit only the US.
The desire of European nations to hook into the BRI is frustrated by US policies and actions.
The US endless wars traps NATO and coalition partners in quagmires that benefit only the US hegemony.
The reality is unsustainable. The revolt is evident. The EU trying to hold onto the Iran nuclear deal; and several European nations re-establishing smoothed relations with Russia.
The restlessness in all nations brought by the UniPolar demands of the US is at the breaking stage. Hungary, Italy, and India all have shown they will not tow the line. Turkey is heretical to US hegemony.
The US game plan to isolate Russia, China, Iran and North Korea is too much. These are not threats to most other nations. Only the US insists these four are “evil”. The rest of the world sees them as inviting markets and willing partners or tempting opportunities for growth and development.
Rational actors see the economics. The US sees challengers and threats. The dissonance is profound.
And the four nations all know how to ‘play’ that dissonance against the US.
Larchmonter445
Well spoken. There is an old Army rule which goes like this:”He who wants to control everything ends up controlling nothing”. Washington forgot about this rule. It is now paying the price. It’s empire, one of the shortest in history, is dissipating, cracking up.
As I have written before, Washington is not fully aware what is going on. It is still living in the past and issuing imperial decrees, thinking it’s allies, and others, would go along. Well, those days are coming to an end. When it comes to Europe, it is ceasing to play the role of Roman auxiliary troops, to be used every time Washington needs them. The political and economic center of power is moving towards the East, and this cannot be stopped short of a general war, for which there is no appetite in Europe. However, has Washington grasped this fact ?
The complicating factor in the USA, and in the West as a whole, is Zionazi rule. Without the USA as a bullying, thuggish, destructive planetary overlord, the USA’s own Boss, Israel and the Zionazi International, lose their de facto status as global ‘shadow shoguns’. Or, if you prefer, the bunraku puppet-plays’ Master manipulators, resplendent in their finery as they control their marionettes, but Heaven help any ‘antisemite’ who notices their presence and says so.
No US rule, no Israeli immunity to International Law, no impunity as they drive the Palestinians into the dust, endlessly, no veto over Western politics, as in the destruction of UK Labour through utterly mendacious accusations of the Supreme Crime- ‘antisemitism. No several billions a year in Imperial Tribute from the USA, no refusal to acknowledge their shared humanity will all others etc. Just human beings in a State beholden to International Law like the rest of us. The Zionazis will do ANYTHING, including causing a war with Iran, to prevent that. It will probably start with a massacre in Gaza, or an attack on Lebanon or Syria, but the approaching coalescence of Purim, Satan-yahoo’s criminal charges and the Israeli election indicate that it might be quite soon.
The Zionazis, as ever, have pushed too far. The growing reaction in the UK among the hundreds of thousands who joined UK Labour to support Corbyn in opposition to neo-liberal class hatred and economic austerity, to the insanely vicious (as ever) Zionazi campaign to destroy their hopes through an ENTIRELY fraudulent campaign of lying accusations of ‘antisemitism’, is a good sign. Unfortunately Corbyn continues to grovel like a craven cur, as if that would stop the Gods Upon the Earth driving to destroy him and all he represents. The Labour members need to oust him and find someone like him, with spine. It’s simple enough-say you oppose all racism and class hatred etc, call out phony accusations and support the victims of the smear campaign, declare that the Palestinians are as valuable human beings as Jews, damn the swine (the Zionazis) to throw as much dirt as they wish and demand that decent Jews call out the racist, fascists and supremacists in their community.
Thank you for the update.
Yes, it is a relief that Pepe Escobar is not the author of the provocative article. Yet, him sharing space with such BIASED reporting is a concern.
A link to the original incorrect posting follows. Upon reading it, one can understand why it might arouse substantial agitation -mostly because of the one-sidedness and very skilled lack of detail..
Original link: New Zealand wakes belatedly to its China risk While Wellington and Beijing look to boost trade ties, rising security concerns have recently roiled bilateral relations By HELEN CLARK, PERTH
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/02/article/new-zealand-wakes-belatedly-to-its-china-risk/
If taking time to read it, the Chinese position which was skillfully omitted by Helen Clark, should be considered in regarding the “international tribunal ruling”. That position can be noted in the following article:
Tribunal not a UN body, violates UN Charter spirit
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-07/26/content_26218138.htm
What the hell is this comment doing on this thread?
Totally irrelevant.
Oh come on … it was just an error. Don’t make more of it than what it was.
HJay, the entire affair of the reference to the ‘Arbitration’ Panel was a dirty sham from beginning to end, not that you would know that from the ‘reporting’ by the racist scum of the Western fakestream media.
The referral was a US effort, with the Philippines providing a mere fig-leaf. Nearly the entire legal team were from the USA, the Philippines regime of the hereditary thug, Aquino (his grandfather was the leading Filipino Quisling during Japanese Occupation in WW2)doing the Boss in Thanatopolis DC’s will. The USA is not even a signatory to UNCLOS, another layer of hypocrisy.
‘Arbitration’ involves negotiation between parties, so China’s non-involvement renders it null. That didn’t stop the Chief Judge’, a Japanese ally of another hereditary fascist, Abe, who grandfather was a top war criminal during WW2. Japan having territorial disputes with China over the illegally stolen Diaoyu Islands, the Japanese judge should have absented himself, but niceties of law are irrelevant. He appointed the other judges, all bar one from NATO countries, bastions of Western Moral Values against the Yellow Peril, and the one an African, long employed in the West, so plainly vetted for ‘reliability’. The utterly spurious, one-sided and contemptuous ‘findings’ were a dirty farce.
Indeed, a nice little ”bonus” here would be if the Kerch bridge and Sevastopol’s port were put to maximum use within the context of the BRI. That would certainly drive the Zionazis a-little-angrier-than-usual, so to speak, contemplating how Russia and China made Crimea great again. ”Illegal annexations” are in the eye of the beholder.
Looking at the rail infrastructure currently being built in conjunction with the Kerch bridge, it seems the intent is for that to be a major high speed link in the BRI and Silk Road.
Great news — thank you, Trapper. I’m certainly looking forward to enjoy the Zionazis’ foaming, moaning and groaning greeting the success!
It will become useful for BRI only in case of complete Ukraine’s cure from current bloody idiocy. And even than (especially than) there is no need to run rail link to Southern Europe (via Romania) through Crimea. Better route only through Odessa and Moldova (bypassing Crimea, BTW). Just look at the map. Sevastopol is a strategic naval base but not a trading port. Novorossiysk(SP) is much better suited for such task. Until then the rail through Russia, Belarus, Poland is adequate.
I wonder whether people noticed at the time that the Kerch bridge was built in record time with massive Chinese participation.
Back on topic and still disgusting…
US warns Italy against joining China’s new Silk Road project
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/03/10/590650/US-China-Belt-and-Road-Initiative-Italy-Giuseppe-Conte
US treats Luxembourg like a vassal state or how US imperial hubris has gone bonkers…
/us-treats-luxembourg-like-a-vassal-state-or-us-imperial-hubris-gone-bonkers/
Yes; it will be great when we all have to have a “Social Credit Score” rating. Do not make the mistake of substituting one Zionist Master for another — they are masters at this ;)
China is still a Communist State and Communism was always about total control of humanity, just like the West’s version, the Corporate-run state. They are two sides of the same coin, each using a version of economic-voodoo to justify their totalitarianism. The Communists say there is no such thing as private property — then (((they))) use the state to nab your wealth. The Neoliberals say there is no such thing as the law when it comes to the markets — then (((they))) use the state to nab your wealth.
I find no comfort when Marxists shift over to neoliberalism then back again. (((They))) are the same old shysters conning all of us. Enjoy your silk pajamas but I think Pepe is selling another wheeze in the great East vs West narrative.
“there is no such thing as private property ”
I guess that is why the Chinese have lifted 600 million people out of poverty and into modest prosperity, personal wealth,, home ownership and comfort.
And of course there are tens of thousands of small prosperous businesses . .
Sounds to me like Pepe is telling the truth but I do get the point you regularly make that everything is a lie every journalist is lying and it is all pointless.
I suggest you look a bit further into things. Life in the west can convince us that there is no “good” anywhere but that is just our conditioning and it s not true. Visit Beijing !
The UN reported a few years ago that during a recent decade, something like 2000 to 2010 if I recall correctly, China had been responsible for 110% of global poverty reduction, because other countries, like poor old India, had regressed.
compared to that PEK airport in Beijing – DC’s Reagan looks pathetic
Asset Forfiture; anything one may think they own, can be taken away. And of course, owning property adds a tax to the land on which the home sits. Fail to pay that…………….well life does suck sometimes. Enjoy life, and love. It’s all about the experience, not the material. Now, living free on crown land, different story; The Hermit of Gully Lake.
Communism is ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to their needs’. The Chinese are building a society where the spivs, rorters, rip-off merchants, thieves and parasites are identified to protect the public, unlike the West where they rule, totally.
Mulga; I love your comments. It is entertaining watching Westerners struggling so hard and failing to break out of the western propaganda matrix religious dictum that communism is by definition an evil and oppressive totalitarian system. Talk about blinders imbibed with their mother’s milk. The Chinese know socialism has a living spirit and heart. Did you see the decorative symbol the Chinese put together to commemorate the founding of their communist party? It was a mass of flowers with a great big heart at its center. And Mao was China’s greatest 20th century poet. To share understanding of Maoism Chinese “sing”. Americans live in a culture that does not understand poetry. How can one understand communism if you don’t know the centrality of poetry?
I find it humorous to see people falling for the same wheeze centuries after our ancestors did. You’re defending totalitarian states. There is no point in waving a strawman in front of me either — I know the West is also totalitarian.
I keep having to repeat that Communism/Marxism is not about economics — it was always about gaining total control of a people. Same with neoliberalism. They hide behind fake economic ideologies (e.g. “no such thing as private property” or “we need a lawless market”) and use these to gain total control of our lives and minds. You are all aware of the cultural-marxist strand of these plots aswell.
China is not an exemplar state — the Communist government (i.e. another International-Bankster controlled government) has total control over the lives of its people. Do some research on the Chinese “social credit score”. I suppose you’ll end up defending that aswell.
The West is being deliberately destroyed by liberalism, this was always the plan. This was set down in writing generations ago. We are now reaching the climax of that plan, and now we’ll see the desperate people of the West (denuded of spirituality, family and patriotism) embracing our saviour from the East — Communist China.
The narrative is laughable but you guys here are completely defending it and pushing it. I aint swallowing Pepe’s silk pills.
Flopot,
Your argument ain’t gonna work here. Mulga and Snow Leopard gave you factual and irrevocable evidence that the CPC of China are doing something right for their people. Get over your ism’s infatuations. Start to look at facts its out there. Critical thinking is lacking in the US! BTW i sense an ironic self fulfilling prophecy occurring w all this Western 1960 anti-communism, socialism, ism bla bla talk … hypocrisy. We in the West are turning into what you hate so much. That is the irony.
”The narrative is laughable but you guys here are completely defending it and pushing it. I aint swallowing Pepe’s silk pills.”
If anything is laughable, it’s exactly this impotent, utter defeatist ’Earth-is-flat’ philosophy by which Westerners — totally lacking any intellectual wit and plain spine — try to prove the universality of their own ”experience”, or what passes as such. China has come a very long way since her police and armed forces defeated the West’s colour revolution stunt 30 years ago. And, yes, I’m defending the resolve of the Chinese State with a passion, indeed going on a vacation trip to Beijing coming June to celebrate the West’s first major setback at a very crucial moment when the ominous prospect of a final and total victory for Western imperialism seemed imminent. You ”anti-authoritarians” were defeated there too.
Nussiminem, my mother first visited China in 1974, when The Great Helmsman was still alive. But friends of hers and Dad’s, old Commos from the wharfies’ union, had visited from the 50s, and their stories of peasants building the country up, after 200 years of Western aggression and racist contempt, and of compulsory smoking and boozing with old Long March veterans at State receptions, and my reading ‘Red Star over China’ at school, made me a partisan for China, and that has never changed. Defeating the prototype Colour Revolution in 1989 was, if we yet survive, perhaps THE turning-point in the decline and fall of the American Reich. That and the miraculous appearance of V.V.Putin on the world stage.
Mulga, your past memories shed light on the very nature of the mounting Chinese threat of today: People visiting places and doing that with an open attitude can’t really make the Zionazi media whores’ job easy. And this is precisely what the Chinese economic expansion is consciously aiming at: Easy travel, cooperation, and mutual benefit. The Ziomedia imbecilification works with fewer and fewer believers. Will be interesting to see their vomit and excrement in commemoration of Beijing, June 1989. Indeed, that was the turning point just before the onset of what would otherwise have been pitch black reaction and genocide everywhere.
Nussiminen, here in Austfailia EVERY story concerning China is negative and increasingly viciously so. And EVERY story since 1949 has been so, and before that anti-Chinese sentiment was rife. Despite that true totalitarianism in the ‘Free Press’, millions of Chinese and Australians visit each others countries without problems, the local Chinese community co-exists peacefully, as it has for generations, despite recent utterly Evil attempts to paint them as Fifth Columnists for the Evil CCP. The Empire of Infinite Evil and its minions here, who totally control the military and ‘intelligence’ buffooneries, only exist to spread fear and hatred. They are cancers in semi-human form and they are, and always have been, humanity’s Achilles heel. They practise Divide and Rule tactics that set humanity against one another, even now at the moment of humanity’s greatest ever peril when survival dictates global co-operation, all to the benefit of tiny, immensely hateful and xenophobic, groups.
Flo, to say that China is controlled by ‘International Banksters’ is, to be charitable, bonkers. As to Communism, the eventual aim of all true Marxists is that the State should wither away, and people live in amity and comity, in free association and mutual support, free from exploitation. Utopian, sure, but a world based on any other model is doomed, as is the present one.
I could not agree more, Snow. The average Austfailian is stupid, happily ignorant, totally brainwashed and, inexplicably, arrogantly certain of their own total wonderfulness. I work and have worked for years where I meet many members of the public, and enjoy a chat. To meet an individual who knows anything of the true global situation is like encountering an hermaphroditic unicorn, so rare an occurrence is it. But the ignorant buffoons are legion. Just at the moment, after a record hot summer, record temperature maximums and minimums, fires in wet temperate rainforests, raging fires in the wet tropics and then a ‘once in 2000 years’ flood that drowned 500,000 cattle, the great mediocrity is waking to the reality of rapid climate destabilisation, twenty years after it was obvious to anyone who understood high school science. What is dawning on the less brainwashed, particularly the young, where school-children are revolting, is that, barring a miracle, we have been forced into a gigantic suicide pact, like a global Jonestown. The anger is bubbling up through the tenacious carapace of compulsory stupidity, learned helplessness and ideological brainwashing. From here on, whether to oblivion or salvation, it is going to get very nassty, indeed.
I also read an article by I think, Pepe, though it might have been Jeff Brown, on here though I can’t find it, where he said that although China has a billion plus population, the government are extremely interested in what the people think about policy and teams are sent into every town and village to sound out the peoples’ opinions about policy whether it’s national government issues or small local ones.
These views then get incorporated into policy making. That’s how it works.
Contrary to what many brainwashed western people believe about China, having no knowledge other than what they see or read in the CIA-controlled media, the Chinese are the most consulted population on Earth.
No country is perfect but China is, in my opinion, sincerely trying to improve not only the lot of it’s own people but actually intends, in the long run, to abolish poverty, suffering and disease across the whole planet without hegemonising anybody.
It is about distributing resources and unlocking human potential, and not allowing a few people to own half the planet while the rest starve because the Chinese also know that human potential, given encouragement and investment is almost infinite. The west invests millions in suppressing human potential, controlling everybody and funnelling wealth into a few private hands and offshore tax havens.
Xi refers to “modest prosperity” because he does not see levels of obscene wealth as desirable or meeting human need and the other thing they know in China is that humans are the most fulfilled and happy when they have strong social relationships and a place in their community inside a functioning society.
China is trying to do all this whilst having to spend a large part of it’s wealth on defensive military activities to protect itself from the western predators . Think where the BRI might be if they didn’t have to do all this. Russia too of course.
One compares this approach to the west where crippling loneliness deliberately promoted by war on the family and human society has led to massive ill health, drug addiction and a whole generation of young people whose lonely lives consist of nothing more than their “smart “phone and “social media”.
They begin adult life already heavily in debt having wasted money “training” for jobs that don’t exist.
We have let our young people down very badly.
Most Americans, sadly, are chronically unfit physically and mentally, a metric never discussed in the media. The numbers of them on psychiatric drugs – including even young children – is eye watering and horrifying.
Politically, western countries are now at a point where the population have no say whatsoever in the running of their countries, absolutely none. The political parties work only for the oligarchs.
If this isn’t corporate fascism I don’t know what is.
This is the era in which humanity’s future will be decided. Either we are transformed into transhuman robo-freaks or we defeat the psychopaths and retain our human capacities for creativity and the development of our true and as yet unknown full potential. This is a struggle the human race must win. Everything is at stake.
China and Russia at least offer hope and I thank God for that.
Postscript: Saker’s interview of Jeff Brown on China/Russia/multipolarity.
Very informative and rewarding read.
https://www.greanvillepost.com/2017/10/17/the-saker-interviews-jeff-j-brown/
@ Tomsk
Thank you for your heartfelt outpouring. It is refreshing and comforting to read messages like yours as reminders that one is not alone and there is hope for mankind yet.
As to why China is so denigrated in the capitalist west, apart from being a threat to the US economic hegemony, is the recognition that it is the only bulwark left sustaining an ideology that is an anathema to profit and greed for the ruling elites. In fact, China is the inheritor of the socialist mantle worn by the USSR before it was insidiously destroyed from within, therefore it is a threat and an enemy, like all other countries guided by policies aimed for the betterment of the common good.
Although China has of late embraced limited features of capitalism in its productive capacity to accelerate its economic development, the guiding lights and target is Communism as the way to improve the human condition away from greed, ecological disaster and war. As an aside, the Bolsheviks themselves realised in the earlier years of the Soviet Union that they could not offer the people then “peace, land and bread” (the slogan of the Revolution) because the country’s economy could not sustain the implementation of such program, hence the New Economic Policy with large scope for private enterprise to provide the foundations for a socialist economy. And it worked: from an economic backward position, the USSR in about ten years (1928, when NEP was abandoned, to 1939) became and industrial powerhouse capable to face and defeat Germany singlehandedly, and enormous feat unequal in human history.
And the question is: is there a parallel with our times where Germany is impersonated by the US and USSR by China?
The most convincing manifestation of total Western cretinism is how Westerners happily stick to the enemy conceptions of their betters. Flat-out refusal to show the slightest admiration for the West’s most reputable adversaries, past and present. Westerners swallow the rubbish either when the blame game is shifted abroad to the DPRK, Russia, China, etc. or when the Zionazi curriculum on the 20th century is being peddled.
the west has become a PSYCHOcracy
I’ve been following pro-OBOR developments in Italy for some months now,
The Winds of Cleansing Change, as depicted by Pepe are quite “freshening” and not abating….are they?
The fetid, foul stench of decomposing geo-political divide and conquer Imperial “conflict management” when lifted by any such transformative breeze, say a hot Sirocco (from North Africa into Southern Europe) or a cooling Mistral —(down from France and the Alps, south across the Mediterranean) can change the mood within the hour …or sooner…… for scores of millions of souls sensitive to the Cause and The Necessity ….the High and Low Pressure Dynamics of it all
The economic driver of the change in global weather can be said to be a “Karaburan ” or Power Storm” (a spring and winter katabatic wind of central Asia, in its external manifestation and most vast geographical reach, descending from the Roof of the World…..towards its farthest (lower) shores.
However in its inner manifestation it is a more subtle phenomenon like the concept of Chi…..a combination of breath, oxygen enriched circulation of blood, and more delicate, enzymatic and endocrine changes, in coordination and harmony guided by calmer thought and a more universal consciousness, mellowing the heart and sharpening the mind….while energizing the body in more durable health and well-being than any shallower, less wise, less patient.approach.
What made this possible?
In the innermost sense, two of the Russian words for “wind” …..come to mind:
“Veter” …which sounds a lot like weather., (whether more humid or windier, warmer or cooler, we rarely know very far in advance …and “dykhaniye” breath, breathing, respiration, blowing,
For internal essence I like the Russian root of the latter word, dukh: spirit, mind, ghost, soul, ……and I am thinking that the opening for the healthy Chi Energy-Infused mobile winds of win/win commerce from China were only made possible by the Immovable Rock of Russia:
“Russia has placed an immovable object of sorts in the way of the British geopolitical efforts to use the U.S. to threaten thermonuclear war against Russia and China: that is, Russia’s surprise announcement on March 1, 2018 of military capabilities based on new physical principles, for which the West currently has no rejoinder. And China has breathed new life and optimism for the future into an otherwise dying planet, with the dramatic success of the Belt and Road Initiative and its own epochal accomplishments in poverty reduction. “This is very clearly the future of civilization,” the “Silk Road Lady” stated, four days ago.
It is still true, as many here soberly know, that human civilization on the planet may still be terminated by desperate evil in high places, determined to dominate in a slave system forever, in a grim gamble with nuclear war, within this decade or next, and yet, the change in the nature of the current “wind” brings A Certain Capacity through millions of persons now far more “willing” than ever before in their lives….. to Will a Saner Outcome for Mankind. Such a happier outcome was far more difficult to imagine…in just the fairly recent past …..than it is now.
Bro 93; Your poetic reading is appreciated. It inspires me to offer my own preferred interpretation of your cleansing wind. From were do we discern its cleansing source. The hermetic Christian Rudolf Steiner spoke of the most sublime event possible for humanity as the emergence of the etheric Christ. And the great blessing is that its effects are now visible in the manner you describe. it is global as you say. This wind comes from the center of the world. According to Steiner this is the hidden spiritual force that is pushing up the resistance of evil. The most sublime of all possible events has a Christian resonance and guarantees the further intensification of the resistance on the part of evil. However it also guarantees the final protection of humanity and victory. This at any rate is the poetry that inspires me.
Marco Polo – Biography, Travels and Influence
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marco-Polo
Excellent, related article by Koenig:
Washington is Waging a New Dimension War Against China – and will Lose out Bitterly
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51253.htm
“Once the all-encompassing chittering and chattering about tariffs on Chinese imports by the western corporate media subsided, Trump, egocentric businessman rather than the President of the Empire, “out of the blue”, one could almost say, under the pretext of ‘unfair’ Chinese trading, launches a new ferocious and as usual totally illegal campaign of aggression against China’s fast-growing economy. It’s aillicit campaign against Chinese competition, against Chinese unstoppable growth. It’s a tacit recognition of China’s emerging supremacy which the United States can only confront with fraud, deceit and illegal activities. And this only as long as Washington controls the western monetary system. This won’t be for much longer.”
Geraci states the obvious; the BRI link will allow more of Made in Italy to be exported to China.
Climaveneta, an Italian company, made the cooling system for the Sunway TaihuLight, China’s top supercomputer. “Climaveneta” sounds like it has something to do with Venice…
Presumably ‘water-cooled’ in honor of the soon to be completely sunken city where tourists will need scuba tanks to visit and snap selfies?
I’m all for cruising at insane speeds on Chinese superhighways, chasing fire-breathing dragons through fairy-tale landscapes in a late-model Ferrari or Lamborghini… until a Chinese-built NIO EP9 blows right past you on 1,341 whisper-quiet electric horsepower. Seriously, though, when I tweeted @realDonaldTrump back during the 2016 campaign (in the pre-Bolton/Pence/Abrams/Pompeo era) about the Belt and Road Initiative as a yuuuge opportunity for American foreign investment, I thought the 4D chess master might be interested in what seemed a very profitable proposition all around, in the Xi Jinping win/win style which I wistfully compare to Henry Carey’s “Harmony of Interests” doctrine which informed American political economy before the old British imperial model moved back into town. Pepe’s probably familiar with this line of thought, which can be reverse-engineered back to Leibniz and from there further back to Confucian China, which makes it all the sadder that in order to “Make America Great Again” a presently non-existing American leadership would have to go digging several hundred years back in history, which no one presently on stage is remotely capable of doing. I remember mentioning the North American Power and Water Alliance (NAWAPA) project to bring surplus runoff from the Pacific Northwest to irrigate arid North American plains all the way down to Mexico, eerily similar to the Transaqua project (Italian, by the way) that China is financing in the Chad basin region, using similar surplus flow from the Congo. And on and on and on. Think of all the money (even if it were only about money) Caterpillar, Euclid, etc. would stand to make from such projects. Think about the tremendous stimulus to STEM education in American schools and universities to produce the brainpower to participate meaningfully in this worldwide construction boom. But did he listen to me? Nooo. He only has eyes for Bolton, Pompeo, Pence and Abrams, some of the ugliest buggers on the planet (although Pence doesn’t think so, or Marco Rubio, if you know what I mean). Hopefully someone will have better luck at shaping this bouffanted polymorph into something resembling a political leader with a vision for America in the world. I, frankly, have given up.
These Americans you speak of are not really normal human beings at all. So we can’t kid ourselves that we can reach them by treating them as such. What they really are are ungrounded minds collectively trapped in denial driven ego mania. Even when they have brief flashes of seeming humanity it cannot go anywhere real as they have been conditioned all their lives to see the mass ego mania they are surrounded by as actually, in their eyes, normal and necessary. I see them as set up by the universal process to create a profound dialectical contradiction between the extreme of denial driven ego mania and the rest of humanity which is struggling to validate an authentic humanism. They are no more than educational caricatures.
@Paracletus,
Sounds great ! But you forgot the Masters – those who now possess around 80-90 of Western Wealth – these will only deflate when suddenly other guys play the casino and hand out chips on their own – very, very bad news ! They went so far murdering, killing, destroying, bribing, and threatening that for them there is now only one direction – forward – and allout attack – else they will be roosted slowly past the bones, that’s for certain – that’s what One World Ddor is and was about, nothing else !!!
Can you now understand their perils and the mortal dangers for us non-existent ? There are no bridges behind left standing, no defense in depth is possible ,here we stand or die, that’s their credo !!
Thank you. All of the above is purely tongue-in-cheek, as I am painfully aware of the axiomatic non-humanity of present-day neocons and assorted oligarchic phantasmagoria who’ve been the scourge of humanity since time immemorial. There is, however, a historical precedent for nations rising against Empire, as shown by world-wide support for the American revolution in the 18th century, including Catherine the Great’s refusal to back George III against the Americans (I will promptly acknowledge the imperfections of said revolution, in anticipation of inevitable protests from, among others, present-day “Bolivarian” lefties who hate everything American just because, and far-right ideologues who consider Alexander Hamilton, for example, a communist). Even before the establishment of modern republics there were humanist surges that propelled man forward on the road to greater freedom and material comfort, always tied to fundamental advances in science and technology, which appeared in theological guise (as in the above-referenced Gottfried Leibniz, or Johannes Kepler, for example) and expressed in revolutionary new art forms during periods of political, philosophical and cultural ferment. This we may still hope for, coming perhaps from unexpected quarters.
Please, all it will take is one. Just one.
To give the British the treatment that Gen. Patton described as his tactics …. “Hold them by the nose and kick them in the rear.” (movie version with probably cleaned up language)
The latest of the Unicorns floated by clueless Brits in the Brexit debate is that all the UK has to do is to ask for an extension and they’ll get one. Except, that’s not the rules.
The rule is that when the British ask for an extension, as they are now highly likely to do, the EU Council has to agree. The EU Council is the group of the leaders of the 27 EU countries. And the rules of the EU Council is that they have to have unanimous agreement. Thus, if someone does put forward the motion to agree to the UK’s request for an extension, it takes unanimous agreement of 27 EU leaders.
Thus, all it takes is one to say no.
The Bank of England did an estimate a while back saying the UK economy will lose about 10% of GDP if there is a no-deal Brexit. This would be about a 5 times larger economic shock than the last Great Repression.
Thus, the idiotic English have gotten the UK into a position where all it takes is one EU leader to vote No to hit the UK economy with a 10% shock treatment. At the very least, at least one of the 27 should realize that this is a golden opportunity to soak the Brits for a bunch of money. Because that one vote would be worth a large fortune to the silly Brits who have talked themselves right into this position.
Surely Russia or China can make a deal with someone to help kick the Brits in the hiney? Greece comes to mind. Greece is already a port on the Chinese Belt and Road. Maybe the Chinese can sweeten the pot a little bit. Surely, like most of the rest of the world, the Greeks have got to be sick of English arrogance? Maybe Russia can throw in a deal for favorable terms on connected to South/Turk Stream?
For that matter, maybe Russian intelligence has some blackmail material to play on just one EU leader?
The rewards will be enormous. Not only would this be payback for all the English nonsense about the Skirpals and Novichuk and false flag chem weapons attacks in Syria. Not only would this be payback for the English intelligence arming jihadis around the world to attack Russian interest. Not only would this be payback for the English daring to stick their noses into the South China Sea. Not only would this be payback for all of the wars of the Great Game era against Russia and the colonization of parts of China, the Opium Wars and the 100 year occupation of Hong Kong. This would be ….
— a 10% hit on the British economy.
— probably the destruction of the auto manufacturing industry in Britain.
— Such a disruption of food and medicine that the Brits have already made plans to put the Army into the streets to supress British citizens in the event of No-Deal.
— The shock of a no-deal Brexit probably kills any chance of PM May’s warlike Tory Party from winning an election again for at least a generation. The word Tory would be about as popular in Britain as the word Yeltsin is in Russia after people die from lack of medicines and scramble to put food on the table and lose their jobs.
All it takes is one EU leader. The Brit Parliament will think they are voting away No-Deal on Odin’s Day. Then on Thursday its highly likely that they’ll vote for an extension of article 50. But, that’s their Unicorn of thinking they can just ask for it and it will be granted. All it takes is one EU leader, just one who’s sick of the English and their arrogance and their past empire and their current delusions of Empire to do a really good job of kicking the English below the waist in a way that the British won’t recover from for at least a decade.
It only takes just one!
Remember the Boston Massacre! (or whatever your local favorite for nasty things the Brits have done to your country in the past few hundred years!)
Eventually Russia will be “free” of the Tyranny of the Dollar when that currency is toppled as the world’s reserve currency. The problem is that the kosher constitution of the Russian Central Bank shackles the ruble to whatever is the world’s reserve currency, i.e. bye-bye Dollar, helo Renminbi. The RCB cannot hold an amount in rubles greater than its reserve currency holdings (something like that :P).
So the supposed Silk Road is just another worm.
Gold will be the standard; that`s why China and Russia have been hoarding it and the USA ,stealing it.
Marco Polo was a spy for the Venetian Republic, which today’s equivalent is the Anglo-American Empire. I am flummoxed by the title.