It is getting more and more difficult to escape the continuing story about the newly formed Russia-China alliance and its ramifications:
And while the world is distracted by what Russia is doing on its Western Borders, we ought to look with concern at the growing friendship it is forming to the East. A friendship that has blossomed on the foundation of economic and military cooperation, including a recent multi-billion dollar natural gas deal, cemented with a mutual desire for expansion and an unabashed distaste for America as the world leader.
China’s path over the last two decades is remarkably similar to Russia’s. It has grown from a third world nation, isolated from the wealth of free markets, to a capitalist-totalitarian hybrid, with a booming economy, quickly advancing military capability, strong media censorship and a poor human rights record. The Tiger looks east for its conquests; full control of Taiwan, the East China Sea, and the South China Sea are that nation’s near term goals. And like Russia, when Chinese leadership believes that there will be little or no consequences for its actions it will act. China will continue its slow progression of forcing Filipino, Vietnamese and Japanese vessels out of the maritime areas under dispute, and will continue the buildup of forces in the Taiwan Strait until they believe an international intervention would be untenable; then they will annex Taiwan, sooner than we may think, and it won’t stop there.
The ambitions and the ideology echoed by Russia and China run eerily parallel to the mutual interests which brought Hitler and Mussolini together. And like the WWII Axis of Evil, the development of Russia and China’s military technology and doctrine is being done in peacetime, with all signs pointing towards the nations’ full anticipation of war. Their military goals are clearly to counter the military capabilities of the West. Just as an example, Russia’s SA-20 was designed to shoot down the PATRIOT missile, and China’s DF-21D Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile was developed to destroy the top deck of an Aircraft Carrier.
And while the rest of the world verbally condemns China and Russia without actually intending to enforce any consequences; China and Russia move their pawns into our backyard. The Tiger and the Bear appear to be taking preemptive measures to counter U.S. military might at home by moving forces to Nicaragua. China and Russia are cooperating on a canal in that country meant to rival the Panama Canal.
Not only does this provide an economic foothold for Russia and China in Central America, but it is an excellent smoke screen for Russia to use Nicaragua as a strategic operating base. Compound the canal with the April 2014 announcement of Russian legislation approving the construction of Space Navigation Hubs in Nicaragua for the “peaceful exploration of space” (a common party line) and to enhance their GLONASS system, the Russian rival to U.S. GPS, and all of a sudden there is quite a bit of activity to our south. What elevates this concern is that China is the foremost developer of Antisatellite (ASAT) technology and it would be naïve to assume that China will not be covertly working with Russian scientists in Nicaragua. The close proximity of these Space Hubs to the territorial U.S. also increases Russia and China’s ability to triangulate the position of our communication satellites, which we are extremely reliant on for command and control.
Russia and China want their way with Europe and Asia in the coming decades, so the two countries are beginning the process of checking U.S. power before we ever realize we may need to exercise it. It is imperative that as a nation we recognize the scheme that is afoot and the eventual consequences we will face if we turn a blind eye.
The wanton arming of Syrian rebels by the United States undermines Washington’s allies in the country’s civil war and could lead to a warlord system similar to that of Somalia in years to come, a Free Syrian Army leader has warned.
Brigadier General Abdelilah Al-Bashir – who led opposition forces of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) before becoming chief-of-staff of the FSA’s Supreme Military Council (SMC) in February – told Reuters that Washington has avoided the SMC in routing weapons straight to various rebel groups often out of the FSA’s control.
"The Americans are leading the distribution of weapons on the northern front and in the southern front. We demand that we be responsible," said Bashir, who defected from Syrian military in 2012.
"Providing support to individual battalions could turn the commanders of these battalions into warlords and they will be difficult to control in future," he added. "This could turn Syria into Afghanistan or Somalia."
His comments track closely with those of former UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who recently likened the situation in Syria to those countries and said he was afraid there could be “warlords all over the place.”
Naftali Bennett and Tzipi Livni don’t agree on much.
Bennett, Israel’s economy minister, sees the West Bank as an inseparable part of the Jewish state and wants Israel to annex its settlements there. Livni, the justice minister, says Israel can remain a Jewish democracy only by evacuating settlements.
Their debate exposes the cracks in Israel’s diverse governing coalition. But the biggest division in Herzliya wasn’t between hawks and doves; it was between the politicians who prioritized addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the military officials who all but ignored it.
The assessment of the military leadership differed little from last year’s conference, despite the recent collapse of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and the subsequent unity agreement between the Fatah faction of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas, which is regarded as a terrorist group by most of the West.
Those developments, which the politicians treated as major changes, were mentioned only in passing by military officials, who focused instead on threats emanating from Iran, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere.
“We’re in a Middle East that’s undergoing a jolt,” Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz said in a speech Monday that focused mainly on tensions on Israel’s borders. “Dramatic instability is a constant in this region and we need to be ready.”
Each speaker criticized the others. Lapid and Bennett, once political allies, called each other’s proposals “delusional.”
“The era of Oslo has ended,” Bennett said. “Now the time has come to admit that it simply didn’t work. We need to think in a different way to create a better reality.”
The only politicians who weren’t especially bothered by the current state of Israeli-Palestinian affairs were Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Interior Minister Gideon Saar, both of the ruling Likud party. Both dismissed the idea of territorial compromise and blamed the failure of the talks on the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
“I think we made a mistake with land for peace,” Ya’alon said. “The conflict is not about the establishment of a Palestinian state. It’s about the existence of a Jewish national home.”
One issue of broad consensus among conference speakers was the need to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Speakers were skeptical that negotiations between Iran and world powers to scale back Iran’s nuclear program would succeed.
“It’s clear to us that this regime has not given up the option of a nuclear military capability and is striving toward it,” Ya’alon said. “And it thinks it will succeed in this through negotiations with the West and a charm offensive.”
Israeli Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz, a Likud member, said a nuclear-armed Iran constitutes a far greater danger than the stalemate with the Palestinians.
British rights group Amnesty International has painted a disturbing picture of EU-aspirant Turkey as a country on the way to authoritarian rule.
Its report, published on Tuesday (10 June) - one year after mass protests which broke out in Gezi Park, Istanbul - warns that thousands of people are at risk of prison for exercising their right to freedom of assembly, while police officers are getting away with acts of severe brutality.
It says that after 12 years in power the ruling party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan “is perhaps at a cross-roads”.
At the same time, anti-terrorism laws are being cited against many government critics, who face between three and 15 years in prison if convicted.
The prosecutions, as in the case of five men linked to the Taksim Solidarity group, often rest on flimsy evidence.
The Taksim Solidarity defendants are being prosecuted mainly on grounds of tweets sent from the group’s account documenting the events. Some of the tweets cited by prosecutors give locations of makeshift medical facilities, while the people who provided medical care to the wounded are also facing jail.
“The prosecutions … illustrate once again the failure to distinguish between criminal activities and those protected by the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly”, Amnesty said.
With Erdogan notorious as the world’s leading jailer of journalists, the British group highlighted his attack on Turkish people's access to independent information.
It says that 153 reporters were injured by police during last year’s clashes. Foreign correspondents “were subjected to unprecedented pressure” including “anonymous death threats”, while more than 80 Turkish journalists were forced out of their jobs for refusing to toe the Erdogan line.
It notes that subsequent criminal proceedings against some reporters show that “defamation and incitement to hatred legislation are used to silence government critics in Turkey” and “illustrate the authorities’ severe aversion to dissent”.
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According to a study by the Boston Consulting Group, privately held wealth increased to $152 trillion globally in 2013.
Compare this to estimates putting the US federal government's total debts and liabilities alone at anywhere from $78 trillion to $200 trillion and you can see just how untenable the US government's debt is. The US government is nearly indebted to the equivalent of all the privately held wealth in the world and possibly more!
Remember that the next time someone says, "The US is the richest country on Earth." It is much more accurate to state that the US is the most bankrupt and indebted country in the history of the world.
However there have been some estimates of the total debt and liabilities of the US government. Former US Comptroller General David M Walker argues total US government debt is $73 trillion. Some consider it to be higher: The Washington Post asked if the US has $128 trillion in unfunded liabilities. That means the US government is nearly as indebted as the world is wealthy, if not more.
This means that all the wealth in the world - every stock, bond, bar of gold, piece of real estate - couldn't even pay off the US debt and liabilities at this point.
Actual debt owed via Treasury bonds currently stands over $17 trillion and as can be seen in the following chart has gone fully parabolic.
That total doesn't take into account the liabilities of the federal government. These are funds that have been extorted in the past for programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Socialist Insecurity that are theoretically supposed to be paid back. If accounted for under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), like every other company in the US does, total US government debt and liabilities stands above $90 trillion and is rising at about $5 trillion per year.
This is a truly record-breaking amount of debt for an empire. Compare this to the Soviet Union which, in comparison, barely had any debt at all... mostly because no sane person would lend a communist government money. The total amount of debt of the Soviet Union upon its collapse was $45 billion and was quickly paid off once Russia had become more capitalist and actually created wealth in 2006. $45 billion is equivalent to what the US government goes into debt every 15 days currently!
The only thing keeping this system alive is the never-ending printing of money of the Federal Reserve and the continued acceptance of dollars by foreigners in the form of Treasury bonds.
In March of this year, Treasuries held by the Federal Reserve on the behalf of foreigners recorded the biggest drop in history.
In other words, this game is coming to an end. And all the wealth in the world couldn't even pay off the debt and liabilities of the US government at this point.
Yet, the great majority of people are not even aware of the possibility of The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI) much less prepared for it. Stay tuned at The Dollar Vigilante for info, news and analysis on how to survive and prosper during and after the collapse of the US dollar.
Yep, Russia and China are executing a plan.....and Saudi Arabia and Brazil and South America and many others.
ReplyDeleteAnd the only place the US has in it is a 3rd world nation....if that.
And they're executing it brilliantly....and we're being totally obliging.