The Big Picture Blog

It doesn’t take a genius to see that our society is becoming less and less tolerant and compassionate, and is becoming more strident and uncompromising.

At the end of WW II the United States implemented the Marshall Plan, which helped European nations get back on their feet after the devastation of the war. We also helped our former enemy in Japan to rebuild their economy. In the spirit of generosity and tolerance, we gave the Japanese technology that they used brilliantly to become one of the world’s major industrial powers. When Henry Kissinger went to China in 1971 and met with Zhou Enlai, the idea was to help the Chinese people enter the modern world. In a spirit of altruism (and good business practice) we supported the CCP’s entrance into the World Trade Organization in 1999. We transferred trillions of dollars worth of technology. Now China is the world’s most powerful industrial nation. Our experiment in China with the CCP backfired, but it was done with the hope that the CCP would reform and become a valued world trading partner, instead of the rapacious entity it has become. Nevertheless, the opening to China by President Nixon in 1972 was done in the spirit of goodwill. Generosity, tolerance, and the support for human rights, liberty, and “the pursuit of happiness” (no matter which party embraces it) are all hallmarks of classical liberalism.

We are a far cry from that now.

How did our society devolve into one in which rioters occupy the streets of our cities, murdering 73 year-old police officers, smashing windows, damaging property of small business owners, and shooting people? It happened because we’ve gotten away from the ideals of classical liberalism and embraced degraded, materialist ideas that promote nihilism and the desire to tear down society without putting anything good in its place. I call this Leftism (capital L) because the groups who practice it (Antifa, BLM) embrace Marxism-Leninism. A Leftist (capital L) is not a leftist (small l), who are probably half the population to the left of center politically. Leftists (capital L) are a small, but very vocal, segment of the population.

The modern Leftist, with Critical Theory, has obsessively overemphasized definition 2 of the word “discriminate.” The Merriam Webster dictionary defines ‘discriminate’ as follows: “1a. To mark or perceive the distinguishing or peculiar features of; 1b. Distinguish, differentiate. 2. To make a difference in treatment or favor on a basis other than individual merit.”

The ability to distinguish, or discern, is a sign of intelligence. A person who cannot tell the difference between a horse and a house is probably insane. Subtle and nuanced thought is the sign of rational thinking. Irrational persons can’t distinguish, for example, between their own needs and desires and the needs and desires of others. They think in black and white terms, redefining everything into a duality of choices (one or the other) and disregarding the spectrum of nuanced thought, and the diversity of opinion.

An irrational person might (with no qualms) verbally assault another, or even violently attack another, thinking that the other person is just “in the way.” People who cannot discriminate cannot tell the difference between a totalitarian dictatorship, as in the CCP in China and the mullahs in Iran, and a democracy, as in the US and in Europe. Such persons will see evil, or bad, in everything.

This focus on evil is the basis for silly, nonsensical theories such as Critical Race Theory and Critical Social Justice Theory, in which EVERYTHING is criticized.  Critical theory is the basis for cancel culture, where people are shamed on social media and even fired from their jobs for having “wrong” opinions. This is all part of Leftism’s New Cultural Revolution in the US, where even large corporations embrace and mimic the Maoist Cultural Revolution in China, which practically destroyed Chinese society between 1967 and 1977.

This is clearly irrational, but not to a Leftist. Leftism sees society itself as something evil and discriminatory, and regards successful persons as racist or “wrong” because they must have cheated or taken advantage of the system to get ahead. No consideration is given to a person’s natural abilities or their desire to work hard and persist on a path. Victims are defined as “good” because they can be used in a “class struggle” against the inherent evil of “the system.”

Leftism is obsessed with the second definition of ‘discriminate’ above. They have re-defined the second definition of discrimination in racial or “social justice” terms. Discriminate, to a Leftist, means that all social situations devolve, always, to favor one race of people over another race, or to favor one gender over another. This re-definition regards people as mere meat bodies, and is based on the nihilistic idea that nothing in life means anything.

What is nihilism? According to Wikipedia, “The nihilist movement was a Russian movement in the 1860s that rejected all authorities. The word nihilism derives from the Latin nihil, meaning ‘nothing.’ After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, the nihilists were known throughout Europe as proponents of the use of violence in order to bring about political change.” Sound familiar?

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, nihilism is

1a: a viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless.

1b: a doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth and especially of moral truths.

2a: a doctrine or belief that conditions in the social organization are so bad as to make destruction desirable for its own sake independent of any constructive program or possibility.

b: the program of a 19th century Russian party advocating revolutionary reform and using terrorism and assassination.”

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nihilism

Let’s take an example from Critical Race Theory (CRT), as told by James Lindsay, mathematician and political commentator.

You are a store owner. There are two people in your store, a black guy and a white guy. If you help the white guy first, CRT says you are a racist because you ignored the black guy. But if you serve the black guy first you are still a racist! Why? Because by serving the black guy first you are trying to get him out of the store faster.

“But the storekeeper has only two choices,” you say. “What is he or she supposed to do if anything he/she does is wrong?” Well, that’s how Leftists think.

This is clearly a form of insanity. Yet it is being taught in many of our universities.

The goal of Leftism is simply to tear down society, but such a philosophy has no plan to make things better. Why? Because Leftism is essentially nihilistic.

Nihilism is the philosophy that nothing matters; that life is empty and meaningless. If this is so, then there are really no distinctions between anything! A  totalitarian dictatorship is no different than a democracy. Why? Because there is evil in both systems, both must be destroyed. There is no discrimination or distinction between the two governments, even though one system employs concentration camps and gulags, and engages in live organ harvesting. The injustices in a democracy are seen by Leftism as equivalent to the brutal repression of an entire population in a totalitarian dictatorship.

The lack of an ability to think clearly, or discriminate, leads to an Orwellian view of life. To Leftism, slavery=freedom; intolerance=compassion; and ignorance=intelligence. This leads not just to a dumbed-down, black-white view of the world that has no discernment or nuance, but eventually to a world where there are no distinctions or discernment at all! A world like this would resemble what Antony P. Mueller wrote about in his excellent article, “The Great Reset”: a world run by technocrats and materialists, where human beings are just chips or apps that can be easily controlled. (See “From Lockdowns to the Great Reset” at https://mises.org/wire/lockdowns-great-reset

If you’ve seen the movie “Bladerunnner” you have the idea of the ultimate materialist, technocratic society, and the final evolution of Leftist thought.

The de-evolution of liberalism to Leftism has existed throughout history. The Nazis were socialists/communists, and had only contempt for the virtues of classic liberalism. 150 years ago, Fyodor Doestoyevsky wrote about the de-evolution of the Russian liberal in his book The Idiot, way back in 1868-1869. His character, Yvgeney Pavlovitch, says the following (italics are mine):

In the first place, what is liberalism, speaking generally, but an attack (whether mistaken or reasonable, is quite another question) upon the existing order of things? Is this so? Yes. Very well. Then my ‘fact’ consists in this, that Russian liberalism is not an attack upon the existing order of things, but an attack upon the very essence of things themselves—indeed, on the things themselves; not an attack on the Russian order of things, but on Russia itself. My Russian liberal goes so far as to reject Russia; that is, he hates and strikes his own mother. Every misfortune and mishap of the mother-country fills him with mirth, and even with ecstasy. He hates the national customs, Russian history, and everything. If he has a justification, it is that he does not know what he is doing, and believes that his hatred of Russia is the grandest and most profitable kind of liberalism. (You will often find a liberal who is applauded and esteemed by his fellows, but who is in reality the dreariest, blindest, dullest of conservatives, and is not aware of the fact.) This hatred for Russia has been mistaken by some of our ‘Russian liberals’ for sincere love of their country, and they boast that they see better than their neighbors what real love of one’s country should consist in. But of late they have grown more candid and are ashamed of the expression ‘love of country,’ and have annihilated the very spirit of the words as something injurious and petty and undignified.”

Dostoevsky,, The Idiot.

Substitute United States for Russia, and Leftism for liberalism in this quote and you have the present situation in the United States. TRUMP, for example, is pilloried for his “America First” policy by Leftists who dominate the mass media and who – to put it plainly – hate America.

To a Leftist, there is no difference between a totalitarian dictatorship and a democracy. Why? Because both are evil, just as both actions of the storekeeper are evil. They must both be criticized, and ultimately, destroyed.

Sadly, today’s conservatism is the “new” classic liberalism. Liberals have devolved so far left they have become Leftists (tyrants). In the past, conservatives were regarded as stodgy, stubborn troglodytes who defended the status quo at all costs. Conservatives, for example, created the War on Drugs and imprisoned drug users, instead of going after state actors like the CIA who manufacture and distribute drugs on a planetary scale. Conservatives mindlessly defended ALL aspects of society, both good and bad.

Yet today, with the ascendance of nihilistic Leftism, conservatives (mostly in the Republican party) are the only group left defending human rights, individual freedom, the nuclear family, showing up on time to an appointment (a sign of respect for others, but criticized by Leftism as an example of “white racism”), the scientific method (criticized by Leftism as an example of “white supremacy”), and a host of other rational and respectful memes that hold a society together. It shows how far we have devolved.

Low consciousness vs High consciousness; Dark vs Light

The astute reader will see that I have incorrectly framed this discussion into two phony categories: Left vs.  Right, Conservative vs Liberal, Democrat vs. Republican. I have myself been guilty of Leftist thought (in order to illustrate my point), for the true distinction is between high consciousness and low consciousness, between dark and light, between freedom and tyranny, and most important, between spirituality and materialism. There are nihilists on both sides of the phony left-right debate: the right wants to tear down leftism and smash liberal thinking; the Left wants to destroy the right, and society as a whole.

What is needed is more tolerance, compassion, and DIVERSITY. Diversity is defined by Leftists purely in meat body terms: a person’s race and sex, not their divinely endowed abilities and diverse points of view. Leftists have no room for opinions that differ from theirs. This intolerance is at the heart of “political correctness” and Critical Theory. I talked about this in a previous blog post.

In Communist China, for example, Catholics have been forced to take down pictures of Jesus and put up pictures of General Secretary Xi Jinping. To a communist (the ultimate Leftist) religion and spirituality are very dangerous, for they embrace nasty ideas like individual freedom and human rights, principles enshrined in the U.S. constitution. In communist China, the only God is the communist party, represented by Xi. To the ultimate Leftists in the CCP, only ONE line of thought is acceptable: the Party Line. Diversity of opinion is counter-revolutionary and reactionary.

Hive-mind thinking, and totalitarianism, is what happens when you embrace Leftist thinking.  

Let’s make a distinction: tolerance, compassion, recognition of individual liberties, freedom, the family, and democracy, are ideas worth embracing. Violence, ignorance, intolerance, totalitarianism, and materialism are ideas we should all reject, no matter what “side” they appear on.

Group Mind

In order to understand the significance of the Leftism movement on our culture we have to understand the power of Group Mind. This is sometimes called Group Think, but its main function is to exercise power in the mental environment. What I have to say here is the entire point of this article.  

The mental environment is very important, for action follows thought. If the thoughts and beliefs of a person (or a group, or a nation, or a planet) can be influenced, the influencers have great power. In effect, the influencers merely have to establish a way of thinking via Group Mind (or Group Think). Then, a population will, on its own, follow the Party Line like a wind-up toy car. This is what all communist/dictatorships try to establish, except that their methods in the past have been crude, using violence and gulags. Now however, in the PRC (and in the US with Big Tech), we are seeing the use of artificial intelligence and other surveillance systems in a much more sophisticated attempt at control.

Here in the US today, we are seeing an even more powerful strategy: the effect of Group Mind on our population.

If you have ever attended an event, or been involved in a group discussion where several persons have the same viewpoint and express it forcefully, you will discover the power of Group Mind. For it is as if your own thoughts bend toward the dominant opinion. Now, if a large enough group (even if it is a small minority) can establish a way of thinking, such as “political correctness,” or Leftism, an entire population can be made to go in a certain direction. No wars are needed, no gulags, no concentration camps.

This is the danger (and the power) of Group Think.

Of course, Group Mind can also be used in a positive manner.

Here’s the point: A group’s inner spirituality can be accessed to counter the debilitating effects of Group Think toward the darkness.

This is the challenge we face in the United States today, a challenge all nations will have to face.

On earth at present we are engaged in an information war that is being fought in the mental environment. The stakes are the soul of humanity. Do we go to the darkness, or to the light? Do we embrace freedom, spirituality, and tolerance, or do we allow a technocracy backed by scientific materialists to control our societies?

All individuals on the planet will have to choose. I hope we make the choice that fulfills the divine potential of every human being.

Dr. Zev Zelenko, a frontline physician, speaks about the effectiveness of HCQ, and the FDA and CDC’s effort to suppress its use in favor of expensive and unproven drugs. This is mindblowing.

https://youtu.be/hS92k48pyKc?t=162

Dr. Harvey Risch of the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the Yale Department of Public Health speaks about hydroxychloroquine and its use in early treatment (prophylaxis) for COVID-19:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pHZM8l3x7E&t=189

Dr. James Todaro, MD, PhD, from Columbia University speaks on hydroxychloroquine use in patients with COVID-19.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgu1MJ1RUes

If you study ice core data, which shows how the earth’s temperature has changed over the past million years, and the relationship between CO2 emissions and temperature, we discover that the earth goes through natural cycles of warming and cooling. Every 100,000 years or so there is an ice age, where the global temperature gets colder, glaciers form, and sea levels lower by several hundred feet.

The Serbian geophysicist and astronomer Milutin Milanković asserted that variations in the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit around the sun, the earth’s axial tilt, and the earth’s “wobble” on its axis (called precession) results in cyclical variation in the solar radiation reaching the Earth, and that changes in the earth’s orbit around the sun strongly influence climatic patterns on Earth. The idea is that the level of radiation that hits the earth from the sun largely determines the earth’s global temperature. In other words, the earth’s temperature is largely controlled by astronomical factors that are out of our control.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

Between ice ages there is a natural cycle of global warming and cooling, and the levels of carbon dioxide also change.

This natural cycle of global warming and cooling can be seen from the deepest ice cores in Antarctica (EPICA and Lake Vostok).

The deepest ice, and therefore the ice with the longest record, is found in Antarctica. As the ice in Antarctica is mostly over land, as opposed to the Arctic where most of the ice is floating on sea, this makes it ideal for deep core sampling. EPICA is the deepest of the ice cores and it also goes farthest back in time. Figure 2 shows the temperature and radiation data as calculated from the Milankovitch cycles. As can be seen, there is good agreement between the timing of orbital cycles and the temperature changes. It is also noticeable that there is a tendency for times of higher radiation to be associated with higher temperature but the correspondence is far from perfect. Figure 3 shows temperature and CO2. As can be seen, there is close correspondence in the timing and relative magnitude of the two variables. Although not clear from this chart there is general agreement that temperature changes precede CO2 changes during the rising phase and CO2 lags temperature by a larger amount during the falling phase.”

http://www.climatedata.info/proxies/ice-cores/

The following ice core data graphs are taken from the climatedata.info website:

OK, so the earth goes through cycles of temperature change. How does the earth’s natural cycle of climate change relate to the current global warming cycle?  

The subject has been so politicized that a rational discussion is almost impossible these days, and I won’t get into it. I will just put this forward for your consideration: What if the current global cycle of warming has little to do with man-made fossil-fuel CO2 emissions, and has more to do with the earth’s natural warming and cooling cycles? What if the Industrial Revolution just happened to coincide with one of the planet’s warming periods?

People who say things like this are regarded as kooks and conspiracy theorists. However, some global warming supporters postulate something I think is even more crazy: man-made runaway global warming, where all life on earth is threatened.

This assumption is plausible I suppose, but only if you think the world is going to end very soon. I don’t think that Gaia, which has been evolving for 4 billion years, would suddenly turn on the life it has so painstakingly nurtured.

Do man-made CO2 emissions really have such a dire effect on weather and temperature?  I prefer to take a more optimistic view. I prefer to think that the earth has been around for billions of years, and that Gaia EXISTS to cocoon and nurture the life it has evolved to support. Call me a nut, but I think that Gaia wants to cooperate with humanity and not destroy it.

Electric Cars

 Let’s take a look at electric cars. Electric cars are supposed to be more environmentally friendly, avoiding the stink and pollution of fossil fuel vehicles. But there’s another side to this story.

The disposal of used electric batteries poses a terrible pollution problem, similar to that of nuclear waste.

More than 1 million electric vehicles were sold worldwide in 2017. The study authors estimate that those cars alone will ultimately result in 250,000 tons of discarded battery packs. If those were to end up in landfills, they’d run the risk of going through a process called “thermal runaway,” which is basically a chemical reaction in the battery that can cause it to heat up, potentially to the point of burning or exploding. (It’s the reason why TSA prohibits spare lithium-ion batteries in checked baggage when you board a plane.)”

“The electric vehicle industry needs to solve its battery  disposal problem,” https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/6/20951807/electric-vehicles-battery-recycling

How much waste would be generated if millions more electric cars were sold each year?

Moreover, batteries used in electric cars contain cobalt. Two-thirds of the world’s cobalt production comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a communist dictatorship that sends tens of thousands of African kids into mines, scrabbling and retrieving cobalt. These kids get sick and even die.

From CNBC: “The African nation supplies more than two thirds of the world’s cobalt but human rights groups have raised concerns that the industry relies on child workers.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/16/tesla-glencore-cobalt-gigafactory.html

Oops. As I remarked in my last post, we don’t worry too much about the inconvenience of human rights in our Brave New World run by AI, Big Tech, and multilateral corporations interested only in the bottom line.

While virtue-signaling drivers in the West proudly show off their electric cars – trying to solve a global warming problem that might not even exist – African kids are being exploited and dying. Battery waste is piling up.

Pesky problems like human rights get brushed under the rug in the name of economic “progress.” This is the new scientific, materialist technocratic state that is being pushed by Big Tech.

What does this new world look like? Dr. Antony P. Mueller, in a brilliant article in Mises.org, describes this future in “From Lockdowns to The Great Reset” at https://mises.org/wire/lockdowns-great-reset

The Great Reset

This coming technocracy involves close cooperation between the heads of the digital industry and of governments. With programs such as guaranteed minimum income and healthcare for all, the new kind of governance combines strict societal control with the promise of comprehensive social justice.

“The truth, however, is that this new world order of digital tyranny comes with a comprehensive social credit system. The People’s Republic of China is the pioneer of this method of surveillance and control of individuals, corporations, and sociopolitical entities.

“For the individual, one’s identity is reduced to an app or chip that registers almost any personal activity. In order to gain a few individual rights, and be it only to travel to a certain place, a person must balance such apparent privileges with his submission to a web of regulations that define in detail what is “good behavior” and deemed as beneficial to humankind and the environment. For example, during a pandemic, this sort of control would extend from the obligation of wearing a mask and practicing social distancing to having specific vaccinations in order to apply for a job or to travel.

“It is, in short, a type of social engineering which is the opposite of a spontaneous order or of development. Like the mechanical engineer with a machine, the social engineer—or technocrat—treats society as an object. Different from the brutal suppressions by the totalitarianism of earlier times, the modern social engineer will try to make the social machine work on its own according to the design. For this purpose, the social engineer must apply the laws of society the way the mechanical engineer follows the laws of nature. Behavioral theory has reached a stage of knowledge that makes the dreams of social engineering possible. The machinations of social engineering operate not through brute force, but subtly by nudge.

“Under the order envisioned by the Great Reset, the advancement of technology is not meant to serve the improvement of the conditions of the people but to submit the individual to the tyranny of a technocratic state. ‘The experts know better’ is the justification.’”

Antony P. Mueller, “From Lockdowns to The Great Reset” at https://mises.org/wire/lockdowns-great-reset

How do you like it so far?

What this guy says is true. It’s happening right before our eyes.

The human race better wake up, and do it soon. Human rights, liberty, and freedom are not luxuries, but the precious commodities of life. The global elites want a dead, sterile, scientific-technological society based on materialism and the squashing of all religion and spirituality, controlled by them. We can’t let this happen. I don’t want to live in a hive-mind society where everyone thinks alike. I am not a Borg, and neither are you. I don’t want to live in a dead future, in a repressive society where people are afraid to speak out and where all spirituality is crushed.

Let’s wake up and speak out now, before it happens!

In the words of the great John F. Kennedy,

The same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe—the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.”

John F. Kennedy, “Inaugural Address,” January 20, 1961, Public Papers of the Presidents: John F. Kennedy, 1961 (Washington, DC, 1961), I.

The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) has a geostrategic plan to acquire resources across the globe. This includes ports, minerals, transportation projects, telecommunications, medicines, you name it. The CCP’s strategy is to lend a country money, provide business to CCP owned businesses to build or facilitate the projects, and when a government has trouble making loan payments, to  foreclose and take over the project. The CCP controls supply chains for industrial, medical, and telecommunications across the planet. Indeed, Rosemary Gibson, in China Rx, has shown that the US is dependent on CCP supply chains for fully 85% of the APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients) necessary for making antibiotics and other important pharmaceuticals. This is one of the severe drawbacks in the “globalist” economy model, where supply chains for many important products in the world economy are centered in China. Multinational corporations like China because the CCP guarantees very low wages, which can generate more profits.

If the CCP were a fair and cooperative player in the world economy, Belt and Road  would be no problem. If the money generated from these projects went to the Chinese people – instead of being laundered into real estate purchases and equities in Western countries such as the US and Britain – no one would complain. However, the CCP, being a totalitarian dictatorship, simply enriches itself at the expense of its own people, and other nations.

Let’s take a look around the world to see these developments. We will be using the fantastic site rwradvisory.com for these reports:

China Orders Payment from Private Maldives Loan Recipient that Is Backed by State Guarantees, Applying Financial Pressure on Country

Posted Tuesday, July 28, 2020 at 1:00pm

On July 27, local media reports in the Maldives indicated that the Export-Import Bank of China had ordered the country to repay $10 million of a $127 million loan issued to a private Maldivian construction company by August 6. The loan was initially issued in 2017 to Sun Siyam Resorts Pvt. Ltd. Although a private company, the loan to Sun Siyam Resorts was backed by Maldivian state guarantees. Indeed, the loan was reportedly the only major state-backed loan offered to a private enterprise in the country.

This unusual circumstance has led to local reports, citing “reliable sources,” that failure to repay the loan had the potential to pose a real threat to the country’s financial standing, even though the debt amount is comparably lower than other guarantees issued by the Maldivian government for Chinese loans on state-backed projects.”

Here is an example (one of many) where the CCP uses its financial might to acquire resources in other countries.

Estonia Approves Hikvision’s Acquisition of BK Group and Its Significant Regional Sales Network

Posted Friday, July 24, 2020 at 12:37am

On July 20, Hikvision Singapore Pte. Ltd. (a unit of the Chinese surveillance equipment manufacturer) was issued permission from the Estonian Competition Authority to acquire Baltic security systems wholesaler, BK Group.  The acquisition will include BK’s global sales unit, BK Eesti AS, among other units that operate in regional markets such as Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Poland.  BK Group is reportedly among the largest vendors of security systems in the region.

Hikvision has noted that the primary intention of the acquisition is to improve the company’s marketing activities in the Baltics.  The acquisition of BK Group will presumably allow the Chinese manufacturer considerable access to the Baltic firm’s global and regional sales networks, just as scrutiny of the company’s foreign activities increases in the United States and other parts of the world.  While the Baltic states maintain a wary eye toward Russia, Chinese investment fares differently.

The U.S. government is in the process of finalizing regulations banning the purchase of goods from any companies using equipment produced by Hikvision (among other Chinese technology firms), due to the company’s close ties to the Chinese government and the associated data security implications.  Despite these concerns, Hikvision products are already pervasive in the Baltic market. In February 2020, an investigative piece by the Lithuanian National Radio and Television disclosed that the equipment is particularly pervasive within Lithuania’s state security agencies.”

After Confirming $400B Deal with China, Iran Bumps India from Strategic Chabahar Rail Project

Posted Thursday, July 16, 2020 at 2:01pm

On July 14, it was reported that Iran had bumped India from its involvement in the Chabahar-Zahedan railway project, a critical component of the joint effort to develop strategically significant Chabahar port in southeastern Iran.  India’s involvement in Chabahar port (despite the threat of U.S. sanctions), including the railway, has been seen as a means of countering China’s growing maritime ambitions in the Indian Ocean, marked by significant Chinese investments at Gwadar Port, Pakistan as well as in Sri Lanka, the Maldives and elsewhere.

While Iran is challenging the notion that India ever had a binding role in the railway project to begin with (and the Indian government is likewise challenging the media’s interpretation that it has been unexpectedly removed from the project), there is still a broadly held view that Iran’s decision to move on with the project without India is linked to the new 25-year, $400 billion cooperation agreement recently announced between Iran and China.  Although India continues to have a significant stake in other aspects of the Chabahar port project, there is a perception that this recent decision was either motivated by an Iranian desire to appease Chinese wishes in the aftermath of recent border clashes with India or by a newfound confidence in its ability to finance and execute projects of this magnitude with the help of Chinese companies and banks.

Either way, the overarching concern for India is that its removal from the rail project may be as an early indicator of greater Chinese influence over Chabahar port, undermining its utility to New Delhi as a source of competing strength in the region.   Prior to these recent developments, Iran had, indeed, already invited China’s participation in the port’s development in a non-binding capacity, with the intention of increasing Chabahar’s connectivity with the Chinese-operated, Gwadar Port. “

Here, the CCP has essentially bought and paid for another repressive government in Iran with their $400 billion investment. This money will allow the mullahs to continue to suppress the desires of the Iranian people for freedom and democracy.

The next example shows how the CCP has in its pocket another repressive regime in Pakistan, and is using the Pakistani’s against the world’s most populist democracy in India:

China, Pakistan Finalize Third Major Hydropower Project in Disputed Kashmir within Span of Three Months

Posted Monday, July 13, 2020 at 5:13pm

On July 6, Pakistani officials announced the signing of a $1.5 billion Azad Pattan hydropower construction project with Chinese state-owned contractor, China Gezhouba Corporation, that is to be situated in Pakistan-administered Kashmir (PoK). This is the third such hydropower plant to be finalized with a Chinese state-owned company in a span of less than 90 days, notably, in a region claimed by both Pakistan and India.

Some experts believe that these projects, which have been under discussion for months have been expedited by Beijing and Islamabad against the backdrop of separate escalating border tensions between China and India, which have prompted both sides to take punitive economic and political measures against the other since May 2020.”

Indian Firm Scraps Security Camera Procurement Tender Due to Bias Toward China’s Hikvision

Posted Tuesday, July 7, 2020 at 12:17pm

On July 2, the state-owned Railtel Corporation of India (RCIL) scrapped a tender issued in June 2020 to procure thermal surveillance cameras intended to detect COVID-19 symptoms, due the tender being designed for award to Chinese state-owned manufacturer, Hikvision. Competing vendors identified the biases in the tender language that clearly favored DeepInMind – Hikvision’s proprietary artificial intelligence technology.”

Here’s what’s happening in Greece:

Thessaloniki Port to Integrate Operating System of China Merchants Port Holdings; Company Agrees to Promote Port as “Gateway” to Europe

Posted Wednesday, July 15, 2020 at 3:49pm

On July 10, the Thessaloniki Port Authority in Greece signed two agreements for strategic cooperation with China’s state-owned China Merchants Port Holdings (CMPH) and subsidiary China Merchants Holdings International Information Technology (CMHIT).  Both agreements pertained to the integration of CMPH’s container terminal operating system by the operators of Thessaloniki port, making it the first European port to install the CMPH software. 

CMPH’s subsidiary, China Merchants Holdings (International) Information Technology Co., has touted these agreements as significant to their overall efforts to be competitive in the information and technology industry as it relates to the European ports and logistics market.  As part of the agreement, CMPH has reportedly agreed to promote Thessaloniki – Greece’s second largest port – as a “gateway” for Chinese freight traffic to Europe.

China already controls Greece’s largest port, the Port of Piraeus.  In 2016, state-owned COSCO Shipping acquired a majority stake in the port and has since invested significantly in the development of the trade terminal.  Piraeus is a critical node in Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).  The combined access of Piraeus and Thessaloniki would offer Chinese interests even greater access to European trade networks.  The ports permit efficient access to Serbian and Hungarian railway systems (which have also received significant technical and financial support from Chinese companies) to fulfill a vision for improved transport capacity into Europe.”

OK, you get the idea. These are just a few of many reports like this. Belt and Road has been an ongoing project of the CCP since 2013. Why is it so important? Let’s let Wikipedia explain:

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, or B&R[1]), formerly known as One Belt One Road (OBOR) is a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 to invest in nearly 70 countries and international organizations. It is considered a centerpiece of Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping’s foreign policy.

Xi Jinping originally announced the strategy during official visits to Indonesia and Kazakhstan in 2013. “Belt” refers to the overland routes for road and rail transportation, called “the Silk Road Economic Belt”; whereas “road” refers to the sea routes, or the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. It was incorporated into the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China in 2017.

The Chinese government [controlled by the CCP] calls the initiative ‘a bid to enhance regional connectivity and embrace a brighter future.’ Some observers see it as a plan for Chinese world domination through a China-centered global trading network. The project has a target completion date of 2049, which coincides with the 100th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.

According to George Soros, ‘At the beginning of 2018, [the CCP] and Pakistan announced grandiose plans in military cooperation. By the end of the year, Pakistan was in a deep financial crisis. But one thing became evident: [the CCP] intends to use the Belt and Road Initiative for military purposes as well.’”

When you have a million Uyghers in concentration camps (slave labor camps) in Xinjiang province, when you engage in live organ harvesting, when you disappear and imprison political dissidents, Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong, Catholics, Christians, and political dissidents, the world has good reason to suspect the motivations of the CCP’s Belt and Road initiative. The CCP euphemistically calls these concentration camps “Vocational Education and Training Centers.” Right.

To the governments of the world: Be careful what you ask for. You might get it.

In the 1930s, when Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Workers Party was becoming more influential, intellectuals and political elites in Britain relied on people like Neville Chamberlain to set policy for the country. The idea was that if the European democracies were nice to Hitler, he would see the error of his ways and reform. Mainly, the European democracies were afraid of Hitler and didn’t want war. Others, like Winston Churchill, were staunch, hard-line opponents of Hitler. Churchill favored a confrontational approach, reasoning that a dictator only understands force. In Britain, Churchill was pilloried as a right-wing nutcase and a warmonger.

Of course we all know what happened. At the Munich Agreement on September 30, 1938, Hitler gained the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia. The area had 3 million German speaking people. Hitler claimed that they wanted to become part of Germany. Germany, France, Italy, and Britain met. Hitler promised he would not take any more territory.  Most of Europe celebrated the agreement, because it prevented the war threatened by Hitler. Hitler announced that this was his last territorial claim in Europe, and the choice seemed to be between war and appeasement. When Neville Chamberlain came home he was celebrated by Britain’s political elites. But when the Nazi bombs started falling on London who did Britain turn to? The hard-ass wingnut Winston Churchill.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica’s article titled “Munich Agreement,”

Today, the Munich Agreement is widely regarded as a failed act of appeasement, and the term has become ‘a byword for the futility of appeasing expansionist totalitarian states.’”

Keep that phrase in mind, “the futility of appeasing expansionist totalitarian states.”

Hitler was feared because his centrally planned economy was seen as superior, and because of his ability to mobilize people and resources without bothering with little things like human rights and freedoms.

Let’s fast forward to 1980. The Cold War with the Soviet Union is in full swing. A conservative former actor by the name of Ronald Reagan is elected president. He is widely condemned for his hard-line attitude toward the communist state. He is told that the Soviets have a superior, centrally planned economy that will inevitably surpass the United States because of its ability to mobilize people and resources (without worrying about little things like freedom and human rights). He is told that the Soviet Union is the rising power and the US is the declining power. He is told that if we are nice to the Soviets they will reform.

Just as the British elites during the 1930s regarded Churchill as a wingnut, so too Reagan is regarded as a buffoon, a lightweight, and a warmonger. Reagan asks his economic advisors to do an analysis of the superior Soviet economy. He is told that it is about half the size of General Motors. Reagan decides to continue his hardline policy and defeat the Soviets. The same year he leaves office (1989) the Berlin Wall falls. The Soviet Union crumbles. In 1991, Boris Yeltsin signs a declaration banning the communist party and outlawing communism forever in Russia.

Fast forward to 2020. The former host of a really bad TV show by the name of Donald Trump – probably the most despised president in U.S. history – initiates a hardline policy toward the Communist Party of China, the last remaining bastion of communism on the planet. TRUMP pillories the CCP for their concentration camps which  contain a million Uyghurs, a Muslim minority. These CCP concentration camps also imprison Falun Gong, a Chinese spiritual movement, Tibetan Buddhists (remember Tibet? The great nation the CCP occupied in the early 1950s?), dissident Catholics and other Christians, and political dissidents. TRUMP says that the CCP has turned China into a slave labor camp, and calls out Tim Cook of Apple for placing nets around his buildings so workers can’t jump off and commit suicide. He criticizes the CCP for breaking trade agreements, conducting massive espionage, and for its massive theft of intellectual property.

TRUMP is pilloried by the media and the corporate and Wall Street elites who are in bed with the communists and who are making lots of money off the backs of the hard-working Chinese people. TRUMP is called a racist and a xenophobe for stopping international flights out of Wuhan to New York during the pandemic, an action that probably saved tens of thousands of lives.

TRUMP, like his predecessors, is told by the corporate/Wall Street and political elites that the Chinese Communist Party is managing a superior economy, a centrally planned economy that must inevitably surpass the US. He is told that China under the CCP is the rising power and that the US is the declining power. He is told that China under the CCP will inevitably surpass the United States because of its ability to mobilize people and resources (without worrying about little things like freedom and human rights).He is told (as has every president been told since the 1990s) that if we keep being nice to the CCP they will reform and become a valuable and law-abiding partner in the global economy.

There’s only one thing wrong with this idea: it doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked since the National Socialist Workers Party (the Nazi Party) came into existence in 1920. The world’s manufacturing supply chains are centered in China, where the Chinese people are worked to death. That’s great for the balance sheets of corporations and Wall Street hedge fund managers, but not so great for the Chinese people, and the people of every other country under the tyranny of the CCP’s Belt and Road initiative. Where did ten million U.S. manufacturing jobs go? To China and its slave labor factories.

Despite this, the elites drag out this tired old argument decade after decade, trying to fool the people over and over again. Like Churchill and Reagan, TRUMP aint buying it. TRUMP is on a mission to take down the CCP and free the Chinese people, and the world, from totalitarian communism once and for all.

Communism is another word for fascism and tyranny. The CCP is an old, sad, dark remnant of the 20th century, a century of war and brutality. A century I grew up in and lived through, and never want to see again. The CCP operates under a tired, failed philosophy of old white guys like Marx and Lenin.  It cannot survive without gulags, concentration camps, suppression, and ubiquitous surveillance, all aided and supported by American Big Tech companies who are making billions off the backs of the Chinese people.   

Do you want to know what the riots in our streets are all about? Certainly not about poor George Floyd and what happened to him. Chairman Mao told us what it is about in his euphemistically titled “Little Red Book,” a collection of his writings:

A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained, and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence, by which one class overthrows another.”

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/download/red-book.pdf, The Little Red Book, p. 5.

And this:

The seizure of power by armed force, the settlement of the issue by war, is the central task and the highest form of revolution. This Marxist-Leninist principle of revolution holds good universally, for China and for all other countries.”

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/download/red-book.pdf, The Little Red Book, p. 24

Why all the Mao quotes? Because General Secretary Xi Jinping is a Maoist. The CCP is the center of darkness on the planet at the beginning of the 21st century, aided and abetted by our own economic, technological, and political elites of BOTH parties. It’s sad. The tools being used are information and economic warfare, but it is warfare nonetheless.

I have had to reluctantly conclude that TRUMP is holding the line against these fascists.

Who knows, maybe TRUMP is fooling us, and is just a Tool of the Oligarchy (if so he’s doing a good job of pissing them off). But I do know one thing: he’s not a Neville Chamberlain. He’s not an appeaser. He’s willing to stand up to tyranny and those who support it.

Bret Weinstein holds an intellectual round table for black voices about race and current social issues.

Confused about cancel culture? The very popular Joe Rogan podcast hosts mathematician and commentator James Lindsay. The discussion is about the foundations of Critical Race Theory and Critical Social Justice Theory. After you listen to this you’ll have more clarity on what’s happening in our society.

Pedophilia and child abuse are the scourge of humanity. It has been in existence for millennia. Fortunately, the light is penetrating the darkness. This scourge is being exposed, but it’s been hiding in plain sight for a long time.

Pleasure Island? Does that ring a bell?

The Epstein/Maxwell story is being reported in the media as a “sex scandal,” but it’s way more than that. The Epstein/Maxwell story is the tip of a huge iceberg that will lead – if the story is pursued – to the exposure of the worldwide pedophilia rings and their satanic ritual abuse, and the trafficking and abuse of children.

Unless the human race is wiling to confront this evil, we will never have peace on earth, we will never recognize our potential as a species. It’s as simple as that. The darkness cannot be fully exposed unless the people of earth are willing to confront it.

Let’s all pray for the children of the world, and thank the brave investigators who are helping to expose this evil in our midst.

This article appeared in the Washington Examiner on December 26, 2019, about accused pedophile Kevin Spacey. Make up your own mind about this.

“This marks the third Spacey accuser to die in 2019. ” It’s probably just coincidence of course.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/kevin-spacey-accuser-dies-by-suicide-day-after-actor-posts-kill-them-with-kindness-video

When are we going to stop talking about conspiracy theories and begin to confront the problem?

Here’s a conspiracy theory for you: The massive hatred of TRUMP is partly motivated by people in these networks who don’t want to be exposed if TRUMP wins a second term. I’ll make a prediction right now: TRUMP is going to come down hard on this if he wins a second term. Maybe Biden will too, but I’m not sure what his priorities are. Biden is a groper, which is documented in many public photographs. If Biden wins my guess is that the subject will be ignored.