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  1. #901
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    You really are pathetic, Klongdick.

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    ^If you (and your friends) represent a sample of population of your country there is no surprise of the situation the country is in.

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    Will the Israel-US “New Wars” succeed in weakening Hezbollah?


    "When conventional military war failed to defeat the Lebanese Hezbollah, Israel and the US adopted different tactics in the art of war whilst avoiding overt conflict in the public eye. The new tactics, whilst not excluding traditional warfare, include a group of wars or actions based on irregular formations, terrorist acts, chaos, sanctions, electronic platform warfare, media wars, propaganda, fake news, the division of society, starvation policy and engaging the enemy from within, to weaken Hezbollah before attacking and finishing it off. This is “fifth generation war”; it is the hybrid war against Hezbollah.

    The United Nations delivered a message to Hezbollah from Israel stating that killing any Israeli soldier or officer would push Israel to hit ten Hezbollah targets and centres in different regions of Lebanon. Israel has provided the maps, offices and locations it intends to target, according to a leading source familiar with the matter.


    Hezbollah replied to this message, that the bombing of ten targets in Lebanon will trigger an immediate response against ten Israeli military targets, command and control centres and other offices affiliated to the Israeli government. Precision missiles will be launched against Israel – said the message – without prior warning.

    The Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, had announced that he would kill an Israeli soldier in return for Israel killing a Hezbollah member in Syria while targeting a centre of the joint forces in the vicinity of Damascus. Since that day, that is, since July 2020, Israeli jets have not struck any Iranian command target in Syria. Furthermore, the Israeli army has been asked to conceal itself in its barracks to avoid triggering Hezbollah’s announced process of retaliation.

    The commander of the IDF’s Northern Command, Major General Amir Baram, stated, “Israel is keen not to be dragged into a large-scale war with Hezbollah. It is fundamentally a war that both sides wish to avoid.”

    Israel’s leaders no longer brandish the threat to take Lebanon back to the Stone Age by bombing and destroying the entire infrastructure and whole villages and cities as it did in the 2006 war. This is because Hezbollah has achieved a balance of deterrence: Israel has acknowledged that Hezbollah has missiles that can strike any target anywhere in Israel with enormous destructive power and precision.

    Consequently, the theory – introduced by Hezbollah’s opponents in Lebanon to say the international community can protect Lebanon and not a heavily armed domestic group – that ”Lebanon is strong due to its weakness and incapacity to defend itself” has fallen. Indeed, the balance of deterrence has forced Israel and its ally the US to back down from the use of military force, without necessarily abandoning the project to weaken or defeat Hezbollah. This is what has pushed this strategic alliance (US and Israel) to shift towards “soft and hybrid warfare”. This new approach creates windows of opportunity to direct a military strike on Hezbollah to defeat it when the right time comes. That is possible only when Hezbollah becomes weak and without allies, supporters or a society protecting it, and indeed if Hezbollah fails to confront this hybrid war.

    In 2006 during the second Israeli war on Lebanon, Israel did not achieve its goals because its intelligence failed to predict Hezbollah’s missile capabilities and readiness to hold its ground. The first surprise came at Wadi Al-Hujair with the Kornet anti-tank missiles and later with surface-to-surface missiles (when the class corvette Saar-5 was hit). Also, Hezbollah possessed the electronic capabilities to break through to the Israeli drones and other capabilities, which enabled it to know a large number of pre-prepared operations and targets in Israel’s bank of objectives. Israel has since modified its electronic protection with more advanced technology. However, electronic warfare continues: it is an ongoing battle with measures and countermeasures on both sides.

    That is why it was necessary to introduce « hybrid warfare ». It needed another more effective approach to attack Hezbollah, more comprehensive. Let us take, for example, what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented in 2018 and a few days ago to the United Nations General Assembly about the presence of Hezbollah missiles near Beirut airport and others in the Jnah area in the Lebanese capital. In the first attempt of Netanyahu, Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil reacted by inviting Country Ambassadors to visit the site. In the second most recent case, Hezbollah invited the local and international press to visit the site and to confirm the falsity of Netanyahu’s claim. However, did Netanyahu lose the two rounds against Hezbollah or did he reach his desired objective?

    I asked a Lebanese leader within the “Axis of the Resistance”: How many out of the 194 representatives at the United Nations saw Nasrallah’s response to Netanyahu’s lie? The immediate answer did not wait: “”Maybe one, two – very few. “”

    Consequently, the Israeli prime minister won the disinformation war, and the powerful Zionist lobby helped him in the international media to publish his colourful pictures and folkloric output and to overlook Hezbollah’s point of view. It is likely that Netanyahu aimed in his media war to amplify the already existing negative international and domestic public opinion against Hezbollah: though in Europe, most of the leaders of the old continent have refused to consider Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation, resisting the tremendous US pressure to join the US-Israeli objective.

    In Lebanon, there is a well-known saying: “There are people who, if we anoint them with filtered honey, only hate us more. Others, if we wound them and cut them to pieces, love us the more.” Lebanese society is divided between those who support Hezbollah and those who hate and voice their hatred of Hezbollah.

    Whoever ideologically or by conviction supports Hezbollah will maintain the same position and never budge. As for those who support Hezbollah only circumstantially, some will turn against it or voice their criticism, particularly on social media. Many within the Lebanese Christian camp, particularly those who support the Tayyar al-Watani al-Hurr (the Free National Movement- FNM), no longer take into consideration that Hezbollah prevented the election of a President for two and a half years to impose – successfully – the FNM leader, General Michel Aoun, as President, notwithstanding domestic and international opposition.

    Instead, due to the US brainwashing campaign claiming that Hezbollah supports corruption or is responsible for corruption or is the ally of the Speaker Nabih Berri accused of corruption, a growing number of the FNM supporters fail to recognize the US-Israel hybrid campaign and give no more extended consideration to the alliance of two minorities (Shia and Christian) in the Levant. The expensive US economic sanctions and the decades of US-allies Lebanese-corrupted politicians overwhelm any reasoning. Daily life necessities become the priority, and alliances become marginal.

    The hybrid war against Hezbollah forced the society that supports the group to be entrenched and on the defensive."


    Will the Israel-US “New Wars” succeed in weakening Hezbollah? – Elijah J. Magnier
    A tray full of GOLD is not worth a moment in time.

  4. #904
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    Most Lebanese want them to fuck off. The filthy terrorist puppies of Iran don't represent the Lebanese people.

    On Sunday, Lebanon’s Maronite Christian patriarch, Bechara Boutros Al Rahi, made several statements that were far reaching. He essentially underlined that the Lebanese state could not co-exist with the behaviour of Hezbollah.

    The patriarch’s remarks came as Lebanon is struggling to form a government in line with the initiative presented by French President Emmanuel Macron in early September. It calls for a “mission focused” government of specialists to address Lebanon’s grave financial and economic crises. These specialists would enjoy the support of the political parties, but would not include politicians.

    The process has been derailed by the country’s two leading Shiite parties, Hezbollah and Amal, who have insisted that the finance minister be a Shiite, and that this condition always be respected in future governments. Their demand went against the principle of a rotation of ministerial portfolios over which virtually all other Lebanese parties agree, including a number of Hezbollah’s allies.


    By demanding that the finance minister always be a Shiite, Hezbollah and Amal appeared to be surreptitiously altering Lebanon’s constitutional custom without a formal constitutional amendment. The reason is that the finance minister must countersign legislation involving expenditures, and the Shiite parties have regarded this as granting them an unofficial right of veto over laws with which they disagree, alongside the Maronite president and the Sunni prime minister.

    In his speech, Mr Al Rahi questioned the parties’ insistence on this. He rejected the idea that Lebanon’s sects could reserve portfolios for themselves and then made a more profound point. He declared that if the Shiites, particularly Hezbollah, wanted to change the Lebanese system, then they had to make major concessions of their own. He implied they had to end the existence of their state within a state, surrender their weapons, and accept Lebanon’s neutrality.

    For the first time a leading Lebanese figure has underlined that Hezbollah’s actions are undermining the interests of the state – in this case the successful conclusion of the Macron initiative that is vital to bringing Lebanon urgently needed international financial aid. The patriarch’s statements clearly shocked the Shiite parties, and hours later the Higher Shia Council, over which Hezbollah and Amal have influence, released a statement condemning them.

    For an understanding of what is going on, one has to see what is happening in the region.
    The recent peace agreements concluded with Israel by the UAE and Bahrain have altered the strategic landscape. Where Iran has sought to place its missiles in Lebanon and Syria to strike Israel, the peace deals turned the tables, with Israel building strategic alliances in the Gulf region.


    This appears to have led to a hardening of Iran’s attitude in Lebanon. Many observers believe that Hezbollah’s demand that the finance minister be a Shiite was aimed at undermining the French initiative. Tehran reportedly felt that an apolitical government in Beirut might hinder Hezbollah’s ability to act from Lebanon, when Iran might need the party to retaliate against an Israeli attack on its territory.

    In effect Iran, if it prevented implementation of a French plan designed to bring economic relief, condemned millions of Lebanese to great economic pain, perhaps even famine, including Hezbollah’s supporters. Worse, Hezbollah and Amal are isolated today, with even their ally, President Michel Aoun, opposed to the parties’ refusal to accept a rotation in the finance ministry.

    On September 22, former prime minister Saad Hariri may have created an opening for a resolution of the impasse in Lebanon. He agreed to an independent Shiite as finance minister while refusing to accept that the finance portfolio was reserved for the Shiite community. If this is accepted by Hezbollah and its allies, it may revive the French initiative.


    While the party had not responded formally to Mr Hariri yet, were it to refuse his proposal it would show that Hezbollah has no solutions for Lebanon’s serious economic crisis, offers no vision for the country other than to remain a satrapy of Iran, and is trying to preserve a political status quo that most Lebanese reject.

    And it has just been called out on much of this by the Maronite patriarch. Hezbollah’s response through the Higher Shia Council showed that it could only muster support for its position from within its community’s sectarian institutions. This is a far cry from a party that had once portrayed itself as the vanguard of regional resistance against Israel and America. By transforming itself into an Iranian tool, it has allowed Tehran’s priorities to steadily erode its domestic standing.

    What will this mean for the future? If Hezbollah’s ultimate role is to strengthen Iran’s deterrence capability against Israel and the U.S., then the contestation it is facing in Lebanon may have neutralised that capability. No Lebanese wants to see his or her country destroyed on Iran’s behalf. Nor do they want to see Lebanon disintegrate economically because of a veto from Tehran. For most Lebanese the message is clear: Hezbollah’s preferences usually offer only more misery.
    Hezbollah is actively undermining France's help for Lebanon - The National

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    Thailand Expat OhOh's Avatar
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    Rather than Hezbollah "undermining" France you may wish to read this:

    US Secretary Pompeo criticizes France for policy on Iran, Hezbollah

    Updated: September 23, 2020 11:20 AM

    "France’s leadership is failing to stand up to Iran and its proxy Lebanese Hezbollah, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday. policy on Iran


    France’s President Emmanuel Macron has recently attracted attention for two high-profile visits to Lebanon following the Beirut port explosion on August 4.
    According to reports in French newspaper Le Figaro, Macron met with a Hezbollah official during his first trip, saying to Mohammed Raad:

    “I want to work with you to change Lebanon but prove that you are Lebanese,” referring to the organization supporting Iran’s regional policies.
    In remarks published on the US’ Virtual Iran Embassy, Pompeo called France’s approach to Iran and Hezbollah “appeasement.”

    Pompeo questioned how France could vote against extending the UN arms embargo on Iran and also have its president meet with a Hezbollah official in Beirut. policy on Iran
    “How could France vote down the arms embargo one week, and President Macron meet with a senior Hizballah official in Beirut the next?” Pompeo said.
    Designating Hezbollah terrorist organization

    Pompeo criticized France’s refusal to designate “all of Hizballah a terrorist organization, as other European nations have done.”
    Earlier this year, both the UK and Germany designated the entire Hezbollah a terror organization.

    Like France and the European Union, both countries previously had distinguished between Hezbollah’s political arm and military units.
    “Paris maintains the fiction that there is a ‘political wing’ of Hizballah, when all of it is controlled by a single terrorist, Hassan Nasrallah,” said Pompeo, adding that he backs a group of 27 prominent French figures, who recently called for France to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization in an article published in Le Figaro.Macron has rejected criticism of his approach, saying he wants to avoid “escalation.”

    France, in addition to the UK and Germany, did not support the US resolution to extend the UN arms embargo on Iran, resulting in it failing to pass the UN Security Council vote.
    The current UN arms embargo on Iran is set to expire next month, despite the US and allies in the region pointing to the dangers of allowing Iran to purchase arms considering its destabilizing regional activities.

    Pompeo said America’s “European friends” did not support the “reasonable proposal” because of fear and political calculations.
    “Our European allies fear that if they hold Iran accountable for its destabilizing behavior, Iran will violate the even more in response,” he said.

    “This strategy of appeasement does nothing but play into Iran’s grand strategy,” Pompeo said.
    France is one of the partners to the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and has advocated for the preservation of the deal that the Trump administration exited in 2018 – despite Tehran violating the deal multiple times since then.

    “The question is whether France is willing to join us to stand up to Iran and secure peace and regional stability,” Pompeo said.

    US Secretary Pompeo criticizes France for policy on Iran, Hezbollah | The Levant

    or this article:

    I did not fail, Macron said; but why did he indeed fail - and could not have succeeded.

    02/10/2020 by Elijah J Magnier

    "The French initiative President Emmanuel Macron has taken towards Lebanon is not expected to succeed, now or in the coming weeks unless new elements are introduced. The French President is far from finding a solid foothold in Lebanon or uniting the Lebanese and has not even convinced the Europeans to join his initiative and inject sums of money into the crumbling Lebanese economy. Macron has friends in Lebanon who do not mind preserving a good relationship with France as long as it can offer solutions to solve this intractable Lebanese crisis. As for blaming others, not admitting his mistakes, and not realising the pitfalls of Lebanese politics, this is evidence that the master of the Elysée is not yet ready to learn the lessons from his previous mistakes and does not possess other solutions following his initial plan, which was just not realistic. But why is it that France will not succeed in its initiative in Lebanon? The reasons are numerous.

    Without a doubt, President Macron is more knowledgeable about the details of Lebanese politics than any other western President. However, this knowledge is not sufficient to accurately predict the reactions of well-established politicians, their fears, and the lack of trust between them.

    When Macron delved into the details of the financial situation and how Lebanon reached the size of its current debt and its causes (corruption, theft of public funds and the lack of an infrastructure plan whose money went into the pockets of politicians), as a former banker, he was able to explain more than 30 years of financial engineering that failed due to corruption in less than two minutes. Lebanon is not in a position to reconstruct international and domestic financial trust when its production belies its expenditure and the foreign investment in the infrastructure is ending up in the pockets of local warlords.

    As for when Macron tacked a possible political solution, he appeared weak and did not hold to a robust road map which would have had chances of success. During his first meeting with the politicians,he asked for their participation in the forthcoming government. Then he returned to Lebanon to request a consensual government. In both cases, he did not clarify what sort of government he was hoping to see and for the international community to collaborate with. It was not until his last press conference a few days ago that he clarified some of his wishes, only to confirm his confusion.

    Macron made it clear that former Prime Minister Saad Hariri made a mistake when selecting ministers based on confessional choice only to confirm that Hariri, the leader of a political party, was dictating his wishes to the designate Prime Minister Mustafa Adeeb. How can Macron ask Lebanese politicians – who disagree and distrust each other – to accept that the “club of former Prime Ministers” loyal to Saudi Arabia and the US run the Prime Minister Adeeb and suggest the new cabinet members? This “club” is formed by former PMs Fouad Siniora who is extremely hostile to the majority Christians led by former Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil and to Hezbollah. Its second member is Najeeb Miqati, a Sunni billionaire close to Saudi Arabia with a substantial interest in the USA. Its third member is Saad Hariri who holds Saudi nationality, and a declared enemy of Bassil, whose family lives in Riyadh, who seeks the Saudi blessing even if Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman has rejected him. Hariri has 17 MPs in parliament while Bassil has 20 and the duo Shia groups (Amal and Hezbollah) have 34 MPs.

    President Macron says that politicians have to choose between “the politics of the worst,” which means a civil war, as he said, or democracy. Macron did not explain how the concept of democracy would work in this case, which, if applied, governs the parliamentary majority and not the club of former presidents who represent the minority of the deputies. This indicates confusion in Macron’s message.

    The French President seems to be destroying the bridges he created with Hezbollah during his two visits to Lebanon when he accused the organisation of being responsible for obstructing the formation of the government that Macron adopted (Adeeb’s government). The French President did not say at any time in his successive visits to Lebanon that the parliamentary minority represented by the Club of former MPs must manage the naming and selection of the new cabinet and draw the road map for the resigning Prime Minister, Mostafa Adeeb.

    Had Macron formulated his road map, he would undoubtedly have faced face a total rejection by the majority of the politicians. At no moment has the French President said – as MP Walid Jumblatt revealed– that Macron wanted a government that does not represent the Lebanese political leaders. Also, why would PM Adeeb refuse to meet the leaders of the MPs and limit his consultation with the Sunni club of PMs? Furthermore, notwithstanding the nomination of Adeeb, the Christian leader Samir Geagea (who represents 15 MPs) refused to give confidence to Macron’s candidate from the very beginning. Geagea is known to be totally pro Saudi Arabia and the US.

    The duo Shia groups Amal and Hezbollah insisted on nominating the Finance Minister. In fact, for the first time, Hezbollah insisted more than the Speaker Nabih Berri (head of Amal). It held a firm position on the constitutional right to choose the Shia representative in the cabinet. The Finance Minister has the power to agree and release the budget of any cabinet project or payment to any official institution. The firm position of the Shia came after the designation of the US to the duo-Shia allies of two ministers on the sanctions list and after being ignored by PM Adeeb as suggested to him by the anti-Hezbollah advisers, the Sunni “Club of former Prime Ministers”.

    Moreover, the insistent position of the duo Shia on nominating the Finance Minister saved President Aoun and the Christian majority party. Each religion has the right to be consulted on the names of the future cabinet members when the selection of all Ministers is carried out by the Sunni PM and the Sunni former PMs. It is worth mentioning that in around three weeks, between the designation and the day the Prime Minister resigned, Adeeb never presented a list of the names of his ministers to the President for approval or opinion.

    During his last press conference, the French President offered a second chance for another 4-6 weeks. The six-week period coincides with the US Presidential election planned for 3rd November. However, the US election results won’t be available immediately but rather weeks afterwards. Moreover, the fate of the US is uncertain if Donald Trump is not re-elected. The “New York Times” columnist Thomas Friedman is said to be terrified by the possibility of covering a potential civil war in the US if Trump is not returned to the White House.

    It seems evident that the US did not give France the green light and did not leave the Lebanese stage free for Macron to draw his road map. Indeed, following each visit of the French President, a US envoy landed in Lebanon just days after Macron’s departure. Moreover, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered harsh overt criticism following Macron’s meetings with Hezbollah in Lebanon. To give another hit to the French initiative, the US imposed sanctions on Lebanese personalities that Emmanuel Macron explicitly said he does not agree with, though he can neither stop nor control their timing."

    https://ejmagnier.com/2020/10/02/i-d...ave-succeeded/
    Last edited by OhOh; 05-10-2020 at 12:34 PM.

  6. #906
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    France would indeed be idiotic to give billions to Beirut if Hezbollah have access to it.

    They will thrust their grubby snouts into the trough and steal as much as they can to buy terrorist weapons that their Iranian masters can't afford.

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    China’s High-Speed Rail Reaches into Southeast Asia

    05.10.2020 Author: Tony Cartalucci

    There is a significant reason why political unrest fueled by US interference is flaring up across Southeast Asia – an attempt at derailing Beijing’s ambitious One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative.

    When completed, it will cement not only China’s regional rise, but permanently replace the United States as Asia’s largest and most influential power.


    The “stitching” holding this emerging shift together is a regional high-speed rail network running from the southern Chinese city of Kunming, through Laos, and into the heart of Thailand. Construction in Laos is well underway with construction having already started in Thailand and expected to be completed in 2-3 years.
    The brand new Bang Sue Central Station in Bangkok was built specifically to service high-speed trains.
    While the West has heavily criticized this citing costs, debt, and low projections for passenger use – and while all of these issues are already being discussed by China and its Laotian and Thai partners – the West’s own criticism is more owed to its inability to compete with China’s regional rise and its vision for Asia’s future than any legitimate concern regarding the project itself.
    A Game Changer

    Western criticism has focused on both debt incurred through this leg of OBOR, as well as a perceived lack of demand for high-speed rail passenger services along the routes being built.

    However there are two points often left out of Western commentary – or more accurately – out of Western complaining.
    First is the fact that infrastructure itself often creates demand simply by being built, existing, and creating options that had never existed before.Travel along these high-speed rail lines may or may not be options existing travelers use in great numbers but those numbers will likely be joined by additional passengers who would have otherwise avoided the trip altogether because of the lack of appealing options in existence now – flying, conventional rail, buses, and vans – which are still expensive, time consuming, and mostly uncomfortable.Western critics, who mistakenly believe tourism is Thailand’s largest industry – claim that the high-speed railway travels through areas most (Western) tourists are uninterested in.

    However, there are two problems with this. Firstly, most tourists visiting Thailand no longer come from Western nations, but from Asia. More Chinese tourists visit Thailand each year than tourists from all Western nations combined.

    Thailand’s northeast region may currently be less appealing to tourists than other regions of the country, but this is simply because few have invested in making the region more accessible and more appealing.
    Chinese tourists traveling into Thailand via high-speed rail could just as easily be persuaded to spend time in the northeast, provided investments are made in local infrastructure and attractions. Currently, little incentive exists. Completion of the Thailand-Laos-China high-speed railway will be the first as well as a major incentive in changing this.

    Just as mass transportation networks in Bangkok have transformed little-known areas of the city into high-end commercial and residential districts, high-speed rail has the possibility of doing this on a much larger, national and even regional level.
    Then there is the fact that in addition to moving passengers, this high-speed rail network could just as easily move freight.In this regard, the benefits are undeniable. The network passes through one of Thailand’s main agricultural regions and the ability of farmers in Thailand’s northeast to move produce from their farms directly to China by rail would reduce time to market and increase exports – including exports that aren’t practical at the moment.

    Articles like Bloomberg’s, “Thailand forges new path for food exports to China,” explains the current options available for moving Thai produce to Chinese markets. This includes moving goods by trucks through Laos and Vietnam. It also includes via air.

    The article also notes more recent attempts to use rail in Vietnam, stating:

    Thailand began a two-mode system by trucking products to Vietnam, then moving the goods into containers on trains, which complete the deliveries to China. It may sound simple, but this is a first for Thai shipments, according to Narapat Kaeothong, vice minister for agriculture.

    How much simpler would it be to place goods on a single train and transport it at higher speeds straight to China, or anywhere else along high-speed rail lines?

    Acknowledging possibly low passenger numbers, Thailand has already considered the utility of using the network to move freight as well.

    The South China Morning Post (SCMP) would report in its article, ” Thailand pushes for high-speed rail link with China to be used for freight,” that:

    Vallobh Muangkeo, secretary general of the National Assembly of Thailand, told the South China Morning Post that Thailand had concerns about low demand for the service and called for it to be used to transport freight instead.

    High-speed rail services handling freight is not unprecedented.

    France’s TGV La Poste used dedicated trains specifically for moving mail across the country. Similar trains could be used by Thailand, Laos, and future countries in the region connected to the high-speed rail network to move large amounts of goods quickly and directly to China as well as receive goods from China.
    China itself plans on using its own high-speed rail network to move freight. A SCMP article titled, ” China planning high-speed rail freight network to help e-commerce sector,” noted:

    China’s state-owned railway operator is planning to accelerate the development of a high-speed freight network in the hope of bolstering the e-commerce network.
    A development plan published in mid-August also includes plans to further expand the passenger network and build an advanced control system that will integrate home-grown technologies such as 5G telecommunications, the Beidou satellite navigation system and artificial intelligence.

    It is not a difficult leap to imagine how easily this network could be extended into Laos and Thailand just as China plans on moving passenger services into both nations.

    China is already Thailand and Laos’ largest trading partner, largest foreign investor, largest source of tourism, and a key partner in defense and infrastructure.
    Connecting these nations together with high-speed rail and giving the population of Southeast Asia a direct route into China’s own massive domestic high-speed rail network will facilitate the movement of people and goods in ways that may not be immediately quantifiable.

    There were similar doubts over China’s own high-speed railway when it was first proposed, but it now moves billions of people a year, easily competes with domestic airlines, and has begun to play a role in China’s development in ways not directly connected to simply collecting fares.
    Arguments against the construction of Thai and Laotian high-speed rail based merely on passenger numbers and revenue projections are lazy arguments and are made primarily by a West otherwise unable to compete with China’s growing influence and role in Asia – a region the US saw itself maintaining primacy over for another century.

    The completion of high-speed rail in Southeast Asia – an admittedly massive project – will take time to prove its worth. But a look at high-speed rail anywhere else in the world indicates that such a network will undoubtedly become a major asset for each nation involved, and the entire region. It is no coincidence that detractors of the ongoing project are also deeply involved in promoting US-funded anti-government protests in Thailand and a generally anti-Chinese stance regarding any issue in the region.
    For detractors, it is not doubts about the viability of this major leg of China’s OBOR initiative – it is certainty of how it will contribute to the end of Western hegemony in Asia permanently."


    China’s High-Speed Rail Reaches into Southeast Asia | New Eastern Outlook


    A reminder of a previous "openings up" in other countries. Evidence of towns into cities, survival economy to international business, outlaws and pirates to law and order, lastly military movement quickened and available in the 4 corners of the country, Atlantic to Pacific, Europe to the Arctic Ocean, and beyond.

    Eurasia Topics-russian-tsr-jpg


    Eurasia Topics-us-train-jpg


    A familiar sight a while ago.
    Last edited by OhOh; 06-10-2020 at 11:41 AM.

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    The Double De-Coupling

    Alastair Crooke


    October 5, 2020

    "The defining event of this post-Covid era (whomsoever wins in the U.S. elections), will likely be the U.S. de-coupling from China – Tech de-coupling of telecoms (from Huawei’s 5G); de-coupling from Chinese media and chat platforms; the purging of all China tech from the U.S. microchip ecosystem; the disconnecting of China from internet, from app stores, from undersea cables; and from access to U.S. cloud-based data storage systems – under Pompeo’s Clean Network programme. This represents the first heavy artillery barrage to a prolonged, and mud-laden, trench-warfare ahead.

    This is not Cold War, but a reversion to an earlier era that then ended with hot war – when policy-makers (and markets) famously failed to appreciate the rising danger that was accreting during the sleepy-summer hiatus that elapsed between the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in late June 1914, and the outbreak of the First World War, five weeks later.

    Diplomats of course understood that two heavily-armed alliances were on potential a collision course, but there had been episodes of sabre-rattling for several years before, whose failure to come to a head had induced a sense that the status quo would extend indefinitely. Opinion then had been influenced by Norman Angell’s 1909 best-seller, The Great Illusion, arguing that war had become impossible, because global trade and capital flows were too closely interlinked.


    What they did not understand at that earlier moment was that the circumstances of mid-1914 (the Sarajevo moment) seemed so propitious both for Germany to aspire to empire, and for Britain to believe that it could quash it utterly. Just as circumstances are believed – by some in Washington – to be serendipitous today.


    Trump et al seem convinced that the U.S. can use its financial and trade muscle – whilst America still predominates – to crush China’s rise, contain Russia, and arm-twist Europe into tech vassalage. The Balkan war in the early 20th century locked Germany’s fickle ally Austria-Hungary into Germany’s greater fight against Russia. And today, Pompeo hopes to lock (fickle) Europe into America’s containment of Russia. The Nordstream threats and the Navalny scam are just some of Pompeo’s ‘levers’.


    Pompeo’s Clean Network assault is today’s ‘Sarajevo moment’. Policy-makers, and markets, remain blasé (as in 1914, when markets awoke to the risks, only in August, on the outbreak of war). By late January next year, the U.S. is very likely to be paralysed in an intractable, possibly violent, constitutional crisis – and in all-out tech war with China. By then, Europe and America are likely to be in full recession, as Coronavirus fires up for the winter.


    Tech de-coupling is not explicitly military, yet nor is it system-neutral: Who it is that sucks up our data, and then mines it via algorithms, to know what we think, what we feel, and do, precisely has the power to shape our society socially and politically. The point here is that our data – were we to remain in the U.S. digital sphere – is about to be used and shaped, in a polarized, adversarial manner. And with the drums of war beating, inevitably comes the call for public full commitment.


    It is obvious that, with the Clean ‘Fortress America’ project, Pompeo is taking Antonio Gramsci’s thesis that the cultural sphere is the most productive arena of political struggle – and is inverting it. Thus, instead of culture being the site of revolutionary action against an élite (per Gramsci), U.S. social net-platforms, cleansed of non-western rivals, become precisely the site where the system reasserts itself – neutering the possibility of political resistance via its most powerful weapons: big platform algorithmic and MSM demonisation of China (i.e. the ‘China Plague’) and Russia (‘assassination of its dissidents’). These can be the means by which a largely war-adverse Europe can be turned against China and Russia, in the name of advancing its ‘universal’ liberal values.


    There is however, another equally significant de-coupling edging its way ahead: “Russia has been watching with growing disquiet that Germany is in another historical transition”, Ambassador Bhadrakumar writes, “that holds disturbing parallels with the transition from Bismarck in the pre-World War 1 European setting … To illustrate the change sweeping over the German ideology, in an interview with the weekly magazine Die Zeit in July, the German Defence Minister (who is also the acting chairwoman of the ruling CDU) stressed that it is “high time” to discuss “how Germany must position itself in the world in the future”.


    She said, Bhadrakumar continues, that Germany is “expected to show leadership, not only as an economic power”, but also in “collective defence … it concerns a strategic view of the world, and ultimately it concerns the question of whether we want to actively shape the global order.” “Plainly put, the German voice is no longer the voice of pacifism, the Ambassador concludes”.


    Kramp-Karrenbauer said “the claim of the current Russian leadership” to advocate their interests “very aggressively” must be “confronted with a clear position: We are well-fortified, and in case of doubt, ready to defend ourselves. We see what Russia is doing and we will not let the Russian leadership get away with it”.


    “Suffice to say”, Bhadrakumar summarises, “seventy-five years after the end of World War 2, German imperialism is stirring — and, [its élites] once again, targeting Russia … Berlin plays a leading role in the western offensive against Russia and leads the NATO battlegroup in Lithuania. Germany and the U.S. are also working closely together on NATO moves against Russia. Germany is the most important staging area for NATO units deployed at the Eastern European border with Russia. And the German media is awash with opinion demanding that the NATO commitment should now finally be fulfilled and military spending increased to 2 percent of GDP”.


    The well-connected, Carnegie Moscow bureau chief, Dmitri Trenin, writes in a similar vein: “Berlin is ending the era launched by Gorbachev of a trusting and friendly relationship with Moscow. Russia, for its part, no longer expects anything from Germany, and therefore does not feel obliged to take into account its opinion or interests … One can only imagine how Putin reacted to Merkel’s announcement that Navalny had been poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent. A stab in the back is the mildest reaction that comes to mind”.


    Trenin writes: “Thirty years ago, German reunification seemed to be not only a historic reconciliation, but also a guarantee of future friendly relations and close cooperation between two peoples and states. Now that, too, has become a thing of the past … Russia is also embarking on a new chapter. The situation is accordingly becoming both simpler and more risky: The Kremlin is unlikely to take any drastic action immediately, but will from now on view Germany as being controlled by the United States. [And] as for the United States, Russia has long been engaged in a zero-sum hybrid war with it, in which there are fewer and fewer inhibitive factors left”.


    Merkel’s generation of German politicians are staunchly ‘Atlanticist’, but only in the ‘liberal way’ – as she herself is. That is, they are committed to upholding the ‘universal liberal value system’. This places her, of course, at loggerheads with Trump; yet paradoxically, that makes the German leadership that much more susceptible to U.S. manipulation on China and Russia (which are now fully bi-partisan issues in Washington) – since, as Samuel Huntington noted, “universalism is the [useful] ideology of the West for confronting other cultures”. Shades of 1914, when Austria-Hungary was locked into the greater fight with Russia, in a similar fashion!


    It is not hard to see the German élites’ bottom line: they are counting on a Biden win. Norbert Röttgen, chair of the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, and a candidate for the leadership of the CDU, put it this way: “Should Joe Biden win, I would expect his government to return to a partnership based on rational thinking and cooperation” i.e. the Euro-élites are counting on the return to ‘business as usual’. It won’t be though – the ‘old normal’ is well behind us.


    European Council President, Charles Michel, spoke this week about how the EU can achieve ‘strategic autonomy’: The EU “wants to be stronger, more autonomous, and firmer”. The EU, Michel continued, is about to develop an “open model with greater awareness of our strength, with more realism, and perhaps less naivety. We have faith in the virtues of free and open economies, never in protectionism … But from now on, we will better enforce the level playing field, in a market open to those who respect its standards”.


    Oh yes? Well, this may be fine for minnow states to be treated as vassals seeking an opening with Empire’s good grace for its manufactures, but it won’t work for tech, the New Economy, U.S., or the China-Russia axis. (Never mind that hypocrisy that the ‘level playing field’ is not a form of EU protectionism).


    The U.S. is pulling the commanding heights of tech and its standards and taking them ‘back home’. China will continue to be expelled from the western digital sphere – as far as the U.S. is able. Wolfgang Munchau reports that the German coalition now has approved a de facto Huawei ban. It’s goal is to kill Huawei through full-force application of German bureaucracy. And Russia is de-coupling from Europe to work more closely with China, (thanks to Merkel and her cohorts).


    But what then? Europe has no substitute to Huawei. 5G networks effectively represent the nervous system connecting the political, strategic, military, informative, economic, financial, industrial and infrastructural dimensions at a personal, local, national, international and transnational level. 5G networks, together with the exponential progresses in computing power and advances in AI, are the transformative agency of the New Economy. The point here is latency: the ability to integrate differing streams of data all together, and with virtually no delay. It is key not just to everyday ways of life, but to defence systems too.


    Machine Learning is a specific subset of AI that trains machines. It trains AI to learn and adapt, and without the latency of human-driven decisions, efficiency can be at the forefront. Machine Vision: From autonomous cars and drones to robots and so much more of today’s cutting-edge technologies, they all share a dependence on machine vision. That means these machines must be able to “see” to perform their tasks in the physical world.


    And all these need 5G to reduce latency. The U.S. hasn’t got it. And China leads. It leads on Big Data and on AI. Yes, the U.S. leads on semiconductors or ‘chips’, but for how long? China simply won’t allow itself to be expelled from the global semiconductor market. IT experts from Russia, ASEAN and Huawei are explaining, as Pepe Escobar reports, what could be described as a limitation of quantum physics is preventing a steady move from 5 nm (billionth of a metre) to 3 nm chips. This means that the next breakthroughs may come from other semiconductor materials and techniques. So China, in this aspect, is practically at the same level of research as Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. China’s breakthroughs have involved a crucial switch from silicon to carbon. Chinese research is totally invested in this switch, and is nearly ready to transpose its lab work into industrial production.


    To whom then is China turning for tech co-operation? It is not Germany. As Asia Times’ David Goldman notes, “the cumulative impact of a series of sanctions on Russia has pushed Russia toward a strategic alliance with China, including close cooperation with China on 5G telecommunications and semiconductor R&D. Russia’s economy may be the size of Italy’s, but its brain is bigger than its body: It graduates more engineers per annum than the United States, and they are very well trained”.


    And so – back to our ‘Sarajevo moment’. Pompeo has pulled the trigger on the Arch Duke. Dynamics have been set in motion. Yet we remain stuck in the interregnum waiting on the U.S. – whilst Euro-leaders count that Biden must win, and ‘normality’ be restored.

    In the early twentieth century, Britain’s attempt to rip-apart global supply lines – to preserve its own; and to deny Germany its external links, effectively channeled resurgent German ambitions eastwards, across the plain of Europe, and ultimately, to a drive on Russia. It ended with war and economic depression.


    Today, the U.S. demands that Europe sever from Russia and China, yet America has entered into internal crisis – and even at the best of times, cannot substitute for the Asian axis in most tech spheres. It would be hubris for Europe to imagine it can build a New Economy in rivalry to the Big Two, and absent their tech and diplomatic strategic co-operation. For Europe to try to sit out the present ‘phony war’ like the Grand Panjandrum, waiting for tech suitors to come to it, is no strategy, but rather a receipt for Depression.


    It is not a great prospect … for European peoples struggling, not with the chimaera of Euro-empire, but with trying to manage their lives in difficult Corona times. One cannot help but notice that European politics at the national level is all domestic (school openings, virus restrictions and shrinking economies), whilst far-away Brussels fantasises about building a stronger, more autonomous, European ‘empire’."

    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/10/05/the-double-de-coupling/


    Will history repeat itself, again?

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    26 countries urge Western sanctions lifting to tackle virus

    By Edith M. Lederer | AP


    Oct. 6, 2020 at 10:11 a.m. GMT+7

    "UNITED NATIONS — China and 25 other nations countries on Monday called for the immediate lifting of sanctions by the United States and Western countries to ensure an effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Speaking on behalf of the 26 countries at a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly’s human rights committee, China’s U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun said “unilateral coercive measures” violate the U.N. Charter, multilateralism, and impede human rights by hindering “the well-being of the population in the affected countries” and undermining the right to health.

    “Global solidarity and international cooperation are the most powerful weapons in fighting and overcoming COVID-19,” the joint statement said. “We seize this opportunity to call for the complete and immediate lifting of unilateral coercive measures, in order to ensure the full, effective and efficient response of all members of the international community to COVID-19.”

    continues at ;

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/26-countries-urge-western-sanctions-lifting-to-tackle-virus/2020/10/05/94d705c8-0781-11eb-8719-0df159d14794_story.html

    and

    China seeks lifting unilateral sanctions on behalf of 26 countries - CGTN

  10. #910
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    If Baldy doesn't give a fuck what happens to Americans, why the fuck would he give a shit about anyone else?

  11. #911
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    I love the way they tiptoe round it so as not to get the chinkies squealing again.

    Huawei's UK code reviewers say Chinese mega-corp is still totally crap at basic software security. Bad crypto, buffer overflows, logic errors...

    Last year telcos scrambled to plug 'critical user-facing vulns' in network kit

    UK.gov security researchers examining Huawei source code have so far verified just eight firmware binaries out of more than 60 used across Britain's mobile phone networks, according to the GCHQ-backed agency's annual report.

    The Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre (HCSEC) – mostly run by GCHQ offshoot the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), though it is also staffed by some Huawei personnel – sighed that the Chinese company has made "limited" progress on
    last year's recommendations to toughen up its act.


    Code reviewers found "evidence that Huawei continues to fail to follow its own internal secure coding guidelines. This is despite some minor improvements over previous years." In addition, "The Cell" said it had found more vulnerabilities during 2019 than it had in previous years – though Huawei was keen to paint this finding as "proof the review system is working", something NCSC guardedly agreed with.


    "NCSC does not view the increase in vulnerabilities as an indicator of a further decline in Huawei's product quality, but it certainly does not indicate any marked improvement or transformation," said the agency in its report.


    There was nothing in the report suggesting the Chinese state had planted intentional backdoors in code – though there was plenty to suggest that Huawei simply isn't taking the task of building robust and secure software and firmware with requisite seriousness.
    (because it planted intentional backdoors in code - Harry)

    Vulns uncovered by HCSEC researchers poring over the source code of Huawei's mobile network equipment firmware included "unprotected stack overflows in publicly accessible protocols, protocol robustness errors leading to denial of service, logic errors, cryptographic weaknesses, default credentials" as well as "many other basic vulnerability types".
    Huawei's UK code reviewers say Chinese mega-corp is still totally crap at basic software security. Bad crypto, buffer overflows, logic errors... • The Register

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    Version 666.1 will fix them all.

  13. #913
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    This is the bit where the chinkies start threatening a trade deal.

    • U.K. Parliament’s defence committee said in a new report that there is “clear evidence of collusion” between Huawei and the “Chinese Communist Party apparatus.”
    • They pointed to allegations of state funding to Huawei as well as the company potentially having to comply with China’s national security laws.
    • The lawmakers said that U.K. operators might have to consider ripping out Huawei gear from their 5G networks by 2025, rather than 2027, if certain conditions change.



    Huawei accused of '''collusion''' with China Communist Party: UK lawmakers

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    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    This is the bit where the chinkies start threatening a trade deal.
    Aside from being a mid-size market, though, the UK isn't that important to them . . . so they'll bully as its no longer part of the EU.

    Smart move Brexiteers.

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    Quad won’t fly. This is why

    October 13, 2020 by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR

    "The expectations were that the visiting US Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun would expand from a public platform in Delhi on October 12 on a theme he had audaciously expounded some six weeks ago in an online seminar that Washington was aiming to “formalise” growing strategic ties with India, Japan and Australia in the framework of the so-called Quad.

    Biegun had said, “It is a reality that the Indo-Pacific region is actually lacking in strong multilateral structures. They don’t have anything of the fortitude of NATO, or the European Union. There is certainly an invitation there at some point to formalise a structure like this.”

    The remark raised eyebrows within India and regionally, as Beigun entered forbidden territory. Beigun would have desisted if only he had glanced through the External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s book The India Way.


    The point is, even the former Soviet Union, in the halcyon days of friendship with India — even while shooing off USS Enterprise prowling in the Bay of Bengal in 1971 threatening India — never proposed a formal military alliance with New Delhi.


    Therefore, the most striking thing about Beigun’s speech yesterday is that he steered clear of the “Asian NATO” theme. Indeed, Biegun was also speaking a week after the Quad ministerial in Tokyo where Jaishankar said the absolute minimum necessary — and Beijing promptly took note of it.


    In such a context, Beigun outlined Plan B, which candidly accepted that “the model of the last century of mutual defence treaties with a heavy in-country US troop presence (aka NATO)” is not necessarily the Quad’s future.


    Biegun instead proposed a loose “alignment on how best to equitably address strategic threats while accounting for changes in capabilities and respect for one another’s sovereignty.”


    India’s China hands, all dressed up and raring to go for “strategic linkages” with the US, must be sorely disappointed when Biegun stated his “respect” for India’s strategic autonomy. (Jaishankar boldly calls it “nonalignment”.)


    Biegun chose measured words to outline what Quad can do, namely, “an organic and deeper partnership—not an alliance on the postwar model, but a fundamental alignment along shared security and geopolitical goals, shared interests, and shared values.”


    Nonetheless, he noted, China is the “elephant in the room”. So, how does the Quad look like? Beigun called for an “increase and regularise contact at all levels between the Quad’s diplomats, defense officials, and technical experts”; partnerships between development finance corporations to help facilitate the Indo-Pacific needs for energy and infrastructure; deepening of engagement with ASEAN; cooperation in defending freedom of the seas; joint efforts in governance, health, environmental protection, water conservation and transparent data sharing; and, increased people-to-people ties.

    Biegun conceptualised as follows: “The Quad is a partnership driven by shared interests, not binding obligations, and is not intended to be an exclusive grouping.”

    The main purpose of Biegun’s visit was probably not this speech but the discussions today with Indian officials to get a preview of the planned 2+2 foreign and defence ministers’ bilateral meet in Delhi. Any productive outcome could be useful for Trump’s campaign, which is in dead heat.


    Biegun is a realist, having been President Trump’s envoy to North Korea — and a specialist on Russia with live-in experience of Moscow — and senses that Quad won’t fly in the geopolitics of Asia.


    In the run-up to the Tokyo meeting, Washington hoped to attract more countries to the Quad — Mongolia, South Korea and Vietnam. But Pompeo saw there were no takers and abruptly cancelled his scheduled visits to Ulaanbaatar and Seoul.

    The week before the Quad meet in Tokyo, Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke to the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam and President Nguyen Phu Trong. According to the Chinese readout,

    “The Vietnamese side highly treasures and firmly safeguards the friendly and cooperative relations with China, and is grateful to the Chinese side for offering valuable support and assistance at various stages of the liberation and development of Vietnam… The Vietnamese side hopes to cement political mutual trust of the two parties and the two countries with the Chinese side, give full play to political leadership of the two parties in bilateral relations, maintain the right tone in public communication, and push for new progress in economic and trade cooperation. Both sides should deepen exchanges and cooperation at local levels, boost coordination and cooperation within multilateral frameworks, jointly secure a peaceful and stable environment for development, properly address and resolve existing problems, and lead the relations both between the two parties and between the two countries to new historic development.”


    Our ex-generals and ex-diplomats who fantasise about the Quad have lost the plot. Simply put, to rally a political or military alliance against China is not an achievable goal. Just forget about it. At Tokyo, Pompeo indulged in vicious anti-China diatribes, but his Quad colleagues looked away.


    The new Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who, unlike Abe, has no pretensions of being Trump’s friend, has made it clear that he wants to repair the somewhat strained relationship with China. Japan will no doubt remain loyal to the bilateral defence alliance with the US, but Suga faces an election next year and his handling of COVID-19 and Japan’s economic recovery are going to be the clinchers, where close economic and trade relationship with China can make big difference.

    For India too, the Belt and Road Initiative is the only stepping stone to accelerate economic recovery, create a rapid development path and job creation before the 2024 general election.

    At a Border Roads Organisation virtual function on October 12, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh touched upon a collusive threat from Pakistan and China. He said, “First Pakistan, and now also by China, as if a border dispute is being created under a mission by the two countries. We have a border of about 7000 km with these countries.”

    Yes, the spectre of a war of attrition haunts India. But it is a failure of foreign policies. A modus vivendi with China is absolutely imperative. How that is to be achieved poses an intellectual challenge rather than a military matter. India should not make the cold-war era mistake of strategic overreach that ultimately tired out the former Soviet Union and led to its collapse.

    A starting point will be to examine with a cool head the factors underlying the US’ hostility toward China. In a nutshell, the US’ predicament is that whereas it accounted for one-half or more of the world’s manufactures through the past seven-decade period, it now makes only about one-sixth. The US is paranoid that the era of its global dominance is ending. And, as happened often in history, the great power in decline desperately refuses to accept the geopolitical reality and adapt itself to a new normal.

    Today, China accounts for 30 percent of global manufacturing and continues to grow, with an economy that is almost one-third larger than that of the US in purchasing power terms and rapidly approaching parity at nominal exchange rates. China is hard to beat as it is now the largest consumer market on the planet and the biggest trading partner of over three-fourths of the world’s other economies.

    China is fully integrated into the global capitalist system and cannot be walled off from it. And China already possesses one-fourth of the world’s scientific, technological, engineering, and mathematics workforce. Its ascendancy has become unstoppable.

    Yet, China spends only two percent or less of GDP on its military compared to the current 7.9% spent by the US. China is disinterested in matching the US’ nuclear arsenal and adopts a “no first use” policy backed by a modest force de frappe that can conduct a limited but devastating retaliatory counterstrike.

    China cannot be beaten since, unlike the USSR, it is part of the same global society as the US. Look at the sheer spread of the US-China battlefields — global governance, geoeconomics, trade, investment, finance, currency usage, supply chain management, technology standards and systems, scientific collaboration and so on. It speaks of China’s vast global reach. This wasn’t the case with USSR.

    Above all, China has no messianic ideology to export and prefers to set a model by virtue of its performance. It is not in the business of instigating regime change in other countries, and actually gets along rather well with democracies.

    The heart of the matter is that India has no reason to be the US’ pillion rider. Whatever remained of the US’ exceptionalism is also gone as the world witnesses its pitiable struggle with Covid-19, repeated displays of racism, gun violence, political venality, xenophobia. No wonder, the transatlantic alliance is withering and Europeans are dissociating from the US’ effort to “contain” China.

    The US created the ASEAN but today no Asian security partner wants to choose between America and China. The ASEAN cannot be repurposed to form a coalition to counter China. Thus, no claimant against China in the South China Sea is prepared to join the US in its naval fracas with China.

    China has resources, including money, to offer its partners, whereas, the US budget is in chronic deficit and even routine government operations must now be funded with debt. It needs to find resources needed to keep its human and physical infrastructure at levels competitive with those of China and other great economic powers.


    Why on earth should India get entangled in this messy affair whose climax is a foregone conclusion? No, things should never be allowed to reach such a pass that India needs to tackle a China-Pakistan collusion.

    A robust attempt is needed to reach a settlement of the boundary dispute with China, which would open up vast vistas of cooperation that can uplift India’s development trajectory.


    If our generals (or ex-generals) want a bigger defence budget, so be it. If the government has money to spare, why not? But that doesn’t have to be pinned on outlandish notions of inevitability of an epochal war with China.

    China has no need to fight wars when it is already winning."


    https://indianpunchline.com/quad-wont-fly-this-is-why/
    Last edited by OhOh; 13-10-2020 at 09:44 PM.

  16. #916
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    Damn that wobbly is funny.

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    Quote Originally Posted by OhOh View Post
    China has no need to fight wars when it is already winning."
    So, why is it stoking aggression and military bravado all over the place?

    Yea . . . will either throw everything it has at a smaller/weaker enemy and suffer the consequences or it will retreat again in fear of the government losing power and keep whining about China's utter humiliation hundreds of years ago . . . whiny little bitches

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    Quote Originally Posted by panama hat View Post
    why is it stoking aggression and military bravado all over the place
    Where and to whom is China undertaking such actions?

    Quote Originally Posted by panama hat View Post
    throw everything it has
    To whom do you consider has China thrown everything at?

    Quote Originally Posted by panama hat View Post
    keep whining
    One presumes you consider the official Chines government responses to actual military, financial and racist foreign government's official spokespersons, unproven allegations, as wining.

    I would have thought you, having experienced the diplomatic community to and fro's in your lifetime, would be able to distinguish between the two.

    Unfortunately you appear not able to.
    Last edited by OhOh; 14-10-2020 at 10:03 AM.

  19. #919
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    Quote Originally Posted by OhOh View Post
    Where and to whom is China undertaking such actions?
    If you don't know the answer to that question I'd read the thread about the chinkies starting fights with India, or the thread about them building military installations all over islands they don't own.

    But you do know the answer, so stop playing the dumb shit. It makes you look like a really dumb shit.

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    Quote Originally Posted by OhOh View Post
    Where and to whom is China undertaking such actions?
    Oh dear . . . India, Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia etc etc . . . the news escaped you?



    Quote Originally Posted by OhOh View Post
    One presumes you consider the official Chines government responses to actual military, financial and racist foreign government's official spokespersons, unproven allegations, as wining.
    No, not wining at all . . . whining. Yes.

    Quote Originally Posted by OhOh View Post
    I would have thought you, having experienced the diplomatic community to and fro's in your lifetime, would be able to distinguish between the two.
    You think correctly . . . and I can, hence my opinion and observations.

    Quote Originally Posted by OhOh View Post
    Unfortunately you appear not able to.
    Unfortunately you are unable to differentiate between reality and the dross that the communist party doles out.

  21. #921
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    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    I'd read the thread about the chinkies starting fights with India,
    Is it a MK ameristani funded regime thread?

    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    all over islands they don't own.
    Possession is 9/10s of the law.

    Quote Originally Posted by panama hat View Post
    India, Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia
    "Throwing everything at", pray tell what was the everything and when was it thrown?

    Responding with talks and arriving at a satisfactory result to both parties.
    Last edited by OhOh; 14-10-2020 at 09:35 PM.

  22. #922
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    Quote Originally Posted by OhOh View Post
    Possession is 9/10s of the law.
    Er... no actually, it isn't.

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    Quote Originally Posted by OhOh View Post
    Possession is 9/10s of the law.
    That's a stupid thing to say, even for you.

    I guess Taiwan is safe then.

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    Quote Originally Posted by panama hat View Post
    That's a stupid thing to say, even for you.

    I guess Taiwan is safe then.
    The Republic of China (ROC), commonly known as Taiwan,[1][2] has formal diplomatic relations with 14 out of 193 United Nations member states.

    Russia and 17 UN member states officially recognize Crimea as part of the Russian Federation.

    So Russian Crimea has more legitimacy than Taiwan.

  25. #925
    Thailand Expat
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    Again, stick to your experiences regarding rape-apologists and hookers as you have zero clue anywhere else.

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