Preamble
Conversation with an imaginary friend (from the US).
'We are the #1 country in the world.'
No you're not.
'We are the most powerful.'
No you're not.
And that's the point. Things aren't in terms of power anyway. Not any longer.
The US is on the other side of the planet. Mostly isolated. Canada's there, ready to bend over when politely propositioned. But Central America and South America are definitely not on your side. What does 'BRICS' stand for? The 'B'?
Your 'world' - NATO and AU and NZ - represents, at most, some 12% of the world's human population. The two greatest nations in terms of population are on our side. They're part of Eurasia. Which, as you may remember, was part of the Grand Chessboard nightmare?
Saudi Arabia’s in BRICS. Trade between Russia and China uses USD to only 20%. And then there’s the SCO. G7 is fading fast.
The US can still wreak havoc. We're all aware of that. Last we looked, borderland Ukraine wasn't exactly a tidy tea party. Or even a Mad Hatter one.
But dominate? Those days are gone, Blossom. That's the whole point. There isn't even a single bully to replace you. Again, that's the point. Or rather the (fortuitous) intention. The 'world' is no longer unipolar. It's been moving away from that for a long time. It was of course mentioned by Vladimir Putin in his 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference, as you may remember.
Look out your window, my love. Was it in the LA area you lived? Can you listen to the sounds of the city? Do you hear sirens? Helicopters overhead? That's a place to live?
Do you have tent cities? Like in San Francisco? Or Phoenix? Or Chicago? Or Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love? Or New York? People say New York is a mess, by the way, like all your cities. Or how are things in Washington DC these days? Can you go out at night there without a police escort or a bodyguard? Remember Seth?
You're in decline, dear. Your empire is in decline. It used to be an empire - not a particularly beloved one, but an empire still the same. Now it's not anymore. Now it's in decline.
You can't recover. You can only land gracefully (or not). Up to you.
Keep a low profile, dear. There are a lot of people in a lot of places in a lot of countries who are angry for the way they've been treated, and they're going to exact revenge if they have a chance. So keep a low profile. And be nice.
And no, don't look to Europe for a way out. They don't have anything to offer. They're following you. They're in decline too.
Try your archenemy instead. Try Russia. Try this. (Did you know some 30,000 Afro-Americans migrated there 90 years ago? Yup. You might conceivably run into them.) And is this a good place to hang out, to seek shelter? It is now. How it'll be in another twenty years isn't known, but things change all the time. Have a look.
Do you see something different there? Not the girls, silly. That's just a come-on. Clickbait. This is a walkabout in Moscow. Capital of and largest city in Russia.
So look around. Beyond the camera. Do you see something you didn't expect? Do you not see something you would expect?
YouTube has a lot of Russian walkabout clips. Try a few.
Not every country outside the Golden Billion has shithole cities like you. The most powerful, #1.
There are some good people in the US. Really good people. But, in this post-neocon world, you're going to have to peek around the corner to see what's happening on the other side, to see how much you've been screwed over by your corrupt governments for so long.
Eva’s Pubmates
This clip here's four years old. It's by Eva Bartlett. It should be a shocker for most people in your hemisphere.
You're not #1, Angel. And you're surely not the 'most powerful'. That's the wrong idea anyway. Not understanding why is part of the reason you're the problem.
It's up to you.
Jeffrey's Crash Course
Here's a brief 30 minute chat with professor Jeffrey Sachs, hosted by Judge Nap. As you'll notice, Andy says hardly a word through it all. Jeffrey was there. He was adviser to Gorby. To Bakers and Bushes and Clintons. And to Yeltsin.
Jeffrey was in the Kremlin itself when Yeltsin shocked everyone by announcing his intention to step down, ushering in the era of Putin and the new Russia.
Listen to Jeffrey. Especially the parts where he gives you the background to some pretty disastrous decisions by a number of White Houses. What's your take on it all? Are they evil incarnate? Or are they mostly a pack of bumbling bunglers?
Nyet Means Nyet
Jeffrey cites an important document in his crash course. An embassy cable called 'Nyet Means Nyet'. It comes from WikiLeaks. It's not part of the notorious Cablegate release from late autumn 2010, but from the PlusD (Public Library of US Diplomacy) release some half year later. PlusD wasn't a leak per se. It came from freely available archives. The only hitch was that everything was archived in JPEG PDF format. So the first thing WikiLeaks had to do was a machine read of the trove to turn it all into searchable text. This is where the revelation came, as told to Michael Hastings, that Sweden's former PM was actually a CIA spy who'd successfully got himself recruited by Langley.
C O N F I D E N T I A L MOSCOW 000265
SIPDIS
SIPDIS
E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/30/2018
TAGS: PREL, NATO, UP, RS
SUBJECT: NYET MEANS NYET: RUSSIA'S NATO ENLARGEMENT
REDLINES
REF: A. MOSCOW 147
B. MOSCOW 182
Classified By: Ambassador William J. Burns. Reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).Here's the first of twelve sections of that dispatch.
1. (C) Summary. Following a muted first reaction to Ukraine's intent to seek a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) at the Bucharest summit (ref A), Foreign Minister Lavrov and other senior officials have reiterated strong opposition, stressing that Russia would view further eastward expansion as a potential military threat. NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains 'an emotional and neuralgic' issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. In Ukraine, these include fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene. Additionally, the GOR and experts continue to claim that Ukrainian NATO membership would have a major impact on Russia's defense industry, Russian-Ukrainian family connections, and bilateral relations generally. In Georgia, the GOR fears continued instability and 'provocative acts' in the separatist regions. End summary.You can read the full cable at the link here.
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html
A video summary can be found here.
BTW, did you notice the name of the emboff sending that cable? Does that name ring a bell?
Busy Man
Judge Napolitano is a busy man. More and more he has a group of regulars who visit him each week. Some of the best in the business. Larry, Doug, Ray, to name just a few. And now this week he got back Karen Kwiatkowski, who was an absolute gem.
You don't need your MSM anymore, as Kash Patel says. You get everything you could possibly need right here.
Here's Scott Ritter.
Here are Larry and Ray.
Here's Alastair Crooke.
And here's Doug Macgregor.
All in one week.
Class dismissed.
'When Putin speaks I listen, when Biden speaks I laugh. When Biden stumbles up the stairs, I laugh some more. When Zelensky speaks I hide my wallet.'