Feb-Mar 2023

The Chinese Takeover

(i)

Republican lawmakers have urged Blinken to tell Beijing that its aggression against India and Taiwan is not ‘acceptable’. They have also asked Blinken to raise human rights violations, unfair trade practices, expansion in the Indo-Pacific and China’s leading role in the fentanyl crisis in the United States. (Hindustan Times, YouTube, Feb 2023)

“China’s leading role in the fentanyl crisis in the United States”? China is responsible for American physicians’ prescribing opioids to Americans, of course! and the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), “who is responsible for protecting the public health” according to its website, is responsible for nothing in an opioid crisis that has claimed more than half a million American lives. Of course!

(ii)
The weather balloon conspiracy

(For details, see Law 33: Weather Balloon from China, as well as the comments section.)

When someone apologizes to you for an accident, you may scold them for negligence or clumsiness, but not for intentional wrongdoing (such as airspace violation for spying) because then you are calling them liars and reject their apologies.

The U.S. is provoking China, calling her a liar and rejecting her apologies, which means America refuses to turn the page and threatens China with retaliation. “Never again,” in this context, means “We are going to teach you a lesson.” This is a menace, and they know the implications of menace in international law.

The number of American provocations against China these last months and weeks appalls me, as a European. Next, they’ll say China gave Putin the green light for the military operation in Ukraine; they’ll say Putin asked Xi whether China minded if Russia started the operation and Xi said “You have our support.”

(iii)

China’s Ukraine hypocrisy: Readies drones for Russia & calls out West for arms to Kyiv. (Hindustan Times, YouTube, Feb 2023)

When you’ve got, in this war, a party that has just made known it will send weapons to Ukraine “as long as it takes,” after a whole year of war already, you know their plans are not to reach peace in six months as a contrived CIA report that was pumped into the media made believe (just after a U.S. top general had publicly said it will be “very, very hard”). You know this party is on the contrary expecting a decade-long war. So, if you lend a hand to belligerent country A, although you began with opposing arming belligerent country B, you are not “duplicitous”; in fact, you are trying to deter the Brandon party to further carry out the bellicose strategy aiming at war “as long as it takes,” because you want a peace deal and your acts are no different from your words.

What prevented NATO from granting Ukraine their military shield, like the “oil for security deal” between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia? It is not right, after such a lack of anticipation, to try to amend one’s mistakes with precipitous sanctions and arms supplies. – Ukraine will be a battlefield “as long as it takes.” This is not weapons Ukraine should ask for: it is full belligerence of NATO countries or peace with Russia.

Arming Ukraine cannot make this country win the war in the foreseeable future, so, absent direct belligerence by NATO, Russia is the only possible winner. A ceasefire and peace deal should be agreed by Ukrainian authorities, and that probably means relinquishing the newly annexed regions, no more no less. NATO countries have failed to anticipate and prevent this; if they think Russia has more such operations in store for the future, they should provide some countries with a military shield, such as the shield with which the United States is covering her friend Saudi Arabia. Arming Ukraine cannot be a substitute for lack of anticipation, something that should be obvious after a whole year of sanctions and financial and military support.

One may question my expectations about the war as waged to this day, but what are NATO’s expectations to begin with? One American general said it will be “very, very hard” to chase Russians from the newly annexed regions, then, a few days later, a CIA report talked about ending the war in six months. So much for the consistency. Zero credibility. Let them admit publicly that their policy of arming Ukraine is a 10-year or longer war plan, and China’s position will become much clearer. “As long as it takes” means war for years, it’s not going to be six months. Those who oppose this are those who may be said to be for peace.

(iv)

A non-neutral (although nonbelligerent) party to a conflict will be deemed tainted with partiality by a neutral, impartial judge. The non-neutral U.S.’s talking of Chinese “disinformation” regarding the conflict between Ukraine and Russia is therefore partial. It may or may not be true in the final analysis: an impartial judge will decide after hearing all parties. On the other hand, the U.S.’s talking about “poisonous” disinformation is hostile, and the statement will be recorded as such, as hostile toward China.

The American rhetoric and its use of fighting words shall be stressed in the record. Needless to say, “poisonous” hints at pests, such as snakes. And the idea that the Chinese “poison the well” (“The well has been poisoned by Chinese and Russian disinformation, said the special envoy”) hints at lepers and other outcasts from the European Middle Ages, who were accused of poisoning wells. The record shall stress that the American party has abandoned the language of diplomacy and is now resorting to the language of incitement.

*

Justa Causa

The Americans are making believe there is no such thing as a “just cause” (justa causa), but their practice and precedents show that they cannot claim to have an international doctrine of nonaggression; the U.S. cannot claim to consider aggression by itself a breach of international law. On the contrary, their practice shows they act under the notion there are just causes of war, and therefore they shall be asked not to claim, without reason and evidence, that there are no or cannot be just causes whenever the U.S. herself is not involved in a conflict outbreak. For neutral parties, the question whether Russia had a right to send troops in Ukraine or not remains open, by application of the just cause doctrine.

On the other hand, absent a just cause doctrine, aggression of one state by another cannot be a just cause to be hostile to the former, because to claim to have a just cause, one needs a just cause doctrine. Furthermore, absent such a doctrine, any country has the discretionary and unaccountable right to remain neutral, that is, nonbelligerent and neutral.

In other words, faced with the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, if foreign countries 1/ abide by a just cause doctrine, then a decision not to remain neutral supposes a just cause, which can only be that the Russians themselves have no just cause, and if 2/ they do not abide by such a doctrine, the decision to remain neutral or not is unrelated to any such ground. If it is unrelated to the issue of causes, it remains out of discussion: it is entirely discretionary, the people of these states are, for all intents and purposes, mute. Therefore, NATO’s so-called free countries are expected to abide by a just cause doctrine: that their decision not to remain neutral remains undiscussed, namely, the fact that it is taken for granted that Russia does not have a just cause for intervention in Ukraine, is self-contradictory.

*

U.S. fighter jet destroys object over Canada. (Hindustan Times, YouTube, Feb 2023) – User: Canada has no Air Force?

The North American Aerospace Defense Command or NORAD is combined U.S.-Canadian surveillance. The U.S. consisting of two mainland parts divided by Canada (see Alaska), for all intents and purposes Canada is not sovereign over Canadian skies vis-à-vis the U.S.

*

German FM [foreign minister] concedes ‘War with Russia a mistake.’ (Hindustan Times, YouTube, Feb 2023) [The German minister of foreign affairs had said Germany is in war with Russia, before conceding it was a mistake.]

She is incompetent. There could hardly be another utterance proving she is “unfit for the job” as much as the one she made. Her government’s position, in terms of international law, is that Germany and other NATO countries are not belligerent parties in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia and therefore eschew any responsibility if Russia takes hostile military measures against them, in which case they would act, accordingly, in self-defense. A foreign minister so blatantly ignorant of the international-law underpinnings of her government’s stance, is unfit for the job, there’s no other word.

*

NATO Nation [Germany] defends India’s oil trade with Russia despite sanctions; ‘None of Our Business’. (Hindustan Times, YouTube, Feb 2023)

Last time I checked, Germany was a member of the sanctions party. Therefore, India’s buying cheap oil from Russia is 100% Germany’s business, for two reasons: 1) the sanctions party is the cause of the discount, while Europe gets its energy at inflationary price from the U.S., Qatar, and others, & 2) the sanctions party should ensure that its sanctions policy is effective, and that means it should ensure that all friends dance to the same tune, otherwise the party is only harming itself. A sanctions party that looks the other way when India and others benefit from hampering the sanctions is a joke.

Let the situation be known to the Germans (but I doubt the speech will make news there, to start with), some will begrudge their government for the nonsense, others will begrudge India for her non-cooperative “friendship,” others will begrudge both.

*

At some point, it was thought by some that winds blow on the moon because the NASA pictures of the manned moon landing show the stars and stripes waving in the wind, but in fact the stars and stripes was just creased because of storage, and the first men on the moon did not care to straighten their flag before saluting it, and the flag is still.

*

I’ll believe there are female soldiers fighting when I see one die on the battlefield. It’s easy to put a woman in uniform in front of cameras for the show.

They are always showing us women in uniform, in time of peace, but now and then you hear or read that this or that army’s doctrine is that women are not sent to the battlefield. Typists in uniform! Wonderful equality where I will be asked to sacrifice my life and my female colleagues will wear the same uniform and sport the same medals while being exempted from this little service, a mere trifle. You think I’m a dog? – Oh yes, it’s teamwork, we all contribute: I contribute with dying, and you with staying alive.

*

Anti-racism protests in Tunisia after President Kais Saied’s migration speech [Kais said, according to journalists, “migration from Sub-Saharan Africa was aimed at changing Tunisia’s demographics”] (Al Jazeera English, YouTube, Feb 26, 2023)

The social democrats in power in Denmark say the same as Kais and implement the most restrictive immigration policy of the whole of Europe, while singing antifascist anthems like the others.

(I don’t know if “was aimed at” is a correct report; if correct, the assertion is problematic: aimed by whom? Is there a mastermind behind these migrations? If Kais’s speech is rightly reported, then I am not claiming Denmark’s authorities “say the same” as strictly as if it were only about demographic change.)

–Denmark has a population of just 4M, it would be so easy to become outnumbered in your own land. Who wants that?

On Google, I find Denmark’s population to be 5.8M. But this is not the relevant demographic figure, which is, rather, the percentage. Does Denmark have a greater percentage of foreign population than other European countries already to make a valid claim that its native population is being outnumbered compared with more populated nations? If, with a small population, Denmark has an even smaller percentage of foreigners, the argument is contrived.

However, this was not my point, which was the irony of finding a social-democratic party implementing the most restrictive immigration policy in Europe when the same parties in other countries have been so vocal for immigration. My interlocutor is saying, in her own way, that the platforms of social democracy depend on demographics, but I don’t believe this. It’s just that political parties scramble for seats and they’ll say anything. And Danes voting for social democrats to carry out an anti-migrant policy is just as comical as their remaining loyal members of their national church without believing in anything according to polls. (See Law 13: Is the church of Denmark a religious organization?)

*

Speaking at Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi, [Giorgia] Meloni without naming [India’s minister of foreign affairs] Jaishankar said that “Europe’s problem has become World’s problem”. Last year, Jaishankar said that “Europe thinks that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems but world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.” Jaishankar made these comments amid persistent efforts by Europe to make India take tough position on Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. (Hindustan Times, YouTube, March 2023)

I don’t want to be harsh with a woman but this lady campaigned on a platform for family values while being a single mother. The true message of such a campaign, therefore, was that she was too busy, as a VIP, to build a family for her child and that family is a loser’s thing. So much so that she eventually married her –I don’t know how to call that– boyfriend or comfort toy in a flurry, a few days ago. Europe’s problem is its inescapable decadence, and this is not a world’s problem but the problem of those who are dying and will be replaced.

Europe’s decadence is inescapable because the measures available to these countries against decadence cannot be genuine any longer. For instance, the “reaction” against decadence of family values is Giorgia Meloni, a single mother. This is not reaction, but aggravation and acceleration.

A single-parent home (and in these I include any home where the mother has a boyfriend instead of a legitimate husband) may have many causes, such as death; I may retract what I just said about this lady if I am told she had actually bonded with a man and the man died or they had to separate because of force majeure, not the banal, predictable story of people incapable of bonding because family makes no sense to them.

*

When the beacon blinds you

A blogger from France using WordPress, which is owned by the American Automattic, Inc., and writing a good deal of contents in English, I have always had daily clicks from the U.S., but I think I am noticing a pattern. Lately, I took positions against the U.S. administration in its relationships with both Russia and China, and that stopped the clicks from the U.S. It comes back slowly after a few days. I had noticed the same pattern before and I can’t help thinking this is not coincidental. It is a temporary drop or stop of clicks, noticeably from the U.S., provoked by some kinds of content, and it has become somewhat predictable. It’s as if there were a software somewhere intent on deterring bloggers to post some kinds of content, lest blog stats be impacted. I guess they don’t make it permanent because they don’t want to lose platform users, and they probably hope that a temporary impact can be deterrent enough.

One user (about me): Here’s the 50c. wumao. Another user (to the former): Sounds lame…

Thank you. I reported the (former’s) post as “intimidation,” as it is inconvenient enough to be denounced, without reason, as a foreign paid agent, but contrary to a couple of previous experiences with reporting this one still shows up for me. Apparently, this kind of one-word expletives is content with which YouTube is okey, and while it is fond of flaunting its harsh speech rules and regulations, it is full of such pollution, as everyone knows. It makes one think they reserve their censorship for articulate thought-of criticism.

*

If what was reported [about the Nord Stream sabotage] is not right, why the US, Norway and leaders involved did not sue the award-winning journalist?

Journalism on issues of “general interest” is protected by the American First Amendment, public officials cannot hope to win a libel case in these conditions. But this stops at the American border, and the lack of response by Norwegian personalities, if some are named, might be a clue of guilt. At least, these Norwegians may be challenged to sue the writings, they may be asked why they do not, whereas that would be irrelevant in the U.S., where libel suits by public personalities are a nonstarter.