Venezuela?

Russia provided Iran and Venezuela with many weapons.

The US demanded that Iran negotiate, Iran agreed, and, while Iran figured they were safe while negotiating with the US, Israel first, and then the US attacked Iran.

Israel had many Iranians telling Mossad, the CIA, and MI6 almost everything they needed to know: the initial Israeli attack killed most Iranian generals and Nuclear Science Professors in their homes, which were known to Israel, and also destroyed the Iranian air defence system with an EMP attack, so they knew exactly where the computers that controlled the Iranian air defences were located.

But Russians got the Iranian air defence system working again in less than 24 hours, so the second Israeli strike didn't go nearly as well as planned. And the Iranian response? Reported as totally ineffective by all the Israeli/US/UK/EU reporters, and totally effective by all the Iranian and Russian reporters. (So not clear at all what really happened.)

If the Iranian/Russian version is to be believed, after the damage from the initial strike was repaired (by naming new generals and having Russia repair the air defence system), the Iranians did massive damage to Israel and the US military base in Qatar. 

If the US/Israeli version is to be believed, the US/Israeli attack completely destroyed the Iranian nuclear bomb development programme (which Iran lie did not exist), with no damage to Israel or the US base in Qatar, so now Iran can never again threaten Israel or US assets in West Asia.

***

But what about Venezuela?

It is obvious that all the Russian air-defence systems in Venezuela were easily destroyed by the US, who were then able to land dozens of helicopters full of US military, who were able to capture former president Maduro and bring him to the US, where he is now an accused (and soon to convicted) narco-terrorist, and his wife, who will be accused and convicted of the same crimes.

Net??? a) Russian air-defenses are useless against the US military, who could easily arrest Putin and Xi as narco-terrorist war criminals whenever they want, using exactly the same method they used to arrest President Maduro and his wife; or b) Venezuelan have a lot of CIA/MI6/Mossad agents who paid corrupt Venezuelans to give them all the details of where the Russian anti-aircraft systems were located, so the US could easily destroy all those systems, and also told the US where Maduro and his wife were hiding, so dozens of US helicopters could drop a huge force to kill all Maduro's guards and arrest Maduro and his wife.

***

So, at this point, if one believes the US/UK/EU version of events, the US could very easily arrest Putin and Xi for war crimes and make the government in Taipei the legitimate government of all China and some good Aryan in the Ukraine the legitimate ruler of Russia.

Or, if one believes Russia/PRC propaganda, the US are losing in the Ukraine, which will soon be divided into a Russian part and an Aryan part, and the Aryan part will be much smaller than the former Ukraine, and too weak to threaten Russia.

Venezuela remains a question, since it is in the Monroe Doctrine area, close to the US and all the US weapons systems and very far from Russia and the PRC. President Trump has announced that the US will insist on a Venezuelan puppet who will do everything the US demands, starting with the return of all Venezuelan oil and other resources to the rightful American oiligarchs, who will pay a very tiny group of compliant Venezuelans a lot of money to let the US take everything, and leave the vast majority of Venezuelans with nothing. And many believe the Monroe Doctrine will prevail in Venezuela, so Russia and the PRC can do nothing about it, and won't dare to even try.

But the PRC have invested a lot in Venezuela, and they desperately need the oil. And if they let the US have Venezuela, Iran will be next. The US would love to have all the Iranian oil, but if it is not possible to overthrow the Ayatollah and return to the days of the Shah (before 1973, when the Shah did a Mossadegh), Israel are ready to nuke Iran to eliminate the Iranian threat to Israeli dominance of West Asia, and then no one will be able to use the radioactive oil. And the US will settle for cutting the PRC off from all oil, either by having all the oil under US control (best case scenario), or having the oil destroyed so no one can use it (not so good, but destroying the PRC economy would be worth it).

Updates(?) on the Ukraine

Some of the people I watch on, e.g., Judge Napolitano, ask, 'Why are the US/UK/EU squandering so much money on the Ukraine, which is obviously a lost cause? Millions of forcibly drafted Ukrainian soldiers have died, the US/UK/EU have squandered $billions, and there is no possible hope of victory.'

The answer is that the CIA and MI6 have told all the mainstream media in the US/UK/EU to write:

1) The Russian military are losing, and losing badly, the Russians have lost more than 5 million soldiers, armed with WWII weapons that don't work, patched up with washing-machine parts, and the Russians are fighting against the Ukrainian military who are armed with the most advanced NATO weaponry, who have only lost 50,000 to 100,000 troops, so victory is very close; and

2) The sanctions have totally destroyed the Russian economy. The Russians don't have enough to eat, the Russian stores have nothing to sell. Russia cannot supply the Russian military that are illegally invading the Ukraine, so the soldiers are eating their dead companions, since they have nothing else to eat.

And then the CIA and MI6 read this in the mainstream media, and know they must have gotten it right, and report this to their senior government officials, who are convinced that they are very close to victory.

And victory over (and colonisation of) Russia have been desired by Europe for more than 1,000 years.

The Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania have been at war with Russia (on and off) for more than 1,000 years. 

Napoleon tried to take all of Russia in 1812, won, and Russia have paintings of the victorious French Army killing Russians. But Russia have two great generals, who were on vacation when Napoleon attacked, but when they got back to work, General January and General February reduced Napoleon's invasion force of 500,000 to a force of just 10,000 that managed to make it back to East Prussia (as depicted in what is considered the greatest visual graphic ever, Charles Minard's map of Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign of 1812).

And Hitler sent the Wehrmacht to cleanse the USSR of Slavs and make it a home for Aryans, a campaign that lasted from 1941 until 1945, but did not work out all that well (the official US/UK/NATO version is that the US almost single-handedly, with just a little help from the Brits, defeated the Wehrmacht).

'Why?' one might ask, have so many wanted to conquer Russia? The answer is that Russia is very rich in agricultural land and energy resources.

All those resources belong to US/UK/EU oligarchs (who run the US/UK/EU governments), and they know they are very close to having all that Russian energy and agricultural products, so they just need to keep at it a little bit longer and spend just a few $trillion (of the ordinary taxpayers' money, not their own money), and those many, many $trillions will all be theirs.

And the CIA and MI6 tell the US/UK/EU mainstream media, and the mainstream media all report, that victory is very close, we have to finish this war with complete victory over Russia, break Russia up into  small states, and all those resources now being stolen by Putin will be returned to their rightful owners, the US oligarchs, just as the US did to Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc., etc.

This has gone so well, so many times, that most believe the US/UK/EU mainstream media must be correct, not the Russian propaganda that is believed and spread by the people who fill a few of the social media channels.

Tucker Carlson wants to Make the US more like the PRC???

Tucker Carlson dislikes Representative Ilhan Omar. I don't know if Ilhan Omar is her legal name, or is it like the old joke about the 'John Johnson Chinese Laundry'.

Someone saw the sign hanging over the door to the laundry, went in, saw a person of obviously Oriental ethnicity, and asked, 'How did you get the name, 'John Johnson Chinese Laundry?'

The owner said, 'My grandfather was in the queue at Ellis Island. The immigration agent asked the man in front of him, 'What's your name?' and he said, 'John Johnson.' The immigration officer filled out the form, gave it to the man, and said, 'Go ahead.' 

Then my grandfather stepped up to the agent and was asked, 'What's your name?' and he said, 'Mi Tu', and the agent gave him a paper with his American name written down as 'John Johnson.'

***

In Arabic cultures, everyone's name is their own name, their father's name, their grandfather's name, and, at some point, their family name which must start with an 'Al'. So Omar is not her family name, it's her father's name. And those calling her 'Omar' are calling her by her father's name, not her own name and not her family name, at least in Arabic.

Of course, the immigration agent might have written on the form: Given name: Ilhan, Family name: Omar

so now, legally, her family name could be Omar, not her actual family name, but like the name given to the apocryphal Chinese laundry owner in the old joke.

***

In any case, Carlson notes that most Somalis living in the US live in two cities, one of them Minneapolis (I forget the other), and they mostly speak Somali, live in neighbourhoods that are all (or at least almost all) Somali, and, worst of all from Carlson's perspective, they vote Democrat.

***

Carlson wants all of the US to be one, homogeneous culture, an Anglo culture. As he says, he has nothing against Somalis, as long as they stay in Somalia, but if they come to the US, they should speak English, scatter and live in mixed neighbourhoods, accept the Anglo culture, and vote Republican (Tucker doesn't like anyone who votes Democrat).

***

The PRC has 56 official ethnic groups. The largest group are the Han, comprising 91.1% of the total PRC population. The 2nd largest group are the Zhuang, with 1.4%. Fifty years ago, there was discrimination in favour of the Han, they got the best jobs, best houses, severe discrimination against the other ethnic groups. But that was 50 years ago. Not clear why, but things changed, lots of things changed.

First, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID), two agencies who work with the CIA to bring 'democracy' to undemocratic countries by overthrowing the authoritarian government and replacing it with a good, democratic government that lets US oligarchs steal everything worth stealing, but it's a free democracy, so that's good.

The Uyghurs once occupied a place the Europeans called Turkmenistan, which got divided between the Chinese province of Xinjiang, which means 'New Boundary' in Chinese, and some parts, first of the Russian Empire, and later of the USSR, until the break-up of the USSR when they became independent, impoverished countries, one of which is Kazakhstan. NED and USAID gave Uyghurs in Kazakhstan money and weapons to go into the PRC to destroy PRC government property and kill PRC government officials, so a lot of what the PRC mislabel as 'terrorism,' when it was just doing good by bringing democracy to an evil autarchic state.

But the PRC have lots of intelligence agents and computers, and now they have a list of all who have ever poked their nose into a NED or USAID facilities, and refuse to let them enter the PRC, so the bombings and killings have pretty much stopped.

The Uyghurs had been living in poverty, even by PRC standards, Very poor housing, very poor jobs. The Uyghurs are Muslim, and it was illegal to go to a mosque, so all the old mosques (some 1,000 or more years old) were closed, or to sell any food suitable for Muslims (called halal). The PRC leadership decided that the best way to stop the beneficial efforts of the US was to make every ethnic group equal.

Uyghurs spoke no Chinese, they could not read or write Chinese, they spoke a language written with the Arabic alphabet. So, even if employers wanted to hire them, they could not understand what they were asked to do, nor could the employer understand their questions about what was wanted.

But even when the job was so straightforward that the Uyghurs could be taught, if the job paid well, it was always given to a Han Chinese.

And then all that changed.

First, religion was legalised, so all the old mosques have reopened (as have all the Buddhist and Taoist temples and pagodas), and almost all food sold in Xinjiang supermarkets and restaurants is halal for Muslims.

Then, China said that all Uighur children must be taught both Uighur and Chinese. All working age Uighur were also required to study Chinese, and had to learn to speak Mandarin and read Simplified Chinese (the PRC decided that the standard Chinese characters were too difficult, so they came up with Simplified Chinese, not all that simple, but easier than the older Chinese writing).

And the Uighur learned, and now they get good jobs and good housing (and can go to mosques that are now all over the PRC, even parts that formerly had few Muslims, and find halal restaurants).

Before, a typical Chinese home was one room for what might have been a family with 10 kids. A Han home had no running water, a Uighur home might not have electricity, and usually had had big holes in the roof, so rain was a big problem.

Today, the Uighur have decent, above average jobs and good housing, much larger, than their old homes, no holes, running water and electricity, subsidised heat in winter.

Uighur are given jobs picking cotton, a very difficult job to get in China. Most cotton is picked by machine, but there are some very expensive kinds of cotton that must be picked by hand, and this pays very well. Before, such work only went to Han Chinese, but now, most of that work that's in Xinjiang is given to Uygur people. They also have jobs working on the automatic cotton pickin' machines that pick the vast majority of the cotton.

All the mosques are open, and most of the food in Xinjiang is halal, and for Uyghur who travel outside of Xinjiang, there are lots of halal restaurants where the PRC government checks and makes sure everything is halal.

***

Net: Now everyone must speak Mandarin, read and write Simplified Chinese, and the ordinary Chinese (老百姓 lao bai xing), both Han and ethnic minorities,  all live in similar homes.

So one can say that all the minorities in the PRC have been Hanified (i.e., foreign barbarians, 洋鬼子 yang gui zi can't tell them apart). 

(The ethnic minorities would probably say they can eat what they want, so they don't eat like the Han, they can worship where and how they want, not in the places where the Han worship, so they are not at all like the Han, but it's hard for us foreign barbarians to see the differences.)

More Questions about Venezuela????

First I heard that Russia and the PRC have treaties with Venezuela, and that Maduro is largely continuing the policies of Chavez, so most Venezuelans plus Russia and the PRC will all stand with him against the US invading forces, and those US forces will be quickly destroyed. 

Then I heard that Maduro is corrupt, is stealing everything and most of the Venezuelan people are against him, that he has stolen $billions from the PRC and they want rid of him, that he has annoyed Russia and they want rid of him, and if Trump sends those 18,000 US troops into Venezuela, they'll have an easy victory.

Then I heard that many Venezuelans are volunteering for the militia to fight off any invasion.

There are so many contradictions on the various interviews of 'experts' (one-at-a-time interviews) on Venezuela who contradict each other (but they can't defend themselves against another interview of which they are not even aware), that it is very hard, without going to Venezuela and spending a year or two there, for me to have any idea what's really going on.

So I'm waiting for Trump or Rubio to order the all-out attack to see what happens.

One program I watched said that having the US Aircraft Carrier Battle Group off the coast of Venezuela is costing $1 billion a day, but the US$ is the World Key Currency, so the US can just keep printing 1 billion of those dollars every day, and the world have no choice to to accept them all, so not a problem.

Where is Venezuela?

First, I read about Venezuela under Chavez, who somehow got elected in 1998 when the US were not paying attention, then took office in 1999 and nationalised just about everything, and started giving all the money formerly taken by US corporations to the Venezuelan people.

The US would not stand for this, so the US military went into Venezuela in 2022 and arrested Chavez, but the Venezuelan people freed him two days later, and Chavez remained president of Venezuela until his death in 2013.

Then Maduro took over. And that's where the history gets very complicated.

One need not be a US puppet to be corrupt. The puppet governments of US neo-colonies let the US take everything, but the US pay them with money and weapons, so they live very well (and they even get visas so they can visit the US and buy stuff in expensive US shops). But some non-US puppets take all the money formerly going to US oligarchs and keep it all for themselves, so the US and the citizens of their own country join forces to e remove them from power. After which, the ordinary citizens would like a government like the Chavez government, but they get a US neo-colonial government that robs them of just about everything (but since the corrupt government was already robbing them, the ordinary citizens haven't really lost anything).

I have heard that Maduro kept things much like they were under Chavez, but I have also heard that Maduro is corrupt and most Venezuelans are now as impoverished as they would be under a US neo-colonial government, so if the US marches in and arrests Maduro, no one will free him from goal and return him to the presidency, but they will figure they'll be no worse off under the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Maria Corina Machado than under Maduro. I also heard that the PRC have found Maduro corrupt, and that he stole the money they gave him. So, unlike Chavez, Maduro has no support from the Venezuelan people, and also no support from the PRC, so he'll be a very easy target for removal.

I have also heard that Maduro has given the US everything they asked for, that he returned all the Venezuelan oil to the US oil companies that are the rightful owners of all the oil on earth, so why remove him? But I understand that the US are still determined to remove him because he was 'friends with Chavez' and they'd prefer the Nobel Laureate Machado, so just giving back all the oil to American oil companies wasn't enough for Maduro to remain in power.

Net: I thought I had a pretty good idea of what is happening in Venezuela, and what was likely to happen, but now I have absolutely no idea.

Where in the heck is Monroe and his Doctrine????

Starting in 1823, the US tried to claim all the Western Hemisphere as a US neo-colony. Of course, in 1823, the US was too weak to challenge the UK outside the US, and had barely managed to get the UK to stop conscripting US citizens as sailors for the UK fleet in 1814. But, thanks to high tariffs, which the US called 'fair trade' as opposed to letting the UK flood US markets for manufactured products with what the UK called 'free trade', US industry was growing, slowly but steadily. So the US Navy was also growing, and by 1900, was at parity with the UK Navy.

By the 20th century, much of Latin America were US neo-colonies, with the US giving a small group lots of weapons and enough money they were happy to take over the government of their own country and then do whatever the US asked them to do, the most famous of which was providing the US with lots of very, very cheap bananas that were sold as cheap bananas in the US and still made the neo-Imperialist American banana importers rich. If one reads Ayn Rand, she also talks about the US getting lots of Latin American copper very cheaply, at great profit to the American companies that mined the copper, paying the Latin American labourers minimal wages (but decent payments to the citizens of the country who were running the country as a good US neo-colony).

But then came WWI and WWII, after which the European powers were all destroyed and weak, and the US became the Western Hegemon, with only the USSR, the Eastern Hegemon, as a serious military rival.

So the US made all the NATO nations into neo-colonies. The USSR suggested that Germany be re-unified like Austria, as a neutral, demilitarised nation, but the US said, 'NO! West Germany will be part of NATO, heavily armed to defend against Soviet aggression,' so the USSR made East Germany a member of the Warsaw Pact (formed as a reaction to NATO, but described in my history and geography books as preceding NATO and forcing the US to create NATO to stop the Warsaw Pact from annexing all the rest of Europe plus the UK).

And then the USSR collapsed, and the US became World Hegemon. Most of the Warsaw Pact were absorbed into NATO, including the Baltics, formerly unwilling parts of the USSR, forced into the USSR by Stalin during WWII.

So the US, as World Hegemon, started attacking countries for reasons not altogether clear. The nations attacked did not seem like serious threats to the US. Noriega said he did everything the US told him to do, but the US still invaded Panamá, killed a lot of Panamanians, and sentenced Noriega to Life in Solitary Confinement in the worst cell in the gaol, for reasons no one knows.

Meanwhile, the PRC had a falling out with the USSR. Britain and France had drawn all the International Boundaries in Eurasia and Africa, and the USSR figured the UK/French-drawn boundary between the USSR and the PRC was too far to the north, while the PRC figured the UK/French boundary was too far to the south.

So the PRC ping-pong team, at a tournament in Japan, invited the US team to come to the PRC. The US team asked, were told they could and should go, so they went.

And then Nixon went to the PRC and made a deal with Mao: the US would start moving factories to the PRC where the labour would be much cheaper than in the US, and the PRC would see how much better Capitalism works than Communism.

So now the nominal PRC economy is about half the nominal American economy, but at PPP, the PRC economy is about 25% larger. And the PRC is the world's biggest exporter, exporting about 25% of all the world's exports at PPP (much less in nominal terms), and rising rapidly (from about 0% when the ping-pong team and then Nixon went to the PRC).

So the PRC now exports a lot to Latin America and imports a lot from Latin America. Venezuela is a significant source of PRC energy imports. And the PRC does not want the US to make Venezuela into a US neo-colony under a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has promised to return Venezuela to a pure, unadulterated US neo-colony, with the locals getting paid nothing or next to nothing to do all the work to produce and send cheap oil and minerals (and bananas?) to the US.

And Russia, for reasons probably related to the Cuban Missile Crisis, have also sent lots of weapons to Venezuela.

So what happens now? WWIII anyone???

Are the Times a'Changin'?

 It was in the 11th century that the Normans started using sailing ships.

Before that, ships were galleys, with lots of oarsmen. The ships had sails, but the sails could only be used when the ship was sailing in the same direction that the wind was blowing. With an East wind, the ship could sail West. If the ship wanted to sail west and the wind was not an East wind, they used the oarsmen.

But the Norman ships were full of knights, with all their armour, and their horses, and no room for oarsmen (who have to be fed and given potable water, which takes a lot of space). So, in 1066, the Normans had to wait until they had an East wind and could sail West to England. While they were waiting, the English Army ran out of food, so a lot of the soldiers went back to their farms to tend their crops and livestock and replenish the English munitions. And then the winds shifted, and the Normans sailed across the channel and defeated the English.

Of course, when Richard Coeur de Lion sailed to Palestine to fight the Saracens, he eventually ran out of munitions and tried to sail back, but the winds were unfavourable, and he never made it (except in some Disney movies where he got back just in time to save Robin Hood from the Sheriff of Nottingham).

But then, in the 15th century, the Italians figured out how to make the first sailing ships that could sail into the wind. One cannot sail due East into an East wind, but one can sail northeast by north or southeast by south and tack to make it to one's destination. No need for oarsmen, so lots of room for passengers and cargo.

So Europe managed to conquer just about the entire world and became the richest, most advanced continent (since they managed to destroy the civilisations that had been doing OK before the Europeans arrived with their ships and marines and armies and canons, and generally defeated most of Asia, Africa, the Antipodes, and the Americas).

But then in 1914, a Serb shot an Archduke, and the only thing the Europeans could think of was to have a massive War of Attrition. The US knew England and France, and not much more about Europe, so they loaned Britain and France a lot of money to pursue the war. Britain and France were losing, and the US banks were faced with bankruptcy, so the US declared war on the side of Britain and France, and they managed to win and take every gram of gold from Germany, and also a lot from the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire.

Britain and France didn't really recover from the war, and Russia had become the Soviet Union. Britain and France didn't care much about Russia, but the Soviet Union was terrifying, so they let Germany re-arm to help them stop the USSR. Only, after 5 years, Germany looked too strong, so France and Britain decided to destroy Germany, which had allied with the Soviet Union.

The war pretty much finished off all the European countries, and the US forced them to decolonise, so almost all the world's colonies were gradually freed and some became neo-colonies of their former Imperial powers, while others became neo-colonies of the US.

Only now, a lot of those neo-colonies are revolting against neo-colonialism. And the US intend to put a stop to this: the US intend for the world to remain a bunch of US neo-colonies, only that might be a teeny bit more difficult than it was just a few years ago.