Richard D Wolff Responds: "Winners & 'Likely' Losers: China vs USA Trade War"??? (Dated April 30, 2025)

It is worth watching Professor Wolff's YouTube video that he calls the 'Likely' Trade War between China and the US. He gets a lot right, but not all.

For one, it's not a 'Likely' trade war, the trade war is already happening, with the US attacking and the PRC defending.

As Professor Wolff correctly says, the PRC have all the advantages in the Trade War, and as he worries, also correctly, Trade Wars often turn into actual military wars.

Professor Wolff was going along very well in his video: First, the Chinese Communist Party exercises overall control of everything in the PRC and is making very intelligent decisions (obviously 110% TRVE: the decisions of those running the PRC have been as close to perfect as possible).

And then he notes that the US have not managed to make such intelligent decisions, also obviously true, but his explanation is somewhat lacking: he says that in the US, since production is in the hands of private companies, each with different chief executives who cannot coordinate under anti-trust law, such intelligent control is impossible in the US.

However, Professor Wolff misses that, over the Chief Executives of US corporations are the Governing Boards of those corporations, and a small group of people sit on the boards governing all the major corporations, and those people move easily and frequently between senior government jobs and senior private jobs, often holding both simultaneously, US laws notwithstanding.

In the 19th century, the US built the world's largest rail network, linking just about all of the US. By 19th century standards (slow though they were), it was a high-speed rail network.

In Europe, the British had a rail system, the French had a rail system, the Germans had a rail system, etc., etc., and one could buy a ticket on the Orient Express and make one's way from Liverpool to the near Orient, using British and European rail networks (and a boat to cross the English Channel), but only by coordinating different national railroads. (And one can read novels and watch movies about the Orient Express, even if one couldn't travel on it.)

But now, the PRC have a large network of high-speed rail (part of a rail network that is much larger than the US rail network ever was) adding to the overall success of the PRC economy while the US have no high-speed rail network (and many problems in the existing US rail network). Wolff says this is only because the Chinese Communist Party have overall control of the PRC economy and so can make decisions that are very unprofitable while the US do not have such a network because there is no US Party having such overall control, so a totally unprofitable network cannot be built.

That's where Wolff's economics break down: if that high-speed rail network is really so unprofitable, it must be hurting the PRC economy, but the PRC economy is booming. The US economic system would be greatly helped by such a system, but it can't be built because it would be very unprofitable. This makes no economic sense. What it means is that the US economy has serious flaws that make it impossible to complete a project the completion of which would add greatly to the US economy (the project has been started several times, but little progress was made because the US economic flaws, not to mention US leadership flaws, have made all such starts so incredibly expensive that none have even come close to completion).

The real conclusion is that a very small group of people who have all the intelligence (and connections) to rise to the top of the US power system have made a lot of decisions which have been very profitable for the decision makers but not very good for the overall US economy or for ordinary Americans, while the small group of people who managed to rise to the top of the PRC power system have made a lot of very intelligent decisions that benefitted everyone in the PRC.

And no one has a clue how to change the way the US works, so the US uses wars to destroy and pillage, taking Iraqi and Libyan and Syrian oil, and doing all they can to get the Iranian, Venezuelan and Russian oil into the hands of US oiligarchs (the Venezuelan and Iranian and Russian projects do not seem to be going nearly as well as the Iraqi and Libyan and Syrian projects went, while the Russian project seems certain to go horribly wrong--sorry, as Hamlet said, ' “Seems,” madam? Nay, it is. I know not “seems.” ').

Trump: Peace Candidate, but ...

I heard 'President' Trump say, twice, 'I order all US troops out of Syria.'

Of course, the DNC and RNC each put up one candidate, each, every four years, and the Electoral College picks one of them to be the actor who plays the part of US president. But, when 'President Trump' failed to read his line on the Teleprompter, i.e., 'I order the US military into Syria to bring peace and democracy,' and instead ordered all US troops out of Syria, not one troop left. So orders the actor gives that are not on the Teleprompter do not get followed. The orders given by the person who authored the speech on the Teleprompter are the orders that are actually followed.

And, on 19 January 2025, I heard 'President-elect' Trump say, 'The US must withdraw from the Ukraine or the US economy will be destroyed,' and on 21 January 2025, I heard 'President' Trump say, 'Russia must withdraw from the Ukraine or Russia will be destroyed.' Quite the difference. But at least Trump learned to read the Teleprompter without (or at least with less) ad-libbing between 2021 and 2025.

The real president is a well-kept secret, at least from me, and if anyone knows, they refuse to tell me who it is. Obama has been suggested as the real president from 2009 to 2025, but I, at least, can't know for certain, and I don't know who does.

 ******

I tried to listen to two Tucker Carlson shows: one show, 'FORTRESS AMERICA' with George Friedman, was about how the US rules the world, and will continue to rule the world for the foreseeable future: Russia tried to conquer the Ukraine, and, after three years, have only a tiny sliver, have lost most of their military, and will soon have to sell off all Russian assets to US oiligarchs to pay for the war. The PRC is in slightly better shape than Russia, but are totally hemmed in by US Naval assets and those assets make it impossible for the PRC to project any power at all, they could not possibly even attack Taiwan, let alone annex that American asset. And most of the rest of the world already acknowledges and gratefully accepts absolute US hegemony. Or at least the UK and EU accept it and try to look grateful.

The second show was "Embedded with Russian Troops"  where Tucker interviewed Patrick Lancaster who has been an embedded reporter with the Russians fighting the Ukrainians, and he notes that their job is to protect ethnic Russians in the Ukraine and in Russia from the Ukrainian forces who are determined to cleanse the Ukraine (and as much of Russia as possible) of ethnic Russians. Some say this is a Slav v. Slav fight, but the Western Ukrainians consider themselves Aryans, not Slavs, and are in general agreement with the book, My Struggle written in the 1920s by a future Chancellor of Germany. that all Slavs must be exterminated or at least enslaved by Aryans. Mr Lancaster is sympathetic to the ethnic Russian position in this war, and, as he notes, his pro-Russian viewpoint is soundly rejected by all the mainstream US/UK/EU media who agree that the book, My Struggle, while wrong in its anti-Semitism, was absolutely right about the Slavs.

As the US/UK/EU all said after Germany lost WWII, Hitler's killing 6 million Jews was the absolute worst crime in all history. Some ask, 'But what about Hitler also killing 27 million Slavs?' and the US/UK/EU answer is 'That just shows there's a little good in the worst of men.'

This raises the question: Where is the war in the Ukraine going?

As George Friedman says, that's obvious: Russia will lose the war and all their assets and end up an impuissant, impoverished country or, more likely, 20 small impuissant, impoverished countries.

But I fear Mr Lancaster might very well be correct that Russia will manage to survive, economy intact, and with all the ethnic Russians under Russian protection, with whatever is necessary to keep them safe from the good Aryans in the Western Ukraine, US, UK, and EU.

Where with Iran? (War?)

 I just watched "Life, Liberty, and Levin" on Fox News. Mr. Levin started with 9/11, how just 19 terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, struck the Pentagon, and crashed a plane in Pennsylvania. Then he showed the old films taken of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and noted that those 19 terrorists could have done a lot more damage with nukes, and Iran are preparing nukes and are very close to giving them to terrorists, but Levin is sure Trump can stop them unless the Left manage to stop Trump's prophylaxis.

The US started by saying all the nuclear bombs were based on U₂₃₅ (U235 if subscripts don't display). My physics professor in high school said he worked on the project: they formed uranium fluoride gas and centrifuged it, so the lighter U₂₃₅(U235) rose to the top and the heavier U₂₃₈(U238) sank to the bottom, but it took many, many cycles to get pure enough U₂₃₅(U235) to make a bomb.

I read a Disney comic where Prof. Ludvig von Drake explained that U₂₃₅(U235) was the most powerful explosive in the world.

Later, the US admitted that one of the three nukes they set off in 1945 was plutonium. Then some said it was two plutonium bombs, and I read one author who wrote that all three bombs were plutonium. The US executed two Jews for giving the USSR the secret of the U₂₃₅(U235) nuclear bomb, with all the details that had pretty much become common knowledge. J. Edgar Hoover rounded up leftists, charged them with treason for giving the USSR the secret of the nuclear bomb, had them sentenced to death, then offered to commute their sentence if they'd name more spies. The Rosenbergs were the first (and last) accused 'spies' who refused to name anyone else, so both were executed in 1953 (there is still a debate about the FBI's 'evidence' of their guilt).

But Levin figures Iran are just weeks away from having a bunch of nukes and giving them to terrorists. 

Fortunately, we have two versions of recent history.

First, the US killed an Iranian general, Suleimani. Iran said when and which US military base they'd attack, and attacked right on schedule, but the US had removed all planes and troops, so no materiel or troops lost. Net: Iran failed to do the slightest damage to the US base, so are they quite incapable of damaging a US base with the sophisticated defences protecting each and every US base, or did they prove they could do a lot of damage if they attacked without first warning the US?

Then Israel killed just about everyone in the Iranian Embassy in Syria, so Iran named their targets in Israel and sent a bunch of drones and missiles, but none got past the massive defensive shield put up by Israel, the US, Jordan, France, the UK, and maybe a few more. That's the Western version.

Or maybe four missiles did get past all the defences and hit empty military targets, doing little damage. That's the Iranian version, and they say that they didn't have to announce when and where they were going to hit, so they could have done major damage, and will do if Israel do another attack on an Iranian Embassy.

Israel want a joint US/Israel attack on Iran. Actually, the last Israeli attack on Iran was when President Assad was still president of Syria, and Syria had antiaircraft weapons, so the US provided hundreds of US planes forming a protective floor and ceiling between which the Israeli planes flew in safety (President Assad ordered the antiaircraft to make sure no US plane was threatened). Assad is gone now, and so are all Syrian defences against Israel, so Israeli planes can fly to and bomb Iran whenever they feel like it, and President Jolani of Syria says he fully supports the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) and would not do anything to threaten it, even if he had any antiaircraft weapons, which he doesn't since the IOF have destroyed them all.

This raises the question: if Israel attacks Iran, how much support will they get from the US, and can Iran retaliate in any way, or are Israel totally protected by their air defence system called Iron Dome???

Levin and Fox are sure an Iranian atomic attack is imminent, but if Israel and the US act now, they can destroy all the nuclear resources in Iran and keep Israel safe, but if they keep pithering, Israel and the US will soon be hit by hundreds of nukes, and there will be no way to stop them.

Iran say that, if the US and Israel attack Iran, they have plenty of non-nuclear missiles that will do major damage to Israel and all the West Asian US military bases, plus much of the world's oil supply will be under attack and the price of oil will be prohibitively high, stopping much of western industrial activity.

President Trump wants a new and Greatly Improved JCPOA. The trouble with the old one was that Obama and Hillary did the work and got the credit, so President Trump withdrew in spite of a UN Security Council resolution (turns out, the UN membership pledge to be bound by UN regulations aside, the US are not bound by UN Security Council resolutions the way other members of the UN are bound). But President Trump intends to take 110% of the credit for the new and greatly improved JCPOA (that probably will not be allowed a single J, C, P, O, or A in the acronym).

And no matter what the new and improved JCPOA treaty says, the US might decide to assist Israel in their attack on Iran. We'll just have to wait and see.

The JCPOA

For anyone who might have forgotten, the JCPOA was The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which started as a US agreement with Iran and was passed as a UN Security Council Resolution, so it should have been binding on all member states of the UN.

However, it was a plan concocted by Obama and Hillary, so Trump declared that he was taking the US out of the agreement after he won the 2016 election.

And now some say his negotiations with Iran are just a return to JCPOA

Before President Trump ordered all US troops out of Syria, and none left, and before we saw that President Biden wasn't sure where he was or who he was, many of us thought the person called President of the US was the executive running the US government. Now all we know is that we don't know.

Whoever was really running the US government under Clinton imposed a blockade on Iraq, and at least half a million died from lack of food and medicines. Clinton's Secretary of State, Albright, said the deaths were well worth it for what they achieved. Clinton promised Iraq an end to sanctions if they had UN inspectors verify that Iraq had no Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). And, as soon as those inspectors verified that Iraq had no WMD, Bush, Jr and associates like Powell said they had irrefutable proof that Iraq had WMD and were planting some in the US, planning to kill millions of Americans, so the US War on Iraq started, killing many more Iraqis and executing all the senior members of the Iraqi government.

Then whoever was running the government under Bush, Jr imposed sanctions on Libya, and, when those UN inspectors verified no WMD, whoever was really running the government had Obama and Hillary order that Gaddafi be killed, the Libyan government dismantled, and all the US oil that Libya had been stealing went back to the US (but the US shared 10% with the UK and 10% with France for helping recover that stolen US oil). Many think Obama really was the one running the US government when he was president, and that he continues to run things, that it was Obama who chose Biden to wander about and fall down for four years. But we cannot know for certain. All we know for certain is that Obama signed the JCPOA and had the US delegate to the UN vote to make it a Security Council Resolution.

But the JCPOA appeared to be an Obama-Hillary plan, where, as soon as those UN inspectors said that Iran had no WMD, Hillary would be the one to announce that she'd found those WMD and then she'd  order the attack that would have liberated all the US oil located in Iran, stolen first by Mosaddegh, then returned to the US by the Shah, then stolen by that same Shah, so the US had him replaced by Khomeini who not only failed to return the oil, he also allowed his supporters to take the staff of the US Embassy in Tehran hostage and would not release the oil or the hostages (but then Reagan paid him enough to get all the hostages released, but not the oil).

In the latter days of the Obama presidency, when it looked like Hillary would succeed him, it looked like Obama and Hillary had worked out a way to get all that oil back from Iran, but Trump was having nothing to do with an Obama-Hillary plan, so he pulled out.

So now what? There isn't time for years of sanctions that kill off millions of Iranians. Oops, the US has had the harshest sanctions on Iran since 1980, but Iran can still grow enough food and make enough medicine to prevent mass deaths. The sanctions did shrink the Iranian economy to less than half what it was in '79 before the blockade, but they still had enough food and medicine to prevent mass deaths like we saw in Iraq.

But then, in 2021, a huge fleet of oil tankers showed up in Iran. From 1980 until 2020, every year or so we read about an oil tanker that tried to sneak out of Iran full of oil, and all were stopped by the US Navy patrol that stopped all Iranian oil traffic. Only the 2021 fleet was accompanied by a huge naval fleet, much more powerful than the tiny fleet enforcing the US blockade, so the US Navy could do nothing but pull away and watch as the oil tankers all filled up and left Iran (and left behind payment in full, so the Iranian economy has more than doubled from what it was in 2020).

And now Trump wants to reclaim all that Iranian oil, and hopes to do it with threats of military action on Iran rather than actual military action on Iran. Trump is bombing the Yemen, and claims Iran are providing AnsarAllah in the Yemen with all the ordinance they have used to stop all Red Sea traffic.

AnsarAllah have also been shelling (without any noticeable effect) the US Aircraft Carrier that is launching all the planes bombing the Yemen and many of the drones targeting the Yemen.

Iran have launched several attacks on Israel, and Israel have launched several attacks on Iran. But reports of results are contradictory: one version is that all the Iranian bombs were shot down by Israel and Israel's allies, doing absolutely no damage to Israel, while Israeli bombs have done major damage to legitimate Iranian war targets; the other version is pretty much the opposite: most of the Iranian rockets and drones fired at Israel were decoys, all the real ones got through and did severe damage, while the Israeli attacks on Iranian military targets accomplished nothing (but one attack did kill many of the mourners at a memorial service for General Suleimani).

So we have no idea what Trump will do about Iran (if it is Trump making the decisions, or what the persons actually in charge will do).

But we're pretty sure Trump won't let anyone call anything he does a JCPOA. New acronym, anyone? One Trump can live with?

1933

 Looking at Europe today, one should be reminded of 1933. Churchill wrote a huge volume, The Gathering Storm, and also had a short, schoolboy version that I read as a schoolboy. The short version started in 1933 when Germany elected a new Chancellor. The Chancellor-elect promised to abrogate the Treaty of Versailles as soon as he took office, the treaty which Germany had been forced to sign after losing WWI, a treaty where Germany promised never again to have any military.

In Churchill's version of history, Churchill thundered in Parliament against the UK allowing the Chancellor-elect to take office: he said that the UK must demand regime change, he insisted that the next German Chancellor must agree to uphold the Treaty of Versailles, and he claimed (after 1945) that WWII would have been averted without the loss of a single life if only the Parliament had listened to him.

Only I checked the morgue, something much more difficult in the '50s, and found no Churchill speeches saying that the UK military must insist on regime change in Germany in 1933. Basically, the Great Powers, France and the UK, wanted a re-armed Germany to give them a little time when the Evil Union in the East began their inevitable invasion.

In Churchill's version, he kept giving speeches, all ignored, that the UK must stop Germany before they became invincible, something that could have been accomplished with no bloodshed in '33, very limited bloodshed in '35, some bloodshed but certain victory in '38 when the cowardly PM Chamberlain surrendered to Germany and called it 'Peace in Our Time,' and finally, an ignominious defeat of the UK by Germany when PM Chamberlain finally agreed to go to war in '39. Almost all wrong. War in '38 would have been, as Waugh said, 'war in a panic, for the wrong reasons or no reason at all, with the wrong allies.'

In '38, France wanted to complete the Maginot Line and the UK wanted to complete the radar shield, so France would never have joined the UK in war in '38, and, had Chamberlain not bought the year to complete the radar shield, Germany would probably have won the Battle of Britain. (Of course, Churchill relied on the fact that the radar shield was Top Secret, so he never mentioned it in his histories, he said the RAF won the Battle of Britain by eating lots of carrots that enabled them to see the Luftwaffe coming, even at night, in plenty of time to scramble and shoot most of the Luftwaffe down.)

Then, after the UK and France let Germany re-arm, in 1939 Germany and the USSR made the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression pact signed in Moscow on 24 August 1939 by Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov and German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop (for which the Allies hanged von Ribbentrop after the war).

But no problem, the UK and French armies were safe behind the Maginot Line. Oops.

The UK and France agreed to let Germany rearm as a bulwark against the USSR, but then (briefly) Germany and the USSR were allies and took all of Poland, bringing Germany into war with the UK and France (but the USSR were not mentioned in the UK-French Declaration of War for invading Poland, only Germany).

And now all of Europe are again sure, as they were in '33, that the SovietsRussia are ready to invade and conquer all of Europe, so all of Europe must join together against the SovietsRussia. And no persons who say they will vote against war with the SovietsRussia can be allowed to be elected to high office in any EU country, and, should it appear that some people who are not ready to go to war with the SovietsRussia are running for election in the EU, the European Courts must remove those people from any elections before they can be elected, or, if elected, remove them from office. All of Europe know they must defeat the SovietsRussia and they can't let anyone or anything stand in their way.

What about President Trump???

 Every American president (and a lot of other presidents) must be a Zionist, since the countries' political system prevents non-Zionists from getting elected (and AIPAC has a track record that's close to 100% at getting only Zionists elected to US legislatures). So we knew President Trump, like Presidents Biden, Obama, Bush, Jr, Clinton, Bush, Sr, etc., etc., was a Zionist (although some hoped having Arab grandchildren might lessen his Zionism).

But Presidents Biden, Obama, Bush, Jr., Clinton, Bush, Sr., and Reagan all wanted to destroy the Evil Empire that was the USSR under President Reagan and Russia starting during Bush, Sr's term in office.

Since Russia still has the world's largest nuclear arsenal, defeating Russia looked like a good way to get to WWIII, but the people running the US government figure Russia ain't no USSR and probably have let all their nuclear bombs lose their capacity to go off in a thermonuclear explosion, so it would just be the conventional charge detonating unevenly and spreading a bit of radioactive material that has spent a lot of its radiation half-lives. So nothing to worry about.

But some still worry that a cornered, desperate Russia might still be able to start WWIII, and hoped President Trump would turn down the heat.

And, on 19 January 2025, President-elect Trump said the US had to pull out of the Ukraine since the war was destroying the US economy. I'd settle for that. I'd prefer the genocidecomplete and total elimination of the terrorist Arabs attacking the Israelis might be toned back a bit, but that's not going to happen. It is against the law, a serious offence, in the US/UK/EU to criticise anything Israel does to defend themselves from the women and childrenterrorists who are trying to finish the genocide of the Jews that started during WWII. (And, since it's illegal to say anything else, I won't.)

But at least President-elect Trump was pulling us back from WWIII.

Then, on 21 January 2025, President Trump said that Russia must totally withdraw from the Ukraine or Russia would be destroyed. And that remains the official US position, as it has been since the end of WWII, that the USSR/Russia must back down or they will be totally destroyed, since the US has far more advanced nuclear weapons and impregnable defences against a nuclear attack (at least impregnable defences for all the top multi-billion dollar Americans, plus the top civil servants and politicians, and who else really matters?).

Whoever was really running the government under 'President' Biden refused to talk to the Russians. But President Trump has ordered meetings of US and Russian negotiators in Saudi Arabia, and has had two long phone calls with Putin. So that's something we haven't seen for awhile.

The US/UK/EU media, with a few exceptions like Fox News and the New York Post, say that Trump is a terrible President for not completing the total destruction of Russia to which the Great Presidents who preceded him had gotten within easy striking distance. The New York Times explained how  the US generals told the Ukrainians how to kill Russians, and, when the Ukrainian military listened, they managed to kill almost a million Russian soldiers, leaving the Russian military with nothing but young boys and old men. But the Ukrainians far too often failed to listen to their American advisors, so there are still far too many Russian teenagers and geriatrics who would all have been eradicated if only the Ukrainians had listened.

Fox and the New York Post agree that the Great US military has almost destroyed the Russian military, but say this was done very inefficiently, squandering far more money than necessary and leaving the US economy in a very precarious position from which only President Trump can salvage a rescue, and without losing the Ukraine.

Biden, Fox and the New York Post say, was a very weak president, but we finally have a strong president.

In 1980, the US ordered a blockade of Iranian oil (and has since ordered a blockade of Venezuelan oil). But in 2021, Biden lifted the blockade of Iranian oil and let the PRC buy all of it, to which, in 2022, was added a lot of Russian oil after Europe stopped buying it. The PRC economy desperately needs oil (the PRC has the largest number of cars and drivers in the world), and a strong president like Trump will be able to lead the US military to stop the PRC from buying any oil, putting them back as a third-world country, and bringing a lot of jobs back to the US.

And, as I read yesterday (and I'm sorry I forgot to save the person who wrote it), when the US orders that no one can sell any oil to the PRC, all the PRC will be able to say, like the huge MMA guy who sees someone making a pest of himself in a bar, is, "请拿着我的啤酒."

What does the fall of Syria mean for Russia and Iran?

On 6 December, my Arab friends told me that Hayat Tarir al-Shams, a group consisting of just about all Syrians with no outside connections was about to take all of Syria. asked my Arab friends, 'How can you call people from Xinjiang Syrians?' They replied, 'There are maybe a dozen people from Xinjiang, and a total of about a hundred from other countries, but almost everyone in Hayat Tarir al-Shams was born in Syria, and they represent all Syrians, Sunnis, Alawite, Shi'a, Druze, and Christian.' 

Russia said that Aleppo had fallen to a combination of jihadists and Turkish army forces with many of the members from Xinjiang and the nearby countries, but they would never be able to go past Aleppo.

And then Hayat Tarir al-Shams took Damascus, while Israel took just about everything south of Damascus and the Turkish flag now flies above Aleppo, while the Daesh flag flies over Damascus.

Members of al-Qaeda and ISIS joined to form al-Nusrah, then renamed themselves Hayat Tarir al-Shams. Some Western reporters in Syria say that a rather large number are not Arabs, but are Sunni Muslims from Xinjiang and countries near Xinjiang, and the group contains no one who is not Sunni. But do you believe them, or actual Arabs (not Syrian Arabs) who say almost everyone in Hayat Tarir al-Shams is a born Syrian, and they represent all of Syria? They certainly heard it in Arabic, and I assume it was Syrian Arabic (or the accent of an Arab country near Syria), but a Sunni Syrian might have been surrounded by Uygurs while saying, 'There's no one here but us Syrians, and many of us are Alawites and Christians and all the other religious sects in Syria.'

CNN are running videos of people describing their horrible experiences in Syrian prisons, videos that are in Arabic (of course) with English subtitles for the CNN intended audience, but Arabs have taped and Instagrammed and Facebooked the videos, and they don't need the subtitles. The prisoners, kept for months without any food or water or sunlight and subjected to vicious beating, came out of their cells after the CNN crew broke open the door which had been left locked, and they looked well dressed, neatly barbered and shaved, and tanned. But one must believe what they say, and most of the Arabs I know say they are obviously telling the TRVTH, the whole TRVTH, and nothing but the TRVTH. (Some of the people who have been covering the Middle East for years, such as Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett, say Hayat Tarir al-Shams are killing people, but are trying to do so privately, and no one is broadcasting any videos of the killings. I only found videos on Telegram that claim to be graphic evidence of Tayat Harir al-Shams atrocities, but it's not clear if one can verify that evidence, but it's on Telegram .

And Hayat Tarir al-Shams aren't killing anyone, they have always been peaceful, according to my Arab friends, who heard their horror stories of life under the Assad regime, and don't believe any of the Telegram videos.

Thousands of Syrians fled to Lebanon, but Lebanon handed them over to Hayat Tarir al-Shams for execution, so that didn't work.

***

But what about Russia? Former president Bashar al-Assad's father brought the Soviets into Syria, and they had a large presence, and fought with Syria to prevent regime change. But now Russia had greatly reduced the Russian presence in Syria from the Soviet presence, and had no idea Hayat Tarir al-Shams would be taking over part of Syria. For now, the northeastern third of Syria, the part with all the oil, is held by the US and Kurds. Erdogan wants all that to be a Kurd- and American-free part of the New Ottoman Empire (Erdogan won't call it that, but Russia do). What used to be southern Syria is now part of Israel, and Jolani, head of Hayat Tarir al-Shams says that Syria will strongly support Israel and do whatever Israel ask. He also says he wants Russia to remain, and Erdogan is welcome to Aleppo.

But Russia are now very weak in Syria, the troops on those Russian bases are not well protected, and could be subject to jihadi attacks, so it's looking like Russia will have to tell Jolani, 'Thanks, but no thanks.'

And that will mean that Russian influence in the Middle East will end, to the very great delight of the US. The Soviets were a world power, but Russia are just a regional power. Still, the Wehrmacht didn't have much luck fighting the Soviets in the Soviet Union, and it's not clear that NATO would be all that successful if they tried to fight Russia inside Russia or the countries adjacent to Russia.

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Before, Syria had Russian anti-aircraft weapons, and Russian help training Syrian soldiers to use them, so Israel could never fly over Syrian territory. Now, Syria has absolutely no anti-aircraft, so Israel are free to fly over Israel whenever it suits them. Before, Israel wanted to bomb Iran, but the only route to Iran is over Syria, so US planes formed a vast sheet so Israeli planes could fly above the sheet, and Syria knew not to shoot down a US plane. Now, no need for US protection, Israel can bomb Iran whenever they wish. So far, Israel has just been bombing Syria to make absolutely certain that Syria won't be able to put together any antiaircraft protection of any kind. And Hayat Tarir al-Shams have absolutely no problem with this. I'm guessing regular bombing runs on Iraq and Iran will start soon.

Russia have been sending antiaircraft batteries to Iran, so Israel will not be able to bomb Iran, they'll have to use rockets, but rockets were enough to kill everyone in the Iranian Embassy in Syria, and they should be able to do whatever damage Israel wants to do to Iran. Israel wants US help carpet bombing Iran, but US equipment hasn't been doing all that well against Russian antiaircraft in the Ukraine, and Russia do not want Iran to fall to a US/Israeli military intervention and regime change. I fear we shall soon see how well US piloted US jets do against Russian antiaircraft batteries.

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The PRC has been strictly non-interventionist. If the PRC gets a contract to build a port or airport or railway or whatever, and the US military force regime change to a government that only uses Western contractors (the country gets ripped off, but the senior government officials are very well paid).

Read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins: they go to a country like Indonesia, the IMF and/or World Bank offer a loan at 10%, and the 'expert' promises a return of 20%, so the returns from the project will make the loan payments with a lot left over.

The IMF and World Bank insist that the country use their contractors who take the money and leave, so no project generating any return, and the loan must be repaid or the country will be blockaded. The country have to sell subsistence cropland to Western buyers who use it for cash crops, leaving many without any food, and all the countries mineral resources must be sold to Western buyers who take the minerals and dump waste in the rivers, leaving the people no safe drinking water. But the heads of state are very well rewarded as most of the population see their lives becoming much worse.

If the West engineer regime change to someone who will take those Western loans that are incredibly profitable to the West instead of the PRC loans that would have resulted in good profits for both the natives of the country and the PRC, the PRC never interferes.

But the PRC desperately needs Iranian oil, enough to send a Naval Fleet that could overcome the US Naval Blockade of Iran, so the PRC could buy as much oil as Iran could produce.

But if the US forces regime change in Iran to a government that gladly accepts US sanctions on selling oil to the PRC, will the PRC still do nothing? At what point, if any, do the PRC decide that non-interventionism is no longer a viable policy?

***

The US plan is to destroy Iran and Russia and cut the PRC completely off from their oil, then pressure the Gulf States to sanction the PRC and not give them any oil. The fact that, in the '40s, the US produced 75% of the world's oil, so the allies had plenty of oil for their airplanes and tanks, while the Axis did not, was one thing that helped the Allies win the war. Probably not nearly as much as the Wehrmacht trying to attack the Soviet Union, but still, having all the oil helped the Allied efforts, and the US is hoping that cutting off all oil and gas will greatly weaken the PRC and make regime change fairly facile.

Or maybe the US will convince the PRC that non-interventionism isn't really such a good policy.

***

I fear we will learn a great deal in 2025 that we'd rather not know.