All for the Greater Good

Several years ago, Germany asked Russia for more gas. Russia said, ‘Да!’ And they built Nord Stream 2. But, under great pressure from the US, the German regulators have not approved Nord Stream 2 for gas, even though it’s complete. The US and NATO say Germany must sanction Russia and not buy Russian gas. And the regulators say they probably will never approve Nord Stream 2.

Meanwhile, the PRC wants to decarbonise, but desperately needs energy to provide for its 1.5 billion citizens, so they are digging coal mines like crazy and say they hope to reach peak coal in 2030, increasing their use of coal every year for the next 8 or 9 years.

As it turns out, there is a very happy solution: all that Russian gas should go to the PRC! Gas is a fossil fuel, but it produces much less CO₂ per megawatt hour than coal, so switching from PRC and Australian and DPRK coal to Russian gas is good for Russia, good for the PRC, and good for the planet! It’s a bit hard on the poorer NATO citizens who will have to pay twice as much for their gas, but it’s not Russia’s fault, it’s not the fault of the PRC, it’s entirely the fault of the NATO leaders who say they must sanction Russia.

Russian and the PRC need to start digging those pipelines NOW. And with PRC production values, it would not be that long before the PRC starts greatly reducing its CO₂ emissions while paying much less.

So I'm hoping they get started ASAP.

 

USSR ❤️ PRC; USSR ✄ PRC; PRC ❤️ US; Russia ❤️ PRC

 When the PRC formed in 1949, they and the USSR were BFF. (Also, in 1949, the USSR detonated its first nuke.)

In 1951, the US wanted a single Korea with a US puppet dictator, and was about to overrun and overthrow the DPRK when the PRC intervened. General MacArthur said the only way to defeat the PLA was with nukes, but Truman said, 'The USSR has MAD. You're fired.' And the US settled for a 'draw' with the DPRK remaining in the USSR/PRC sphere of influence and South Korea as a US puppet state. (The PRC consider this a Great Victory over the US by the PLA.)

But those two BFF, the USSR and the PRC had a falling out over what the PRC call Zhenbao Island and the USSR call Damansky Island in 1969. Both claimed the island, and both were furious that the other claimed it.

Then, at the World Ping Pong tournament in Japan in 1971, some PRC ping pong players invited the US team to come to the PRC, the US team asked for and got permission, and Kissinger saw to it than President Nixon got invited. The PRC went from BFF with the USSR to BFF with the US. The unitary Communist part of the world was divided into two.

Naturally, the US plutocrats, who only earned 5 times the US average wage under Eisenhower, saw a way to get all their labour costs down to a few ¢ and their net income more than 500 times the US average wage! Great job, Kissinger!

But the PRC slowly went from a nation where most people didn't have enough to eat, where millions starved to death every year to a middle income nation where no one goes hungry. From a nation where more than a billion people slaved all day, every day on farms to a nation where all those farms are deserted. Work done by hundreds of peasants manually is now done by one engineer with high-tech agricultural robots. The old farmhouses are now vacation homes 'out in the country', since the farmers no longer need them nor use them, having homes in the cities where they have jobs that were, until very recently, 996 jobs: i.e., work from 9 am to 9 pm 6 days a week (but that's highly illegal now and the CPC is cracking down very hard, and set up a website 996.ICU where workers can turn in illegal bosses anonymously; they'll get the same pay and only have to work 40 hours a week, because the factories are earning too much profit and can afford to pay far more for labour).

It is obvious that what the CPC is doing to its workforce is highly illegal, they're going to give workers all over the world the wrong idea, so the US, which has been cracking down on Russia to prevent their every again rising to the threat level once posed by the USSR, is now cracking down on the PRC, as well they should be. What would happen if all workers all over the world started demanding the kind of treatment the CPC is demanding for all PRC workers?

But with the US cracking down very hard on both the PRC and the Russian Federation, they have, after many years, returned to their prior BFF status. Basically, the last three or so presidents have managed to undo all Kissinger's work.

So the US is working hard to provoke Russian invasion of Taiwan and PRC invasion of the Ukraine. Or do I have that backward? Anyway, doesn't matter, the US military just need a good excuse to put the PRC and Russia back in their place. US intelligence say that job will be far easier than Grenada and Panama, and the sooner the US get it done, the better.

What about the PRC and the RF???

 Back in 1983, Grenada had a powerful military and posed a serious threat of conquering the world and imposing their dictatorship, and only the US, under the Great Reagan, were able to stop them. But peace did not last. In 1989, a new threat to the world arose, Panama, but Bush, Sr managed to subdue their quest for world domination. Shortly thereafter, in 1991, Iraq was prepared to first conquer the entire Middle East and take control of most of the world's oil, and again, only the US were able to stop them. Then, it was Yugoslavia that was close to conquering the entire world, but again, the US under Clinton managed to stop them. Then, on 9/11/2001, Afghanistan attacked the US and destroyed the World Trade Center. It took 20 years to topple that evil dictatorship, but the US finally managed under President Biden. During those 20 years, Libya became a serious threat, but Obama managed to lead the US military to victory, and the Libyan attempt at world domination was stopped.

But now we have the PRC and the RF. These are not great powers like Grenada and Panama, but only backward countries that wish to threaten the world. Obviously, Luxembourg would be able to take on both of these third-world countries who are nothing in comparison with Grenada and Panama, but Luxembourg is not willing, so it looks like the US of A will once again have to step up to the plate.

Fortunately, the PRC and the RF should not require nearly as much effort as Afghanistan, and the US should be able to subdue both in much less than 20 years. Chechnya and Dagestan and the other Republics in the RF will have their freedom, as will East Turkestan, Tibet, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

The US solution to the Afghanistan problem

 On 9/11/2001 (US date style) 19 Arabs,15 of them Saudis, hijacked 4 aeroplanes. Two were flown into the World Trade Center, killing most of the people inside and, of course, everyone on both planes. Another plane was crashed into the Pentagon, which was built to withstand bombing by the Luftwaffe, so it killed everyone on the plane and a very few of those working in the Pentagon. The passengers got word on their cellphones on the 4th aeroplane and fought with the hijackers who then crashed the plane, killing everyone on board, but no one else.

Since Saudi is an essential supplier of oil to the US, Afghanistan proved the perfect scapegoat. Bush, Jr convinced Americans in 2001 that Afghanistan had perpetrated 9/11, and the US vowed revenge. The Congress authorised the US president to wage war against anyone he thought had been responsible for 9/11, so for 20 years the US bombed Afghanistan, bombing schools, hospitals, weddings, and funerals.

But after 20 years, the US came up with a new plan. The Important Americans were all evacuated, the unimportant ones left behind. The Afghan government had to keep all its money in US banks, all of which was confiscated when the US left. Afghanistan is sanctioned so no food, no fertiliser, no agricultural implements allowed, and certainly no aid. With luck, every last Afghan will starve, suitable punishment for the 9/11 scapegoat, and most Americans figure they deserve it.

Of course now the US wants to rein in Russia and the PRC.

After the US transformed Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Libya from brutal, impoverished dictatorships and major threats to the world into peaceful and prosperous democracies, third world countries like Russia and the PRC will be much easier, especially after all the US learned from their beneficent transformations of those former threats.

The PRC lie about what they know about CoViD-19

 A US report just came out about CoViD-19. The virus was probably zoonotic. Unless it wasn't. No one in the US knows, but they do know that the PRC know a lot more than it is telling. And, for once, they are right about that.

The American Unz, whose analysis is well worth reading, has a theory about the origins of CoViD-19, and the PRC have the same theory, namely that it originated in the Chinese province of Maryland at a Chinese virology lab called Fort Detrick. 

The PRC have refused to share this theory of theirs with the world, because the Chinese have been studying diplomacy for 5,000 years, and figure this is one thing they'd better not say, so they're sticking with saying they're sure that the origins of CoViD-19 are strictly zoonotic .

As Nicholas Wade writes, in February and March 2020, a bunch of American scientists who had funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan wrote that CoViD-19 was irrefutably proven to be zoonotic. Since they would be liable if their gain-of-function research project caused the CoViD-19 pandemic, they lied through their teeth that they had proof that CoViD-19 was zoonotic. As Mr Wade points out, they lied and lied in their two papers, and no reasonable researcher would accept one word of what they wrote.

Once upon a time, gain-of-function research viruses were easy to identify, and CoViD-19 does not meet those criteria. Only now, there are 'no-see-um' gain-of-function viruses that do not have the markers, but are still gain-of-function viruses. Mr Wade says CoViD-19 fits this bill perfectly.

Mr Wade blames the Wuhan lab. Mr Unz says the US sent highly infectious viruses to the Wuhan lab with the note that they were harmless, so the Wuhan lab took minimal precautions, and the pandemic started in Wuhan, as planned by the US intelligence agencies. Only the PRC applied massive countermeasures and contained the virus. But before they knew, a few people went to Italy, and from Italy to the rest of the world, and the rest is history.

Kipling (White Man's Burden)

 When I was in school (we took our notes on stone tablets) Kipling was on the reading list, and we had to read "White Man's Burden". Great poem. About how the Europeans had the duty to bring civilisation to the savages, even though the savages preferred their miserable, primitive lifestyle and hated progress. The White Man brought modern medicine, and cured all the savages' diseases. The White Man brought modern agriculture and eliminated all the savages' famines.

Then, of course, I read other histories, not the ones taught in Western secondary schools. The White Man brought the Native Americans blankets. And smallpox. And this, without the White Man having to lift a finger, exterminated more than 90% of the Native Americans.

And the British, needing grain for their armies in the World Wars, took all the food from the Indians and caused massive starvation.

And that is how Western Medicine and Western Agricultural methods eliminated diseases and famine for the savages: they were all dead, so no disease and no famine.

And yet, as Kipling complained, the savages did not appreciate the White Man's ministrations and kept rebelling, for reasons that escaped Kipling and many Westerners.

Those of us who read too much can see why some of the savages might not have appreciated the White Man's largess.

Fortunately, most Westerners get their information from the TV that reiterates that Kipling was right and those savages are a bunch of ingrates after all the West has done for them.

Trying to Block the Internet

 The US wants to stop the Taliban, of course, and had the name of their website, alemarahenglish.net deleted from all the nameservers that translate names into IP addresses, j(i.e., the actual Taliban IP address, 93.113.37.250), so typing in alemarahenglish.net one gets 'Domain not found.' As best I can tell, the Taliban have not figured out how to get their website back up and running.

In the case of Russia, the Russian Website has to have a disclaimer that it is by the Kremlin and probably false. The Russians agreed. A reporter named Murad in Afghanistan, after the US generals claimed they had killed the planner of the 26 August suicide bombing that killed 13 US soldiers, showed pictures of the 'terrorists' including 2 2-year-old girls. Some of the Senators actually watch (or have their constituents send them) Murad's photos, and they asked the generals some hard questions, until the generals confessed, for one day, that they had made a mistake and killed 10 people, none of them terrorists. A day after that, they said all 10 had been proven to have worked together to plan, organise, and fund the suicide bomber, and the US had done the right thing taking them all out. The neo-liberals believe their generals, but just about no one else does.

So the Taliban defeated the USSR and the US of A. The USSR ended up bankrupt and fell apart after its defeat. The US says they will continue to drone those 2-year-old terrorists in Afghanistan in repayment for 9/11. Most Americans still believe Bush, Jr that Afghanistan was responsible for the 9/11 attack. The fact that the attack was by 19 Arabs, 15 of them Saudis, was once on the CIA website, but was moved to 911MYTHS.com instead. After all, the Great US President Bush, Jr said (at first) it was Afghanistan, and most Americans believed him. That was in 2001. Then, in 2003, Bush, Jr gave what the Washington Post called one of the very best State of the Union Addresses in the entire US history in which he identified the Axis of Evil. Iran planned, organised, and funded 9/11, and it was perpetrated by the 3 nations that strictly follow the same evil sect of Islam as the Ayatollahs: Mullah Omar's Taliban, Saddam's Iraq, and Kim's DPRK.

Saddam did use WMD against Iran and the Iraqi Kurds, so Clinton imposed sanctions that killed at least 500,000 Iraqi children and offered to end the sanctions just as soon as UN Inspectors said Iraq had no WMD, and Clinton guaranteed no regime change. As soon as the UN inspectors said Iraq had no WMD, Bush, Jr ordered immediate regime change, since US intelligence said Saddam, who had sent many of the 9/11 hijackers, was planning a 2nd attack with WMD that would make everyone forget 9/11. Many good Bushies say they found lots of WMD pointed at the US with fuses lit, but the military arrived just in the nick of time and stopped the attack. The Great Bush, Jr figured worrying about a WMD attack was his job, not the US peoples', so the WMD evidence was all classified. In this case, it was classified as a big lie, but still classified so anyone who said anything could be gaoled. Then Bush, Jr made the exact same offer to Libya and the DPRK. Gaddafi fell for it. Kim Jong Il set off an explosion he said was a nuke.

So, as soon as the UN inspectors said Libya had no WMD, Obama ordered the US military to kill Gaddafi, and then reiterated Bush, Jr's  offer to Iran, and Iran accepted. Obama's idea was that the 2nd Clinton president would finish the job as soon as the UN Inspectors verified no WMD, only she lost and Trump said he was tearing up Obama's deal with Iran. This was a clear violation of International Law, since the US signed a treaty in 1945 to be strictly bound by all Security Council Resolutions, and Trump, violating such a Resolution, was in egregious breech of International Law. Trump said he had never signed the treaty, so it was not binding. And most Republicans believe that Trump was under no obligation to honour Obama's Security Council Resolution. But then, none of them have the slightest idea what the written International Laws are, they only know that the International Court only goes after weak nations like Serbia and some African countries, and would never dare accuse the US of a violation, so, for all intents and purposes, the US is innocent as a newborn babe. Reneging on treaties? The US has every right. Killing 2-year-old girls? The US has every right. If the US say they were terrorists, then they were terrorists. International Law strictly follows Thrasymachus.

There is, of course, one very tiny fly in the US' ointment: the PRC.

In 1951, the US Army wanted to nuke the PLA, but President Truman, who, in 1945, ordered the US military to deploy the entire US nuclear arsenal against Japan, said in 1951, 'The USSR has MAD! No nukes!', and fired the generals who wanted to use nukes. Today, of course, the PRC, the DPRK, and Russia all have MAD. Russia and the PRC both have a 'No First Use' policy, and, until 2015, Putin knew the US Army could defeat the Russian Army without nukes, so he kept his head down. But in 2015, Putin figured Russia was back, and said if the US tried to take the southern half of Syria, they'd have to face the Russian military to do it. So the US and Turkey seem to have settled for the northern half of Syria.

And in March of this year, the PRC and Russia both started saying they'll defend Iran and Venezuela against a US attack. And, so far, the US hasn't tried to call and see if they're just bluffing. The US generals are sure Russia and the PRC are still far too weak to win a military engagement with the US, so the US could easily force regime change without nukes and put someone like Yeltsin in charge of Russia and the PRC, but the US must hurry, because both are getting stronger, so the longer the US waits, the more such wars will cost.

The Atomic Scientist say the Doomsday Clock is now 100 seconds from midnight. I, of course, wonder why they are such Pollyannas.

The US also controls the .asia domain: Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Website Gone

 The Taliban bought two names for their English-language website: alemarahenglish.com and alemarahenglish.net and these were up for at least two years that I know of.

Then the US went to the site that sold them those names and had both names removed from the nameservers, so attempts to connect just say, 'Hmm. We’re having trouble finding that site.'

So the Taliban bought a .asia name, and their website was up and running. But not for long. As soon as the US found out about the .asia website, they went to whomever sells .asia names and had the Taliban names removed from the nameserver, so if one tries to connect to their new, .asia site, one gets "Hmm. We’re having trouble finding that site."

There are several neighbours of Afghanistan who could help, but it is not clear if the Taliban can work with any of them. They figure Iran are all infidel apostates who must be killed for their apostasy. The CIA agency National Endowment for Democracy has lied to the Taliban (and everyone else) that the PRC is committing genocide on the Muslims in Xinjiang, so the PRC is out. And the Taliban were created by the US for the specific purpose of killing all Soviets in Afghanistan, so they are officially designated as terrorists by Russia.

The Russian Embassy in Kabul is fully open and fully staffed, but Russia have not recognised the Taliban government. The PRC Embassy in Kabul is still open, but was reduced to a skeletal staff, and the PRC have not recognised the Taliban government. And I haven't heard the status of the Iranian Embassy in Kabul, but I know Iran has not recognised the Taliban government of Afghanistan.

So the three nations that could help the Taliban get their website back up, nations that border Afghanistan, don't seem to be readily available.

(They should probably try Pakistan.)

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Website back up

 The US has complete control over all .com .org and .net accounts. Anyone with such an account can be shut down by the US, as they did with the Persian News channel presstv.com and presstv.org , and as they did with the Islamic Emirate .com and .net accounts.

But the Islamic Emirate figured out where to buy a .asia name, so their website is back up where it is more difficult for the US to take it down.

Russia uses a .com website for its propaganda channel, but (so far) the US has not taken it down. The US insists on a disclaimer that everything on the site is just Russian propaganda, but the Kremlin must figure that a .com address is easier to remember than a .ru address. And the people who read the Russia propaganda website figure it's not a bad idea to read all sides, so they're not put off by the mandatory disclaimer.

US Blocks Websites it Dislikes

 For several years, going back to 2019 that I know of, the Taliban had a website, alemarahenglish.net

Then the US noticed, and had the company that sold them the name alemarahenglish.net remove it from all nameservers, so if one tries to access the website, the web cannot find it. Every web address is a number having 4 to 12 digits called the Internet Protocol or IP address. Google is at 142.250.181.14

Of course, very few of us know that Google is at 142.250.181.14, so some clever person came up with the nameservers that look up the names, find the numerical IP address, and allow your computer to connect. To connect to, e.g., google.com, your computer browser must have the address of a nameserver (or you would have to give your browser the IP address of google.com), and that nameserver searches all the nameservers holding all the registered names on the Internet, until it finds the IP address of Google.com and sends your browser to 142.250.181.14

The US went to the owners of the nameservers that knew the name of the Taliban website and its IP address, a company called Tucows, and had Tucows remove the Taliban's name, alemarahenglish.net from the nameserver, so if one tries to connect, every web browser just says, 'We’re having trouble finding that site.' So no web brower can connect to the Taliban website. If I had saved the IP address, I could check, but it looked like the ISP hosting the Taliban website took the website down, so even if one knew the IP address, one still could not connect. (One typically buys the name for one's website from a company that sells names, and then finds another company to host one's website.)

The US tried to do that to Iran. Iran had a webserver, presstv.com 

Iran had to buy the name presstv.com from a vendor outside Iran, and the US had the company that owns the nameserver that had the presstv.com name point to a US government webserver

Sadly, the civil servant who funded the development of the Internet wanted it to be a tool that would allow the US military to communicate during a war with the USSR, when the USSR would be doing everything a superpower could do to block the US military from communicating.

So the Iranians put their news website on presstv.ir which has its own nameserver, and the US has been unable to block it.

Net: it would behove the Taliban to work with Iran, Russia, and/or the PRC, any of whom could get the Taliban website up and running in a day or so, and protected so the US cannot block it.

However, the Taliban were created by the US to make trouble for the USSR, and they are still designated terrorists under Russian law. Also, they are a sect of Islam that hates the Ayatollahs. And the CIA has been telling them lies about the PRC genocide of Muslims in Xinjiang. So it is not clear if they will be able to make friends with Iran, Russia, or the PRC, something they desperately need to do.

Before, when the Taliban ran Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001, only 3 countries gave them diplomatic recognition: Pakistan and 2 small Arab countries. They could not convince any other country to give them recognition or a seat at the UN. Of course, they were happy to live in the 7th century: if the Prophet did not have it, the Taliban's Afghanistan didn't need it. But that was 20 years ago, and the new and improved Taliban would like to live a little differently. For which they need other countries to recognise them and help them.

Russia and the PRC did not close their Embassies when the Taliban took over Afghanistan. The Russian Embassy is fully open, while the PRC had most of its staff return to the PRC but left a skeleton staff to keep the Embassy nominally open. Most European countries, and, of course, the US, closed their Embassies in Afghanistan.

So some of us are wondering in what direction Afghanistan will be going. And with whom.

12 US Marines and a Navy Medic killed. The US does not forgive. Or forget.

An ISIS-K (the K is for Khorasan, part of the Ancient Persian Empire that is now part of Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) suicide bomber has killed 13 US servicepersons, 12 Marines and a Navy medic (he also killed more than 60 Afghans, but they don't count). His ISIS-K name was Abdul Rehman Al-Loghri, with the al-Loghri meaning he was from the village of Loghman.

Since the US does not forgive or forget (according to President Biden, who has trouble remembering the names of the people who work for him) the US must drone some peasant farmers in Loghman, say that intelligence proves they were the members of ISIS-K that sponsored the attack, and justice has been served. (And if anyone hands out classified information that those ISIS-K terrorists the US killed included some babies, that person will be tracked down and gaoled for life, while the drone operators and their commanders will all get medals for Great Services Rendered, protecting the US from terrorists.)

President Biden says the US will stay another 4 days, so we might see more attacks, maybe with names like al-Kandahari or al-Herati, so more to drone.

Getting the heck out of Afghanistan

 St Joe says he is doing the exit from Afghanistan perfectly. It would have been very difficult a month ago, it would be very difficult a month from now, so no matter when we left, it would have been exactly as it is now as long as he is the one directing the exit, and a lot worse if some else (meaning Trump) had been directing it, because he is doing it perfectly.

Fox News, of course, disagrees vehemently, of course, because they're Fox. So does Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, but she was condemned by all her readers: they all wrote that St Joe is doing it perfectly, and if she were doing it, it would be a lot worse.

Some ask, if the exit were always going to be so difficult, if there is absolutely no way anyone could possibly get all our people out, shouldn't we have stayed, the way we did in Germany and Japan after WWII?

St Joe says we had one job to do in Afghanistan, we got it done when we killed Osama, and there was no point wasting even one more US life (except for those we'll have to leave behind to be murdered by the terrorists, but there would never have been a way to save any of them, and lots more US soldiers would die if we stayed any longer).

Again, Fox and Ms Dowd disagree with St Joe, but just about all the New York Times readers agree with him and hate both Fox and Ms Dowd.

The critics of St Joe do have a few flaws: he was warned that the Taliban could take over the entire country, making it very difficult to get all our people out, very soon after the end of August. But, of course, St Joe planned a massive evacuation, with the help of the Ghani government, before the end of August. No one believed the Taliban would take over on 15 August. All the warnings were that it might happen right after August (and St Joe said he didn't believe any of those warnings, he knew the Ghani government would last for years after the total US withdrawal).

I read about Saigon: Fred Reed wrote that Saigon actually went far, far better than Kabul. The helicopters took all the embassy staff, Americans and Vietnamese, to US ships that took them to the US. In Kabul, the helicopters took only the Americans in the embassy, and only to the Kabul airport, where there was lots of processing before they could be taken to someplace like Qatar, and more processing before they could make it to Germany, then more processing before they can make it back to the US.

Also, as the North Vietnamese Army closed in on Saigon, all Americans in Vietnam were told to go to an airfield. Most brought their Vietnamese relatives and friends, and refused to leave without all their relatives and friends. The US government was afraid of leaving any US hostages, so they agreed to take everyone, and got them all out before the North Vietnamese Army arrived.

In Kabul, of course, it is very difficult to get to the airport, and the US says, 'You're on your own to get to the airport, and you'd better have all your papers in perfect order or don't bother.'

And as St Joe says, we know we're going to have to leave a lot of people we promised to get out, but that we'll be leaving the fewest possible number because of his brilliant management of the evacuation, no one could possibly have left fewer behind that he will leave. And again, most New York Times readers figure he's telling the TRVTH, the whole TRVTH, and nothing but the TRVTH.

Sadly, most polls show the New York Times readers do not represent the majority of the voters, so the Democrats might have a teeny bit of trouble in the coming mid-terms, but the voters are likely to have forgotten Kabul by the next presidential election. And there's a very good chance St Joe will stand down about two months after the mid-terms, letting St Harris take over for the next 10 years.

Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) in Kabul???

 As President Biden said, the legitimate Afghan government, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, has 300,000 well trained soldiers and an advanced air force, so the Taliban, about 75,000 guerilla fighters with primitive weapons, could not possibly pose a threat.

And he was right. The Taliban don't seem to exist, and it was not the Taliban that toppled the puppet Afghan government installed by the US. The opposition call themselves the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Mujahideen, and it was feared they might be able to take over a large part of Afghanistan over a period of a year. That year lasted about 7 days, and the puppet president installed by the US resigned (after getting the heck out of Afghanistan).

The Western Press still calls the Mujahideen the Taliban, so I guess they could call that land that led the military that occupied their country for 20 years the Aggressors, and always refer to them that way: after all, your name for someone from a different ethnic group is much better than what they call themselves.

The Western media love to demonise the Mujahideen. I guess, if I know Joe and Sam are fighting, and Joe is from my ethnic group, I gotta listen to Joe's side of it and figure it's all that evil Sam's fault. Of course, I could listen to both sides. Nah. Why listen to anyone not from my own ethnic group?

However, the Mujahideen have their own website, so one can read their side of it. Maybe. Their website was down for a couple of days, but now it's back up. The US bragged about taking down the Persian Press site, so they might have blocked the website, or it might be that their webmaster is somewhat lacking in the requisite skills needed to keep the website up (or that their finances are limited).

Their own website presents them as very different from how they're presented by the Western press. Of course, they might be lying on their website, but the Western Press has a habit of lying ever since the Spanish-American War, when the newspapers promised, 'We'll provide the War!' and then they did. So I figure I've got massive evidence that the Western press lies, and no evidence one way or the other about the Mujahideen website. So, for now, I think I'll give more credence to the Mujahideen website than to the Western Press.

Out of Afghanistan

 Back in 2000 and early 2001, the Western Press had horror stories about the Afghanistan Taliban. No school for girls. No healthcare for females. No female could leave purdah (South Asian for harem or seraglio) so girls could not go to school, women could not go to hospital or to a physician, a male physician was not allowed into a woman's purdah unless he was her husband, brother, son, or father, and a female physician was not allowed to leave her own purdah, so no healthcare except for the very few females who had a husband, brother, son, or father who was a physician (or maybe another of her husband's wives was a female physician).

Of course, the 'woman' reporter who 'spent a year in Afghanistan researching that story' might have been a man who could not find Afghanistan on a map, but, since the Taliban destroyed some statues that were almost 2,000 years old because they were not Islamic, it is quite possible to believe that those newspaper stories were true.

However, Ted Rall went to Afghanistan in 2001 to see what the war was about, and again about 10 years later, and said the Taliban were completely different: different people, different goals.

Actually, right after the 9/11 attack, the CIA identified the attackers as Arabs, 15 from Saudi. Bush, Jr quickly corrected that mistake: the attack was planned, coordinated, and arranged in Afghanistan, so the US military were sent to Afghanistan to eradicate all the jihadists who were planning another attack. The proof that the attackers were really from Afghanistan was that no one on the planes had an Afghan passport or visa in their passport, proving that Afghanistan carefully concealed their primary role in the attack. And the US had that proof, but, of course, it was all Top Secret, so no patriotic American, or any American ally, would ever want to see any of that proof.

So off the US military went to Afghanistan in 2001, and now the ground forces are coming back in 2021, and the war will be prosecuted by drones controlled from the US.

Total success! Great Job! Another unmitigated US victory!!!

CoViD from the Wuhan Institute of Virology?

 Back in 2020, Trump said China caused the CoViD-19 pandemic, and the establishment media all agreed that everything Trump said was false, so the virus never came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

 “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” was written by a group of virologists and others in the Lancet on February 19, 2020, and this was widely quoted (and referenced) by those who wanted to refute Trump's claim. Most of us expected the teams researching the virus to find the original bat version and the intermediate host. It was thought to most likely be a pangolin. Only the infected pangolin has not been found. Still, it was early. Surely the bat and the intermediate species would eventually turn up.

However, after 20 Jan 2021, Trump was no longer president, and was barred from all social media. The establishment media still run anti-Trump articles, but no longer runs multiple such articles on a daily basis.

And then President Biden said the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and this quickly became the standard corporate media theory of how it originated.

In support of the now accepted Biden theory, which, of course, had no relation to any of Trump's ridiculous ideas of how the virus originated, Nicholas Wade wrote "The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?" The paper has a long and detailed argument that strongly suggests the virus was developed in a lab. He wrote about that Lancet article that ' It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Daszak’s organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the SARS2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Daszak would be potentially culpable. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to the Lancet’s readers. To the contrary, the letter concluded, “We declare no competing interests.” ' which rather reduced the weight of that Lancet article. We all know that the scientists on the payroll of tobacco companies continued (until it was legally prohibited) to publish papers saying that the science proved that smoking was harmless, and probably had many health benefits. And it now looks like Daszak's paper fits that category.

Wade notes that, in the case of SARS and MERS, it was quickly  discovered that the virus had started in a bat, then infected a civet in the case of SARS and a camel in the case of MERS, and was then transmitted to humans, where is was more deadly than CoViD-19 in terms of infection fatality rate (IFR), but less transmissible. However, we still have not found the original bat virus nor the intermediate host.

Mr Wade says there is strong evidence CoViD-19 must have been created by what is called gain-of-function research. This is done in military biological warfare labs, especially in Fort Dettrick in Maryland. It is also done in civilian virology laboratories where they are looking to first develop particularly infectious and deadly viruses and then study how to stop them. The virus sequence is such that it would be very difficult for it to have occurred in nature, it looks like it could only have been created in a gain-of-function research lab. Mr Wade provides ample evidence in support of his claim, and, now that it's President Biden, not Trump saying it came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, many accept Mr Wade's contention that it was a biological weapons project that escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

What strongly weakens Mr Wade's contention that it was a biological weapons programme at the Wuhan Institute of Virology is that it was proved in 2021 that the US funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology research. Dr Fauci said the research was too dangerous to perform in the US, so the US funded it in Wuhan. The PRC responded that the US would be insane to fund biological warfare research in a country it considered one of its two worst enemies. Which is a very convincing argument that Wuhan was doing prophylactic gain-of-function research before 2020 in an effort to discover new and better ways to stop any future pandemic, and not as a biological warfare project (unlike Fort Dettrick).

It is also obvious, since the US was funding the research, that material was going back and forth, so the CoViD-19 virus might have been created at Fort Dettrick and sent to Wuhan for further study, where a researcher, who had no idea how dangerous it was, studied it in a BSL-2 (biosafety level 2) laboratory, which is about the same as a normal dentist's office, got infected and then went shopping in the Wuhan Wet Market.

While it now looks obvious from Mr Wade's paper that a virus engineered in a gain-of-function research programme escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, it is not clear if the virus was engineered in Wuhan or in Maryland.

It is clear that if, as seems highly likely, the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab, it was accidental and not a PRC conspiracy to infect the West.

The claim that the PRC covered up the virus has a tiny bit of truth in it. The PRC released a report on 31 December 2019 that they had a few patients with a new respiratory virus, and the new virus might be as deadly and infectious as SARS. The comments on the report was that there was no evidence it was actually transmissible between humans, nor that it was deadly. The first patient was admitted on 1 December 2019, most of those infected had proven links to the Wuhan Wet Market, and no one had died.

The first death was on 10 January 2020. A doctor wanted to raise the alarm, but the Wuhan CPC ordered him not to say anything, because they had planned a huge party with 40,000 guests to celebrate Chinese New Year. So the doctor called Beijing, and on 19 January 2020, a team from Beijing came, studied the cases for one day, and went back to Beijing. On 20 January 2020, the PRC announced to the world that it had a new, infectious, and deadly virus in Wuhan. On 23 January 2020, the PRC closed Wuhan: no one could leave, and only essential workers could enter. Tens of thousands of doctors, nurses, and construction workers flew into Wuhan, but no one flew out after 23 January 2020. And Beijing fired the entire leadership of the Wuhan CPC.

The West had from 20 January 2020 to get ready (it would have been much better if the Wuhan CPC had started taking steps against the virus on 10 January 2020, which is why they were all fired for incompetence).

Sadly, the West had outsourced all PPE manufacture to the PRC, so the PRC had plenty of PPE to fight CoViD-19 in the PRC, but not enough to supply the rest of the world. And without adequate PPE, it was very hard to fight the virus. The US had the most infections and deaths because it is the 3rd largest country. In terms of per capita deaths, the US is about the same as Europe and Latin America.

But the Democrats figure CoViD-19 was a G_dsend, because it got rid of Trump. They all figure 600,000 US deaths was a miniscule price to pay to not have another 4 years of Trump.

Out of Afghanistan?

After the US was attacked on 9/11, some accused Saudi Arabia of having a part in the attack. The CIA website, cia.gov had a page with the names and nationalities of the 19 hijackers. That page has since been moved to 911myths as well it should. The page lists 15 of the hijackers as Saudis, but that was before the attack was properly investigated. The first version, before it was properly massaged into the proper shape, was that 19 Arabs, 15 of them Saudis, met in the Arabian Peninsula, decided to destroy the World Trade Center, flew to Berlin, then London, then the US where four of them took jet passenger airliner flying training in Florida, then, on 9/11/2001 (in US date notation) they hijacked four aeroplanes. The hijacking relied on the hijacking protocol from before 9/11: do whatever the hijackers demand, get the planes safely on the ground, and then let the police deal with the hijackers. So it proved easy to hijack the four planes, and the hijackers then used two of them to destroy the World Trade Center, one to damage the Pentagon, and one crashed when the passengers tried to take control of the plane from the hijackers. Just because we have the records from the flight passenger lists, from their passports, from the flight training schools in Florida is irrelevant, of course, that is not how the US investigates major crimes, it uses much more sophisticated methods.

Ignoring such useless distractions as facts, proof, and evidence, Bush, Jr immediately announced that the attack was planned in Afghanistan, and the main hijackers were members of the Taliban, so the US troops went into Afghanistan in October, 2001. The main perpetrator of 9/11 was said to be Osama bin Laden, who was a) a senior member of the Taliban or b) someone protected by the Taliban or c) someone whose main base was in Afghanistan and who was closely allied with the Taliban or d) maybe something else. What, exactly, was, of course, irrelevant. Afghanistan was responsible for 9/11. Of course, Osama was never found in Afghanistan, but no matter. Osama did say that the US World Trade Center housed many murderers who must be killed. How, exactly, they must be killed he did not say, but bombs were planted in the World Trade Center in 1993, killing six people and injuring thousands, and the plotting to destroy the World Trade Center continued until it was destroyed, and it was all Osama's doing. Of course, many Imams in Saudi gave their Friday khutbahs saying that the World Trade Center must be destroyed, but that does not change the fact that Afghanistan was responsible. Those khutbahs were based on facts that would not be revealed to the world until after 9/11/2001, when the motivation for 9/11 appeared in the book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, published in 2004. He explained how he convinced Indonesia to accept a predatory loan for a construction project that was supposed to pay for itself, with returns more than enough to service the loan. Only the project returned nothing, and the loan was unforgivable sovereign debt, so Indonesia had to repay. Subsistence farmland was converted into cash crops, and the former farmers starved to death. Mines were dug and the waste dumped in the drinking water and many more died from having no potable water. So the Imams and Osama all said the people in the World Trade Center had murdered more than 1 billion Muslims and must be killed. As Perkins made clear, there is no evidence that any of the people who arranged for the economic hit men to go making those predatory loans worked in the World Trade Center, but Osama and the Imams were still convinced.

The total number killed by predatory loans is in the millions, not a billion, and included only a small percentage of Muslims. John Perkins and the other Economic Hit Men foisted those predatory loans off on Latin America, Asia, and Africa, so most of those who died were not Muslim but Christians, Buddhists, & etc., but still, those Saudi Imams and Osama blamed the World Trade Center for murdering Muslims, they knew what those economic hit men had been doing.

So obviously, Osama was entirely to blame (well, plus the many who followed him, but he was still the main one, those Saudi Imams who said the same things have been found blameless by the US courts, the best legal system in the entire world).

Obama asked actors to pose as physicians and say they were giving free vaccines to get Pakistanis to let them investigate homes in Pakistan looking for (and finding) Osama. Since then, many Pakistanis are very reluctant to take vaccines, but this trifle does not detract from Obama's managing to kill the person who was entirely responsible, with hundreds or maybe thousands of others, for the 9/11 attack on the US. Nor does it reduce Afghanistan's guilt. They were entirely responsible for 9/11 (with many other countries) and had to be punished, and punished severely.

Most commentators agree that Afghanistan remains a big problem. They were entirely responsible for 9/11, and, as soon as the US pulls out, they're sure to do it again. But Biden says the US has been in Afghanistan too long, even though it was the presence of the US in Afghanistan that prevented the terrorists from committing another 9/11.

The fact that none of the 19 named as hijackers had ever been anywhere near Afghanistan, as proven by their passports that were scanned in full and recorded when they entered the US does not reduce Afghanistan's guilt. Osama was there. Briefly, but he was there. So it is clearly necessary for US troops to remain to keep America safe, and Biden is letting the US guard down by withdrawing.

Biden has promised that the troops will not foolishly return to the US, they'll be relocated to other bases in the area, and their intelligence will direct the daily drone strikes on Afghanistan run from the US. Those strikes will kill the many, many terrorists still there, terrorists who include many infants and great-grandmothers.

So the US will sort-of, kind-of be 'out of Afghanistan' but at least the drone strikes will continue, and surveillance of Afghanistan will continue from bases near Afghanistan.

But still, all the experts say that Afghanistan does nothing but plot attacks on the US like 9/11, and only the presence of US troops ever since 9/11 has prevented a repeat, so, even with the daily drone strikes and constant intense surveillance, Afghanistan is sure to do another 9/11 if US troops do not remain to prevent it.

JCPOA continues netherwards

 St Joe keeps hoping to finish what Obama started: Iran agrees to full inspections that verify no WMD, then St Biden can order the USAF to take out all the Ayatollahs and hand Iran over to a decent, Democratic* government instead of their current Autocratic** government.

Iran includes some Kurds, who are Sunni and hate Persians and having their old Ottoman Vilayet broken up into bits that are in Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria, and also some Arabs who were on the wrong side of the Shatt al-Arab (as it is known to the Arabs) or the Arvand Rood (as it is known to the Persians) when the Ottomans and the Persians agreed to the current boundaries, and who also hate Persians, and they could form a new, Persian-free government for Iran that would be acceptable to the US.

Only the Persians are refusing to cooperate. They must agree to 110% of US terms FIRST, then, once the US is sure that they don't have any WMD, regime change.

The Persians want an end to all sanctions before they stop 60% enrichment with no inspections.

It should be noted that the reunification of Korea was stopped in 1951 because General MacArthur said he could only defeat the PLA with nukes, and Truman said, 'The USSR has MAD, you idiot. You're fired.'  

Then (40 years later) the USSR collapsed, Kim II feared regime change was back on the table, and set off an explosion he said was a nuke (seismic data not clear if it was or wasn't).

Later, Kim III set off some explosions that could have been nothing but nukes, so he has 'em, and regime change in the DPRK must remain on hold a while longer.

And Iran is getting close to being able to set off an ambiguous explosion and say 'It's a nuke, baby, it's a nuke!' 

The Persians do not seem inclined to stop all production of highly enriched uranium and allow inspectors while the US still has full sanctions, so it's looking like St Joe won't be able to get Iran to disarm completely with UN inspections so the US can easily force regime change, and the JCPOA doesn't seem likely to be resurrected. It ain't like Lazarus.

Added to which, someone (guess who) set off an explosion in an Iranian facility that might be capable of producing bomb-grade enriched uranium, which does not incline Iran to tranquility.

Net: no JCPOA for the foreseeable future!

***

*Democratic - Defn. A form of government that always does whatever the US tells them to do.

**Autocratic - Defn. Any form of government that does not do whatever the US tells them to do.

The JCPOA

 Before Trump, every American president had worked for his party since he was a teenager. One had to go to all the party meetings and get to know the party leadership (it helped if your parents were senior members of the Party and put you in for a future leader). You passed out leaflets, asked people if you could put up signs for your party in their yard, and generally worked for the party. If the leadership liked you, they put you up for local, then statewide, then governor or Congresscritter. And finally, for a very few of a very few, they got put up as a presidential candidate.

But the Republicans lost to Obama twice and decided to let the rank and file vote on the nominee, and they got Trump who could not possibly win. And then he won. And he had no idea. 

Every president, the day he becomes President Elect, should hand in 4,000 names of people who have ample qualifications and who will have his back. Trump did not know anyone qualified, took a list of names from some Republican 'friends' and nominated 4,000 #NeverTrumps who did nothing but try to get rid of him. So Trump accomplished very little. Obama built far more wall, deported far more Hispanics, and did much more to support the fossil fuel industry, all while saying he was against a Wall, never deported a single Hispanic, and was doing all he could to stop climate change. But what Obama said sounded good.

Trump said the US needed a Wall that would make that thing in China look like a picket fence, that we needed to deport every last Hispanic, that we must support fossil fuels since Climate Change is a hoax. Everything Trump said sounded terrible, but Trump didn't really do much, unlike his predecessors, hypocrites who said all the right things and did all the wrong things.

Another heinous offence by the PRC

 For starters, everyone knows that the US and UK are the only sources of TRVTH in the world. We know that the UK brought the savages modern medicine and modern agriculture, eliminating death from cold and disease in the Native Americans when they supplied them with used blankets, and eliminating famine, as they did in the Raj and in all their concessions in China. We know this because US and UK writers like Kipling told us so, and we know we can believe them. We know the US and UK saved the world from Saddam's and Qaddafi's nukes, which were ready to destroy the world before the US and UK intervened and transformed Iraq and Libya from brutal, impoverished dictatorships and state sponsors of terror into democratic, peaceful and prosperous democracies, again because the always reliable US and UK reporters told us so. Even the most rabid anti-US/UK reporters have to admit that the US/UK armed interventions in Iraq and Libya completely eliminated all reliable electricity and clean water for everyone except the US/UK supervisors and their employees, two things that every good Arab abhors as evil and harmful. And in Libya, everyone knows that Qaddafi destroyed the traditional Libyan economy when he closed all the slave souks, but the US and UK have ensured that they are now once again functioning, and have returned to their position as the mainstay of the Libyan economy after the US/UK eliminated the horrible Qaddafi, who had created an illegal economy based entirely on stealing the oil that rightfully belongs to the US/UK and France.

More recently, we learned that the UK government had used the safest possible cladding on the Grenfell Tower, and the fire was caused by the horrible, unsafe practices of the immigrants who were living there, and this was in every reliable UK newspaper and on the BBC, so no reasonable person can possibly doubt that it is true.

So now, in the interest of ensuring that only the TRVTH is broadcast in the UK, the UK government was forced to ban the lying PRC TV station, CGTN, from broadcasting in the UK. After which, the evil PRC banned the always truthful BBC from broadcasting in the PRC because they were telling the truth about the PRC persecution, rape, murder and incarceration in Concentration Camps, Camps that make those of the Germans in WWII seem like luxury resorts, of all the Muslims in Xinjiang.

We know the BBC is telling the truth because they have at least half a dozen reliable witnesses, and we know those witnesses must be reliable because they are employed by the CIA and MI6, who only pay for the TRVTH. And those witnesses say they have gone all over Xinjiang, have personally seen those Concentration Camps, and have spoken to hundreds of Muslims, including many women to said they were repeatedly raped by the entire PRC army units assigned to impose the evil PRC policies on the poor, enslaved Muslims in Xinjiang.

The fact that the PRC has absolutely no record of any of those witnesses ever having been in the PRC, either as citizens, since there is no record of any of them being citizens, nor any record of any of them ever having received a visa, cannot be trusted, even though the PRC has a rather well regarded reputation of keeping meticulous records. The fact that the PRC has offered visas to anyone who wants to come to Xinjiang and said they were free to go all over Xinjiang and search wherever they like for any raped Muslim women or Concentration Camps is an obvious trap, since all those who have written the TRVTH about those Concentration Camps, Camps that they were able to see very clearly from their offices in Beijing and Shanghai, from both of which Xinjiang and its Concentration Camps are clearly visible, are all banned, and only those who have, by failing to report on those rapes and Concentration Camps, proved they are completely blind, are allowed to go to Xinjiang and look and report.

We know the CIA and MI6 have never once told a single misstatement, every single thing they have ever said is provably true, for one can ask them, and, since they reiterate that they always tell the TRVTH, their assurances cannot be doubted.

So we now know that the PRC bans all truth in the PRC, and tried to spread their lies in the UK, but the UK government stopped them, for which everyone in the UK must be eternally grateful.

US Elections

 At my age, I figured I would have seen it all. Instead, I ain't seen none of what we're seeing these days.

US elections are complicated. Every state does things differently, but the national elections generally suffer the exact same complications year after year. But then came 2016 and 2020.

When the 13 Colonies were Colonies, communication with the UK took months, so there had to be a local government subordinate to the UK, where (back then) the monarch was Head of State, and so the ultimate ruler of the Colonies, but the 13 local governments ran most things. And after those who wanted Independence forced those who wanted to remain British subjects up to Canada and forced the Brits out, the 13 Colonies had some problems with a union. The agricultural colonies hated being mercantile colonies, forced to sell all their raw materials to the UK at below world market prices and forced to buy all manufactured goods from the UK at above world market prices, and they could see the large, industrial states making them mercantile colonies of the US industrial states, so the agricultural states, all of which had tiny populations with respect to the industrial states, wanted a veto, and they got two.

Every state got representatives in the House in proportion to its population, but every state got 2 Senators, no matter how small its population. So the House always voted with the industrial states, and the Senate with the agricultural states.

Every white landowner could vote, but the large industrialists and plantation owners didn't trust the yeomen farmers, so they set up the presidential election so the yeomen had to elect members of the elite, who would then vote for President. And each state was to send one member of its elite for every Representative and every Senator to vote for President. The elections in November elect Electors, not the president. I knew this, but not the grimy details. The Electors vote on 14 December. But that vote is not necessarily final, it must be certified by the new Congress on 6 January. Once certified, the person elected president is President-Elect, and nothing and nobody can change that. The Congress can only decertify the 14 December vote by a 2/3 majority in both houses, which has never happened.

Now, most adult American citizens are allowed to vote for Electors (but most do not bother), and the Electors all run on a platform of, 'If elected, I will vote for Candidate <whomever>!' Most Americans figure they're voting for the President, even though they are not, exactly, but close.

Every election, there are Election Commissions at every polling place, in every County (not all states have Counties, some have Parishes, and some have other divisions, but whatever they're called, all have Election Commissions). And every State has an Election Commission. The Commission decisions on vote count is final, that is the legal vote count. So, before 2020, no presidential candidate ever challenged the election result from November, because they knew they could not.

But every election, we snickered. The Election Commissions, by law, must be exactly ½ Democrat and ½ Republican, so if the majority agrees on the eligible and ineligible voters, that must be correct. Neither Republicans nor Democrats would accept ineligible voters from the other party, or reject eligible voters from their own party, so if all agree, it must be accurate. But in some (no idea how many) solid Republican states, the 'Democrats' on the Committees were really Republicans who agreed to block Democrats and let in Republicans whose signatures didn't match their signatures from when they Registered to Vote, and in solid Democrat states, the opposite, and we were sure that some of the Commissions were crooked, but their final vote counts were still final. We had jokes about dead people voting, people allowed to vote early and often. Always. Every election. But everyone knew there was no way to challenge the Election Commission final vote counts, so we accepted the result announced the night of the November election, or early the next morning.

But then, before 2016, the Democrat National Committee (DNC) and the Republican National Committee (RNC) picked who could run in the primaries. When I was a boy, they picked the candidate, but now we have primaries, but the DNC and RNC decide who can run, and usually it is someone who started as a teenager trying to become president, meeting and greeting the Party Leaders, learning how the US government works.

But then in 2016, a Reality TV star was allowed to buy his way in to the primaries, and then he started winning the plurality of the votes, since he had much better name recognition than any of the other primary candidates. And he became the Candidate, even as the RNC was aghast, and the DNC was cheering since he couldn't possibly win.

And then he won all the flyover states, 30 states, most with very small populations, so the DNC candidate had far more votes, but Trump had far more Electors.

Trump was the most incompetent president I had ever seen. He knew absolutely nothing about the job and how to do it. He gave orders that were seldom followed, and he had no idea how to get anything done. And he was vehemently hated by every Democrat plus the establishment Republicans. Shortly after the 6 Jan deadline, Obama announced that the Russians had hacked 21 states. Later, they said they didn't know if the Russians had changed the votes, but 'hacked' means they changed the votes (they changed the definition of 'hacked' to mean read-only access to the publicly available data of who won, but getting read-only access to public data is not what the word 'hacked' is supposed to mean). So Obama's statement meant Trump did not win 30 states, but only 9 (a statement later watered down to, 'We don't know what the Russian did, we only know they hacked 21 states, and maybe they never changed a single vote, or maybe they single-handedly stole the election, but all proof is Top Secret, so no patriotic American would ever want to see any of it).

For four years, the DNC said the Russians stole the election from St Hillary.

Then, in 2020, Trump lost, but he had no idea how these things work. No candidate had ever challenged an election result before, because they knew it could not be done. Members of the Commissions often challenged the result, because only members of the commissions are allowed to challenge the vote (and when Democrats on the Florida Election Commission challenged the vote, the case went to the Supreme Court, where the 5 Republicans said Bush, Jr won and the 4 Democrats said Gore won.)

But Trump did not understand, and tried to get the states to change Electors, tried to get the Electors to change their votes, and tried to get the Congress to decertify the election on 6 January.

And the US establishment media said it was irrefutably proven that the 2020 election was the very first election where the result was 100% accurate, the final vote count was exactly correct, it was absolutely certain that the count was not off by even 1 vote. The US media claim was ridiculous. The counts are always off, but, if no one on any Election Commission raises a challenge, we have absolutely no idea how many of the Commissions are corrupt or incompetent.

So I had never before seen the press saying the final vote count was perfect,  nor had I ever seen a presidential candidate who had no idea how things work and who tried to challenge the election result.

But in any case, we now have Biden and Harris as president and vice-president, and Trump is facing his 2nd impeachment trial  this week, with the Democrats hoping for a conviction (which takes a 2/3 majority) followed by prosecution and gaol for Life without Parole. Trump represents 2 of the 4 Presidential impeachments and trials the US has ever had. The first, the Senate were 1 vote short of a 2/3 majority. The 2nd and 3rd, a large majority of the Senate voted to acquit.

This month, for the 2nd time, a majority of the Senate will vote for conviction, but not a 2/3 majority, so Trump will be acquitted. Before, the Republicans were running the trial, and found Trump innocent very quickly. This time, Democrats are running the trial, and they have a lot of terrible things to say about Trump, so it might go on for a loooooooooooooong time before Trump is acquitted, and the Democrats denounce as Deplorable every Senator who voted against conviction.

Biden is coming, Biden is coming

 Growing up, I had the 3 US TV channels, of which everyone watched 2 for news: Cronkite on CBS and Huntley and Brinkley on NBC, so we always got the official US version of the news: the US was bringing Democracy to Vietnam, and the US had no choice but to go to war after the Vietcong attacked a US Navy ship in international waters, a travesty at least as bad as Pearl Harbor.

But in the late '60s, we had Cronkite admitting he'd been lying for years. He took the official US government lies and said they had been verified as TRVE. But now he had to say he'd learned the US government lied, and no, nothing they claimed had ever actually been validated, the news reporters knew which side their bread was buttered on, and knew that repeating the official US government lies was a safe way to keep their jobs without having to incur any danger by actually going to look. Those who did go and look, if they managed to make it back and file a report, would not get their reports into the establishment media, which, back then, was CBS, NBC, and the major newspapers.

When I got older, I read Graham Greene who complained that nothing of what he'd actually seen as a foreign correspondent ever made it into his news reports after the censors and editors got through with his filings, so he put it into his novels, which were not censored.

But times change even more than that. 

When I was a young boy, I was taken by my mother to a Ham Radio Operator to call my grandmother for free. The Ham said that he'd been listening to the Soviet version of world news, and it was very different from the US version. 'What did they say?' I asked. 

'We don't have time. Just make the phone call to my mother,' said my mother. So I never learned what the Soviets said. 

Times change. The Russians now say the Soviet news was all lies, but so was the US news. And I can easily get the Russian version of the news thanks to the Internet and Satellite TV. Also the PRC version.

The PRC news say they are very happy about Biden, he'll be a big improvement on Trump. That's the diplomatic thing to say.

Russia is not saying that. Russia is very worried about Biden. St Joe never met a war he didn't love, and promised to punish Russia severely on Day 1. Also, all those warm-water Naval Ports in Syria where the Soviets and then Russia have been squatting for years will be returned to their rightful owners, NATO. The evil Syrian dictator and all his evil henchmen will be killed, and a new government of peaceful, pro-democracy activists put in, those beneficent people who call themselves al-Qaeda, which is Arabic for 'peaceful, pro-democracy activist'. The Syrian people will be eternally grateful to the US.

In 2009, Obama said he was going to overthrow the evil government of Libya, and both Russia and the PRC voted 'Yes' in the UN Security Council. In 2013, Obama said he was going to overthrow the evil government of Syria, and both Russia and the PRC didn't say anything. Russia and the PRC knew they could not stand up to the US (but the UK Parliament voted 'NO!' so the US did not send the USAF in to completely destroy Syria, there are still bits left).

But in 2015, things appeared to have changed. Putin said if the US tried to overthrow the legitimate government of Syria, Russia would fight to protect it.

So what happens?

Soon after 20 Jan, Biden has promised to send the USAF to kill the Syrian government. And Putin promised in 2015 to shoot down all those planes. I cannot see Biden getting cold feet. But what will Putin do? Will Putin back down, figuring he can't possibly stand up to a powerhouse like Biden?

Or will Putin realise he has nothing to gain by letting the US kick Russia out of Syria, and keep his promise to protect the Syrian government?

And if Putin keeps his promise to Syria, what will St Biden do?

The PRC are saying lots of nice things about Biden, but they also indicated (without actually saying it) that they intend to fight for their New Silk Road, which includes places like Venezuela and its current government.

As the PRC would say, we are in for some Interesting Times in less than one week!