PPP???

Measuring economies can be very easy, but many figure the easy way is wrong. All countries worth measuring do their best to count all sales and purchases, so they can tax them, So we have the total sales and the total purchases, always a little bit off since the people counting don't manage to count everything correctly, when we know that total purchases have to equal total sales. So we take some number, maybe the average, maybe just sales, maybe just purchases, maybe a weighted average, and we get the total economy in the local currency, and there are official translations from every (significant) currency to every other (significant) currency. So we put the result for every economy in US$ or € or £, (or whatever) and we have a number for every economy worth measuring that allows us to rank all the economies of the world.

***

Now consider two mythical islands. Both have crops and livestock, both build houses and boats and go fishing, but the fishing boats can't make it from one island to the4 other. Both use a rare, exotic, rather beautiful shell as currency, but one island has exactly twice as many of those shells as the other island. In New York City, the shells, no matter from which island, are worth $1, but on the island with twice as many shells, homes, boats, pounds of fruit and veggies and meat and fish cost twice as many shells. Both islands produce the exact same amount of everything, but one island has an economy worth twice as many US$ as the other island.

So, since both islands produce the exact same quantity and quality of everything, the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) economies for the two islands are exactly the same, even though the US$ value of one economy is twice as much as the other, because they both produce exactly the same total outputs.

***

Of course, in real life, we never have two economies like the two islands, both producing exactly the same quantity and quality of stuff, but one paying twice as much for it. So, in real life, the PPP economy is somewhat subjective, depending on how one counts things. Do any two real islands produce the exact same quantity of food, housing, boats, and fish? Probably not in real life. And are all prices exactly twice as many shells? Again, probably not.

So the final calculation of PPP is not so easy, and is always subject to question.

How much longer does Maduro have?

President Trump has closed Venezuelan air space. The New York Times, a big fan of Trump, says he can't actually do that. All direct flights to Venezuela, like direct flights to Russia, are prohibited, so no planes have been going from the US to Venezuela to suddenly have their flights cancelled.

Small, regional carriers have several hundred flights still scheduled to fly to or from Venezuela in December.

Not clear what Trump will do next.

The Monroe Doctrine says Venezuela, being a part of the Americas, belongs to the US, so Russia and other countries had better stay out (Russia still has diplomatic ties and treaties with Venezuela, as does the country buying all the Venezuelan oil, being the only country, other than the US, with refineries that can process the very sour Venezuelan crude).

So it is looking like whoever is really running the US of A is having Trump threaten military action against Venezuela in order to replace the evil dictator Maduro with the democratic winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.

Raising such questions as, 'What friends does Maduro have that would have the temerity to violate the Monroe Doctrine???? And what horrible things will the US do to those friends if they dare to help Maduro after the US have decided to get rid of him?'

 

Note (for whatever it's worth): Logistics change. In 1800, the UK had a 2+1 Navy, meaning that, if the nations with the 2nd and 3rd strongest navies allied against the UK, the UK Navy could defeat both of them. But by 1900, the US had a Navy that, while they could not challenge the UK in the Eastern Hemisphere, were more than a match for the UK in the Western Hemisphere, so the UK and US decided the US would dominate the entire Western Hemisphere and the UK would dominate the entire Eastern Hemisphere. WWI and WWII left the UK broke and unable to have a 2+1 Navy, or even a decent medium-size Navy. They could take on the Argentina Navy, with permission from the US, but that was about the limit of the power of what had been a 2+1 Navy. And that logistics that made the US the unquestionable master of the Western Hemisphere might have changed again. I guess we'll see rather soon if Venezuela has any friends that will stick around when the shooting starts inside Venezuela, given that one of those friends desperately need Venezuela oil.

Off to the Races

As a boy, I was taught that humans are divided into 5 races. In alphabetical order, Black, Brown, Red, White, and Yellow, with Black representing Africa, Brown representing South and West Asia, Red for the Indigenous People of the Americas, White for Europe, and Yellow for East Asia. 

I have spoken to some East Asians, and they consider themselves The Yellow People. Africans consider themselves Black. I'm pretty sure that West Asians and South Asians accept that they are Brown. Europeans consider themselves White. The History Books tell us that the Europeans, having divided the world into White, Black, Brown, and Yellow, wanted a different colour for the Indigenous Americans, and asked one of them who said his tribe considered themselves Red, a view not accepted by most Indigenous Americans, but the colour Red stuck with the Europeans. Calling the Indigenous Americans 'Red' is a big point of contention, while the other four races pretty much accept the colours assigned to them.

But then the German National Socialists said that Europeans are not a single Race that could be called 'White', they are three very distinct races, Aryan, Jewish, and Slav, and many of the Europeans who consider themselves to be Aryans want a Europe that is only Aryan with no Jews and no Slavs.

There is an old story set in WWII (not clear when it really started). A young German SS officer sent to separate the Aryans from the Slavs and Jews in Poland asked, 'How can we tell Aryans from Slavs and Jews? All look the same, and all speak multiple languages.' An older SS officer said, 'Follow me and learn!'

The two SS officers went into a shop, and the older SS officer asked, 'Do you have any left-handed teapots?'

The shopkeeper said, 'There is no such thing as a left-handed teapot.'

The senior SS officer said, 'He is a Slav. Send him to a Concentration Camp and close this shop.' And it was done.

The senior SS officer led them into a second shop and asked, 'Do you have any left-handed teapots?'

The shopkeeper said, 'Dummkopf! You can take any right-handed teapot, turn it one hundred eighty degrees, and it is a left-handed teapot.'

The senior SS officer said, 'He is an Aryan. He gets to keep his shop and also gets the shop of the Slav.'

They went into a third shop, and the senior SS officer asked, 'Do you have any left-handed teapots?'

The shopkeeper whispered, 'Yes, but they are very rare, and I only have one, and it is very expensive, I have to charge you twenty times as much as for a right-handed teapot.'

The senior SS officer said, 'He is obviously a Jew. Send him to the Concentration Camp and give his shop to the Aryan.'

This story has nothing to do with the differences between Aryans, Slavs, and Jews, and everything to do with how the Nazis viewed what they considered to be Aryans, Slavs and Jews.

This was a historical feature of Europe that I thought ended in 1945. Silly me. A minority of Ukrainians consider themselves Aryans, and would like to rid the Ukraine of all Slavs. They were told that the US/UK/EU will help them get rid of the Slavs provided that they accept and protect the Jews, and the Ukrainians who consider themselves Aryans agreed.

And here we are.

According to the US/UK/EU mainstream media, the Ukraine are easily defeating the Slavs in Ukraine and the Slavs attacking from the USSR, where 'R' stands for Russian. Victory is now very close, and a great improvement in the Ukraine, and the American resources in Russia that were being stolen by the Russian Slavs will soon be returned to the rightful owners, American oiligarchs.

I Was Just Following Orders???

In Vietnam, on 16 March 1968, a Company of US Army soldiers killed between 347 and 504 civilians, almost all women, children, and elderly men (no one is sure of the exact number) at My Lai.

The US soldiers said they'd been in a fierce fight with the Viet Cong, but in November, 1969, Seymore Hersh wrote that the Company of US soldiers had killed unarmed civilians who were no threat to the soldiers. 

After most accepted the Hersh version as accurate, the US Army declared this a war crime and held a few men responsible. Twenty six were tried, but only Lieutenant Calley was found guilty, sentenced to Life in Prison, held (more or less) under House Arrest for three and a half years, then released after his sentence was commuted.

US soldiers are now taught that they must never obey illegal orders, like the one given to kill those unarmed Vietnamese civilians.

Raising the question: have US servicemen been given illegal orders to kill unarmed fishermen off the coast of Latin America?

Officially, the answer is, 'Not at all. Those are heavily armed drug dealers, carrying cargoes of illegal drugs that kill millions of Americans every year, and they must be stopped. Since we have irrefutable proof that they are heavily armed drug traffickers, orders to kill them are legal orders that must be obeyed!'

Some ask, 'Can we see the proof that they are heavily armed drug traffickers?' Obviously, a ridiculous question, all that information is Classified TS/SCI/NOFORN/BBR, so it can never be revealed to anyone without a TS/SCI/NOFORN/BBR Clearance and a Need to Know. And all those people say they have seen the proof and it is irrefutable, so those orders were absolutely legal and must be obeyed.

Those who have not seen that Classified Proof keep saying those men might have been just fishermen, there is no proof they were armed or carrying illegal drugs, and even if they were armed and carrying illegal drugs, the appropriate action would have been to stop the boats (an armoured military vessel could have approached the boats without risking the lives of the sailors inside the vessel), then, from inside the armoured boat, demanded to see if the men on the boats had any weapons, and, if they had weapons and refused to throw all weapons overboard, then it would have been legal to kill them all, but not to kill them all by bombing or shelling them without any inspection, but that's not how the US military, the most advanced and reliable and law-abiding military the world has ever seen, deals with heavily armed terrorists carrying drugs that kill millions of Americans every year.

And everyone should know that the American military would never tell a lie about having irrefutable proof that all those killed were all heavily armed terrorists carrying tonnes of illegal drugs that kill millions of Americans every year.

More to the point, of course, is that in 1999, Hugo Chávez stole all the American oil in Venezuela and squandered the money on the ordinary Venezuelan people (the US had been paying the government of Venezuela a lot of money to let US oil and banana companies take all the oil and bananas they wanted). Venezuelan oil is very sour, and the only refineries that could process it were in the US, plus one set up by a US firm in Venezuela. Of course, after Chávez stole the oil, the US stopped refining it or maintaining the refinery in Venezuela, which soon stopped working.

In 2002, the US overthrew the illegal Chávez regime for two whole days, until the Venezuelan military freed Chávez and restored him to power until his death in 2013, after which Maduro took over as Dictator of Venezuela and continued to claim that all that American oil belonged to the Venezuelan people.

As it happens, there are now two countries that can process Venezuelan crude, and, for reasons that escape us all, a third country, Russia, say they are allied with Venezuela, so both Russia and the nation that is buying and refining just about all the Venezuelan oil (and paying for it) are in egregious violation of the Monroe Doctrine, and both must be stopped.

The US plan to make the winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize the legal Venezuelan Head of State and she got her Peace Prize for saying that every drop of oil in Venezuela belongs to the rightful owners, US oiligarchs.

So all decent people hope she becomes the Venezuelan Head of State ASAP.

Holodomor (or less)

The official Soviet version of the Holodomor is that Stalin put a strict Communist in charge of agriculture, and, while he knew Communism very well, he had no knowledge of agriculture, so Soviet agricultural production fell drastically, and many Soviets starved to death all over the USSR.

The Western Ukrainian version of the Holodomor was that the Russians stole all the Ukrainian food, and millions of Ukrainians starved to death.

Only the Western part of the Russian Empire was lost to Germany in 1917 during WWI, then Germany lost, but Britain, France, and the US all hated the USSR, so Britain and France took the lands lost by Russia during the war, plus lots of German land and a huge chunk of what had been the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and redrew the map of Europe, forming countries with multiple ethnic groups, multiple languages, all weak and divided, easily controlled by France and the UK, and unable to pose any kind of threat to France or the UK.

One old story was:

'I was born in Austria. I went to school in Poland. I got my first job in the Soviet Union. And I retired in the Ukraine.'

'Oh, you must have done a lot of travelling.'

'I never left the village where I was born.'

Of course, there was no Austria before the end of WWI, Austria was formed as a small country after WWI out of a tiny bit of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and he was more likely Hungarian than Austrian, since large parts of Western Ukraine still speak Hungarian and have Hungarian signs and the people wear Hungarian-style clothes.

So the people who most rabidly denounce the Holodomor as something perpetrated on the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine by the Soviet Socialist Republic of Russia were in Poland during the Holodomor, but were annexed by Stalin during WWII, when he took back all of West Russia that had been taken in 1917 by Germany, plus bits of what had been the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and Germany, and all were part of the USSR until the USSR broke up in 1991.

The final Soviet Socialist Republic of the Ukraine was put together by Stalin and Khrushchev, and had large chunks of what had been the Soviet Socialist Republic of Russia added to ensure that the final Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine had many different ethnic groups that don't like each other, making it easier to govern.

Now that the USSR is gone, those ethnic groups aren't all that happy together, and some want to be part of Russia, while others would love to help the US break Russia up into 20 small, unarmed countries with all those Russian energy resources returned to the rightful owners, US/UK/EU oiligarchs (but mostly US oiligarchs), for which they have been promised generous payment on the successful completion of this task.

Don't Know Much about History

 On Sunday, the New York Times writer Thomas L. Friedman wrote that Trump is another Chamberlain.

Churchill was a prolific historian, he wrote very well, and made himself the hero of WWI and WWII, and maybe a few more wars I forgot about. Of course, his histories are not altogether accurate.

In 1917, the Czar of the Russian Empire resigned and Russia capitulated to Germany, agreeing that Western Russia would become part of Germany.

With Russia gone, things were looking very bad for the UK and France, but the US banks had figured, from 1914 to 1917, that the UK and France were, by far, the strongest nations on earth and sure to win, so they loaned them a lot of money to use in WWI, and it looked like the banks would have to write off all those loans to the UK and France, making many major US banks insolvent, which was something the US could not allow, so they entered the war against Germany and were enough to let the Allies win WWI, and then in 1919, Germany had to agree to the Treaty of Versailles: they must totally disarm, give up the Russian lands ceded by Russia (but not back to Russia, to the UK and France to do with whatever they wanted), and to hand over every bit of German gold as war reparations, so Germany was very weak and impecunious, and no threat to the UK or France. And the US banks got repaid with a lot of interest.

But in 1933, Germany elected a new Chancellor who said Germany must rearm. Churchill said he thundered against such an atrocity: Churchill wrote that he said that if the UK, with all the resources of the British Empire, had demanded that an unarmed Germany must select a Chancellor who would abide by the Treaty of Versailles, Germany would have had no choice but to agree, and and if anyone had listened, WWII could have been avoided without the loss of a single drop of blood.

Only I checked the morgue, and I couldn't find a single speech by Churchill demanding that Germany pick a Chancellor who would abide by the Treaty of Versailles in 1933.

Everyone was scared to death of the USSR, and wanted a rearmed Germany able to put up a feeble effort against the inevitable Soviet invasion of Western Europe, an effort that would get the UK and France enough time to mobilise and stop the Soviet threat.

Then, in 1938, Chamberlain went to France and asked what they should do about Germany. Hitler had re-armed Germany, and released news reels to be shown during movies showing a Great German military, taking hours to march past the cameras filming for the news reels. France said, 'Wait until 1939 when we have our defensive Maginot Line ready, and then the UK and France will be able to easily defeat the Germans with very limited losses.' So Chamberlain signed a faux peace deal with Germany and promised, 'Peace in Our Time!' Fake, of course, so Germany would not attack before the UK and France were ready. Chamberlain agreed (as did France) that Germany could take back bits of Germany taken away after WWI in 1938.

Churchill wrote, and Friedman agrees, that Germany was still very weak in '38, so victory would have been possible with minimal UK-French losses (or the UK alone could have easily defeated Germany). Patently false, but Friedman calls Trump worse than Chamberlain, Russia have lost millions in the Ukraine and are on the edge of total defeat, after which Russia can be broken up into 20 small, unarmed countries, and all Russian assets can be confiscated as war reparations to American oiligarchs.

But Trump's agreeing to give a Russia, that is now almost totally defeated by the Ukrainians, a Russian victory forced upon the Ukrainians by the US, will mean a much stronger Russia in a year or two, so anyone who wants to visit the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben will have to speak Russian to ask the way.

Regime Change in Iran?

Israel and the US want to overthrow the Ayatollah and return the Shah to power. The US did this in '53 after Mossadegh announced, in '51, that he was nationalising all the oil in Iran. The US made the Shah the supreme ruler of Iran and helped him build a pro-Shah force that would keep him as supreme ruler. But then, in '73, the Shah nationalised the Iranian oil, and the US found an Ayatollah who only wanted to force all Iranian women to wear Islamic dress, and who didn't care about Iranian oil.

The Ayatollah the US helped to replace the Shah had all the Americans in the US Embassy in Iran captured and held hostage until '81 after Reagan was elected to replace Carter. But, while the Ayatollah released the US hostages after Carter was removed from office, the Ayatollah never returned the US oil. That Ayatollah died, but his replacement did not return the American oil to the US.

Israel tried to get rid of the Ayatollah, but failed, and need US bombers to destroy Israel, but the US do not seem interested.

It is said the Trump agreed to bomb Iran after Israel threatened to use nukes, so the US bombed the nuclear sites in Iran and Trump said all Iranian nuclear facilities were totally destroyed.

Most experts figure the Iranian nuclear facilities are still there in Iran, the Trump strike did limited damage.

Strictly speaking, no one has made a nuke from scratch without 60 tonnes of uranium. It is said that the US helped Israel get 100 tonnes of uranium, more than enough to build 60 to 200 nukes. No one knows for certain how much uranium Israel has, or how many bombs. Probably enough to totally destroy Iran and leave a radioactive waste where Iran used to be.

The US wanted to get back the Iranian oil so they could sell it, but maybe the US would settle for the complete destruction of all Venezuelan and Iranian oil production, and two new pro-American governments who will give the US complete control over Venezuelan and Iranian energy assets.

And maybe that will work and cut the PRC off from most of the oil they require.

Cursing in China: Beautiful Dog!!!

There is a US comic strip called "Mallard Fillmore" (the name of the duck star of the strip, a name derived from the name of the US president Millard Fillmore), which takes a right-wing, pro-Republican view of politics, and gets about 500 comments every day, fighting between Democrat readers who detest the strip and Republican readers who love the strip. The two groups fight every day, and say as much as they can, given the editorial restriction on the language allowed in comments. (All comments must be written, so the shouting matches are just using lots of ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.)

Which brings me to the PRC, where I can't read the comic strips, all of which are in Chinese, nor can I understand the fierce fights that take place on their mobile phones, with the two sides of a debate I cannot understand screaming at each other.

The 'discussions' frequently degenerate into profanity, and one of the worst curses one can level at an opponent is 'Beautiful dog,' in Chinese 美狗。

I have no idea why this is the case, since I don't understand a word of Chinese, but being around Chinese people, I have to listen to the fierce fights over subjects I do not understand.

Overthrowing China

The US have their sights on Venezuela, Iran, and Russia.

Fifty years ago, most Chinese were farmers, much as described in The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. They had a tiny farm, and had to do everything manually: no tractors, no oxen, primitive tools, they worked hard all day, every day during the growing season. They had to plow, plant, fertilise, water, and harvest by hand, and when the weather was bad, they didn't have enough to eat and some of their children starved to death.

Twenty years ago, electric machines did a lot of the work, there wasn't that much work for the farmers, just one going around to check on the machines and report any malfunctions so a replacement machine could be sent out. The farmers spent most of their time playing cards, and a lot left the farm and went to work in a city factory or office or university.

The farmers who left to work in the city had to pay someone to take their place on the farm since their ID card said, 'Farmer', and the shortages and starvation that had been a feature of Chinese life were indelibly written into the minds of the government workers who figured China needed everyone whose labour card said, 'Farmer' to be farming.

Just 20 years ago, most Chinese residential buildings were single story, with small, one room apartments for the ordinary Chinese, called the Lao Bai Xing (老百姓）, 10% of homes were without electricity, just about all without running water. In northern China, winters were cold, and so was the housing. Maybe they scrimped on food to buy a little coal to burn in the middle of their one-room apartment for heat.

Today, all housing in China has electricity and running water and cheap heat in winter: the coal is burned many kilometers from any city, used to heat water that is sent to the city in insulated pipes, and runs radiators, without any coal smoke in town (and filters on the plants that produce the hot water, so no big cloud of black smoke).

But to maintain their new lifestyle, China need energy, oil, gas, and they still use a lot of coal. More than twice as many cars as any other country. So they need lots of oil and gas, and, after the West refused to buy from Russia, Russia started selling a lot of their energy to China.

And China keeps rising and rising, but all this would stop if China could not buy any energy resources.

So Venezuela is first on the list. Under the Monroe Doctrine, everything in North, Central, and South America belongs to the US, so the US has every right to all Venezuelan oil, which China are buying.

The US imposed a Naval Blockade on Iran in 1980, and would not let anyone buy Iranian oil or gas, and made it difficult for anyone to buy anything else from Iran, or sell anything to Iran.

But, while Iran's economy fell by more than half under the US blockade, Iran grew enough food to feed themselves and made basic medicines, so no problem with common ailments (some people with rare diseases died, but not that many since they were rare diseases for which Iran had no treatment because of the blockade).

But then, in 2021, a fleet of oil tankers came to Iran. The US Navy ships blockading Iran saw that the oil tankers were protected by a larger fleet of Naval ships than the US had, so any engagement would just mean all the US ships at the bottom of the Persian Gulf (always the Arabian Gulf on the West Side, and always the Persian Gulf on the East Side of the Gulf), so the US Navy ships withdrew, and the oil tankers bought and filled up with every drop of Iranian oil that Iran had available to sell. And those tankers and Naval ships keep coming and coming to Iran to buy up all the Iranian oil. So a much stronger reaction is needed, and Israel say they will nuke Iran, making all the oil too radioactive to use, so that will cut off the second of the main sources of Chinese energy.

Then, if we can use the Ukraine to destroy Russia, and return all that Russian oil to the rightful US owners, that will greatly reduce China's energy resources, and should cause a collapse of the Chinese economy, and the US will remain the unquestioned Global Hegemon.

Israel got the US into the Iran war by threatening to use nukes, but Iran is still there, and next time, Israel might destroy Iran with nukes, after which Iranian oil will be too radioactive to use, and China will have lost two of their biggest energy suppliers, and should be on the way to total collapse.

Geography????

The Ancient Greeks said Asia AKA the Orient started at the Hellespont. They also said that all of Asia plus all of Africa were much smaller than Europe. This is because they knew a lot of European cities, but only a few African and Asian cities, and extrapolated from this rather limited information (India was small, just Westernmost India, and China did not exist).

Actually, they calculated the size of Africa by noting that, as one goes further south, it gets hotter, so, as one travels south in Africa, it soon becomes too hot for humans to survive, and then too hot for matter to exist, and that is where the Equator is located (they figured the Earth must be a hemisphere). 

Not clear how they knew where Asia ended, but Alexander spread his Ragtime to Persia and then further east to Westernmost India, and then he died, and the Persians and Indians gave up on Greek music. The Greeks knew that people had gone East from Persia where they saw giant anthills, which one can see in places like White Sands National Park in the US, or in the Arabian and Taklamakan deserts. I've seen those anthills, but the ants were all inside when I was there, which is good, since, according to the ancient Greeks, they're the size of dogs and very fierce and attack and kill the humans who disturb them. In any case, the Greeks knew that a very few of those who managed to go to those anthills came back with lots of gold that they somehow managed to get from the anthills without disturbing the ants (but most of those who went into those deserts never came back alive).

Of course, some would say that the travellers were not altogether honest about their travels, which meant bringing Western goods all the way to India, maybe all the way to the Chinese Empire over the old Emperor's Silk Belt and Road Initiative, selling them those Western goods, using the proceeds to buy silk and maybe some tea, selling the silk and tea for gold, and finally coming back to where they started with lots of gold, but I trust those travellers and I've seen those giant anthills, so I figure they somehow managed to evade the ants and got the gold that way.

In  any case, the Ancient Greeks were the World Hegemon a long time ago. More recently, it was the British, who set 0º Longitude at Greenwich, the obvious Centre of the World when Britain was the World Hegemon. The British figured all of Europe was the West, as did the Ancient Greeks, so the Orient AKA Asia started at the Hellespont, and the westernmost bit of Asia was the Near East.

Then the US became World Hegemon, and figured the UK and Europe were Nearest East, West Asia was Middle East, and, when I was a boy, East Asia was called the Orient in the US. As I recall from geography class, India was just India back then (the Brits broke up India before I was born, but we used old textbooks), but now, of course, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh et al. are South Asia.

So names and geography have changed over the years.

Not clear if the US will ever allow another Hegemon to replace them, since they have nukes, and some, maybe a lot of them, figure having no world at all would be much better than having a world with some nation other than the US as World Hegemon.

One thing I heard about was that, around 1937, Germany had videos to be shown during the News Feature that used to be a standard part of watching a movie, videos that appeared to show a huge German military, and the UK and France said it was just a camera trick, the tiny German Army was just marching in circles with the camera only showing the soldiers and tanks and artillery as they marched past and past and past, so it looked like a huge military when it was only a very few men and tanks and artillery pieces, nothing that could challenge the UK and France, or even just the UK or France.

And one thing I've seen on TV was the Chinese military parade on 3 September 2025, which looked like a huge military, but all the Western experts assure me it was just the Chinese marching their tiny military in circles past the camera: the PRC have absolutely nothing that could possibly challenge the US military.

Victory in the Ukraine

All the mainstream media in the US/UK/EU say that Russia are losing badly in the Ukraine.

Of course, all the people who read and watch and gullibly accept Russian propaganda believe that Russia are winning in the Ukraine.

Judge Napolitano has had guests who say Russia are winning, and many guests who say Russia are losing, the Russian military are losing huge numbers of men, all kept Top Secret by the Soviets, of course, and then the Soviets lie that they are winning in the Ukraine, but the Russian economy was destroyed by US/UK/EU sanctions,, The whole Russian economy is based on selling oil to Europe and using the money to buy everything Russia need from Europe, and now that Europe are not buying any Russian oil or selling hamburgers and clothes and shoes and dishwashers and everything else Russians need, Russians have nothing, they are using washing machine parts to run their tanks that have all been destroyed by the advanced NATO weapons given to the Ukraine, even though more than half those weapons were sold by the Ukraine and they pocketed the money, the Ukrainian military are still easily defeating the Russians with the weapons they didn't sell but used to totally destroy the Russian military armed with WWII and Czarist weapons.

Victoria promised that the Ukraine would join NATO and the US would put in anti-missiles that could totally stop any Soviet retaliation for a massive NATO nuclear strike on the USSR or Russia or whatever it is they call themselves these days, so they could choose between surrender or total nuclear destruction with no possibility of a counter-strike, so no reason for NATO not to totally destroy the USSR if they refuse to surrender.

The Ukraine having gleefully welcomed those NATO nukes, the USSR launched a totally unprovoked invasion of the Ukraine. In a few days, they made it to Kyiv, but were then forced back to the Russian border, and the Ukrainian Army have taken a huge chunk of the USSR, the Kursk region, and are easily defeating the Russian military.

The Russian propaganda lie that Russia are winning, that most of the Ukrainian military have been defeated, but that's not what one sees or reads in the US/UK/EU media, which are totally reliable, and have never told a lie.

So we expect Russian surrender very soon, with all Russian natural resources returned to the rightful owners, American oiligarchs. 

What could possibly go wrong?????

Russia and the PRC 'Support' the US/Zionist Plan for Ghaza

Trump's 20 point plan for the Ghaza went to the UN Security Council (UNSC). Most Islamic States sitting as temporary members of the UNSC voted in favour of the US plan, while Russia and the PRC abstained, so the Plan passed as a UN Resolution.

As of now, no one has any idea what this really means. The Islamic States won't do anything to support the plan that they voted for, and presumably won't do anything against it.

The UN-passed Plan has Trump as the Head of the Ghaza commission, a commission which doesn't seem to have any Palestinian members, but it does have Blair of the UK as a senior member.

Trump's 20 point plan says all of Hamas must disarm and surrender to the Zionists. Hamas must show where every last one of their secret tunnels are so all can be totally and irreversibly destroyed.

Not clear where what is now the UN Plan for Ghaza is going.

But I guess we'll find out.

Ghaza

 Ghaza have been a problem since the land was handed over to the Philistines in 2005, and that problem became bigger when Hamas won the election of Palestinian officials in 2007. Israel funded Hamas to weaken the Palestinian authority, but, after Hamas won the 2007 election, Israel said the Palestinian Authority would remain the only legitimate government of the Palestinians (who don't really have any land, since all of Ghaza and the West Bank belong to the Zionists).

For electing Hamas, Israel imposed sanctions on Ghaza, but those sanctions were relatively mild (only a few annual cases of starvation, death by Israeli shelling, and death from lack of medicine).

But then Hamas staged a totally unprovoked attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

Israel have proof that Hamas raped and murdered many women and beheaded many babies. Of course, many question that 'proof' since many of  the Israeli civilians killed on 7 October were killed by weapons not available to Hamas.

I watched two presentations by Max Blumenthal. In the first, he said very few had seen the rape videotapes, and the few allowed to see the tapes had no knowledge of videotapes. Max said he'd watched the tape and all the rapes took place before 2023, and in places such as Kurdistan that were outside of Israel. He gave a presentation a few months later saying so few people claim to have seen the tape that the tape does not exist, since if it did exist, Israel would broadcast it to the entire world.

I wish Mr Blumenthal had a logically consistent reason not to believe that the rapes and murders were real, but he has not presented it yet.

Still, Mr Blumenthal raises serious questions about the veracity of the Israeli version of what happened on 7 October 2023.

In any case, the US are now planning to open a large US military base in Ghaza, and the US will help Israel enforce Trump's 20 point peace plan: totally disarming all of Hamas and dismantling all the Hamas tunnels.

And if this means removing all the Palestinians from Ghaza, one way or another, then the US military will help with this task, and maybe extend to the West Bank.

It's the least the US can do to maintain World Peace by giving Israel everything they want.

Venezuela

 All the world's oil belongs to US oiligarchs. They did the exploration, the drilling, paid a few pennies to the locals who did most of the work, so all the oil is theirs.

Except for Saudi Oil. The Saudi king agreed that all the Saudi oil belonged to the American company Aramco, which was on the US Stock Exchange. Saudi used their Hajj money to buy every share, so all that Saudi oil legally belongs to the Saudis.

But the UK did all the work to find Iranian oil, so it all belongs to a branch of BP, and the US own half that branch, so half of all Iranian oil (less now, of course) belongs to the UK and the rest (much more than half) belongs to the US.

With Venezuela, Iran, and Russia, all those energy resources belong to the US, and the US are moving to return all the Venezuelan oil to the rightful owners, American oiligarchs. In addition, Venezuela is one of the major causes of the US drug crisis, since they send most of the illegal drugs to the US from their long Pacific Ocean coastline, so the US have been bombing lots of small Venezuelan boats filled with narcotics bound for California. The fact that those boats have no access to the fuel they'd have needed is no excuse, the US military were totally justified in bombing them, and the (Classified TS/SCI/NOFORN/BBR) intelligence proves this beyond the shadow of a doubt!

As of now, the US need some Venezuelan crude since it is very sour crude, and there are some critical petroleum products that can only be made from very sour crude. And all that Venezualan oil legally belongs to the US of A, and Trump is a Great President for leading the charge for the US to reclaim that oil and put a Nobel Peace Laureate in as President of Venezuela.

Israel and the US want all that Iranian oil, but Israel is getting impatient and wants to use nukes, which would be more than justified, but maybe not such a good idea since all the Iranian oil would be unmarketable until it is no longer radioactive.

Israel and the US are also talking about nuking the Ghaza, but that would leave the land radioactive and unsuitable for building a lavish and very exclusive resort there.

But I'm sure the US will do the right thing and remove Iran and Russia as threats, and if we have to nuke them and all their oil, the US oil will be worth 10 times as much, so that's probably worth it.