Splitting Parties

Thomas Friedman is hoping the Republican party will split. They now get a little less than half the votes, but that was enough to elect Trump in 2016. St Hillary got more votes: she had huge majorities in the states that always vote Democrat, while Trump won 30 states with narrow pluralities, so St Hillary did have a plurality of the total vote; however, in the US system, it's not the votes, but the number of Electors. What happened when the 13 colonies agreed to join into a United States was that the smaller of the 13 colonies were afraid the large, industrial states would treat them as mercantile colonies, so they wanted a veto over legislation and the presidency, and they insisted that every state gets 2 Senators, regardless of population, and every  state gets 1 elector for everyone they have in the Congress, so at least 3, even if they have a tiny population. Thus, the agricultural states were able to prevent the industrial states from passing mercantile laws that the small states could only buy from the US industrial states at above world market prices and could only sell to the US industrial states at below world market prices. And this system gave Trump 304 out of 538 Electors and the presidency.

So the current Republican Party is capable of winning elections, and Friedman wants it split. The Trump voters in 2016 consisted of those who liked Trump and those who hated St Hillary, two very different groups, and if the party split on those lines, it would form two parties of about 24% of the vote who would put up 2 different candidates for president in every election. This would ensure Democrat victories in every single national election, since the Democrats would always have a plurality in every state, even if they only had 40% of the total vote.

Actually, the Democrats are also kind-of, sort-of split. There are the DNC Democrats who figure Ss Hillary and Biden are two of the very best candidates for president the US of A has ever had, and then there are those who voted for Trump or third parties or didn't bother to vote because they detested St Hillary. 

The DNC are certain both that Russia stole the election, and also that 52% of the voters actually voted against St Hillary (how could they). Something must be done to make sure this never, ever happens again.

The DNC know for a fact that every single American who failed to vote early and often for St Hillary in 2016 is utterly Deplorable. Enough learned their lesson in 2016 to give St Joe a massive victory in 2020. But it was still far too close. Every single voter who failed to vote early and often for both Ss Hillary and Joe must be disenfranchised, since their votes go against everything the US stands for. But how?

Thomas Friedman stands firmly with the DNC, and he fervently hopes that splitting the Republican party into two small parties would fix that once and for all, so that was his Christmas wish to Santa.

(There are, of course, those who figure in 2016, the Democrats were so sure St Hillary would win those 41 states, maybe all 50, they got lazy and didn't bother to rig the election, a mistake they did not make in 2020, and will not make in 2024.)

Getting rid of dictators

 In 2015, Russia paid Michael Flynn to fly to Moscow and tell them all about Trump. The Russians were a bit shocked when Flynn promised regime change in Iran, the Ayatollahs had to go and Iran had to return to a proper democracy, meaning the US oil companies had to get their rightful property back.

Back in 1951, Mossadegh, a Communist Dictator, took over the government of Iran. We know he was a Communist Dictator because he stole all the UK oil property, so the UK asked the US to help. The fact that a majority of the Iranian people voted for him just means the election was corrupt: no one who steals Western oil property is anything but a Communist Dictator. So the US sent in the CIA who gave money and weapons and support to the group who liberated Iran, transforming it into a Constitutional, Democratic Monarchy with the Shah overseeing the Rule of Law, and all those stolen oil properties returned to their rightful owner: the US oil companies.

Iran lived in peace until 1973, when the Shah suddenly took over the government as a Communist Dictator who was much worse than Mossadegh, because he stole US oil properties. So the US had to once again bring democracy to Iran. Fortunately, Kissinger knew of a cleric with absolutely no interest in oil who was living in Paris, and it was arranged for the CIA to help him form a democratic government in Iran without the Shah. Only that did not work out quite as well as Kissinger and the CIA thought it should have done.

So, ever since 1980, every US president has wanted to bring true democracy to Iran. Only there is the teeny, weeny problem of the Strait of Hormuz. And no US president was willing to take the chance of Iran managing to close the Strait. Flynn said Trump would be able to manage regime change, but the FBI went after all Trump supporters and arrested Flynn, who was asked exactly what he had said on a tapped phone, his recollection didn't match the tape, so he was clearly guilty of perjury and sentenced to a long and well-deserved prison sentence. Clearly, St Hillary deserved to be the First Female President, she had the very best qualifications of anyone to be US president. She promised regime change in Syria and Russia on Day 1. What more could anyone ask?

But then the evil Trump workers somehow managed to get a bunch of Deplorables (with a lot of help from Putin) to steal the election.

As Obama announced in early January (but after 6 January when the election results become irreversible), very few Americans voted for Trump, St Hillary won 30 states by huge margins, but Trump tweeted Putin passwords to pilfer the polls. There was absolutely no other way Trump could possibly have won. We know (from the story of Obama and the cherry tree) that Obama cannot tell a lie, the he had irrefutable proof of this, but, of course, all that proof is classified Top Secret, so no patriotic American would ever want to see any of it, ever patriotic American knows Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election, and does not need or want to see a scintilla of such proof. The major American newspapers reiterated for four years that Trump stole the election, that everyone who helped Trump is a heinous criminal who deserves Life in Prison without the possibility of parole, and that media rightly hated every single Trump pardon of one of those evil supporters. And those who read and believe the obviously true establishment media know that this is an irrefutably proven fact, even if no one can (or should want to) see any of that Top Secret proof.

But Trump will soon be gone for good, and St Biden will bring that regime change to Syria and Russia that St Hillary promised. Or maybe not. St Biden is getting up there in years, and many figure he was just a stand in, put up by Obama to get St Kamala in as the First Black Female president who will finally bring regime change to Syria and Russia, and we know every Syrian and Russian should be eternally grateful.

(As Thomas Friedman said, the US transformed Iraq from a brutal, impoverished dictatorship and state sponsor of terror into a democratic, peaceful, and prosperous paradise, and every single Iraqi should have been eternally grateful, but instead, there were many evil Iraqis who made trouble for the US, costing the US $trillions, but that was all because of the evil Iraqis, who should have handed over all their oil in deep gratitude for the great favour the US did for them and done nothing but thank and  repay the US. But they didn't. Not the fault of Bush, Jr or the US, entirely the evil Iraqis' fault. And everyone knows that Thomas Friedman is by far the best international reporter employed by the media to tell us all what is happening in the world.)

Bringing the light to the people in darkness

 Back when the US was bringing light to the Philippines, Mark Twain wrote that this bringing light was no longer such a good idea, the quality of the remaining darkness was far inferior to that of those nations to which the US had already brought the light. And that seems to be even more true today than back when Twain wrote it around the turn of the 19th century to the 20th.

After Vietnam, Carter failed to bring Democracy to any country, just like Trump. Both were lazy good-for-nothing presidents, and both were booted out of office after one term.

Reagan saw an existential threat to world peace, one of the world's most powerful military powers, but he brought Democracy, peace, and prosperity to Grenada. Bush, Sr. then did the same for Panama.

But then the Austin newspaper had a cartoon of Uncle Sam, the Great White Hunter, holding his elephant gun, with two mouseheads mounted on his trophy wall.

So Bush, Sr. convinced Saddam to take Kuwait, then attacked Iraq and liberated Kuwait, while also imposing crushing sanctions that are thought to have resulted in the deaths of more than 500,000 children who could not get enough food or any medicine for the balance of Bush, Sr's term and Clinton's term and Bush, jr's term.

Then Clinton liberated Yugoslavia, and made a deal just like the Iran deal with Saddam, with UN inspectors verifying that Iraq no longer had any WMD, so Bush, Jr found plenty of WMD the UN missed and sent the US military to hand Saddam over to a lynch mob. Great job. Just what US presidents should be doing.

Obama liberated Libya, and started on Syria.

Then Trump did absolutely nothing, but St Biden has promised to liberate Syria and the Ukraine and Venezuela and Bolivia and ...

Will Russia and the PRC sit back and let St Biden bring Democracy to all those countries, plus also Russia and the PRC?

As I started, the Darkness that is left is not of the same calibre as the darkness that engulfed Grenada and Panama and Iraq and Libya.

Even Iran looks like it could be a very big deal. Let alone Russia and the PRC.

But we'll have St Joe, and I'm sure he knows how to force regime change in Syria, Iran, the DPRK, Russia and the PRC, and won't have the slightest difficulty.

And what could possibly go wrong????

About history

 Primary observers were there, they saw what happened, and they wrote about it. Of course, primary observers have axes to grind, so what they wrote might not be altogether factual.

Secondary researchers weren't even there. They have to take what the primary observers wrote and try to figure out what really happened. But how can they know? 

So, as I wrote, we have multiple histories most of the time, except when one side surrenders unconditionally and is ordered to reiterate the official history and never question it. After WWI, the Central Powers had their own version of what really happened, and published it and taught it in their schools. After WWII, the Axis were ordered to accept the Allied version of the history of the war.

So what is true?

And what happens at High Noon on 20 Jan 2021.

***

Yeltsin let the US do whatever it wanted. Putin did for 14 years. But in 2015, he said Russia would fight to keep Syria.

And president-elect Biden says he will force regime change in Syria. Does Putin back down? Not a good idea, president-elect Biden wants to dismantle Russia into a bunch of tiny, unarmed states.

Does Russia shoot down the USAF trying to bomb the Syrian government to oblivion, and, if so, what will President Biden do????

Lots of questions, and we'll get the answers in 45 days, whether we'll like them or not.

Histories

 In school, I learned that the evil Socialists had conquered the entire Eastern Hemisphere in 1940. Then, in December, 1941, the US seed its duty and we dood it, single-handedly liberating Western Europe, Japan, and South Korea and bits of Africa and the Middle East from the evil Socialists.

Later, I read some other histories of WWII. The British version was that the UK had defeated the Nazis by November, 1941, but the assistance of the US shortened the war by a year or so and saved some British lives.

The USSR version was that the UK and France said in '38 they would not go to war with Germany, and the USSR had no choice but to sign a non-aggression pact, which the Nazis violated, and the USSR sacrificed more than 20 million lives to defeat the Nazis. Revisionist US histories say that's pretty much what happened, the US waited until the Soviet Army was advancing through Eastern Europe and the Nazis were pretty much defeated before invading France. The Revisionists say the US could never have defeated the Nazis without the USSR. And they have things like evidence supporting their claims. They also say it was wrong of the US to nuke Japan, and, again, have substantial evidence. But I've mentioned some of these Revisionists, and was corrected: the version I learned in school is 100% correct, and anyone who says it isn't is a proven liar. I asked for the proof, and was told only an evil anti-American would want to see any proof, anyone who reads real history (i.e., US school textbooks) knows that's the only true version.

***

Then we have the Bush, Jr improved history of 9/11. The case has been settled in the US courts, that the Bush, Jr 2003 State of the Union Speech finally revealed what years of study had proven was the true story. The attack was planned, organised, and funded entirely by Iran, and was perpetrated by the co-religionists of the Ayatollahs: Mullah Omar's Taliban (Omar is one of the most popular names among the Ayatollahs and their followers), Saddam and his Guards, and Kim and the DPRK. Bush, Jr later found three more evil terrorist groups that helped with the 9/11 attack: Assad's Syrian forces, Gaddafi's Libyan forces, and Castro's Cuban forces. So far, the US has liberated Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, but the DPRK, Syria, Cuba, and Iran must also have their evil regimes changed. Not one Saudi had anything to do with the 9/11 attack, of course, as the US courts verified finding Saudi totally innocent and Iran 100% responsible as the leader of the attack, and who could possibly doubt Bush, Jr, the US mainstream media, and the US courts?

The evil Trump squandered four years when the US military should have been liberating those countries from their evil dictators, but Trump did nothing. Fortunately, Trump is leaving on or before High Noon, 20 Jan, and Biden has promised regime change in Syria starting on Day 1.

Of course, there's a bit more history: the USSR collapsed in '89, and the CIA managed to get Yeltsin in as president, and he said, as long as the CIA kept him in vodka, they could do whatever they wanted. So they dismantled the USSR military, industries, schools, and just about everything else. But then Yeltsin got old and sick and the CIA let them put in an obscure mayor who kept his head down. In 2011, Russia and the PRC agreed in the UN Security Council that the US could force regime change in Libya.

In 2013, Russia and the PRC had no objection to regime change in Syria, but the UK Parliament did, and that was pretty much that.

But in 2015, Putin said Russia would not allow regime change in Syria.

And on 20 Jan 2021, Biden has said he will order the USAF to start removing the Syrian government. He has also said that Russia has been murdering Americans for four years while Trump did nothing, and he is going to punish Russia severely.

He also noted that the PRC Navy has been invading US territorial waters in the South China Sea and building illegal ports there, and he will send the US Navy to put an end to that.

Obviously, Russia won't be a problem. Russia was no match for that French fellow who got an Overture written for his victory over Russia in 1812, and that fellow Barbarossa (whom the Germans say is Austrian and the Austrians say is German) had no trouble with the USSR in 1942, so regime change in Russia should be easier than Panama.

And we know the PRC Navy is just junk, so they won't be able to put up any resistance.

Surely nothing has changed in Russia since 2013 when Putin said they could not object to regime change in Syria, and they'll leave quietly.

And surely nothing in the PRC has changed since 1900, so when a real leader like Biden orders them out of America's South China Sea, they'll also leave quietly.

And putting in the real president of Venezuela, Guaidó, should be an easy job for President Biden, even though the Russian Army and the PRC Army are there, since the PRC figure Venezuela is part of the New Silk Road (not clear why the Russians are supporting the party of the late Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, but they are).

It will be great to have a real leader again instead of Trump who has not liberated a single country in four long years, but that's over now.

And I'm sure all the people in Syria, Russia, the PRC, Iran, Venezuela, and the DPRK are waiting eagerly for the US to bring their countries freedom and democracy.

And what could possibly go wrong?

War is Peace. Peace is War.

 The New York Times say Trump is doing all he can to leave poor President Biden with unnecessary wars he'll have to fight.

First, the US has many, many peacekeeping missions all over the world. The US soldiers, strictly in the interest of peace, bomb houses while the farmers are out farming, killing all their wives and children. That way, the farmers come home to learn that it is useless to resist the US of A, and they become peaceful.

By bringing those troops home and stopping the peace-keeping bombing, Trump is just starting wars where his predecessors had stamped out war and terrorism.

So bombing and killing is peace, and not bombing and killing is war, and if you cannot believe the New York Times, whom can you believe???

Where we are now

 If one reads the Grayzone, they blame the US for the tragedy in Lebanon. Since Lebanon is at war with Israel, the US has severe sanctions against Lebanon, and those sanctions drained a lot of money (and corrupt government officials stole all that was left) leaving no resources to deal with tons of 21-0-0 fertilizer that also happens to be extremely hazardous and prone to explode if ignited. The US says it's not the sanctions that are to blame, but the evil Lebanese government that must resign and let the US appoint a pro-US, pro-Israel government that will gaol every member of Hezbollah. Only then could the US lift those sanctions. 

Of course, US sanctions are also killing people in Venezuela, Syria, and Iran, but those sanctions are necessary, those countries all need to get rid of their evil governments and replace them with good, pro-US, pro-Israel governments who will return all the oil they've been stealing and wasting on their own people to the rightful owners of that oil, the US oil companies, who deserve every drop without spending 1¢ on royalties.

And most Americans know that Trump has been much too soft on the evil dictators in Russia and China. St Hillary promised to force Putin to resign on Day 1 and put in someone like Yeltsin, but Russia stole the election. The Mueller report had page after page of computer code that they assure us prove Russia stole the election. The fact that anyone who can read code cannot see the slightest evidence that Russia did anything just proves that people who can read code can't understand these things the way the US intelligence community can, they are always 100% reliable. We know that Snowden was a lying traitor when he accused the US of spying on everyone, and his so-called 'proof' was manufactured. We know this because Clapper said, under oath, that the US was doing no such thing, and there is no way a top intelligence agent like Clapper could possibly lie to the American people.

So we all figure Trump will be gone 20 Jan 2021, and Biden will finally do the needful and force regime change in Russia and China.

Meanwhile, CoViD-19 has killed almost 800,000 people. There are normally about 30 million deaths from February through August, so CoViD-19 has raised the total number of deaths by about 1%, and the experts say that's all Trump's fault. There was an outbreak of Ebola in the US when Obama was president, but only 2 deaths, and the experts all tell us that the Ebola outbreak would have killed just about everyone if Trump had been in charge instead of Obama, and they also say that the CoViD-19 outbreak will be completely eradicated as soon as Biden takes office.

So, by the end of January, the experts tell us that CoViD-19 will be gone, along with the evil governments of China, Russia, Venezuela, Iran, and Syria, and the world will be a great place to live.

Especially for cockroaches, what with no longer having to worry about boots.

Winston writes again

Today's New York Times has yet another article authored by Winston (using various aliases) about how Russia is funding and arming the Taliban to murder innocent Americans, and that Trump has been told over and over since February (and maybe since 2018) about this, and the fact that it is clearly an act of war, but Trump has done absolutely nothing. The New York Times reiterates that this is clearly Dereliction of Duty, and the Congress has every impetus to remove Trump from office, but the evil Republicans, probably all Soviet agents, keep blocking the efforts of all the patriotic members of the Congress.
Great work, Winston!
Trump himself has said that Biden will win the election because the voters don't love Trump, and Biden has said he'll move promptly against the Russians who have already committed many Acts of War against the US.

Winston's Latest

The New York Times has another piece by Winston Smith that the evil Russians are proven to have created the Taliban and provided them ample resources to kill Americans, and it is time for daily Hate Minutes and Hate Week against the Russians.
Airstrip 1 wanted to maintain its Oceanic Hegemony. When the French were a challenge, they'd team with the Russian Empire, AKA Eastasia, against Eurasia. When the Russians seemed to a threat to the Raj, as when they asked the Ottomans if they could represent the Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire, Airstrip 1 joined the French and the Ottomans, AKA Eurasia, against Eastasia.
Oceania didn't get into the picture until after WWII.
Basically, in 1929, Herbert Hoover became president of Oceania and promised there could never be another stock market crash or another depression. So banks would loan just about anyone 90% of the cost of buying a stock. An investor put up $100 to buy $1,000 worth of stock, typically, 100 shares at $10 a share. If the shares went up to $11, the investor had a profit of 100%, but if the shares went down to $9, the investor got a margin call and lost everything (but the entire loss was the investor's, the bank didn't lose anything). Then, one day, stocks dropped 20% and banks no longer had enough money to cover their liabilities, and most American banks were insolvent, so large depositors lost a lot, and small depositors lost everything. Unemployment went to 25%. Hoover did nothing, and got booted out of office in the '32 election, and FDR took over, and gave comforting Fireside Chats and created some Workfare like the CCC and the WPA that provided some work and a little money to a small percentage of the unemployed, but large numbers were just going door to door begging for food. This started to turn around when Adolph Schickelgruber was elected Chancellor of Germany and the UK and France began placing orders for US military equipment (as did Adolph) and that put some of the unemployed back to work. Tojo also got the top political job in Japan. Between them, Adolph and Tojo, two brilliant applied economists, got the US unemployment rate down from more than 25% to less than 2%. Sadly, Adolph died in '45, and Tojo shortly thereafter, and all the top economists said the Great Depression would return, but much worse: people would long for the days when 75% of the workforce had jobs and only 25% were unemployed. What to do?
President Truman said, 'The leaders of the Axis dead? Wrong! Completely wrong from beginning to end. The real leader was always Uncle Joe, and he's still alive and still a mortal threat, so the war effort must not only continue, but increase! A lot!' And unemployment remained low. No postwar depression, since there was no real 'post' to the war. The shooting stopped for 5 years, until Oceania went to war with Eurasia against Eastasia in the Korean Peninsula.
Oceania, allied with Eurasia, has been fighting Eastasia with Cold War interspersed with shooting wars ever since 1945.
And then the jihadists stepped up to provide excuses for shooting wars after Eastasia collapsed in 1990.
Some thought the jihadists hated not just our own freedom, but also the Eastasians and their different brand of brutal dictatorship.
A couple of days ago, and again today, Winston wrote that Eastasia was always in control of the jihadists, arming them and funding them. And to make matters worse, Eastasia armed the jihadists with Oceania weapons and funded them with Oceania money. Some might wonder about that, but Winston assures us that Big Brother has irrefutable proof (classified Top Secret so no one who isn't a traitor would ever want to see any of it) that it was Eastasia that was really responsible for all the jihadist attacks, and Oceania must step up and do something about it.
Biden has said he'll do just that as soon as he takes office, and Trump has said he knows Biden will be the next president of Oceania, since the voters don't love Trump enough.

More Work for Winston Smith

Once, history books were filled with the lies that the US and USSR were allied against the Axis, but, as I wrote, Winston fixed that, so now the US single-handedly freed most of Europe, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea from the Axis, which consisted of the Central European Socialist Party, the Soviet Socialist Party, and the Italian Fascist Party, while Japan had been overrun by the Axis that turned control of Japan over to the Communist dictator Tojo, who was under the control of the Soviet agency that was once the KGB and is now the GRU.
But other mistakes crept in after that. In particular, some history books wrote that the US created the Taliban to expel the evil USSR from Afghanistan. Of course, Winston has just run his correction in the New York Times, that proves that the Taliban were created by the evil USSR and are still on the Russian payroll killing US forces. The New York Times story is short on details, but, since it has been verified by unnamed Obama appointees to the US Intelligence Services and also some unnamed European Intelligence agents, we can be sure it is true, since no one appointed by Obama could ever tell a lie, and, given that all the proof is Top Secret, no patriot in the US, UK, or EU would ever want to see any of it, since the word of any Obama appointee is the most irrefutable proof that there is, and needs no further support of any kind.

50 years to '84

It is said that the title, 1984, came from the fact that it was written in 1948, and George Orwell needed a future year, so he reversed the digits. It was published in 1949, and I read it for the first time about half way between the date it was written and the title year, but it was not until 50 years later that I understood.
In 1984, the world is divided into 3: Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. The narrator, Winston Smith, lives in Airstrip One, a part of Oceania, and his job is correcting the newspaper morgues and the history books. It seems Oceania allies with Eurasia against Eastasia for awhile, then allies with Eastasia against Eurasia. When Oceania is allied with Eurasia against Eastasia, Oceania has always been allied with Eurasia against Eastasia, and, likewise, when Oceania is allied with Eastasia against Eurasia, Oceania has always been so allied, so Smith must correct everything that was written that contradicts the current state of affairs. And they keep him very busy.
When I read 1984, I naturally thought that Eurasia was the USSR and Eastasia was the PRC, so 1984 didn't make any sense: it was the USSR and the PRC that had always been allied against Oceania, i.e., the US and its allies and neocolonies, Oceania would never ally with the USSR against the PRC or with the PRC against the USSR. For that matter, neither the USSR nor the PRC would ally with free and democratic Oceania against the other Communist dictatorship.
After 50 years, I realised that, in 1948, there was no PRC. Eastasia was a fictionalised Russian Empire/Soviet Empire. Eurasia was more like the Central Powers of WWI, the German Empire, the Austrian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. Airstrip One (i.e., England) feared the Russian Empire threatened the Raj, the 'jewel in the crown' of the British Empire.
But then came Napoleon, and Airstrip One was allied with the Russian Empire against Napoleonic France. Then, in the Crimean War, Airstrip One was allied with France and the Ottomans against the Russian Empire. Next, during WWI, Airstrip One was allied with the Russian Empire against the Central Powers. After WWI, Airstrip One allied with Germany against Stalin's USSR, until WWII, when Oceania was allied with the USSR against the Axis. And after WWII, Oceania was allied with West Germany and the rest of Western Europe against the USSR.
Just as Orwell wrote, Winston Smith has been very busy fixing the history books. The fact that Oceania was allied with Eastasia during WWII has been altered: now, seeing that the Axis (which included the USSR after the German–Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939) had conquered the entire Eastern hemisphere, the US saw its duty to freedom and democracy and single-handedly freed Western Europe and Japan from the Axis, but was unable to defeat the USSR which held on to the rest of Europe and Asia, plus parts of Africa and Latin America. Or it did until 1990, when the USSR finally collapsed, since it could not compete with Oceania, only to have Russia and the PRC continue their quest for global domination, a quest that Oceania must fight with huge military expenditures, vastly more than Russia and the PRC put together, just to preserve our freedom and democracy that Russia and the PRC vehemently hate.
Eastasia had imposed brutal dictatorships and state sponsors of terror on the impoverished (because of Eastasian theft) Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Libya, and Syria, but Oceania, making a huge sacrifice of its young soldiers and treasure, finally managed to liberate all but Syria, where it is making great progress toward the final liberation we hope will happen soon.
Sadly, the new Russian Empire obviously stole the 2016 election from St Hillary. St Obama told us so, and, since all his proof is classified Top Secret, no Oceania patriot would ever want to see any of it: after all, during the 8 years when Obama was our Big Brother, he could not tell a lie, so his word alone is irrefutable proof. Had it not been for Russian interference in the 2016 election, St Hillary had promised she would force regime change in Russia on Day 1, and everyone in Oceania deeply regrets that Russia prevented her election victory, since her Russian regime change would have meant we would have never had any worries about CoViD-19 (or anything else).

Putin's Lessons of WWII

There are 3 major histories of WWII. The first, the Churchill version, is that Churchill led the UK to victory over the Axis. Churchill did thank the US for providing a spot of help that shortened the war by a few months, but credit for the victory goes to Churchill's leadership.

The US version, of course, was that the Axis had conquered the entire eastern hemisphere when the US finally saw its duty and single-handedly liberated the eastern hemisphere from the Axis.

The third version is that the USSR did almost all the work of defeating the Axis.

Someone said the truth must be somewhere in the interior of the triangle formed from those 3 points of view. Putin, of course, wants the West to know and believe the USSR version.

Churchill always said history would treat him kindly because he would write it, and he did, and became the main English language source for WWII. But there are problems. Churchill demonised Chamberlain for appeasement. Only it wasn't appeasement. In Chamberlain's defence, I have to call a hostile witness who wrote, 'Shall We All Commit Suicide?' in 1924, saying that, if there were ever a war after the War to End All Wars, both sides would have MAD, and would use it. Only they didn't. But Chamberlain didn't know that. Churchill wrote that all nations would use the new aeroplanes like crop-dusters to spray new poison gasses covering all the population centres, gasses far, far more deadly than the ones used in WWI, and against which gas masks were useless, and this would completely depopulate all of Europe. So Chamberlain was pretending to appease Hitler just to buy time to put in the radar shield that ended up helping win the Battle of Britain (that might have been lost had Chamberlain gone to war in '38, along with the entire BEF that would have been lost if they'd been defeated in Czechoslovakia instead of at Dunkirk). But Putin accepts Churchill's demonisation of appeasement, then says the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was just the USSR trying to buy time after the UK and France appeased Hitler by refusing to fight the Axis in Czechoslovakia and made it clear they were terrified and would never challenge Hitler, who was planning World Conquest.

But Putin is worried about WWIII, as well he should be, and is trying to convince the US not to go there.

In '45, the US used its entire nuclear arsenal against Japan, which was already defeated, so there was no military reason to use that arsenal. But the USSR saw that a nuclear weapon was possible, knew about the unclassified Chicago Pile of '42, and made their own. (The US executed two people for giving the USSR the secret, but they probably didn't, and the USSR was an ally, not an enemy, at the time, so it wasn't technically treason; after the USSR broke up, some desperate, unemployed Russians said they had been spies who had gotten the secret from the two who were executed, for which they were very well paid, so that's not the proof many Americans think it is.) The USSR detonated their first nuke in '49. In '51, the US was at war in Korea, and was unable to defeat the People's Liberation Army. General MacArthur said the only way to win was to nuke China, and President Truman said, 'The USSR has MAD. You're fired!' With that in mind, WWIII has been avoided for 75 years. Only now, the top US military experts are convinced the US anti-missile defences mean that the Russians and PRC and DPRK no longer have MAD and so ...

Anyway, the US is cancelling all the Nuclear Bomb treaties and generally acting very pugnacious, so Putin wrote a 20 page paper called "The Real Lessons of World War 2" trying to convince the US to back off.

It basically says the USSR did 75% of the work of defeating the Axis, and Russia is not to be trifled with.

I doubt it will work. Biden has never seen a war he didn't like, and it looks like he's likely to win the election. And it's not clear what Trump will try since he's desperate to get re-elected.

So it looks like we're inexorably heading toward a Thucydides trap.

CoVid-19 Update 1

A pandemic growing exponentially means that the numbers change rapidly. China had about a dozen sick and no deaths in December, 2019, 547 cases and 17 deaths by 22 January, about 10,000 cases and 200 dead by the end of  January, 2020 and 80,000 infections and 5,000 dead by the end of February (but very few deaths and new infections after February).

And the world now have a number of deaths that is far more than than the usual range for January through May, and all due to CoViD-19

As the US news says, exponential growth meant that, if Trump had called for a lockdown just one week earlier, he might have saved 50,000 lives, and the European countries could have reduced their number of deaths by 50% if they'd acted a week earlier than they did.

CNN blames both Trump and China for the 100,000+ CoViD-19 deaths in the US. According to CNN, China should have known CoViD-19 was deadly on 14 January, but they didn't do anything before 20 January (except try to keep the infection quiet, to deny that the novel virus was contagious and deadly). And they had a big Chinese New Year banquet for 40,000 in Wuhan that resulted in about 40,000 infections, so China could have saved most of the 5,000 lives lost if they'd acted just 6 days sooner.

Blaming China is very popular in the West. And China is guilty of two things: they knew that wildlife markets were dangerous in 2003 after the SARS outbreak, and they said they were going to ban all wildlife markets, but they didn't (they finally got around to banning all wildlife markets this year, and this time, they almost certainly mean it, and if China is serious about banning wildlife markets, there won't be any in China ever again). And, of course, China definitely delayed at least 6 days after they should have known better (and they admit to 3 weeks). But all other charges are obviously false.

Compared to the Pandemic of 1918 - 1919, the Spanish flu, CoViD-19 is, so far, not much. Trying to look up the Spanish flu, death estimates range from 17 million to 200 million (in other words, historians don't have a clue how many actually died, but they're sure it was a lot: the median guess is about 50 million). The world population today is 4 times what it was in 1918, so, even if one takes the lowest estimate of deaths as 17 million, that would be equivalent to more than 60 million deceased now, and the current number of dead is less than 400,000 (but it's still going up).

Of course, history says the Spanish flu had 3 waves, and not many died in the first wave, it was the 2nd wave when most died, and we're still in the first wave of CoViD-19.

The second wave of the Spanish flu started in October, 1918, so we won't know how bad CoViD-19 is going to be before 2021. But if it's anything like the Spanish flu, we'll have more than 65 million dead before June, 2021, based on the lowest estimate of how many died from the Spanish flu and the increased population (but it's not looking like that's going to happen from our current perspective, since the rate at which people are dying is already down from its peak; and we're all hoping we'll have some effective medicines for CoViD-19 before 2021). However, if there's a second wave like the Spanish flu before we have any effective medicines ...

CoViD-19 Pandemic???

Numbers turned out to be hard to come by. Trying to look up the 'normal' annual number of deaths from respiratory infections proved much more difficult than I thought it would be. For that matter, looking up the average number of deaths per month didn't turn up much in a Google search, only some data from before 2017. But, after gleaning all that Google could find, it looks like the total dead from all respiratory infections varies greatly year to year, and the total for this year is well within normal limits.

So I think it's clear that the White Horseman of pestilence is not the problem it's being presented as. Total CoViD-19 deaths in the US were mostly caused by the states that shipped old people with CoViD-19 off to nursing homes where everyone caught the disease, and, since they all had DNR orders, all were allowed to die. That's most of the CoViD-19 deaths in the US. The number of deaths in the US could be much, much lower if they hadn't maximised it to empty nursing homes of elderly residents, many with dementia, that many figured the US would be much better off without.

US newspapers have a problem: they hate China and they hate Trump, and say everything coming out of China is a lie and everything Trump says is a lie, so when Trump says China deliberately started the pandemic, and China says they didn't, it's hard to call both of them liars at the same time (but the establishment media are all trying their best). They're saying Trump is completely and totally responsible for every one of the 90,000 deaths from CoViD-19 in the US, and also that China is completely and totally responsible.

Gordon Chang wrote a book, The Coming Collapse of China, back in 2001 saying China would be back to peasants unable to grow enough to feed themselves in a very few years. Everything in the book was completely wrong from beginning to end, but no matter, he's now considered one of the best experts on China, and he says CoViD-19 has killed millions of Chinese (not the 5,000 they claim), that it started before November 2019 and was a major problem China covered up completely until January 20, 2020, and China deliberately sent people out to infect every other nation so China's economy would not be harmed by China having the only epidemic. Again, just about everything he says is easily proved false, but he's now hailed as the World's Greatest Expert on China. Chang is now saying China must acknowledge its guilt and pay reparations on the order of $20 trillion (for starters), enough to finally make his 2001 book come true. And Pompeo agrees with him.

So the White Horseman is now being used as an excuse to bring out the Red Horseman of War. After Vietnam, every president starting with Reagan started a shooting war in his 3rd year. Starting with Grenada, then Panama, two countries with People living in Darkness who were very profitably (for the US) brought the light. Until Trump, who started trade wars with everyone his 2nd year, but no new shooting wars. Yet. (He tried with Iran, but they refused the bait.) It should be noted that Obama wanted a trade war with China, but one where the US had a treaty with all the Pacific nations except China to cut China off as much as possible. (The treaty also said that most national laws would no longer apply to corporations, so it would not be possible to sue a chemical plant if it leaked and killed a bunch of people, thereby protecting the Important Rentiers of the World.)

Americans are strangely split: a little less than half figure Trump is one of our greatest presidents and Obama was one of our worst, and a little more than half figure Trump's the absolute worst and Obama was one of the best, when both pretty much did the same things. (OK, I must admit, Obama had a lot more style than Trump, a fact that really appeals to the Obamabots and infuriates the Trumpeters. But style ain't substance!)

Not much time left between now and the election. Trump keeps withdrawing from the arms control deals his predecessors signed, but not much sign he's doing anything provocative after withdrawing. Makes the US Defence Industry happy, and gets condemned by those that criticise everything Trump does, starting every morning when he gets out of bed on what they're sure must be the wrong side. But not all that much in the press about the US doing anything new after cancelling the arms control agreements.

And, after murdering an Iranian with a clever trap (an offer to meet MbS from Saudi Arabia to talk peace, on a specific date and at a specific time so he could easily be tracked and droned), not much more military action under Trump, except continuing all the wars he inherited from Obama.

But there's Chang and Pompeo who both say war with China is necessary to avenge the pandemic. And China ain't no Grenada or Panama.

Choice of Equestrians?

The Book of Revelations (the last book in the Christian Bible) briefly mentions some Seals and four horsemen. In the original Greek, the first, on a White Horse, is never identified (my commentary says he is probably a Parthian, which was an old word for Iranian; so one suspects the author of the book felt he had been cheated by an Iranian, possibly in a card game or a real estate deal). The second, on a Red Horse is identified as War. The third, on a Black Horse, is a merchant who charges a day's wages for a kilo of wheat. The fourth, on a Pale Horse, is Death.

In the 19th Century, the New Revised Standard version came out with a new translation, and suggested the Four Horsemen might be Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death (it's not clear from the translation that's what the author or the translator really had in mind).

The Chapter in Revelations is Chapter 6, which is actually called the Chapter of Seals, but at the turn of the previous century, someone introduced the Four Horsemen as the title of the Chapter. And the name of the book used to be the transliteration of the original Greek name of the book, Apocalypse, so there were lots of English essays about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (there might have been essays in other languages, but I wouldn't know). The White Horseman was Pestilence, some kind of pandemic like the plague, the Red Horseman was War, the Black Horseman was Famine, and the Pale Horseman was Death. Except for the Red Horseman and the Pale Horseman, this doesn't match the Bible, but it will do.

Back in the '30s, someone wrote a novella, Pale Horse, Pale Rider about the Flu Epidemic of 1918-1919, a book that might be relevant again with CoViD19 (although that was about the White Horseman and the flu pandemic).

Now it looks like we have a choice between the White Horseman and the Red Horseman. As it says in the Bible, 'Sufficient unto the Day...'.

The White Horseman

The new virus, CoViD19, spreads rapidly. Everyone who has it passes it on to about 3 others on average. The only good news is that the rate of increase peaked at 70% in China and is now down to 8% in China, and about 5% outside of China.

Inside China, it's killed 2.5% of those diagnosed with the virus by a real time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction test. Part of this (the Chinese say) is that 75% recover without medical intervention, all that's needed is to isolate them for 4 to 6 weeks. But 25% die without an ICU, and China is overwhelmed, so most of those who died lacked access to an ICU.

Outside China, only one died, and that was in the Philippines, so it's not clear how good the ICU was. About 525 cases outside China, and only 1 death, so a fatality rate of 0.2%, but it's still spreading rapidly, and if it spreads to just about everyone, only a very few will have access to an ICU, and the fatality rate will rise to 2.5% or more (since most of the world lacks China's resources for fighting epidemics: the Chinese can build 1,000-bed hospitals in just 10 days, and can send 10,000 doctors and nurses to regions with a high infection rate to help out until the disease is under control).

The other 'good news' is that China only counts those diagnosed with that real time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction test that identifies the virus, and many with mild cases who never report to the health authorities are undercounted, so the real fatality rate in China is somewhere between 0.2% and 2.5%, with no idea what it really is. A fatality rate of 0.2% is the same as the flu that breaks out every year, and next year, CoViD19 will be in every flu shot worldwide. But it's spreading rapidly, and we might not have a year.

The Red Horseman

Then we have the Thucydides Trap.  Thucydides was a Greek historian who wrote about the war between Athens and Sparta, about a hegemon seeing a rising power who feel they are compelled to go to war with the rising power to stop the rise. There have been many, many Thucydides Trap wars, and another one, resulting in WWIII, is looking more and more likely.

The Powers that Be in the US figure it's getting long past time for WWIII. The US is tearing up all the antinuke treaties it signed back when it knew the USSR had MAD. Today, the 'experts' say no one has MAD any more, the US can totally destroy any other nation without the slightest threat that they can retaliate, because the US military is so much more advanced than anyone else, but that won't last much longer, so the sooner we nuke Russia and China and the DPRK (and Iran prophylactically), the better. There is no proof that Russia interfered in the last election, but the establishment media all agree it's irrefutably proven that they did. They also say that, fortunately, all Putin's nukes are just Photoshop, but we need to strike now before he gets any real ones, and China is still a backward country that might become advanced if we don't do something now.

The plan is that Russia and China know they do not have MAD, so, when ordered to hand control over to the US, both will meekly comply. The US appointed administrators will break up both Russia and China into a bunch  of small, unarmed, powerless states who will never be able to threaten the US.

Sadly, Russia and China still have MAD, would much, much rather not have to use it, but will if forced. 

The establishment media all agree that the Mueller report proved that Russia stole the election and Trump helped. The report does say Russia stole the election, but that there was no proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump helped. The media agree that proof beyond a reasonable doubt is an unbelievably high standard of proof, and there is more than enough proof to convince a civil jury if not a criminal jury, and Mueller was probably being polite, when he really had more than enough evidence to convince an honest criminal jury of #NeverTrumps (and everyone who isn't a #NeverTrump is obviously not honest).

Mueller's 'proof' that Russia was guilty was page after page of computer code. Since computer code is as readable as Russian or Chinese to most Americans, they are convinced that Russia was guilty and must be punished. The code actually proves nothing at all, but it's impossible to convince the 50% of American voters who are rabid #NeverTrumps that the code doesn't say 'RUSSIA DID IT!!!'

Democrats and Republicans disagree about some minor stuff, but not about the importance of the US spreading democracy* to the entire world.

*Democracy - a government that does what the US tells them and hands over all the country's natural resources to US corporations in exchange for a little baksheesh for the 1% and nothing at all for the 99%.

 

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Net: I have no idea if it'll be the Red Horseman or the White Horseman. Both seem far too likely. Heck, maybe we'll have both working together to wipe us all out and solve the problem of climate change. And with all the disruption, maybe the Black Horseman will join them, and the Pale Horseman will have more work cut out for him than he's ever had before.

Death of a General

General Soleimani flew from Iran to Baghdad on a scheduled flight to meet the Iraqi prime minister, something Trump had encouraged him to do, making the drone strike very easy.

The General was a terrible enemy of the US, having been responsible for killing thousands of members of the best US ally in the region.

In 2009, Camp Bucca was emptied. The prisoners were given a chance to swear an oath to go to Syria, overthrow the evil elected dictator, and never return to Iraq, and all those who did were released, given money and weapons, and shipped to Syria, where no one heard much  about them until 2011, when they began demanding the removal of the elected dictator. Then, in 2014, they noted that an oath not to cross a fake line drawn by the infidels Sykes and Picot was not binding, and they came back into Iraq, where Obama bombed and killed a very few of them, so they made several very popular and well-viewed YouTube videos with American and British stars.

The peaceful, pro-democracy freedom fighters call themselves IS, the West call them ISIS or ISIL, and Arabs call them Daesh. And the evil General Soleimani kept killing them, and has made it very difficult for them to liberate Syria from the evil dictator and fly their dignified Black Flag over Syria and Lebanon, as the US fervently hopes they will be able to do very soon now that the General who was stopping them has been removed on Trump's orders.

The US fervently hopes that their Black Flag will fly over the Levant and Iran, and maybe Pakistan and Afghanistan, but has said it can never fly over Iraq, because Iraq has too much oil, all of which belongs to the US, so no need to pay Iraqis for oil they do not own, and ISIL has a nasty habit of taxing the places it controls, so it can never have Iraq. But the US will support them strongly to gain full control of the Levant and Iran, which should be very easy now that the US has removed the evil General Soleimani who was the main person stopping ISIL from completing the goals the US set them.