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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

***

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

***

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then all that changed.

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

And the Uyghur learned, and now they get good jobs and good housing.

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

More Questions about Venezuela????

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where is Venezuela?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what happens now? WWIII anyone???

Are the Times a'Changin'?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back to Monroe????

It was US President Monroe who said, in 1823, that the US would control the Western Hemisphere.

Back in 1823, the US were too weak to control the entire Western Hemisphere, but by 1898, the US could and did neo-colonise most of  Latin America.

But things change. Logistics meant the US armed forces had a huge logistical advantage over European armed forces if the US were fighting the Europeans in the Western Hemisphere, an advantage the US used to make most of Latin America into a US neo-colony.

But now, the PRC have the power, but not the interest, to engage in a long war with the US.

The US press say that Xi intends to re-take all of Taiwan before the end of 2027, just about two years away. Not clear what, exactly, Xi actually said or intends, but the Western media want to US to go to war with the PRC, since that will sell lots of newspapers and TV news and get the people who don't trust the mainstream media to pay for podcast news.

The main thing is that the PRC have started buying Venezuelan oil, some of the most sour oil in the world, oil that, before, only the US had the technology to refine, but now the PRC also have the technology to refine, and have built several of the specialised refineries that can refine Venezuelan oil.

So will Xi abide by the requirements of the Monroe doctrine, or will he say the PRC have invested a lot in Venezuelan oil, and intend to have all that they have paid for?

Trump Contradicts Himself. Frequently.

Most US presidents say one thing when they are running, something that they hope will get them elected, no matter how much they hate the idea of America actually doing what they promise the voters, then say something else after the election (let's face it, the US President doesn't do anything, he just gives the orders, like any other CEO, so voters foolishly assume that the US President will give the same orders he promised to give as a candidate, and are then sorely disappointed when he gives the opposite orders).

Trump ran on an America First/Make America Great Again platform, but then he was told, 'You must read the Teleprompter,' and the Teleprompter said, 'I order the US military to go into Syria and transform the evil dictatorship into a Democracy with Freedom and Justice for All.'

So Trump ordered all the US troops out of Syria. Twice.

Then someone had a little chat with Trump, so the third time the Teleprompter said, 'I order US troops into Syria to bring Freedom and Democracy,' Trump said, 'I order US troops into Syria to steal all the oil, so this won't cost US taxpayers 1¢, the US will make a big profit from this.'

So Trump managed to make it through his first term, only to lose his first bid for re-election.

After which, it was President Biden who ordered all US troops out of Afghanistan, an order executed with US Afghan allies clinging to and falling from the US planes leaving Afghanistan that refused to let them board. US troops trying to guard the only airport were killed by a terrorist attack. The withdrawal did not go well, but the Democrat US media all said, 'Biden got the US out of Afghanistan, something every president tried and failed to do for 20 years!' The Republican media all said, 'Biden made a complete mess of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.'

Running for re-election, Trump promised to get the US out of the Ukraine, to stop spending all that money on foreign projects that should instead go to Making America Great Again. After winning, on 19 January 2025, Trump reiterated that the US had to get out of the Ukraine or the cost of the war would destroy the US economy.

But then on 21 January 2025, Trump said the US would make sure that Russia left the Ukraine or the US would destroy Russia.

What happened? Obviously, the men in dark suits, dark glasses, and carrying dark briefcases (and no telling what's in those briefcases) had another little talk with Trump, and explained that abandoning the Ukraine to Russia was not an option, unless Trump wanted to be the next JFK.

For most of my life, US Presidents have been far more consistent that Trump, consistently wrong for the most part, but at least consistent. 

But Trump keeps changing his course 180º on a rather regular basis.

The US: Mostly anti-Colonialist

In 1823, President Monroe said that the Americas, i.e., the Western Hemisphere, was all American, the European Imperialists had better stay out. The US were not very strong in 1823, but they got stronger and stronger. Spain and Portugal lost most of their Latin American colonies as the US provided Latin American countries with money and weapons to end their status as colonies and become US neo-colonies.

The European Imperialists marched into a country, defeated the military, killed off the rulers, and put a European governor or viceroy as resident Head of State, and with the European Imperialist Head of State as the ultimate Head of State. They also put in a government with all the top officials Europeans.

The US gave money and weapons to a small group so they could overthrow the European Imperialists and make one of themselves the Head of State, with members of the group holding all the senior government positions, and the country was, officially, a free, independent nation. But, if the government did not do everything the US wanted, that government would be overthrown and replaced with a government of Citizens of the country who would do what the US wanted. Meaning (mostly) the US got all the bananas for the cost of good pay for the group forming the government and not much for anyone else, so the overwhelming majority of the citizens of the country were very poor, but the small, select group the US put in to run the country,  all Citizens of the country they were running, got paid fairly well. This is neo-colonialism. No American was in the government, no American was named governor or viceroy or got a senior position in the government, the American agent just told them what they had to do if they wanted to remain as rulers of their own country and get paid very well, i.e., whatever the US told them to do.

The US raged against colonialism for 75 years, but then in 1898, someone told the US President McKinley that every Great Country must have colonies, so the US declared War on Spain and took all the Spanish Colonies and made them US Colonies. They killed off all the colonials who resisted colonialism, and killed, by mistake, people who were not even resisting, but at least no one could say the US was still a minor power because they had no colonies.

The US rapidly decided that it really didn't like Imperialism, and 'freed' the Philippines and Cuba, going back to having them as US neo-colonies, with the governments all native citizens of the Philippines and Cuba (for as long as those governments did whatever the US told them to do).

But then Castro took over Cuba, and got enough support from the USSR that the US did not overthrow the Cuban government, they just embargoed Cuban products. Cuba's economy was mostly selling sugar and cigars, and, since the US was closest, it was easiest to sell just about all the Cuban sugar and cigars to the US. With the US market cut off by Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, Cuba had a hard time for a few months, but then the world discovered a cheap source of good sugar and great cigars, and started buying from Cuba until the US put up a blockade (many years later) and pretty much killed the Cuban economy.

(Plus the US uses a US military base in Cuba to imprison all the terror suspects that can't be legally tried in a US mainland court.)

For some reason, the US still has a few colonies, but the grimy details of exactly why they still have colonies when they say they don't want them isn't clear.

In any case, the fierce US antipathy toward Colonialism meant almost all of it ended after WWII, with only a few places still colonies (but lots of places are now neo-colonies, mostly US neo-colonies). 

Finishing off Russia, and then…

The US/UK/EU leadership all know that Russia is not much of a threat. All of the US/UK/EU news media reliably report that the illegal and unprovoked Russian invasion force that attacked the Ukraine has been almost completely destroyed, while (according to the always completely reliable Ukrainian media), only about 50,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or seriously wounded.

Russian propaganda has AI photos of the Russian returning thousands of Ukrainian dead while the Ukrainians have only returned a few hundred Russian dead, but just because the Ukraine do not bother preserving the bodies of the invaders doesn't mean they weren't killed and the bodies disposed of.

So the US figures that, with all the EU terrified of Russia, and for good reason if you read Mein Kampf about how terrible all the Slavs are, the US can provide the Europeans with the weapons they need to cleanse Europe of all the Slavs who once led the evil Soviet Dictatorship and were a menace to World Peace.

The good Ukrainian Aryans taking over the Ukrainian government and expelling all the Slavs from the government were doing the Right Thing to make the Ukraine a true Democracy, since no nation can be a true Democracy if even one Slav is allowed to be in the government.

After taking over the Ukrainian government (with a lot of help from the US, organised by Victoria Nuland) the Aryans knew they had to start the important project of ethnically cleansing the Ukraine of all Slavs, and, of course, they are very grateful to Presidents Obama and Biden for providing the help they needed to expel all Slavs from the government, and then provided the weapons, training, and intelligence they needed to complete the essential ethnic cleansing that will eventually leave absolutely no evil Slavs in the Ukraine, but only good Aryans and a few Jews. The Ukrainian Aryans can't possibly be considered Nazis, except in Russian propaganda, since they allow Jews, and the definition of a Nazi is someone who dislikes Jews and tried to kill all the Jews. Some people who fought with the Wehrmacht in WWII got standing ovations in Canada since they had killed lots of evil Slavs, but not a single Jew.

International Law say that only the ethnic cleansing of Jews is illegal. Also, the legal definition of genocide is killing all or part of a recognised religious-ethnic group, so killing even one Zionist Jew is genocide under International Law, while the Zionist Jews killing every Arab in West Asia is not genocide but just self-defence.

So the US/UK/EU are hoping that, with more shipments of better NATO weapons, the Ukrainians will easily prevail over the evil Russians, whose worst crime was not just invading the Ukraine, but stealing all the US oil in Russia. 

All that oil belongs to America, and Russia stealing it then selling it is one of the most heinous crimes ever committed. Saddam and Qaddafi were both executed for that exact same heinous crime, and the whole world is hoping Putin will be next, and very soon, and all that oil will be returned to the rightful owners, US oiligarchs.

And when that happens, the world will be very grateful to all those Ukrainian Aryans.

What to do now?????

The Russian military seem to have taken a small additional area of the Ukraine, and are claiming that they can easily take all of the Ukraine, but they are willing to stop with just 5 oblasts, none of which they completely control, all of which have most of their citizens desperate to be rid of the murderous Russian war criminals.

All the US/UK/EU media rely on the Ukraine to report what is really happening in the Ukraine, and they tell us that the Russians have lost millions of their soldiers, sent to die by Putin in his totally unprovoked invasion. The Ukraine tell us that they have only lost about 50,000 soldiers, but the Russians have killed millions of Ukrainians, almost all unarmed civilians the Russians found undefended in villages like Bucha.

The Western media all report that the massacre in Bucha has been irrefutably confirmed to be true, and anyone who says otherwise is just swallowing Russian propaganda: it is proven that Russia murdered all the villagers who were living in Bucha!

The Western media reiterate that Russia thought they could take all of the Ukraine in a few days, not knowing that NATO had supplied the Ukraine with the most advanced (non-nuclear) NATO weapons, while the Russians only had Soviet weapons from WWII and Czarist weapons from WWI that the Russians had patched with parts from washing machines, but those mostly home-appliance-parts weapons systems were no match for the ultra-advanced NATO weapons that had been supplied to the Ukraine and have completely destroyed almost the entire Russian invasion force, but only 'almost', so NATO need to give the Ukraine a lot more money and weapons or there is a chance that Russia could win the war, a chance NATO must not take, since that would be worse than Chamberlain at Munich.

It's a good story, with a happy ending, and it is constantly repeated in all the Western mainstream media, along with the warning that everything else is just Russian Propaganda.

Farming, then and now

In the US about 110 years ago, farmers used oxen and/or horses to pull the plow. They had some tools to help with planting, fertilising, and harvesting. Farms for crops couldn't be very large since there was only so much a farmer could do with a few oxen or horses. Of course, farms for cattle could be huge, since the cattle farmer could manage a lot of cattle and needed lots of grass for those cattle.

In China, only the richest farmers could afford an ox (they used both male and female oxen, used mainly for helping with the farming, pulling the plow or turning the pump that watered the crops). Most Chinese farmers had to do everything manually with primitive tools, so work was backbreaking and production was limited. Farms for livestock were few, most Chinese only got meat for Chinese New Year, if then.

In the US, about 50 years ago, most farmers had tractors to do the plowing and help with planting and fertilising. This meant farms for crops could be larger than with oxen or horses since a tractor could do much more than a team of oxen or horses. Farms for livestock got smaller, since the livestock were mostly fed packaged feed and kept from moving around much so they'd fatten up quicker than walking around looking for grass.

In China, not much had changed.

I saw a video about a modern American farmer, a rather elderly man, who took a book with him and got into his tractor, which had a compartment for a human driver that had A/C for hot weather and a heater for cold weather, and maybe space for a passenger/companion for the driver, but the driver wasn't really needed, the tractor could do everything all by itself, but, having had to drive a tractor for many years, sometimes the old farmer just liked to get in his modern, fully automatic tractor and ride as it did the plowing, planting, fertilising,  harvesting, and just about everything else that needed to be done to raise the crops for which it was designed.

And now the Chinese farmers have similar or even better tractors. The job of the modern farmer is to sit in the control room for the farm and push the appropriate buttons, turn the appropriate knobs, and type the appropriate commands into the computer that is running the farm, and this is true in the US and the PRC.

Both the PRC and India have packed about 1.4 billion people into a tiny area, both countries have only one time zone, so about a quarter the size of the CONUS (well, actually the PRC and Indian time zones are somewhat larger than a US time zone, but still, only one time zone in each country, while Russia have 11 time zones and the United States have a total of 6).

The PRC now have enough money to buy a lot of their food from countries that sell food cheaply, so that includes the US on and off, depending on what obstacles the US government put in that help or hurt the US farmers (who don't have all that many votes, so what they want isn't a top US government priority). The PRC is looking at Brazil, the Antipodes, Africa, just about anywhere they can buy food. Meat is everywhere. I saw a Chinese character that wasn't in my 1990 Oxford Chinese-English Dictionary, the character 串 (chuàn) which now, on a restaurant sign, means kebab, and there are a lot of kebab shops in China now, something that wasn't there in 1990. The character originally meant, 'string together' and someone decided that a kebab means that someone will string together some meat to make the kebab.

The Chinese oxen were tiny, bred to eat as little as possible, so the cows produce barely enough milk for the calves. So, fifty years ago, China had no dairy products. Now, there is milk in the PRC, not a lot of it since older Chinese never had it before, and figure it is mostly for children. Just 50 years ago, most PRC children had barely enough to eat and no dairy, so not much calcium or protein. So one thing I notice is how much taller the younger Chinese adults are than the older Chinese. 

Twenty years ago, pizza had just gotten to China. It was too expensive for most Chinese, but the upper class Chinese wanted to show me their pizza back then.

Now, ordinary Chinese can afford pizza, and like things like durian pizza, which is an acquired taste, and is preferably eaten when one has a bad cold, since durian can have a rather strong 'aroma' (to use the polite term).

Quite the change in farming over the last 50 years in the US and the PRC, but the change is much more noticeable in the PRC. In the US, farmers went from old tractors that the farmer had to drive to modern tractors that drive themselves, while Chinese farmers went from mostly manual farming to tractors as advanced, or even more advanced than those used by modern American farmers.

Is the PRC really the top economy????

If one accepts the PRC official size of the economy, in 元·and converts that to US$, the PRC economy is around $18 trillion, or a little more than about half the size of the US economy.

However, at PPP, the PRC economy is about 30% larger than the US economy.

How can that be when most of those in the PRC are farmers, farming a tiny plot with primitive implements?

Which was certainly true when Pearl Buck wrote The Good Earth in the 1920s. When the rains failed, many died of starvation.

In 2001, the PRC still had a lot of farmers. The Chinese governments had always designated most citizens as 'farmers' who were supposed to farm, since the Chinese governments were afraid of famines coming because the PRC didn't have enough farmers working to provide a margin of safety in case of droughts or floods that reduced crop output, but actually, most of the work was done by electric machines that greatly reduced the manpower requirement. I saw many farmers, forced to be farmers by government policies, sitting around playing cards while the machines did most of the work that had once meant all day, every day of backbreaking labour that, in bad years, produced less food than the calories required to produce it. Not any more! By 2001, 90% of farmers had electricity and electric machines to do a lot of the work (I was unable to make it up to places high in the remote mountains where the Chinese government was still unable to provide electricity.)

And those farmers, forced to sit on their farms with not much to do, managed to sneak off and work in towns, in factories and offices and universities. They had to pay a penalty for not being at their farm every day, and they resented that, but their jobs paid enough they could afford the penalty for not being on the farm.

That was 20 years ago. Now those farm have almost no farmers, machines do all the work.

The US regularly reports of the poor Uyghur slaves in Xinjiang who have to pick cotton, just like American slaves before 1865. And here's a photo of one of those poor slaves hard at work:

 

As anyone can see, those slaves have a very hard life picking cotton: "When dem cotton balls get rotten you can't pick very much cotton in dem old, cotton fields back in Xinjiang."

(Actually, the PRC does have some people who pick cotton by hand, it's a very expensive kind of cotton that is not suitable for machine harvesting, and it is not very easy to get one of the very high-paying jobs picking that expensive cotton; I understand that, 30 years ago, all those high-paying cotton-picking jobs went to Han Chinese, the once favoured majority ethnic group before equal rights suddenly made their way into the Chinese government leadership, so now most of those jobs go to the Uyghurs who are the majority of the population of Xinjiang.)

Some farms are full of greenhouses producing strawberries all winter long. Also automated.

And one can see the sad state of how the poor Chinese have to get around:

 

So life is very hard in the PRC, having to go out and look for rickshaws to get around, like the ones provided by that rickshaw outlet in the photo (I believe the owner of that rickshaw factory is German, as is the name, but the rickshaws are produced in the PRC with some of the parts formerly shipped to the PRC from Germany before Germany lost access to cheap energy and had to move most of the German production to other countries).

How to rank economies, Part II

I posted on a chat session that Russia now has the largest economy in Europe at PPP, and the response was that Russia is about the smallest economy in Europe, which it is if one counts the total rubles produced and converts to US$. But, since prices are much lower in Russia than in the EU, the Russian economy is the largest in Europe at PPP.

Likewise, measured in US$, the PRC economy is about half the US economy, but at PPP the PRC economy is about 30% larger than the US economy.

So the US notes that the PRC are desperate for oil and gas.

The US ordered that no one could buy any Iranian oil or gas in 1980, and no one did until 2021. Now the PRC buys just about all the Iranian oil and gas, and most of the Venezuelan oil and gas, plus about half of the Russian oil and gas.

The US figure it will be very easy to put the recent Nobel Peace Prize Laureate in as Jefa de Venezuela, and she has promised that, once she is La Jefa, all the oil in Venezuela will be returned to the rightful owners, the US oiligarchs (in exchange for a very reasonable fee paid directly to La Jefa). The PRC might be able to buy some, but the price will be much higher than they've been paying.

Iran is up for a new war to replace the Ayatollah with a Shah who will guarantee that all Iranian oil belongs to the US and UK. Again, the PRC might be able to buy some, not very much, and at a much higher price.

And the US have asked Japan to help make Taiwan an independent country (and still the legal leaders of the Republic of China, not the PRC).

And since all the US/UK/EU news report that the Ukraine are about to defeat Russia and then NATO will break Russia up into 20 small, demilitarised countries with all resources handed over to US oiligarchs as war reparations (with 1% going to the Ukrainian government), the PRC will have a hard time buying Russian oil and will have to pay an outrageous price for it.

The top US experts all agree that this is a Great Plan and it is proceeding apace, and the US hope for total victory over Russia and the PRC in the very near future.

Of course, Venezuela, Iran, Russia, and the PRC have other plans, but what can they do against the might of the US that so easily defeated Vietnam and Afghanistan (better stick to Grenada, Panamá, Serbia, Iraq, Libya, and Syria).