Pepe Escobar

 Mr Escobar is a journalist from Brazil who covers the Ukraine War, the PRC, and the Middle East that I'm aware of, and provides a good alternative view to the Official Western Narrative reiterated by all the Western media, from the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, BBC, Le Monde, Die Welt, etc. etc..

All say the Ukraine are winning, that they completely destroyed the Russian invasion force who only had "outdated and inept" weapons from the USSR and maybe the Czars, and will have all the Russians out of the Ukraine 'real soon now'. But not Mr Escobar, who has access to alternative sources of information, such as Ms Alina Lipp who wrote that the Russians are winning in the Ukraine and was sentenced, in absentia, to 3 years in gaol for deviating from the Official Western Narrative.

Mr Escobar writes for Asia Times and other publications that refuse to stick to the Official Western Narrative.

I strongly recommend reading his articles for an alternative reality to the Official Western One which said the US victory was certain in Vietnam and Afghanistan until it wasn't. That Vietnam attacked the US Navy in International Waters and Afghanistan sent most of the 9/11 terrorists to hijack the 4 planes, when none of that has the slightest resemblance to what actually happened, but that's Western Reality for you.

The door is open and I can't find the key

 Back in 1944, Bretton Woods tried to come up with how the winners would run their economies after the war. The US unconditionally guaranteed that, for anyone not a US citizen or permanent resident, they would exchange a US dollar for approximately 0.88 gm of 24K gold. Bretton Woods declared the US$ to be the World Key Currency.

I have seen the dollar called the World Reserve Currency, and this seems to be the current term, but, strictly speaking, any currency that international banks must keep in reserve is a reserve currency, and these are the US$, the £, the €, the ¥, and the CHF.

The key currency is the default currency for international transactions. Sellers are afraid the buyer might devalue their currency, buyers are afraid the sellers will upvalue their currency. Gold was recognised as guaranteed, but after WWII, there wasn't enough physical gold in the world to support the expanding global trade, but the US$ was a big enough currency with a value permanently fixed at approximately 0.88 gm gold, so it was declared the Key Currency and made international trade much easier than it had been.

Then, in 1971, was the biggest default in world trade ever: The US said they would no longer give any gold for a US$!

The world economy could have collapsed, but it didn't. The US$ remained the key currency, for reasons no one completely understands (except there was no alternative). The Europeans tried to come up with a key currency not controlled by a single country and created the €, but it only caught on for international payments inside the Euro Zone and so never became a key currency: the US$ reigned.

Iraq and Libya said they'd start accepting currencies other than the US$, so the US destroyed both: taught them a lesson they'll not soon forget.

But, while the US had great success forcing regime change in Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and destroyed the economies of Syria, Iran, and Venezuela, and Americans felt no pain in the US, not the slightest inconvenience. But.

After the collapse of the USSR, the US became Global Hegemon. Graham Allison wrote in 2012 that global hegemons almost always fight tooth and nail to retain their hegemony when they see a rising power that might eventually be able to challenge them, and that rising power was the PRC. So the US planned for regime change in the PRC, and breaking the PRC up into a bunch of small, weak nations that could never challenge the US. Predominantly Muslim western PRC would become East Turkestan. Tibet, Hong Kong, and Taiwan would be independent nations.

But then Russia got uppity, and the US decided to get rid of Russia. After all, when General Douglas MacArthur said the US could easily win the war in Korea by nuking the PLA, President Truman, who had ordered the USAF to use the entire US nuclear arsenal on Japan in 1945 instead said, 'The USSR have MAD. You're fired.'

So the US decided that Russia must be dismantled, the Republics that constitute Russia must become independent nations who cannot agree about anything. The US said that the Ukraine was a candidate who would be admitted soon, then denied that they'd ever said that.

When the US put nukes in Turkey in 1962, the USSR put nukes in Cuba and everyone expected WWIII, but JFK called Moscow and said, "I have to run for re-election and you don't, so if you say you gave the US everything we wanted and got nothing in return, we'll give you everything you want." Khrushchev figured, 'What harm can it do?' and then he had to write the two letters.

Those nukes the US removed from Turkey are now in Türkiye, and the US put nukes in some of the former Warsaw Pact countries. Russia were not happy, and made demands in December 2021, demands the US and NATO said Russia had no right to make, and they would not be honoured.

In 2014, the US neocolonialised the Ukraine. They gave money and weapons to a small group of Ukrainians who consider themselves ethnic Germanic, whose grandparents fought with Germany in WWII, and who agree that Hitler had the right idea about Jews, Roma, and Slavs. The US told them that killing Jews is wrong, and not allowed, but killing Slavs was a great, patriotic achievement during WWII and the Ukraine must be cleansed of everything Slavic. This makes the Ukraine a neocolony: the government must do whatever the US say or they will be removed ASAP.

The Ukrainian government seemed to be planning an attack on the Donbass to eradicate every trace of Slavic language and religion in early 2022, so Russia moved to protect all the ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine on 24 February. The US was ready and sanctioned Russia: Russia cannot use the US$, and so is completely cut off from all international trade, thereby destroying the Russian economy which consisted of selling oil and gas to the West for US$ and using those US$ to buy everything Russia need from the West. Oops.

Russia said all oil and gas must be bought with Rubles. Then Russia said the PRC can use RMB and India can use rupees. Russia and China and India are now trading with Iran, who are no longer completely cut out of international trade, and they ain't using the US$.

Using the US$ against Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Venezuela, and Iran caused those countries great pain but did nothing to the world economy. No one in the rest of the world felt any pain, only the countries sanctioned.

Using the US$ against Russia does not seem to be working out all that well. The US has high inflation. The US neocolony of Europe has even higher inflation and not enough oil or gas, so the ordinary people have trouble getting around and staying warm and buying food. But the governments are doing well, paid by the US so they don't lack anything. For the European leaders, bought and paid for the by US, they have petrol and fancy foods and heat in winter and A/C in summer. No problems as long as they do whatever the US tell them to do. Good employees all, they are earning their salaries.

But more and more of the world are abandoning the US$, it is now a semi-Key currency. The control over the world that the US had since the collapse of the USSR, and the US$ as the world's Key currency, both seems to be slowly eroding.

So what will the US do?

Will the US figure that no world at all is better than a world without the US as Global Hegemon?

The PRC and Russia are hoping that, if the US do figure that, it will be after the US$ has ceased to be the Key currency, and the US won't have enough money to pay to launch a nuclear attack.

Not much news in the Ukraine

 The New York Times  has been reporting since February that Russia are losing badly in the Ukraine, that the Ukraine, with advanced US weapons, easily defeated the entire Russian invasion force with their "outmoded and inept" weapons, so almost all the invaders are dead, and the survivors only hold a few undefended villages until the Ukrainian military arrive and evict them, finding the civilians brutally murdered and the villages destroyed. At the same time,  the sanctions totally destroyed the Russian economy, based entirely on selling oil and gas to the West and using the money to buy everything Russia need from the West. So regime change has predicted to be about a fortnight away since April, when a new government like that of Gorbachev who would let the US break Russia up into a bunch of small states, e.g., Chechnya and Dagestan would be independent states, run by Muslim monarchs and hating all their Christian neighbours, the independent states would be at war with each other and not able to challenge the US in any way, shape, form or fashion.

Then the Ukraine recaptured the huge Oblasts of Kharkov and Kherson. How, when the Russians only held a few villages? So the New York Times reported that the US had given the Ukraine very precise artillery but of limited range, while the Russian artillery, not precise at all but longer range, had enabled the Russians to take the two Oblasts, but then the US gave the Ukraine longer range artillery, and with the new artillery, much longer range and much more precise than Russian artillery, the Ukraine quickly recaptured more than 55% of all the territory illegally seized by Russia and, in about a fortnight, would have recaptured the rest, followed by regime change.

That was more than a month ago that the Ukrainians recaptured the eastern part of Kherson, and not much has happened since.

Those sanctions that devastated the Russian economy managed to destroy the European economy that can no longer afford to run any factories, since the cost of energy, now six times as expensive, would more than double total costs forcing Europe to sell at double the price, which is not competitive, so most factories must close and Europe must deindustrialise. Very green, going back to living as they did in the 15th century. Or maybe they might make it as far as the 19th century when everything ran on coal. So that's good progress, the US do not need any competition from Europe.

The sanctions also made life somewhat harder for Americans: the US factories have energy only 50% more expensive, not 500%, and little competition with Europe closed, so the factories remain open, and people have jobs, but inflation has significantly reduced real wages. So the sanctions have done more damage to the US than to Russia, but a lot less damage than to Europe.

Still, the plan was always to destroy Russia (and then the PRC) without a nuclear holocaust. Russia would be provoked into a war in the Ukraine and the PRC into a war in Taiwan where, in both cases, those advanced US weapons would enable the Ukraine to destroy the Russian military and Taiwan to destroy the PLA, and sanctions would destroy the Russian and PRC economies forcing regime change. And if one reads the New York Times, the plan is going very, very well and will succeed in just another fortnight, and anyone can put up with a few minor inconveniences for a fortnight to save Democracy.

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One must blame Churchill, whose autohagiography demonised Chamberlain, saying the UK could have easily defeated Germany in 1938 in Czechoslovakia with very little loss of UK lives, but Chamberlain's Appeasement resulted in WWII, the defeat of the BEF at Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain that destroyed a lot of British infrastructure and killed many, and then the years of war where far too many British soldiers died unnecessarily because of Appeasement.

So now Putin is said to be trying to recreate the USSR, then the Warsaw Pact, then annex Western Europe, then the US and Canada, so he must be stopped in the Ukraine, or this Appeasement will be much worse than Chamberlain's horrible mistake at Munich in 1938.

Waugh wrote that, when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, war became inevitable, but war in 1938 would have been the wrong war for the wrong reasons with the wrong allies. So Chamberlain did the right thing, buying time for France and the UK to get ready. Didn't go all that well in France in 1940, but at least the UK had the Miracle at Dunkirk that saved almost all of the BEF and the radar shield that ensured every German bombing raid had unacceptable losses for the Luftwaffe, neither of which would have been possible in 1938 when Germany would probably have been able to win the war against Czechoslovakia and the UK, force the surrender of the UK, and then the US would have had nowhere to station their troops and could not have participated in the European War (but they would still have nuked Japan).

As Waugh wrote, this is the wrong war for the wrong reasons with the wrong enemy. Putin feels obligated to protect ethnic Russians under attack in former Soviet states. With former Soviet states that give ethnic Russians human rights, Putin does not wish  to do anything.

But, of course, the real reason for this war is that, after the collapse of the USSR, the US became Global Hegemon, and, as Graham Allison wrote in 2012, Hegemons, ever since Sparta in ancient Greece, usually fight tooth and nail to keep their hegemony. Allison predicted war with the PRC, but then Russia got uppity, so both Russia and the PRC must be destroyed. And it looks like the US will stop at nothing to destroy Russia and the PRC. Only, except in all the Western media, this destruction of Russia does not seem to be going all that well, doing far more to destroy Europe and weaken the US than it is damaging Russia.

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So things have been pretty quiet for the last six weeks or so, but Winter is Coming, the season when the Russian military usually do their best. So we'll see what happens after Orthodox Christmas, 7 January.

The Decline of Search Engines

 The Internet allowed anyone on the Internet to see public files on any other computer on the Internet. If, of course, one knew they were there and their address. So, early on, they came up with a search engine called Archie. But early Internet computers were mid-range with hundreds of users and with an Admin who decided what programs to install, so I never saw Archie. There were maybe 100 computers on the Internet back then, so one hoped for e-mails giving the address of a research paper one might find useful. Then there was the Usenet where people could post links to their research papers and I used Usenet heavily. There were sections devoted to very esoteric research, and sections devoted to humour and just about everything else. It was useful when I first found it, but then it got overwhelmed with, among other things, the very first spam, a couple of lawyers looking for clients who flooded the Usenet with their adverts.

Then came the World Wide Web, with browsers and servers and it seemed like everyone and his dog had a website, but finding the ones with information one needed seemed impossible. So someone developed Lycos. Lycos didn't want you to miss anything. So if you searched for 'date' it would find data and rate and dare and etc. and etc., just in case you misspelled your search term. My boss had a son who had to do a paper on 'date rape'. So I typed in 'date rape' and got lots of important dates, 4th of July websites, 25 December, 1 January, etc., etc. plus the dates grown in Saudi Arabia plus, plus, plus. Too many papers about date (or close to date) so it never got to date rape. So I tried rape date, and got papers about rape (but not date rape) and papers about rap and rep and reap and and and but nothing about date rape. So useless.

Then came Yahoo. Yahoo asked people to put their information on Yahoo and then did searches based on conjunction. If I asked for 'date and rape' I got only papers about date rape. GREAT! (but too late for my boss's son's high school paper). As long as Yahoo was a student project.

Then they graduated and venture capital took over. Everything on Yahoo was ranked by how much money the person paid. I was asked to find coin dealers in New Orleans. I got coin dealers in Chicago that paid to be listed, and restaurants in New Orleans that paid, but no coin dealers in New Orleans, since none had paid enough to be listed.

Then came Google. Pages ranked by how many other pages pointed at them. Scammers created lots of fake sites whose only purpose was to point to a site so it would get a higher rank. But Google tried to program the search engine not to use such faux sites in making its ranking. One could find just what one wanted, if it was anywhere on the Internet. But that was while they were still students, and Google was a student project. Actually, that's not quite fair, Google used that same model for several years. But after they became a commercial project, they blocked lots of sites. I found a site about the US war to colonise the Philippines. Then it went from detailed history to just one page: "this site is now blocked by Google, so we can't make any money and we're taking the site down". They said they asked, "Why?" and got no reply. So Google could kill a site they did not like. But still, if they didn't hate the site you were looking for, Google would probably find it for you.

But I looked for a good walker for an elderly man who has some disease his doctor said starts Al something or other, but I can't remember what the doctor said or why I went to see him. Anyway, a couple of years ago, I found lots of walkers, many of which looked much better than the one I'd just bought, but  I really didn't need another walker.

My walker is getting old, and I'm looking for a new one. I looked. Not much turned up. Then a florist told me: Google has gone the same as Yahoo right after they went public: sites are ranked by how much they pay Google. Pay enough, your site gets ranked first, in bold, 'This is the page you need!' even if it has nothing to do with what you're looking for. Build a page, leave it floating, it won't turn up on Google even if it's a perfect match for what you're searching for. So I found very few walkers, and all overpriced and not nearly as good as the ones I could find before. Google is now almost worthless if you need to find the best page to answer your query.

If one is looking for the best walker, Google will always point to the walker that paid the best to Alphabet, and they gave their money to Alphabet, they did not waste it building the best walker because paying Alphabet is a better way to have great sales.

Russia's Problem

 The US found some nations engaged in horrible, criminal activities, especially wanting to squander the profits from their natural resources on their own people when everyone must know that, with the demise of the USSR, all the world's resources belong to the US (with a little for US allies France and the UK).

When Iran claimed Iranian oil in 1951, the US sent the CIA to remove the government that stole the oil and put in the Shah who promised all the oil would belong to the US. When the Shah stole the oil, the US put in an obscure cleric who only cared about stoning women who didn't wear proper Islamic dress. But then the Ayatollah failed to hand over the oil, so the US would have destroyed Iran except there was no strait path to that destruction, so the Ayatollahs continue to refuse to hand the oil over to the US, and the US forbade the world from buying any Iranian oil. Of course, other evil nations have defied the US and bought Iranian oil, so their destruction is in the planning stage: buying Iranian oil is only one of many PRC violations of the Rules-Based Order, i.e., the US make all the rules and give all the orders.

Of course, Iraq tried to claim Iraqi oil, and Libya tried to claim Libyan oil, so the US destroyed both countries, carpet bombing the cities, killing as many of the men, women, and children terrorists as possible, destroying all their illegal infrastructure: water processing plants, electric plants, schools, hospital, & etc., all built with stolen US oil money.

This was easy and went very well, since they had no defences that could stand up to the US of A: no air defences, no real army.

But Russia do not hate the Ukraine the way the US hate any country that steal their natural resources that all belong to the US, and then squander the money on their own citizens. Russians have friends and relatives in the Ukraine.

Putin wants to demilitarise and denazify the Ukraine while minimising civilian casualties and damage to Ukrainian infrastructure, and this is much more difficult than US 'shock and awe' campaigns.

Obviously, Putin has no idea what he's doing, and is committing a heinous crime: the Ukraine and all their resources belong the US, and no one else.

So how to demilitarise and denazify without killing civilians or doing much damage to infrastructure? And why would anyone want to do that?

Putin does not seem to have a good answer to that problem.

Shortly after the invasion, the Russians took over much of the Donbass, Kharkov, and Kherson and held them for five months, until the Ukraine, given more advanced US weapons, forced the Russians out of Kharkov and out of about a third of Kherson, the first major Russian losses.

Does this mean the US have finally given the Ukrainians weapons with which they can drive the Russians out of the entire Ukraine? Or are Russia just trying to minimise Russian casualties and pulling back to more defensible positions which the Ukraine will attack with limited success and massive losses?

The US 2022 Elections, Sunday 13 November

 Yesterday, the Democrats and Republicans had 49 seats in the US Senate, or 2 short of the total, since 2 races had not been decided.

Today, The Democrats have 50, so a majority, when the polls the day before the election said the Republicans would probably take the Senate. But now the Senate has a Democrat majority, and may have a Democrat majority of 51 after the Georgia runoff.

All the anti-war Republicans who had to run lost (there are a few Senators who did not have to run in the 2022 elections, every election elects just 1/3 of all the Senators, so some of the very few Republicans who are anti-war did not have to run; lots of those running were anti-war, but they just about all lost).

Yesterday, the Democrats started with 201 members of the House of Representative, but that rose to 204, while the Republicans stayed at 211. Today, the Democrats still have 204, and the Republicans gained one to 212, just 6 away from having a majority of the House. The polls said the Republicans would have a comfortable majority, but now it is not clear if they will get a majority. Yesterday started with 19 races still undecided, and 3 of the four decided went to Democrats and one to a Republican. If this continues, the Democrats will have the House and Senate, just as they do now. Fifteen seats in the House still undecided. The Democrats need 14 more to win the House, and the Republicans need just 6 more. Will the Democrats get 14 out of 15? Quite possibly. And every last Democrat wants war with Russia and the PRC that will destroy both countries and split them into a bunch of unarmed, independent nations that cannot challenge US hegemony.

The US 2022 Election

 The US had an election for the legislative branch, not quite a Parliament, but the closest US equivalent, on Tuesday, 8 November (it has to be on the first Tuesday AFTER 1 November). We still have no idea who won.

Before, the Democrats had a majority in the House and the Senate. After 5 days, we have no idea. Neither party have a majority in either the House or the Senate, since we have no idea which party won.

A month before the election, the polls said it was 60% certain the Republicans would win in the House, and 60% certain the Democrats would win in the Senate. A week before the election, the polls said the Republicans would have a comfortable majority in the House, and the Senate was 50-50.

To win in the House requires having at least 218 members, and neither party have that many yet.

To win in the Senate, the Democrats need 50 Senators, the Republicans need 51, and both now have 49.

The Republicans are slightly ahead in the House, with 211, and the Democrats have 201, sorry 202, sorry now it's 204: the Democrats are gaining, and no one knows which will end up with the majority.

The Senate is almost certain to go to the Democrats, who might go from their current majority of 50 to a majority of 51.

The anti-war candidates did not do well. Most Americans listen to their leaders that Putin wants to rebuild the Warsaw Pact, then expand it to Western Europe, the UK, the US, and Canada, so he must be stopped. Not stopping Putin in the Ukraine would be as bad as Chamberlain appeasing Hitler at Munich.

Only the story about Chamberlain and appeasement came when the UK wanted a scapegoat and Churchill gave them Chamberlain.

In 1938, the year of Munich, Britain and France wanted war with Germany in 1939. Neither were ready for war in 1938. France wanted to complete the Maginot Line, and France would not join Britain in a war against Germany without that Maginot Line. So Chamberlain pretended that he only wanted 'Peace in our time' and so gave Germany the Sudetenland when he was really buying time.

Britain wanted to complete a radar system, which was Top Secret, so Churchill's demonisation of Chamberlain said the UK won the Battle of Britain with carrots, not radar, which was completely false. The radar meant that the RAF knew when and where the Luftwaffe were coming and were waiting for them, so Luftwaffe losses were unacceptably high, the Luftwaffe lost too many bombers, and the UK won the Battle of Britain. But Churchill said the RAF could see the Germans coming and shoot them down because they ate a lot of carrots, nothing else.

Since Churchill warned about appeasement, the US went to war in Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, the Yemen, Syria, and probably a bunch I forgot and a bunch that never made the media, since war is always better than appeasement.

But now the US want to take on Russia and the PRC, which are not at all like any war the US has ever fought before.

So the US threatened to put nukes and ABMs in the Ukraine, and said there was nothing Russia could do about it, so Russia did something, and the US say Russia must be totally destroyed, broken up into several small, independent, unarmed states. A state for Dagestan, a state for Chechnea, an independent state for all the Russian Republics. Then those states will be no more of a problem for the US than Grenada.

But Russia are NOT Grenada, so this war is unlikely to go like the War against Grenada.

But every US Democrat and the senior Republicans all say we cannot appease Putin, we must totally destroy Russia before they can conquer the world. Only a few Republicans say they want to stop the war and go back to cheap petrol and low inflation. All the rest say, 'No appeasement!!!'

As for the election, 'It's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes.' And those who count the votes are making sure enough of the anti-war Republicans lose that a comfortable majority will continue to support the endless US wars.