Outside of Eurangloland, these two presidents are the hopes and dreams of a fairer, more just world. Now, they’ve got to make sure their excellent working relationship transcends their eventual retirement, so that the China-Russia marriage will last for the rest of the 21st century. (Image by politrussia.com)
The Xi-Putin honeymoon is over-now it’s time to make the China-Russia marriage succeed long term
The Moscow-Beijing Express
By: Jeff J. Brown
Crosslinked with China Rising: http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2016/03/02/the-xi-putin-honeymoon-is-over-now-its-time-to-make-the-china-russia-marriage-succeed-long-term/
You can also listen to Jeff read this article, below:
For much of Xi Jinping’s first two and a half years as president of China, his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin was high profile and incredibly dynamic. Without going into the lengthy list of accomplishments that these two world statesmen achieved 2013-2015, it is safe to say that their proactive cooperation in almost every conceivable field: finance, banking, commerce, trade, military, intelligence, investment, science & technology, research & development – even down to the mundane, but symbolically important education, culture and tourism – has fundamentally changed the way the world works.
This synergy has been and continues to be for the betterment of the Moral Majority, those 85% of the world’s peoples, mostly dark skinned, who have suffered and continue to fight against Western racism and capitalism, which together, impose upon all of us an endless stream of imperialism, colonization, fascism, war and false flags. Thus no surprises, that this alliance has also dramatically focused the strategies and tactics of evil Eurangloland, compared to just three or four years ago.
President Putin taking Russia out of the claws of Western vultures, then reviving and returning his proud people to the geopolitical superpower table was one thing. At the same time, China’s Communist Party continued Mao Zedong’s incredibly successful socioeconomic development to dizzying, 21st century heights; that was another. By themselves, Western empire confidently planned for continued world tyranny and colonial exploitation, hoping to divide these two historical planetary giants, as was done in 1960, with the devastatingly destructive Sino-Soviet split.
Xi and Putin have fundamentally changed all that. What is now overlooked is how fast this new century, Sino-Russian marriage coalesced around these two leaders. While not quite a shotgun wedding, these two visionaries clearly saw the need to cooperate, in the face of the West’s relentless onslaught, and they had the determination to make it work, which is what a successful marriage is all about.
The Xi-Putin-China-Russia honeymoon lasted about two years, which is remarkable, really. It’s fun and exciting to sign hundreds of billions in gas and oil deals, announce banking integration and ruble-yuan trade tranches; plan high speed rail, aerospace and infrastructure projects; schedule buying and selling top notch military equipment and agricultural products; tout expanding a whole panoply of traded goods, ink investment deals, get their respective intelligence and militaries to shake hands and talk to each other (this, after 50 years of official hostility), supporting each other in the United Nations Security Council – that was the honeymoon and like all nascent marriages, it was the easy part.
The symbolic culmination of their relationship, as countries and leaders, was when they each other’s guest of honor at their respective 70th anniversary, victory over fascism parades in 2015, first in Moscow on May 9th and then in Beijing on September 3rd. Using the marriage analogy, these were the big family wedding banquets at their respective homes. With 99% of the West’s leaders boycotting these two very public and powerful statements to the world, it was official: Russia and China are standing tall, proud and defiant against Eurangloland.
Now, like any marriage, the warm glow and idealism of the honeymoon are over and the hard, day in-day out work comes. Western empire was more than happy to make it challenging for these two new allies. First came the 2014, genocidal machinations in the Ukraine, which in fact affected both countries, since China had a long and deep economic and trade relationship there, going back into the 1980s. This crime against humanity is, of course, ongoing. Both countries experienced false flags, one airplane full of people gone missing (MH370) and one shot down (MH17), making geopolitical life difficult for them, but for different reasons.
At the same time, Uncle Sam was announcing to the world that he was going to follow through on pivoting 60% of its deep water navy off the coast of China (and effectively, Eastern Pacific Russia). This was and is being amped up into routinely challenging China’s South Sea islands, in the air and on the high seas, while the US bribes, bullies, extorts and blackmails its regional allies to join the fray.
In the meantime, US/NATO continued its plans to undermine Russia, by trying to bring down its historical ally in the Middle East, Syria. This has the added benefit of also making things difficult for two other common allies in the region, Iran and Hezbollah. It is no accident that within hours of America’s farcical and illegal, yet deeply cruel sanctions being lifted on Iran, President Xi was in Tehran meeting with Iran’s leaders, President Hassan Rouhani and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. You can bet that Syria was a major point of geopolitical discussion.
Earlier news that China already had a significant, supporting military presence in Syria, to aid Russia, is apparently not true or at best, exaggerated. But, China has already started construction of a military base in Djibouti, joining Western installations already there. It is understood that the US had to close one of its two bases there, to make room for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which must be especially galling to Uncle Sam. But, the world has changed. I would be willing to speculate that Djibouti would not have insisted on booting out that division of U.S. Marines, if China and Russia were not such close allies. Why? As with all alliances, the military clout of each country is burnished, with the world knowing they are brothers-in-arms. The fact that it is well known in military circles that Russia’s and China’s two Red Armies are the only ones that the West truly fears, just adds to the aura.
Like Djibouti, would Russia have gone into Syria, without China’s back? Would Baba Beijing be confidently telling America that if Western empire wants a war over the South China Sea, then “bring it on”, without Russia peering over America’s shoulders?
Since the September 3rd Beijing parade, all of those highly publicized face-to-face meetings and phone calls between Putin and Xi are not being reported. However, it is safe to assume that Putin’s and Xi’s offices are in daily communication on everything they signed and agreed to during their honeymoon, and that these two leaders are staying on top of bilateral and common geopolitical developments.
We also get to enjoy the spectacle of US Secretary of State John Kerry, going a hard fought round in the diplomatic boxing ring with Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov. Then, with no rest for the wicked, he is having to turn right back around and judo wrestle with China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wang Yi. You can bet your bottom ruble or renminbi that these two formidable negotiators’ offices are working together closely, sharing notes and advice, on their Eurangloland portfolios. Knowledge is power and this diplomatic cooperation just makes it that much more difficult and vexing for the imperial West, which is normally used to having the upper hand in all geopolitical situations.
China has a huge presence around the world, over 50,000,000 overseas Chinese, as well as hundreds of billions in investment and development projects in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania. That represents a massive data bank of human intelligence for China and its allies, Russia included. Russia has a strong human intelligence presence in Europe, North America and across its southern Asian flank. We can safely assume there is reciprocal synergy and note sharing in this department. Ditto, satellite and signal intelligence. Both countries alone are equal to anything that Eurangloland can throw at them. Together, the whole balance of power in the world of spydom has fundamentally been shifted away from the West, since Putin’s and Xi’s initiatives.
This is what marriage is all about. It’s a hard job, 24/7, slogging time and a half, in addition to your day job, to keep it going, functioning and satisfying. Nothing flashy, just working at it patiently, making accommodations, compromising and learning from mistakes. Marriages last long term, when there is a firm conviction to honor the terms of the contract that both sides signed on public record, hell or high water.
The big question at this point is what happens to this marriage, after Presidents Putin and Xi step down from their pinnacles of power, and turn their countries’ reins over to their successors. For Putin, his current term expires in 2018, but he can run again, and stay in the presidency until 2024. Xi’s ten-year term expires in 2023. Thus, Planet Earth’s 85% Moral Majority appears to have some breathing room for the next seven years or so.
But long term, these two inspiring leaders of the world’s oppressed will eventually retire. All great leaders and heroes must eventually step down and fade away, to live on in history books. The Chinese are experts at visionary, long term planning, with a rolling, 10-year national budget plan and stated socioeconomic goals going out to 2050. Historically, the Russians have shown themselves to be a patient and enduring lot, especially in times of distress and when their survival is on the line.
With China’s democratic dictatorship of the people, control over the means of production and the Communist Party of China being in the dawn of its Red Dynasty, the degree of comfort that this marriage partner will stick to its commitments long term, is much higher. As we have seen recently in Venezuela and Argentina, where there is the possibility of serious change in who governs the country, radical departures in the way national and international business is conducted can happen, often for the worse. Where people can vote, history shows that they eventually want change, the old “grass is greener on the other side” delusion, even if it ultimately is to their harm.
Russia has its Atlantic Integrationists, who would be happy to turn their country into tomorrow’s Argentina. In the next eight years, can Putin and the Eurasian Sovereigntists, who are aligned with China, come up with a structure or means to prevent, or at least seriously frustrate attempts by insiders and elites, to return Russia to Western serfdom? This is probably the most important question that will help decide the fate of humanity in the years to come. If there is a second Russia-China split, like what happened in 1960, our species may not survive the divorce this time.
Now, in the day to day drudgery of making China’s and Russia’s marriage continue to succeed, it may not be Putin and Xi who are meeting face to face and talking on the phone. But, for the sake of the human race’s aspirations for peace and social justice, let’s hope the hundreds of members of their respective teams are in fact talking and planning about keeping their vows, for decades to come, regardless of who their presidents may be.
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I find this highly amusing:
“We also get to enjoy the spectacle of US Secretary of State John Kerry, going a hard fought round in the diplomatic boxing ring with Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov. Then, with no rest for the wicked, he is having to turn right back around and judo wrestle with China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wang Yi. You can bet your bottom ruble or renminbi that these two formidable negotiators’ offices are working together closely, sharing notes and advice, on their Eurangloland portfolios”
Good luck with that, Mr Kerry!
Excellent partner coupling report. May the marriage be long lasting, fruitful and produce many beautiful offspring. Could the first two be twins? (Syria and Iraq). A German intellectual and moral opposition leader seems to suggest so, in 7-8 minutes public presentation contribution in India yesterday: https://soundcloud.com/larouche-pac/helga-zepp-larouche-addresses-the-observer-research-foundation-in-new-dehli-march-2-2016 Follow up on winning the war against the Empire and its liver eating proxies by winning the peace and bringing these concrete “Silk Road” detailed elements into being as rapidly as possible, making the old and devastated “Cradle of Civilization” new again.
yes, I agree with the last paragraph of this post 100%. Still lots of work to do between the 2 leaders to make sure this is a lasting relationship!
Good article, full of truth and for some foreboding. It will take ten years and more before a lot of the agreements and plans come to fruition but I have no doubts they will. The benefits will start to accrue this year for both countries and will only increase within both the short and the long term.
Now, if we can just keep The West from doing something abysmally stupud we might all survive and see perhaps a second renaissance in our world. Hope springs eternal.
Auslander
Author, Never The Last One http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZGCY8KK
Coming very soon:
An Incident on Simonka, The Third Defense of Sevastopol
Dear Jeff,
Thank you for an excellent article – as you say – I hope Putin runs for another term so that he and Xi have the time to see some of their hard work come to fruition.
The West via Kissinger got what they wanted back in the 60’s by dividing these two great countries. I hope the lessons of the past aren’t forgotten. As mankind needs them to succeed – otherwise we are looking into the abyss.
Rgds,
Veritas
Another interesting article on China in the Pacific:
http://www.fort-russ.com/2016/03/china-expels-us-from-pacific-ocean.html
Woody Island is not in or near the Malacca Strait. It is over 1000km away in the Paracel Islands.
Posted on my fb with a ”Very Well Worth Reading”.
–
Thank you really good read… and something I give a thought “now and then” kind 24/7…
Watching the comments in the Guardian there is a huge difference in how people view Russia and China, or to be more exact Russian intervention in Syria and US setting up a siege on China in the Asia Pacific.
A majority of the comments say Russia is doing a good thing in Syria and US is the bad guy supporting terrorist either deliberately or mistakenly.
In the South China Sea most commentators believe US is saving the world from Chinese “aggression”. They see nothing wrong in the US controlling the the strategic shipping lanes of the worlds largest trading nation.
China needs to get its information warfare together and get some popular support.
Decent – bland- rah rah – overly optimistic essay; but decent, but incomplete.
Absent:
How can one discuss Political relations between 2 world leaders without a brief description of – just where – they get their power from?
Hollywood Obomber and H. Clinton, and Trump, the Bushes, and Sanders, and Kerry, and Nuland, have been discussed at length. Although, even in their cases, their backgrounds, and for whom they serve, have been repeatedly obfuscated, and not just by the Oligarch media, also by their so-called opponents.
Cheerleader Jeff J. Brown offers:
no discussion on who chooses China’s President Zi Jinping. Who chooses China’s leaders? Unfortunately, the Chinese people, just as with the American people, have no active part in the operation of their government, or the choosing of their leaders.
Weakness:
A government which disestablishes its citizens, a government which sports a Totalitarian Power Pyramid, is morally and physically weaker than it needs to be in order to confront World Imperialism. Their peoples are Unfree, not fully developed humans, slaves, cogs, -Less than Others.
America’s Republic was destroyed on November 22, 1963. And the Chinese people have yet to successfully try a Democratic Republic – on for size. The moral conundrum of Who Rules Who? must be faced.
America has failed to present a Constitutional Government, with a Constitutional President, for half a Century. During that time, its Leaders, and its weak kneed citizens have murdered 5 million humans, dispersed millions more, stolen $Trillions, and destroyed a Dozen Nations. Each succeeding American Government has proved to be more depraved than the preceding one; and the so-called ‘President’ is ever less, more a puppet, more owned, more Hollywood, a Hologram.
The Chinese, and their Cheerleaders in the West, must confront the moral issue of Human Political Relations. The sweep of government paradigms has moved from Machiavelli’s Good Prince, to Lock’s Republic of the Wealthy, to Jefferson’s Democratic Republic of white men, to the Democratic Republic of Durruti’s Catalonia.
Standing Rigidly in One Spot:
is not a good idea. The retreat of Russia in 1990, was not a good thing, and it almost destroyed Russia, and tilt the balance of world power, unalterably, to the Zionist American Oligarchs. Russia’s retreat happened because the Russian People had no say, no power, no contractual – Constitutional participation in their own government. The Russian people were powerless to intervene and defend their own country.
The Chinese once pretended a Democratic Republic. In 2016, they can do more than pretend; they can go all the way. The Chinese people will eventually move; if they, themselves, determine their move, the charge forward will be of benefit to the Chinese People, and will healthily transform our World’s Political future.
For the Democratic Republics!
Durruti
@Peter J
You are stuck on ideology. The only thing we can hope for in this world is to have fair and honest leaders or rulers that put the wellbeing of their country and citizens first. How they come to power doesn’t really matter.
Todays democracy was developed as a means of controlling the masses and preventing revolution.
Give the masses just enough freedom that revolution won’t take hold. Maximum freedom in western “democracies was between the Russian revolution and the Vietnam war.
After the Vietnam war, US embarked on a course to take control of information fed to the masses.
Democracy only works if the masses are well informed. By taking away information, freedoms can also be taken away. Add to that total state surveillance with todays tech and the terrorism laws of the last few years and any aspiring political group can be nipped in the bud. Most freedoms that were allowed to the “western” masses after the Russian revolution can now be taken away.
I like the thought of an ideal democracy and believe it would be the best system… But.. it needs a non democratic means of keeping it free of corruption.
I totally agree with you. You nailed the real essence of the western political system in a short comment. Funny, often I find comment sections more interesting than articles. Western democracy opens the gate for the worst totalitarian tyranny world has ever seen. Check for example Star Wars episode three. It´s a great description about it. Sakers slogan, “Stop Empire´s war on Russia”, is telling. We don´t need ideologies, only truth and justice and…love and compassion.
“I like the thought of an ideal democracy … ”
Indeed it is an ideal, and so is communism – and that’s why it is nowhere to be seen; all there is is ‘sham democracies’ to fool the subjects into perpetual subjugation to the elites.
Perhaps it’s time to abandon the pretence that democracy is achievable and honestly seek forms of governance with just and fair rules for all, but without rulers. Free-market capitalist democracy is an oxymoron.
I think that one of the first steps to freedom is abandonment of the huge lie of democracy. The concept of democracy keeps people in captivity. How many times you have heard that, “yes, democracy is not perfect, but what´s the alternative? Communism or dictatorship?” Many are brainwashed to think that there are no way out of this destructive system. Like blind sheep at brink of the abyss. So is it better to run to abyss than turn back? Simply to fair and just world, with different priorities than now, when everything is ruled by money.
Democracy! What a promise. What a dream. What a fraud.
It has been said that democracy is an advance auction of other people’s person and property. How true that turns out to be. Politicians, technocrats and bureaucrats promise to deliver all manner of goodies. Just put us in charge first they opine. Healthcare, Welfare. Education. Superannuation. On and on and on goes the near infinite list of freebies & luscious goodies. They’ll get it all for you. And they’ll do it for less than it costs, for free even! Just give them power over everyone.
What is not acknowledged or discussed is that it does all have to paid for. There are no free lunches in this world.
The invisible 800 lb gorilla in the room is the secret wish that all the social givaways get paid for by other people with other people’s money. Each dirty dishonest voter pretends that with his champion wielding the levers of power, then other people will be made to pay. Each dirty dishonest voter anticipates the prospect of getting more out of the system than it costs him personally in contribution- each wants more goods and services at lower than it cost and someone else is going to be forced to pay the difference.
Each dishonest voter is self-delusional. Nevertheless each tries to rob his neighbour by employing his 1/4 vote per year. Certainly it is idiotic. Certainly the voters, each and every one, eventually gets looted. Certainly it is tragic how so many end up suffering as a result. Greece is but one contemporary example. There are plenty more and yet many, many more to come in the not too distant future.
Indeed, democracy is a god that failed. Interestingly, the ancient Greeks were well aware of the problems with democracy. So were some of the colonial rebels who went on to found the USA. Yet now it is the leaders of the USA that demand the god that failed be worshiped everywhere!
Look, this has all been tried time and time again. The results are predictable and demonstrable. Time to look at a better approach.
Siotu
Stuck on ideology, the man says, and then proceeds to define a half-baked, utterly naive, self-contradictory ideology. People coming up with stuff like that is exactly why ideology is important: Ideology defines how things should run, and if you get it wrong, like because you can’t be bothered to think about it or pay attention to those who have thought about it, things run badly.
Traditionally, the question has always been how to choose those who rule us. That is the wrong question and it rules out of bounds the right answer. But it’s still how people think, and so you get stuff like Peter AU concluding that if choosing those who rule us by a vote isn’t working so good, we should instead . . . just let oligarchs decide, or something, and it will all work out somehow. Because doing that has always worked great before . . . oh wait, it hasn’t.
The point, apparently, is to have “fair and honest leaders or rulers that put the wellbeing of their country and citizens first”. Well, that would be an improvement, certainly, and is what that traditional question has been devoted to. Near as I can make out, Peter AU has decided that since voting isn’t getting that result, we should try waving a magic wand instead. The idea seems to be that if “democracy” doesn’t work, then some sort of “autocracy” must–I guess since those must be the only possible options and he feels some kind of rulership has to work. Those who do not learn history are condemned to repeat it.
I see two broad variations on the whole ruler-selection thing. Either it’s random, like monarchy, in which case on average you get rulers about as good or bad as a typical person–some better, some worse. Or there’s some kind of selection, which means that people are going to become rulers because they worked and competed to become rulers, whether by bureaucratic infighting or by amassing wealth or by gaining popularity and running for office. Both approaches have bad problems.
The kind with selection means that disproportionately, you end up with people running your life because they’re the kind of people who want to run people’s lives. Which is to say, scum, or at best jerks, and mostly people who aren’t in fact interested in your welfare but in theirs. Selection of leaders also tends to involve corruption. There are exceptions to all this, like Putin and Chavez. But they are flukes. Overall, I can think of no selection method, democratic or otherwise, which has actually resulted in better-than-average people ending up on top, at least from the perspective of most of the governed. Some methods tend to give you leaders with some degree of expertise, but this is of little use since they are usually not using that expertise for the public’s benefit–often quite the opposite.
The monarchy kind on the other hand generally leaves you with leaders who aren’t fundamentally better or worse than anyone else but who are totally out of touch with the majority of citizens and have no reason to govern in their interests.
If we’re going to insist on leaders as the way for society to be governed, I really think the best approach would be fairly frequent selection by lottery. You’d get people who on average weren’t fundamentally evil, who didn’t climb to the position by backstabbing, but who also came from the ranks of the citizens and would hopefully take some time before they forgot it. I realize merely “not mostly scum” is a rather low ambition for leadership, which does not really satisfy the need many people apparently have for a leader they can wholeheartedly follow and look up to. But I see no potential for a selection approach which will not be gamed to bring the scum to the top. Random is the best anyone’s likely to get.
The real question is not how should leaders be chosen, but how should society be governed? And my answer is, it should be governed without rulers or great concentrations of power in the hands of a few. The difficulty there is, how to keep it that way, and how to actually get things done without centralized leadership and hierarchies. I do not wish to handwave this problem. It is a very real and difficult one, which needs a lot of work to be solved. But that work can be done, and modern technology is making it much more workable. So for instance I would point people to
http://www.loomio.org
where they have a software project for doing horizontal decision making, which is seeing a fair degree of success. There are other similar ideas out there.
“stuff like Peter AU concluding that if choosing those who rule us by a vote isn’t working so good, we should instead”
I got to that statement and stopped reading your rant. This is the piece from peter J’s comment that I was thinking about……
>Cheerleader Jeff J. Brown offers:
no discussion on who chooses China’s President Zi Jinping. Who chooses China’s leaders? Unfortunately, the Chinese people, just as with the American people, have no active part in the operation of their government, or the choosing of their leaders.<
Leaders vs Rulers? How many democracies have a referendum on each and every decision taken by government, or even on laws made by government? Here in Australia, the executive has the power to take Australia to war with no legal requirement for the decision to even be debated in parliament.
We vote for Rulers who once in power can rule over the voters.
But tell me, how do you keep a democracy honest? The basis of the ideal democracy is information. How do you ensure the information given to voters/populations is accurate?
The biggest hurdle I see to an everlasting perfect democracy is who is given the absolute power to keep the bastards honest?
For a short time the NSW ICAC (Independent commission against corruption) in Australia was making the news, MPs resigning ect. The ICAC had the power simply to follow the politicians money trails and make them public. The sort of information a democracy needs for informed voting. ICAC did not have power to lay charges.
Of course the money trails led from state politicians into federal politics, there was a court case and very little has been heard from NSW ICAC since.
On reading through the rest of your rant I see that first you have ridiculed me and my thoughts. Next you state your thoughts on how leaders come to power/how they should be judged, which are exactly the same as my thoughts and I totally agree with you, and then you drift off into some sort of fairytale utopia.
Maybe your problem is that you don’t communicate your ideas well? The simple face value of what you said is, we shouldn’t worry about ideology, and we shouldn’t worry about how leaders are chosen, except that it probably shouldn’t be democratically. But the important thing is that the leaders should be awesome. You don’t say how on earth one is supposed to end up with awesome leaders while ignoring the process of getting leaders.
I suppose to be charitable I should have assumed that’s not what you really meant–except that millions of people around the world have really meant exactly that. It’s called “fascism” and it hasn’t really worked all that well. The leaders kept on turning out to be powermad bastards instead of “fair and honest”.
I personally am, obviously, very pessimistic about all known processes for choosing leaders; they will all usually result in leadership that is in effect worse than the average person being led. Democracy is not an exception in either direction. If we’re going to restrict the solution field to ones where people are led, though, democracy is clearly better not because better leaders result but because people are not objects. If people are going to live under leadership, it is their right and responsibility to choose that leadership, and this remains the case even if they’re going to botch the job. As a side note, if I’m living under leadership that I had no opportunity to participate in choosing, that leadership has no legitimacy for me and I have IMO every right to kill him if I get the chance. Of course, actually existing “democracies” and indeed most plausible future “democracies” involve elites gaming the appearance of choice in various ways, like a magician “forcing” which card you’ll pick.
I suppose one might claim that makes such pseudo-democracies the worst of both worlds, giving the public neither the real ability to choose nor the awareness of illegitimacy that helps muster resistance to bady run autocratic governments. The Chinese government has, by and large, only one claim to legitimacy: Competence, success, one might say “the mandate of heaven”; if they lose that, the people will attempt to rise up and toss them. In practice, though, plenty of incompetent, brutal, kleptocratic autocracies and oligarchies have held on to power for long periods.
There are big problems no matter how leaders are gotten. But what’s so great about leaders anyway?
Words? My wife like lots of words. So many words that it becomes background noise, until I am in the shit for saying yes or no at the wrong time.
Although I have read all my life, I am not a writer. Mostly I read history and the history of wars.
I developed an interest because wars bring about the biggest changes in civilisations and systems.
What most interested me was the reason for war. The reason always came back to human character.
The same range of character types that never changes down through the ages. The good the bad, the psychopaths and those that couldn’t harm a fly, honest and dishonest.
There are also those who like independence and those that would prefer others to make decisions. Some people like the security of routine work where they are first taught to do a job and are then content repetitively doing this day in day out for the rest of their lives.
looking at history people have general flocked together into communities towns cities. Similar to any herd animal.
It seems that most if not all civilisations have had leaders/rulers in one form or another so perhaps that is a part of human character/instinct. I did see an archaeological documentary the other night on a civilisation in the Andes called the cloud people. The archaeologists could find no trace of buildings or burial sites for rulers or leaders and apparently this was an anomaly in the world of archaeology.
Families make up a community, communities make up a nation state and within that are all the character types that need to compromise to live together.
There needs to be a system for controlling the dangerous and dishonest character types. There also needs to be a means of defending the state from outside aggression.
Perhaps it is because of war that civilisations/nations have nearly always had either a single leader or a small group of people leading. The ability to make decisions quickly.
Earlier you said that I had not given any answers to what is a better system. There is no answer. Because of human character, what you see in this world is what you have got. we can try and make changers for the better, each to their own abilities.
Some times will be better, some worse. People will live and people will die and history rolls on.
“And my answer is, it should be governed without rulers or great concentrations of power in the hands of a few. The difficulty there is, how to keep it that way, and how to actually get things done without centralized leadership and hierarchies.” A democrat awoke in a tyranny, disguised in a form of a democracy, and what was his response? More democracy.
The idea of choosing civil servants and politicians by lottery is by far, in my opinion, the most practical (though it may be immediately dismissed as impossible by those at the tip of the pyramid of privilege). It was actually experimented in Greece and it was called “sortition”. I have dealt with this subject and issue in the article/dialog, http://wp.me/p2e0kb-1NO
For that matter, it was something that Lenin talked about, though as I am writing this comment, I do not remember precisely the terms – I think it was in his programmatic document (for the revolution).
Wow!
Look at all the responders to my missive, who have given up on Republican forms of government and prefer – to be ruled by Someone, or Someones!
Good Oligarchs?
This totalitarian political culture, accompanied by imperialist robbery and murder is what exists today. Humankind must rise up and reclaim their liberty. There is no other, easier, or sugar coated road to achieve Freedom.
Dead people who have surrendered – to others, who have forgotten the VISION, cannot do this:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=11&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjtjZaWiKfLAhWIySYKHXZzBPoQ_B0IdDAK&url=%2Fimgres%3Fimgurl%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.mtholyoke.edu%2Fcourses%2Frschwart%2Fhist255%2Fla%2Fbigliberty.jpg%26imgrefurl%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.mtholyoke.edu%2Fcourses%2Frschwart%2Fhist255%2Fla%2Fdelacroix.html%26h%3D600%26w%3D764%26tbnid%3DEIGQX-V2uJLcOM%3A%26tbnh%3D157%26tbnw%3D200%26docid%3DcvtmvlHmAC9EjM%26itg%3D1%26usg%3D__ZQ8REo8Lg5MJ_C-k3B-yX8BrlZ4%3D&usg=AFQjCNGujDJRQe2jiAX7x8FZqj4XAez17A&sig2=yv4ECIRKeEYxLBnhhh_7Hg&bvm=bv.115339255,d.dmo
They should recall Benjamin Franklin’s warning: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Or, as expressed more recently, Get down on your knees, and Genuflect!
For the Democratic Republics!
Durruti
pja
* Get down on your knees, and Genuflect!*
3/4 of the world is already prostrating before
those *good oligards* in beijingthe *masters of universe* in washington…..in case u havent noticed. !p.s.
somehow i know that pja would be on duty here, just like
clockwork
hehehehe
Almost OT —
Every time I come to the term “Eurangloland,” I stumble a bit as my mind insists on reading it as “Eurogangland,” which then seems to me to be a much more apt descriptor anyway, and so I now submit it as a more useful and accurate replacement.
Just for what it’s worth . . .
I also had trouble with “Eurangloland” ! Yours ‘Eurogangland’ is a definite improvement, considering the transatlantic bastard offspring’s origin.
@Jack
I have been reading it as exactly that – ‘Eurogangland.’ And I am not dyslexic..
I guess my subconscious rearranged the term to better reflect my values.
If Russia and Chine don’t want to make some kind of a block like NATO and EU they will perish or stagnate.
What do you think SCO and EEU are?
Wow, you didn’t even post the comment. Why? Could you please state exactly what about my comment violated the rules? If I don’t see a response, I’m done with this website.
Well, I don’t want to presume that the mods know what they’re doing without evidence. But, Ezra Pound, while a good poet, was a fascist. Not sure his ghost leaving will be a huge loss.
now now play nice..
I wonder if this has anything to do with India getting 4 air craft carriers.. Even the US never had more than 3 in the Indian ocean for their Iraq invasion. And this is very perplexing.. There is no power close by that requires such a force, unless the US wants to use india to block the indian ocean to China and also Russia. Or something like that. Other than the US even England and France only have 2 carriers. Since these are force projection devices and india would need to be pushed to do this, what is the US planning?
India vs China’s Maritime Silk Road/String of Pearls. India does have issues with the string of pearls, so no doubt the US will amplify this and make good use of India.
I been reading up on a little bit of modern history, it seems most of India’s problems were pushed on by the US. First the US forced Britain to grant india freedom but only by dismembering it into 3 countries where there are enemies on all sides, east and west Pakistan, then pushing China into a conflict with india where for thousands of years neither of them were actually interested in each other.. Can you imagine 2 large countries with the largest populations and empires next to each other not trying to conquer each other any other place else? Suddenly there is conflict. The splitting up of the country made democratic governance of such a large nation impossible with equal rights for all as they are now separate countries with majorly in power who are enemies of each other who don’t need to consider the rights of minorities at all. If you add in the muslim population of 800 mil of all 3 countries they are only slightly smaller to the hindu population of 900mil and other minorities would decide the outcome of government but federal states would have different power structure which happens even now. All the prodding and poking and scorning of india makes it behave in a way that is unpredictable as it sometimes don’t behave in the best interests of itself and then the US also interferes in the other countries to exaggerate this situation and we can clearly see how both india and Pakistan behave in exaggerated fashion just like Ukraine does with Russia. So now it is far easier to manipulate the government as there is no opposition strong enough to challenge the government just like in the US but far easier to control since it is already known who wields power..
But this latest fiasco definitely shows someone is strongly pushing for a confrontation behind the scenes. I thought 2 air craft carriers was over kill.. India has more aircraft than Russia does, for what???? india is following the US deep strike capability and like Israel with overwhelming military force than their neighbors can force project. So is Israel wagging the dog or is the US allowing countries they influence into becoming minor hegemons on its behalf? We say Israel is blackmailing the US to provide so much aid, but the US does not have to give away so much free military hardware!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It does only because it can control Israel to do its bidding when needed. All this has the writing of the US military industrial complex behind oiling the works.. We can clearly see the US stopping China becoming the hegemon in the east china seas.. We can argue on specifies but the trend is very clear.. Things happen or not because the US allows it or does not. It controls like 75% of world trade and can stomp anyone no matter how we would like to think it cant. Russia and Iran control large oil/gas trading and that is the only reason they have some freedom, no one else has even wiggle room here.
For what is currently happening in South East Asia today I would recommend Tony Cartalucci articles. Very informed and often with links to documents.
One document that I think is recommended reading for a backgrounder is “String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China’s Rising Power across the Asian Littoral.”
Available here as a PDF download. http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubid=721
Original link is in the Cartulucci article here http://journal-neo.org/2014/04/22/setting-the-stage-for-war-with-pakistan/
For India’s reaction to the string of pearls, I have forgotten where I read it and cannot provide the link but it seems that India or factions with power in India believe they are being surrounded by China.
US will not initiate a military attack on China itself in the SCS, but is looking for a proxy that will initiate a firefight.
Maybe Taiwan will be the Ukraine of SCS? I hope not.
the *sheriff* wants a new *deputy* in asia…..
* India’s leadership is sorely needed in the Asia-Pacific region, and the United States is prepared to cooperate with India “as never before” on the high seas, a top U.S. diplomat said Monday.* [1]
bharat is in cloud nine already,
make way australia. !
[1]
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/us-wants-leadership-role-india-asia-pacific-region
If I were China, I would be very careful about getting too close with Rusia. Putin is a great leader, but once Putin goes it is likely Russia will revert to chaos as Russia has never learned from its own history.
Russia is in denial about the Zionism that threatens their future so they will fall prey to it again just as they have in the past.
In looking at Russia’s history in the last few hundred years, Russia has destroyed every world power that has attacked it, whereas China has largely submitted when it has been attacked.
At the moment I think that a good percentage of China is addicted to the US dollar… like an opium addiction.
I agree. Russia is much, much better ally to China than the West. And a good analogy. Indeed, the power of money is like a drug.
The main battle today is between state sovereignty and globalism (not between socialism vs capitalism or democracy vs oligarchy).
Russia is a sovereign nation state and supportive of the maintenance of state sovereignty in politics, geopolitics, economics etc.
The elites who control USA and its allies push for worldwide globalism. That means abolition of the sovereignty of the nation states, worldwide neoliberalism (free trade areas, free movement of capital/services/products/people, more power to MNC’s etc), with major policy decisions being determined, approved and implemented not by states but by various transnational institutions (such as NATO, EU/EUROZONE, NAFTA, Transatlantic partnership etc).
Russia is an obstacle that needs to be destroyed so that the process of globalisation will continue.
In the west, we have the pretence of “elections” but in reality the system has degenerate into parliamentary dictatorships. The modern western – style political systems have never been democratic even though they pretend to be for propaganda reasons.
What we currently have are oligarchic political systems with elected presidents that have the role of monarchs. But even then are just puppets as major decisions are decided by other transnational institutions.
The Chinese political system is even more oligarchic compared to western style pseudo-democracy. The so called “people’s/soviet/democratic republics” were not democratic and were run by a communist party bureaucratic nomenklatura with the common people having no say and no power. Even though the soviet people were in favour of the continuation of the USSR and the soviet economy, the elites decided to dismantle both the USSR and the socialist system.
China has maintained the party dictatorship and embraced capitalism with the party elites and their families becoming billionaire businessmen at the expense of Chinese people.
Therefore, the main difference between the USSR and USA blocs were the status of business ownership (state control vs private control).
Democracy has not been implemented in the modern world.
Ancient Athens (and many other ancient greek city states) had a democratic form of government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy
“Russia is a sovereign nation state and supportive of the maintenance of state sovereignty in politics, geopolitics, economics etc.”
Au contraire…
http://www.pravdareport.com/russia/economics/30-12-2014/129431-usa_russia_central_bank-0/