by Pepe Escobar – posted with permission The key takeaways of the Two Sessions of the 13th National People’s Congress in Beijing are already in the public domain. In a nutshell: no GDP target for 2020; a budget deficit of at least 3.6% of GDP; one trillion yuan in special treasury bonds; corporate fees/taxes cut by 2.5 trillion yuan; a defense budget rise of a modest 6.6%; and governments at all levels committed to “tighten their
by Pepe Escobar – posted with permission Chinese General Qiao Liang argues, ‘If we have to dance with the wolves, we should not dance to the rhythm of the United States’ In 1999, Qiao Liang, then a senior air force colonel in the People’s Liberation Army, and Wang Xiangsui, another senior colonel, caused a tremendous uproar with the publication of Unrestricted Warfare: China’s Master Plan to Destroy America. Unrestricted Warfare was essentially
By Pepe Escobar – crossposted with Strategic Culture Foundation Italian master thinker Giorgio Agamben has been on the – controversial – forefront examining what new paradigm may be emerging out of our current pandemic distress. He recently called attention to an extraordinary book published seven years ago that already laid it all out. In Tempetes Microbiennes, Patrick Zylberman, a professor of History of Health in Paris, detailed the complex process through
By Pepe Escobar – posted with permission Beijing is turbocharging its Belt and Road and other game-changing plans despite Covid-19 and US hybrid warfare Amid the deepest economic contraction in nearly a century, President Xi Jinping had already made it very clear, last month, that China should be ready for unprecedented, relentless foreign challenges. He was not referring only to the possible decoupling of global supply chains and the non-stop demonization
by Pepe Escobar – cross.posted with Strategic Culture Foundation A new, radical paradigm shift is in progress. The U.S. economy may shrink as much as 40% in the first semester of 2020. China, already the world’s largest economy by PPP for a few years now, may soon become the world’s largest economy even in exchange rate terms. The post-Planet Lockdown world – still a hazy mirage – may well need
By Pepe Escobar – posted with permission Hegel saw history moving east to west – ‘Europe thus absolutely being the end of history, Asia the beginning’ Fasten your seat belts: the US hybrid war against China is bound to go on frenetic overdrive, as economic reports are already identifying Covid-19 as the tipping point when the Asian – actually Eurasian – century truly began. The US strategy remains, essentially, full spectrum dominance, with
By Pepe Escobar – posted with permission The times call for acting as poets instead of politicians Between unaccountability of elites and total fragmentation of civil society, Covid-19 as a circuit breaker is showing how the king – systemic design – is naked. We are being sucked into a danse macabre of multiple complex systems “colliding into one another,” producing all kinds of mostly negative feedback loops. What we already know for
By Pepe Escobar – posted with permission As a living embodiment of how East and West shall meet, Mahbubani is immeasurably more capable to talk about Chinese-linked intricacies than shallow, self-described Western “experts” on Asia and China. Especially now when demonization-heavy hybrid war 2.0 against China is practiced by most factions of the US government, the Deep State and the East Coast establishment. Distinguished fellow at the National University of
by Pepe Escobar for the Saker Blog (cross posted with the Strategic Culture Foundation) Hybrid War 2.0 on China, a bipartisan U.S. operation, is already reaching fever pitch. Its 24/7 full spectrum infowar arm blames China for everything coronavirus-related – doubling as a diversionist tactic against any informed criticism of woeful American unpreparedness. Hysteria predictably reigns. And this is just the beginning. A deluge of lawsuits is imminent – such
by Pepe Escobar for The Saker Blog (cross posted with the Asia Times) History teaches us that epidemics are more like revelatory moments than social transformers The plague-stricken town, traversed throughout with hierarchy, surveillance, observation, writing; the town immobilized by the functioning of an extensive power that bears in a distinct way over all individual bodies – this is the utopia of the perfectly governed city. – Michel Foucault, Discipline
by Pepe Escobar – posted with permission Covid-19 driven collapse of global supply chains, demand and mobility will painfully spawn next great tech-led economic models Nobody, anywhere, could have predicted what we are now witnessing: in a matter of only a few weeks the accumulated collapse of global supply chains, aggregate demand, consumption, investment, exports, mobility. Nobody is betting on an L-shaped recovery anymore – not to mention a V-shaped
By Pepe Escobar and crossposted with Consortium News You don’t need to read Michel Foucault’s work on biopolitics to understand that neoliberalism – in deep crisis since at least 2008 – is a control/governing technique in which surveillance capitalism is deeply embedded. But now, with the world-system collapsing at breathtaking speed, neoliberalism is at a loss to deal with the next stage of dystopia, ever present in our hyper-connected angst:
by Pepe Escobar – posted with permission. How Heraclitus, the Riddler, may teach us to fight Covid-19 He was known as “the Riddler.” Even “the Dark.” Heraclitus of Ephesus was one of a kind. In his heart of hearts a contemptuous aristocrat, this master of paradox despised all so-called wise men and the mobs that adored them. Heraclitus was the definitive precursor of social distancing. We, unfortunately, owe the “pre-Socratic” reductionist
By Pepe Escobar and crossposted with Strategic Culture Foundation As much as Covid-19 is a circuit breaker, a time bomb and an actual weapon of mass destruction (WMD), a fierce debate is raging worldwide on the wisdom of mass quarantine applied to entire cities, states and nations. Those against it argue Planet Lockdown not only is not stopping the spread of Covid-19 but also has landed the global economy into
by Pepe Escobar – Posted with permission In the Belt and Road framework, China is supplying much of the world including virus-hit Europe with medicine and healthcare items When President Xi Jinping was on a phone call in mid-March with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conti, before the arrival of a China Eastern flight from Shanghai to Milan full of medical help, the key takeaway was the Chinese pledge to develop
By Pepe Escobar – Posted with permission Like a shot ricocheting at Heaven’s Door, Bob Dylan has released a masterpiece dissecting JFK’s assassination What spectacular timing. Like a shot ricocheting at Heaven’s Door as a virus pandemic rages and Planet Lockdown is the new normal, Bob Dylan has produced a stunning 17-minute masterpiece dissecting the November 22, 1963, assassination of JFK – releasing it at midnight US Eastern Standard Time on Thursday.
By Pepe Escobar – posted with permission The Philosophical Silk Road as celebrated at an Italian airport: a meeting of Chinese and Greek/Latin stoicism Earlier this week a delegation of Chinese medics arrived at Malpensa airport near Milan from Shanghai on a special China Eastern flight carrying 400,000 masks and 17 tons of equipment. The salutation banner the visitors rolled out on the tarmac, in red and white, read, “We’re
By Pepe Escobar – posted with permission Fallout from Covid-19 outbreak puts Beijing and Washington on a collision course Among the myriad, earth-shattering geopolitical effects of coronavirus, one is already graphically evident. China has re-positioned itself. For the first time since the start of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1978, Beijing openly regards the US as a threat, as stated a month ago by Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Munich
by Pepe Escobar – posted with permission Is the planet under the spell of a pair of black swans – a Wall Street meltdown, caused by an alleged oil war between Russia and the House of Saud, plus the uncontrolled spread of Covid-19 – leading to an all-out “cross-asset pandemonium” as billed by Nomura? Or, as German analyst Peter Spengler suggests, whatever the averted climax in the Strait of Hormuz
by Pepe Escobar – posted with permission Once again it was Russia that just prevented the threatened ‘Muslim invasion’ of Europe advertised by Erdogan At the start of their discussion marathon in Moscow on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with arguably the most extraordinary diplomatic gambit of the young 21st century. Putin said: “At the beginning of our meeting, I would like to once
