24 May 2021: Commenting on the weaponizing of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, a new book titled Hegemony with Chinese Characteristics by Asim Doğan and the projection of Chinese greatness in academia: China's multifaceted great power projection.

25 May 2021: As part of President Donald Trump’s spending and pandemic relief package, the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), included a provision calling for the director of national intelligence to help produce an unclassified report on everything government agencies know about UFOs, including scores of unusual sightings reported by military pilots. Thus thanks to the Trump-era covid relief bill, the UFO report is due sometime next month which no doubt will create some more media frenzy, but it already started this week. We already covered the Erich von Däniken claim currently promoted by the History Channel that extraterrestrials have visited Earth for millions of years with the current UFO claims by CNN and CBS 60 minutes following see our investigation of what is behind this current UFO phenomena. Major Case Study. The surprising history of the current UFO sensation.

27 May 2021: Following our article about how UFO sightings went from joke to national security worry in Washington, we will next try to address 'how come that such stories flourish and amplify, especially in the U.S.-This question truly merits a very serious social (and political) study'... while among others discussing the origins of QAnon and the storm of the U.S. Capitol.  A question that remained was how something that started on the anarchic message board could go on to power right-wing thought to the point where QAnon believers were erecting gallows on the lawn of the Capitol. To answer it, we need to look closely not just at what QAnon is, but where it comes from and how it lodges itself so stubbornly into the mind of its adherents. Revisiting the Paranoid Style in American Politics.

1 June 2021: When the Israeli security cabinet and Hamas agreed to an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire to halt 11 days of fighting, this was followed by celebrations in Gaza as the ceasefire took hold. Responding to this, the US said it would seek to rebuild its relations with the Palestinians by reopening its consulate in Jerusalem and providing aid to help rebuild Gaza, Secretary of State Antony Blinken says. The Holy Land and its contestants.

2 June 2021: Back in Nov. 2020, we posted an article where we went on to look at Eastern and Western culture but mostly from a psychological point of view whereby in this article we like to take a look at its economic aspects including the hotly debated 'Great Divergence' while ending with 'the East and the rest'. From East to West and back to East?

3 June 2021: The origins of COVID-19 are shrouded in mystery and conspiracy theories. Some say it started in a lab when scientists fell sick after manipulating a bat-coronavirus. Others say the team was working on a bioweapon for the Chinese military. Analyzing the Wuhan Lab Theory.

5 June 2021: L'oubli des cultures les plus indigènes et la valorisation des Gaëls étaient le résultat direct des idées racistes et de suprématie Aryenne, qui ont alors gagné le crédit politique en Europe. Recherche sur ce qui ne va pas avec les Celtes.

7 June 2021: The Discovery Channel announced a series about Atlantis deciding that novelist Stel Pavlou was right to tie Plato’s allegory to the alleged flooding of the Black Sea around 5000 BCE, despite matching none of the details of Plato’s fictitious story. Why We Never Found Atlantis.

9 June 2021: British politics on the eve of the Second World War remains a subject of enduring fascination. Neville Chamberlain believed Hitler's promise that all the Fuhrer really wanted was the Sudetenland, the ethnic-German part of Czechoslovakia, and had no designs on Poland or the rest of Europe. How Britain hoped to avoid war with Germany in the 1930s.

11 June 2021: Recently Christie’s is selling a bottle of Chateau Petrus 2000 that spent 14 months aging aboard the International Space Station while orbiting Earth. But do such expensive wines really taste all that much better than cheaper wines? The wine report.

12 June 2021: Will inflation be on the rise again? Here is an overview of past developments:

14 June 2021:  When (posted on 5 April 2021) we asked does Myanmar now face civil war, today it now looks that Myanmar is indeed at a point of no return. The army’s February coup, meant to shift power within the existing constitutional framework surgically, has instead unleashed revolutionary energy that will be nearly impossible to contain. So the question now becomes, what Myanmar as a failed state may look like:

17 June 2021:  In an earlier article, we pointed out that while popular with Irish and Scottish Nationalists that the word "Celtic" slowly came to imply "indigenous", and any further distinctions were dropped. But there is another under-researched aspect to early Irish and Scottish Nationalism and that is (as among others pointed out by Dr. Mark Williams Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History) its relationship to the occult. Major Case Study: The less-known aspects of early Irish and Scottish Nationalism.

20 June 2021:  Back already early February this year, the British media wrote about how the previous six months had been a PR disaster for the British Royal Family. In our new article, we explain why historians believe that Queen Victoria's public image of her family is primarily responsible for today's monarchy and public perception of the Royal Family. Queen Victoria's curse?

22 June 2021:  Early on already, Historian James Harrison considered the CCP party's actions of rewriting Chinese history as "the most massive attempt at ideological re-education in human history."In fact, even the founding date of 1 July is a myth and it seems clear from the available evidence that an organization calling itself the Communist Party of China was born a full eight months before the First National Congress as evidenced by the bulletin Gongchandang, published in November 1920 by Chen Duxiu’s Shanghai group, and its British counterpart, The Communist, dated August the same year. Understanding the 100 years of the current regime in China.

23 June 2021:

24 June 2021: Going to the roots of International Day of Yoga on 21 June 2021 modern yoga, evolved in a discursive milieu that incorporates such disparate strands as Hindu religion, occultism, new thought, and gymnastics. Whereby given the recent entry of  QAnon one could argue that Yoga and New Age thinking has always been a breeding ground for conspiracy theories. To understand this it is good to start with the history of how Yoga came to the West: The Invention of Modern Yoga.

26 June 2021:

1 July 2021: Much has been made about the de-classified government report on UFOs issued on Friday whereby even Politico published an article that spins a conspiracy theory. Since the UFO report doesn't include everything the writer wants, he asserts (w/o proof) that there is "undoubtedly" hidden "information" withheld from the UFO task force and asks for Congress to seek answers. From esotericism to alleged Science.

3 July 2021: For rising states, the act of peacefully displacing the hegemon consists of two broad strategies generally pursued in sequence. The first strategy is to blunt the hegemon’s exercise of those forms of control, particularly those extended over the rising state; after all. no rising state can displace the hegemon if it remains at the hegemon’s mercy. The second is to build forms of control over others; indeed, no rising state can become a hegemon if it cannot secure the deference of other states through coercive threats, consensual inducements, or rightful legitimacy. Unless a rising power has first blunted the hegemon, efforts to build order are likely to be futile and easily opposed. And until a rising power has successfully conducted a good degree of blunting and building in its home region, it remains too vulnerable to the hegemon’s influence to confidently turn to a third strategy, global expansion, which pursues both blunting and building at the global level to displace the hegemon from international leadership. Together, these strategies at the regional and then global levels provide a rough means of ascent for the Chinese Communist Party’s nationalist elites, who seek to restore China to its due place and roll back the historical aberration of the West’s overwhelming global influence. Understanding the 100 years of the current regime in China Part Two.

9 July 2021: This expose about Eurasianism and, more importantly, present-day neo-Eurasianism when initially elements of the far right-sided with Russia, and then explores how the far-right pro-Russian attitudes developed in the West during the Cold War, as well as pointing out that Soviet Russia was often prone to use the Western for the right for its own political benefits. This also becomes more pertinent when we expand on the recent book War for Eternity: The Return of Radical Traditionalism and the Rise of the Populist Right by Benjamin R. Teitelbaum. Who links Bannon with Aleksandr Dugin and Jair Bolsonaro’s muse Olavo de Carvalho. They, in turn, connect via outfits such as Arktos publishing, Cambridge Analytica, and a Blackwater spin-off named Jellyfish to white identitarians such as Daniel Friberg in Sweden and populist intellectuals in France Italy, and Austria. Their common currency is Traditionalism, an anti-modernist religion whose earliest exponents were Italian fascist philosopher Julius Evola and his French counterpart, René Guénon. Our article shows how Dugin, Bannon, and Olavo have been influenced by this esoteric blend, though they, and the heirs of Evola and Guénon, interpret it in disparate ways. Major Case Study. Which way will the west turn? Left or right?

15 July 2021: Veering a bit from our usual topics today and having covered such figures like Carlos Castaneda we present a case study about Edgard Cayce, who was born outside Hopkinsville, parlayed a quirky, backwoods upbringing, where he claimed to absorb books by sleeping on them, into a large following that continues today. There are hundreds of people throughout the United States who will testify, at the drop of a hat, to the accuracy of Cayce's predictions, diagnoses, and other claims. All of this while the Cayce movement is described as cult-like while others call Edgar Cayce a fraud, so who is right? So we bring you the Edgar Cayce Secret Files, evidenced to be accurate it tells you everything there is to know about Edgar Cayce today. Major Case Study: The Edgar Cayce Secret Files.

18 July 2021:  Sean McMeekin’s recent 2021 books contention that the Second World War was more Stalin’s war than Hitler’s has a long and dubious pedigree reaching back to the war-revolution conspiracy theory of the interwar years. According to this myth, Stalin plotted to precipitate a new world war in order to foment a global revolution. So sparse is the evidence for the war-revolution hypothesis that McMeekin resorts to citing a blatant forgery: a document purporting to report on a speech Stalin supposedly made in August 1939 in which he spoke about the Sovietisation of Europe as a result of the war he intended to provoke. In fact, there is very little evidence that Stalin had any firm notions in 1944-45 about developing some sort of Communist bloc in Eastern Europe after the war. This will be shown on hand of the research results we post the coming week, including that in the end it was Hitler’s intervention in reference to Pearl Harbor that truly created a world war and transformed international history.

20 July 2021:  Coming in the wake of the distorted book by Sean McMeekin 'Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II' rather carefully analyzing its content we did much additional research and many details of what has been left out of a McMeekin's 1919 and what has now become a multi-part case study where we discovered Germany's rearmament and the destruction of Poland as part of a program to overturn the results of the First World War leading even Barack Obama in 2016 to propose a Polish missile defense site. In spite of their shared antagonisms it produced the partnership at Rapallo that started Europe down the road to renewed war. As will among others be argued here, many of the key milestones along that path - the Reichswehr’s acceptance of Hitler, the speed of German rearmament, British and French appeasement, the Soviet purges, the inability of the European powers to contain Hitler, and finally, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - as we early on show can only be fully understood in light of the Rapallo relationship and what led up to this. Major Case Study: Russia, Germany, and Poland Part One.

21 July 2021:  While we have covered Poland on several earlier occasions we noticed that what was missing in the most recent book on this subject is among others that the German military leadership, who in 1919 sought rearmament and the destruction of Poland as part of a program to overturn the results of the First World War. Bolshevik leaders in Moscow were even bolder, dreaming of a worldwide revolution. Their shared antagonisms produced the partnership at Rapallo that started Europe down the road to renewed war. As has been argued here, many of the key milestones along that path - the Reichswehr’s acceptance of Hitler, the speed of German rearmament, British and French appeasement, the Soviet purges, the inability of the European powers to contain Hitler, and finally, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - as we shall see can only be fully understood in light of the Rapallo relationship and what led up to this. And so we continue in part two that as the Russian Civil War began in earnest, only one state had established diplomatic relations with Bolshevik Russia and could provide aid: the former archenemy Germany.  Russia, Germany, and Poland Part Two.

22 July 2021:  The tribulations and consequences of the Treaty of Versailles Opened on 28 June 2019 the exhibition in Arras organized by the Palace of Versailles starts with the proclamation of the German Empire in the same Hall of Mirrors that witnessed the signing of Peace of Versailles on 28 June. The year 1919 was, in fact, a catalytic moment not only did it see already earlier the rise of Mussolini, in March 1919, but 51 representatives from two dozen countries also met in Moscow at the Founding Congress of the Communist International. Long before Versailles, the other great totalitarian ideology of the 20th century, Marxism-Leninism, was also on the march. When Germany signed the armistice ending hostilities in the First World War on November 11, 1918, its leaders believed they were accepting a "peace without victory," as outlined by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in his famous Fourteen Points. Russia, Germany, and Poland Part Three.

23 July 2021: The ends of World War I, which had left the world with two pariah states, Germany because it had begun hostilities, Russia because the Bolshevik Revolution had transformed the country from a wartime ally to a postwar menace. Hardly had the ink dried on the punitive peace treaty signed at Versailles in June 1919 than the two pariahs joined forces. And as we are about to see  Russia offered a place for the German army to develop weapons and train men to violate the treaty that its civilian government had just signed. In return, Russia would learn how to modernize the Red Army, huge in size but badly trained and poorly equipped. The agreement was formalized at Rapallo, Italy. “Poland must and will be wiped off the map,” wrote Hans von Seeckt, the man who established Sondergruppe Russland (Special Group Russia), the bureau that would manage military relations between Germany and Russia. Seeckt was referring, of course, to the country that Versailles had resurrected between them. (Poland had been divided between Germany, Russia, and the now-vanished Austro-Hungarian Empire.) It was not an unfair peace that motivated Seeckt and his fellow officers, it was the far more ambitious aim of reversing Germany’s defeat in the First World War.” Russia, Germany, and Poland Part Four.

The First World War proved to be the turning point in modern Polish history. It smashed the three empires which held it captive (Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary) and created a power vacuum that a new state in eastern Europe could fill. The core of independent Poland was the former province removed from Russia by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918). To this was added territory from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles (1919) and from Austria and Hungary by the Treaties of St Germain and Trianon (1919 and 1920).

24 July 2021: As we have seen, the First World War proved to be the turning point in modern Polish history. It smashed the three empires which held it captive (Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary) and created a power vacuum that a new state in eastern Europe could fill. The core of independent Poland was the former province removed from Russia by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918). At the Spa Conference in July 1920, the victorious Allies invited the German government to discuss disarmament and reparations. Nevertheless, the Polish Army’s advance into Ukraine in the spring of 1920 was poorly timed. Not only were most of the White armies defeated, but the Red Army was increasingly effective as a fighting force. Russia, Germany, and Poland Part Five. 

Leader of the German delegation in Russia Hans von Seeckt (third from right) next to Wilhelm II (center):

25 July 2021: As we will see it was a handful of German actors that as far back as 1917 contrary to Stalin started to have an influence in Russia. Whereby at the end of World War I, which had left the world with two pariah states, Germany because it had begun hostilities, Russia because the Bolshevik Revolution had transformed the country from a wartime ally to a postwar menace. Hardly had the ink dried on the punitive peace treaty signed at Versailles in June 1919 than the two pariahs joined forces.

The agreement was formalized at Rapallo, Italy. “Poland must and will be wiped off the map,” wrote Gen. Hans von Seeckt, the man who established Sondergruppe Russland (Special Group Russia), the bureau that would manage military relations between Germany and Russia. Seeckt was referring, of course, to the country that Versailles had resurrected between them. (Poland had been divided between Germany, Russia, and the now-vanished Austro-Hungarian Empire.) Russia, Germany, and Poland Part Six.

26 July 2021:  As Hugo Gustav Adolf Stoltzenberg (1883-1974) associated with the German government's clandestine chemical warfare activities finalized the contract to produce poison gas in Soviet Russia, the next war looked like it might be approaching faster than anyone had predicted. Chancellor Cuno, who had initiated passive resistance in early 1923, spent the next eight months trying to get the French and Belgians to compromise on the issue of reparation payments. His policy of printing money triggered the rapid devaluation of the German currency, starting a hyperinflationary crisis that wiped out the remaining savings of the working and middle classes. The chaos inspired strikes across the country. After a vote of no-confidence in August 1923, Chancellor Cuno resigned. While the communist insurrection had failed, another danger to the Republic loomed. In response to the growing national political crisis, the state government of Bavaria, the heartland of the radical right, declared a state of emergency. The local Reichswehr commander, the state commissioner (governor), and the chief of police took control of the government. Fearful lest they be preempted by those even further to the right - like the Black Reichswehr soldiers who had seized Küstrin - the ruling trio banned public meetings other than those they themselves had set up. On November 8, during a rally they had organized in the Bürgerbräukeller, one of Munich’s gigantic beer halls, the three leaders of Bavaria were rudely interrupted by a sallow thirty-four-year-old with a narrow mustache. He stood on a table, picked up a beer stein, drank it to the dregs, smashed it to the floor, then drew a pistol and fired into the ceiling. With the attention of a crowd of more than 6,000 upon him, he then shouted, “The National Revolution has begun!” At gunpoint, he seized the ruling triumvirate and led them into a back room. There, he tried to force them to agree to participate in a new government he planned to organize. Russia, Germany, and Poland Part Seven.

On the left: Lipetsk Air Base, was the first joint military facility to begin operation. On the right: Unable to develop modern technologies of war at home, the Reichswehr used approximations of aircraft and tanks in maneuvers.

28 July 2021: As we have detailed, Russia offered a place for the German army to develop weapons and train men to violate the treaty that its civilian government had just signed. In return, Russia would learn how to modernize the Red Army, huge in size but badly trained and poorly equipped. The agreement was formalized at Rapallo, Italy. “Poland must and will be wiped off the map,” wrote Gen. Hans von Seeckt (pictured below), the man who established Sondergruppe Russland (Special Group Russia), the bureau that would manage military relations between Germany and Russia. Seeckt was referring, of course, to the country that Versailles had resurrected between them. (Poland had been divided between Germany, Russia, and the now-vanished Austro-Hungarian Empire.) “It was not an unfair peace that motivated Seeckt and his fellow officers. It was the far more ambitious aim of reversing Germany’s defeat in the First World War. In the 1920s, without troubling the civilian government in Berlin, the Reichswehr (German defense force) set up a ring of bases south and east of Moscow. German companies like Junkers and Krupp contracted directly with the Soviet government to manufacture warplanes in Russia, deliver coveted German-built locomotives, and train Red Army technicians. Versailles had banned all offensive weapons, but the Reichswehr in Russia included warplanes, battle tanks, and poison gas. In the end, however, with a war of machines - tanks and planes - rising in its place as we will see in part seven, Hugo Stolzenberg finalized the contract to produce poison gas in Soviet Russia, the next war looked like it might be approaching faster than anyone had predicted. Russia, Germany, and Poland Part Eight.

Central Europe in 1938:

29 July 2021:  Contrary to accounts like McMeekin 2021, for the Soviet Union, Germany offered desperately needed expertise for its military and industrial sectors. For Germany, the Soviet Union became a means to undermine the Treaty of Versailles by engaging in a partnership that led to rearmament. Whereby a critical question we are answering next is how these two countries, frequently at odds with each other ideologically and militarily, were able to convince each other that exchange, and eventually alliance, was feasible. Russia, Germany, and Poland Part Nine.

1 Aug. 2021:  Desperate to avoid war, Chamberlain initiated shuttle diplomacy to reach an “acceptable” compromise short of war. This produced the Munich Agreement, where Hitler received all of his territorial demands without the need to go to war. Germany’s armaments lead had produced another bloodless victory: American ambassador in Paris William Bullitt reported home that it was the perceived strength of German air power that had convinced the French and their British partners to surrender yet again to German demands. Whereby it was Hitler’s intervention in reference to Pearl Harbor that truly created the world war and transformed international history. Russia, Germany, and Poland Part Ten.

Underneath Chamberlain waving his agreement with Hitler:

2 Aug. 2021: The German invasion stunned Neville Chamberlain. He delivered a quiet and cautious address to Parliament shortly after the news came in on March 15. Two days later, he addressed a crowd in Birmingham, saying, “Public opinion in the world has received a sharper shock than has ever yet been administered to it, even by the present regime in Germany.” He went on to insist defensively, “Really I have no need to defend my visits to Germany last autumn, for what was the alternative?” But there was a hint of resolve in the speech that was new. He concluded by saying that “No greater mistake could be made than to suppose that, because it believes war to be a senseless and cruel thing, this nation has so lost its fiber that it will not take part to the utmost of its power in resisting aggression.”Hitler had more shocks in store. Seven days after taking Czechoslovakia, he seized the city of Memel from Lithuania. The following day, he forced Romania into a pro-German trade treaty, providing the Wehrmacht with a guaranteed supply of oil. Hitler also began exerting heavier pressure to bring Poland into the German orbit. A final measure of reassurance arrived when a British diplomat delivered a fresh offer from Chamberlain to negotiate over Poland - hinting that the British guarantee to Poland was not, in fact, ironclad. But with the renewal of Rapallo imminent, Hitler was ready to start his war and would not allow any peace talks or concessions to divert him from that aim. Russia, Germany, and Poland Part Eleven.

4 Aug. 2021:  While Germany and Russia expanded their work together at sea, a new economic agreement had not yet been reached. Negotiations in December and January 1940 had brought the two sides closer, but no final treaty had resulted. Then, Ribbentrop sent a personal letter to Stalin calling for the partition of Poland. Stalin agreed to convene another summit in Moscow to discuss economic conditions. The result was the German-Soviet Commercial Agreement of February 11, 1940. Victory over Poland came with a cost for both Germany and the Soviet Union. Russia, Germany, and Poland Part Twelve.

5 Aug. 2021:  Short of German expectations, between January and May 1940, the USSR would export 155,000 tons of oil, 128,000 tons of grain, and 8,600 tons of manganese, with most of those quantities arriving in April and May. Stalin had made clear that he held the initiative throughout eight months of contentious Soviet-German economic talks: the Germans needed Soviet raw materials more than the USSR needed German military equipment, especially as Germany faced the combined might of Britain and France in the west. That equation would change suddenly. The Japanese were angered by a Soviet-Chinese nonaggression treaty of August 1936 and by the subsequent sale of Soviet military aircraft and munitions to China. Russia, Germany, and Poland Part Thirteen.

6 Aug. 2021:  On December 18, 1940, Hitler issued OKW Directive No. 21. It began: “The German Armed Forces must be prepared to crush Soviet Russia in a quick campaign (Operation Barbarossa) even before the conclusion of the war against England.”1 He ordered preparations to start immediately, with the campaign to commence by May 15, 1941. As the news of German attacks began to filter in from the west, Stalin reacted with disbelief. When Rudolf Hess, the second-ranking member of the Nazi Party, flew to Scotland on his own initiative to negotiate a peace deal. Stalin again interpreted the information conspiratorially as an indication of a possible British-German peace arrangement directed against the Soviet Union.23 Messages from Richard Sorge in Tokyo – relaying precise information on German military plans – were also read as part of a plan to force the USSR into accepting economic concessions.24 In sum, Stalin interpreted the growing mountain of intelligence as either a provocation or a trap. Russia, Germany, and Poland Part Fourteen.

9 Aug. 2021: Leaders in both Russia and Germany saw the future of their states as intertwined. German ambassador Brockdorff-Rantzau called the Soviet-German relationship a Schicksalgemeinschaft, a “community of fate.” The term implied that the destinies of the two states were bound up for good or for ill. German officers and politicians hoped that the Soviet Union would serve as a partner against the Western democracies, a role that the Soviets did fulfill from 1939 to 1941. In turn, Soviet leaders Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin all saw Germany as a future partner in revolution. It was a part that would be forced upon East Germany for over four decades. The futures of both countries and their hundreds of millions of residents were inextricably linked. By June 22, 1941, thanks to years of work in collaboration, Germany and the Soviet Union shared a border, a capacity for making war, and exterminationist ideologies. More than 30 million people would die in the struggle that then unfolded between Berlin and Moscow, the final price of the bargain. Russia, Germany, and Poland Part Fifteen.

19 Feb. 2021: A subject, we covered extensively further below China in retrospect now suddenly honors 4 soldiers who died during the Galwan clash, disproves AltNews’ sly attempts to discredit India’s claims of Chinese casualties...

21 Feb. 2021: The following map shows the largest trading partner of each European country.

23  Feb. 2021: When President Joe Biden entered the White House determined to restore the world’s confidence in the United States. That task is particularly important in context of China. Where will the China/US competition lead the world?

25 Feb. 2021: In the following, we proceed with investigating the dynamics of modern China, Korea, and a strengthened Japan. The period under discussion is when the non-Western world focused increasingly upon issues of race and ethnicity, nationality and sovereignty, and the multiple ways East Asians formed and re-formed their own realities in the wake of the First World War.  Can a potential future Pacific War be avoided?

27 Feb. 2021: The U.S.-Japan rivalry escalated in the aftermath of the First World War to the point where the new Republican administration under President Warren Harding felt that it was necessary to initiate a naval limitation conference when strategic thinking permeated the Japanese Navy. Of course, the Japanese Navy was far from being a monolithic entity as illustrated by the clash between Admiral Katō Tomosaburō and Vice Admiral Katō Kanji, who differed vastly in their view of global naval strategy and the future course that Japan should take.  Part Two Can a potential future Pacific War be avoided?

1 March 2021: Having recently covered; Where will the China/US competition lead the world? Turning our view to SE Asia China looks the more likely prize-winner. It is the region’s biggest trading partner and pumps in more investment than America does. At least one South-East Asian country, Cambodia, is in effect already a Chinese client state. And none is willing to cross China by openly siding with America in the superpowers’ many rows. Trade and investment among the countries of South-East Asia outweigh the business they do with China. Another mechanism is strengthening ties with other Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea, one ASEAN has rightly embraced. The rivalry between America and China in South-East Asia.

5 March 2021: Having aspired to be a member of the civilized community by adopting the Western political and social norms, the Chinese now discovered that the nation-state system was not fair and open; rather, it was dominated by Western powers eager to protect their own interests the Chinese realized that Westernization alone would not win them recognition in international affairs. Instead, they focused on recovering national sovereignty through diplomatic negotiations and treaty revisions. Paradoxically they believed that although the nation-state system was a tool used by the Western powers to control the world, the system allowed a discussion of national sovereignty as expounded in Wilson’s Fourteen Points. To them, the only way to beat the system was to protect China’s territorial sovereignty.  Part Three Can a potential future Pacific War be avoided?

8 March 2021:

12 March 2021:  On 9 March Asia Pacific commander Philip Davidson said that China could invade Taiwan in the next six years and that (as has been clear for sometime China is the world's rising power while the US is currently a declining power) Beijing wants to take Washington’s world leadership role by 2050. This comes after Chinese President Xi Jinping has called on troops to "put all (their) minds and energy on preparing for war" in a visit to a military base in the southern province of Guangdong. Following is an overview of the wider background that led up to the current  situation. Major Case Study. The lead up to present-day China and the making of the ChinaTaiwan crisis.

15 March 2021:

16 March 2021: After a year of canceled concerts, closed-door sporting events, and restricted air travel, vaccine passports are being touted as a way to quicken the route back to normalcy. But as explained, there are still some open questions including some reasons for concern. Papers, please, and then:

24 March 2021: Based on the invention of Erich von Däniken, whose origins we will explore, with on the side some remnants of the theories by neo-Nazi's like Ernst Zundel, Wilhelm Landig, and Rudolf J. Mund, who argued that Nazis invented flying saucers had taken their breakthrough technology to bases deep under the South Pole, the American History Channel has a series titled "Ancient Aliens" that claims to explore the controversial theory that extraterrestrials have visited Earth for millions of years from the age of the dinosaurs to ancient Egypt and present what as we will see can best be described as a sensationalized bricolage. Secret Nazis and the return of the Ancient Aliens.

26 March 2021: Following the heated debate during the US-China Alaska meeting, President Joe Biden got a taste of what the next four years may look like: a new era of bitter superpower competition with China since it opened diplomatic relations with the United States. This is also where Japanese and U.S. defense chiefs agreed in their meeting last week to cooperate in the event of a military clash between China and Taiwan closely. Making it time for us to continue our multi-article, the purpose of this is too to understand potentially could lead to a futures second pacific war if China follows up on its threats to attack Taiwan with as a purpose to take control of what China terms the South China Sea. Part Four Can a potential future Pacific War be avoided?

27 March 2021: Efforts to dislodge stuck Suez Canal ship with tug boats suspended till today with authorities cannot predict when it may be dislodged.

29 March 2021: On Saturday, China and Iran, both subject to U.S. sanctions, signed a 25-year cooperation agreement. The deal is expected to increase bilateral trade and military cooperation as US rivals move to deepen ties. As we will point out, this does not come as a surprise as this relationship goes back many years. The enduring relationship between China and Iran.

1 April 2021: At the heart of the conflict between the United States and Japan during the 1930s was the importance of two competing ideologies of world order, liberal internationalism and Pan-Asianist regionalism. From the Manchurian crisis of 1931 up through fruitless negotiations in the fall of 1941 discord consistently turned on basic principles about world govern­ance, tied to rising geopolitical stakes. This also includes the American reception of the Japanese government's efforts to shape American public opinion in the 1930s through a vigorous program of cultural diploma­cy. By tapping the empire’s cultural riches or “soft power.” Japan’s leaders hoped to combat negative perceptions in the United States and legitimize their regionalist aspirations on the continent. Part Five Can a potential future Pacific War be avoided?

3 April 2021: Chinese military aircraft simulated missile attacks on a US aircraft carrier during an incursion into Taiwan’s air defence zone three days after Joe Biden’s inauguration, according to intelligence from the US and its allies.The revelations highlight that the intense military competition between the two superpowers around Taiwan and the South China Sea has not eased, posing a challenge to any attempts the Biden administration might make to improve US relations with Beijing. Part Six Can a potential future Pacific War be avoided?

5 April 2021: Because so many people in Myanmar supported the military's 2017 slaughter of Rohingya, the generals seem to have concluded that they can get away with shooting people in Myanmar whom they don't like, such as pro-democracy protesters. Only concerted pressure can get the generals to talk to the civilians and thereby put Myanmar onto a less ruinous path. The alternative is a failed state at the heart of Asia. What next with Myanmar.

12 April 2021:

14 April 2021: Yesterday Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said the island will defend itself "to the very last day" if attacked by China. While yesterday the U.S. blacklists seven Chinese supercomputing entities citing national security concerns. Accidental war and territorial sovereignty. Part Seven Can a potential future Pacific War be avoided?

15 April 2021:  Last week, UNESCO commemorated the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsis. 27 years ago the Rwandan genocide erupted following the plane crash of then-President Juvenal Habyarimana. For the next 100 days, armed militias engaged in a killing spree against the ethnic minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus. In total, some 800,000 people died. The French, who were allies of the Hutu government under Habyarimana, had sent a special force to evacuate their citizens and set up safe zones. Although they witnessed the horror all around them, to this day, they are accused of having done very little to stop the killing. Major Case Study. Investigating the real story behind the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsis.

16 April 2021: Context is as important for Artificial Intelligence(AI) as it is for people. Just like people need to orient when looking for answers (you don’t look for iPhone solutions in a car repair manual), AI's data source requires curation and context. For sure is, data governance is more important than ever. What data is owned by the organization? What can be done with it? What are the data sources, and how is it being consumed or translated by other systems and processes? How well is data being leveraged to produce value for the enterprise and the customer? How can data issues be addressed and remediated? Dismantling the myths of AI.

18 April 2021: Enchanted determinism explains newspaper headlines such as ‘Can algorithms prevent suicide?’ or ‘can AI read emotions?’ Nobody has come close to such remarkable results, yet the dream that a machine can read emotions or stop people from ending their life is stronger than ever. These illusions distract from the far more relevant questions: Whom do these systems serve? What are the political econo­mies of their construction? And what are the wider planetary consequences? In part two of dismantling Artificial Intelligence's myths (AI), we look, among others at, the new Mappa Mundi? AI, the Myth of Clean Tech, AI and algorithmic exceptionalism, games without frontiers, facial recognition, and language prediction. Dismantling the myths of AI Part Two.

20 April 2021:

22 April 2021: Following is an analysis of positive thinking, self-help, and certain strands of modern Psychology. As we will see some psychologists see the present limitations of their field clearly. We also indicate how an ascendant power elite defined by the concurrent drives to do well and do good, to change the world while also profiting from the status quo. It consists of enlightened businesspeople and their collaborators in the worlds of charity, academia, media, government, and think tanks. So what is with Psychological Science?

24 April 2021: After the ‘sofa-gate’ incident in the EU, President Biden is now posed to be the first US President who dares to use the genocide word in reference to the systematic annihilation of Armenians. We explain; Why, and what happened. 

27 April 2021: US Threat Perceptions:

Source: Office of the Director of National Intelligence

1 May 2021:

2 May 2021:

4 May 2021: Where until last month, the danger that China could attack Taiwan and risk a war with the US was mainly the daily talk in the Pacific region and the US, however, following the news that the UK is sending its largest Carrier Strike Group since the Falklands War to the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea it now also is the talk in Europe with even Angela Merkel expressing her concern. Fact is, the prospects for war are actually higher in the next five years than the period thereafter because of how successfully China has closed the military capability gap with the US. Every day President Xi Jinping delays, his potential adversaries in a battle over Taiwan (which would undoubtedly include the US, Japan, Australia, and the UK) are investing enormous effort to prepare for war and once again expand the capability gap. So we proceeded with the conclusion of our question: Can a potential future Pacific War be avoided?

7 August 2020: Today the World Health Organization has warned against “vaccine nationalism,” cautioning richer countries that if they keep treatments to themselves they cannot expect to remain safe if poor nations remain exposed. It is no secret that Scientists fear that the current pandemic could lead to a geopolitical fight over vaccines. And that ‘vaccine nationalism’ threatens the global plan to distribute COVID-19 shots fairly. But there are also other approaches. Vaccine Nationalism and its alternatives.

8 August 2020: Beirut explosion: Angry protesters take to streets.

10 August 2020: Tonight, Lebanon's government stepped down, less than a week after a massive explosion in Beirut killed more than 160 people and sparked days of violent protests.

13 August 2020: People wash their clothes as Mount Sinabung in Indonesia spews ash:

17 August 2020: World Population Projections.

21 August 2020: Minsk, Belarus:

22 August 2020: The economy of Colonialism:  Major Case Study:  Part one, Part two, Part three.

25 August 2020: Replica of planet earth using NASA imagery goes on display in the Painted Hall of the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich.

29 August 2020: Unsealed Archives Give Fresh Clues to Pope Pius XII’s Response to the Holocaust Several documents that have emerged from the newly opened Vatican Archives on the papacy of Pius XII bolster accusations of indifference to Jewish suffering. Still some scholars say the whole picture has yet to emerge. Major Case Study: The Vatican archives and World War II.

3 Sept. 2020: This week, Indian troops moved firmly and preemptively to stop China’s new attempt at land grabs. China’s People’s Liberation Army was getting active in areas south of the strategically important Pangong Lake. But Indians took the heights near Rezang La and Requin La, allowing them an unfettered view of a critical garrison inside China. The operation was led by India’s covert Special Frontier Force, mostly from Tibetans whose families escaped Chinese oppression.

10 Sept. 2020: Two Myanmar soldiers have admitted on video to the mass killing and rape of Rohingya Muslims in 2017. The video confessions of the two deserters were filmed by a rebel group fighting the Myanmar military and deemed credible by a human rights group. If the confessions are legitimate, they will represent the first admissions by members of Myanmar's military that a campaign of violence against the minority ethnic group took place in the country's western Rakhine State. The two soldiers are believed to now be in the Hague at the International Criminal Court, where an investigation into the Rohingya crisis is underway. As for now, there is no apparent end to the ongoing tragedy that faces the Muslim Rohingya communities of western Myanmar. Yet, with two crucial international legal cases underway at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, there are now essential opportunities to maintain pressure on Myanmar’s government. Myanmar’s current government – a fusion of militarist, democratic, ethnic-nationalist, and conservative interests – has consistently sought to downplay the seriousness of the situation. This attitude, and the fraught but politically influential nexus between Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) and the military, has done much to encourage a culture of impunity among military and civilian decision-makers.

Nevertheless, with crucial national elections scheduled for November 2020 and an economy battered by the global COVID-19 shutdown, Myanmar faces a confluence of grave challenges. Under these conditions, critical decision-makers in Naypyitaw may hope that international scrutiny of violence against the Rohingya will fade. Given these court actions, however, this is unlikely. She will not recover her reputation whatever sympathy we may have for Aung San Suu Kyi’s predicament. And she will forever face hard questions about her inability to prevent, and, more importantly, refusal to condemn, ethnic cleansing.

17 Sept. 2020: We published an extensive five-part study of Russian Freemasonry; we now like to revisit our earlier topic of Freemasonry during the fascist era. Nazi Policy on Masons became unequivocal after the Night of the Long Knives – the savage purge of the SA and other political enemies. After that, the SS assumed control of the Masonic Question. And in the spring of 1935, the former Masonic organizations were told to dissolve themselves completely or be forced to do so. Yet, we also will see how and why Hitler toned down his initial anti-masonic rhetoric. Major Case Study: Freemasonry during the Nazi state.

19 Sept. 2020: Having highlighted Nazi-Germany, we next move on to Spain, where there was a belief, shared by all the different forces on the Nationalist side, that a conspiratorial Masonic influence permeated the Republic so thoroughly that almost anyone could be an instrument of the Lodges. An intriguing part of this history, as we will see, is a spy network known as APIS, which transmitted dozens of fake Masonic documents. One can safely say that APIS was the espionage equivalent of the excellent Taxil hoax of the late nineteenth century. Major Case Study: The war against Freemasons in Spain.

21 Sept. 2020: A sense of history has always been crucial to Freemasonry. But as we have seen all too often, the Masons have squeezed their history into rosy identity narratives. Freemasonry’s past is as chequered as a Lodge floor. Hence in part one, we saw how Hitler toned down his initial anti-masonic rhetoric to focus primarily on his Jewish conspiracy theory, whereby in Catholic Spain, Fascists were less restrained. In this third part, now we come to our present era with, among others, Stephen Knight claims about a Masonic conspiracy, activities like those of the Ndrangheta, when as recently as four weeks ago, $193m in assets were seized, Dan Brown's masonic musings in The Lost Symbol, including the role of Freemasonry in British India and the little, researched influence on Indian Nationalism. Major Case Study: Investigating Freemasonry today.

25 Sept. 2020:

26 Sept. 2020:  With or without a vaccine, the coronavirus will remain part of life well into next year. Alas, as I show in the article, some governments (including America’s and Britain’s) have been ruining the job. As illness, death, and disruption are terrible in rich countries, COVID-19 costs poor ones even more. Why governments get COVID-19 wrong.

29 Sept. 2020:

30 Sept. 2020: An Armenian soldier fires artillery during fighting with Azerbaijan’s forces this while a Turkish F-16 fighter jet shot down an Armenian warplane as fighting intensified near the long-disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region and fears grew of an outbreak of a new, full-scale war between Armenia and Azerbaijan:

1 Oct. 2020: The United Kingdom and Canada have imposed travel bans and asset freezes on Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, his son, and other senior officials while French President Emmanuel Macron called for a "peaceful transition" in the country after he met the exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya in Lithuania on Tuesday. President Macron also visited a military base with Lithuania's president on Tuesday:

2 Oct. 2020: The last quarter of 2020 furthermore will be among others a waiting game -- like for example waiting for the results of the U.S. election in November, waiting on economic numbers, and waiting to see how the COVID-19 crisis plays out.

3 Oct. 2020: President Trump was taken to Walter Reed hospital out of caution after testing positive for Covid-19. At least seven people, including two U.S. senators, who had attended Saturday’s Rose Garden ceremony announcing Amy Coney Barrett as President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee have since tested positive for the coronavirus. The White House on Saturday created a startling amount of confusion on the timing of President Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis and the status of his health through conflicting statements, injecting an extraordinary degree of uncertainty into the nation’s understanding of the president’s condition and who may have been exposed to the deadly virus.

8 Oct. 2020: President Trump said he will not participate in the next presidential debate with Joe Biden after the commission said it will be held virtually. The Biden campaign rejected Trump's demand to delay the next two debates. Whereby the other news in the US was that thirteen people were charged Thursday in an alleged domestic terrorism plot to kidnap Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, federal and state officials announced.

9 Oct. 2020: Will we ever know the true toll that the coronavirus pandemic has taken on the globe? We have the tally provided by Johns Hopkins, but there is no way we can truly know how accurate the numbers are. This is especially the case in countries in which the numbers are manipulated to downplay the seriousness of the pandemic.

10 Oct. 2020: -The 2020 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the United Nations World Food Programme. “In the face of the pandemic, the World Food Program has demonstrated an impressive ability to intensify its efforts,” Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said as she announced the prize in Oslo.

-'The president is likely toast': Trump's woes raise GOP fears of a blue wave.

-More than 200 people have already been killed in fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed enclave populated largely by (Christian) Armenians that broke away from (Muslim) Azerbaijan as the Soviet Union collapsed. Armenia supported it during a war that killed tens of thousands of people. America and Russia helped bring about the ceasefire in 1994. But America has almost entirely abandoned the long, thankless slog of routine peace maintenance. In a world where the democratic superpower is resentful, consumed and distracted, averting wars is far harder. That is one reason why a recent rise in tension in the Taiwan Strait is causing alarm. Few expect an imminent Chinese invasion. But America’s commitment to the defense of Taiwan cannot be guaranteed.

11 Oct. 2020: India's confirmed coronavirus cases cross 7 million, second after US; last 1 million rise is within the last 13 days.

12 Oct. 2020: The pandemic has created a massive economic contraction that will be followed by a financial crisis in many parts of the globe, as nonperforming corporate loans accumulate alongside bankruptcies. Sovereign defaults in the developing world are also poised to spike. The Coming COVID-19 Economic Crisis.

14 Oct. 2020: Turkey threatens Armenia with direct military intervention in Karabakh War.

16 Oct. 2020: It remains the most audacious spy plot in British and American history, a bold and perilous operation to invade Russia, defeat the Red Army, and mount a coup in Moscow against Soviet dictator Vladimir Ilich Lenin. After that, leaders in Washington, Paris, and London aimed to install their Allied-friendly dictator in Moscow to get Russia back into the war effort against Germany. Along with the British and the French, the plot we now know had the “entire approval” of also President Woodrow Wilson. As he ordered a military invasion of Russia, he gave the American ambassador, the U.S. Consul General in Moscow, and other State Department operatives a free hand to pursue their covert action against Lenin. The result was thousands of deaths, both military and civilian, on both sides. Major Case Study: Spys Invade Russia P.1.

17 Oct. 2020: As a civil war began in Russia, Washington, London, and Paris worked to ally themselves with anti-Lenin forces, the Whites, and eventually, send troops. Their ultimate goal was to defeat the Red Army, mount a coup against Lenin and then install their Allied‑friendly dictator in Moscow as a means to get Russia back into the war. Covert American military aid would be laundered by the French and British, then passed along to the Cossacks in a plot to overthrow Lenin and the Bolsheviks. As Lansing suggested, some might say this was illegal. Still, Lansing directed Walter Hines Page, U.S. ambassador to Britain, to act “expeditiously” and confer with France and Britain on the matter. “This has my entire approval,” Wilson said. Major Case Study: Spys Invade Russia P.2.

19 Oct. 2020: To the surprise of some, Chinese President Xi Jinping has called on troops to "put all (their) minds and energy on preparing for war" in a visit to a military base in the southern province of Guangdong on Tuesday, according to state news agency Xinhua. This came shortly after Beijing increased military drills around Taiwan. Almost 40 Chinese warplanes crossed the median line between the mainland and Taiwan on 18-19 September, one of several sorties the island's President Tsai Ing-wen called a "threat of force." Thus, President Xi Jinping was no doubt referring to, and some analysts say China could move against Taiwan should the U.S. presidential election result in political chaos, Reuters reported. Will a coming conflict make the military disasters of Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq pale in comparison?

21 Oct. 2020: So far, American, French, and British diplomats in Russia have shared information. America and France had spies in Russia, but the British Secret Service had not contributed any high-level agents, but that changed now when Sydney Reilly and Bruce Lockhart joined the plot. Where the initial idea was to persuade Russia’s new Bolshevik leaders to continue the war and rebuild the Eastern Front against Germany, the Western powers soon devised an ambitious scheme to trigger regime change by landing troops at the ports of Vladivostok, Murmansk, and Archangel and there join with pro-tsar ‘White’ forces and armed Czechoslovak former prisoners of war who had seized control of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Major Case Study: Spys Invade Russia P.3.

22 Oct. 2020: Allied forces invaded Russia and fought the Red Army in an attempt to support the Moscow plotters. But Wilson and Prime Minister Clemenceau made a mistake in placing the U.S. and French troops under British command. Most British officers resented being shuffled off to a “sideshow” like Russia and took out their anger on the American and French troops under them. Some sanity arrived after the British commander was sacked and replaced with Brigadier General Edmund Ironside. Spys Invade Russia P.4.

23 Oct. 2020: Today a ‘Borat’ sequel has been released with an Election 2020 plot twist...In the current film, Borat is dispatched by the Kazakh government to the US to present a bribe to an ally of Donald Trump to ingratiate his country with the Trump administration... A bit rough to watch at times. In the following scene, Borat tries to sneak into CPAC, where vice president Mike Pence is speaking...

In the U.S., the Kazakh American Association, in a 20 October letter to Amazon officials, asked that the film’s release be canceled and goes on to write that if comedian Sacha Baron Cohen were trying to target U.S. President Donald Trump and racist Americans, he would have created a fictitious country. Cohen, for his part, told The Financial Times that he and his crew always planned to film and release the sequel ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections. “Borat is the perfect character for the Trump era because he is just a slightly more extreme version of Trump. They are both misogynistic and racist, they both don’t care about democracy, and they’re both laughable characters,” Cohen said. An article in today's NYT today added that Rudy Giuliani is just the latest in a long line of people pranked by Sacha Baron Cohen.

24 Oct. 2020: Perhaps the British agents knew nothing of SR plans, either in Ukraine or in Moscow, but gave them money for general purposes only. It is fair to wonder, however, whether some of his money might have helped to fund one assassination or the other, and appropriate to point out as well that in July 1918, with his country and Germany still at war, he would have had every reason to consider it money well spent. Spys Invade Russia P.5.

25 Oct. 2020: American Consul-General Poole sent a cyphered telegram (the Bolsheviks had not broken American codes) to Washington, DC. He anticipated acts of sabotage by the conspirators, then Allied intervention, clashes between Whites and Reds, and between General Poole’s advancing army and the Reds. The telegram said in part: "every effort must be made to remove allied functionaries and nationals from that part of Russia controlled by the Bolsheviks . . . this territory must be regarded as hostile." On 14 August 1918, two Latvians – Jan Sprogis and Captain Berzin of the Rifle Brigade – called on Lockhart. The brigade was disaffected from Bolshevism, they said, and ready to help its overthrow. This seemed to Lockhart and later to Reilly like the answer to a prayer. Lockhart promised money and Allied support to establish a free and independent Latvia and wrote the visitors safe-conduct passes to reach Poole. But both men, well primed by Peters, were Cheka double-agents. Spys Invade Russia P.6.

28 Oct. 2020: Taylor, the former chief of staff at th