To Those Who Wonder About This ...

 ... and namely why China voted the way she voted (abstained from voting) on anti-Russian Resolution. 

As I wrote for years--be my guest and search this blog--China is a commercial civilization, and they love to trade. Hence their Belt and Road Initiative--a development of markets for Chinese goods. Critical in this whole idea always was and is the EU as the, highest, for now, solvency market. In this sense, China is torn between dissatisfaction from clear demolition of European solvency through effects of SMO and thus reducing the value of the main market for which BRI was conceived and, on the other hand, Chinese interests in terms of time Russia inadvertently bought for China by engaging a whole of combined West in a historic struggle. 

Now, the White House has POTUS who sees China not as a neutral commercial power but as a threat to the United States. It is clear that Trump needs to close the 404 Folder he inherited from DNC and Biden criminals and reroute America's resources towards the standoff with China, while simultaneously trying to woo Russia away from China, or vice-versa. So, China acts in this case as she always does--pragmatically and having own interests in mind first and foremost, as it should be. But let's put it into prospective here--SMO and Russia's victory over the combined West produced tectonic effects on Chinese plans which few could foresee in Beijing in 2021. It is a strain. This strain is not going to break close Russian-Chinese ties, but it surely changed the dyadic dynamics, and China now has to contend or resign herself to the fact that Russia reemerged as the premier global military superpower--a fact which many (not all, though, I stress it) in Beijing have been somewhat uncomfortable with and loved the idea of Russia being "a junior partner"--a cliche developed primarily in the West. So, China simply abstained, which, however, contrasts dramatically and historically with the US voting AGAINST anti-Russian Resolution. You gotta love this, LOL. Pop-corn time. 

And This Is The News Exactly How?

Nothing to see here, folks. Move along, move along:

US officials have been lying to the American people about US failures in Afghanistan, where the US military has been fighting its longest armed conflict in US history, a collection of confidential documents obtained by the Washington Post revealed. Over the past 18 years of war, US officials have repeatedly insisted that the US is making progress in Afghanistan, but over 2,000 pages of notes from interviews with more than 400 people who had a direct role in the war in Afghanistan have revealed the truth about the conflict — that data was altered and facts were twisted to present a positive picture when the reality in country was far from it, The Post reports. John Sopko, head of the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the agency that conducted the interviews, told The Post that the documents clearly show "the American people have constantly been lied to." The documents obtained by The Post show that the US and its allies and partners had no clear mission, the US does not have a sufficient understanding of Afghanistan, and the US has wasted massive amounts of money trying to stabilize the still unstable country. "We didn't know what we were doing," Douglas Lute, a retired Army three-star general who oversaw the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, told interviewers in 2015. "What are we trying to do here? We didn't have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking,"

There is one teeny-weeny "detail" here. The number of KIAs, same as in Iraq, is given only for regular military. There are, of course, those so called "contractors", who, if to believe reports by 2015 accounted for another around 2000 KIAs. Plus, lest we forget purely civilian contractors. As the news-piece continues:

"If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction ... 2,400 lives lost," he added. Since the start of the war in 2001, the US has sent more than 775,000 troops to Afghanistan. Around 2,400 service members have been killed, and more than 20,000 have been wounded. Furthermore, the US is estimated to have spent roughly $1 trillion on the conflict. "What did we get for this $1 trillion effort? Was it worth $1 trillion?" Jeffrey Eggers, a retired Navy SEAL who served both Bush and Obama as a White House staffer, asked, according to The Post.

So, at this stage, one must ask the question--what are they thinking in D.C.? It is especially scandalous against the background of Russia having to clean up the mess left by the United States in Afghanistan, with all fruits of Afghan "democracy", such as Taliban and ISIS, and other "progressive" Jihadist movements having plans for Middle Asia. That means Russia. One, of course, can wax geopolitical and conclude that the United States has The Great Game plans of  "containing" Russia by means of disturbing her "soft Asian underbelly". Well, sure, but not at the price of own humiliating defeat. The game is worth playing only when one gets some benefits. What benefits, exactly, did the United States reap from its longest war in history? So, the abused, as you may have guessed by now by political "scientists", and false argument of this Great Game simply doesn't fly, even if to imagine that some nominally American Transnational Corp will decide to do business in minerals-rich Afghanistan and will be ready to payoff Afghan conflicting tribal interests. Good luck with that. 

Of course, Afghanistan lies perilously close to China's BRI routes....

 

And Afghanistan seems like a nice bridgehead from which to destabilize weak links in this route, especially Tajikistan. Can they have such plans in D.C.? Observing the "level" of Geo-strategic "thinking" in Washington, one can totally conceive that such a delusion is being exercised. But that is where Russian 201st Military Base may turn itself into something much more substantial, granted Tajikistan wants to survive, but that is another issue altogether. Considering the fact that the United States is ungovernable and is mired in lost wars trying to postpone inevitable, as one observer noted about Syria "withdrawal" :

So to recap, we have a withdrawal that isn’t a withdrawal. We have an ostensibly antiwar left that’s too busy ferreting out the Russian spies in its Peloton supply chains to actually accomplish anything useful. We have a shiny, rebranded, “pro-working class” right that refuses to heed the foreign policy wishes of its newest constituents. We have a president who looks less like a commander-in-chief than a Tom and Jerry character falling down an endless set of stairs. And we have a national debt of $23 trillion and counting. Gold stars all around.

Couldn't have said better myself. 

Colonel Lang Had It With Trump, And Other Business.

Colonel Lang tried to stay calm but even he had it with collection of maroons aka Trump Administration.  

Trumpy!  These stiffs are losers!  Losers!  They lost in Iraq!  Remember!  You say you like to win.  These guys are losers.  Keeping these losers will just drag you down!  You always dump losers like these.  Remember!  Where did you get these stiffs?  Who pushed them off on you?  Get rid of them losers too! Bolton torpedoed your deal with your friend Kim!  Remember.  Is he trying to torpedo your deal with China? You know that you  have to make some kind of deal with Russia and the great judomaster.  Is Bolton trying to screw that up ? The three stooges.  Ah, no, Pompey the Magnificent is missing from the group mug shot.   Trumpster! You should dump these guys, AND the crews who gave us the messes in Ukraine, Syria, Gaza, the Golan Heights, Kushner's deal of the century, and the coming good deal in Lebanon.Get some new ones.  You can't let little people losers drag you down.

I long ago simply resigned myself to the fact that nothing short of all out war (I mean within US proper) can change the situation with US elites consistently producing human and professional trash which then occupies top positions in American political structure. The level of degeneracy is simply off the scale and continues to break records. Look at the faces, BTW. 

Per Bolton, he is a very special case of uber-neocon and exceptionalist who, probably, given his not very large frame, was beaten in school without trying to fight back and now he is settling accounts with his pathetic cowardly self by trying to bully those, he thinks, can not hit back. There is a definite mental pathology there. I will omit discussing here other possibilities. As The Hill reports:

Michael McCarthy, a professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, likened the recent posturing by administration officials to being "in a position where they believe it’s time to get a win for Trump." "They’re doubling down, but they’re working on what doubling down means besides increasing sanctions pressure," McCarthy said. "We’re in a gray zone between the saber rattling and action, and I think we’re going to stay there for the foreseeable future." But inaction is unlikely to satisfy Bolton, Posner said, even if it sets up a showdown with Trump. Bolton will likely "find another reason for military intervention," he said. "If that happens, I think that Trump will back off because he knows that’s a losing proposition."

Patients truly are in charge of the asylum. So, will Trumpy kick these dangerous morons out or is he really content with lunatics running his national security and foreign policy, or, rather, lack thereof. How about dropping Bolton with Elliott Abrams with the SEAL team into Venezuelan jungles or at the Iranian shores--let them lead by example. 

Paul Craig Roberts penned an excellent piece:

Now white people in America are to be stripped of their history, because white history traumatizes preferred minorities. At George Washington High School in northern California an historic mural depicting the school’s namesake has been declared offensive.      

PCR explains eloquently what will come, I can too. It is worth reading and contemplating.  

Meanwhile Pepe Escobar explains some key facts about BRI (formerly known as OBOR).

Scores of nations across the Global South, as well as some aspiring to developed world status, have adopted the Chinese investment and development model over financing from Washington or Brussels for three very simple reasons: no strings attached, no one-size-fits-all straitjacket, and no interference in their internal affairs.

Ahh, here are some other news on this issue: