How History Helps Us Understand What Russia and China Are Up To

The Clash of the Two Americas Volume 3: The Birth of a Eurasian Manifest Destiny

By Matthew Ehert

Purchase link: https://canadianpatriot.org/untold-history-of-canada-books/

Book Review

Another great read on a very complex topic.

About half of Volume 3 focuses on hidden history and about half on the Russian-Chinese collaboration to build a global economy based on on peaceful coexistence, nternational cooperation and economic and technological development.

The hidden history chapters cover

• The “Spirit of Westphalia,” as expressed in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia that officially ended the Thirty Years War.[1]
• The role of banking centers in the city-states of Venice (697 – 1797 AD) and their role in replacing Rome as the political and economic center of the western world.[2] In 1095, the Venetian Empire instigated (along Pope Urban II) the Crusades against the Middle East Muslim states. It subsequently commandeered the Khazarian [3] trade routes connecting the steppes with the Silk Road and China. Venice would be the first empire to ban Jews from participating in international trade, owing land or weapons, joining trade guilds, farming or serving in the military. The word “ghetto,” which dates back to Venice, was used to describe their urban settlements where the only occupations Jews were allowed were dealing in old rags, pawn brokering and money lending.
• Stalin’s allegations that Churchill had Roosevelt (who died under suspicious circumstances) poisoned and his request (which Eleanor Roosevelt declined) for an autopsy to be performed.
• A summary of positive steps (towards peaceful coexistence and international cooperation Donald Trump launched during his presidency:
  • An initiative to extract CIA operations from the US military.
  • An initiative to end US cooperation with NATO and WHO.
  • An initiative to defund CIA-sponsored regime operations like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – see USA: Exportng Democracy Since 1948
  • An initiative to enact protective tariffs to support US domestic industry.
  • His successful negotiation of a US-China treaty to increase Chinese imports of US goods.
• The role of Jesuits in the New World in recruiting Native Americans to launch terrorist attacks on North American colonists, [4] the land grants they received from British round table founder Cecil Rhodes and the study and use of Jesuit psychological mind control techniques at the Tavistock Clinic in London.
• An excellent chapter by Cynthia Chung on the ancient African kingdoms that preceded European colonization of African and enslavement of its residents.

About half the book concerns the role of China and Russia in building the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the International North-South Transit Corridor linking China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, Central Asia and the Middle East in a massive trade and energy sharing network. According to Ehert, all the Arab countries (including Syria) except Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE have joined one or both of these networks.

The only chapters of the book I found problematic were those unconditionally  championing Russia and China’s embrace of nuclear energy. Ehret and Chung’s assertions about nuclear energy being a carbon neutral and totally safe alternative to fossil fuels provide an extremely one sided view of an extremely controversial topic. There’s strong evidence showing nuclear power plants produce far more carbon emissions during their construction (especially for concrete and steel) than either solar panels or wind turbines and emissions continue to be produced as the uranium used to fuel them is processed. See  Fact Check: Is Nuclear Energy Good for the Climate

The authors also assert that the Russians and Chinese have eliminated the toxic nuclear waste problem by 1) reprocessing nuclear waste so it can be reused instead of stored, 2) by replacing uranium-fueled reactors with those fueled by thorium and fusion technology. This directly contradicts the views of the physicists who run the Union of Atomic Scientists.

See The History of Nuclear Power’s Imagined Future: Plutonium’s Journey From Asset to Waste,  Fact Check: Five Claims About Thorium Waste Made by Andrew Yang (which talks about thorium waste being even more dangerous than conventional nuclear waste) and Fusion Reactors: Not What They’re Cracked up to Be.

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[1] The Thirty Years War, essentially a religious war between Catholics and Protestants, began as a civil war between German statelets belonging to the Holy Roman Empire and eventually drew in nearly all of western Europe (reducing the population of Germany by one-third). The Peace of Westphalia outlined (for the first time in western society) the five principles of peaceful coexistence eventually adopted by the Non-Aligned Movement. Founded in 1954, the NAM consisted of 120 countries not formally aligned with any major power block.

[2] The global banking center shifted to Amsterdam in 1609 with the founding of the first private central bank and the Dutch East India Company, which soon merged with the British East India Company. It then shifted to England when the Dutch prince William III (who founded the Bank of England in 1694) assumed the British throne in 1689.

[3] The chapter on the Khazarian Empire describes its founding in the late 6th century, by Turks who subsequently converted to Judaism, owing to their close relationship with Jewish bankers and traders who ran that section of the Silk Road. Ehert disputes David Ickes’s claims about a so-called Khazarian mafia that alleged replaced the Semitic Jews in Israel.

[4] The inventor (and US spy) Samuel Morse first wrote about this in his 1841 book Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States.

 

 

Orlov on US Collapse, the Great Reset, Klaus Schwab and the Apocalyptic Climate Cult

No Escape

Dmitry Orlov (2021)

Film Review

In this fascinating interview, Russian-American author and journalist Dmitry Orlov discusses the impending US collapse and the Russian view on what he refers to as “the apocalyptic climate cult,” Biden’s meeting with Putin, Klaus Schwab and the Great Reset, the impending cyber wars, geoengineering and the Russian closed cycle nuclear program.

10.00min The West’s “apocalyptic climate cult.”

According to some climate scientists, ice core records suggest the Earth is due for another Ice Age “any century now” (Orlov writes about this in more depth at https://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2019/11/avoiding-coming-ice-age.html). He predicts humankind would have to triple their fossil fuel consumption to prevent it, which would burn up the Earth’s entire coal reserves.

While he’s not advocating this as a policy (one downside would be catastrophic mercury levels), he deplores the reluctance of climate scientists to study the impending Ice Age – to better understand the potential triggers and the possibility of preventing it.

He states that no one in Russia takes seriously what they refer to as the West’s “apocalyptic climate cult.”  While he acknowledges the reality of the greenhouse effect, he questions the reliability of Western climate scientists’ doomsday predictions. The latter are almost totally based on computer models, and it will take at least 1,000 years to gather sufficient evidence to test the models.

24.00min The Great Reset

Orlov doesn’t believe the Great Reset will happen, because it has no support whatsoever from either Russia or China. He describes Klaus Schwab as a “moneybag whisperer” for the super rich. It’s his job to “fluff up” their egos by publishing vanity fiction like The Great Reset. Owing to America’s weakening global position, the WEF was forced to invite Putin and Xi Jinping this past January. Both dismissed the Great Reset categorically – they have their own future development plans.

28.00min Putin/Biden Summit

Orlov quips that the purpose of the summit was to “negotiate the terms” of (US) surrender. He points to a dangerous hyperinflation the US is entering that will reduce living standards by 90% and lead to civil unrest. He predicts the US will be forced to abandon its global military bases in the near future and repatriate its troops.

Orlov believes Biden’s main goals for the summit were

1. For Putin to affirm that Biden (not Trump) is the legitimate president.
2. To persuade Putin to put the brakes on plans to sell its oil and gas in currency other than US dollars.

At present, Russia is the third largest supplier of oil to the US, which has no other source (due to US sanctions on Venezuela) for the heavy oil it needs for diesel, jet fuel and kerosene and can’t run its transport network without it.

1.20min Renewable Energy in Russia

Russia is focusing on solar and wind energy in Russia in remote areas where renewable technology is cheaper than the cost of transporting coal.

1.26min Russia’s Closed Cycle Nuclear Program

At present Russia’s main nuclear investment is in fast breeder reactors that reprocess depleted uranium by burning long half life isotopes and converting it to low level short half life waste (which can be safely buried). At present Russia is buying nuclear waste from other countries for reprocessing.

Will nuclear waste disposal challenges limit a significant expansion of global nuclear power?

Pussy Riot: Brought to You by the US State Department

Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer

Directed by Mike Learner and Maxim Pozdorovkin (2013)

Film Review

This documentary mainly concerns the 2012  trial of three members of the Russian feminist punk rock and performance art group Pussy Riot, for a “blasphemous” performance behind the altar of Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior church. Their stated purpose was to protest 1) the increasing influence of the Orthodox church over the secular Russian state and 2) patriarchal Orthodox doctrine portraying women as inherently sinful.  Although the group’s preference was to perform anonymously in brightly colored balaclavas, they became world famous following their arrest in the cathedral and subsequent trial.

The formal charges against them were hooliganism, disrupting the social order and showing hatred for religion and disrespect for society. Denied bail or visits from their family, they were held in custody until their trial began in late July.

I was fascinated by clips from their trial. Unlike the court system in Britain and former colonies where only attorneys are allowed to address the court, Russian defendants are invited to read statements and members of the media and public are allowed to communicate with prisoners in the dock.

In September 2012, one member (Katya) was released on appeal after her new lawyer presented video evidence that she hadn’t started playing or singing when the arrests occurred. The other two were released in December 2013 when the Duma granted them amnesty.

The film makes no mention of direct funding Pussy Riot received from the US State Department and George Soros-funded “open society organizations – as part of a wider campaign, presumably, to undermine popular support for Putin. See Pussy Riot: A Grotesque Creation of the US State Department

In 2016, the group anticipated the election of Donald Trump when they recorded “Make America Great Again” (below).

Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer can be viewed free on Beamafilm.

How Gender Roles Trap Men

The Empathy Gap: Masculinity and the Courage to Change

Directed by Thomas Keith (2015)

Film Review

This documentary asserts our culture traps men in a stereotypical gender role, just as it does women. Stereotypical masculinity requires contemporary men not to express feelings (except anger), not to show empathy or vulnerability, to control and dominate (with violence if necessary), to excel at athletics, to degrade women, and to accumulate material possessions.

Research indicates boys tend to be open about expressing feelings until age 14, when they become terrified of being labeled “faggots” or “wusses” if they are at all open with emotions or feelings of vulnerability.

Contemporary society also socializes men to have little interest (outside the sexual arena*) in the experiences of women. Our culture typically portrays women as incompetent, unreliable, and emotional. Most of this socialization occurs very early in life via the media.

The filmmakers share vignettes five-year-old children of both sexes consistently choosing boy dolls as “smarter” and girl dolls “as nicer.”

According to Keith, Donald Trump, more than any other contemporary male figure personifies this stereotypical masculinity. The latter carefully cultivates an image of being tough, distant, and demeaning to women. As part of this script he nearly always addresses conflict with aggression and rarely displays any emotions other than anger.

Sadly little has changed in fifty years. A comparison of the idiocies broadcast by right wing commentators such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Erick Erikson reveals little difference between their personna and that of the fictional Archie Bunker in the 1970s TV series All in the Family.

Research shows men in groups are more likely to exhibit toxic masculinity than men on their own.

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*In my experience, most men aren’t very interested in women’s sexuality, either.

Anyone with a public library card can view the film free at Kanopy. Type “Kanopy” and the name of your library into your search engine.

Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos

Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos

PBS (2020)

Film Review

This new PBS documentary about Bezos and Amazon is far more extensive than prior exposes. In addition to getting six senior Amazon managers to respond (on camera) to critics, it also reflects significant moves within the federal government to limit Amazon’s monopoly power.

What comes across most clearly for me is the stark contrast between Trump’s attacks on Bezos (on Twitter)* and Obama’s fawning attitude towards the company’s stellar financial success.

This is the first documentary to make clear that Bezos deliberately set out to create a monopoly – how he deliberately operated at a loss for more than a decade to undercut (via lower prices) and destroy his competition. The list of businesses of all sizes (including authors, publishers, bookstores, and increasingly other retailers) Amazon has put out of business is substantial. Globally, the company is directly responsible for shutting down 38% of retail outlets in two decades.

In recent years, Amazon has also set out to capture the services market at well, seeking to undercut FedEx and UPS in delivery services, Netflix in film production and streaming, Apple and Spotify in music streaming services, and Dropbox, Google, and Microsoft in cloud streaming services.

The company also has health professionals worried with their expansion into pharmaceutical sales and health insurance, likewise food retailers with their purchase of Whole Foods. Moreover in the past year, Bezos has announced his intention to launch a digital advertising platform to rival Google and Facebook.

At present Amazon essentially “owns” the online Main Street, controlling 40% of the global online market place. They also spend more on lobbying US politicians than an any other single entity. However despite all the cash flowing to Washington lawmakers, both the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and a House Committee chaired by Congressman David Cicillini (Dem, RI) are investigating the need to restrict the range of services Amazon is allowed to offer, as well as their collection and use of customer data.

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*Trump has attacked Amazon for tax avoidance and exploiting the US Post Office, and Bezo personally for his ownership of the Washington Post (and its attacks on Trump).

The Politics of Asbestos: Banned in EU, But Not China, Russia, Brazil or US

Deadly Asbestos

DW (2019)

Film Review

This documentary is about the international asbestos industry and its aggressive penetration of developing countries following the EU’s decision to ban it in 1998. The first study linking asbestos to lung cancer and mesothelioma was published in 1964. Asbestos also causes a chronic (eventually fatal) lung condition known as asbestosis. Sadly, as with smoking and lead poisoning, it took decades of sustained organizing to get western governments to acknowledge the fatal health consequences of asbestos exposure. The US enacted a “partial ban” on asbestos in 1989.*

Because mesothelioma can result from a brief single exposure to asbestos fibers, EPA rules regarding asbestos removal from old buildings are far more stringent. In fact, an entire industry has evolved around asbestos removal.**

The filmmakers focus primarily on the Belgian asbestos manufacturer Etex-Eternit (aka Everest) and its expansion into India in the 1990s. India has been a primary industry target of the industry, owing to its lax regulation of asbestos manufacture, use and disposal.

Asbestos sheets are sold widely in India for use as walls and roofs in makeshift shacks. Over 100,000 Indians develop asbestosis annually.

India has more than 50 asbestos manufacturing plants. Filmmakers visit an asbestos factory Everest built in 1995 and sold to an Indian family in 2002. In addition to filming a 600,000 square meter asbestos waste dump, they also visit a makeshift clinic treating thousands of local residents for asbestos-related problems. They also talk with Indian lawyers and activists who are bringing a lawsuit against Everest in Belgium.

The film concludes by looking at World Health Organization efforts to institute a global ban on asbestos. Brazil, China, and Russia, which still mine asbestos, continue to vociferously block the ban.

Last year, the Trump EPA approved new rules that soften regulations against asbestos use in the US.  In response, one Russian asbestos manufacturer now proudly displays features Trump’s image on all their products.

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* History of EPA asbestos regulation

• 1989 Partial Ban on the manufacture, import, processing, and distribution of some asbestos-containing products. EPA also banned new uses of asbestos which prevent new asbestos products from entering the marketplace after August 25, 1989. These uses remain banned. The April 2019 final rule does not provide a way for these uses to return to the marketplace.
• April 2019 Final Rule to ensure that asbestos products that are no longer on the market cannot return to commerce without the Agency evaluating them and putting in place any necessary restrictions or prohibiting use. The uses covered under this rule were not already prohibited under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and could have returned to the market at any time.
• Risk evaluation of asbestos under TSCA. EPA is reviewing a handful of very limited, still ongoing uses of asbestos. The evaluation of the risks associated with ongoing uses of asbestos is required under TSCA section 6. If EPA finds unreasonable risk, the Agency will take prompt action to address those risks.

** See https://www.epa.gov/asbestos

 

 

 

Inside the White House: A Question of Competence?

Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House

By Michael Wolff

Little Brown Book Group (2018)

Book Review

The most remarkable aspect of this book is its blow-by-blow account of Team Trump – from his nomination in July 2016 to Steve Bannon’s firing in August 2017. Unlike prior presidential administrations, which are extremely guarded about their inner workings, Trump’s White House offered the media virtually unfettered access during his first nine months. According to Wolff this occurred for four main reasons: 1) Trump’s impulsive daily tweets 2) the constant “weaponized” leaks from warring Trump staffers* 3) Trump’s nightly rambling calls to wealthy supporters** and 4) his willingness to allow more public access to the Oval Office than any previous president.

While Wolff cite sources for his factual statements and quotes, the book has been carefully fact checked, in addition to being reviewed by two libel attorneys.***

As a psychiatrist, what I found most interesting about Fire and Fury is the insight it reveals into Trump’s psychological functioning. The current President is described by nearly everyone who has worked with him as extremely childlike, guileless, impulsive, undisciplined, incapable of following a game plan and impossible to communicate with. He trusts no one.

One of the few direct quotes in the book is from his former scheduler Katie Walsh: “It’s like trying to figure out what a child wants.”

My favorite quote, though, comes from Trump himself during a staff discussion about repealing Obamacare: “Why can’t Medicare simply cover everyone?”

Toning down Trump’s impulsiveness has been virtually impossible, though some staffers have been able to influence his behavior by winding him up.

Trump categorically refuses to read written briefings or watch PowerPoint presentations. He also refuses to listen to long verbal briefings and tends not to follow scripted statements. He always prefers to be the one talking, typically coming out with long rambling statements in which he frequently repeats himself.

Wolff’s introduction also confirms what many analysts have surmised: Trump didn’t intend to win the Presidency. His original plan was to use the media exposure to launch his own TV network. In fact, Trump refused to invest any of his own money in the campaign (although he loaned them $10 million).

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*Prior to Bannon’s departure in August 2017, there was no White House chain of command and no clearly defined duties for any of its staff. Four discrete factions – Bannon, Jared Kushner/Ivana Trump (Bannon called them Jarvanka) nominal Chief of staff Reince Priebus and Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway were at continual war with one another in controlling Team Trump. According to many sources, Trump essentially served as his own chief of staff and press secretary, in that he phone reporters, dictated quotes and personally reviewed all press releases.

**The recipients of these calls (concerning unfavorable media and Trump’s “incompetent” staff) were so alarmed by them that they often felt compelled to pass on their content to White House staff and/or reporters.

***The Trump family is notoriously litigious, and Wolff and his publisher must be able to document the book’s assertions in a libel suit.

 

 

 

Hidden History: Inside the Bungled Trump Transition

The Fifth Risk

By Michael Lewis

W W Norton (2018)

Book Review

This is a fascinating book about the bungled Trump transition following his 2016 election. As of February 2016, federal law required all remaining primary candidates to set up transition teams – in the off chance they actually won the presidency. Two million people work for the US government, with 70% employed in national security. Of these, 4,000 are political appointees who lose their jobs on the day the new president takes office.

Although the federal government provides office space for transition teams, the candidates have to pay transition staff from their campaign coffers. No one (including Trump himself) believed he would win in November. In fact he was livid on discovering former New Jersey governor Chris Christie was running his transition team from campaign funds.

Lewis’s book is a collection of in-depth interviews with the Obama appointees who spent most of 2016 attempting to orient a handful of Trump appointees to take on the massive work of these three federals departments. Their main fear was that without understanding the essential work undertaken by key agencies, the incoming Trump administration might eliminate or massively downsize vital work. In the end, this is exactly what happened.

Largely because there was no one on the Trump campaign team (other than Chris Christie or Rudolph Giuliani) with prior political experience, Christie was unable to send teams of 30-50 people (as Obama had done) to accept the handovers. So essentially they didn’t happen.

Lewis focuses on three departments, the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Commerce. I found his book a real eye opener concerning the actual work they do. For example:

• The Department of Energy (DOE) has a $30 billion budget, of which half goes to safeguard the US nuclear arsenal. This $15 billion covers programs to detect and prevent espionage and to prevent accidental loss or explosion, as well as the international monitoring of all weapons grade uranium and plutonium stores, the training of all international nuclear inspectors and the clean-up of the extremely hazardous (and leaking) Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington State. When Trump took office on Jan 20 2017, the Obama appointee in charge of the nuclear weapons program notified a number of senators that Trump had failed to appoint his successor.*
• The USDA runs the US Forest Service and its massive firefighting program. This is in addition ensuring the safety (?) of all meat Americans eat (the FDA regulates other foodstuffs). The are also responsible for food stamps, school lunches and programs offering catastrophic crop insurance to farmers and (using Weather Bureau data) advising them on the best dates to plant, fertilize and harvest their crops. Ironically they also run a Rural Development Program** providing grants and loans to the struggling rural communities that turned out for Trump in such large numbers.
• The Department of Commerce runs the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Weather Bureau and the Census, as well as a massive data bank created to assist other departments (eg global atomic weapons numbers, violent crime statistics, consumer complaints against banks, cop shootings of civilians). Much of this data has disappeared from government websites since Trump took office.

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*These Republican senators forced Trump to temporarily re-appoint him.

**Which Trump cut by roughly 16%. See https://www.dailyyonder.com/trump-budget-cuts-usda-16/2018/02/12/

White Supremacy and the Obama Legacy

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

One World (2017)

Book Review

This remarkable book is a collection of essays about white privilege, Obama’s inability to live up to his campaign promises, and the role of his presidency in setting the stage for Donald Trump.

Coates’ approach to the topic of white privilege is largely historical. He traces the brutal reversal of Reconstruction reforms and re-institution of de facto slavery with Jim Crow laws; the Great Migration north of 6 million African Americans during the early 20th century; the deliberate exclusion of African Americans from New Deal programs such as Social Security, Aid to Families with Dependent Children and FHA (Federal Housing Administration) mortgage insurance; as well as the War on Drugs and mass incarceration of African Americans.

Coates has the best definition of white supremacy I have seen anywhere. In his words, white privilege is “banditry.”

“To be black in America is to be plundered. To be white is to execute and benefit from it.”

Coates gives numerous examples to justify this view: the exclusion of African Americans from wealth creation programs such as FHA and VA (Veterans Administration) mortgage loans, long time job discrimination and wage suppression, the recurrent decimation of prosperous Black communities via white race riots, predatory owner “contract” financing of home purchases, and predatory targeting of Blacks for subprime mortgagae they can’t repay.

My favorite essay is the one advocating for African American reparations, based on the argument that systematic exploitation of Blacks didn’t end with slavery but continues to the present day. As a precedent Coates cites the $7 billion (in today’s dollars) West Germany paid Israel in 1953 in compensation for Germany’s genocidal treatment of European Jews during World War II.

 

Cards Against Humanity: Stopping the Wall

According to the November 19  New Zealand Herald, Cards Against Humanity is a politically incorrect party game in which players complete fill-in-the-blank statements with offensive, risqué or politically incorrect statements (see their website).

In 2018, they launched a Kickstarter campaign which enabled donors to purchase tiny parcels of vacant land on the US-Mexican border for $15 each. More than 150,000 people who bought parcels now collectively own thousands acres of land on which Trump plans to build his wall.

Cards Against Humanity has also hired a prominent eminent domain law firm to protect the new owners’ property rights. Their hope is to make construction of the border wall prohibitively expensive and time consuming.

They explain their campaign in this holiday video:

For more information about the organization and their border wall campaign, go to Cards Against Humanity Stops the Wall