SeventyTwoTrillion

reading zone where you aren't really internalizing anything but your brain is going over the words and telling you that you read them

I have to make notes, particularly in my own words rather than just transcribing, while reading basically any book that isn't fiction or I just enter that mode. Makes it considerably slower to get through, but I figure that the time I lose during is made up for not having to re-read it every few years to remember what's being said.

The fact that Israel is doing everything in their power to try and provoke a war with the rest of the Middle East, while the US is taking Ls in the Red Sea and cannot defend shipping and Israel is losing thousands of troops and hundreds of vehicles in Gaza and has lost most of their border infrastructure is... bizarre. You'd have thought that they'd want to try and tone things down a little when they're this close to the brink, not increase the heat. I'm unsatisfied with explanations that assume that any enemy is "irrational" or "crazy" or "not thinking things through"; Israel certainly has a plan whether it's actually going to work or not, but I don't know what it could possibly be.

Sure, they can turn Beirut into Gaza and kill civilians there, but how does that help them when Hezbollah is ready to go and has knocked out most of their border infrastructure? Sure, they can start carpet bombing Damascus, but that doesn't safeguard their fascist state project. Sure, they can cause massive terrorist attacks in Iran, but that doesn't really impact the Iranian military and thus lessen the threat. They seem to desperately want war, even though that war would destroy them. Perhaps they're just trying to reconstruct deterrence, but we're way, way past "deterrence" being a factor any more; every hostile action they commit in the Middle East makes those countries more willing to go to war, not less. I cannot figure out what their plan is other than maybe "go out in a blaze of glory" (that is, dropping nukes on Iran and Lebanon and Palestine).

Zionists always resort to targetting civilians when they're losing militarily, it's at the heart of their fascist ideology. This is evidence of weakness, not strength

This Gazan child asked me to pull his finger. I was nervous about this, fearing one of the classic Palestinian misdirections, as they are a nefarious people. I could tell that my captors, despite visibly seeming unarmed, were likely pointing a gun at me, and so I felt forced to acquiesce to his violent demand. I did so, and he simultaneously released flatulence. This was clearly intended as a humiliation tactic, but I maintained my psychological composure and merely laughed as if I was unbothered by it. But deep down, I felt extremely ashamed.

@President_Obama@hexbear.net

I found your gay anime scene.

Source is Hitorijime my hero.

Scene is here, at 26 seconds in.

these kinds of predictions are always like "In the grand far-away year of 2005, humanity will have flying cars and robots that do everything for their masters" or, like in the Foundation series, "The most advanced possible power source that humanity could ever possibly use, 10,000 years from now, is nuclear power" when nowadays sci-fi novels have power generation from like dyson spheres or word-jumbles like "quantum neutrino-harvesting stellar engines"

#Tradle #667 2/6
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https://oec.world/en/tradle

Could 3.3 million 'civilian warriors' give it a fighting chance?

Taiwan's residents better be getting pretty fucking nervous about that kind of rhetoric.

"We shall fight ~~Russia~~ China to the last ~~Ukrainian~~ Taiwanese."

Monthly Review: How Yemen changed everything

Some anti-doomer medicine courtesy of Pepe Escobar.

Whether invented in northern India, eastern China or Central Asia—from Persia to Turkestan—chess is an Asian game. In chess, there always comes a time when a simple pawn is able to upset the whole chessboard, usually via a move in the back rank whose effect simply cannot be calculated. Yes, a pawn can impose a seismic checkmate. That’s where we are, geopolitically, right now.

The cascading effects of a single move on the chessboard—Yemen’s Ansarallah stunning and carefully targeted blockade of the Red Sea—reach way beyond global shipping, supply chains, and The War of Economic Corridors. Not to mention the reduction of the much lauded U.S. Navy force projection to irrelevancy.

Yemen’s resistance movement, Ansarallah, has made it very clear that any Israel-affiliated or Israel-destined vessel will be intercepted. While the west bristles at this, and imagines itself a target, the rest of the world fully understands that all other shipping is free to pass. Russian tankers—as well as Chinese, Iranian, and Global South ships — continue to move undisturbed across the Bab al-Mandeb (narrowest point: 33 km) and the Red Sea.

Only the Hegemon is disturbed by this challenge to its ‘rules-based order.’ It is outraged that western vessels delivering energy or goods to law-breaking Israel can be impeded, and that the supply chain has been severed and plunged into deep crisis. The pinpointed target is the Israeli economy, which is already bleeding heavily. A single Yemeni move proves to be more efficient than a torrent of imperial sanctions. It is the tantalizing possibility of this single move turning into a paradigm shift—with no return—that is adding to the Hegemon’s apoplexy. Especially because imperial humiliation is deeply embedded in the paradigm shift.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, on the record, is now sending an unmistakeable message: Forget the Suez Canal. The way to go is the Northern Sea Route—which the Chinese, in the framework of the Russia-China strategic partnership, call the Arctic Silk Road. For the dumbfounded Europeans, the Russians have detailed three options: First, sail 15,000 miles around the Cap of Good Hope. Second, use Russia’s cheaper and faster Northern Sea Route. Third, send the cargo via Russian Railways. Rosatom, which oversees the Northern Sea Route, has emphasized that non-ice-class ships are now able to sail throughout summer and autumn, and year-round navigation will soon be possible with the help of a fleet of nuclear icebreakers. All that as direct consequences of the single Yemeni move. What next? Yemen entering BRICS+ at the summit in Kazan in late 2024, under the Russian presidency?

The new architecture will be framed in West Asia

The U.S.-led Armada put together for Operation Genocide Protection, which collapsed even before birth, may have been set up to “warn Iran,” apart from giving Ansarallah a scare. Just as the Houthis, Tehran is hardly intimidated because, as West Asia analyst ace Alastair Crooke succinctly put it: "Sykes-Picot is dead." This is a quantum shift on the chessboard. It means West Asian powers will frame the new regional architecture from now on, not U.S. Navy “projection.” That carries an ineffable corollary: those eleven U.S. aircraft carrier task forces, for all practical purposes, are essentially worthless.

Everyone across West Asia is well aware that Ansarallah’s missiles are capable of hitting Saudi and Emirati oil fields, and knocking them out of commission. So it is little wonder that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi would never accept becoming part of a U.S.-led maritime force to challenge the Yemeni resistance.

Add to it the role of underwater drones now in the possession of Russia and Iran. Think of fifty of these aimed at a U.S. aircraft carrier: it has no defense. While the Americans still have very advanced submarines, they cannot keep the Bab al-Mandeb and Red Sea open to western operators. On the energy front, Moscow and Tehran don’t even need to think—at least not yet—about using the “nuclear” option or cutting off potentially at least 25 percent, and up, of the world oil supply. As one Persian Gulf analyst succinctly describes it, "that would irretrievably implode the international financial system."

For those still determined to support the genocide in Gaza there have been warnings. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has mentioned it explicitly. Tehran has already called for a total oil and gas embargo against nations that support Israel. A total naval blockade of Israel, meticulously engineered, remains a distinct possibility. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Hossein Salami said Israel may “soon face the closure of the Mediterranean Sea, the Strait of Gibraltar, and other waterways.” Keep in mind we’re not yet even talking about a possible blockade of the Strait of Hormuz; we’re still on Red Sea/Bab al-Mandeb.

Because if the Straussian neo-cons in the Beltway get really unhinged by the paradigm shift and act in desperation to “teach a lesson” to Iran, a chokepoint Hormuz-Bab al-Mandeb combo blockade might skyrocket the price of oil to at least $500 a barrel, triggering the implosion of the $618 trillion derivatives market and crashing the entire international banking system.

The paper tiger is in a jam

Mao Zedong was right after all: the U.S. may be in fact a paper tiger. Putin, though, is way more careful, cold, and calculating. With this Russian president, it’s all about an asymmetric response, exactly when no one is expecting it. That brings us to the prime working hypothesis perhaps capable of explaining the shadow play masking the single Ansarallah move on the chessboard.

When Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist Sy (Seymour) Hersh proved how Team Biden blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, there was no Russian response to what was, in effect, an act of terrorism against Gazprom, against Germany, against the EU, and against a bunch of European companies. Yet Yemen, now, with a simple blockade, turns global shipping upside down. So what is more vulnerable? The physical networks of global energy supply (Pipelineistan) or the Thalassocracy, states that derive their power from naval supremacy? Russia privileges Pipelineistan: see, for instance, the Nord Streams and Power of Siberia 1 and 2. But the U.S., the Hegemon, always relied on its thalassocratic power, heir to “Britannia rules the waves.”

Well, not anymore. And, surprisingly, getting there did not even entail the “nuclear” option, the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which Washington games and scaremongers like crazy. Of course we won’t have a smoking gun. But it’s a fascinating proposition that the single Yemeni move may have been coordinated at the highest level between three BRICS members—Russia, China, and Iran, the neocon new “axis of evil”—plus other two BRICS+, energy powerhouses Saudi Arabia and the UAE. As in, “if you do it, we’ve got your back”. None of that, of course, detracts from Yemeni purity: their defense of Palestine is a sacred duty.

Western imperialism and then turbo-capitalism have always been obsessed with gobbling up Yemen, a process that Isa Blumi, in his splendid book Destroying Yemen, described as “necessarily stripping Yemenis of their historic role as the economic, cultural, spiritual, and political engine for much of the Indian Ocean world.” Yemen, though, is unconquerable and, true to a local proverb, “deadly” (Yemen Fataakah). As part of the Axis of Resistance, Yemen’s Ansarallah is now a key actor in a complex Eurasia-wide drama that redefines Heartland connectivity; and alongside China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the India-Iran-Russia-led International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), and Russia’s new Northern Sea Route, also includes control over strategic chokepoints around the Mediterranean Seas and the Arabian peninsula.

This is another trade connectivity paradigm entirely, smashing to bits western colonial and neocolonial control of Afro-Eurasia. So yes, BRICS+ supports Yemen, who with a single move has presented Pax Americana with The Mother of All Geopolitical Jams.

I've been neglecting Bhadrakumar lately (through no fault of his own, I've just been busy) and he's put out some interesting pieces in the meantime.

In the first, he describes how India has turned around on the Israel-Palestine conflict:

India’s voting pattern in the United Nations with regard to the Israel-Palestine conflict is lately marked by a calibrated distancing from Israel. Only a few weeks ago, Israel’s ambassador in Delhi bullishly described the Indian stance as one of “100% support” to his country. But that is no more the case today.

Delhi has rejected the repeated Israeli entreaties to declare Hamas as a terrorist organisation, marking its independent opinion regarding the ecosystem of resistance movements. Indeed, this is a highly significant distinction that Delhi is making vis-a-vis the Israeli and Western narrative about Hamas. although India has not hesitated to condemn the violence directed against Israel on October 7, it refused to name Hamas.

...from a geopolitical perspective, Delhi has marked its distance from the US-Israeli campaign branding Iran as the instigator of extremist groups acting against Israel. Interestingly, on December 19, India was one of only thirty states — along with Russia and China — who voted against a UN resolution on “the human rights situation in Iran.”

The unprecedented unity among the Arab countries, the close coordination between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the huge groundswell of opinion in the Arab world against Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian populations in Gaza and West Bank — all this has created a new momentum in Middle East politics that has pitchforked the Palestine problem to the centre stage, which is something India cannot afford to ignore. ... The acolytes of Israel in the Indian strategic community feel utterly disillusioned. Simply put, an influential constituency in India and the interest groups that it spawned are no longer calling the shots in Delhi. This is going to be consequential.

In the second, he describes how the US war on Ansarallah is illusory, and they are more isolated and vulnerable than they would like to admit:

From a geopolitical perspective, the US has strong reasons to dominate the Red Sea where China has a naval base in Djibouti and Washington has been fuelling the civil war in Sudan to keep the country on the boil and block Russia’s plans to set up a submarine base.

Another littoral state Eritrea occupies a key strategic position on the eastern side of the Red Sea, which has strong economic, diplomatic and military ties with China and Russia. Indeed, the US efforts failed miserably to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia, the largest country in the Horn of Africa, who is aligned to Russia. Suffice to say, the US has not a single friend or ally left today in the entire eastern part of the Red Sea.

The big question is whether the US ploy to drag QUAD — and along with that, India — into the Red Sea will succeed. This is in some ways a replay of history when resisting pressure from the George W. Bush administration, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government refused to join the US-led coalition of the willing to invade Iraq in 2003. In retrospect, that proved to be a wise decision. Then, as now, there are influential interest groups in Delhi who would probably argue for Indian participation in the US-led ‘war on terror’ against the Houthis.

...Stakes are indeed high for Israel to give ballast to the US-led coalition in the Red Sea. The US and Israel are desperate to rope in India in their upcoming ill-fated ‘war on terror’ against Yemen, a civilisational state, so as to give their risky enterprise a regional habitation and name.

And in the third, he talks about Putin's speech on December 19th:

Putin’s speech exuded a buoyant mood. The Russian economy has not only regained its pre-2022 momentum but is accelerating toward a 3.5% growth rate by the yearend, marked by rising incomes and purchasing power for millions of its citizens and an increase in living standards. Unemployment is at an all-time low and Russia has beaten back the Western sanctions and the attempts to isolate it in the international arena.

... On the military side, clearly, Russia will press forward the attritional war to its logical end of pushing the Ukrainian military into a strategic dead-end, which would mean seeking tactical improvements along the frontline, undermining Ukraine’s economic potential, inflicting military losses, and boosting Russia’s own defence industry on a scale that tips the balance of forces to weigh against any military adventures by the NATO.

In the final analysis, Putin asserted, Russia is determined to reclaim the “vast historical territories, Russian territories, along with the population” that the Bolsheviks transferred to Ukraine during the Soviet era. However, he drew an important distinction as regards the “western lands” of Ukraine (west of Dnieper) that are a legacy of World War II over which there could be territorial claims from Poland, Hungary and Romania, which at least in the case of Poland is also linked to the transfer of “eastern German lands, the Danzig Corridor, and Danzig itself” following the defeat of the Third Reich.

Putin took note that “people who live there (western Ukraine) – many of them, at least, I know this for sure, 100 percent – they want to return to their historical homeland. The countries that lost these territories, primarily Poland, dream of having them back.” That said, interestingly, Putin simply washed his hands off any territorial disputes that may arise between Ukraine and its eastern neighbours(all of whom are NATO countries.) Looking ahead, this is going to be a can of worms for the US. Recently, Russia’s intelligence chief Sergey Naryshkin used a powerful metaphor, warning that the US may face a “second Vietnam” in Ukraine that will come to haunt it for a long time.

...a decisive shift in the balance of forces against Ukraine is entirely conceivable by the end of next year, leading to an end of the conflict on Russia’s terms.

SCMP: China and Russia test ‘hack-proof’ quantum communication link for Brics countries

Scientists in Russia and China have established quantum communication encrypted with the help of secure keys transmitted by China’s quantum satellite, showing that a Brics quantum communication network may be technically feasible. The scientists were able to span 3,800km (2,360 miles) between a ground station close to Moscow and another near Urumqi in China’s western Xinjiang region to send two encoded images secured by quantum keys.

The first “full cycle” quantum communication test between the two countries was successfully conducted last year, said Alexey Fedorov, of Russia’s National University of Science and Technology (MISIS) and the Russian Quantum Centre (RQC), Russia’s leading institution in charge of creating a quantum computer, on December 14. Bridging the vast distance is possible with the help of China’s quantum satellite Mozi, which has opened pathways to develop national and international quantum communication networks.

...

Quantum communication – a form of quantum physics-based information transfer that uses cryptography to encode data in single photons – offers a way to transfer information that hackers cannot eavesdrop on, according to the paper. ...

To transfer quantum keys between long-distance ground stations, both stations must have detectors that pick up signals from a satellite. These devices “are not always working ideally”, Fedorov said.

Quantum cryptography is fascinating. One of my minor interests is cryptography, and I read a book on it and at the end it describes how quantum technology could be used to create unbreakable messaging systems. Like, it's directly tied to how the laws of physics work. Current encryption is essentially based on creating extremely difficult math problems that no digital computer could solve in anywhere close to a human lifetime, but could still hypothetically be broken.

Quantum codebreaking can break these math problems much easier and it'll cause a shitload of problems if that technology is developed (one of my conspiracy theories is that the CIA and similar organizations are going all-in on the technology and might be ahead of the current known technology), but quantum developments will also allow us to finally create a messaging system that fundamentally cannot be broken unless you already have the keys. Obviously there's the problem of creating a messaging system that can work across long distances (especially in an era of anti-satellite weaponry) but if that can be overcome...

Scheer Post: Iraq ‘Heads Towards’ Ending US Military Presence

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said his government is “heading towards” ending the presence of international forces in Iraq, which includes about 2,500 US troops, the largest foreign contingent.

Al-Sudani’s comments came after his government strongly condemned several rounds of US airstrikes in Iraq as a violation of sovereignty and a hostile act. In the latest strikes, the US said it targeted the Shia militia Kataib Hezbollah in retaliation for an attack on a US base, but al-Sudani’s government said civilians were also wounded in the US bombing.

“We are in the process of rearranging the relationship with the international coalition, as in light of the presence of capable Iraqi forces, the Iraqi government is moving towards ending the presence of the international coalition forces,” al-Sudani said at a press conference with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

Spain has 300 troops stationed in Iraq as part of the US-led anti-ISIS coalition. “My country, always at the request of the Iraqi authorities, will support the unity, sovereignty and stability of Iraq,” Sanchez said at the press conference.

Al-Sudani first came into office at the end of 2022 and made his first public comments on US troops in Iraq in 2023, when he expressed support for the presence of foreign forces. But he’s been under increasing pressure to get them out, especially now as Iraq has become a battleground between Shia militias and the US due to President BIden’s full-throated support for Israel’s Gaza onslaught.

The US has been resisting Iraqi efforts to expel its forces from the country since 2020 when a US drone strike in Baghdad killed Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. In the wake of the killings, Iraq’s parliament voted to expel foreign forces, but the US refused to leave. The US formally changed its presence in Iraq from a combat role to an advisory one in December 2021, but it did not withdraw any troops at the time.

If al-Sudani tries to expel foreign forces from his country, Washington could make things difficult for him. The US has leverage over Iraq because, since the 2003 invasion, the country’s foreign reserves have been held by the US Federal Reserve, giving Washington control over Baghdad’s dollar supply and the ability to devalue the Iraqi dinar. The US also keeps tight control over Iraq’s ability to pay its neighbor Iran for much-needed electricity.