# entry

title: &amp;#039;Super Dunfun&amp;#039; makes Dunhuang culture full of fun
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https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/-Super-Dunfun-makes-Dunhuang-culture-full-of-fun-1Bj5D6kF1Ly/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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<div readability="7" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/-Super-Dunfun-makes-Dunhuang-culture-full-of-fun-1Bj5D6kF1Ly/img/52689320b61b441b86ce428b23dd5311/52689320b61b441b86ce428b23dd5311.jpeg" alt="A photo taken on February 23, 2025 shows an interior view of the digital art exhibition " super held wangfujing in downtown beijing. layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/-Super-Dunfun-makes-Dunhuang-culture-full-of-fun-1Bj5D6kF1Ly/img/52689320b61b441b86ce428b23dd5311/52689320b61b441b86ce428b23dd5311.jpeg"><div readability="11" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A photo taken on February 23, 2025 shows an interior view of the digital art exhibition "Super Dunfun" held in Wangfujing in downtown Beijing. /CGTN</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">A photo taken on February 23, 2025 shows an interior view of the digital art exhibition "Super Dunfun" held in Wangfujing in downtown Beijing. /CGTN</p>
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<div readability="7" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/-Super-Dunfun-makes-Dunhuang-culture-full-of-fun-1Bj5D6kF1Ly/img/c1d07e03aa8e42ed8c8a5c90849761a5/c1d07e03aa8e42ed8c8a5c90849761a5.jpeg" alt="A photo taken on February 23, 2025 shows an interior view of the digital art exhibition " super held wangfujing in downtown beijing. layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/-Super-Dunfun-makes-Dunhuang-culture-full-of-fun-1Bj5D6kF1Ly/img/c1d07e03aa8e42ed8c8a5c90849761a5/c1d07e03aa8e42ed8c8a5c90849761a5.jpeg"><div readability="11" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A photo taken on February 23, 2025 shows an interior view of the digital art exhibition "Super Dunfun" held in Wangfujing in downtown Beijing. /CGTN</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">A photo taken on February 23, 2025 shows an interior view of the digital art exhibition "Super Dunfun" held in Wangfujing in downtown Beijing. /CGTN</p>
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<div readability="7" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/-Super-Dunfun-makes-Dunhuang-culture-full-of-fun-1Bj5D6kF1Ly/img/5bd3e4717c9f4f518225126799e2231f/5bd3e4717c9f4f518225126799e2231f.jpeg" alt="A photo taken on February 23, 2025 shows an interior view of the digital art exhibition " super held wangfujing in downtown beijing. layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/-Super-Dunfun-makes-Dunhuang-culture-full-of-fun-1Bj5D6kF1Ly/img/5bd3e4717c9f4f518225126799e2231f/5bd3e4717c9f4f518225126799e2231f.jpeg"><div readability="11" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A photo taken on February 23, 2025 shows an interior view of the digital art exhibition "Super Dunfun" held in Wangfujing in downtown Beijing. /CGTN</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">A photo taken on February 23, 2025 shows an interior view of the digital art exhibition "Super Dunfun" held in Wangfujing in downtown Beijing. /CGTN</p>
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<div readability="7" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/-Super-Dunfun-makes-Dunhuang-culture-full-of-fun-1Bj5D6kF1Ly/img/c90e514785e64fdd9b17670a513f042a/c90e514785e64fdd9b17670a513f042a.jpeg" alt="A photo taken on February 23, 2025 shows an interior view of the digital art exhibition " super held wangfujing in downtown beijing. layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/-Super-Dunfun-makes-Dunhuang-culture-full-of-fun-1Bj5D6kF1Ly/img/c90e514785e64fdd9b17670a513f042a/c90e514785e64fdd9b17670a513f042a.jpeg"><div readability="11" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A photo taken on February 23, 2025 shows an interior view of the digital art exhibition "Super Dunfun" held in Wangfujing in downtown Beijing. /CGTN</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">A photo taken on February 23, 2025 shows an interior view of the digital art exhibition "Super Dunfun" held in Wangfujing in downtown Beijing. /CGTN</p>
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<div readability="7" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/-Super-Dunfun-makes-Dunhuang-culture-full-of-fun-1Bj5D6kF1Ly/img/c0d7907390df4547a8acd9eb5ac02507/c0d7907390df4547a8acd9eb5ac02507.jpeg" alt="A photo taken on February 23, 2025 shows an interior view of the digital art exhibition " super held wangfujing in downtown beijing. layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/-Super-Dunfun-makes-Dunhuang-culture-full-of-fun-1Bj5D6kF1Ly/img/c0d7907390df4547a8acd9eb5ac02507/c0d7907390df4547a8acd9eb5ac02507.jpeg"><div readability="11" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A photo taken on February 23, 2025 shows an interior view of the digital art exhibition "Super Dunfun" held in Wangfujing in downtown Beijing. /CGTN</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">A photo taken on February 23, 2025 shows an interior view of the digital art exhibition "Super Dunfun" held in Wangfujing in downtown Beijing. /CGTN</p>
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<div readability="7" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/-Super-Dunfun-makes-Dunhuang-culture-full-of-fun-1Bj5D6kF1Ly/img/7986d551c2a541aab7800d72d19660ce/7986d551c2a541aab7800d72d19660ce.jpeg" alt="A photo taken on February 23, 2025 shows an interior view of the digital art exhibition " super held wangfujing in downtown beijing. layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/-Super-Dunfun-makes-Dunhuang-culture-full-of-fun-1Bj5D6kF1Ly/img/7986d551c2a541aab7800d72d19660ce/7986d551c2a541aab7800d72d19660ce.jpeg"><div readability="11" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A photo taken on February 23, 2025 shows an interior view of the digital art exhibition "Super Dunfun" held in Wangfujing in downtown Beijing. /CGTN</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">A photo taken on February 23, 2025 shows an interior view of the digital art exhibition "Super Dunfun" held in Wangfujing in downtown Beijing. /CGTN</p>
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<p>The exhibition "Super Dunfun," jointly hosted by the EDCC Ewin Digital Art Center and Dunhuang Art, offers visitors the chance to experience the beauty of Dunhuang over thousands of years through digital interactions.</p>
<p>Through 13 exhibition areas divided into seven sections and based on the creative achievements of artists from Dunhuang Art, "Super Dunfun" integrates the essence of Dunhuang murals and grotto art, cultural heritage and modern digital technology to rejuvenate the historic culture of Dunhuang and immerse visitors in a fantasy-filled metaverse.</p>
<p>The exhibition, held at the fifth floor of Beijing Wangfujing Department Store in downtown Beijing, will run until March 25, 2025.</p>
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link:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/-Super-Dunfun-makes-Dunhuang-culture-full-of-fun-1Bj5D6kF1Ly/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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title: Lucy&amp;#039;s Journey: Beijing&amp;#039;s Qianmen area
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https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/Lucy-s-Journey-Beijing-s-Qianmen-area-1Bj4hDUyWHu/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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<div data-width="1179" data-height="2096" data-ratio="1179:2096" data-news-id="485524" data-video="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/Lucy-s-Journey-Beijing-s-Qianmen-area-1Bj4hDUyWHu/video/wu_1il0jfoqcn130s10gj16ev155113/wu_1il0jfoqcn130s10gj16ev155113.m3u8" data-is360="false" data-is4k="false" data-poster="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/Lucy-s-Journey-Beijing-s-Qianmen-area-1Bj4hDUyWHu/video/wu_1il0jfoqcn130s10gj16ev155113/wu_1il0jfoqcn130s10gj16ev155113.jpg" data-title="Lucy's Journey: Beijing's Qianmen area" data-origin="web_list" data-sanitized-class="cg-player-container J_player_container">
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<div data-width="1179" data-height="2096" data-video="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/Lucy-s-Journey-Beijing-s-Qianmen-area-1Bj4hDUyWHu/video/wu_1il0jfoqcn130s10gj16ev155113/wu_1il0jfoqcn130s10gj16ev155113.m3u8" data-is360="false" data-newsid="485524" data-poster="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/Lucy-s-Journey-Beijing-s-Qianmen-area-1Bj4hDUyWHu/video/wu_1il0jfoqcn130s10gj16ev155113/wu_1il0jfoqcn130s10gj16ev155113.jpg" data-is4k="false" data-sanitized-id="c_videoCULTURE_GENERAL_DIGITAL_checkvideo0Play-myOverlay" data-sanitized-class="click-to-play-overlay J_player_container_main">


<p>00:33</p>
<img src="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/Lucy-s-Journey-Beijing-s-Qianmen-area-1Bj4hDUyWHu/video/wu_1il0jfoqcn130s10gj16ev155113/wu_1il0jfoqcn130s10gj16ev155113.jpg" alt></div>
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<p>Qianmen and Dashilan are two closely connected historic districts in Beijing, both part of the vibrant Qianmen area just on the Central Axis of the capital city. Qianmen Street, with its grand architecture and modern shops, serves as the gateway to Dashilan, a maze of narrow alleys filled with traditional silk, tea, and snack vendors. A short walk from Qianmen brings you into Dashilan's lively atmosphere of old Beijing, where heritage brands and local delicacies preserve the city's rich cultural history.</p>
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https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/Lucy-s-Journey-Beijing-s-Qianmen-area-1Bj4hDUyWHu/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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title: Why Chinese viewers are losing interest in the latest Captain America
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<p><em>In short: The passion for superhero movies is fading for Chinese audiences. It can be assumed that the carefree days for a Hollywood flick to easily rake in millions of dollars in China are history.</em></p>
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<div readability="6" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/Why-Chinese-viewers-are-losing-interest-in-the-latest-Captain-America-1BjcrLLCw3C/img/5e02053e8daf441b8724f54f56abc16d/5e02053e8daf441b8724f54f56abc16d.jpeg" alt="Anthony Mackie in Captain America: Brave New World /LMKMEDIA via VCG" layout="responsive"><div readability="8" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>Anthony Mackie in Captain America: Brave New World /LMKMEDIA via VCG</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">Anthony Mackie in Captain America: Brave New World /LMKMEDIA via VCG</p>
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<p>In "Captain America: Brave New World," the captain seems unable to manifest his bravery. And the film's sluggish box-office performance suggests that the "Cap" has deeply disappointed his patient Chinese fans.</p>
<p>As an African American, Sam Wilson is driven to stand up for his oppressed ethnic group. Inheriting the title of "Captain America" from Steve Rogers, he is compelled to cooperate with the U.S. government, placing him at a crossroads. Balancing these two roles, he frequently serves as an impartial decision-maker. Yet, the more he adheres to neutrality and political correctness, the more the plot loses its suspense and the hero loses his edge.</p>
<p>Since "Captain America: Brave New World" fails to depict a hero who is upright, kind-hearted, and brave enough to break free from the constraints, it is, in fact, the most steadfast adherent to the old formulas.</p>
<p>Hollywood, once a "super-creative power" now only pursues "money-making power," and no longer fuels audiences with dreams. Backing the industry are a slew of highest market-value movie companies, controlled by monopolistic big business. In a rapidly changing world and political landscape, Wall Street CEOs plan their productions according to financial statements to reduce risk. What kind of movies are the least risky? That's easy — sequels to old intellectual property!</p>
<p>As a result, we see one installment after another of Captain America, Avengers, and the Fast &amp; Furious franchises. Only in this way can Hollywood CEOs maintain their multi-million dollar annual salaries, and naturally, they have no incentive to develop new content. Without innovation and creativity, it is safe to assume that Hollywood movies are doomed to lose their appeal.</p>
<p>Marvel's endeavors to renew old intellectual properties with diversified cast have their merits. But owing to the poorly executed adaptations by its screenwriters and the dearth of innovation in satisfying the audience's desires, Chinese viewers are evidently not willing to pay for this particular diversity initiative.</p>
<p>Chinese audiences' interest in superhero movies has waned in recent years, and they no longer top the charts. Gone are the days when a Hollywood movie could easily make hundreds of millions of dollars in China. As Chinese audiences' aesthetic standards continue to evolve and mature, they have developed a stronger preference for deriving personal emotional fulfillment and a sense of purpose from the time and money they invest in the movies.</p>
<p>Today, Hollywood movies are no longer offering audiences love and dreams, and the United States is no longer at the forefront of leading global culture. Its military interventions around the world have caused widespread chaos. Hollywood, indifferent to the tragedy in Gaza, has done little to help where children suffer. As a result, the once-appealing plot of superheroes saving the world fails to resonate with audiences globally. It has become difficult for people outside of the U.S. to find solace or inspiration in such fictional narratives that seem so detached from the harsh realities we live in.</p>
<p>Chinese audiences seem to be the first to notice this shift and reflect it in the box office results. When it comes to the future direction of the world, China has put forward the concept of a community with a shared future for mankind. This is evident in "The Wandering Earth" movie series, where highly imaginative science fiction stories vividly illustrate the spirit of humanity's unity and cooperation in pursuit of the common goal of survival.</p>
<p>Beyond ideology, the visual spectacle that Hollywood films once prided themselves on has also lost its luster. The Chinese film, animation and gaming industries have caught up and are producing works of equal quality. The "post-90s" and "post-00s," the mainstay of China's moviegoing public, have already been exposed to comparable or even more intense visual thrills in 3A games, VR, AR, and other forms of entertainment. As a result, Hollywood's reliance on these visual effects can no longer captivate audiences as it did in the past.</p>
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<div readability="6" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/Why-Chinese-viewers-are-losing-interest-in-the-latest-Captain-America-1BjcrLLCw3C/img/64806b5121b645fa8fb9533601358c81/64806b5121b645fa8fb9533601358c81.jpeg" alt="A combined photo of posters of Chinese film Ne Zha 2 and Captain America: Brave New World. /CGTN" layout="responsive"><div readability="8" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A combined photo of posters of Chinese film Ne Zha 2 and Captain America: Brave New World. /CGTN</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">A combined photo of posters of Chinese film Ne Zha 2 and Captain America: Brave New World. /CGTN</p>
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<p>The extremely popular domestic film "Ne Zha 2" serves as a prime example in this regard. Its production quality is on a par with Hollywood's industrial standards, vividly demonstrating the remarkable advancements achieved by China.</p>
<p>Since joining the World Trade Organization three decades ago, China has opened its doors wide to the world's films. Each year, China imports a certain number of foreign productions on either a revenue-sharing or flat-fee basis, fostering a diverse cinematic landscape.</p>
<p>According to a revenue-sharing agreement signed by China and the United States in 2012, China can import 34 films from the United States each year. Of these, 14 are IMAX and 3D films. In the past, this quota of 34 films was often fully utilized. As a result, additional American films entered the Chinese market on a flat-fee basis, further fueling exchanges between the film industries of the two countries.</p>
<p>However, the situation has changed significantly. In 2024, out of a total of 93 imported films in China, there were only 33 American films. This notable decline not only indicates a shift in import volume, but also reflects the evolving dynamics of the Chinese film market, which has become more diversified and selective in its choice of foreign films. Although Hollywood still maintains a strong dominance in the U.S. market, it is finding it increasingly challenging to replicate its past glories in the Chinese market.</p>
<p>As we look towards the future, the Chinese film market will continue to open up to the world, with more films being imported and exported through dynamic exchanges. Chinese audiences will be exposed to a wider range of outstanding works from different cultural backgrounds, which will further refine their discernment. Whether American films can regain the favor of Chinese audiences may be revealed by the upcoming releases of "Snow White" and "Zootopia 2."</p>
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link:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-26/Why-Chinese-viewers-are-losing-interest-in-the-latest-Captain-America-1BjcrLLCw3C/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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title: CGTN The Vibe 20250226
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<p>【Film &amp; Tourism】Filming on location… "Detective Chinatown 1900" helps boost cultural tourism in Shandong.</p>
<p>【Going Global】Chinese micro dramas are growing in popularity on a global scale.  </p>
<p>【Classics on the Paddies】Qianxi village's harvest spectacle: Farmers become living art in stunning fields-to-frames cosplay of world-famous paintings.</p>
<p>【Yingge Dance】Keeping tradition alive… Chen Laifa is passing on the tradition of Yingge Dance, bringing popularity to the three-century-old dance.</p>
<p>If you have any further questions or inquiries for collaboration, please email us at vibeteam@cgtn.com.  </p>
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link:
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title: Beyond Tai Chi: The royal splendor of Wudang&amp;#039;s Zixiao Palace
hash: 8��Y%~���K��
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content:
<div><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Beyond-Tai-Chi-The-royal-splendor-of-Wudang-s-Zixiao-Palace-1BljrMnowDu/img/d5028150f2654f15a4ed4480ecb55384/d5028150f2654f15a4ed4480ecb55384-1920.png" data-sanitized-class="ff-og-image-inserted"></div><div readability="40" data-sanitized-class="text en">
<p>For centuries, the Wudang Mountains in Shiyan City, central China's Hubei Province, have stood as a vital center of Taoism, renowned particularly for the development of Taoist martial arts, including Tai Chi. The ancient palaces and temples that grace these mountains showcase the pinnacle of Chinese art and architecture.</p>
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<div readability="42" data-sanitized-class="text en">
<p>Among them, the Zixiao Palace, or Purple Heaven Temple, commands a majestic presence atop Zhanqi Peak in the Wudang Mountains. Historically, it served as a sacred space where Wudang Taoists prayed for the imperial family, with emperors from the Song (960-1279) to Qing (1644-1911) dynasties commissioning altars for ancestral blessings and divine intervention for prosperity and bountiful harvests.</p>
<p>(All photos taken by CGTN at the Zixiao Palace in the Wudang Mountains.)</p>
</div>

link:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Beyond-Tai-Chi-The-royal-splendor-of-Wudang-s-Zixiao-Palace-1BljrMnowDu/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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title: Cultures blend in Xiangtangshan Caves&amp;#039; honeysuckle patterns
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<div readability="6" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cultures-blend-in-Xiangtangshan-Caves-honeysuckle-patterns-1BavNBsllmw/img/aed6b695bb194bc18b58305b93fb9b71/aed6b695bb194bc18b58305b93fb9b71.png" alt="A view of the honeysuckle patterns in the Xiangtangshan Caves /CGTN" layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cultures-blend-in-Xiangtangshan-Caves-honeysuckle-patterns-1BavNBsllmw/img/aed6b695bb194bc18b58305b93fb9b71/aed6b695bb194bc18b58305b93fb9b71.png"><div readability="8" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A view of the honeysuckle patterns in the Xiangtangshan Caves /CGTN</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">A view of the honeysuckle patterns in the Xiangtangshan Caves /CGTN</p>
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<div readability="6" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cultures-blend-in-Xiangtangshan-Caves-honeysuckle-patterns-1BavNBsllmw/img/d72418f55c4d497f9a213cf436c77cf0/d72418f55c4d497f9a213cf436c77cf0.png" alt="A view of the honeysuckle patterns in the Xiangtangshan Caves /CGTN" layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cultures-blend-in-Xiangtangshan-Caves-honeysuckle-patterns-1BavNBsllmw/img/d72418f55c4d497f9a213cf436c77cf0/d72418f55c4d497f9a213cf436c77cf0.png"><div readability="8" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A view of the honeysuckle patterns in the Xiangtangshan Caves /CGTN</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">A view of the honeysuckle patterns in the Xiangtangshan Caves /CGTN</p>
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<div readability="6" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cultures-blend-in-Xiangtangshan-Caves-honeysuckle-patterns-1BavNBsllmw/img/249fee38b37e47bab6d507974d6c8641/249fee38b37e47bab6d507974d6c8641.png" alt="A view of the honeysuckle patterns in the Xiangtangshan Caves /CGTN" layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cultures-blend-in-Xiangtangshan-Caves-honeysuckle-patterns-1BavNBsllmw/img/249fee38b37e47bab6d507974d6c8641/249fee38b37e47bab6d507974d6c8641.png"><div readability="8" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A view of the honeysuckle patterns in the Xiangtangshan Caves /CGTN</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">A view of the honeysuckle patterns in the Xiangtangshan Caves /CGTN</p>
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<div readability="6" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cultures-blend-in-Xiangtangshan-Caves-honeysuckle-patterns-1BavNBsllmw/img/f534b0d89dcc42f79e117642a08dbab0/f534b0d89dcc42f79e117642a08dbab0.png" alt="A view of the honeysuckle patterns in the Xiangtangshan Caves /CGTN" layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cultures-blend-in-Xiangtangshan-Caves-honeysuckle-patterns-1BavNBsllmw/img/f534b0d89dcc42f79e117642a08dbab0/f534b0d89dcc42f79e117642a08dbab0.png"><div readability="8" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A view of the honeysuckle patterns in the Xiangtangshan Caves /CGTN</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">A view of the honeysuckle patterns in the Xiangtangshan Caves /CGTN</p>
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<div readability="6" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cultures-blend-in-Xiangtangshan-Caves-honeysuckle-patterns-1BavNBsllmw/img/3bdd382c6137443786a0231eaa920760/3bdd382c6137443786a0231eaa920760.png" alt="A view of the honeysuckle patterns in the Xiangtangshan Caves /CGTN" layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cultures-blend-in-Xiangtangshan-Caves-honeysuckle-patterns-1BavNBsllmw/img/3bdd382c6137443786a0231eaa920760/3bdd382c6137443786a0231eaa920760.png"><div readability="8" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A view of the honeysuckle patterns in the Xiangtangshan Caves /CGTN</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">A view of the honeysuckle patterns in the Xiangtangshan Caves /CGTN</p>
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<div readability="6" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cultures-blend-in-Xiangtangshan-Caves-honeysuckle-patterns-1BavNBsllmw/img/93548e3183a341aa9a20f3f33a5d3d26/93548e3183a341aa9a20f3f33a5d3d26.png" alt="A view of the honeysuckle patterns in the Xiangtangshan Caves /CGTN" layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cultures-blend-in-Xiangtangshan-Caves-honeysuckle-patterns-1BavNBsllmw/img/93548e3183a341aa9a20f3f33a5d3d26/93548e3183a341aa9a20f3f33a5d3d26.png"><div readability="8" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A view of the honeysuckle patterns in the Xiangtangshan Caves /CGTN</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">A view of the honeysuckle patterns in the Xiangtangshan Caves /CGTN</p>
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<p>The honeysuckle patterns seen at the Xiangtangshan Caves in Handan, Hebei Province, are an example of the blending of Indian Buddhist culture and traditional Chinese culture. With the introduction of Buddhism into China, the patterns began to appear on the statues of grottoes. As one of the most notable features of the Xiangtangshan Caves, the honeysuckle patterns there include Chinese honeysuckles, representing a new type of diversified Buddhist decorative art. They are of high artistic and research value.</p>
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link:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cultures-blend-in-Xiangtangshan-Caves-honeysuckle-patterns-1BavNBsllmw/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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title: Zhangjiajie: The real-life &amp;#039;Pandora&amp;#039; from the movie &amp;#039;Avatar&amp;#039;
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<div readability="7" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Zhangjiajie-The-real-life-Pandora-from-the-movie-Avatar--1Bm7ZrSbMti/img/9cf3783cf9a34d2f9d856b1d15f39e87/9cf3783cf9a34d2f9d856b1d15f39e87.jpeg" alt="Liuqi Pavillion in the snow of Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, central China's Hunan Province. /CMG" layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Zhangjiajie-The-real-life-Pandora-from-the-movie-Avatar--1Bm7ZrSbMti/img/9cf3783cf9a34d2f9d856b1d15f39e87/9cf3783cf9a34d2f9d856b1d15f39e87.jpeg"><div readability="11" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>Liuqi Pavillion in the snow of Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, central China's Hunan Province. /CMG</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">Liuqi Pavillion in the snow of Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, central China's Hunan Province. /CMG</p>
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<div readability="6" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Zhangjiajie-The-real-life-Pandora-from-the-movie-Avatar--1Bm7ZrSbMti/img/d3d9cde462c24b2aa97f6afc96b94057/d3d9cde462c24b2aa97f6afc96b94057.jpeg" alt="Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in snow and mist in central China's Hunan Province. /CMG" layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Zhangjiajie-The-real-life-Pandora-from-the-movie-Avatar--1Bm7ZrSbMti/img/d3d9cde462c24b2aa97f6afc96b94057/d3d9cde462c24b2aa97f6afc96b94057.jpeg"><div readability="8" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in snow and mist in central China's Hunan Province. /CMG</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in snow and mist in central China's Hunan Province. /CMG</p>
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<div readability="6" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Zhangjiajie-The-real-life-Pandora-from-the-movie-Avatar--1Bm7ZrSbMti/img/ec0caae3975f48259ede259424da5c64/ec0caae3975f48259ede259424da5c64.jpeg" alt="Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in snow and mist in central China's Hunan Province. /CMG" layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Zhangjiajie-The-real-life-Pandora-from-the-movie-Avatar--1Bm7ZrSbMti/img/ec0caae3975f48259ede259424da5c64/ec0caae3975f48259ede259424da5c64.jpeg"><div readability="8" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in snow and mist in central China's Hunan Province. /CMG</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in snow and mist in central China's Hunan Province. /CMG</p>
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<div readability="6" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Zhangjiajie-The-real-life-Pandora-from-the-movie-Avatar--1Bm7ZrSbMti/img/28a7dd3341f84c0aa5df76aca7d18d0b/28a7dd3341f84c0aa5df76aca7d18d0b.jpeg" alt="Peaks and sandstone pillars inspiring the sci-fi movie " layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Zhangjiajie-The-real-life-Pandora-from-the-movie-Avatar--1Bm7ZrSbMti/img/28a7dd3341f84c0aa5df76aca7d18d0b/28a7dd3341f84c0aa5df76aca7d18d0b.jpeg"><div readability="8" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>Peaks and sandstone pillars inspiring the sci-fi movie "Avatar." /CMG</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">Peaks and sandstone pillars inspiring the sci-fi movie "Avatar." /CMG</p>
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<div readability="7" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Zhangjiajie-The-real-life-Pandora-from-the-movie-Avatar--1Bm7ZrSbMti/img/6ec86cb5e72b43df9629f9f4341e1c8d/6ec86cb5e72b43df9629f9f4341e1c8d.jpeg" alt="Mist shrouds the sandstone pillars in Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, central China's Hunan Province. /CMG" layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Zhangjiajie-The-real-life-Pandora-from-the-movie-Avatar--1Bm7ZrSbMti/img/6ec86cb5e72b43df9629f9f4341e1c8d/6ec86cb5e72b43df9629f9f4341e1c8d.jpeg"><div readability="11" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>Mist shrouds the sandstone pillars in Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, central China's Hunan Province. /CMG</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">Mist shrouds the sandstone pillars in Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, central China's Hunan Province. /CMG</p>
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<div readability="6.5" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Zhangjiajie-The-real-life-Pandora-from-the-movie-Avatar--1Bm7ZrSbMti/img/3d453224e8264b9ca7e938b47d9124a5/3d453224e8264b9ca7e938b47d9124a5.jpeg" alt="Sea of clouds in Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, central China's Hunan Province. /CMG" layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Zhangjiajie-The-real-life-Pandora-from-the-movie-Avatar--1Bm7ZrSbMti/img/3d453224e8264b9ca7e938b47d9124a5/3d453224e8264b9ca7e938b47d9124a5.jpeg"><div readability="9.5" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>Sea of clouds in Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, central China's Hunan Province. /CMG</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">Sea of clouds in Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, central China's Hunan Province. /CMG</p>
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<div readability="6" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Zhangjiajie-The-real-life-Pandora-from-the-movie-Avatar--1Bm7ZrSbMti/img/a47e9254603b4463a9165824f9b58183/a47e9254603b4463a9165824f9b58183.jpeg" alt="Peaks and sandstone pillars inspired the sci-fi movie " layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Zhangjiajie-The-real-life-Pandora-from-the-movie-Avatar--1Bm7ZrSbMti/img/a47e9254603b4463a9165824f9b58183/a47e9254603b4463a9165824f9b58183.jpeg"><div readability="8" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>Peaks and sandstone pillars inspired the sci-fi movie "Avatar". /CMG</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">Peaks and sandstone pillars inspired the sci-fi movie "Avatar". /CMG</p>
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<div readability="6.5" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Zhangjiajie-The-real-life-Pandora-from-the-movie-Avatar--1Bm7ZrSbMti/img/9af16ec02b174fe39af35b396f3ca77b/9af16ec02b174fe39af35b396f3ca77b.jpeg" alt="Sea of clouds in Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, central China's Hunan Province. /CMG" layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Zhangjiajie-The-real-life-Pandora-from-the-movie-Avatar--1Bm7ZrSbMti/img/9af16ec02b174fe39af35b396f3ca77b/9af16ec02b174fe39af35b396f3ca77b.jpeg"><div readability="9.5" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>Sea of clouds in Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, central China's Hunan Province. /CMG</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">Sea of clouds in Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, central China's Hunan Province. /CMG</p>
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<p>Amid the mist-shrouded peaks, Zhangjiajie in central China's Hunan Province stands as a masterpiece of nature, with its otherworldly quartz sandstone pillars inspiring the first-ever 3D sci-fi blockbuster: Avatar. </p>
<p>The mysterious and mesmerizing world of Pandora, as envisioned by director James Cameron, draws direct inspiration from Yuanjiajie Scenic Spot, located in the heart of Zhangjiajie National Forest Park within Wulingyuan Scenic Area. Towering with approximately 3,000 quartz sandstone pillars reaching into the sky, this surreal landscape served as the real-world shooting location for the legendary Hallelujah Mountains seen in the film.</p>
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<p>Zhangjiajie is not just a marvel of nature – it is a living, breathing masterpiece of landscape artistry. For centuries, this land has preserved rich geological wonders, folklore and the cultural heritage of the Tujia ethnic group, giving it a unique soul. Mist drifts between the towering peaks, rising and falling like the breath of the earth itself, adding an ethereal, dreamlike quality to the scenery.</p>
<p>In 1992, Wulingyuan was officially recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, securing its place as one of the world's most extraordinary natural treasures. And in 2004, Zhangjiajie was designated as one of the world's first UNESCO Global Geoparks, recognized as a quintessential representation of quartz sandstone peak forest landscapes. </p>
<p>Today, Zhangjiajie continues to captivate visitors from around the globe, sparking boundless imagination about the harmony between nature and fantasy. Whether standing atop Yuanjiajie's peaks, gazing at the breathtaking landscape, or strolling along Golden Whip Stream, immersed in the serenity of nature, every moment spent there is a conversation with the soul of Earth itself.</p>
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<p>(All images taken by Zhang Hongtao)</p>
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link:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Zhangjiajie-The-real-life-Pandora-from-the-movie-Avatar--1Bm7ZrSbMti/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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title: Animated film &amp;#039;Chang&amp;#039;an&amp;#039; boosts international cultural tourism
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<div data-width="4032" data-height="4030" data-ratio="4032:4030" data-news-id="486162" data-video="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Animated-film-Chang-an-boosts-international-cultural-tourism-1Bmhmt0ahos/video/wu_1il5iimnn1g1k53pdj79h918ffa/wu_1il5iimnn1g1k53pdj79h918ffa.m3u8" data-is360="false" data-is4k="false" data-poster="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Animated-film-Chang-an-boosts-international-cultural-tourism-1Bmhmt0ahos/video/wu_1il5iimnn1g1k53pdj79h918ffa/wu_1il5iimnn1g1k53pdj79h918ffa.jpg" data-title="Animated film 'Chang'an' helps cultural tourism break boundaries and expand internationally" data-origin="web_list" data-sanitized-class="cg-player-container J_player_container">
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<div data-width="4032" data-height="4030" data-video="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Animated-film-Chang-an-boosts-international-cultural-tourism-1Bmhmt0ahos/video/wu_1il5iimnn1g1k53pdj79h918ffa/wu_1il5iimnn1g1k53pdj79h918ffa.m3u8" data-is360="false" data-newsid="486162" data-poster="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Animated-film-Chang-an-boosts-international-cultural-tourism-1Bmhmt0ahos/video/wu_1il5iimnn1g1k53pdj79h918ffa/wu_1il5iimnn1g1k53pdj79h918ffa.jpg" data-is4k="false" data-sanitized-id="c_videoCULTURE_GENERAL_DIGITAL_checkvideo0Play-myOverlay" data-sanitized-class="click-to-play-overlay J_player_container_main">


<p>03:18</p>
<img src="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Animated-film-Chang-an-boosts-international-cultural-tourism-1Bmhmt0ahos/video/wu_1il5iimnn1g1k53pdj79h918ffa/wu_1il5iimnn1g1k53pdj79h918ffa.jpg" alt></div>
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</div>
</div>
</div>
<div readability="38" data-sanitized-class="text en">
<p>The animated film "Chang'an" showcases the brilliance of Tang Dynasty (618-907) poets, captivating audiences. The enduring nature of these poems, which are still recited today, has sparked a renewed passion for traditional Chinese poetry and boosted the development of cultural and tourism resources in China. </p>
</div>

link:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Animated-film-Chang-an-boosts-international-cultural-tourism-1Bmhmt0ahos/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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title: Chengdu makeup artist stuns with bridal looks
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<div data-width="3353" data-height="1876" data-ratio="3353:1876" data-news-id="486164" data-video="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Chengdu-makeup-artist-stuns-with-bridal-looks-1BmhTTH84xy/video/wu_1il5j2nn4134oav61hcs1lptpu75to/wu_1il5j2nn4134oav61hcs1lptpu75to.m3u8" data-is360="false" data-is4k="false" data-poster="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Chengdu-makeup-artist-stuns-with-bridal-looks-1BmhTTH84xy/video/wu_1il5j2nn4134oav61hcs1lptpu75to/wu_1il5j2nn4134oav61hcs1lptpu75to.jpg" data-title="Chengdu makeup artist stuns with bridal looks" data-origin="web_list" data-sanitized-class="cg-player-container J_player_container">
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<div data-width="3353" data-height="1876" data-video="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Chengdu-makeup-artist-stuns-with-bridal-looks-1BmhTTH84xy/video/wu_1il5j2nn4134oav61hcs1lptpu75to/wu_1il5j2nn4134oav61hcs1lptpu75to.m3u8" data-is360="false" data-newsid="486164" data-poster="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Chengdu-makeup-artist-stuns-with-bridal-looks-1BmhTTH84xy/video/wu_1il5j2nn4134oav61hcs1lptpu75to/wu_1il5j2nn4134oav61hcs1lptpu75to.jpg" data-is4k="false" data-sanitized-id="c_videoCULTURE_GENERAL_DIGITAL_checkvideo0Play-myOverlay" data-sanitized-class="click-to-play-overlay J_player_container_main">


<p>02:53</p>
<img src="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Chengdu-makeup-artist-stuns-with-bridal-looks-1BmhTTH84xy/video/wu_1il5j2nn4134oav61hcs1lptpu75to/wu_1il5j2nn4134oav61hcs1lptpu75to.jpg" alt></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
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<div readability="36" data-sanitized-class="text en">
<p>Traditional Chinese looks remain trendy among makeup styles. In Chengdu, makeup artist Chen Shasha not only creates stunning bridal looks, but also teaches the next generation of beauty professionals. Her studio is now a hot spot for those looking to learn the art of traditional Chinese makeup.</p>
</div>

link:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Chengdu-makeup-artist-stuns-with-bridal-looks-1BmhTTH84xy/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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title: Step into a world of film: Xi&amp;#039;an&amp;#039;s Film Experience Center
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<div data-width="588" data-height="1046" data-ratio="588:1046" data-news-id="486176" data-video="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Step-into-a-world-of-film-Xi-an-s-Film-Experience-Center-1BmlJWcWjlK/video/wu_1il5mb3p91vuv1jktkjk12surcia/wu_1il5mb3p91vuv1jktkjk12surcia.m3u8" data-is360="false" data-is4k="false" data-poster="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Step-into-a-world-of-film-Xi-an-s-Film-Experience-Center-1BmlJWcWjlK/video/wu_1il5mb3p91vuv1jktkjk12surcia/wu_1il5mb3p91vuv1jktkjk12surcia.jpg" data-title="Step into a world of film: Xi'an's Film Experience Center" data-origin="web_list" data-sanitized-class="cg-player-container J_player_container">
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<div data-width="588" data-height="1046" data-video="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Step-into-a-world-of-film-Xi-an-s-Film-Experience-Center-1BmlJWcWjlK/video/wu_1il5mb3p91vuv1jktkjk12surcia/wu_1il5mb3p91vuv1jktkjk12surcia.m3u8" data-is360="false" data-newsid="486176" data-poster="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Step-into-a-world-of-film-Xi-an-s-Film-Experience-Center-1BmlJWcWjlK/video/wu_1il5mb3p91vuv1jktkjk12surcia/wu_1il5mb3p91vuv1jktkjk12surcia.jpg" data-is4k="false" data-sanitized-id="c_videoCULTURE_GENERAL_DIGITAL_checkvideo0Play-myOverlay" data-sanitized-class="click-to-play-overlay J_player_container_main">


<p>01:24</p>
<img src="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Step-into-a-world-of-film-Xi-an-s-Film-Experience-Center-1BmlJWcWjlK/video/wu_1il5mb3p91vuv1jktkjk12surcia/wu_1il5mb3p91vuv1jktkjk12surcia.jpg" alt></div>
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<p>Xi'an isn't just about history, it's also a city of cinema and creativity! At the Xi'an Film Studio Experience Center, Rachel and a group of international travelers and students in China step into the world of filmmaking. From green screen magic to voice dubbing, sound effects and movie sets, they explore what it takes to bring a film to life. Let's dive into the lights, camera, action!</p>
</div>

link:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Step-into-a-world-of-film-Xi-an-s-Film-Experience-Center-1BmlJWcWjlK/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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title: What do international visitors think of Chinese films?
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<div data-width="572" data-height="1017" data-ratio="572:1017" data-news-id="486180" data-video="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/What-do-international-visitors-think-of-Chinese-films--1Bmn7sSBB60/video/wu_1il5n346n1u0v1m3vg20l4f1g2jau/wu_1il5n346n1u0v1m3vg20l4f1g2jau.m3u8" data-is360="false" data-is4k="false" data-poster="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/What-do-international-visitors-think-of-Chinese-films--1Bmn7sSBB60/video/wu_1il5n346n1u0v1m3vg20l4f1g2jau/wu_1il5n346n1u0v1m3vg20l4f1g2jau.jpg" data-title="Cinema in Xi'an: What do international visitors think of Chinese films?" data-origin="web_list" data-sanitized-class="cg-player-container J_player_container">
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<div data-width="572" data-height="1017" data-video="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/What-do-international-visitors-think-of-Chinese-films--1Bmn7sSBB60/video/wu_1il5n346n1u0v1m3vg20l4f1g2jau/wu_1il5n346n1u0v1m3vg20l4f1g2jau.m3u8" data-is360="false" data-newsid="486180" data-poster="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/What-do-international-visitors-think-of-Chinese-films--1Bmn7sSBB60/video/wu_1il5n346n1u0v1m3vg20l4f1g2jau/wu_1il5n346n1u0v1m3vg20l4f1g2jau.jpg" data-is4k="false" data-sanitized-id="c_videoCULTURE_GENERAL_DIGITAL_checkvideo0Play-myOverlay" data-sanitized-class="click-to-play-overlay J_player_container_main">


<p>01:10</p>
<img src="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/What-do-international-visitors-think-of-Chinese-films--1Bmn7sSBB60/video/wu_1il5n346n1u0v1m3vg20l4f1g2jau/wu_1il5n346n1u0v1m3vg20l4f1g2jau.jpg" alt></div>
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<p>Chinese films are gaining global attention, but what do international travelers and students in Xi'an think about them? Have they seen "Ne Zha 2" or other popular Chinese movies? Rachel meets visitors at the Xi'an Film Studio Experience Center to hear their thoughts and explore how Chinese cinema is making an impact worldwide!</p>
</div>

link:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/What-do-international-visitors-think-of-Chinese-films--1Bmn7sSBB60/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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title: Cham dance marks Lhasa&amp;#039;s Tibetan New Year celebrations
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<div readability="7.5" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cham-dance-marks-Lhasa-s-Tibetan-New-Year-celebrations-1BmolFdZm2A/img/f7b9e490252f48379709963177ecb13d/f7b9e490252f48379709963177ecb13d.png" alt="A Tibetan Buddhist monk performs the Cham dance at a monastery in Lhasa, Xizang on February 27, 2025. /VCG" layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cham-dance-marks-Lhasa-s-Tibetan-New-Year-celebrations-1BmolFdZm2A/img/f7b9e490252f48379709963177ecb13d/f7b9e490252f48379709963177ecb13d.png"><div readability="12.5" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A Tibetan Buddhist monk performs the Cham dance at a monastery in Lhasa, Xizang on February 27, 2025. /VCG</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">A Tibetan Buddhist monk performs the Cham dance at a monastery in Lhasa, Xizang on February 27, 2025. /VCG</p>
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<div readability="7.5" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cham-dance-marks-Lhasa-s-Tibetan-New-Year-celebrations-1BmolFdZm2A/img/adc51c54c331436c8bef38cc9fb6a5d7/adc51c54c331436c8bef38cc9fb6a5d7.jpeg" alt="Tibetan Buddhist monks perform the Cham dance at a monastery in Lhasa, Xizang on February 27, 2025. /VCG" layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cham-dance-marks-Lhasa-s-Tibetan-New-Year-celebrations-1BmolFdZm2A/img/adc51c54c331436c8bef38cc9fb6a5d7/adc51c54c331436c8bef38cc9fb6a5d7.jpeg"><div readability="12.5" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>Tibetan Buddhist monks perform the Cham dance at a monastery in Lhasa, Xizang on February 27, 2025. /VCG</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">Tibetan Buddhist monks perform the Cham dance at a monastery in Lhasa, Xizang on February 27, 2025. /VCG</p>
</div>
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<div readability="7.5" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cham-dance-marks-Lhasa-s-Tibetan-New-Year-celebrations-1BmolFdZm2A/img/8289ab89221b43d79512c9aca05a1e10/8289ab89221b43d79512c9aca05a1e10.jpeg" alt="Tibetan Buddhist monks perform the Cham dance at a monastery in Lhasa, Xizang on February 27, 2025. /VCG" layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cham-dance-marks-Lhasa-s-Tibetan-New-Year-celebrations-1BmolFdZm2A/img/8289ab89221b43d79512c9aca05a1e10/8289ab89221b43d79512c9aca05a1e10.jpeg"><div readability="12.5" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>Tibetan Buddhist monks perform the Cham dance at a monastery in Lhasa, Xizang on February 27, 2025. /VCG</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">Tibetan Buddhist monks perform the Cham dance at a monastery in Lhasa, Xizang on February 27, 2025. /VCG</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div readability="7.5" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cham-dance-marks-Lhasa-s-Tibetan-New-Year-celebrations-1BmolFdZm2A/img/6254f3db57c044228324f003ba616018/6254f3db57c044228324f003ba616018.jpeg" alt="Tibetan Buddhist monks perform the Cham dance at a monastery in Lhasa, Xizang on February 27, 2025. /VCG" layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cham-dance-marks-Lhasa-s-Tibetan-New-Year-celebrations-1BmolFdZm2A/img/6254f3db57c044228324f003ba616018/6254f3db57c044228324f003ba616018.jpeg"><div readability="12.5" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>Tibetan Buddhist monks perform the Cham dance at a monastery in Lhasa, Xizang on February 27, 2025. /VCG</p>
<div readability="10" data-sanitized-class="wrapper-visible">
<p data-sanitized-class="title">Tibetan Buddhist monks perform the Cham dance at a monastery in Lhasa, Xizang on February 27, 2025. /VCG</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div readability="7.5" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cham-dance-marks-Lhasa-s-Tibetan-New-Year-celebrations-1BmolFdZm2A/img/ac1c5270367e4f3ab149dab13d21b013/ac1c5270367e4f3ab149dab13d21b013.jpeg" alt="Tibetan Buddhist monks perform the Cham dance at a monastery in Lhasa, Xizang on February 27, 2025. /VCG" layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cham-dance-marks-Lhasa-s-Tibetan-New-Year-celebrations-1BmolFdZm2A/img/ac1c5270367e4f3ab149dab13d21b013/ac1c5270367e4f3ab149dab13d21b013.jpeg"><div readability="12.5" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>Tibetan Buddhist monks perform the Cham dance at a monastery in Lhasa, Xizang on February 27, 2025. /VCG</p>
<div readability="10" data-sanitized-class="wrapper-visible">
<p data-sanitized-class="title">Tibetan Buddhist monks perform the Cham dance at a monastery in Lhasa, Xizang on February 27, 2025. /VCG</p>
</div>
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</div>
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<p>A monastery in Lhasa, Xizang, held its annual Qiangmu, or Cham dance, ritual on the 29th day of the 12th month in the traditional Tibetan calendar, which falls on February 27. The event was performed to drive away evil spirits, offer prayers for good fortune and express good wishes for Tibetan New Year.</p>
<p>The Cham, a religious dance performed by Tibetan Buddhist monks, consists of solo, duet and group performances. The monks wore masks during the ceremony, which is deeply rooted in Tibetan culture and Buddhism.</p>
</div>

link:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Cham-dance-marks-Lhasa-s-Tibetan-New-Year-celebrations-1BmolFdZm2A/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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title: China&amp;#039;s natural wonders and urban marvels feature in Hollywood movies
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<div data-width="1080" data-height="597" data-ratio="1080:597" data-news-id="486195" data-video="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/China-s-natural-wonders-and-urban-marvels-feature-in-Hollywood-movies-1BmqWVsJT2M/video/wu_1il5q5m4j1ibr1nk41poh1kugluoa/wu_1il5q5m4j1ibr1nk41poh1kugluoa.m3u8" data-is360="false" data-is4k="false" data-poster="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/China-s-natural-wonders-and-urban-marvels-feature-in-Hollywood-movies-1BmqWVsJT2M/video/wu_1il5q5m4j1ibr1nk41poh1kugluoa/wu_1il5q5m4j1ibr1nk41poh1kugluoa.jpg" data-title="China's natural wonders and urban marvels feature in Hollywood movies" data-origin="web_list" data-sanitized-class="cg-player-container J_player_container">
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<div data-width="1080" data-height="597" data-video="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/China-s-natural-wonders-and-urban-marvels-feature-in-Hollywood-movies-1BmqWVsJT2M/video/wu_1il5q5m4j1ibr1nk41poh1kugluoa/wu_1il5q5m4j1ibr1nk41poh1kugluoa.m3u8" data-is360="false" data-newsid="486195" data-poster="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/China-s-natural-wonders-and-urban-marvels-feature-in-Hollywood-movies-1BmqWVsJT2M/video/wu_1il5q5m4j1ibr1nk41poh1kugluoa/wu_1il5q5m4j1ibr1nk41poh1kugluoa.jpg" data-is4k="false" data-sanitized-id="c_videoCULTURE_GENERAL_DIGITAL_checkvideo0Play-myOverlay" data-sanitized-class="click-to-play-overlay J_player_container_main">


<p>02:08</p>
<img src="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/China-s-natural-wonders-and-urban-marvels-feature-in-Hollywood-movies-1BmqWVsJT2M/video/wu_1il5q5m4j1ibr1nk41poh1kugluoa/wu_1il5q5m4j1ibr1nk41poh1kugluoa.jpg" alt></div>
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<div readability="37" data-sanitized-class="text en">
<p>China's breathtaking landscapes have become iconic backdrops for global filmmakers, adding depth and grandeur to some of Hollywood's biggest blockbusters. From mystical mountains to futuristic cities, here's how China's natural beauty and urban skylines have left an indelible mark on cinematic history.</p>
</div>

link:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/China-s-natural-wonders-and-urban-marvels-feature-in-Hollywood-movies-1BmqWVsJT2M/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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title: Enjoy roasted brews in pastoral Zhejiang
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<div data-width="1637" data-height="921" data-ratio="1637:921" data-news-id="486196" data-video="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Enjoy-roasted-brews-in-pastoral-Zhejiang-1BmruT03ZhC/video/wu_1il5qp0bp1i4qlc7d7qho9vnlbp8/wu_1il5qp0bp1i4qlc7d7qho9vnlbp8.m3u8" data-is360="false" data-is4k="false" data-poster="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Enjoy-roasted-brews-in-pastoral-Zhejiang-1BmruT03ZhC/video/wu_1il5qp0bp1i4qlc7d7qho9vnlbp8/wu_1il5qp0bp1i4qlc7d7qho9vnlbp8.png" data-title="Enjoy roasted brews in pastoral Zhejiang" data-origin="web_list" data-sanitized-class="cg-player-container J_player_container">
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<div data-width="1637" data-height="921" data-video="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Enjoy-roasted-brews-in-pastoral-Zhejiang-1BmruT03ZhC/video/wu_1il5qp0bp1i4qlc7d7qho9vnlbp8/wu_1il5qp0bp1i4qlc7d7qho9vnlbp8.m3u8" data-is360="false" data-newsid="486196" data-poster="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Enjoy-roasted-brews-in-pastoral-Zhejiang-1BmruT03ZhC/video/wu_1il5qp0bp1i4qlc7d7qho9vnlbp8/wu_1il5qp0bp1i4qlc7d7qho9vnlbp8.png" data-is4k="false" data-sanitized-id="c_videoCULTURE_GENERAL_DIGITAL_checkvideo0Play-myOverlay" data-sanitized-class="click-to-play-overlay J_player_container_main">


<p>03:35</p>
<img src="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Enjoy-roasted-brews-in-pastoral-Zhejiang-1BmruT03ZhC/video/wu_1il5qp0bp1i4qlc7d7qho9vnlbp8/wu_1il5qp0bp1i4qlc7d7qho9vnlbp8.png" alt></div>
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<div readability="39" data-sanitized-class="text en">
<p>In recent years, certain "town cafes" and "village cafes" have become popular in various pockets of China. In east China’s Zhejiang Province, for example, many "village cafes" have gained popularity, enticing tourists to indulge in a flat white or maybe something more exotic while immersing themselves in the natural beauty of their surroundings. Let's hear the stories behind some of the village cafes in Zhejiang.</p>
</div>

link:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/Enjoy-roasted-brews-in-pastoral-Zhejiang-1BmruT03ZhC/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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title: CGTN The Vibe 20250228
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<div data-width="1255" data-height="706" data-ratio="1255:706" data-news-id="486209" data-video="https://english-live-replay.cgtn.com/recorder/CGTN-EN-7x24h/2025-02-28/replay6300-6480.m3u8?v=1740737235144" data-is360="false" data-is4k="false" data-poster="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/-CGTN-The-Vibe-20250228-1BmuKGqFNrq/img/6d49610f5a2745cba0b98f708090718a/6d49610f5a2745cba0b98f708090718a.jpeg" data-title=" CGTN The Vibe 20250228" data-origin="web_list" data-sanitized-class="cg-player-container J_player_container">
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<div data-width="1255" data-height="706" data-video="https://english-live-replay.cgtn.com/recorder/CGTN-EN-7x24h/2025-02-28/replay6300-6480.m3u8?v=1740737235144" data-is360="false" data-newsid="486209" data-poster="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/-CGTN-The-Vibe-20250228-1BmuKGqFNrq/img/6d49610f5a2745cba0b98f708090718a/6d49610f5a2745cba0b98f708090718a.jpeg" data-is4k="false" data-sanitized-id="c_videoCULTURE_GENERAL_DIGITAL_checkvideo0Play-myOverlay" data-sanitized-class="click-to-play-overlay J_player_container_main">


<img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/-CGTN-The-Vibe-20250228-1BmuKGqFNrq/img/6d49610f5a2745cba0b98f708090718a/6d49610f5a2745cba0b98f708090718a.jpeg" alt></div>
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<div readability="46" data-sanitized-class="text en">
<p>【Travel with Films】An influx of foreign tourists has flocked to China through the promotion of "China Travel with Chinese Films".</p>
<p>【Tourism Boom】The animated film "Chang'an" rekindles people's love for classical Chinese poetry and promotes local tourism.  </p>
<p>【Rural Museums】We head to a village in Hangzhou where idle farmhouses are transformed into cultural and art spaces.</p>
<p>【Urban Attractions】Can you hear the sirens? Chongqing is repurposing its wartime air-raid shelters into vibrant urban attractions.</p>
<p>If you have any further questions or inquiries for collaboration, please email us at vibeteam@cgtn.com.  </p>
</div>

link:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/-CGTN-The-Vibe-20250228-1BmuKGqFNrq/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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title: CGTN The Vibe 20250227
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https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/-CGTN-The-Vibe-20250227-1BkPOntRfUI/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

content:
<div data-sanitized-class="cmsVideo cg-pic-big3">
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<div data-width="1080" data-height="607" data-ratio="1080:607" data-news-id="485924" data-video="https://english-live-replay.cgtn.com/recorder/CGTN-EN-7x24h/2025-02-27/replay6300-6480.m3u8?v=1740650773581" data-is360="false" data-is4k="false" data-poster="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/-CGTN-The-Vibe-20250227-1BkPOntRfUI/img/53b2987cbad747b8a6db891adcef9373/53b2987cbad747b8a6db891adcef9373.jpeg" data-title=" CGTN The Vibe 20250227" data-origin="web_list" data-sanitized-class="cg-player-container J_player_container">
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<div data-width="1080" data-height="607" data-video="https://english-live-replay.cgtn.com/recorder/CGTN-EN-7x24h/2025-02-27/replay6300-6480.m3u8?v=1740650773581" data-is360="false" data-newsid="485924" data-poster="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/-CGTN-The-Vibe-20250227-1BkPOntRfUI/img/53b2987cbad747b8a6db891adcef9373/53b2987cbad747b8a6db891adcef9373.jpeg" data-is4k="false" data-sanitized-id="c_videoCULTURE_GENERAL_DIGITAL_checkvideo0Play-myOverlay" data-sanitized-class="click-to-play-overlay J_player_container_main">


<img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/-CGTN-The-Vibe-20250227-1BkPOntRfUI/img/53b2987cbad747b8a6db891adcef9373/53b2987cbad747b8a6db891adcef9373.jpeg" alt></div>
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<div readability="48" data-sanitized-class="text en">
<p>【France Release】The new cinematic blockbuster, "Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force" hits the big screen in France.</p>
<p>【Cinematic Landscape】China's cinematic landscapes… From mystical mountains to futuristic cities, we take a look at how China's landscapes have been inspiring Hollywood movies.</p>
<p>【Going Global】China's digital content is rapidly expanding on the world stage with the rise of popularity in Chinese web novels and online games.</p>
<p>【Erhu in Japan】The two-stringed erhu is growing in popularity in Japan thanks to superstar musicians.</p>
<p>If you have any further questions or inquiries for collaboration, please email us at vibeteam@cgtn.com.  </p>
</div>

link:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-28/-CGTN-The-Vibe-20250227-1BkPOntRfUI/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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title: Longmen Grottoes: Ancient carvings, enduring stories
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content:
<div readability="43" data-sanitized-class="text en">
<p>The Longmen Grottoes, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Luoyang, China, stand as a testament to the country's rich cultural and artistic heritage. Carved into the steep cliffs along the Yi River, these grottoes span over 1,500 years and represent a remarkable period in Chinese history, spanning multiple dynasties. With thousands of caves and niches, tens of thousands of statues and numerous inscriptions, Longmen is a treasure trove of ancient Chinese culture and artistry.</p>
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<div readability="7.5" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-01/Longmen-Grottoes-Ancient-carvings-enduring-stories-1BooGSKGdPy/img/845893dc127340ba9a6c50d2808dd43e/845893dc127340ba9a6c50d2808dd43e.jpeg" alt="The majestic Lushena Buddha at Longmen Grottoes, Luoyang, an ancient capital city in central China's Henan Province." layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-01/Longmen-Grottoes-Ancient-carvings-enduring-stories-1BooGSKGdPy/img/845893dc127340ba9a6c50d2808dd43e/845893dc127340ba9a6c50d2808dd43e.jpeg"><div readability="12.5" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>The majestic Lushena Buddha at Longmen Grottoes, Luoyang, an ancient capital city in central China's Henan Province.</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">The majestic Lushena Buddha at Longmen Grottoes, Luoyang, an ancient capital city in central China's Henan Province.</p>
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<div readability="6.5" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-01/Longmen-Grottoes-Ancient-carvings-enduring-stories-1BooGSKGdPy/img/90a66952c37746fc8946e4e0ce58d2da/90a66952c37746fc8946e4e0ce58d2da.jpeg" alt=" The Longmen Grottoes in Luoyang, China." layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-01/Longmen-Grottoes-Ancient-carvings-enduring-stories-1BooGSKGdPy/img/90a66952c37746fc8946e4e0ce58d2da/90a66952c37746fc8946e4e0ce58d2da.jpeg"><div readability="9.5" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>The Longmen Grottoes in Luoyang, China.</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">The Longmen Grottoes in Luoyang, China.</p>
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<div readability="7.5" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-01/Longmen-Grottoes-Ancient-carvings-enduring-stories-1BooGSKGdPy/img/7a286211052243f5a8b8137cb28ba6a6/7a286211052243f5a8b8137cb28ba6a6.jpeg" alt="The Lushena Buddha towering majestically amidst the Longmen Grottoes, Luoyang, Henan, China." layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-01/Longmen-Grottoes-Ancient-carvings-enduring-stories-1BooGSKGdPy/img/7a286211052243f5a8b8137cb28ba6a6/7a286211052243f5a8b8137cb28ba6a6.jpeg"><div readability="12.5" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>The Lushena Buddha towering majestically amidst the Longmen Grottoes, Luoyang, Henan, China.</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">The Lushena Buddha towering majestically amidst the Longmen Grottoes, Luoyang, Henan, China.</p>
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<div readability="6.5" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-01/Longmen-Grottoes-Ancient-carvings-enduring-stories-1BooGSKGdPy/img/90006d37c3294fe7bcb3df92cfa7cce1/90006d37c3294fe7bcb3df92cfa7cce1.jpeg" alt="The Longmen Grottoes in Luoyang, China." layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-01/Longmen-Grottoes-Ancient-carvings-enduring-stories-1BooGSKGdPy/img/90006d37c3294fe7bcb3df92cfa7cce1/90006d37c3294fe7bcb3df92cfa7cce1.jpeg"><div readability="9.5" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>The Longmen Grottoes in Luoyang, China.</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">The Longmen Grottoes in Luoyang, China.</p>
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<p>Among its many wonders, the Lushena Buddha is a notable example of a Tang Dynasty (672-675) sculpture. Sponsored in part by Empress Wu Zetian, this colossal statue radiates a sense of serene majesty. The Buddha's dignified countenance, along with the lifelike depictions of disciples, bodhisattvas, heavenly kings and warriors, showcases the pinnacle of Chinese Buddhist artistry.<br>The photo collection captures the Lushena Buddha, offering insights into the artistic styles of the time, as well as reflecting the spiritual devotion and cultural values of ancient China.</p>
<p>(All photos taken by CGTN at The Longmen Grottoes in Luoyang, China)</p>
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link:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-01/Longmen-Grottoes-Ancient-carvings-enduring-stories-1BooGSKGdPy/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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title: Chinese musical revives Tang Dynasty&amp;#039;s grandeur with French actor
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<div data-width="2680" data-height="1502" data-ratio="2680:1502" data-news-id="486568" data-video="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Chinese-musical-revives-Tang-Dynasty-s-grandeur-with-French-actor-1BoASR4e7de/video/wu_1il951d691vdc1nnboqq1aoov4ta/wu_1il951d691vdc1nnboqq1aoov4ta.m3u8" data-is360="false" data-is4k="false" data-poster="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Chinese-musical-revives-Tang-Dynasty-s-grandeur-with-French-actor-1BoASR4e7de/video/wu_1il951d691vdc1nnboqq1aoov4ta/wu_1il951d691vdc1nnboqq1aoov4ta.jpg" data-title="In Theater: Chinese musical revives Tang Dynasty's grandeur with French actor" data-origin="web_list" data-sanitized-class="cg-player-container J_player_container">
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<div data-width="2680" data-height="1502" data-video="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Chinese-musical-revives-Tang-Dynasty-s-grandeur-with-French-actor-1BoASR4e7de/video/wu_1il951d691vdc1nnboqq1aoov4ta/wu_1il951d691vdc1nnboqq1aoov4ta.m3u8" data-is360="false" data-newsid="486568" data-poster="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Chinese-musical-revives-Tang-Dynasty-s-grandeur-with-French-actor-1BoASR4e7de/video/wu_1il951d691vdc1nnboqq1aoov4ta/wu_1il951d691vdc1nnboqq1aoov4ta.jpg" data-is4k="false" data-sanitized-id="c_videoGENERAL_NEWS_TIANFU_checkvideo0Play-myOverlay" data-sanitized-class="click-to-play-overlay J_player_container_main">


<p>06:59</p>
<img src="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Chinese-musical-revives-Tang-Dynasty-s-grandeur-with-French-actor-1BoASR4e7de/video/wu_1il951d691vdc1nnboqq1aoov4ta/wu_1il951d691vdc1nnboqq1aoov4ta.jpg" alt></div>
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<p><em>Editor's note: "In Theater" brings you into the world of performing arts. Here, you can dive deep into musicals, dances, plays and other performances being staged in China and pick the brains of the brilliant artists.</em></p>
<p>Chang'an – modern-day Xi'an in northwest China's Shaanxi Province – was the capital of the Tang Dynasty (618-907). A new musical, which recently premiered in Beijing, brings the ancient city to life on stage, reviving the grandeur of one of China's most prosperous eras.</p>
<p><strong>Bringing the cultural splendor of the Tang Dynasty to life</strong></p>
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<div readability="6.5" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Chinese-musical-revives-Tang-Dynasty-s-grandeur-with-French-actor-1BoASR4e7de/img/7665cd89852a45a6955e073f0d9a9245/7665cd89852a45a6955e073f0d9a9245.jpeg" alt="Hu Xiaoqing, director of " the longest day in layout="responsive"><div readability="9.5" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>Hu Xiaoqing, director of "The Longest Day in Chang'an." /CGTN</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">Hu Xiaoqing, director of "The Longest Day in Chang'an." /CGTN</p>
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<p>"The Longest Day in Chang'an" made its debut at the Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Center on February 14. Adapted from a novel of the same name, the musical follows Li Bi, deputy minister of city security, and Zhang Xiaojing, a former death row inmate turned commander, as they race against time to save the city within 24 hours.</p>
<p>Hu Xiaoqing, the show's director, hopes the production will offer audiences a deeper appreciation of Chinese culture through its stage design, costumes, music, traditional dances, martial arts and the time-honored Qinqiang Opera, which originated in Shaanxi Province.</p>
</div>
<div readability="7" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Chinese-musical-revives-Tang-Dynasty-s-grandeur-with-French-actor-1BoASR4e7de/img/409c094a78bb47a2949f829bbfd21158/409c094a78bb47a2949f829bbfd21158.jpeg" alt="A stage photo of Mao Haifei, who plays Zhang Xiaojing in the musical " the longest day in tianqiao performing arts layout="responsive"><div readability="11" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A stage photo of Mao Haifei, who plays Zhang Xiaojing in the musical "The Longest Day in Chang'an." /Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Center</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">A stage photo of Mao Haifei, who plays Zhang Xiaojing in the musical "The Longest Day in Chang'an." /Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Center</p>
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<p>"During the Tang Dynasty, Chang'an was a global hub where people from all over the world gathered. So, we explore different musical and dance styles here. I think this is about us transcending our limits," Hu said.</p>
<p>Mao Haifei, who plays Zhang Xiaojing, shared with CGTN that he visited Xi'an while rehearsing for "The Longest Day in Chang'an" and was deeply moved by its rich history and vibrant culture.</p>
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<div readability="8.5" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Chinese-musical-revives-Tang-Dynasty-s-grandeur-with-French-actor-1BoASR4e7de/img/3221307a7a62491b9589aef352c5bcf8/3221307a7a62491b9589aef352c5bcf8.jpeg" alt="An aerial photo of the Datang Everbright City, Xi'an City, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, January 10, 2025. /VCG" layout="responsive"><div readability="15.5" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>An aerial photo of the Datang Everbright City, Xi'an City, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, January 10, 2025. /VCG</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">An aerial photo of the Datang Everbright City, Xi'an City, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, January 10, 2025. /VCG</p>
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<p>"I went to the tourist spot called Datang Everbright City," Mao said. "Although I knew it had been renovated, I could really feel the splendor of the Tang Dynasty."</p>
<p><strong>A French actor in a Chinese production</strong></p>
<p>One of the production's highlights is the participation of French musical theater actor Laurent Ban.</p>
<p>Ban plays Ge Lao, the mysterious ruler of Chang'an's underworld, a character of Gaulish origin in the musical. Known for his roles in French musical "Mozart, l'Opéra Rock," Ban takes on the challenge of performing entirely in Chinese, even delivering lines in Qinqiang Opera.</p>
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<div readability="7" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Chinese-musical-revives-Tang-Dynasty-s-grandeur-with-French-actor-1BoASR4e7de/img/4cb8127ab8d647558c0a54f33b911591/4cb8127ab8d647558c0a54f33b911591.jpeg" alt="A stage photo of Laurent Ban, who plays Ge Lao in the musical " the longest day in tianqiao performing arts layout="responsive"><div readability="11" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A stage photo of Laurent Ban, who plays Ge Lao in the musical "The Longest Day in Chang'an." /Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Center</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">A stage photo of Laurent Ban, who plays Ge Lao in the musical "The Longest Day in Chang'an." /Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Center</p>
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<p>"Acting in Chinese totally destroyed my way of acting in French," he admitted. "As I always say, I don't like staying in my comfort zone. I really wanted to try something very hard."</p>
<p>Hu revealed that incorporating Ban's theatrical background added a new layer to the show.</p>
<p>"This musical has an international appeal while maintaining a distinctly Chinese style, which allows for a lot of fusion. We wondered if any French theater elements could be blended with the Chinese style."</p>
<p>The idea eventually took shape in the number "Le Chef," which features lyrics partially in French and musical elements inspired by French theater traditions.</p>
<p>Ban expressed his eagerness to continue learning Chinese and working on future projects in the country.</p>
</div>
<div readability="6" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Chinese-musical-revives-Tang-Dynasty-s-grandeur-with-French-actor-1BoASR4e7de/img/23bb60c9fd9d43e793c3dad4e075fada/23bb60c9fd9d43e793c3dad4e075fada.jpeg" alt="A stage photo of " le the musical="The" longest day in layout="responsive"><div readability="8" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A stage photo of "Le Chef" in in the musical "The Longest Day in Chang'an." /C-Musicals</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">A stage photo of "Le Chef" in in the musical "The Longest Day in Chang'an." /C-Musicals</p>
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<p>"If it works this time, I'll keep improving. Over time, I hope to learn more and more Chinese. I'd love to collaborate on new projects and creations," he said.</p>
<p>Having first visited China around 20 years ago, Ban has witnessed the country's musical theater industry evolve.</p>
<p>"I can really see the difference," he told CGTN. "I'm really surprised by because I can see how hard-working the Chinese people are… I have some great singers and artists on stage with me. For now, what I really love is watching them work and trying to be at a good level." </p>
<p><strong>The rise of Chinese-style musicals</strong></p>
</div>
<div readability="6.5" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Chinese-musical-revives-Tang-Dynasty-s-grandeur-with-French-actor-1BoASR4e7de/img/aa2c5b55bf1a4cd5b3f20ac03c6ffcf1/aa2c5b55bf1a4cd5b3f20ac03c6ffcf1.jpeg" alt="A stage photo of the musical " the longest day in tianqiao performing arts layout="responsive"><div readability="9.5" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A stage photo of the musical "The Longest Day in Chang'an." /Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Center</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">A stage photo of the musical "The Longest Day in Chang'an." /Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Center</p>
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<p>Chinese-style musicals have been gaining traction in the country's theater scene in recent years. Hu believes this trend will only continue to grow.</p>
<p>"These musicals tap into the very essence of our culture," she said. "When we hear Chinese music on stage, it creates a powerful emotional resonance… Our original musicals must tell our stories in a way that is deeply rooted in our own emotions."</p>
</div>
<div readability="37" data-sanitized-class="text en">
<p>Mao hopes "The Longest Day in Chang'an" can eventually reach audiences beyond China.</p>
<p>"My lifelong dream is for one of the musicals I perform in to make it to Broadway or the West End, so we can share our Chinese story with the world," he said. "That would be my greatest honor."</p>
</div>
<div readability="6.5" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Chinese-musical-revives-Tang-Dynasty-s-grandeur-with-French-actor-1BoASR4e7de/img/df83acabaecd482ab6c4425ef9f5a70a/df83acabaecd482ab6c4425ef9f5a70a.jpeg" alt="A stage photo of the musical " the longest day in tianqiao performing arts layout="responsive"><div readability="9.5" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A stage photo of the musical "The Longest Day in Chang'an." /Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Center</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">A stage photo of the musical "The Longest Day in Chang'an." /Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Center</p>
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<p>Hu echoed the sentiment, emphasizing the importance of learning from global theater while staying true to Chinese storytelling.</p>
<p>"We must not limit our vision to just our own country. We need to seek out better ideas, learn from how others tell their stories, and find ways to strengthen ourselves. I truly believe we will continue to grow," she said.</p>
<p><em>Videographer: Guo Huakang</em></p>
<p><em>Video editor: Guo Meiping</em></p>
<p><em>Cover image: Yu Peng</em></p>
</div>

link:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Chinese-musical-revives-Tang-Dynasty-s-grandeur-with-French-actor-1BoASR4e7de/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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title: Wahuang Temple, a thousand-year-old hanging temple in Hebei
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https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Wahuang-Temple-a-thousand-year-old-hanging-temple-in-Hebei-1BmctyLRbY4/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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<div data-width="2467" data-height="1388" data-ratio="2467:1388" data-news-id="486146" data-video="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Wahuang-Temple-a-thousand-year-old-hanging-temple-in-Hebei-1BmctyLRbY4/video/wu_1il5eu3d993t1e80l6325d18hm29/wu_1il5eu3d993t1e80l6325d18hm29.m3u8" data-is360="false" data-is4k="false" data-poster="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Wahuang-Temple-a-thousand-year-old-hanging-temple-in-Hebei-1BmctyLRbY4/video/wu_1il5eu3d993t1e80l6325d18hm29/wu_1il5eu3d993t1e80l6325d18hm29.jpg" data-title="Wahuang Temple, a thousand-year-old hanging temple in Hebei" data-origin="web_list" data-sanitized-class="cg-player-container J_player_container">
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<div data-width="2467" data-height="1388" data-video="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Wahuang-Temple-a-thousand-year-old-hanging-temple-in-Hebei-1BmctyLRbY4/video/wu_1il5eu3d993t1e80l6325d18hm29/wu_1il5eu3d993t1e80l6325d18hm29.m3u8" data-is360="false" data-newsid="486146" data-poster="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Wahuang-Temple-a-thousand-year-old-hanging-temple-in-Hebei-1BmctyLRbY4/video/wu_1il5eu3d993t1e80l6325d18hm29/wu_1il5eu3d993t1e80l6325d18hm29.jpg" data-is4k="false" data-sanitized-id="c_videoBUSINESS_VIDEO_DIGITAL_checkvideo0Play-myOverlay" data-sanitized-class="click-to-play-overlay J_player_container_main">


<p>01:03</p>
<img src="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Wahuang-Temple-a-thousand-year-old-hanging-temple-in-Hebei-1BmctyLRbY4/video/wu_1il5eu3d993t1e80l6325d18hm29/wu_1il5eu3d993t1e80l6325d18hm29.jpg" alt></div>
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<div readability="42" data-sanitized-class="text en">
<p>The Wahuang Temple, situated in Shexian County, Handan, Hebei Province, has a history of over 1,400 years. Although from a distance it looks like it's clinging to the cliff, it's actually connected to the mountain behind it by nine iron chains. When the number of people upstairs exceeds a certain limit, the building can lean forward and the nine iron chains take up the slack. Hence the name "Hanging Temple."</p>
</div>

link:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Wahuang-Temple-a-thousand-year-old-hanging-temple-in-Hebei-1BmctyLRbY4/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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title: Farmers harvest tea in Zhejiang
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https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Farmers-harvest-tea-in-Zhejiang-1BptkEkqP16/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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<div data-sanitized-class="cmsImagesCollectionOuter">
<div data-sanitized-class="cmsImagesCollection">
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<div readability="8" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Farmers-harvest-tea-in-Zhejiang-1BptkEkqP16/img/65ac43f951394bf8a1a896a8f2211274/65ac43f951394bf8a1a896a8f2211274.jpeg" alt="Farmers harvest tea at a plantation on an island in Qiandao Lake in Chun'an County, Zhejiang Province, March 1, 2025. /VCG" layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Farmers-harvest-tea-in-Zhejiang-1BptkEkqP16/img/65ac43f951394bf8a1a896a8f2211274/65ac43f951394bf8a1a896a8f2211274.jpeg"><div readability="14" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>Farmers harvest tea at a plantation on an island in Qiandao Lake in Chun'an County, Zhejiang Province, March 1, 2025. /VCG</p>
<div readability="11" data-sanitized-class="wrapper-visible">
<p data-sanitized-class="title">Farmers harvest tea at a plantation on an island in Qiandao Lake in Chun'an County, Zhejiang Province, March 1, 2025. /VCG</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div readability="8" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Farmers-harvest-tea-in-Zhejiang-1BptkEkqP16/img/8070164122b743e996732e14ae7a94dc/8070164122b743e996732e14ae7a94dc.jpeg" alt="Farmers harvest tea at a plantation on an island in Qiandao Lake in Chun'an County, Zhejiang Province, March 1, 2025. /VCG" layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Farmers-harvest-tea-in-Zhejiang-1BptkEkqP16/img/8070164122b743e996732e14ae7a94dc/8070164122b743e996732e14ae7a94dc.jpeg"><div readability="14" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>Farmers harvest tea at a plantation on an island in Qiandao Lake in Chun'an County, Zhejiang Province, March 1, 2025. /VCG</p>
<div readability="11" data-sanitized-class="wrapper-visible">
<p data-sanitized-class="title">Farmers harvest tea at a plantation on an island in Qiandao Lake in Chun'an County, Zhejiang Province, March 1, 2025. /VCG</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div readability="8" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Farmers-harvest-tea-in-Zhejiang-1BptkEkqP16/img/a791ae4581584aed8cb16f68698b470e/a791ae4581584aed8cb16f68698b470e.jpeg" alt="Farmers harvest tea at a plantation on an island in Qiandao Lake in Chun'an County, Zhejiang Province, March 1, 2025. /VCG" layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Farmers-harvest-tea-in-Zhejiang-1BptkEkqP16/img/a791ae4581584aed8cb16f68698b470e/a791ae4581584aed8cb16f68698b470e.jpeg"><div readability="14" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>Farmers harvest tea at a plantation on an island in Qiandao Lake in Chun'an County, Zhejiang Province, March 1, 2025. /VCG</p>
<div readability="11" data-sanitized-class="wrapper-visible">
<p data-sanitized-class="title">Farmers harvest tea at a plantation on an island in Qiandao Lake in Chun'an County, Zhejiang Province, March 1, 2025. /VCG</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div readability="8" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Farmers-harvest-tea-in-Zhejiang-1BptkEkqP16/img/44cd1032135f47d4bcfa56a4a92c9eb6/44cd1032135f47d4bcfa56a4a92c9eb6.jpeg" alt="Farmers harvest tea at a plantation on an island in Qiandao Lake in Chun'an County, Zhejiang Province, March 1, 2025. /VCG" layout="fixed-height" height="210" lightbox="collection" aria-describedby="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Farmers-harvest-tea-in-Zhejiang-1BptkEkqP16/img/44cd1032135f47d4bcfa56a4a92c9eb6/44cd1032135f47d4bcfa56a4a92c9eb6.jpeg"><div readability="14" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>Farmers harvest tea at a plantation on an island in Qiandao Lake in Chun'an County, Zhejiang Province, March 1, 2025. /VCG</p>
<div readability="11" data-sanitized-class="wrapper-visible">
<p data-sanitized-class="title">Farmers harvest tea at a plantation on an island in Qiandao Lake in Chun'an County, Zhejiang Province, March 1, 2025. /VCG</p>
</div>
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<div readability="38" data-sanitized-class="text en">
<p>Farmers were busy harvesting tea at a plantation on an island in Qiandao Lake in Chun'an County, Zhejiang Province. As the home of tea in China, Zhejiang has long taken advantage of its rich natural resources to cultivate a wide variety of tea products. Qiandao Lake is one of the most important tea producing areas in the region, covering large areas of forested and cultivated land.</p>
</div>

link:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Farmers-harvest-tea-in-Zhejiang-1BptkEkqP16/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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title: China&amp;#039;s recent cinematic successes reflect cultural soft power
hash: F�j̷�g��� Z�xj
guid:
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content:
<div readability="6" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/China-s-recent-cinematic-successes-reflect-cultural-soft-power-1BpHKuJuToQ/img/5e9e08aca3384ec88d1d0b4d32f5402a/5e9e08aca3384ec88d1d0b4d32f5402a.jpeg" alt="A poster for the Chinese animated blockbuster " ne zha layout="responsive"><div readability="8" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A poster for the Chinese animated blockbuster "Ne Zha 2." /VCG</p>
<div readability="7" data-sanitized-class="wrapper-visible">
<p data-sanitized-class="title">A poster for the Chinese animated blockbuster "Ne Zha 2." /VCG</p>
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</div>
<div readability="36" data-sanitized-class="text en">
<p>As more Chinese films make their way into international theaters, they not only demonstrate China's advanced film technology but also highlight the country's rich cultural heritage. These films have sparked global discussions about Chinese culture and served as a bridge to connect audiences around the world.</p>
</div>
<div readability="6" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/China-s-recent-cinematic-successes-reflect-cultural-soft-power-1BpHKuJuToQ/img/2a5ce7508a0a4a96bb1ab15b5901ed29/2a5ce7508a0a4a96bb1ab15b5901ed29.jpeg" alt="A poster for the Chinese film " detective chinatown layout="responsive"><div readability="8" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A poster for the Chinese film "Detective Chinatown 1900." /VCG</p>
<div readability="7" data-sanitized-class="wrapper-visible">
<p data-sanitized-class="title">A poster for the Chinese film "Detective Chinatown 1900." /VCG</p>
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</div>
<div readability="39" data-sanitized-class="text en">
<p>The Chinese animated blockbuster "Ne Zha 2" has achieved remarkable success, grossing a total box office of more than 14.44 billion yuan (around $1.98 billion), including pre-sales and overseas earnings, as of 4 p.m. on March 2 Beijing Time, according to online movie platform Maoyan. The film's overseas earnings have surpassed 152 million yuan (about $20.87 million). "Ne Zha 2" is now the highest-grossing animated movie in the world and ranks among the top seven highest-grossing films of all time.</p>
</div>
<div readability="6" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/China-s-recent-cinematic-successes-reflect-cultural-soft-power-1BpHKuJuToQ/img/30d4fa3e643c4266a155ccb44e85e1c9/30d4fa3e643c4266a155ccb44e85e1c9.jpeg" alt="A poster for the Chinese film " creation of the gods ii: demon layout="responsive"><div readability="8" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A poster for the Chinese film "Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force." /VCG</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">A poster for the Chinese film "Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force." /VCG</p>
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<p>Four Chinese films, including "Ne Zha 2" and three other Chinese films – "Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants," "Detective Chinatown 1900," and "Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force," are being screened in more than 20 countries and regions worldwide. Analysts predict that the total overseas revenue of these Chinese films could reach an unprecedented milestone of $100 million.</p>
<p>France's "Le Point" magazine highlighted China's growing cultural soft power, saying that "Ne Zha 2" has shattered Western cultural hegemony and proved that China can create, produce and distribute blockbusters that rival, or even surpass, Hollywood productions.</p>
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<div readability="6" data-sanitized-class="cmsImage"><img src="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/China-s-recent-cinematic-successes-reflect-cultural-soft-power-1BpHKuJuToQ/img/7e8a63bd8fad42a69f82038597cfef5e/7e8a63bd8fad42a69f82038597cfef5e.jpeg" alt="A poster for the Chinese film " legends of condor heroes: the layout="responsive"><div readability="8" data-sanitized-class="imageCaption">
<p>A poster for the Chinese film "Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants." /VCG</p>
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<p data-sanitized-class="title">A poster for the Chinese film "Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants." /VCG</p>
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<div readability="48" data-sanitized-class="text en">
<p>International audiences have expressed their admiration for Chinese cinema. Some Canadian viewers were amazed by the costumes, traditional Chinese architecture, and animation effects in "Ne Zha 2," which are distinct from Western animations. European audiences expressed similar sentiments after watching "Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force," appreciating the fresh perspective of Chinese mythology compared to the familiar Greek and Norse myths.</p>
<p>The influence of Chinese films extends beyond the screen, inspiring viewers worldwide to explore China. "That's been on my bucket list even before I watched the movie. But now for sure, most definitely," said one New York moviegoer. A teenager from Washington shared a similar sentiment: "I would love to visit China one day. I mean, it's a dream. It would be awesome."</p>
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link:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/China-s-recent-cinematic-successes-reflect-cultural-soft-power-1BpHKuJuToQ/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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title: Purple miracle: How Ningxia&amp;#039;s vineyards fuel green growth
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<div data-width="1777" data-height="1000" data-video="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Purple-miracle-How-Ningxia-s-vineyards-fuel-green-growth-1BpR8S84eoo/video/wu_1ilb4863nk4n1bug138seoohuea/wu_1ilb4863nk4n1bug138seoohuea.m3u8" data-is360="false" data-newsid="486723" data-poster="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Purple-miracle-How-Ningxia-s-vineyards-fuel-green-growth-1BpR8S84eoo/video/wu_1ilb4863nk4n1bug138seoohuea/wu_1ilb4863nk4n1bug138seoohuea.jpg" data-is4k="false" data-sanitized-id="c_videoVIDEO_NEWS_TIANFU_checkvideo0Play-myOverlay" data-sanitized-class="click-to-play-overlay J_player_container_main">


<p>02:30</p>
<img src="https://video.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Purple-miracle-How-Ningxia-s-vineyards-fuel-green-growth-1BpR8S84eoo/video/wu_1ilb4863nk4n1bug138seoohuea/wu_1ilb4863nk4n1bug138seoohuea.jpg" alt></div>
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<p>Have you ever thought about growing grapes in the desert? In Yinchuan, vineyard cultivation has not only transformed barren land but also driven the growth of the wine industry. Through precise water management and sustainable development strategies, Yinchuan has successfully integrated wine production with ecological conservation, breathing new life into the local economy. From small grapes to big business, Yinchuan's grape industry has brought prosperity and vitality to what was once a desert.</p>
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link:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-02/Purple-miracle-How-Ningxia-s-vineyards-fuel-green-growth-1BpR8S84eoo/p.html?UTM_Source=cgtn&amp;UTM_Medium=rss&amp;UTM_Campaign=Culture

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guid: https://www.unz.com/?post_type=item&amp;p=544412
title: Baltic/Black Sea Power Games and Red Lines Intersect in a "Strange War", by Pepe Escobar
author: ;Pepe Escobar
link: https://www.unz.com/pescobar/baltic-black-sea-power-games-and-red-lines-intersect-in-a-strange-war/
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<p wcount="17" data-sanitized-id="p_1_1" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong><em>No one ever lost money betting on the batshit crazy “policies” of the ferociously yapping Baltic chihuahuas.</em></strong></span></p>
<p wcount="35" data-sanitized-id="p_1_2" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">No one ever lost money betting on the batshit crazy “policies” of the ferociously yapping Baltic chihuahuas. Their latest power play of sorts is a drive to turn the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake.</span></p>
<p wcount="58" data-sanitized-id="p_1_3" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The notion that a bunch of Russophobic sub-entities have what it takes to expel the Russian superpower from the Baltic Sea and pose a threat to St. Petersburg does not even qualify as cartoonish. Yet that is indeed part and parcel of NATO’s re-configured obsessions, as their warmongering “vanguard” has been relocated to a London-Warsaw-Baltic chihuahuas-Ukraine axis.</span></p>
<p wcount="45" data-sanitized-id="p_1_4" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">What kind of black hole rump “Ukraine” will turn out to be after the end of the war – which may not even happen in 2025 – remains to be seen. What’s certain is that in the case of a Ukraine exit – whatever the modalities – enter Romania.</span></p>
<p wcount="34" data-sanitized-id="p_1_5" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The whole electoral farce in Romania – complete with the demonization of election front-runner Calin Georgescu – revolves around the upgrading of the Mihail Kogalniceanu base, which will become the largest NATO military base in Europe.</span></p>
<p wcount="30" data-sanitized-id="p_1_6" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">So, once again, this is all about the Black Sea. NATO wreaking havoc in the Black Sea carries way more savory prospects than NATO via chihuahuas monopolizing the Baltic Sea.</span></p>
<p wcount="33" data-sanitized-id="p_1_7" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Ilya Fabrichnikov, a member of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, has published a remarkable essay essentially focusing on the Black Sea (<a title="https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/7516851" href="https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/7516851" rel="noopener">this is a short version on the Kommersant daily)</a>.</span></p>
<p wcount="88" data-sanitized-id="p_1_8" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Fabrichnikov convincingly argues that from an European – UE/NATO – angle, what really mattered in Ukraine was “to move its borders, along with its military, political and economic infrastructure, close to Russia’s, to put under full control the strategic Black Sea trade corridor – which easily stretches further north along the Odessa-Gdansk route – in order to more conveniently and quickly explore the economic spaces of Asia and North Africa, and to begin dictating its terms to Russian supplies of oil, gas and other resources needed by the European economy.”</span></p>
<p wcount="45" data-sanitized-id="p_1_9" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">As this focused power play instrumentalizing Ukraine is unravelling in real time, a replacement is needed – even as warmongering Eurocrats keep peddling their Orwellian “peace is war” dementia non-stop, complete with a non-stop tsunami of sanctions and renewed promises of avalanches of weapons to Kiev.</span></p>
<p wcount="50" data-sanitized-id="p_1_10" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">This is a classic Brussels vassals affair – even as the toxic Medusa von der Lugen as head of the EC and Rutti-Frutti as the new head of NATO were essentially appointed by Washington and London. Collectively, Europe has pumped way more military-political funds into black hole Ukraine than the Americans.</span></p>
<p wcount="19" data-sanitized-id="p_1_11" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The reason is simple. For Europe there’s no Plan B apart from that mirific “strategic defeat” of Russia.</span></p>
<p wcount="38" data-sanitized-id="p_1_12" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The EU/NATO Black Sea power play would make it even more imperative for Russia to connect with Transnistria. The only one who can answer whether this is part of the current planning is of course President Putin.</span></p>
<p wcount="4" data-sanitized-id="p_1_13" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>Neo-nazis go pipeline bombing</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="38" data-sanitized-id="p_1_14" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Russian intel is very much aware that the Europeans have to some extent already carved up their own areas in Ukraine – from ports to mines. Not surprisingly the Brits, via MI6, are ahead of the “continentals”, mostly Germany.</span></p>
<p wcount="45" data-sanitized-id="p_1_15" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">All that intertwines with the extremely murky weapons-for-metals deal clinched by Trump 2.0 with the totally illegitimate sweatshirt actor-turned-gangster in Kiev. The only thing that matters for Trump is to get U.S. money back – whether the total bill is $500 billion or less (actually, much less).</span></p>
<p wcount="53" data-sanitized-id="p_1_16" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Into this kabuki steps in the real power in Kiev after the proclamation of martial law: the National Defense and Security Council of Ukraine. The unelected, actually illegal actor is not taking any major decisions for some time now. These are issued by the former head of the foreign secret service, Oleksandr Lytvynenko.</span></p>
<p wcount="32" data-sanitized-id="p_1_17" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">It was the council that on February 17 ordered the bombing of the crucial pipeline owned by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) linking Kazakhstan to Novorossiysk, exporting loads of Kazakh and Russian oil.</span></p>
<p wcount="28" data-sanitized-id="p_1_18" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Crucially, CPC shareholders included Italy’s ENI (2%); the Caspian Pipeline Co., which is a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil (7.5%); and the Caspian Pipeline Consortium Co., a subsidiary of Chevron (15%).</span></p>
<p wcount="34" data-sanitized-id="p_1_19" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Well, that’s not very bright; the “integral nationalists”, code for neo-nazis in Kiev decided to bomb a partially owned American asset. Not only there will be blowback by Trump 2.0; it is already on.</span></p>
<p wcount="82" data-sanitized-id="p_1_20" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">On the equally murky rare earths front, Putin’s recent interview to Channel One seems to have thrown everyone off balance. Russia, he said, has way more rare earths than Ukraine and is “ready to work with our foreign partners, including the U.S.” to develop these deposits. That’s classic Sun Tzu Putin: the Americans won’t have rare earths to exploit in the future rump Ukraine – because they don’t exist. But they can be partners with Russia in Novorossiya.</span></p>
<p wcount="31" data-sanitized-id="p_1_21" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">All of the above of course would presuppose a solid U.S.-Russia negotiation on Ukraine. And yet Team Trump 2.0 still does not seem to grasp the real Russian red lines:</span></p>
<p wcount="7" data-sanitized-id="p_1_22" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">1. No temporary ceasefire “along the front line”.</span></p>
<p wcount="9" data-sanitized-id="p_1_23" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">2. No trading of new territories acquired in the battlefield.</span></p>
<p wcount="11" data-sanitized-id="p_1_24" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">3. No NATO or European “peacekeepers” in the western borders of Russia.</span></p>
<p wcount="3" data-sanitized-id="p_1_25" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>Putin discombobulating Trump</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="11" data-sanitized-id="p_1_26" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">As it stands, Washington and Moscow remain divided by an abyss.</span></p>
<p wcount="30" data-sanitized-id="p_1_27" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><a title="https://sputnikglobe.com/20250128/pepe-escobar-dancing-to-trumps-disco-inferno-1121513139.html" href="https://sputnikglobe.com/20250128/pepe-escobar-dancing-to-trumps-disco-inferno-1121513139.html" rel="noopener">Mr. Disco Inferno</a> simply cannot make serious concessions – or de facto recognize the strategic defeat of the Empire of Chaos. Because that would seal the Definitive End of Unilateral Hegemony.</span></p>
<p wcount="33" data-sanitized-id="p_1_28" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Putin for his part simply will not give away the hard-won victories on the battlefield. Russian public opinion expects nothing less. After all Russia holds all the cards leading to a possible negotiation.</span></p>
<p wcount="35" data-sanitized-id="p_1_29" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The EU/NATO will never admit their own, self-inflicted strategic defeat; hence those Baltic/Black Sea dreams, which carry the extra self-inflicted fantasy of disrupting China’s New Silk Roads as much as “isolating” Russia.</span></p>
<div data-sanitized-class="book-unit alignright premblock book-author"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978813820/"><img src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/514BiChCuYL.jpg"></a>
<p>ORDER IT NOW</p>
</div>
<p wcount="81" data-sanitized-id="p_1_30" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Putin is actually performing virtual somersaults to instill some common sense. In his <a title="https://sputnikglobe.com/20250128/pepe-escobar-dancing-to-trumps-disco-inferno-1121513139.html" href="https://sputnikglobe.com/20250128/pepe-escobar-dancing-to-trumps-disco-inferno-1121513139.html" rel="noopener">Mr. Disco Inferno</a> he noted how, on U.S.-Russia relations, “t <strong>his first step should focus on</strong> increasing the level of trust between the two countries. This is exactly what we have been doing in Riyadh, and this is what our next high-level contacts will be devoted to. Without this, it is impossible to solve any issue, including one as complex and acute as the Ukrainian crisis.”</span></p>
<p wcount="51" data-sanitized-id="p_1_31" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Trust is far from being re-established, especially vis a vis a Lavrov-defined “non-agreement capable” Empire of Chaos with its global credibility in tatters. Add to it bombast after bombast manufactured to control the news cycle 24/7: the preferred Trump 2.0 modus operandi. None of it leads to that prime diplomatic mantra: “confidence building”.</span></p>
<p wcount="51" data-sanitized-id="p_1_32" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">And it will get even murkier – and way more dangerous – if Russian public opinion is confronted with the fact that after 11 years fighting a vicious proxy war with the Empire of Chaos, they may become partners in strategic industry sectors that Putin himself defined as essential to Russia’s national security.</span></p>
<p wcount="17" data-sanitized-id="p_1_33" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Just like that. Or that may be just Putin discombobulating Trump with some unforeseen Sun Tzu gambit.</span></p>
<p wcount="56" data-sanitized-id="p_1_34" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Earlier this week I had a fabulous off the record conversation with Sergey Glazyev, formerly with the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and now leading the consolidation of the Union State (Russia-Belarus). It was up to Mr. Glazyev to come up with the definitive summary of everything unrolling before our eyes: “This is a very strange war”.</span></p>


guid: https://www.unz.com/?post_type=item&amp;p=544389
author: ;Andrew Anglin
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title:
Slimy Cheater and Retard Elon Musk Bombs with Stand-Up Comedy Opening of First Cabinet Meeting, by Andrew Anglin

content:
<p><iframe width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8E2QksviRAA?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" title="Elon Musk at Trump Cabinet meeting: US will go ‘bankrupt’ without DOGE" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin">[embedded content]</iframe></p>
<p wcount="2" data-sanitized-id="p_1_1" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><a title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E2QksviRAA'" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E2QksviRAA" target="_blank" data-sanitized-class="caption">Video Link</a></span></p>
<p wcount="81" data-sanitized-id="p_1_2" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><strong>Editor’s Note:</strong> This is not introducing a new format. This is just a normal Daily Stormer essay. But I don’t want the site to seem dead, so I’m just going to be posting things like this every day or every other day to keep people coming to the site while I work on my bigger projects. I guess it should be daily, given the name of the site. That’s sort of what I’ve been leaning towards.</em></span></p>
<p wcount="22" data-sanitized-id="p_1_3" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Elon Musk was inexplicably invited by President Donald Trump to deliver a stand-up comedy routine at the administration’s first cabinet meeting.</span></p>
<p wcount="108" data-sanitized-id="p_1_4" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The routine fell flat, eliciting no laughs except from one woman who seemed to be laughing out of politeness – or perhaps ambition, given Musk’s penchant for impregnating middle-aged women. (Musk has been impregnating used up old skanks at random, most recently a former porn star and conservative influencer named Ashly St. Claire. She had sex with blacks and is Jewish. Musk doesn’t care, and he doesn’t make these women sign papers, meaning they will all sue him and get billions. Many women are trying to get in on this burgeoning industry and will be willing to embarrass themselves by laughing at the worst jokes ever.)</span></p>
<p wcount="49" data-sanitized-id="p_1_5" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Along with many other failed landings, Musk told a joke about how he has a wooden head, which no analyst has been able to decipher the meaning of. Most have concluded that the joke didn’t make sense at all, and Musk made the joke because he is retarded.</span></p>
<p wcount="18" data-sanitized-id="p_1_6" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Musk has been hovering over this second Trump administration in a way that many find disgusting and weird.</span></p>
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<div data-sanitized-class="image-holder"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><a href="https://dailystormer.in/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/elon-turmp.jpeg"><img src="https://dailystormer.in/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/elon-turmp-618x324.jpeg" alt></a></span></div>
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<p wcount="51" data-sanitized-id="p_1_7" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Just before the inauguration, Musk came out and demanded that Americans accept an unlimited number of Indian perverts and scammers into the country on H-1B visas, threatening that those who complained would be “fucked in their face.” He also said that he would give his life for Indian replacement immigration.</span></p>
<p wcount="59" data-sanitized-id="p_1_8" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">As he is demanding to be at the center of the Trump Administration, no one was shocked to see him doing the opening act at the cabinet meeting. It’s unclear if Trump likes being controlled by this retarded man or if he is purposefully allowing him to become hated by everyone so that people demand he be deported.</span></p>
<p wcount="92" data-sanitized-id="p_1_9" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">If Trump is purposefully allowing Musk to consume the spotlight in order to drum up hatred against him, it appears to be working. A <a title="https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabReport_IHMRRoV.pdf" href="https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabReport_IHMRRoV.pdf">poll</a> by The Economist/YouGov earlier this month showed that the support for Musk among Republicans had been nearly halved since November. People are suspicious of leftist polling agencies, and polls are generally sort of useless regardless, but it’s not possible to believe that any Republican who saw Musk’s comments about his plans to replace whites with “superior” Indians would tell a pollster they support him.</span></p>
<p wcount="29" data-sanitized-id="p_1_10" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Furthermore, anyone can just ask people they know what they think of Elon Musk following Trump around everywhere and making himself the center of attention. No one likes this.</span></p>
<p wcount="57" data-sanitized-id="p_1_11" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">That said, Trump must be getting tired of the headlines about how Musk controls him, and he has to be annoyed by Musk continuing to play into this. At the cabinet meeting, he delivered another “hovering and watching” photo for the <a title="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/us/politics/trump-musk-cabinet-meeting.html" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/us/politics/trump-musk-cabinet-meeting.html">New York Times</a> to use in a story about how the meeting showed “deference” to Musk.</span></p>
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<div data-sanitized-class="image-holder"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><a href="https://dailystormer.in/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-27-at-2.48.21%E2%80%AFAM.png"><img src="https://dailystormer.in/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-27-at-2.48.21%E2%80%AFAM-618x837.png" alt></a></span></div>
</div>
<p wcount="42" data-sanitized-id="p_1_12" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Why would he think it’s okay to not sit down? To hover like that? Who does that? Everyone else in the room is sitting down. He is wearing a t-shirt and a baseball cap and hovering like he’s the mastermind.</span></p>
<p wcount="89" data-sanitized-id="p_1_13" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">He should have a pretty easy job managing his public image, given that his agenda to cut government spending is generally popular with everyone. However, his odious visage and retarded way of speaking, coupled with his pompous obsession with making himself the center of attention, is destroying any good will that he might otherwise have. He could very easily have not insisted on giving the opening remarks at the first cabinet meeting, but he is apparently so disconnected from reality that he doesn’t realize how repulsed people are.</span></p>
<p wcount="90" data-sanitized-id="p_1_14" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Trump’s cabinet is reported to be sick of this man. Musk sent out an email to most federal employees doing a little cutesy thing where he said something to the effect of “list five things you did this week or you’ll be fired.” The actual text was: “Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished this week and cc your manager.” He’s conserving letters by abbreviating “approximately.” He later announced that if someone doesn’t respond, that will be taken as a resignation.</span></p>
<blockquote data-width="500" data-dnt="true" readability="10.488549618321" data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr" xml:lang="en">Consistent with President <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDonaldTrump</a>’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week.</p>
<p wcount="9" data-sanitized-id="p_1_15" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.</span></p>
<p wcount="5" data-sanitized-id="p_1_16" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1893386883444437415?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 22, 2025</a></span></p>
</blockquote>

<p wcount="52" data-sanitized-id="p_1_17" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Obviously, most of these federal employees work under one of the cabinet members. Presumably, these people do not think Elon Musk should be coming in and threatening to fire their employees. In fact, he cannot fire those employees, and would have to simply request that the heads of the departments fire them.</span></p>
<p wcount="157" data-sanitized-id="p_1_18" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I’ve seen conservative commentators saying “WHY CAN’T THEY LIST FIVE THINGS THO???” and that clearly misses the point. Firstly, he’s not going to read millions of emails, that would be the definition of “inefficient,” and he doesn’t have those resources anyway. Secondly, even if he did read them, or try to process them with AI, they wouldn’t mean anything. Maybe there are government employees who don’t do anything, you would assume there are given how bloated this government is, but even ones who do literally no work would be able to make up five things they did in a week. Anyone can just type into DeepSeek “what are five things someone with [my title] would have done this week?” and send it as the reply. It would take less than a minute and meaning nothing at all. So it’s just a harassment campaign, to cause a panic in government offices.</span></p>
<p wcount="61" data-sanitized-id="p_1_19" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">A lot of government employees should be fired, clearly, and it’s possible that there should be some kind of independent body formed to figure out who needs fired, because the heads of these agencies don’t want their own budgets cut. However, this email is not serious and can only serve the purpose of harassing people with no concrete goal.</span></p>
<p wcount="31" data-sanitized-id="p_1_20" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">After it was pointed out that the email could not possibly serve any purpose, Musk then claimed that he knew that all along and was just messing with people’s heads.</span></p>
<p wcount="21" data-sanitized-id="p_1_21" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Before the meeting this week, Trump posted a tweet on Truth Social claiming “ALL CABINET MEMBERS ARE EXTREMELY HAPPY WITH ELON.”</span></p>
<div data-sanitized-id="i_3" data-sanitized-class="image imagecenter container">
<div data-sanitized-class="image-holder"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><a href="https://dailystormer.in/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-27-at-2.52.04%E2%80%AFAM.png"><img src="https://dailystormer.in/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-27-at-2.52.04%E2%80%AFAM-618x449.png" alt></a></span></div>
</div>
<p wcount="30" data-sanitized-id="p_1_22" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">This was a response to news reports that none of the cabinet members were really very excited about Musk’s behavior and assertion that he is the boss of everything.</span></p>
<p wcount="36" data-sanitized-id="p_1_23" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Clearly unfamiliar with the concept of “oversaturation,” the “bulbous billionaire,” who is known for being fat and sloppy, appeared at CPAC over the weekend and was accused of being high on ketamine as he mumbled stupidly.</span></p>
<blockquote data-width="500" data-dnt="true" readability="7.5474452554745" data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr" xml:lang="en">He is so high on Ketamine, Elon Musk can’t form a sentence.</p>
<p wcount="5" data-sanitized-id="p_1_24" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><a href="https://t.co/m2BJfnNHoK">pic.twitter.com/m2BJfnNHoK</a></span></p>
<p wcount="5" data-sanitized-id="p_1_25" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">— James Tate (@JamesTate121) <a href="https://twitter.com/JamesTate121/status/1892722618920312895?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 20, 2025</a></span></p>
</blockquote>

<p wcount="34" data-sanitized-id="p_1_26" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Apparently, some people were unaware that he always talks that way. He has grotesque autism and an abysmally low IQ, in order words he is what used to be referred to as “mentally retarded.”</span></p>
<p wcount="18" data-sanitized-id="p_1_27" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">At CPAC he also waved around a chainsaw, apparently with the intent of some sort of comedic effect.</span></p>
<blockquote data-width="500" data-dnt="true" readability="10.150537634409" data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr" xml:lang="en">BREAKING: Elon Musk, who is wearing sunglasses indoors, wields a chainsaw to celebrate the tens of thousands of federal employees he’s fired indiscriminately and without explanation. <a href="https://t.co/VMsW1MDmzh">pic.twitter.com/VMsW1MDmzh</a></p>
<p wcount="7" data-sanitized-id="p_1_28" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">— Trump’s Lies (Commentary) (@MAGALieTracker) <a href="https://twitter.com/MAGALieTracker/status/1892701573337211357?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 20, 2025</a></span></p>
</blockquote>

<p wcount="57" data-sanitized-id="p_1_29" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Why would that be funny? It doesn’t make sense. I could maybe see a person with Down Syndrome thinking it’s funny, but that would have to be the explicit goal of that chainsaw bit. You might think of that bit if someone told you “we’re going for the Down Syndrome demographic with this one.”</span></p>
<p wcount="110" data-sanitized-id="p_1_30" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Seriously, you couldn’t even claim that bit was aimed at children. I just watched Dog Man this week, and I can tell you: children have higher standards than “haha, a chainsaw, haha! woooo!” But if this is the kind of humor Elon is going for, he should consider hiring the writer of Dog Man as a “comedic advisor.” (By the way, just a note: Dog Man the Movie has race-mixing, so since I mentioned the film, I should probably say that while it is good, people shouldn’t really let their kids watch it. I also wouldn’t recommend watching it without kids, because it’s like, for 5-year-olds.)</span></p>
<p wcount="104" data-sanitized-id="p_1_31" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">If he wanted to do physical comedy, he should made a joke about $50 million in condoms to Gaza and then put on a full-body condom and gone crowd surfing. But why does there need to be this forced humor, which is never funny at all? Why is that the agenda? Is it because his father didn’t love him and therefore in late middle age he need to go around begging for public approval? But if that were the case, why wouldn’t he hire a team to figure out how to gain approval? Why does he do jokes that make everyone hate him?</span></p>
<p wcount="37" data-sanitized-id="p_1_32" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Speaking of Elon’s father, Errol Musk this week <a title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y-tmcrMx2s" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y-tmcrMx2s">told Al Arabiya</a> he thinks his son will fail at politics. He said that politics are for people with people skills, and Elon does not have these skills.</span></p>
<p wcount="16" data-sanitized-id="p_1_33" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">He is also redpilled on the Hitler salute, clearly having read my materials on the subject.</span></p>
<blockquote data-width="500" data-dnt="true" readability="11.640883977901" data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr" xml:lang="en">Errol Musk defends his son Elon Musk's 'salute':</p>
<p wcount="15" data-sanitized-id="p_1_34" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">"It means my right hand is empty, I do not carry a weapon"</span></p>
<p wcount="33" data-sanitized-id="p_1_35" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Errol Musk joined us for an exclusive interview where he says that people have misinterpreted <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@elonmusk</a>'s gesture and was not meant to replicate a Nazi salute. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ElonMusk?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ElonMusk</a> <a href="https://t.co/pfvhPnYR4k">pic.twitter.com/pfvhPnYR4k</a></span></p>
<p wcount="7" data-sanitized-id="p_1_36" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) <a href="https://twitter.com/AlArabiya_Eng/status/1894113919460843907?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2025</a></span></p>
</blockquote>

<p wcount="140" data-sanitized-id="p_1_37" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Musk’s own agenda has nothing to do with America First, as evidenced by his desire to race replace whites with Indians, and in fact as evidenced by everything he’s ever said. He wants to go live on Mars. That’s what he says. That “the human race” should be an “interplanetary species.” He’s jungled up with a bunch of weirdos who want to live forever using “bio-hacks.” This is not related to Norman Rockwell, Jesus, or any sort of nationalistic vision of America. His agenda to cut government spending is something everyone would agree with, but he is so distasteful that he’s actually giving this agenda a very bad image, and making it so Democrats can claim people are going to be starving in the streets if we don’t sent $50 million in condoms to Gaza.</span></p>
<p wcount="45" data-sanitized-id="p_1_38" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">It seems rather unlikely he’s going to be such a fixture in the Trump administration much longer. It’s possible that his disastrous stand-up routine at the opening of the first Trump 2.0 cabinet meeting will be seen in retrospect as the “Peak Elon” moment.</span></p>

link:
https://www.unz.com/aanglin/slimy-cheater-and-retard-elon-musk-bombs-with-stand-up-comedy-opening-of-first-cabinet-meeting/


guid: https://www.unz.com/?post_type=item&amp;p=544447
title: On Media, Trump and the Impending War with China, by Hua Bin
author: ;Hua Bin
link: https://www.unz.com/bhua/on-media-trump-and-the-impending-war-with-china/
hash: *"�nj ����F-,�
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content:
<div><img src="https://www.unz.com/wp-content/themes/unzSite/IMAGES/unz_large_logo.png" data-sanitized-class="ff-og-image-inserted"></div><p wcount="26" data-sanitized-id="p_1_1" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I had an interview with reporter Mike Whitney recently and Mike’s article was published on Unz Review, which published my Substack articles as a columnist.</span></p>
<p wcount="46" data-sanitized-id="p_1_2" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I thought it was interesting for my Substack readers on a range of topics from western media report on China, US China technology comparison, Trump, the so-called Uyghurs “genocide” in Xinjiang, war between US and China. Those parts in bold are highlights called out by Whitney.</span></p>
<p wcount="46" data-sanitized-id="p_1_3" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">For those unfamiliar with Unz Review, it is a great source of news and analysis from the “alternative media” and features many of my personal favorite thinkers such as Michael Hudson, Ron Unz, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Ron Paul, Alastaire Crooke, Pepe Escobar, Philip Giraldi, and more.</span></p>
<p wcount="18" data-sanitized-id="p_1_4" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Here is the text of the interview and you can also check it out on <a href="https://www.unz.com/" title="www.unz.com">www.unz.com</a></span></p>
<p wcount="6" data-sanitized-id="p_1_5" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><a href="https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/hua-bin-on-media-trump-and-the-impending-war-with-china/" title="https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/hua-bin-on-media-trump-and-the-impending-war-with-china/">https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/hua-bin-on-media-trump-and-the-impending-war-with-china/</a></span></p>


guid: https://www.unz.com/?post_type=item&amp;p=544407
title: AI and the Digital Revolution Are Mankind’s Deadly Enemies, by Paul Craig Roberts
author: ;Paul Craig Roberts
link: https://www.unz.com/proberts/ai-and-the-digital-revolution-are-mankinds-deadly-enemies/
hash: -0.U�,!\����`��
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content:
<p wcount="115" data-sanitized-id="p_1_1" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Does the pleasure you get from scrolling your cell phone compensate you for the frustration from the absence of customer service? The same digital revolution that gave you a cell phone gave the companies the opportunity to drive up profits and executive bonuses by replacing customer service with AI that is seldom, if ever, programed to answer your questions and is extremely reluctant to connect you to a superior human who knows what to do. All of us have been stressed out trying to get problems fixed, accounts adjusted, repairs made. My favorite AI response when I call about the internet being down is “you will get faster service if you chat with us online.”</span></p>
<p wcount="140" data-sanitized-id="p_1_2" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">All of us know the frustration of the constant demands to update our information, our telephone number, our email. These endless notices always appear when we are in the middle of some activity that is inconvenient to interrupt to go tend to Internet house-keeping problems. But if you fail to respond too often, all of a sudden you cannot get into your investment accounts, your bank account, your Internet files, because the necessary code, since passwords no longer suffice, doesn’t reach you via cell text or email because you didn’t update. These kinds of problems are almost impossible to correct, because they use your cell phone number and email to identify you. And even if you can get a human on the phone, the person has no way of knowing who you are except your information on file.</span></p>
<p wcount="83" data-sanitized-id="p_1_3" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The ability to hack the Internet has grown so rapidly that accounts now have to have double and triple protection, and this doesn’t suffice. Your password and user name are merely step one. Next you have to receive a code via cell phone as a text to the number on record. Then a code via email of record. If you didn’t update or made a typo, you don’t have access to what is yours. Just try getting that straightened out.</span></p>
<p wcount="122" data-sanitized-id="p_1_4" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">And now we hear from Malwarebytes, one of the protective services you can purchase online to protect you against viruses, phishing, and capture of your cell phone and/or computer, that AI is being employed by cybercriminals to craft convincing voice, video, and email messages to defraud both businesses and individuals with sophisticated tactics that result in devastating financial losses, reputational damage, and compromise of sensitive data. The AI-powered scamming operations can bypass security filters. As the AI tools are low cost, they can be used on a poor man’s budget. <a href="https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2025/02/how-ai-was-used-in-an-advanced-phishing-campaign-targeting-gmail-users?utm_source=iterable&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=b2c_pro_oth_20250224_februaryweeklynewsletter_v4_174008949080&amp;utm_content=AI_used_for_phishing" title="https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2025/02/how-ai-was-used-in-an-advanced-phishing-campaign-targeting-gmail-users?utm_source=iterable&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=b2c_pro_oth_20250224_februaryweeklynewsletter_v4_174008949080&amp;utm_content=AI_used_for_phishing">https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2025/02/how-ai-was-used-in-an-advanced-phishing-campaign-targeting-gmail-users?utm_source=iterable&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=b2c_pro_oth_20250224_februaryweeklynewsletter_v4_174008949080&amp;utm_content=AI_used_for_phishing</a></span></p>
<p wcount="43" data-sanitized-id="p_1_5" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Every dollar companies saved by laying off customer representatives has been spent on cybersecurity. As cybersecurity experts will tell you, there is no cybersecurity. The protections can only make hacking more difficult. The digital revolution is costing us much more than our privacy.</span></p>
<p wcount="137" data-sanitized-id="p_1_6" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Malewarebytes gives an example of how the attack on you unfolds and how to avoid being a victim. Notice that the only way you can avoid being a victim is to be unreachable by anyone whose email or telephone number you do not recognize. But these can also be obtained, and I suspect that it will not be long before scammers contact you via your husband, wife, or child’s cell phone number. Or something like this can happen. Your college kid loses his/her cell phone, gets a new one, different number, has a car accident, calls you and cannot reach you because you don’t recognize the number. Suppose a headhunter wants to offer you a job at $100,000 more than you are currently making, but it is not a number you recognize and goes unanswered.</span></p>
<p wcount="42" data-sanitized-id="p_1_7" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Already cell phones have gone beyond being useless, as no one answers a call, to being dangerous. Texting has taken over communication. People hear one another’s voices less and less. The digital revolution is isolating people by making verbal conversation problematical.</span></p>
<p wcount="91" data-sanitized-id="p_1_8" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">And the situation is worsening at warp speed. The other day a software engineer I know who is earning in the six figures told me that his employer just told the engineers that they would be replaced by AI in three years. He has a mortgage on a $900,000 condo and is stunned that his expensive education and years of experience are suddenly worthless. Why will Americans go to universities? What will be the point of education, of public schools? Who among the work force displaced by AI can pay property taxes?</span></p>
<p wcount="89" data-sanitized-id="p_1_9" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The digital revolution and its bastard child AI, along with nuclear weapons, US blowar labs, and Israel, are the worst enemies mankind has. How is Trump going to make America Great Again when in the third and fourth year of his term there will be mass layoffs of Americans replaced by AI? Indeed, Trump and Musk have bought into this development and are discussing replacing a large chunk of the civil service with AI. Why not instead just get rid of the useless work with budget and spending reform?</span></p>
<p wcount="79" data-sanitized-id="p_1_10" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">As an economist I am utterly and totally amazed at the complete and total stupidity of displacing humans with AI. Robots don’t need food and clothing and entertainment and cars and housing. They don’t have car payments and mortgage payments and credit card payments. With humans displaced by machines, aggregate consumer demand disappears, so, as no one has a job or any income, who purchases the goods and services produced by AI? What becomes of the economy?</span></p>
<div data-sanitized-class="book-unit alignright premblock book-author"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0986076996/"><img src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51TyPsr3%2ByL.jpg"></a>
<p>ORDER IT NOW</p>
</div>
<p wcount="132" data-sanitized-id="p_1_11" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">As I pointed out years ago, and as Elon Musk today confirms, <em>AI and the digital revolution introduce the era of Socialism.</em> Everyone, Musk admits, will have to be given an income. Otherwise, there is no point in the AI provision of goods and services. As humans are not involved in production, merit no longer matters. Everyone will be given the same income. Equality at last. Indeed, what is the point of humans? They no longer have any productive function. Why are they needed? What do they do with themselves with nothing to do? Why should machines produce substance for people who do not participate in production? You can see why Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum want to reduce the human population to a small percentage of its present size.</span></p>
<p wcount="13" data-sanitized-id="p_1_12" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The digital revolution and AI bring us the most dystopian of all worlds.</span></p>
<p wcount="32" data-sanitized-id="p_1_13" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The First World will be the first to be utterly and totally destroyed by the digital revolution. But “education” will eventually carry the digital revolution into what was once called “darkest Africa.”</span></p>
<p wcount="52" data-sanitized-id="p_1_14" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">In an AI world universities are superfluous as there are few if any jobs that AI cannot do. The only remaining jobs would be plumbers, electricians, mechanics, and perhaps sooner or later your friendly plumber will be a robot programmed to run through the programs, one of which will clear your line.</span></p>
<p wcount="49" data-sanitized-id="p_1_15" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Meanwhile libertarian and free market economists will be telling us that “better jobs” will be created by the digital revolution just as they told us that jobs offshoring would create better jobs to take the place of the old “dirty fingernail jobs.” These promised jobs are yet to materialize.</span></p>


guid: https://www.unz.com/?post_type=item&amp;p=544391
title: Chihuahuas, Not Dobermans, by Patrick Lawrence
author: ;Patrick Lawrence
link: https://www.unz.com/plawrence/chihuahuas-not-dobermans/
hash: ;���.<`+&�葊��
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<p wcount="19" data-sanitized-id="p_1_1" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I have never been much for <em>schadenfreude</em>: It is always best to occupy one’s mind with worthier matters.</span></p>
<p wcount="66" data-sanitized-id="p_1_2" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">But I cave to temptation as Volodymyr Zelensky, the puffed-up buffoon who has paraded flamboyantly across the world stage as a hero these past half-dozen years, is publicly cut to size as President Donald Trump gets on with the business of ending the proxy war Zelensky has cynically sold to the Western world’s lumpen liberals while presiding over the monstrously corrupt, Nazi-infested regime in Kiev.</span></p>
<p wcount="15" data-sanitized-id="p_1_3" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Let us sneer, let us snicker as the air hisses out of Zelensky’s balloon.</span></p>
<p wcount="40" data-sanitized-id="p_1_4" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">This thieving som-a-gom bears front-line responsibility — along with his masters, of course — for the deaths of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers somewhere in six figures and the ruination of the country and the citizenry to which he purports to dedicate himself.</span></p>
<p wcount="32" data-sanitized-id="p_1_5" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Donald Trump’s démarche toward Russia and a determination to end the Ukraine war he shares with President Vladimir Putin, leave Zelensky marooned on an island made of out-of-date propaganda ops.</span></p>
<p wcount="31" data-sanitized-id="p_1_6" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">And now we find Europe’s neoliberal elites, having war-mongered their way into the Ukraine morass because the Biden regime told them to do so, wandering on the beaches with him.</span></p>
<p wcount="36" data-sanitized-id="p_1_7" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">As of Trump’s Feb. 12 telephone call with Putin and the Munich Security Conference, held in the Bavarian capital Feb. 14–16, the Continent’s leaders and their repellent mascot have been left holding a very big bag.</span></p>
<p wcount="23" data-sanitized-id="p_1_8" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Zelensky’s fall is significant but was a matter of time. Europanic, as I call it, is the big news of the week.</span></p>
<p wcount="25" data-sanitized-id="p_1_9" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">This shapes up to be more fun than a rerun of an old Terry Southern movie, supercilious hypocrites with their pants down in every scene.</span></p>
<p wcount="51" data-sanitized-id="p_1_10" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Zelensky has been the <em>papier mâché</em> creation of others since he was plucked from a sit-com and re-costumed to succeed Petro Poroshenko, a chocolate magnate — Is there not a serious pol anywhere in Ukraine? — who moved into the presidential palace after the U.S.–cultivated coup 11 years ago this month.</span></p>
<p wcount="26" data-sanitized-id="p_1_11" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">He, Zelensky, was financed by one of Ukraine’s countless megacrooks and coached by American image-crafters during the craven chicanery of his presidential campaign back in 2019.</span></p>
<p wcount="44" data-sanitized-id="p_1_12" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">As readers may recall, the propaganda got so far out of hand after Russia began its military intervention three years ago that Biden regime ideologues, with corporate media dutifully parroting the trope, had the great broad masses believing Zelensky was “a 21st century Churchill.”</span></p>
<p wcount="13" data-sanitized-id="p_1_13" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Tell me, I recall thinking, somebody please tell me they are not serious.</span></p>
<p wcount="27" data-sanitized-id="p_1_14" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">In <a title="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114031332924234939" href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114031332924234939">his now-famous dismissal of Zelensky</a> last week, Trump marked him down as “a modestly successful comedian.” Sometimes even what we quaintly call reality has its appeal.</span></p>
<p wcount="36" data-sanitized-id="p_1_15" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">As Max Blumenthal astutely observed <a title="https://thegrayzone.substack.com/p/zelensky-didnt-start-the-war-he-provoked" href="https://thegrayzone.substack.com/p/zelensky-didnt-start-the-war-he-provoked">in <em>The Grayzone</em> the other day</a>, Trump had it wrong when he charged in his contra–Zelensky broadside that the Ukrainian president started the war in Ukraine. No, he provoked it.</span></p>
<p wcount="49" data-sanitized-id="p_1_16" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I like the distinction. The modestly successful comedian has effectively served — very effectively, indeed — as a sort of <em>agent provocateur</em> enabling those with the money and the guns to send extravagant amounts of both into the sinkhole of corruption over which Zelensky presides without the worry of domestic revolts.</span></p>
<p wcount="3" data-sanitized-id="p_1_17" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>Pleading &amp; Complaining</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="56" data-sanitized-id="p_1_18" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">With the regularity of a seasonal TV series, Zelensky would bleat that Ukraine needs more weapons, Ukraine needs more money and Ukraine needs it all now. I especially liked it when he would bark that Western leaders — President Joe Biden, the Europeans — were sloughing off their responsibilities. The impudent, scolding tone: You had to appreciate this.</span></p>
<p wcount="52" data-sanitized-id="p_1_19" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">That wasn’t meant for Biden or any of the trans–Atlantic clients. I have had a hunch all along that the Biden White House, which acknowledged daily telephone contacts with Zelensky, rehearsed him regularly as to what to say, when to say it and how desperately to make the assigned point.</span></p>
<p wcount="42" data-sanitized-id="p_1_20" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">No, Zelensky’s pleading-and-complaining routines, at times so rude Biden’s people told him to throttle back, were meant for the American and European publics — a perception management op to keep the blue-and-yellow flags drooping off millions of balconies and front porches.</span></p>
<p wcount="53" data-sanitized-id="p_1_21" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Zelensky was a professional showman and his was a showman’s work. His other job was fully to harness Ukraine’s neo–Nazi fanaticism — in the political sphere, in the military — while dressing it up to look like a presentable democracy worthy of all the billions of taxpayers’ money wastefully lavished upon it.</span></p>
<p wcount="8" data-sanitized-id="p_1_22" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">And so to the bout of early-onset <em>schadenfreude</em>.</span></p>
<p wcount="54" data-sanitized-id="p_1_23" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Zelensky in Munich was little more than a gadfly. It was minorly wonderful to watch: You saw in the video footage the face of an uncertain man who knew his star was falling, and his anxious features reminded you that the grotesque operation this nobody was oddly instrumental in sustaining was falling with him.</span></p>
<p wcount="3" data-sanitized-id="p_1_24" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>The European Turn</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="47" data-sanitized-id="p_1_25" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Let’s have a pivot, shall we — that overworked word the mainstream press has not been able to resist since Hillary Clinton’s celebrated-but-without-substance “pivot to Asia” way back when. Post–Munich, the suddenly desperate Zelensky — authentically desperate this time — pivoted on a dime to the Europeans.</span></p>
<p wcount="47" data-sanitized-id="p_1_26" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The modestly successful comedian had not even departed from that lovely city of <em>Biergärten</em> and parks before <a title="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgl27x74wpo" href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgl27x74wpo">he was calling for “an army of Europe”</a> — this as if to imply he and his regime were, but of course, as European as the French or the Portuguese.</span></p>
<p wcount="66" data-sanitized-id="p_1_27" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">And now we have the spectacle of the European powers, ignoring the fact that Zelensky’s diadem just turned into tin foil, throwing in their lot with him and his regime once again — never mind the only two powers capable of negotiating an end to the war are about to do so over their heads (where, indeed, the U.S.–Russian talks ought to take place).</span></p>
<p wcount="23" data-sanitized-id="p_1_28" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I absolutely loved an unnamed Trump administration official’s assessment of Zelensky’s new circumstances a few days after the Munich conference ended.</span></p>
<p wcount="40" data-sanitized-id="p_1_29" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">“It’s a shit sandwich,” <a title="https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/02/zelenski-has-yet-to-eat-the-shit-sandwich.html" href="https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/02/zelenski-has-yet-to-eat-the-shit-sandwich.html">this source said</a>, according to <em>Moon of Alabama</em> (which cited a brief <em>Axios</em> report). “But Ukraine is going to have to eat it because he [Trump] has made clear this is no longer our problem.”</span></p>
<p wcount="15" data-sanitized-id="p_1_30" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">And now it is decided: The European powers are going to chow down with him.</span></p>
<div data-sanitized-class="book-unit alignright premblock book-author"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1949762785/"><img src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71xGRE8EThL.jpg"></a>
<p>ORDER IT NOW</p>
</div>
<p wcount="51" data-sanitized-id="p_1_31" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">We are now treated to a daily procession of chest-beating European leaders professing their determination to go it alone with the Kiev regime. Europe must “step up,” <a title="https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/ukraine-british-troops-keir-starmer-78l3fqhb9" href="https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/ukraine-british-troops-keir-starmer-78l3fqhb9">Keir Starmer said</a> a day after the Munich gathering concluded. “It’s time for us to take responsibility for our security, for our continent.”</span></p>
<p wcount="40" data-sanitized-id="p_1_32" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">That is from <em>The Times</em> of London. <a title="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/02/21/starmer-to-defy-trump-with-new-aid-for-ukraine/" href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/02/21/starmer-to-defy-trump-with-new-aid-for-ukraine/"><em>The Telegraph</em> subsequently reported</a> the British PM plans “to defy Trump” with a “triple whammy” — vulgarity goes trans–Atlantic these days — that will include military support and yet more sanctions against Russian interests.</span></p>
<p wcount="26" data-sanitized-id="p_1_33" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I am always on for more deluded silliness from Annalena Baerbock, the dependably deluded and silly German foreign minister. And she did not disappoint last week.</span></p>
<p wcount="31" data-sanitized-id="p_1_34" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">As <a title="https://www.rt.com/news/613126-germany-us-russia-ukraine/" href="https://www.rt.com/news/613126-germany-us-russia-ukraine/">RT International reported</a> under the headline, “Germany issues warning to U.S.,” it quoted Baerbock offering this gem at a Potsdam campaign rally just before Germany’s national elections Sunday:</span></p>
<blockquote readability="6" data-sanitized-class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p wcount="29" data-sanitized-id="p_1_35" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">“We’re increasing pressure on the Americans [so they know] they have a lot to lose if they don’t stand on the side of Europe’s liberal democracies.”</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p wcount="43" data-sanitized-id="p_1_36" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I can do no better with this one than Tom Harrington, emeritus at Trinity College, Hartford, and an energetic blogger with that pithy wit for which we all appreciate the Irish. Under the headline, “The perils of method acting” he gives us this:</span></p>
<blockquote readability="7" data-sanitized-class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p wcount="36" data-sanitized-id="p_1_37" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">“If you are a chihuahua and you play a Doberman for many years on TV, you can forget you are actually a chihuahua. This can lead to much delusion when the director calls off the production.”</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p wcount="17" data-sanitized-id="p_1_38" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I loved typing those lines just now and wish they were mine. These people are blowing bubbles.</span></p>
<p wcount="29" data-sanitized-id="p_1_39" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Neither Britain nor Germany — nor any other member of Ukraine’s European constituency — has the money, the military, or the domestic consensus to act consequentially in Kiev’s behalf.</span></p>
<p wcount="21" data-sanitized-id="p_1_40" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">They have been supine clients of the U.S. for too long. In Tom Harrington’s terms, they are yelping chihuahuas.</span></p>
<p wcount="5" data-sanitized-id="p_1_41" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>‘Into the Valley of Death’</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="32" data-sanitized-id="p_1_42" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The Euros and their Canadian cousins in the neoliberal cause, a dozen top officials in all, gathered in Kiev Monday to put their money — so wastefully and unwisely — where their mouths are.</span></p>
<p wcount="44" data-sanitized-id="p_1_43" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">European foreign ministers convened simultaneously in Brussels. And between them they considered sending Ukraine an additional €20 billion straight off the top — more coming is the implication— and a wide variety of additional sanctions — on energy, trade, financial services and so on — against the Russians.</span></p>
<p wcount="20" data-sanitized-id="p_1_44" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">So: The killing must go on more senselessly by the day, and the European citizenry must continue to suffer, ditto.</span></p>
<p wcount="30" data-sanitized-id="p_1_45" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Why do I keep thinking of the Charge of the Light Brigade and <a title="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45319/the-charge-of-the-light-brigade" href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45319/the-charge-of-the-light-brigade">Lord Tennyson’s mournful memorial</a> to that catastrophic miscalculation — “Into the valley of death” and all that:</span></p>
<blockquote readability="11">
<p wcount="43" data-sanitized-id="p_1_46" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em>“Forward, the Light Brigade!</em><br><em>Charge for the guns!” he said….</em><br><em>“Forward, the Light Brigade!”</em><br><em>Was there a man dismayed?</em><br><em>Not though the soldier knew</em><br><em>Someone had blundered.</em><br><em>Theirs not to make reply,</em><br><em>Theirs not to reason why,</em><br><em>Theirs but to do and die….</em></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p wcount="43" data-sanitized-id="p_1_47" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">This new round of foolishness among the Europeans is not funny. This is not a Terry Southern script. Under the circumstances — a likely settlement somewhere in the offing — it is a criminally careless of human lives and the well-being of 450 million European citizens.</span></p>
<p wcount="45" data-sanitized-id="p_1_48" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I see only one explanation for this. It is the diabolic outcome of the liberal authoritarianism I go on about in this space. The neoliberal order must must must prevail no matter what the cost, no matter how obviously irrational this repudiation of reason proves.</span></p>
<p wcount="44" data-sanitized-id="p_1_49" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Keir Starmer is off to Washington this week for his first encounter with President Trump. We cannot know what will transpire when they meet in the Oval Office, but these two could not possibly be more opposite in their politics, their temperaments, their intentions.</span></p>
<p wcount="31" data-sanitized-id="p_1_50" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Emmanuel Macron, who concluded his visit to the White House Monday, proved predictably ineffectual. He seemed, at least, to understand — a modest virtue — that he is no more than a chihuahua.</span></p>
<p wcount="41" data-sanitized-id="p_1_51" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Taking as a guide the French president’s failure to get anything done, I see little coming out of Starmer’s small summit — perhaps, if Trump shuts down the famously spineless Brit, another occasion for the indulgence of a little <em>schadenfreude</em>.</span></p>
<p wcount="60" data-sanitized-id="p_1_52" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I have waited decades — I go back here to the mid–Cold War years — for the Europeans to think and act for themselves, to stand as an independent force as de Gaulle and a few others urged, to serve as a bridge between the Atlantic world of which they are a part and the great East that is their neighbor.</span></p>
<p wcount="31" data-sanitized-id="p_1_53" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">How superbly moral the world order they could bring into being, I imagined. Václav Havel shared such a vision — or, I had better say out of respect, I shared his.</span></p>
<p wcount="53" data-sanitized-id="p_1_54" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Now circumstances at last force the Europeans to go their own way. And they charge in precisely the wrong direction — clinging for dear life to the old binaries generations of Americans have long insisted upon even as America’s new leadership, countless objections to it notwithstanding, seems to begin looking beyond all that.</span></p>


guid: https://www.unz.com/?post_type=item&amp;p=544439
title: Synaptically Seductive Sequence, by Tobias Langdon
author: ;Tobias Langdon
link: https://www.unz.com/article/synaptically-seductive-sequence/
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<p wcount="32" data-sanitized-id="p_1_1" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Almost everyone has a favorite number. So if you aspire higher than the herd, you need a favorite number-sequence too. In fact, you need lots of them. Here’s <a title="https://oeis.org/A000002" href="https://oeis.org/A000002">one of mine</a>:</span></p>
<p wcount="0" data-sanitized-id="p_1_2" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, …</span></p>
<p wcount="337" data-sanitized-id="p_1_3" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">See if you can work out the rule self-generating the sequence. If you can, congratulations. If you can’t, don’t worry. The <a title="https://metatutor.co.uk/the-kolakoski-sequence/" href="https://metatutor.co.uk/the-kolakoski-sequence/">Kolakoski sequence</a>, as it’s known, is simultaneously supremely simple and synapse-seducingly subtle. On the one hand, it’s entirely deterministic; on the other, it’s uncannily unpredictable. It’s merely mathematical, it’s mundanely mechanical, but it seems to have a mind of its own. Technically speaking, the Kolakoski sequence is identical to its own <a title="https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Run-LengthEncoding.html" href="https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Run-LengthEncoding.html">run-length encoding</a>. In other words, if you write down the lengths of the runs of 1 and 2, you reproduce the same sequence.</span></p><p>You can also create the Kolakoski sequence by dropping the initial 1 like this: 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, … This means that the Kolakoski sequence consists of nothing but 1s and 2s in runs of one and two.</p>
<div data-sanitized-id="i_1" data-sanitized-class="image imagecenter container">
<div data-sanitized-class="image-holder"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><a href="https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/pic1-11.jpg"><img src="https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/pic1-11.jpg" alt="William Kolakoski and his synaptically seductive sequence (adapted self-portrait from Wikipedia)"></a></span></div>
<div data-sanitized-class="caption"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">William Kolakoski and his synaptically seductive sequence (adapted self-portrait from <a title="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kolakoski" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kolakoski">Wikipedia</a>)</span></div>
</div>
<p wcount="96" data-sanitized-id="p_1_4" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">As I said: supremely simple. And mathematicians have been studying this supremely simple sequence for decades. But they’ve never found a straightforward formula for an arbitrary entry in the sequence. That is, no-one can easily tell in advance whether the 100th or 1000th or 1,000,000th number in the sequence is 1 or 2. To know that, it can be quicker to work out everything that comes before. In short, the sequence isn’t periodic and isn’t predictable. And no-one can yet prove that 1s occur there as often as 2s. As I also said: synapse-seducingly subtle.</span></p>
<p wcount="2" data-sanitized-id="p_1_5" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>Strangely beautiful</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="157" data-sanitized-id="p_1_6" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The sequence certainly seduced the synapses of the man who gave it his name. It soothed his synapses too. This was because <a title="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kolakoski" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kolakoski">William Kolakoski</a> (1944-97), the American artist and amateur mathematician who popularized the sequence in 1965, was schizophrenic and needed constant medication to prevent his mind being carried into what a friend of his <a title="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kolakoski" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kolakoski">called</a> “regions of chaos and delusion.” Because he couldn’t control his own brain, Kolakoski felt compelled to reject free will and accept determinism. But he wanted to find some “benevolent order” in the deterministic universe and he believed that his sequence was one expression of it. As I noted above, the Kolakoski sequence is entirely deterministic, but uncannily unpredictable. It’s also strangely beautiful. Discussions of it on the web sometimes make the claim that it’s “<a title="https://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2014/oct/07/neil-sloane-the-man-who-loved-only-integer-sequences" href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2014/oct/07/neil-sloane-the-man-who-loved-only-integer-sequences">the only sequence</a>” that is its own run-length encoding. That isn’t just wrong, but infinitely wrong. There are an infinite number of such sequences:</span></p>
<p wcount="3" data-sanitized-id="p_1_7" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">1, 3, 3, 3, 1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 3, 1, 3, 1, 3, 3, 3, 1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 3, 1, 3, 3, 3, 1, 3, 3, 3, 1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 3, 1, 3, 1, 3, 3, 3, 1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 3, 1, … (Kolakoski sequence <a title="https://oeis.org/A064353" href="https://oeis.org/A064353">using 1,3</a>)</span></p>
<p wcount="3" data-sanitized-id="p_1_8" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, … (Kolakoski sequence <a title="https://oeis.org/A071820" href="https://oeis.org/A071820">using 2,3</a>)</span></p>
<p wcount="3" data-sanitized-id="p_1_9" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, … (Kolakoski sequence <a title="https://oeis.org/A079730" href="https://oeis.org/A079730">using 1,2,3,4</a>)</span></p>
<p wcount="175" data-sanitized-id="p_1_10" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">If someone’s synapses aren’t seduced by such sequences, then they’ll never enter nerd-nirvana. But if their synapses <em>are</em> seduced, I can make two confident predictions about them. First, they’re probably male. Second, they’re probably light-skinned. They’re White or Jewish or Asian, not Black in the fullest, melanin-tastickest sense. Math appeals most to pale stale males like William Kolakoski. And like <a title="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rufus_Oldenburger" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rufus_Oldenburger">Rufus Oldenburger</a> (1908–69), the American mathematician who first published the sequence in 1945. But that year is very late in the history of mathematics. Why was such a simple and seductive sequence not discovered millennia ago? That’s an interesting question. It’s also interesting to speculate what would happen to intellectual history if we could use a time-machine to teach <a title="https://infogalactic.com/info/Pythagoras" href="https://infogalactic.com/info/Pythagoras">Pythagoras</a> or <a title="https://infogalactic.com/info/Archimedes" href="https://infogalactic.com/info/Archimedes">Archimedes</a> or <a title="https://infogalactic.com/info/Aryabhata" href="https://infogalactic.com/info/Aryabhata">Aryabhata</a> about the sequence.</span></p>
<p wcount="232" data-sanitized-id="p_1_11" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">All of those mathematical giants would have found their synapses seduced by it, I think. But Pythagoras might have been seduced most of all. After all, he was a <a title="https://infogalactic.com/info/Pythagoras" href="https://infogalactic.com/info/Pythagoras">mystic and metaphysician</a> as well as a mathematizer. The Kolakoski sequence is mystically and metaphysically mesmerizing as well as mathematically so. As I said above: it seems to have a mind of its own. Indeed, a life of its own. The <a title="https://infogalactic.com/info/Fibonacci_number" href="https://infogalactic.com/info/Fibonacci_number">Fibonacci sequence</a> – 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, … – famously illuminates biology. The Kolakoski sequence almost seems to belong to biology. What would Pythagoras have made of it? I think he would have been dazzled and delighted by it. And if the Kolakoski sequence had become part of early mathematics, it might have profoundly altered and enriched the course and content of the field. Perhaps calculus would have appeared centuries or millennia earlier, and not had to wait for the genius of those two pale stale males <a title="https://infogalactic.com/info/Isaac_Newton" href="https://infogalactic.com/info/Isaac_Newton">Isaac Newton</a> (1642–1726) and <a title="https://infogalactic.com/info/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz" href="https://infogalactic.com/info/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz">Gottfried Leibniz</a> (1646–1716).</span></p>
<p wcount="4" data-sanitized-id="p_1_12" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>The geometry of life</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="139" data-sanitized-id="p_1_13" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Why Newton and Leibniz didn’t discover the Kolakoski sequence is a question that currently belongs to history and the philosophy of mathematics. Why they <em>did</em> discover calculus is a question that now belongs partly to biology, because their genius is explained by something else that Pythagoras would have been dazzled and delighted by, namely, DNA. Part of his delight would have come from a sense of vindication. Pythagoras <a title="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pythagoras" href="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pythagoras">believed that</a> “Number rules the Universe.” DNA is, in effect, a number-sequence that rules all earthly life. In other words, biology is mathematics: <em>A</em><em>ei h</em><em>ē Zo</em><em>ē geōmetreî</em>, “Life eternally geometrizes,” as Plato might have put it. That ancient Greek verb, <a title="https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0058:entry=gewmetre%2Fw" href="https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0058:entry=gewmetre%2Fw"><em>geōmetreî</em></a>, captured the modern sense of “do mathematics” because Greek mathematics centered on geometry.</span></p>
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<div data-sanitized-class="image-holder"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><a href="https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/pic1-8.jpg"><img src="https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/pic1-8.jpg" alt="DNA would have dazzled and delighted Pythagoras"></a></span></div>
<p><span data-sanitized-class="contents">DNA would have dazzled and delighted Pythagoras</span></p>
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<p wcount="146" data-sanitized-id="p_1_14" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">But DNA geometrizes in a more literal sense. It’s a geometric embodiment of a number-sequence, because the physical structure of DNA — its geometry — explains how it works, how it encodes and directs the manufacture of proteins. DNA is a splittable spiral, a double helix whose structure and simplicity would have added to the dazzlement and delight of Pythagoras. Biology is mathematics and mechanics! In effect, a human body is a giant factory full of microscopic machines manufacturing and maintaining meat. And also manufacturing and maintaining mind. Whatever the precise nature and origin of <a title="https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2022/02/19/magnissimum-mysterium-pondering-a-huge-but-hidden-factor-in-politics-and-white-nationalism/" href="https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2022/02/19/magnissimum-mysterium-pondering-a-huge-but-hidden-factor-in-politics-and-white-nationalism/">consciousness</a>, there can be no doubt that it is profoundly influenced by mindless matter and by those microscopic machines of DNA. In some sense, mind is both mechanical and mathematical. If we want to explain the very wide mental variation among humans, we have to understand the mechanics and mathematics of DNA.</span></p>
<p wcount="6" data-sanitized-id="p_1_15" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>“A hidden arithmetic of the soul”</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="188" data-sanitized-id="p_1_16" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">That’s because DNA governs the differing psychology and cognition of different human races. Indeed, DNA explains why and how there are different human races. DNA has mutated in the course of human history and now differs in significant ways from race to race, just as DNA has mutated in deeper biological time and differs from male to female. This produces a delicious irony: the number-sequence of DNA explains why some human beings delight in number-sequences and some don’t. And why some human beings are much better at understanding and manipulating number-sequences, in both a narrow and a wide sense. The great philosopher Leibniz, co-creator of calculus, once <a title="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gottfried_Leibniz" href="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gottfried_Leibniz">wrote that</a> <em>Musica exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi</em> – “music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, unaware that it calculates.” In other words, music is mathematics (and is another synapse-seducing sequence). It’s not a coincidence that perhaps the greatest mathematician of all time, <a title="https://infogalactic.com/info/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss" href="https://infogalactic.com/info/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss">Carl Friedrich Gauss</a> (1777–1855), belonged to the same race as perhaps the greatest composer of all time, <a title="https://infogalactic.com/info/Ludwig_van_Beethoven" href="https://infogalactic.com/info/Ludwig_van_Beethoven">Ludwig van Beethoven</a> (1770–1827). Leibniz, a <a title="https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/g-o-a-t/" href="https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/g-o-a-t/">GOAT</a> in both philosophy and mathematics, belonged to that race too.</span></p>
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<div data-sanitized-class="image-holder"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><a href="https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/pic1-10.jpg"><img src="https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/pic1-10.jpg" alt="Charles Murray’s hate-hexagon captures 97% of human accomplishment by stale pale males in Europe"></a></span></div>

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<p wcount="217" data-sanitized-id="p_1_17" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">It was the German branch of the White European race. Gauss, Beethoven and Leibniz were all pale stale males. So, in a wider sense, is perhaps the greatest living mathematician, the Chinese <a title="https://infogalactic.com/info/Terence_Tao" href="https://infogalactic.com/info/Terence_Tao">Terry Tao</a> (born 1975). He’s perhaps the greatest on Earth, that is, but there may be far greater mathematicians elsewhere in the Universe, members of alien species with radically different biologies. In one sense, math floats free of biology: it’s presumably a universal language for advanced intelligent beings of any kind, which is why we’ve <a title="https://www.celestis.com/blog/message-sent-into-space-and-what-we-heard-back/" href="https://www.celestis.com/blog/message-sent-into-space-and-what-we-heard-back/">beamed prime numbers</a> at the stars to prove our existence and intelligence, not the poetry of Maya Angelou. But in other senses math is closely bound to biology. The Fibonacci sequence is one famous example. It governs the <a title="https://phys.org/news/2013-02-nature-pattern-fibonacci.html" href="https://phys.org/news/2013-02-nature-pattern-fibonacci.html">structure of pine-cones and pineapples</a>, yet those species are subjects of math, not sovereigns of it like <em>Homo sapiens</em>. You could say that pine-cones and pineapples <em>are</em> mathematics, that is, they embody mathematics. Human beings both are mathematics and <em>do</em> mathematics. And if you want to understand why, you have to understand the biology of human beings and the number-sequence of their DNA.</span></p>
<p wcount="2" data-sanitized-id="p_1_18" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>Misomathematical mysticism</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="208" data-sanitized-id="p_1_19" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">More specifically, you have to understand the biology of those individuals and races who invented and excel at mathematics. As I pointed out above, the individuals have a strong tendency to be pale stale males, from Pythagoras in the 6th century before Christ to Terry Tao in the twenty-first century after. The maximal masculinity of math is explained by the evolution of males to hunt and hurl weapons; the minimal melanicity of math is explained by the evolution of higher intelligence at higher latitudes in colder climates. In other words, the mathematics of DNA explains why some human beings have a mind for mathematics and some don’t. DNA is mechanically mathematical (and vice versa). But mystics, of course, object to the mechanization and mathematization of mind. There’s a great irony in that <a title="https://www.etymonline.com/word/miso-" href="https://www.etymonline.com/word/miso-">misomathematical</a> mysticism, because some of those who espouse it are followers of a man who would, like Pythagoras, have been dazzled and delighted by DNA. And like Pythagoras he would have felt vindicated by it. But whereas Pythagoras would have hailed the mathematicality of DNA, Karl Marx (1818–83) would have hailed the materiality of DNA.</span></p>
<p wcount="149" data-sanitized-id="p_1_20" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Marxism in its classic form claims to be a strictly materialist ideology. But modern Marxists, like the wider, Marx-influenced left in general, are resolutely anti-material when it comes to race and the influence of mere DNA on the majesty of mind. They deny the existence of race and claim that only sociology, not biology, can explain why Black women, for example, haven’t scaled the heights of mathematics like the stale pale males Isaac Newton and Terry Tao. For example, their devotion to Marxism unites stale pale males like <a title="https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2011/06/stephen-jay-gould-next-to-judas-iscariot-brutus-and-cassius-in-the-devil%E2%80%99s-mouth-at-the-center-of-hell/" href="https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2011/06/stephen-jay-gould-next-to-judas-iscariot-brutus-and-cassius-in-the-devil%E2%80%99s-mouth-at-the-center-of-hell/">Stephen Jay Gould</a>, Richard Lewontin, Leon Kamin, and Steven Rose, the most important and influential of the DNA-deniers. They are all adherents of a strictly materialist ideology. And yet they resort to mysticism when it comes to racial and sexual difference, denying that genetics can explain the vastly different behavior and achievements of Whites and Blacks or men and women.</span></p>
<p wcount="3" data-sanitized-id="p_1_21" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>Partisan, not impartial</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="176" data-sanitized-id="p_1_22" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">However, something else unites these dominant DNA-deniers. They are also all Jewish. So are the DNA-deniers — with delicious irony — determined by DNA? I would say yes, to some degree at least. Jewish DNA certainly accounts for the intelligence and verbal facility of Gould, Lewontin <em>et al</em>. Scholars like Kevin MacDonald would further claim that Jewish DNA accounts for the <a title="https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2021/05/16/the-psychology-of-moral-communities-part-2-ethnocentrism-and-its-control/" href="https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2021/05/16/the-psychology-of-moral-communities-part-2-ethnocentrism-and-its-control/">ethnocentrism</a> of the Gouldeans, who haven’t been impartial scientists pursuing truth but partisan ideologues pursuing Jewish advantage. It’s not good for Jews for Whites to recognize the simple truth, namely, that biology underlies behavior and that the failure of Blacks in Western societies has deep genetic and evolutionary roots. But it is good for Jews for Whites to <a title="https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2018/06/03/destroy-the-goy-the-metaphysics-of-anti-white-hatred-part-1/" href="https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2018/06/03/destroy-the-goy-the-metaphysics-of-anti-white-hatred-part-1/">embrace a gigantic lie</a>, namely, that sociology is supreme and that all non-White failure can be blamed on White racism. The Gouldeans are mendacious, not <a title="https://infogalactic.com/info/Mendelian_inheritance" href="https://infogalactic.com/info/Mendelian_inheritance">Mendelian</a>. So you could also say they are immoral. And I would say that DNA also profoundly influences morality: some races have evolved for deceit and manipulation, and even for straightforward criminality.</span></p>
<p wcount="161" data-sanitized-id="p_1_23" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">As I pointed out in my article “<a title="https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2013/10/verbal-venom-biological-parallels-for-western-pathologies/" href="https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2013/10/verbal-venom-biological-parallels-for-western-pathologies/">Verbal Venom</a>,” predation and parasitism have spontaneously evolved again and again in the animal kingdom. There are parasitic mammals, birds, fish, insects and more: Think of vampire-bats, cuckoos, lampreys, mosquitoes and so on. All of those animal groups behave in what is, from one perspective, a profoundly immoral way. They steal the hard-earned resources of their fellow creatures, deceiving and manipulating and sometimes literally sucking their blood. But morality doesn’t really apply, of course. It’s biology, not badness, that’s at work when a mosquito sucks human blood or a cuckoo-chick flips its unrelated nest-mates to their death and then exploits the labor of the deceived parents. And I think it’s biology, not badness, if those same readily evolving strategies of predation and parasitism have appeared among human beings. Predation and parasitism are written into mosquito and cuckoo DNA and may also be written into the DNA of some human groups.</span></p>
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<div data-sanitized-class="image-holder"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><a href="https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/pic1-9.jpg"><img src="https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/pic1-9.jpg" alt="Genetic geometry shows that Jews are distinct from northern European Whites"></a></span></div>
<p><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Genetic geometry shows that Jews are distinct from northern European Whites</span></p>
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<p wcount="267" data-sanitized-id="p_1_24" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">But DNA is a number-sequence, not a code of ethics. Morality dissolves in mathematics. I don’t think we can blame Stephen Jay Gould for his anti-Mendelian mendacity. As Kevin MacDonald <a title="https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2011/06/stephen-jay-gould-next-to-judas-iscariot-brutus-and-cassius-in-the-devil%E2%80%99s-mouth-at-the-center-of-hell/" href="https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2011/06/stephen-jay-gould-next-to-judas-iscariot-brutus-and-cassius-in-the-devil%E2%80%99s-mouth-at-the-center-of-hell/">points out</a>, Gould proclaimed this in his most famous book, <em>The Mismeasure of Man</em> (1996): “May I end up next to Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius in the devil’s mouth at the center of hell if I ever fail to present my most honest assessment and best judgment of the evidence for empirical truth.” That was self-righteous and Gould is self-damned, because <em>The Mismeasure of Man</em> is replete with mendacity. But if Gould denied scientific truth and MacDonald champions it, that divergence isn’t surprising. Both men belong to small human groups that have had a vastly disproportionate influence on the world. But Scots, who have mostly had a good influence, are White and Jews, who have often had a bad influence, are not. Analysis of DNA has proved that. The three-dimensional geometry of DNA can be translated into a two-dimensional geometry of gene-clusters. On a gene-cluster map, Jews stand as <a title="https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2024/05/28/israeli-society-sociopathic/" href="https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2024/05/28/israeli-society-sociopathic/">a people alone</a>, separated by the Southern-European cluster from Scots in the Northern-European cluster. But there’s another irony in such mathematically based DNA analysis, because one of the central figures in the discovery of DNA’s geometry was much more closely related to Stephen Jay Gould than she was to two of the other central figures in the DNA story.</span></p>
<p wcount="123" data-sanitized-id="p_1_25" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><a title="https://infogalactic.com/info/James_Watson" href="https://infogalactic.com/info/James_Watson">James Watson</a> (born 1928) and <a title="https://infogalactic.com/info/Francis_Crick" href="https://infogalactic.com/info/Francis_Crick">Francis Crick</a> (1916-2004) were White like Kevin MacDonald, but the X-ray crystallographer <a title="https://infogalactic.com/info/Rosalind_Franklin" href="https://infogalactic.com/info/Rosalind_Franklin">Rosalind Franklin</a> (1920–58) was Jewish like Stephen Jay Gould. Unlike Gould, she was a true scientist, but unlike Crick and Watson she never achieved the scientific immortality of a Nobel prize. She died too soon and perhaps being a woman during her lifetime would have denied her a Nobel anyway. Immortality can be much easier to achieve in mathematics. William Kolakoski died young like Franklin, but he achieved immortality by discovering and giving his name to that synaptically seductive sequence of 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 2…</span></p>
<p wcount="232" data-sanitized-id="p_1_26" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Or rather: by re-discovering it. Rufus Oldenburger was there first. Or first on Earth, at least. Perhaps the Kolakoski sequence was first discovered millennia ago and light-years away by an alien being with a radically different biology. As I pointed out above, in one sense math floats free of biology. But, as I also pointed out above, in other senses math is closely bound to biology. I myself wish I were much better at it. Then again, I can boast that I’m very good at it already, like almost every human since the number-sequence of DNA first granted us the faculty of speech. Whether it’s spoken or written, language too is a number-sequence. It isn’t <a title="https://infogalactic.com/info/Turtles_all_the_way_down" href="https://infogalactic.com/info/Turtles_all_the_way_down">turtles all the way down</a>, it’s numbers and algorithms and math. <em>Le monde, c’est mathématique</em>.</span></p>
<p wcount="1" data-sanitized-id="p_1_27" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>Notes</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="205" data-sanitized-id="p_1_28" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"> <a title="https://metatutor.co.uk/the-kolakoski-sequence/" href="https://metatutor.co.uk/the-kolakoski-sequence/"><strong>“How to generate the sequence</strong></a> The Kolakoski Sequence … is a self-describing sequence. The sequence consists of only 1s and 2s, and begins with 1. Each term in the sequence describes the length of the next run of the same number (either 1s or 2s). That probably didn’t make sense (as it didn’t to me the first time I read it), so let me show you what I mean…<br>The sequence begins with <strong>1</strong>. So this means the first run of the same digit only contains 1 number. Since the first number is 1, this means there must only be one 1 in this run. And by definition, because this run must only contain one 1, the next number must be <strong>2</strong>.<br>Because the second number is 2, that means that there are 2 of the same number in the next run. So the sequence will next contain another <strong>2</strong>. And this term will be the end of this run of the same number.<br>Because the third term is 2, we know that the next run of the same number will have length 2. Because we know the third term was the end of the last run, the fourth term has to be <strong>1</strong>.<br>The fifth term will also be <strong>1</strong>, as this run has to have length 2.”</span></p>
<p wcount="13" data-sanitized-id="p_1_29" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">You can also create the Kolakoski sequence by dropping the initial 1 like this: 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, …</span></p>
<p wcount="42" data-sanitized-id="p_1_30" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"> Oldenburger’s precedence means that the Kolakoski sequence is an example of <a title="https://infogalactic.com/info/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy" href="https://infogalactic.com/info/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy">Stigler’s law of eponymy</a>, which states that “no scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer.” Stigler’s law is also, by design, an example of Stigler’s law.</span></p>
<p wcount="58" data-sanitized-id="p_1_31" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"> Of course, if a time-machine took the Kolakoski sequence back in time, there would be no need for a time-machine to take the Kolakoski sequence back in time. You can avoid this paradox by invoking <a title="https://infogalactic.com/info/Multiverse" href="https://infogalactic.com/info/Multiverse">the multiverse</a> and supposing that a time-machine from one universe hops across to another universe that’s accessible and observable from the former.</span></p>
<p wcount="19" data-sanitized-id="p_1_32" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"> For example, as noted later in the article, the Fibonacci sequence helps explain the <a title="https://phys.org/news/2013-02-nature-pattern-fibonacci.html" href="https://phys.org/news/2013-02-nature-pattern-fibonacci.html">structure of pine-cones and pineapples</a>.</span></p>
<p wcount="14" data-sanitized-id="p_1_33" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"> According <a title="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Classical_Greek_phrases" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Classical_Greek_phrases">to Plutarch</a>, Plato believed that ἀεὶ ὁ Θεὸς γεωμετρεῖ, <em>aei ho Theos geōmetreî</em>, “God ever geometrizes.”</span></p>
<p wcount="27" data-sanitized-id="p_1_34" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"> That is, we humans are governed in our biology, physiology, etc by mathematical principles, but are also capable of creating and performing mathematics as an explicit symbology.</span></p>
<p wcount="20" data-sanitized-id="p_1_35" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"> Tracking prey involves following a sequence of spoor through space; throwing spears or firing arrows selects for spatial ability too.</span></p>
<p wcount="24" data-sanitized-id="p_1_36" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"> In fact, gene-space has far more dimensions than two, but the gene-cluster map above uses only two and I’m simplifying for rhetorical effect.</span></p>
<p wcount="27" data-sanitized-id="p_1_37" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"> And like the mathematical giant <a title="https://infogalactic.com/info/Emmy_Noether" href="https://infogalactic.com/info/Emmy_Noether">Emmy Noether</a> (1882–1935). As I noted above, stale pale males have dominated math, but stale pale females have sometimes been important there too.</span></p>
<p wcount="96" data-sanitized-id="p_1_38" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"> “The world, it’s mathematical.” After the manically alliterative title of this article, that’s a mildly alliterative envoi in French (inspired by Louis XIV’s <a title="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/l%27%C3%A9tat%2C%20c%27est%20moi" href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/l%27%C3%A9tat%2C%20c%27est%20moi">alleged remark</a> <em>L’etat, c’est moi,</em> “I am the state”). Perhaps both the mania and the mildness can be explained by my genetics. Anglo-Saxon poetry was famously based on alliteration, not on rhyme. Gene-expression strengthens with age and the older I’ve got, the more I’ve felt compelled to alliterate. I hope this sequence about a synaptically seductive sequence has been synaptically seductive in its own written right.</span></p>


guid: https://www.unz.com/?post_type=item&amp;p=544414
title: Making America Great Is All About Israel, by Philip Giraldi
author: ;Philip Giraldi
link: https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/making-america-great-is-all-about-israel/
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<div><img src="https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Brian-Mast.jpg" data-sanitized-class="ff-og-image-inserted"></div><p wcount="179" data-sanitized-id="p_1_1" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">After Donald Trump began to pull together his cabinet and inner circle it became pretty clear that the overwhelming tie that bound the group together was its embrace of Israel and everything that it is doing. There were even jokes that the top cabinet officials had apparently been selected by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel himself to reflect the fact that the Jewish state would be calling the shots for Trump even more than they did with the spineless Joe Biden. The handover of power was confirmed for all to see when Trump invited Netanyahu to the White House, the first foreign head of state to be so sanctified. While in Washington, a grinning Netanyahu was beguiled to learn of a crazy scheme to either kill or throw all the remaining Palestinians out of what was once Palestine and turn the ruins of Gaza into a high-end beach resort. Since that time, Trump has assured a delighted Netanyahu that no Palestinians would be allowed to return to visit what was once the site of their homes and communities.</span></p>
<p wcount="111" data-sanitized-id="p_1_2" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">So okay, those of us who had not yet learned to accept the occasional genocides carried out by Israel on its neighbors are now quickly learning to understand that the enabling role played by Joe Biden in the massacres of the Arabs was about to accelerate to a higher gear, which would include the clearing of the West Bank and incorporation of parts of Lebanon and Syria after the two million or so pesky Gazans are removed. Nevertheless, there were still some surprises to come and I must confess that some developments as well as recent comments made by Trump’s team have been astonishing even if one expected the worst.</span></p>
<p wcount="139" data-sanitized-id="p_1_3" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Even seasoned Trump-o-philes might have been astonished by an apparently Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated short video prepared for Trump and released on Tuesday on his website Truth Social. It is a brief cartoonish tour of <a title="https://mondoweiss.net/2025/02/trump-promotes-gaza-ethnic-cleansing-in-bizarre-ai-video/?ml_recipient=147494056028538383&amp;ml_link=147494000569353527&amp;utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=2025-02-27&amp;utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines+RSS+Automation" href="https://mondoweiss.net/2025/02/trump-promotes-gaza-ethnic-cleansing-in-bizarre-ai-video/?ml_recipient=147494056028538383&amp;ml_link=147494000569353527&amp;utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=2025-02-27&amp;utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines+RSS+Automation">what Gaza might look like</a> when it is transformed into Trump Gaza on the Mediterranean, a luxury beachfront destination, filled with posh sky-scrapers and condominiums, and even featuring bearded bellydancers. The video includes Trump and Netanyahu sunbathing together on the beach, Elon Musk apparently eating hummus, and a fifty feet high golden statue of Donald Trump the Founder located prominently on one of the resort’s main thoroughfares. Small replicas of the golden Trump statue were also seen on a gift shop rack for sale, apparently as souvenirs. Every family should have one to place prominently in its home to protect against Hamas “terrorists.”</span></p>
<p wcount="242" data-sanitized-id="p_1_4" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Coming close to the Trump video in terms of its bizarreness, is the behavior by Representative Brian Mast from Florida, who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Mast is perhaps best known for the fact that he was an American veteran who volunteered to serve with the Israel Defense Force (IDF) after he was wounded in Afghanistan and discharged. He has appeared in Congressional offices and in meetings in Washington in his Israeli army uniform, which some, including myself, consider to be both disgraceful and even borderline treasonous. Mast has often asserted the value of his Israeli credentials and cited his love for Israel saying “I stand by Israel,” which should be a disqualifier for the office he holds. In his latest stunt last week, Mast informed the fifty Republican staffers on his committee that henceforth they <a title="https://news.antiwar.com/2025/02/26/house-foreign-affairs-chair-tells-staff-to-refer-to-israeli-occupied-west-bank-as-judea-and-samaria/" href="https://news.antiwar.com/2025/02/26/house-foreign-affairs-chair-tells-staff-to-refer-to-israeli-occupied-west-bank-as-judea-and-samaria/">must not refer to</a> the part of Palestine that is generally called the West Bank by that name. The House Committee must henceforth refer to the region as “Judea and Samaria” which is the Israeli preferred “biblical” usage that will no doubt serve as a first step in the annexation of the area into the apartheid Israeli state. Mast elaborated that “in recognition of our unbreakable bond with Israel and the inherent right of the Jewish people to their ancient homeland, the House Foreign Affairs Committee will, from here forward, refer to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria in formal correspondence, communication and documentation.”</span></p>
<p wcount="119" data-sanitized-id="p_1_5" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">While it may seem only symbolic, referring to the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria” is a clear show of support for Israeli annexation. Mike Huckabee, Trump’s nominee to serve as the US ambassador to Israel, also refers to the West Bank using the same language and has said <a title="https://news.antiwar.com/2024/11/13/huckabee-of-course-israeli-annexation-of-the-west-bank-is-possible-under-trump/" href="https://news.antiwar.com/2024/11/13/huckabee-of-course-israeli-annexation-of-the-west-bank-is-possible-under-trump/">annexation is possible under the new Trump administration.</a> Earlier this month, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas also <a title="https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cotton-reintroduceslegislation-to-eliminate-federal-use-of-the-term-west-bank" href="https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cotton-reintroduceslegislation-to-eliminate-federal-use-of-the-term-west-bank">reintroduced a bill</a> that would require the use of the term “Judea and Samaria” in all official US documents. Representative Claudia Tenney of New York also introduced the identical legislation in the House and maintained that “the Israeli people have an undeniable and indisputable historical and legal claim over Judea and Samaria.”</span></p>
<p wcount="141" data-sanitized-id="p_1_6" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Congress and the White House have clearly become Israeli Occupied territory as Pat Buchanan once colorfully described the US government. Another prominent Israeli firster who is showing his true colors is the grotesque Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who has recently received the <a title="https://www.newarab.com/news/fetterman-staffers-resign-over-us-senators-israel-obsession" href="https://www.newarab.com/news/fetterman-staffers-resign-over-us-senators-israel-obsession">resignations of six of his staffers</a>, who complained that all the work that they had been given recently had reflected the Senator’s obsession with supporting Israel. Congressman Tom Massie of Kentucky <a title="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/house-republican-claims-every-gop-colleague-has-an-aipac-babysitter-pressuring-them-to-cast-pro-israel-votes/ar-BB1nPXGP" href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/house-republican-claims-every-gop-colleague-has-an-aipac-babysitter-pressuring-them-to-cast-pro-israel-votes/ar-BB1nPXGP">has declared that</a> every Republican congressman but himself has among their staffs at least one “minder” (he calls them “babysitters”) who is present to monitor and report on how the representative votes in support of Israel. The Israel-first staffer is often an employee of the Lobby, commonly either connected to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) or with the even more virulent Anti-Defamation League (ADL).</span></p>
<p wcount="85" data-sanitized-id="p_1_7" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">After the “cleansing of Gaza” the West Bank will clearly be next. Israel has already announced that the approximate 40,000 West Bank Palestinians who have already been driven from their homes in ongoing operation “Iron Wall” will not be allowed to return and new Jewish settlements are planned for the former Palestinian towns and villages. As in Gaza the Israeli onslaught has involved the destruction of roads, homes, schools, churches, hospitals and other infrastructure, and the killing of civilians, including a pregnant woman and several children.</span></p>
<p wcount="208" data-sanitized-id="p_1_8" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">And there is more, lots more, but some of the developments are more interesting because they are impacting domestically on the United States and on the constitutional liberties and rights that are under siege as the Israel Lobby and Team Trump seek to suppress any criticism of the Jewish state and/or of the illegal activities carried out by its supporters through their corruption of government at all levels in the United States. Another revelation of how the new administration will be targeting any and all supporters of the Palestinians comes from the highly respectable Arab American Institute’s Director James Zogby. Per Zogby, “For those unaware of the situation, here’s what’s happened. In recent days, a tweet from Elon Musk shared hateful and dangerous disinformation about the Arab American Institute and other groups whose missions, though varied, have been either to provide humanitarian assistance to communities in need or to provide educational services and training. Mr. Musk reposted a tweet that listed several organizations that have received government grants in recent years. The list was almost exclusively Arab American or American Muslim organizations and labeled us all ‘terrorist linked organizations.’ Mr. Musk’s retweet, which now has more than 16 million views, refers to ‘terrorist organizations.’”</span></p>
<p wcount="76" data-sanitized-id="p_1_9" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">This systematic ethnic and religious demonization of Israel’s designated enemies is being backed up by legal initiatives to rid the United States of any and all foreign students who deign to protest against the genocide being carried out by Israel. At the end of January, Trump <a title="https://www.newsweek.com/trump-order-deport-pro-palestinian-protesters-explained-2023375" href="https://www.newsweek.com/trump-order-deport-pro-palestinian-protesters-explained-2023375">signed an executive order</a> that instructs the leaders of federal agencies to provide recommendations on “all civil and criminal” authorities or actions available to the White House within 60 days.</span></p>
<p wcount="156" data-sanitized-id="p_1_10" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The order says the report should include details of all court cases involving schools, colleges and universities, which could lead to actions to remove “alien students and staff.” According to an accompanying White House fact sheet, it will “marshal all federal resources” to combat what it describes “the explosion of antisemitism on our campuses and streets” since the October 2023 Hamas attack. Trump’s executive order promises “immediate action” from the Justice Department to “protect law and order, quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation, and investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities. To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” Trump was quoted as saying in the fact sheet. He explained that “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”</span></p>
<p wcount="81" data-sanitized-id="p_1_11" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Attorney General Pam Bondi has inevitably taken the lead on the deportation plan. She told <em>Newsmax</em> in an interview that “The thing that’s really the most troubling to me [are] these students in universities in our country, whether they’re here as Americans or if they’re here on student visas, and they’re out there saying ‘I support Hamas.’ Frankly they need to be taken out of our country or the FBI needs to be interviewing them right away.”</span></p>
<p wcount="131" data-sanitized-id="p_1_12" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">And the <em>faux</em> compliments regarding what Israel is doing just keep on coming both from talking heads in Washington and from the Zionist dominated media. My favorite line spewed out regularly by both Democrats and Republicans is some version of the assertion that Israel is somehow a wonderful “democracy that is America’s best friend and closest ally.” Attorney General Pam Bondi went over the top <a title="https://www.yahoo.com/news/pam-bondi-pick-replace-matt-013354056.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall" href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/pam-bondi-pick-replace-matt-013354056.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall">when she called Israel</a> “our greatest ally in the world” in an interview with <em>Fox News</em>. Interestingly, apartheid war criminal Israel is in fact neither a democracy nor a friend nor an ally but when the blind are leading the blind anything might well pop out of one’s mouth, particularly when it is not connected to a functioning brain that actually has a conscience.</span></p>
<p wcount="146" data-sanitized-id="p_1_13" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><a title="https://deepnewz.com/israel/fbi-deputy-director-dan-bongino-kash-patel-affirm-strong-support-israel-amid-65bb4a6e" href="https://deepnewz.com/israel/fbi-deputy-director-dan-bongino-kash-patel-affirm-strong-support-israel-amid-65bb4a6e">Over at the FBI</a> effusive comments also seem to be the general rule with Dan Bongino, the newly appointed Deputy Director of the FBI, when responding to a question about what might be the causes that are dear to his heart, stating, “Israel. Defense of Israel.” His comment reflects a broad commitment within the FBI and Justice Department to prioritize relations with Israel, as echoed by FBI Director Kash Patel, who affirmed that “America will prioritize Israel, and we stand by our number one ally.” Nice one Kash! Is that really your first name or just a pseudonym? Maybe you should be looking into the various internationally binding agreements entered into with the US guaranteeing the arrangements that <a title="https://news.antiwar.com/2025/02/27/israel-to-remain-in-philadelphi-corridor-in-violation-of-gaza-ceasefire-deal/" href="https://news.antiwar.com/2025/02/27/israel-to-remain-in-philadelphi-corridor-in-violation-of-gaza-ceasefire-deal/">are being violated by Israel</a> in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza? They are war crimes and Washington is complicit. But I guess you are not interested in that stuff…</span></p>
<p wcount="56" data-sanitized-id="p_1_14" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em>Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is</em> <a title="mailto:inform@cnionline.org" href="https://www.unz.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#046d6a626b766944676a6d6b6a686d6a612a6b7663"><em><span data-cfemail="11787f777e637c51727f787e7f7d787f743f7e6376" data-sanitized-class="__cf_email__">[email protected]</span></em></a>.</span></p>


guid: https://www.unz.com/?post_type=item&amp;p=544443
title: The Geopolitics of Peace — Jeffrey Sachs in the European Parliament, by Jeffrey D. Sachs
author: ;Jeffrey D. Sachs
link: https://www.unz.com/article/the-geopolitics-of-peace-jeffrey-sachs-in-the-european-parliament/
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<div><img src="https://www.unz.com/wp-content/themes/unzSite/IMAGES/unz_large_logo.png" data-sanitized-class="ff-og-image-inserted"></div><p><iframe width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VjcMoDFU1xg?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" title="The Geopolitics of Peace - Jeffrey Sachs in the European Parliament" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin">[embedded content]</iframe></p>
<p wcount="2" data-sanitized-id="p_1_1" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><a title="https://youtu.be/VjcMoDFU1xg'" href="https://youtu.be/VjcMoDFU1xg" target="_blank" data-sanitized-class="caption">Video Link</a></span></p>
<p wcount="2" data-sanitized-id="p_1_2" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>Edited Transcript:</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="1" data-sanitized-id="p_1_3" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>Introduction</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="326" data-sanitized-id="p_1_4" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Michael, thank you so much, and thanks to all of you for the chance to be together and to think together. This is indeed a complicated and fast-changing time and a very dangerous one. So, we really need clarity of thought. I’m especially interested in our conversation, so I’ll try to be as succinct and clear as I can be. I’ve watched the events very close-up in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine, very closely for the last 36 years. I was an adviser to the Polish government in 1989, to President Gorbachev’s economic team in 1990 and 1991, to President Yeltsin’s economic team in 1991 to 1993, and to President Kuchma’s economic team in Ukraine in 1993 to 1994. I helped introduce the Estonian currency. I helped several countries in former Yugoslavia, especially Slovenia. After the Maidan, I was asked by the new government to come to Kyiv, and I was taken around the Maidan, and I learned a lot of things firsthand. I’ve been in touch with Russian leaders for more than 30 years. I also know the American political leadership close-up. Our previous Secretary of Treasury, Janet Yellen, was my wonderful macroeconomics teacher 52 years ago. We have been friends for a half century. I know these people. I say this because what I want to explain in my point of view is not second-hand. It’s not ideology. It’s what I’ve seen with my own eyes and experienced during this period. I want to share with you my understanding of the events that have befallen Europe in many contexts, and I’ll include not only the Ukraine crisis, but also Serbia 1999, the wars in the Middle East, including Iraq, Syria, the wars in Africa, including Sudan, Somalia, Libya. These are to a very significant extent the result of deeply misguided US policies. What I will say may well surprise you, but I speak from experience and knowledge of these events.</span></p>
<p wcount="49" data-sanitized-id="p_1_5" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*1)</sup> Edited transcript of Professor Jeffrey Sachs’ speech in the European Parliament at an event titled “The Geopolitics of Peace”, hosted by former UN Assistant Secretary General and current BSW MEP Michael von der Schulenburg, on February 19, 2025. The transcript has been edited for clarity and annotated in footnotes and hyperlinks.</em></span></p>
<p wcount="9" data-sanitized-id="p_1_6" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>The Geopolitics of Peace<br>i. U.S. Foreign Policy</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="84" data-sanitized-id="p_1_7" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">These are wars that the United States has led and caused. And this has been true for more than 30 years now. The United States came to the view, especially during 1990-91, and then with the end of the Soviet Union, that the US now runs the world, and that the US does not have to heed anybody’s views, red-lines, concerns, security viewpoints, international obligations, or any UN framework. I’m sorry to put it so plainly, but I do want you to understand.</span></p>
<p wcount="112" data-sanitized-id="p_1_8" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I tried very hard in 1991 to get financial help for Gorbachev,<em><sup>(*2)</sup></em> who I think was the greatest statesman of our modern time. I recently read the archived memo of the National Security Council discussion of my proposal on June 3, 1991, reading for the first time how the White House completely dismissed it, and essentially laughed off the table my plea for the US to help the Soviet Union with financial stabilization and with financial aid to make its reforms. The memo documents that the US Government decided to do the very minimum to prevent disaster, but just the minimum.<em><sup>(*3)</sup></em> They decided that it’s not the US job to help. Quite the contrary.<em><sup>(*4)</sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="131" data-sanitized-id="p_1_9" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">When the Soviet Union ended in 1991, the view became even more exaggerated. And I can name chapter and verse, but the view was we [the US] run the show. Cheney, Wolfowitz, and many other names that you will have come to know literally believed this is now a US world, and we will do as we want. We will clean up from the former Soviet Union. We will take out any remaining Soviet-era allies. Countries like Iraq, Syria, and so forth will go. And we’ve been experiencing this foreign policy for now essentially 33 years. Europe has paid a heavy price for this because Europe has not had any foreign policy during this period that I can figure out. No voice, no unity, no clarity, no European interests, only American loyalty.</span></p>
<p wcount="169" data-sanitized-id="p_1_10" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">There were moments where there were disagreements and, I think, very wonderful disagreements. The last time of significance was 2003 in the lead-up to the Iraq war when France and Germany said we don’t support the United States going around the UN Security Council for this war. That war was directly concocted by Netanyahu and his colleagues in the US Pentagon.<em><sup>(*5)</sup></em> I’m not saying that it was a link or mutuality. I’m saying it was a war carried out for Israel. It was a war that Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith coordinated with Netanyahu. And that was the last time that Europe had a voice. I spoke with European leaders then, and they were very clear, and it was quite wonderful to hear their opposition an unacceptable war. Europe lost its voice entirely after that, but especially in 2008. What happened after 1991, and to bring us to 2008, is that the United States decided that unipolarity meant that NATO would enlarge somewhere from Brussels to Vladivostok, step by step.</span></p>
<p wcount="43" data-sanitized-id="p_1_11" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*2) Which became part of a project led by Prof. Graham Allison at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government with Gorbachev economic advisor Grigory Yavlinsky and published in the book Window of Opportunity: The Grand Bargain for Democracy in the Soviet Union, Pantheon Books, 1991.</sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="104" data-sanitized-id="p_1_12" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*3) Richard Darman, at the OMB, put it this way. “In defining the U.S. interest, we need to be somewhat Machiavellian. What is the minimum amount necessary to mollify a regime with which we wish to work on other ma]ers? In other words, what is the bare minimum to keep things moving. I don’t believe we need to worry about the USSR’s decomposi^on. If this is our internal understanding, then we can go ahead publicly.” Later, Darman adds, “I want to</sup></em> <strong><em><sup>seem</sup></em></strong> <em><sup>serious while not fooling ourselves. We have enough ingredients already for a good PR package.” (Emphasis in original)</sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="34" data-sanitized-id="p_1_13" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*4) See also my paper “How the Neocons Chose Hegemony Over Peace in the Early 1990s,” available here: h]</sup></em><em><sup><u>ps://<a title="http://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-ar" href="http://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-ar" rel="noreferrer noopener">www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-ar</a>^cles/bfsmbpe4plx7cc6lgxhf37lx249r22?rq=how%20the%20neocons</u></sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="24" data-sanitized-id="p_1_14" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*5) See Dennis Fritz, Deadly Betrayal: The Truth about why the United States Invaded Iraq, OR Books, 2024. Link here: h]</sup></em><em><sup><u>ps://<a title="http://orbooks.com/catalog/deadly-betrayal/" href="http://orbooks.com/catalog/deadly-betrayal/" rel="noreferrer noopener">orbooks.com/catalog/deadly-betrayal/</a></u></sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="3" data-sanitized-id="p_1_15" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>ii. NATO Expansion</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="66" data-sanitized-id="p_1_16" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">There would be no end to eastward enlargement of NATO. This would be the US unipolar world. If you play the game of Risk as a child like I did, this is the US idea: to have the piece on every part of the board. Any place without a US military base is an enemy, basically. Neutrality is a dirty word in the US political lexicon.</span></p>
<p wcount="72" data-sanitized-id="p_1_17" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Neutrality is perhaps the dirtiest word according to the US mindset. If you’re an enemy, we know you’re an enemy. If you are neutral, you are a subversive, because you’re really against us, but just not telling us. You’re only pretending to be neutral. So, this was indeed the mindset, and the decision was taken formally in 1994 when President Clinton signed off on NATO enlargement to the east.</span></p>
<p wcount="80" data-sanitized-id="p_1_18" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">You will recall that on February 7, 1990, Hans-Dietrich Genscher and James Baker III spoke with Gorbachev. Genscher gave a press conference afterwards where he explained that NATO will not move eastward.<em><sup>(*6)</sup></em> Germany and the US would not take advantage of the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. Understand, please, that this commitment was made in a juridical and diplomatic context, not a casual context. These commitments were core to the negotiations to end World War II that made way for German reunification.</span></p>
<p wcount="74" data-sanitized-id="p_1_19" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">An understanding was reached that NATO will not move one inch eastward.<em><sup>(*7)</sup></em> And it was explicit, and it is in countless documents. And just look up National Security Archive of George Washington University, and you can get dozens of documents.<em><sup>(*8)</sup></em> It’s a website called “What Gorbachev Heard About NATO.” Take a look, please, because everything you’re told by the US about this promise is a lie, but the archives are perfectly clear.</span></p>
<p wcount="55" data-sanitized-id="p_1_20" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">So, the decision was taken by Clinton in 1994 to expand NATO all the way to Ukraine. This is a long-term US project. This is not due to one administration or another. This is a US government project that started more than 30 years ago. In 1997, Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote <em>The Grand Chessboard</em>, describing the NATO enlargement eastward.</span></p>
<p wcount="71" data-sanitized-id="p_1_21" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">That book is not just the musings of Mr. Brzezinski. That is his presentation to the public of decisions <em>already made</em> by the United States government, which is how a book like this works. The book describes the eastward enlargement of Europe and of NATO as simultaneous and conjoined events. And there’s a good chapter in that book that asks, what will Russia do as Europe and NATO expand eastward?</span></p>
<p wcount="93" data-sanitized-id="p_1_22" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I knew Zbig Brzezinski personally. He was very nice to me. I was advising Poland, and he was a big help. He was also a smart man, and yet he got everything wrong in 1997. In 1997, he wrote in detail why Russia could do nothing but accede to the eastward expansion of NATO and Europe.<em><sup>(*9)</sup></em> In fact, he says the eastward expansion of Europe and not just Europe, but NATO. This was a US plan, a project. And Brzezinski explains how Russia will never align with China. Unthinkable. Russia will never align with Iran.</span></p>
<p wcount="119" data-sanitized-id="p_1_23" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">According to Brzezinski, Russia has no vocation other than the European vocation. So, as Europe moves east, there’s nothing Russia can do about it. So, says yet another American strategist. Is it any question why we’re in war all the time? Because one thing about America is we always “know” what our counterparts are going to do, and we always get it wrong! And one reason we always get it wrong is that in the non-cooperative game theory that the American strategists play, you don’t actually talk to the other side. You just know what the other side’s strategy is. That’s wonderful. It saves so much time. You simply don’t need any diplomacy.</span></p>
<p wcount="8" data-sanitized-id="p_1_24" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*6)</sup></em> <em><sup><u><a title="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=677cc347ff&amp;e=16a1c11c93" href="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=677cc347ff&amp;e=16a1c11c93" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogM0EjYbPRk</a></u></sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="26" data-sanitized-id="p_1_25" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*7) It was an agreement, albeit verbal, as Gorbachev emphasized to the US and Germany the importance of the US- German pledge not to expand NATO eastward.</sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="27" data-sanitized-id="p_1_26" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*8) Many of the key documents are here</sup></em> <em><sup><u><a title="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=03e0385ea5&amp;e=16a1c11c93" href="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=03e0385ea5&amp;e=16a1c11c93" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early</a></u></sup></em> <em><sup>and here</sup></em> <em><sup><u><a title="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=71f510902b&amp;e=16a1c11c93" href="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=71f510902b&amp;e=16a1c11c93" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2018-03-16/nato-expansion-what-yeltsin-heard</a></u></sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="112" data-sanitized-id="p_1_27" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*9) Here is what Brzezinski writes: “Russia’s only real geostrategic op^on—the op^on that could give Russia a realis^c interna^onal role and also maximize the opportunity of transforming and socially modernizing itself—is Europe. And not just any Europe, but the transatlan^c Europe of the enlarging EU and NATO. Such a Europe is taking shape, as we have seen in chapter 3, and it is also likely to remain linked closely to America. That is the Europe to which Russia will have to relate, if it is to avoid dangerous geopoli^cal isola^on.” Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic ImperaEves (p. 118). Basic Books. 1997.</sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="5" data-sanitized-id="p_1_28" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>iii. The Black Sea Strategy</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="44" data-sanitized-id="p_1_29" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">So, this project began in earnest in 1994, and we have had a continuity of government policy for 30 years until maybe yesterday, perhaps.<em><sup>(*10)</sup></em> A thirty-year project. Ukraine and Georgia were the keys to the project. Why? Because America learned everything it knows from the British.</span></p>
<p wcount="106" data-sanitized-id="p_1_30" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">We are the wannabe British Empire. And what the British Empire understood in 1853, with Mr. Palmerston, excuse me, Lord Palmerston [together with Napoleon III], is that you surround Russia in the Black Sea, and you deny Russia access to the Eastern Mediterranean. What you’re watching is an American project to do the same in the 21st century. The US idea was that there would be Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Georgia all in NATO, that would deprive Russia of any international status by blocking the Black Sea and essentially by neutralizing Russia as little more than a local power. Brzezinski is clear about this geography.</span></p>
<p wcount="34" data-sanitized-id="p_1_31" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">After Palmerston and before Brzezinski, there was of course Halford Mackinder in 1904: “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands the World- Island; Who rules the World-Island commands the world.”<em><sup>(*11)</sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="190" data-sanitized-id="p_1_32" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I’ve known the presidents and/or their teams. Nothing changed much from Clinton to Bush Jr. to Obama to Trump to Biden. Maybe they got worse step by step. Biden was the worst in my view. Maybe this is also because he was not <em>compos mentis</em> for the last couple of years. I say that seriously, not as a snarky remark. The American political system is a system of image. It’s a system of media manipulation every day. It is a PR system. You could have a president that basically doesn’t function and have that person in power for two years and run for reelection. The one thing is he had to stand on a stage for 90 minutes by himself, and that was the end of it. Had it not been that glitch, he would have gone on to have his candidacy, whether he was sleeping after 4 PM in the afternoon or not. So, this is the reality. Everybody goes along with it. It’s impolite to say what I’m saying because we don’t speak the truth about almost anything in this world right now.</span></p>
<p wcount="71" data-sanitized-id="p_1_33" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">So, this project went on since the 1990s. Bombing Belgrade 78 straight days in 1999 was part of this project. Splitting apart that country when borders are “sacrosanct,” aren’t they? Except for Kosovo, that is. Borders are sacrosanct except when America changes them. Breaking apart Sudan was another related US project. Consider the South Sudan rebellion. Did that just happen because South Sudanese rebelled? Or shall I give you the CIA playbook?</span></p>
<p wcount="85" data-sanitized-id="p_1_34" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Let us please understand as grown-ups what this is about. Military campaigns are costly. They require equipment, training, base camps, intelligence, finance. That support comes from big powers. It doesn’t come from local insurrections. South Sudan did not defeat Sudan in a tribal battle. Breaking Sudan was a US project. I would go often to Nairobi and come across US military or Senators or others with a “deep interest” in Sudan’s internal politics. That war was part of the game of US unipolarity.</span></p>
<p wcount="18" data-sanitized-id="p_1_35" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*10) I refer to the Trump-Pu^n phone call of February 12, 2025 and the statements that followed in quick succession.</sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="20" data-sanitized-id="p_1_36" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*11) Mackinder wrote in 1919 the book DemocraEc Ideals and Reality, building upon his earlier work The Geographical Pivot of History from 1904.</sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="8" data-sanitized-id="p_1_37" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>iv. U.S. Foreign Policy and NATO Expansion</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="73" data-sanitized-id="p_1_38" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">And so, NATO enlargement, as you know, started in 1999 with Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Russia was extremely unhappy about it, but these were countries still far from Russia’s border. Russia protested, but, of course, to no avail. Then George Bush Jr. came into office. When 9/11 occurred, President Putin pledged all support to the US. And then the US decided around September 20, 2001, that it would launch seven wars in five years!</span></p>
<p wcount="49" data-sanitized-id="p_1_39" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">You can listen to General Wesley Clark on video speak about that.<em><sup>(*12)</sup></em> He was NATO’s Supreme Commander in 1999. He went to the Pentagon around September 20, 2001. He was handed a piece of paper explaining the prospect of seven US wars of choice. These were, in fact, Netanyahu’s wars.</span></p>
<p wcount="120" data-sanitized-id="p_1_40" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The US Government plan was partly to clean up [remove] old Soviet allies and partly to take out supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah. Netanyahu’s idea was and is that there will be one state, thank you, in all pre-1948 Palestine. Yes, only one state. It will be Israel. Israel will control all the territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. And if anyone objects, we will overthrow them. Well, not Israel, exactly, but more specifically our friend, the United States. That’s been US policy until this morning. We don’t know whether it will change. Now the only wrinkle is that maybe the US will “own Gaza” [according to President Trump] instead of Israel owning Gaza.</span></p>
<p wcount="44" data-sanitized-id="p_1_41" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Netanyahu’s idea has been around at least for 25 years. It goes back to a document called “Clean Break” that Netanyahu and his American political team put together in 1996 to end the idea of the two-state solution. You can also find that document online.<em><sup>(*13)</sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="44" data-sanitized-id="p_1_42" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">So, these are long-term US projects. It’s wrong to ask, “Is it Clinton? Is it Bush? Is it Obama?” That’s the boring way to look at American politics, as a day-to-day or year-to-year game. Yet that’s not what American politics is.</span></p>
<p wcount="66" data-sanitized-id="p_1_43" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">After 1999, the next round of NATO enlargement came in 2004 with seven more countries: the three Baltic states, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and Slovakia. At this point, Russia was pretty upset. This second-wave of NATO enlargement was a complete violation of the post-war order agreed at the time of German reunification. Essentially, it was a fundamental trick, or defection, of the US from a cooperative arrangement with Russia.</span></p>
<p wcount="33" data-sanitized-id="p_1_44" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">As everybody recalls, because we just had the Munich Security Conference last week, President Putin went to the MSC in 2007 to say, “Stop, enough is enough.” Of course, the US did not listen.<em><sup>(*14)</sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="133" data-sanitized-id="p_1_45" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">In 2008, the United States jammed down Europe’s throat it’s long-standing project to enlarge NATO to Ukraine and to Georgia. This is a long-term project. I listened to Mr. Saakashvili in New York City in the Spring of 2008, when he spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations. He told us that Georgia is in the heart of Europe and as such would join NATO. I walked out and called my wife, and said, “This man’s crazy; he’s going to blow up his country.” A month later, a war broke out between Russia and Georgia, in which Georgia was defeated. The most recent events in Tbilisi are again not helpful for Georgia, with your MEPs going there to prod protests. That doesn’t save Georgia; that gets Georgia destroyed, completely destroyed.</span></p>
<p wcount="57" data-sanitized-id="p_1_46" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">In 2008, as everybody knows, our former CIA director William Burns, who at the time was the US Ambassador to Russia, sent a long diplomatic cable back to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, which was famously entitled “Nyet means Nyet.”<em><sup>(*15)</sup></em> Burns’ message was that NATO enlargement was opposed by the entire Russian political class, not just President Putin.</span></p>
<p wcount="49" data-sanitized-id="p_1_47" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">We know about the cable only from Julian Assange. Believe me, not one word is told to the American people about anything of this by our government or our leading newspapers these days. So, we have Julian Assange to thank for the memo, which we can read in detail.</span></p>
<p wcount="88" data-sanitized-id="p_1_48" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">As you know, Viktor Yanukovych was elected as President of Ukraine in 2010 on the platform of Ukraine’s neutrality. Russia had no territorial interests or designs in Ukraine at all. I know. I was there off and on during these years. What Russia was negotiating during 2010 was a 25-year lease to 2042 for Sevastopol naval base. That’s it. There were no Russian demands for Crimea, or for the Donbas. Nothing like that at all. The idea that Putin is reconstructing the Russian empire is childish propaganda. Excuse me.</span></p>
<p wcount="58" data-sanitized-id="p_1_49" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">If anyone knows the day-to-day and year-to-year history, this is childish stuff. Yet childish stuff seems to work better than adult stuff. So, there were no territorial demands at all before the 2014 coup. Yet the United States decided that Yanukovych must be overthrown because he favored neutrality and opposed NATO enlargement. It’s called a regime change operation.</span></p>
<p wcount="99" data-sanitized-id="p_1_50" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">There have been around one hundred regime-change operations by the US since 1947, many in your countries [speaking to the MEPs] and many all over the world.<em><sup>(*16)</sup></em> That’s what the CIA does for a living. Please know it. It’s a very unusual kind of foreign policy. In the American Government, if you don’t like the other side, you don’t negotiate with them, you try to overthrow them, preferably, covertly. If it doesn’t work covertly, you do it overtly. You always say it’s not our fault. They’re the aggressor. They’re the other side.</span></p>
<p wcount="92" data-sanitized-id="p_1_51" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">They’re “Hitler.” That comes up every two or three years. Whether it’s Saddam Hussein, whether it’s Assad, whether it’s Putin, that’s very convenient. That’s the only foreign policy explanation the American people are ever given. Well, we’re facing Munich 1938. We can’t talk to the other side. They’re evil and implacable foes. That’s the only model of foreign policy we ever hear from our government and mass media. The mass media repeats it entirely because it’s completely suborned by the US government.</span></p>
<p wcount="58" data-sanitized-id="p_1_52" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*12) See the interview of Former NATO Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark, in 2011 with Democracy, where he was told by Pentagon official “we’re going to a]ack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years— we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”</sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="118" data-sanitized-id="p_1_53" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*13) In 1996, Netanyahu and his American advisors issued the document “Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” with the Ins^tute for Advanced Strategic and Poli^cal Studies. This new “clean break” strategy called upon Israel to reject the framework of “land for peace”. This effec^vely advocated that Israel would not withdraw from the Pales^nian occupied lands of 1967 in exchange for regional peace. Instead, Israel would con^nue with its policy of occupa^on un^l securing “peace for peace”, by reshaping the Middle East to its liking. Redrawing the map of the region consisted of toppling governments that were opposed to Israel’s dominance. Link here:</sup></em> <em><sup><u><a title="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=eca6ae2773&amp;e=16a1c11c93" href="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=eca6ae2773&amp;e=16a1c11c93" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.dougfeith.com/docs/Clean_Break.pdf</a></u></sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="29" data-sanitized-id="p_1_54" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*14) On February 10, 2007, Russian President Vladimir Pu^n delivered a speech at the 43rd Munich Security Conference. The speech can be found here</sup></em> <em><sup><u><a title="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=dc11195b68&amp;e=16a1c11c93" href="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=dc11195b68&amp;e=16a1c11c93" rel="noreferrer noopener">http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/24034</a></u></sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="26" data-sanitized-id="p_1_55" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*15) Ambassador William Burns’ memo Nyet Means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines. The memo can be found here</sup></em> <em><sup><u><a title="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=d5e88e883f&amp;e=16a1c11c93" href="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=d5e88e883f&amp;e=16a1c11c93" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html</a></u></sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="66" data-sanitized-id="p_1_56" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*16) Political scientist Lindsey O’Rourke documented 64 U.S. covert regime-change operations between 1947 and 1989, and concluded that “Regime change operations, especially those conducted covertly, have osen led to prolonged instability, civil wars, and humanitarian crises in the affected regions.” O’Rourke, Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War, 2018. Aser 1989, there is ample evidence of the CIA involved in Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Venezuela, and many other countries.</sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="7" data-sanitized-id="p_1_57" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>v. The Maidan Revolution and Its Aftermath</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="49" data-sanitized-id="p_1_58" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Now in 2014, the US worked actively to overthrow Yanukovych. Everybody knows the phone call intercepted by my Columbia University colleague, Victoria Nuland, and the US ambassador, Peter Pyatt. You don’t get better evidence. The Russians intercepted her call, and they put it on the Internet. Listen to it.<em><sup>(*17)</sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="79" data-sanitized-id="p_1_59" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">It’s fascinating. By doing that, they all got promoted in the Biden administration. That’s the job. When the Maidan occurred, I was called soon after. “Professor Sachs, the new Ukrainian prime minister would like to see you to talk about the economic crisis.” So, I flew to Kyiv, and I was walked around the Maidan. And I was told how the US paid the money for all the people around the Maidan, the “spontaneous” revolution of dignity.</span></p>
<p wcount="184" data-sanitized-id="p_1_60" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Ladies and gentlemen, please, how did all those Ukrainian media outlets suddenly appear at the time of the Maidan? Where did all this organization come from? Where did all these buses come from? Where did all those people come from? Are you kidding? This is an organized effort. And it’s not a secret, except perhaps to citizens of Europe and the United States. Everyone else understands it quite clearly. Then after the coup came the Minsk agreements, especially Minsk II, which, incidentally, was modeled on South Tyrolean autonomy for the ethnic Germans in Italy. The Belgians too can relate to Minsk II very well, as it called for autonomy and language rights of the Russian speakers of Eastern Ukraine. Minsk II was supported unanimously by the UN Security Council.<em><sup>(*18)</sup></em> Yet the United States and Ukraine decided it would not be enforced. Germany and France, the guarantors of the Normandy process, also let it be ignored. This dismissal of Minsk II was another direct American unipolar action with Europe as usual playing a completely useless subsidiary role though it was guarantor of the agreement.</span></p>
<p wcount="103" data-sanitized-id="p_1_61" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Trump won the 2016 election and then expanded arms shipments to Ukraine. There were many thousands of deaths in the shelling by Ukraine in the Donbas. There was no implementation of the Minsk II agreement. Then Biden came into office in 2021. I hoped for better but was profoundly disappointed once again. I used to be a member of the Democratic Party. I now am a member of no party because both are the same anyway. The Democrats became complete warmongers over time, and there was not one voice in the party calling for peace. Just as with most of your parliamentarians, the same way.</span></p>
<p wcount="45" data-sanitized-id="p_1_62" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">At the end of 2021, Putin put on the table a last effort to reach a modus operandi with the US, in two security agreement drafts, one with Europe and one with the United States. He put the Russia-US draft agreement on the table on December 15, 2021.</span></p>
<p wcount="60" data-sanitized-id="p_1_63" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Following that, I had an hour-long call with [National Security Advisor] Jake Sullivan in the White House, begging, “Jake, avoid the war. You can avoid the war. All the US has to do is say, ‘NATO will not enlarge to Ukraine.’” And he said to me, “Oh, NATO’s not going to enlarge to Ukraine. Don’t worry about it.”</span></p>
<p wcount="130" data-sanitized-id="p_1_64" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I said, “Jake, say it publicly.” “No. No. No. We can’t say it publicly.” I said, “Jake, you’re going to have a war over something that isn’t even going to happen?” He said, “Don’t worry, Jeff. There will be no war.” These are not very bright people. I’m telling you, if I can give you my honest view, they’re not very bright people. They talk to themselves. They don’t talk to anybody else. They play game theory. In noncooperative game theory, you don’t talk to the other side. You just make your strategy. This is the essence of non-cooperative game theory. It’s not negotiation theory. It’s not peacemaking theory. It is unilateral, noncooperative theory, if you know formal game theory.</span></p>
<p wcount="80" data-sanitized-id="p_1_65" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">That’s what they play. That kind of game theory started [in application] at the RAND Corporation. That’s what they still play. In 2019, there’s a paper by RAND, “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground.”<em><sup>(*19)</sup></em> Incredibly, the paper, in the public domain, asks how the US should annoy, antagonize, and weaken Russia. That’s literally the strategy. We’re trying to provoke Russia, trying to make Russia break apart, perhaps have regime change, maybe unrest, maybe an economic crisis.</span></p>
<p wcount="101" data-sanitized-id="p_1_66" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">That’s what you in Europe call your ally. So, there I was with my frustrating phone call with Sullivan, standing out in the freezing cold. I happened to be trying to have a ski day. “Oh, there’ll be no war, Jeff.” We know what happened next: the Biden Administration refused to negotiate over NATO enlargement. The stupidest idea of NATO is the so-called open-door policy, based on Article Ten of the NATO Treaty (1949). NATO reserves the right to go where it wants, as long as the host government agrees, without any neighbor – such as Russia — having any say whatsoever.</span></p>
<p wcount="70" data-sanitized-id="p_1_67" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Well, I tell the Mexicans and the Canadians, “Don’t try it.” You know, Trump may want to take over Canada. So, the Canadian Government could say to China, “Why don’t you build a military base in Ontario?” I wouldn’t advise it. The US would not say, “Well, it’s an open door. That’s Canada’s and China’s business, not ours.” The US would invade Canada.</span></p>
<p wcount="58" data-sanitized-id="p_1_68" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Yet grownups, including in Europe, in this Parliament, in NATO, in the European Commission, repeat the absurd mantra that Russia has no say in NATO enlargement. This is nonsense stuff. This is not even baby geopolitics. This is just not thinking at all. So, the Ukraine War escalated in February 2022 when the Biden Administration refused any serious negotiations.</span></p>
<p wcount="30" data-sanitized-id="p_1_69" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*17) Link to the transcript of the leaked phone call between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt</sup></em> <em><sup><u><a title="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=8d4a6a5859&amp;e=16a1c11c93" href="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=8d4a6a5859&amp;e=16a1c11c93" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957</a></u></sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="28" data-sanitized-id="p_1_70" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*18) The Minsk II agreement was endorsed by the United Nations Security Council through Resolution 2202, which was adopted unanimously on February 17, 2015.</sup></em> <em><sup><u><a title="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=31073e033d&amp;e=16a1c11c93" href="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=31073e033d&amp;e=16a1c11c93" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://press.un.org/en/2015/sc11785.doc.htm</a></u></sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="13" data-sanitized-id="p_1_71" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*19) Link to RAND paper:</sup></em> <em><sup><u><a title="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=3feb1b34bd&amp;e=16a1c11c93" href="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=3feb1b34bd&amp;e=16a1c11c93" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html</a></u></sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="8" data-sanitized-id="p_1_72" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>vi. The Ukraine War and Nuclear Arms Control</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="66" data-sanitized-id="p_1_73" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">What was Putin’s intention in the war? I can tell you what his intention was. It was to force Zelensky to negotiate neutrality. This happened within days of the start of the invasion. You should understand this basic point, not the propaganda that’s written about the invasion claiming that Russia’s aim was to conquer Ukraine with a few tens of thousands of troops.</span></p>
<p wcount="113" data-sanitized-id="p_1_74" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Come on, ladies and gentlemen. Please understand something basic. The idea of Russia’s invasion was to keep NATO out of Ukraine. And what is NATO, really? It is the US military, with its missiles, its CIA deployments, and all the rest. Russia’s goal was to keep the US away from its border. Why is Russia so interested in this? Consider if China or Russia decided to have a military base on the Rio Grande or in the Canadian border, not only would the United States freak out; we’d have war within about ten minutes. When the Soviet Union tried this in Cuba in 1962, the world nearly ended in nuclear Armageddon.</span></p>
<p wcount="125" data-sanitized-id="p_1_75" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">All of this is gravely amplified because the United States unilaterally abandoned the Anti- Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 and ended the relative stability nuclear arms control framework by doing so. This is extremely important to understand. The nuclear arms control framework is based, in large part, on trying to deter a first [decapitation] strike. The ABM Treaty was a critical component of that stability. The US unilaterally walked out of the ABM Treaty in 2002. This blew a Russian gasket. So, everything I’ve been describing about NATO enlargement has occurred in the context of the US destruction of the nuclear framework. Starting in 2010, the US began to put in Aegis anti-ballistic missile systems in Poland and then later in Romania. Russia doesn’t like that.</span></p>
<p wcount="52" data-sanitized-id="p_1_76" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">One of the issues on the table in December and January, December 2021, January 2022, was whether the United States claimed the right to put missile systems in Ukraine. According to former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, Blinken told Lavrov in January 2022 that the United States reserves the right to put missile systems in Ukraine.</span></p>
<p wcount="43" data-sanitized-id="p_1_77" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">That’s, my dear friends, is your putative ally. And now the US wants to put intermediate missile systems in Germany. Remember that the United States walked out of the INF treaty in 2019. There is no nuclear arms framework right now.<em><sup>(*20)</sup></em> Essentially, none.</span></p>
<p wcount="111" data-sanitized-id="p_1_78" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">When Zelensky said a few days after Russia’s invasion that Ukraine was ready for neutrality, a peace agreement was in reach. I know the details of this because I talked to key negotiators and mediators in detail and have learned much from public pronouncements of others. Shortly after the start of negotiations in March 2022, a document was exchanged between the parties that President Putin had approved, and that Lavrov had presented. This was being managed by the Turkish mediators. I flew to Ankara in the spring of 2022 to hear first-hand and in detail what happened in the mediation. The bottom-line is this: Ukraine walked away, unilaterally, from a near agreement.</span></p>
<p wcount="23" data-sanitized-id="p_1_79" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*20) The United States formally withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty on August 2, 2019, following a six-month suspension period that began on February 2, 2019</sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="7" data-sanitized-id="p_1_80" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>vii. The End of the Ukraine War</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="153" data-sanitized-id="p_1_81" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Why did Ukraine walk away from the negotiations? Because the United States told them to and because the UK added icing to the cake by having BoJo [Boris Johnson] go to Kyiv in early April to Ukraine to make the same point. Keir Starmer turns out to be even worse, even more of a warmonger. It’s unimaginable, but it is true. Boris Johnson explained, and you can find it on the web, that what’s at stake here is nothing less than Western hegemony! Not Ukraine but Western hegemony. Michael von der Schulenberg and I met at the Vatican with a group of experts in Spring 2022, and we wrote a document explaining that nothing good can come out of continued war.<em><sup>(*21)</sup></em> Our group argued strenuously, but to no avail, that Ukraine should negotiate immediately, because delays will mean massive deaths, risk of nuclear escalation, and possibly an outright loss of the war.</span></p>
<p wcount="106" data-sanitized-id="p_1_82" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I wouldn’t want to change one word from what we wrote then. Nothing was wrong in that document. Since the US talked Ukraine out of the negotiations, perhaps one million Ukrainians have died or been severely wounded. And American senators who are as nasty and cynical as imaginable say this is a wonderful expenditure of US money because no Americans are dying. It’s the pure proxy war. One of our senators nearby New York State, Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal, said this out loud. Mitt Romney said this out loud. It’s the best money America can spend. No Americans are dying. It’s unreal.</span></p>
<p wcount="55" data-sanitized-id="p_1_83" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Now, just to bring us up to yesterday, the US Ukraine Project has failed. The core idea of the project all along was that Russia would fold its hand. The core idea all along was Russia can’t resist, just as Zbigniew Brzezinski argued in 1997. The Americans thought the US surely has the upper hand.</span></p>
<p wcount="89" data-sanitized-id="p_1_84" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The US will win because we’re going to bluff them. The Russians are not really going to fight. The Russians are really going to mobilize. We’ll deploy the economic “nuclear option” of cutting Russia out of SWIFT. That will destroy the economy. Our sanctions will bring Russia to their knees. The HIMARS will do them in. The ATACMS, the F-16s, will do them in. Honestly, I’ve listened to this kind of talk for more than 50 years. Our national security leaders have spoken nonsense for decades.</span></p>
<p wcount="63" data-sanitized-id="p_1_85" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I begged the Ukrainians: stay neutral. Don’t listen to the Americans. I repeated to them the famous adage of Henry Kissinger, that to be an enemy of the United States is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal. Let me repeat that for Europe: To be an enemy of the United States is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.</span></p>
<p wcount="34" data-sanitized-id="p_1_86" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*21) The meeting at the Vatican was the Fraternal Economy Session on Jubilee 2025: Hope in the Signs of the Times. Link here:</sup></em> <em><sup><u><a title="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=e605c606ac&amp;e=16a1c11c93" href="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=e605c606ac&amp;e=16a1c11c93" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.pass.va/content/dam/casinapioiv/pass/pdf-booklet/2024_booklet_fraternal_economy.pdf</a></u></sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="4" data-sanitized-id="p_1_87" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>viii. The Trump Administration</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="97" data-sanitized-id="p_1_88" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Let me end with a few words about President Donald Trump. Trump does not want Biden’s losing hand. This is why Trump and President Putin are likely to agree to end the war. Even if Europe continues with its warmongering, it won’t matter. The war is ending. So, please, get it out of your system. Please tell your colleagues. “It’s over.” It’s over because Trump doesn’t want to hold on to a loser. The one that will be saved by the negotiations taking place right now is Ukraine. The second is Europe.</span></p>
<p wcount="88" data-sanitized-id="p_1_89" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Your stock market is rising in recent days because of the “horrible news” of negotiations and potential peace. I know this prospect of a negotiated peace has been met with sheer horror in these chambers, but this is the best news that you could get. I’ve tried to reach out to some of the European leaders. I’ve said, don’t go to Kyiv, go to Moscow. Negotiate with your counterparts. You’re the European Union. You’re 450 million people and a $20 trillion economy. Act like it.</span></p>
<p wcount="104" data-sanitized-id="p_1_90" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The European Union should be the main trading partner of Russia. Europe and Russia have complementary economies. The fit for mutually beneficial trade is very strong. By the way, if anyone would like to discuss how the US blew up Nord Stream, I’d be happy to talk about that too. The Trump administration is imperialist at heart. Trump obviously believes that the great powers dominate the world. The US will be ruthless and cynical, and yes, also vis-à-vis Europe. Don’t go begging to Washington. That won’t help. It would probably spur the ruthlessness. Instead, have a true European foreign policy.</span></p>
<p wcount="146" data-sanitized-id="p_1_91" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">So, I’m not saying that we’re at the new age of peace, but we are in a very different kind of politics right now, a return to great power politics. Europe needs its own foreign policy, and not just a foreign policy of Russophobia. Europe needs a foreign policy that is realistic, understands Russia’s situation, understands Europe’s situation, understands what America is and what it stands for, and that tries to avoid Europe being invaded by the United States. It’s certainly not impossible that Trump’s America will land troops in Greenland. I’m not joking, and I don’t think Trump is joking. Europe needs a foreign policy, a real one. Europe needs something different from, “Yes, we’ll bargain with Mr. Trump and meet him halfway.” Do you know what that will be like? Give me a call afterwards.</span></p>
<p wcount="82" data-sanitized-id="p_1_92" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Please have a European foreign policy. You’re going to be living with Russia for a long time, so please negotiate with Russia. There are real security issues on the table both for Europe and Russia, but the bombast and the Russophobia is not serving your security at all. It’s not serving Ukraine’s security at all. This American adventure that you signed on to and for which you are now the lead cheerleader has contributed to around 1 million Ukrainian casualties.</span></p>
<p wcount="7" data-sanitized-id="p_1_93" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>ix. On the Middle East and China</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="74" data-sanitized-id="p_1_94" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">On the Middle East, incidentally, the US completely handed over foreign policy to Netanyahu 30 years ago. The Israel lobby dominates American politics. Please, have no doubt about it. I could explain for hours how it works. It’s very dangerous. I’m hoping that Trump will not destroy his administration, and far worse, the Palestinian people, because of Netanyahu, whom I regard as a war criminal who has been properly indicted by the ICC.<em><sup>(*22)</sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="103" data-sanitized-id="p_1_95" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The only way for Europe to have peace on your borders with the Middle East is the two-state solution. There is only one obstacle to it, and that is the veto of the United States in the UN Security Council, at the behest of the Israel Lobby. So, if you want the EU to have some influence, tell the United States to drop the veto. In this the European Union would be together with around 160 other countries in the world. The only ones that oppose a Palestinian state are basically the United States, Israel, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Argentina, and Paraguay.<em><sup>(*23)</sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="45" data-sanitized-id="p_1_96" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The Middle East is a place where the European Union could have a big geopolitical influence. Yet, Europe has gone silent about the JCPOA and Iran and around half of Europe has gone silent over Israel’s war crimes and blockage of the two-state solution.</span></p>
<p wcount="77" data-sanitized-id="p_1_97" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Netanyahu’s greatest dream in life is the war between the United States and Iran. And he’s not given up. It’s not impossible that a US-Iran War will also come. Yet Europe could stop it – if Europe has its own foreign policy. I’m hoping that Trump will end Netanyahu’s grip on American politics. Even if not, the EU can work with the rest of the world to bring peace to the Middle East.</span></p>
<p wcount="82" data-sanitized-id="p_1_98" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Finally, let me just say with respect to China, China is not an enemy. China is merely a great success story. That’s why it is viewed by the United States as an enemy, because China has a bigger economy than the United States (measured in international prices). The US resists reality. Europe should not do so. Let me repeat, China is no enemy and no threat. It is a natural partner with Europe in trade and in saving the global environment.</span></p>
<p wcount="5" data-sanitized-id="p_1_99" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">That’s all. Many thanks.</span></p>
<p wcount="46" data-sanitized-id="p_1_100" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*22) “Benjamin NETANYAHU, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Yoav GALLANT, the Minister of Defence of Israel, bear criminal responsibility for the following war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of the State of Palestine.” Link to ICC:</sup></em> <em><sup><u><a title="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=8dabc88c63&amp;e=16a1c11c93" href="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=8dabc88c63&amp;e=16a1c11c93" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-kc-applications-arrest-warrants-situation-state</a></u></sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="26" data-sanitized-id="p_1_101" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><sup>(*23) The United Nations can end the Middle East conflict by welcoming Palestine as a member. Link to my article here:</sup></em> <em><sup><u><a title="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=ed2b13c328&amp;e=16a1c11c93" href="https://twitter.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ec04f7fdd8f247aecfa0ddf&amp;id=ed2b13c328&amp;e=16a1c11c93" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/1/10/the-un-can-end-the-middle-east-conflict-by-welcoming-palestine-as-a-member</a></u></sup></em></span></p>
<p wcount="12" data-sanitized-id="p_1_102" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>Q&amp;A Section<br>Audience Question: Should Europe increase its military spending?</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="4" data-sanitized-id="p_1_103" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>Professor Jeffrey Sachs Answer:</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="85" data-sanitized-id="p_1_104" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I would not be against an approach of Europe spending two to three percent of GDP for a unified European security structure and invested in Europe and in European technology, and not having the United States dictate the use of European technology. The Netherlands produces the only machines of advanced semiconductors using extreme ultraviolet lithography. That company, of course, is ASML. Yet America determines every policy of ASML. If I were you, I wouldn’t hand over all security and technology to the United States.</span></p>
<p wcount="117" data-sanitized-id="p_1_105" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I would suggest having your own security framework so you can have your own foreign policy framework as well. Europe stands for lots of things that the United States does not stand for. Europe stands for climate action. Our president is completely bonkers on this. And Europe stands for decency, for social democracy, as an ethos. Europe stands for multilateralism. Europe stands for the UN Charter. The US stands for none of those things. Our Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently canceled his trip to South Africa because equality and sustainability were on the agenda. That is a vivid, if grim, reflection of Anglo-Saxon libertarianism. Egalitarianism is not a word of the American lexicon. Nor is Sustainability.</span></p>
<p wcount="66" data-sanitized-id="p_1_106" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">You may know that of the 193 UN member states, 191 have presented SDG (Sustainable Development Goal) plans to the UN in the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF). Just three countries have not done so: Haiti, Myanmar and the United States of America. Biden’s Treasury was not even permitted to use the phrase Sustainable Development Goals. I mention all of this because you need your own foreign policy.</span></p>
<p wcount="108" data-sanitized-id="p_1_107" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I issue two reports each year. One is the <em>World Happiness Report</em>. In the 2024 report, 8 of the top 10 countries are European. Europe has the highest quality of life in the whole world. The US ranked 23rd. The other annual report is the <em>Sustainable Development Report</em>. In the 2024 report, 19 of the top 20 countries in sustainable development are in Europe. The US ranked 46th. You need your own foreign policy to protect that quality of life! I was and remain a great fan of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and continue to believe that OSCE is the proper framework for European security. It could really work.</span></p>
<p wcount="13" data-sanitized-id="p_1_108" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>Audience Question: How should Europe engage diplomatically with Russia? Professor Jeffrey Sachs Answer:</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="235" data-sanitized-id="p_1_109" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I think that there are tremendously important issues for Europe to negotiate directly with Russia. And so, I would urge, President Costa and the leadership of Europe to open direct discussions with President Putin because European security is on the table. I know the Russian leaders, many of them, quite well. They are good negotiators, and you should negotiate with them, and you should negotiate well with them. I would ask the Russian counterparts some questions. I would ask them, what are the security guarantees that can work so that this war ends permanently? What are the security guarantees for the Baltic states? Part of the process of negotiation is to ask the other side about your concerns. I know Foreign Minister Lavrov for 30 years. I regard him as a brilliant foreign minister. Talk with him. Negotiate with him. Get his ideas. Put your ideas on the table. The most important thing is to stop the yelling, stop the warmongering, and discuss with the Russian counterparts. And don’t beg to be at the table with the United States. You don’t need to be in the room with the United States. You’re Europe. You should be in the room with Europe and Russia. Don’t hand over your foreign policy to anybody, not to the United States, not to Ukraine, not to Israel. Keep a European foreign policy. This is the basic idea.</span></p>
<p wcount="25" data-sanitized-id="p_1_110" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>Audience Question</strong>: <strong>Countries including Poland, Hungary, and Czech Republic wanted to join NATO. So does Ukraine. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to do so?</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="4" data-sanitized-id="p_1_111" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>Professor Jeffrey Sachs Answer:</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="172" data-sanitized-id="p_1_112" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">NATO is not a choice of Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, or Ukraine. NATO is a US-led military alliance. The question facing Europe back in 1991 and today is how to ensure peace. If I were making decisions back in 1991, I would have ended NATO altogether when the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, and certainly when the Soviet Union itself ended. When countries requested NATO membership, I would have explained to them what our defense secretary William Perry, leading statesman George Kennan, last US ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, all said in the 1990s. They all said, in effect, “We understand your feelings, but enlarging NATO is not a good idea because it could easily provoke a new Cold War with Russia.” There’s a very good new book by Jonathan Haslam, published by Harvard University Press, called <em>Hubris</em>. It offers a detailed historical documentation of NATO enlargement. It explains how the US was too arrogant to discuss, negotiate, and honor the redlines of Russia, even after promising that NATO would not enlarge.</span></p>
<p wcount="15" data-sanitized-id="p_1_113" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>Audience Question: What are the long-term consequences of this lost war? Professor Jeffrey Sachs Answer:</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="299" data-sanitized-id="p_1_114" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">We’re in the biggest technological advance in human history. It’s truly amazing what can be done right now. You know, I marvel at the fact that somebody who knows little chemistry won the Nobel Peace Prize for chemistry because he’s superb at AI and deep neural networks, indeed a genius, Demis Hassabis. He and his team at DeepMind figured out how to use AI to crack the problem of protein folding, a problem that had occupied generations of biochemists. So, if we put our minds, our resources and our energies towards it, we can transform the world energy system for climate safety. We can protect biodiversity. We can ensure every child gets a quality education. We can do so many wonderful things right now. What do we need for success? In my view, most importantly, we need peace. And my basic point is there are no deep reasons for conflict anywhere because every conflict I study is just a mistake. We are not struggling for Lebensraum. That idea, which essentially came from Malthus and later became a Nazi idea, was always wrong, a fundamental intellectual mistake. We have had race wars, national wars of survival, out of the fear that we don’t have enough for everybody on this planet, so that we are in a struggle for survival. As an economist, I can tell you, we have plenty on the planet for everybody’s sustainable development. Plenty. We’re not in a conflict with China. We’re not in a conflict with Russia. If we calm down, if we ask about the long term, the long term is very good, that is, if we don’t blow ourselves up beforehand. So, this is my point. The prospects are very positive if we construct the peace.</span></p>
<p wcount="20" data-sanitized-id="p_1_115" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>Audience Question: Do you think the way out of this conflict is a Finlandization of Ukraine? Professor Jeffrey Sachs Answer:</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="105" data-sanitized-id="p_1_116" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Excellent question. Let me just report one aspect about Finlandization. Finlandization landed Finland number one in the World Happiness Report year after year. Finland is rich, successful, happy, and secure. That’s pre-NATO Finland I’m discussing. So “Finlandization” was a wonderful thing for Finland. When Sweden and Finland and Austria were neutral, bravo. Smart. When Ukraine was neutral, smart. If you have two superpowers, keep them apart a little bit. If the United States had any sense at all, it would have left these countries as the neutral space in between the US military and Russia, but the US has far too little sense.</span></p>


guid: https://www.unz.com/?post_type=item&amp;p=544453
title: Short Shrift for Prime Minister Starmer’s Crimean-War Hatred of Russia, by John Helmer
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<p wcount="30" data-sanitized-id="p_1_1" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">In public, in front of the press, the plan of President Donald Trump on Thursday was to give British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer short shrift. Starmer made it shorter.</span></p>
<p wcount="27" data-sanitized-id="p_1_2" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">TRUMP: “You’ve been terrific in our discussions. You are a very tough negotiator, however, and I’m not sure I like that, but that’s okay.”</span></p>
<p wcount="4" data-sanitized-id="p_1_3" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">STARMER: “Heh, heh, heh.”</span></p>
<p wcount="28" data-sanitized-id="p_1_4" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Trump’s “attitude toward the Russian leader could hardly be more different from the British leader sitting inches away in the Oval Office,” reported the <em><a title="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02/27/us/trump-news#starmer-ukraine-trump" href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02/27/us/trump-news#starmer-ukraine-trump">New York Times</a>.</em></span></p>
<p wcount="42" data-sanitized-id="p_1_5" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXetnKiBKn0bVQ4metCOOtNx-zScPEXT5wC3AFnmm8ajIiOWZs1bkes8ZEKUg5oC59ORbeKXnpRV0dzltMmsHInZdxAeh3sAjje5ABotrR5ABHgEglZWFuQhFHq0xxjOGsWjaCSOjpRT5tvQJDACgQ?key=blB_BTkJS8ibsROZghut64e0"><br>12:20 at the White House, West Wing portico entrance – Prime Minister Starmer was running late: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22aD1erDlFk" title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22aD1erDlFk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22aD1erDlFk</a><br><a title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22aD1erDlFk'" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22aD1erDlFk" target="_blank" data-sanitized-class="caption">Video Link</a><a title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22aD1erDlFk" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22aD1erDlFk"><br></a><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeyri8K2m2RuIfsy-ngSt46-OYnqmhHeUmz6077O2kE0Wi6AQOsguFgzdDa-YQQSs8Hftp5TSG_eQSozT1VUi9PE7ql2A1mAEchF5WZd4lvSMCgx8Qyv_LVaZfwCSfxeqQ23oAIuCPavSZTCR68ZN0?key=blB_BTkJS8ibsROZghut64e0"><br>President Trump arrives at the front door at 12:33. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22aD1erDlFk" title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22aD1erDlFk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22aD1erDlFk</a><br><a title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22aD1erDlFk'" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22aD1erDlFk" target="_blank" data-sanitized-class="caption">Video Link</a></span></p>
<p wcount="10" data-sanitized-id="p_1_6" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXePuMdmNtqA7_pmssKHFnrEBAbIgCctNy4YyUkAki688KEE9UmB98nQOWak9ZISeb5B6TnBN8tPmNELJzW5Eb7KDh1Uen7lZn5W3v9-e2LZiwZPJ5_shE3C7KqbpbEvs2WUBnBIbGziEautwTUhnPg?key=blB_BTkJS8ibsROZghut64e0"><br>12:34: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22aD1erDlFk" title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22aD1erDlFk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22aD1erDlFk</a><br><a title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22aD1erDlFk'" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22aD1erDlFk" target="_blank" data-sanitized-class="caption">Video Link</a></span></p>
<p wcount="69" data-sanitized-id="p_1_7" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Trump was at the White House door to receive Starmer at 12:34. That was nineteen minutes later than the time <a title="https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/topic/calendar/" href="https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/topic/calendar/">announced</a> on the President’s schedule for the day. Fifteen minutes were then assigned at the Oval Office before the two men and their officials went to lunch a few steps away in the Cabinet Room. At 2 pm, ninety minutes later, a press conference was scheduled in the East Room.</span></p>
<p wcount="60" data-sanitized-id="p_1_8" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The published schedule of Trump’s time for talks with Starmer was a fraction of the time which Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron spent together on <a title="https://johnhelmer.net/trumps-incomprehension-thank-you-dear-donald/" href="https://johnhelmer.net/trumps-incomprehension-thank-you-dear-donald/">Monday</a>. At the Oval Office Macron and Trump had answered press questions for <a title="https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-remarks-bilat-emmanuel-macron-france-white-house-february-24-2025/" href="https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-remarks-bilat-emmanuel-macron-france-white-house-february-24-2025/">28 minutes</a>. They then went into their luncheon meeting, and returned for a press conference in the East Room lasting <a title="https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-press-conference-emmanuel-macron-france-february-24-2025/" href="https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-press-conference-emmanuel-macron-france-february-24-2025/">43 minutes</a>.</span></p>
<p wcount="51" data-sanitized-id="p_1_9" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">By contrast, Trump and Starmer gave the press a 20-minute opportunity in the Oval Office to ask questions. This had not been scheduled in advance. The US television networks and the BBC were all taken <a title="https://www.nbcnews.com/video/watch-live-trump-holds-press-conference-with-u-k-prime-minister-starmer-233064005920" href="https://www.nbcnews.com/video/watch-live-trump-holds-press-conference-with-u-k-prime-minister-starmer-233064005920">unawares</a>. It was the German state organ Deutsche Welle which broadcast the impromptu <a title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W8D0t7_9IA" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W8D0t7_9IA">Oval Office session</a>.</span></p>
<p wcount="40" data-sanitized-id="p_1_10" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Trump took almost all the press questions, and invited Vice President J.D. Vance to respond also. Trump <a title="https://johnhelmer.net/no-ifs-no-buts-boots-on-the-ground-lies-on-the-ground-prime-minister-starmer-tells-president-trump-to-fight-russia-the-british-way/" href="https://johnhelmer.net/no-ifs-no-buts-boots-on-the-ground-lies-on-the-ground-prime-minister-starmer-tells-president-trump-to-fight-russia-the-british-way/">repeated</a> the same slogans on the Ukraine war and the minerals agreement to be signed with Ukraine which he has announced before.</span></p>
<p wcount="25" data-sanitized-id="p_1_11" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">He allowed Starmer a few seconds to express himself.* Starmer called the special relationship with the US “the greatest alliance the world has ever seen.”</span></p>
<p wcount="72" data-sanitized-id="p_1_12" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Asked to clarify what that meant, Trump <a title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W8D0t7_9IA" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W8D0t7_9IA">said</a>: “He [Starmer] loves his country and so do I, and that’s our common, ahhh, our common theme. He loves his country, and I love our country…we’ve had a longtime relationship, a long time, hundreds of years, and we like each other, and frankly, we like each other’s country, and we love our country. I think that’s our common thread.”</span></p>
<p wcount="18" data-sanitized-id="p_1_13" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Trump added the US has three friends who are equal in his estimation – the UK, France, and Australia.</span></p>
<p wcount="125" data-sanitized-id="p_1_14" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Asked what he anticipates for an end-of-war agreement with Russia, Trump said: “I have confidence if we make a deal, it’s going to hold.” Starmer added a compliment for Trump: “The deal if we get it is going to be hugely important. I don’t think it would have happened if the space hadn’t been created for it by yourself. But if there is a deal in, we’ve got to make sure it’s a deal that lasts… We need to make sure it’s secure and we’ve leant in and said we’ll play our part, and we’ve talked, and we’ll talk about how we will work with yourself Mr President to ensure this deal is not violated.”</span></p>
<p wcount="8" data-sanitized-id="p_1_15" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">“That will be the easy part”, Trump added.</span></p>
<p wcount="68" data-sanitized-id="p_1_16" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">On the terms to be negotiated for that “deal”, Trump repeated his past vagueness, including the notion that the Kiev regime may recover the territories it has lost since 2014. “They fought long and hard on the land, and you [Starmer] and I will be discussing that and we’re certainly going to try to get as much [land] as we can back… We’ll be seeing about that.”</span></p>
<p wcount="128" data-sanitized-id="p_1_17" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Trump also repeated his vagueness on what forces — American, French, British or others — might be engaged to secure an end-of-war agreement in the Ukraine. “We’re doing the deal, and we’re going to be in there, actually in there, digging, digging our hearts out,” Trump said, referring to the minerals agreement with Ukraine which Vladimir Zelensky is expected to sign with Trump on Friday. “”He’s coming,” Trump added. “Perhaps he’s already on the way. And we are going to be signing the deal together, probably in front of the media… We want to work with him, President Zelesnky, and we will work with him.” Asked to remember his calling Zelensky a dictator, Trump replied: “Did I say that? I can’t believe I said that.”</span></p>
<p wcount="104" data-sanitized-id="p_1_18" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Pressed by a reporter to say whether he means US forces would participate in a peacekeeping force as a “backstop” to an agreement, Trump <a title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W8D0t7_9IA" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W8D0t7_9IA">said</a> “Well, there is a backstop. First you are going to have European countries because they are right there. We are far away. We have an ocean between us. But we want to make sure it works, so when you say backstop, do you mean backstop psychologically or militarily or what? But we are a backstop because we are over there. We’ll be working in the country… I just don’t think you are going to have a problem.”</span></p>
<p wcount="49" data-sanitized-id="p_1_19" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe2UeCOO4dNTZFVh34wegh8S-x2P0pj4stag2LlmA1ByotmgR00-66ayRCW0n5Z3ABaaN95kjicITcmJc4eR28c4YHOCmfZyQTAS_syLgNeRksswa_gJUUwHo4WGzx81MdVHe7Gz2QLENlFgNBx6bA?key=blB_BTkJS8ibsROZghut64e0"><br>On Prime Minister Starmer’s right, David Lammy, Foreign Secretary. On President Trump’s left, Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Source: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W8D0t7_9IA" title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W8D0t7_9IA">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W8D0t7_9IA</a><br><a title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W8D0t7_9IA'" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W8D0t7_9IA" target="_blank" data-sanitized-class="caption">Video Link</a> A verbatim transcript of the session was published later <a title="https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-remarks-bilat-keir-starmer-united-kingdom-february-27-2025/" href="https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-remarks-bilat-keir-starmer-united-kingdom-february-27-2025/">here</a>.</span></p>
<p wcount="23" data-sanitized-id="p_1_20" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">“If British troops are in Ukraine keeping the peace and get attacked by Russia,” asked a reporter, “will you come to their aid?</span></p>
<p wcount="59" data-sanitized-id="p_1_21" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">“The British don’t need much help”, Trump replied. “They can take care of themselves very well… You know, the British have been incredible soldiers, incredible military, and they can take care of themselves. If they need help, I’ll always be with the British. Okay? Okay, I’ll always be with them. But they don’t need help.”</span></p>
<p wcount="21" data-sanitized-id="p_1_22" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Trump then offered to hold hands with Starmer. <img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfUhoYaTtSu2LQ7Md7bZltb2TCFIssIb17cQyvXHTudvaAPeSzEZT5j2ESm8ktUfz5qIVsV3_SV9ZtNNL0g2JOzZR8y_ad5YvNRHYgLdRy2P9GeVCbdn9Ym3vW837mnEVZMopxD5zuQhIe5P8SgCq0?key=blB_BTkJS8ibsROZghut64e0"><br>Source: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W8D0t7_9IA" title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W8D0t7_9IA">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W8D0t7_9IA</a><br><a title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W8D0t7_9IA'" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W8D0t7_9IA" target="_blank" data-sanitized-class="caption">Video Link</a></span></p>
<p wcount="96" data-sanitized-id="p_1_23" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">It is unreported by the US and British media why the scheduled press conference in the East Room was delayed for almost an hour and a half. Part of the time was spent by the American and British staff in the delegations trying to minimize the differences which had emerged during the lunch talks and then between Trump’s and Starmer’s scripts for their public remarks. The British needed time also to get the Americans to agree to his promoting the superiority of the UK over France and other US allies in the present war.</span></p>
<p wcount="62" data-sanitized-id="p_1_24" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">“We remain each other’s first partner in defence, ready to come to each other’s aid, to counter threats, wherever and whenever they may arise,” Starmer read out of pages curling from the hand-written corrections which had been made and re-made. Earlier in the Oval Office, Trump had said the UK was no more of a “friend” than France and Australia.</span></p>
<p wcount="107" data-sanitized-id="p_1_25" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The <em>Financial Times</em> and BBC tried to strike the positive note that Starmer had sought and possibly succeeded in getting bilateral trade relief from Trump’s threatened tariffs than against the Europeans. According to the <a title="https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c625ex282zzt" href="https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c625ex282zzt"><em>FT</em> lead,</a> “Trump says US is working on trade deal with the UK.US President suggested that Britain could escape tariffs if agreement struck.” “’He was working hard,’ the BBC quoted Trump as saying.’ He earned whatever the hell they pay him over there.’ The president says he is receptive to Starmer’s arguments, and says that he thinks we can arrive at a trade deal where tariffs won’t be necessary.”</span></p>
<p wcount="46" data-sanitized-id="p_1_26" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">In fact, Trump was <a title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJSaNSSj_4c" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJSaNSSj_4c">non-committal</a>. “I think there’s a very good chance that in the case of these two great, friendly countries, I think we could very well end up with a real trade deal where the tariffs wouldn’t be necessary. We’ll see.”</span></p>
<p wcount="25" data-sanitized-id="p_1_27" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfqgwEWp_RxA2ZvEcJn8pzGRix4K4_lyVnIUP_sQZifNSTmjGRPQ8kOyclj00l1Sy3jICSkdhZYim8bLgP3UAFb2u7yWVcyBW4xgKFBQNoDCmXn_himFDkwUpe5rRR63YmphrFwP45vwI3t0N-ajQ?key=blB_BTkJS8ibsROZghut64e0"><br>Trump allowed Starmer a 32-minute presser; this was a quarter fraction less than Macron had enjoyed. Source: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJSaNSSj_4c" title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJSaNSSj_4c">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJSaNSSj_4c</a></span></p>
<p wcount="11" data-sanitized-id="p_1_28" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><a title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJSaNSSj_4c'" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJSaNSSj_4c" target="_blank" data-sanitized-class="caption">Video Link</a><br>Click on the verbatim transcript reported by RollCall <a title="https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-press-conference-keir-starmer-united-kingdom-february-27-2025/" href="https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-press-conference-keir-starmer-united-kingdom-february-27-2025/">here</a>.</span></p>
<p wcount="59" data-sanitized-id="p_1_29" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">On the particulars of an end-of-war settlement, Trump <a title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJSaNSSj_4c" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJSaNSSj_4c">claimed</a> his priority at the moment is a ceasefire. “As I discussed with Prime Minister Starmer, the next step we’re making is toward a very achievable ceasefire. We hope that can happen quickly.” “This will lay the groundwork for a longterm peace agreement that will return stability to Eastern Europe.”</span></p>
<p wcount="12" data-sanitized-id="p_1_30" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Starmer’s priority was different – he wants to keep warfighting with Russia.</span></p>
<p wcount="59" data-sanitized-id="p_1_31" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Starmer was emphatic that the peace agreement “can’t be terms that reward the aggressor or that gives encouragement to regimes like Iran.” According to the Prime Minister, “we discussed a plan today to reach a peace that is tough and fair; that Ukraine will help shape; that is backed by strength to stop Putin coming back for more.”</span></p>
<p wcount="66" data-sanitized-id="p_1_32" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Explicitly, Starmer went on, this means “the UK is ready to put boots on the ground and planes in the air to support a deal.” After reciting claims the UK will be boosting its military aid to the Ukraine, and increasing its own defence spending – “the biggest since the Cold War” – Starmer announced: “What counts is winning. If you don’t win, you don’t deliver.”</span></p>
<p wcount="71" data-sanitized-id="p_1_33" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Neither Trump nor Starmer claimed they have agreed on any end-of-war terms. “Our teams will be talking about that,” Starmer said. A British television reporter pressed him to say “whether you can do that without a firm assurance that America will have our back in the form of some kind of security guarantee, were Putin to breach that agreement?” Starmer repeated himself without details. “Our teams will be talking about that.”</span></p>
<p wcount="63" data-sanitized-id="p_1_34" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Starmer insisted on striking a final threatening tone which was not in the script on his lectern. “It’s really important that Putin knows that this historic deal – which I very much hope comes about – is there, is there, and it’s a lasting deal, and that we are able to deal with any inclination he has to go again, or go further.”</span></p>
<p wcount="12" data-sanitized-id="p_1_35" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Starmer meant he is hoping to continue the British war against Russia.</span></p>
<p wcount="76" data-sanitized-id="p_1_36" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The London newspapers <a title="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/26/the-guardian-view-on-starmer-in-washington-dont-compromise-on-the-truth" href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/26/the-guardian-view-on-starmer-in-washington-dont-compromise-on-the-truth">editorialized</a> in favour of that, and against Trump. “Conventional platitudes about a ‘special relationship’ and common values are of little use to Sir Keir Starmer in handling Donald Trump,” declared the <em>Guardian.</em> “History is not irrelevant, but on matters of substance – most urgently, a settlement to end the war in Ukraine – Mr Trump is behaving more like a mafia boss than a statesman. His method is to demand tribute in exchange for protection.”</span></p>
<p wcount="59" data-sanitized-id="p_1_37" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">“Sir Keir Starmer will enter the Oval Office on Thursday walking a delicate tightrope,” the <em>Telegraph</em> <a title="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/02/27/what-starmer-wants-from-trump-and-what-uk-can-offer-return/" href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/02/27/what-starmer-wants-from-trump-and-what-uk-can-offer-return/">acknowledged</a>. “The Prime Minister cannot be seen to simply bend the knee to Donald Trump, but nor can he afford to anger the leader of the world’s largest economy at a time when Britain’s economy is on the brink of recession.”</span></p>
<p wcount="41" data-sanitized-id="p_1_38" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Starmer also revealed that in exchange for warfighting support and trade relief from Trump, he is prepared to betray Canada, constitutionally a dominion under the British monarch, King Charles III, by letting Trump take over Canada as the 51<sup>st</sup> US state.</span></p>
<p wcount="76" data-sanitized-id="p_1_39" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">When a Canadian reporter asked Starmer whether he had discussed with Trump his threat “to remove one of [King Charles III’s] realms from his control”, Starmer criticized the Canadian for asking the question. “You mentioned Canada. I think you are trying to find a divide between us that doesn’t, ummm, exist. We are the closest of nations, and we had very good discussions today. [<em>Lowering his voice</em>] but we didn’t discuss Canada.” <a title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJSaNSSj_4c" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJSaNSSj_4c">Minute 18:54</a>.</span></p>
<p wcount="12" data-sanitized-id="p_1_40" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">“That’s enough,” Trump cut off the reporter trying to follow up.</span></p>
<p wcount="61" data-sanitized-id="p_1_41" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">NOTE: Prime Minister Starmer’s <a title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGw5DKX6U6w" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGw5DKX6U6w">hatred</a> of Russia as British ideology was last on public display during the Crimean War of 1853-56. The lead images are from an animation of the British mentality in that conflict.<br>[*] The transcript of the Oval Office session records that Starmer spoke for a total of 220 seconds; this <a title="https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-remarks-bilat-keir-starmer-united-kingdom-february-27-2025/" href="https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-remarks-bilat-keir-starmer-united-kingdom-february-27-2025/">amounted</a> to just 12% of the total time taken.</span></p>


guid: https://www.unz.com/?post_type=item&amp;p=544462
title: The "Racism" Conspiracy, by Andrew Anglin
author: ;Andrew Anglin
link: https://www.unz.com/aanglin/the-racism-conspiracy/
hash: ��1Dܡ�T��<G��
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<p wcount="20" data-sanitized-id="p_1_1" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The term “racism” along with accompanying terms such “white supremacy” have been thrown around wildly for over a decade now.</span></p>
<p wcount="90" data-sanitized-id="p_1_2" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Shockingly, the term “racism” has not really been defined in any serious way, but the implication of the term is that there are people who hate people for no other reason than “the color of their skin.” It makes little sense that anyone would have this emotion, but the number of people who do have this emotion, and why they have this emotion, is not something that has been investigated. We are simply told that many people, in fact all white people, have this emotion, and they must be stopped.</span></p>
<p wcount="70" data-sanitized-id="p_1_3" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Many people investigating this phenomenon of racial strife all of the sudden becoming the most important issue in the world have pointed out that the mainstream media began using these terms profusely after the 2008 financial crisis and the beginning of the Occupy Wall Street movement, when the banking elite had reason to attempt to divide the population, for fear that right and left could be united behind an anti-banker movement.</span></p>
<p wcount="40" data-sanitized-id="p_1_4" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The media began constantly talking about the threat of racism, and then the population, easily swayed as it is by media hysteria, began to believe that racism was the core problem in society. The charts seem to speak for itself.</span></p>
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<div data-sanitized-class="image-holder"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><a href="https://dailystormer.in/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/racism-chart.jpeg"><img src="https://dailystormer.in/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/racism-chart-618x353.jpeg" alt></a></span></div>
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<div data-sanitized-class="image-holder"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><a href="https://dailystormer.in/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/racism-theory.jpeg"><img src="https://dailystormer.in/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/racism-theory-618x353.jpeg" alt></a></span></div>
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<p wcount="83" data-sanitized-id="p_1_5" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">It’s a clever ruse, to be sure. Whereas the corruption of the banks and the government that works for them is a problem that could be solved, people having a secret emotional state is not something that can ever be solved. You can hunt for it for all of eternity. By redirecting public attention to this kind of spook, you’ve nullified the threat that they might join together in opposition to a real world problem which has a real world solution.</span></p>
<p wcount="39" data-sanitized-id="p_1_6" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The fact that the media created a mass moral panic over this secret emotion of “racism” is fascinating, but despite what many on the right would claim, it does not tell the whole story of racial strife in America.</span></p>
<p wcount="5" data-sanitized-id="p_1_7" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>A Secret White Supremacist Conspiracy?</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="99" data-sanitized-id="p_1_8" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">One of the things that the media racism promoters did was point out that black people are imprisoned at a rate much higher than whites. They also pointed out that blacks have a much lower average income than whites. What they claimed was that the only possible explanation for these differences in social outcomes was “racism.” The basic premise, which usually went unstated, was that “everyone is the same.” If every person of every race has the same ability, then if the outcomes are different, there must be some diabolical secret plot by white people to hold back nonwhites.</span></p>
<p wcount="107" data-sanitized-id="p_1_9" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Unfortunately, those on the right refused to respond with the obvious explanation for why blacks and other races have worse outcomes than whites, which is that they are biologically different from whites, and therefore cannot be expected to have the same outcomes. If you are unwilling to state this obvious reality because you are afraid of being called “racist,” then there is no way to respond to the claims being made by the racism promoters. If all people are exactly the same, then it is simply a plain fact that if they have different outcomes, the only explanation is that there is a secret conspiracy against them.</span></p>
<p wcount="123" data-sanitized-id="p_1_10" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">However, it makes no sense that the different races would be exactly the same. They don’t look the same. They have drastically different histories. Why would they have the same intellectual abilities, or the same propensity for violence? No one has ever explained that, and instead, we are simply told that it would be very rude and hurtful to talk about it. It is anti-intellectual in the extreme to claim that because a truth is hurtful, it should be covered up, but even if you are extremely concerned about avoiding hurting someone’s feelings, could we not easily argue that the denial of the difference in races has led to much more hurt than whatever feelings would be hurt by acknowledging it?</span></p>
<p wcount="101" data-sanitized-id="p_1_11" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Further, the claim that there is a secret racist conspiracy, that white people who are publicly so afraid of being called “racist” that they will hand over their entire society to a leftist mob are in secret plotting to hurt black people out of sheer nastiness, and moreover that it is impossible to discover evidence of this conspiracy, is a bit outrageous, is it not? Hinging your entire worldview on the theory of a massive conspiracy that cannot be traced is nonsensical, and yet this has been allowed because of the culture of silence enforced around the issue of racial differences.</span></p>
<p wcount="70" data-sanitized-id="p_1_12" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">In order to explain away the need for this massive conspiracy to hurt the feelings of nonwhites out or meanness, advanced racism theory came up with the idea that white people are racists without even knowing they are racists. They are programmed like Manchurian candidates by unspecific forces with an underlying desire to hate people for the color of their skin, for no specific reason. This seems even dumber, no?</span></p>
<p wcount="4" data-sanitized-id="p_1_13" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>Race is Very Obvious</strong></span></p>
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<div data-sanitized-class="image-holder"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><a href="https://dailystormer.in/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/racist-copy.jpg"><img src="https://dailystormer.in/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/racist-copy-618x464.jpg" alt></a></span></div>
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<p wcount="121" data-sanitized-id="p_1_14" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">People are aware that intelligent people tend to have intelligent children. They are aware that people who are tall tend to have tall children. They are aware that genetic traits are heritable. So, why then would entire genetic groups not share traits? Oh, but they do share traits. Africans have black skin, for example, a trait shared among their genetic cohort. They have larger, flatter noses, they have different shaped skulls, they are faster, they have more lean muscle mass, they have higher levels of free testosterone. If there is a white supremacist conspiracy to keep blacks out of the Ivy League, it seems there would also need to be a black supremacist conspiracy to keep whites out of the NBA.</span></p>
<p wcount="109" data-sanitized-id="p_1_15" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">In fact, the difference in skin color gives away the truth about the difference in intellectual ability. The biological pressures in Africa, where the sun is very hot, are different than the biological pressures in Europe, which was covered in ice for much of its history. Blacks developed dark skin because this is very useful for people who are out in the sun all day. The reason that blacks were brought over as slaves is that it was much easier for them to work in the sun all day on a Southern plantation, because they were genetically adapted to the sun in a way that white people are not.</span></p>
<p wcount="171" data-sanitized-id="p_1_16" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">In prehistoric times, before technology provided people with easy comfort, humans had to worry about meeting their basic needs for food and warmth, before anything else. In a place without winter, you do not have to worry about freezing to death. Furthermore, food is very abundant, all year. What this means is that black people did not require the intellect to make plans to prevent themselves from freezing, the skills to stockpile enough food for the winter, when there would be no food available. If a person in Europe failed to make these plans, they would die, and be removed from the gene pool, and therefore only those with the intelligence need to plan and implement a strategy to make it through the winter would live to see their genes passed on to the next generation. The European winter had a way of removing those with the lowest intelligence from the gene pool. Meanwhile, Africa had a way of removing those who couldn’t outrun a lion from the gene pool.</span></p>
<p wcount="48" data-sanitized-id="p_1_17" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">This should all be very obvious, and it should be something that a clever child could work through logically without having it explained to them, if they were asked to analyze why it is that black people have such lower average performance in a developed society than whites.</span></p>
<p wcount="7" data-sanitized-id="p_1_18" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>The Other Reason for Promoting “Racism” Theories</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="72" data-sanitized-id="p_1_19" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">While the data about the media promoting the unsolvable issue of racial differences as a white supremacist conspiracy in order to prevent the solvable issue of elite corruption from being addressed is convincing, there is another reason why the media began promoting this artificial hysteria about racism when they did, and that is because during this period, there has been a massive push for whites to accept replacement immigration from nonwhite countries.</span></p>
<p wcount="202" data-sanitized-id="p_1_20" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The amount of immigration we have witnessed in the last 20 years, virtually all of it from nonwhite countries, is totally astonishing. Under normal circumstances, no one would tolerate this, but the development of “racism” theory, of the theory that anyone who acknowledges racial differences is ontologically evil, has created a situation where whites are afraid to speak out. When they do speak out, they are left with flaccid arguments about how they are not “racist,” and they are not against being replaced with brown people, they simply are opposed to unfettered “illegal” immigration. This is obviously not true. The white people who are bothered by immigration are bothered for reasons relating to the racial differences of the people coming in. All of the Somalians, for example, which have flooded the US since the 1990s, were brought here “legally.” No one would prefer a “legal” Somalian to an “illegal” Mexican, and if there were such a thing as an “illegal” Norwegian, people would not be talking about an influx of Norwegians at all. Beating people over the head with images of “evil people” who “hate the color of the skin” has neutered the opposition to the agenda to racially replace whites with nonwhites.</span></p>
<p wcount="172" data-sanitized-id="p_1_21" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Interestingly, it is the same Wall Street bankers, corporate elites, and government officials who wanted people to stop talking about elite corruption by burying them in racial hysteria that wanted to flood America with nonwhites in the first place. They have several reasons for this. The most obvious reason is that flooding the market with cheap labor drives down wages. If real wages had remained static since the mid 1970s, McDonald’s workers in 2025 would be getting paid close to $50 an hour, and the biggest way that these wages have been artificially lowered is by bringing in nonwhite immigrants from poor countries. A bigger and perhaps more esoteric reason is the drive among the elites to homogenize the entire global population, to destroy differences between people, in order to create a kind of singular world system. After all, if there are no demographic differences between nations, then what is the purpose of nations? We might as well have a single world system in order to prevent wars and abuses by “rogue nations.”</span></p>
<p wcount="80" data-sanitized-id="p_1_22" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">It is extremely unfortunate that such a massive and destructive social engineering program could hinge on something as stupid as the claim that “all races are the same and anyone who thinks differently is evil and wants to hurt innocent people out of sheer meanness.” But that’s what happened. And we’ve now entered into the final stages of this program, as whites are a minority in America and white children a minority in virtually every Western European capital.</span></p>
<p wcount="15" data-sanitized-id="p_1_23" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><strong>People are Just Going to Have to Get Over the Fear of Being Called Names</strong></span></p>
<p wcount="51" data-sanitized-id="p_1_24" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">In order to try to turn this around, people are going to have to become comfortable with being labeled a “racist” for acknowledging racial differences. There is no way we can fight back against this scheme to replace us without addressing the fact that no, all races are not the same.</span></p>
<p wcount="76" data-sanitized-id="p_1_25" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">It was encouraging to see the pushback against the Elon Musk plan to replace white American workers with Indians. There was a time not long ago when Musk simply explaining that these immigrants would be brought in “legally” would be enough to silence any conservative criticism of his race replacement agenda, but this time, people were willing to say “I don’t care if it’s legal, I don’t want those people in my country.”</span></p>
<p wcount="134" data-sanitized-id="p_1_26" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">That said, most people are still afraid of actually saying that brown people are incompatible with Western society because of their genetics, and it still feels like we are a long way away from that. But these things can change quickly. And with Trump really going hard against many of the sacred cows of the left, it seems that now is the time to slip through with ideas relating to race. Although the conservatives did go along with the “I’m not racist, but” narrative, being guided by so-called “Jewish conservatives” like Ben Shapiro, many of the ideas from the left that were adopted by the right are now being questioned, and there seems to be less fear of hurting people’s feelings as the situation becomes more and more dire for white Americans.</span></p>
<p wcount="73" data-sanitized-id="p_1_27" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Most of human history has been defined by large scale physical violence, so it is truly harrowing to look at the last few decades in America when fear of some sort of “emotional violence” became enough for people to allow their children’s futures to be stolen from them. White people have become incredibly soft, and that will have to change if we are to reverse course as we spiral down the drain.</span></p>
<p wcount="72" data-sanitized-id="p_1_28" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The hope is that the “anti-racism” that we’ve been inundated with for these past decades is mostly a hangover from the utopian ideology of the baby boomers, and that as younger people have more influence on society, this utopian thinking will start to fade away. In order for that to happen, however, people are going to need to be brave, and start injecting ideas about racial differences into the public discourse.</span></p>


guid: https://www.unz.com/?post_type=item&amp;p=544479
title: Jonathan Revusky on Stephen Hawking Replacement &amp; No Planes Theories, by Kevin Barrett
author: ;Kevin Barrett
link: https://www.unz.com/kbarrett/jonathan-revusky-on-stephen-hawking-replacement-no-planes-theories/
hash: (�E�#���\(�� �
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<div><img src="https://www.unz.com/wp-content/themes/unzSite/IMAGES/unz_large_logo.png" data-sanitized-class="ff-og-image-inserted"></div><p wcount="4" data-sanitized-id="p_1_1" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><a title="https://rumble.com/v6pwo06-jonathan-revusky-on-stephen-hawking-replacement-and-no-planes-theories.html" href="https://rumble.com/v6pwo06-jonathan-revusky-on-stephen-hawking-replacement-and-no-planes-theories.html" rel>Rumble link</a> <a title="https://old.bitchute.com/video/BvCdhmbhAIRn/" href="https://old.bitchute.com/video/BvCdhmbhAIRn/" rel>Bitchute link</a></span></p>

<p wcount="21" data-sanitized-id="p_1_3" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Jonathan Revusky refutes <a title="https://www.unz.com/kbarrett/sterling-harwood-on-was-stephen-hawking-replaced/" href="https://www.unz.com/kbarrett/sterling-harwood-on-was-stephen-hawking-replaced/" rel>Sterling Harwood on the Stephen Hawking replacement hypothesis</a> and <a title="https://www.unz.com/kbarrett/ryan-dawson-on-9-11-trump-vs-deep-state-slo-mo-collapse-of-anglozionist-empire/" href="https://www.unz.com/kbarrett/ryan-dawson-on-9-11-trump-vs-deep-state-slo-mo-collapse-of-anglozionist-empire/" rel>Ryan Dawson on the “Arabs hijacked planes on 9/11” hypothesis</a>.</span></p>
<p wcount="1" data-sanitized-id="p_1_4" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Excerpt:</span></p>
<p wcount="114" data-sanitized-id="p_1_5" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Kevin Barrett: Let’s move on to the theories that you wanted to talk about. The first one being: Was Stephen Hawking replaced? We brought on <a title="https://www.unz.com/kbarrett/sterling-harwood-on-was-stephen-hawking-replaced/" href="https://www.unz.com/kbarrett/sterling-harwood-on-was-stephen-hawking-replaced/" rel>Sterling Harwood</a> and Sterling and I both said there’s a kind of a strong prima facie argument that there’s something really wrong with this conventional biography of Stephen Hawking, because he lived way too long after an ALS diagnosis. But then after admitting that, Sterling Harwood claimed that there’s not really anything else to support (the replacement theory), and ultimately the idea that he was replaced is equally or more unlikely than some other explanation. So go ahead and explain your take on that issue.</span></p>
<p wcount="118" data-sanitized-id="p_1_6" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Jonathan Revusky: Well, of course he was replaced, Kevin. I mean, the whole thing is a pretty self-evident hoax. I never really thought that for anybody who read the article and actually made a point of looking at the photographic record—I sent you <a title="https://yandex.com/images/search?from=tabbar&amp;text=stephen%20hawking" href="https://yandex.com/images/search?from=tabbar&amp;text=stephen%20hawking" rel>a link, which is sort of the main Yandex image search for Hawking</a>, didn’t I? You just type Stephen Hawking into the Yandex search engine, yandex.com, and then hit the images tab. You can do that in Google. I trust Yandex more nowadays. Google is, I think, more curated. But you get a series of images. I think the first dozen images are the latter-day Hawking, who was fairly obviously an imposter.</span></p>
<p wcount="156" data-sanitized-id="p_1_7" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">But, you know, finally, what is interesting about this Hawking case? I mean, we have all these hoaxes, right? The Boston bombing and some crazy Arab ran over some people at the whatever Christmas market in Germany and some other crazed kid in France cut off his teacher’s head and all these kinds of things that are hoaxes. But the funny thing about all of those is they’re sort of one-shot deals: They occur on a specific day and then it’s over. Even 9/11 left much more of a mess than these other hoaxes, that’s for sure. You have all this dust and all the remains of these buildings lying around. But still, but of course, they made a point of clearing off all the junk as fast as possible. So the hoax lasted a certain number of days and was over though the aftermath of the hoax we’re still living with.</span></p>
<p wcount="61" data-sanitized-id="p_1_8" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">But the Hawking hoax, assuming it is a hoax, I’ve investigated enough to say it is, is just…this is a multi-decade hoax, a fairly major production, really, sort of multi-layered with a lot of different weird subplots in it. Hawking, the real Stephen Hawking, almost certainly passed away in the year 1985. You can, I think, pretty much pinpoint it.</span></p>
<p wcount="94" data-sanitized-id="p_1_9" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Supposedly he got pneumonia in Switzerland, in Geneva someplace and was hospitalized. And they had him on life support, these tubes coming out of him. This is the official story, by the way. What you get on Wikipedia is the official story, in essence. And what’s interesting is you can read the official story and there are enough truthful elements in it that you can largely deduce the truth. Like, the claim is that Hawking is in Switzerland in order to visit CERN, the particle accelerator thing they have there somewhere near Geneva…</span></p>
<p wcount="16" data-sanitized-id="p_1_10" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em>(Read the full transcript by clicking the “transcript” button above the video image at <a title="https://kevinbarrett.substack.com/" href="https://kevinbarrett.substack.com/" rel>my Substack</a>.)</em></span></p>


guid: https://www.unz.com/?post_type=item&amp;p=544472
title: The Monsters Aren’t Just in History Books. They Live Among Us. They’re Everywhere, by Jonathan Cook
author: ;Jonathan Cook
hash: l�v�䄒hn"L��_
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content:
<div><img src="https://www.unz.com/wp-content/themes/unzSite/IMAGES/unz_large_logo.png" data-sanitized-class="ff-og-image-inserted"></div><p wcount="30" data-sanitized-id="p_1_1" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><em><strong>Walter Salles’ new film on the disappearances of regime critics in 1970s Brazil is a powerful reminder that the ghouls who defend the slaughter in Gaza are biding their time</strong></em></span></p>
<p wcount="47" data-sanitized-id="p_1_2" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Walter Salles’ new film <em>I’m Still Here,</em> is a moving, true-story, Oscar-nominated portrait of a middle-class, leftwing family in Rio de Janeiro in the early 1970s struggling to come to terms with the father’s disappearance – 25 years later confirmed as murder – by the Brazilian military dictatorship.</span></p>
<p><iframe width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oLJEojFPvIA?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" title="I'M STILL HERE | OFFICIAL TRAILER | IN CINEMAS NOW | Altitude Films" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin">[embedded content]</iframe></p>
<p wcount="2" data-sanitized-id="p_1_3" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><a title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLJEojFPvIA'" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLJEojFPvIA" target="_blank" data-sanitized-class="caption">Video Link</a></span></p>
<p wcount="17" data-sanitized-id="p_1_4" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The mother and a teenage daughter spend time inside a regime torture camp too, before being released.</span></p>
<p wcount="27" data-sanitized-id="p_1_5" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">What struck me powerfully in the film was the endless supply of compliant regime officials who impassively, conscientiously carried out the abuse of men, women and children.</span></p>
<p wcount="29" data-sanitized-id="p_1_6" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">It was a reminder that plenty of these people live among us – and that they have been doing very little to hide who they are over the past 16 months.</span></p>
<p wcount="29" data-sanitized-id="p_1_7" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">They are the politicians mangling language and international law by terming as “self-defence” the collective punishment of the people of Gaza through carpet bombing and starvation – crimes against humanity.</span></p>
<p><iframe width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5HQYfsUAf3s?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" title="Israel ‘has the right’ to withhold water from Gaza, Keir Starmer tells LBC" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin">[embedded content]</iframe></p>
<p wcount="2" data-sanitized-id="p_1_8" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><a title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HQYfsUAf3s'" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HQYfsUAf3s" target="_blank" data-sanitized-class="caption">Video Link</a></span></p>
<p wcount="28" data-sanitized-id="p_1_9" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">They are the police officers <a title="https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/police-escalate-the-british-states" href="https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/police-escalate-the-british-states" rel>raiding people’s homes</a>, and detaining and arresting independent journalists and human rights activists, including Jewish ones, for protesting the slaughter in Gaza.</span></p>
<p wcount="38" data-sanitized-id="p_1_10" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">They are the establishment journalists pretending the carnage inflicted on the people of Gaza is just another routine news story, less important than the death of an elderly actor, or the latest outburst from serial misogynist Andrew Tate.</span></p>
<p wcount="14" data-sanitized-id="p_1_11" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">And, more than anything, they are the army of ordinary people on social media:</span></p>
<ul><li>Mocking the families of children shredded by US-supplied bombs;</li>
<li>Reciting endless claims of “Gazawood” (Gaza-Hollywood), as if the levelling of the tiny territory, visible from outer space, is a fiction and that the only victims are Hamas fighters;</li>
<li>Defending as a legitimate legal procedure the <a title="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/feb/25/israel-gaza-doctors-surgeons-healthcare-detention-international-law" href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/feb/25/israel-gaza-doctors-surgeons-healthcare-detention-international-law" rel>abduction of hundreds of doctors</a> and nurses from Gaza’s hospitals into “detention camps” where torture, sexual abuse and rape are routine;</li>
<li>Justifying the destruction of Gaza’s hospitals – leaving premature babies, pregnant women, the sick and the elderly to die – on the basis of entirely unsubstantiated, and self-serving, Israeli government claims that each is a Hamas “command and control centre”;</li>
<li>Cheering the erasure of the only documentary on Gaza humanising its children because the father of the 13-year-old narrator is a scientist appointed by the Hamas government to oversee what was the agricultural sector before Israel destroyed all the enclave’s vegetation.</li>
</ul><p wcount="12" data-sanitized-id="p_1_12" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">These people live among us. They grow more confident by the day.</span></p>
<p wcount="26" data-sanitized-id="p_1_13" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">And one day, if we don’t fight them now, they will be putting a hood over our head to take us to a secret location.</span></p>
<p wcount="31" data-sanitized-id="p_1_14" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">They will be across the desk, asking us the same questions over and over again, making us pore over photo albums to find faces we recognise, people we can inform on.</span></p>
<p wcount="43" data-sanitized-id="p_1_15" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">They will lead us to dirty cells, where there is a hard shelf for a bed, no blanket to keep us warm, no chance to shower, a hole in the ground for a toilet, and one meal to sustain us through the day.</span></p>
<p wcount="19" data-sanitized-id="p_1_16" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">They will escort us silently through long dark corridors to a room where they will be waiting for us.</span></p>
<p wcount="25" data-sanitized-id="p_1_17" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">There will be a chair in the centre of an empty room. They will nod for us to sit down. And then it will begin.</span></p>

link:
https://www.unz.com/jcook/the-monsters-arent-just-in-history-books-they-live-among-us-theyre-everywhere/


guid: https://www.unz.com/?post_type=item&amp;p=544458
title: A Trump-Putin Accord?, by Paul Craig Roberts
author: ;Paul Craig Roberts
link: https://www.unz.com/proberts/a-trump-putin-accord/
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<p wcount="92" data-sanitized-id="p_1_1" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Why is it that American liberal Democrats and Europeans are so disturbed that Trump is moving the United States toward normal relations with Russia instead of maintaining a hostile approach to Russia based on proxy wars, sanctions, and endless propaganda? We know why the think tanks and university faculties supported by the military/security complex are upset–their incomes are at stake. But why the Democrats and Europeans? The answer will have to wait until another occasion. This column addresses readers’ questions about the many varied conflicting reports about a Trump-Putin deal.</span></p>
<p wcount="36" data-sanitized-id="p_1_2" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">What are my expectations, readers ask, for the Trump-Putin meeting about the conflict in Ukraine? I am pleased that readers think I have been sufficiently correct over the years for my analysis to be of interest.</span></p>
<p wcount="34" data-sanitized-id="p_1_3" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The outlook for the resolution of the conflict and for a final end of the Cold War is good, but never forget the adage that “there’s many a slip between cup and lip.”</span></p>
<p wcount="83" data-sanitized-id="p_1_4" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">First of all, neither leader wants the war. Putin did everything he could to avoid war. He devised the Minsk Agreement which kept the breakaway Donbas republics in Ukraine. He begged for a mutual security agreement and was cold-shouldered. He was forced to intervene in Donbas by Washington, a conflict for which Russia was unprepared. Putin has fought the conflict in the least effective way possible in order to counter the Western propaganda that he had “invaded Ukraine” and Europe would be next.</span></p>
<p wcount="54" data-sanitized-id="p_1_5" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Trump regards the orchestrated conflict the American Zionist neoconservatives created with Russia as a stupidity that is in the way of profitable business between the US and Russia and as a stupidity that is leading to the rise of BRICS and the denial of American business relationships with a large part of the world.</span></p>
<p wcount="30" data-sanitized-id="p_1_6" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">A war leader is the last thing Putin is, a job for which he has no talent. Trump favors business uber alles. So a deal is the most likely outcome.</span></p>
<p wcount="32" data-sanitized-id="p_1_7" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Moreover, statements from Trump, Putin, Lavrov and other officials have created such expectations of an end to the conflict that it is now almost impossible not to deliver a mutually acceptable outcome.</span></p>
<p wcount="33" data-sanitized-id="p_1_8" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Even proxy wars are expensive, and Trump and Musk are committed to reducing the US budget by $1 trillion. That can’t happen with the US shipping hundreds of billions of dollars into Ukraine.</span></p>
<p wcount="104" data-sanitized-id="p_1_9" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Putin and Lavrov remain open for Russia being a part of the Western world. Although Putin was forced by Washington’s aggression to revive Russian nationalism, his heart, like many of his generation, is for Russia to be a part of the Western world. Perhaps Putin is lost in the past and does not recognize the spiritual and moral corruption into which the Western world degenerated under liberal leadership. If Trump had not won the election, pedophilia would have been legalized in the Kamala regime. Indeed, it is likely that Democrat judges would have legalized marriage between women and dogs as “freedom of choice.”</span></p>
<div data-sanitized-class="book-unit alignright premblock book-author"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0986076996/"><img src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51TyPsr3%2ByL.jpg"></a>
<p>ORDER IT NOW</p>
</div>
<p wcount="53" data-sanitized-id="p_1_10" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The question before us is: Can Trump and his government, a capable collection of talent, restore American principles or have our principles been so destroyed by decades of university, media, and entertainment propaganda, and by judicial rulings and unconstitutional regulatory rules that have left the American system too far gone to be resurrected?</span></p>
<p wcount="48" data-sanitized-id="p_1_11" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">If Putin secures a reasonable end to the conflict in Ukraine, will he revert to his trust in negotiations with the West as he did with the Minsk Agreement, thus setting himself up for a future US government that equates Making America Great Again with Washington’s Hegemony?</span></p>
<p wcount="51" data-sanitized-id="p_1_12" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The problem with the US government is that it no longer honors the agreements of previous governments. The neoconservative Clinton Regime did not honor the agreement between Gorbachev and the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations that the Cold War was supposed to end, not move to Russia’s borders.</span></p>
<p wcount="38" data-sanitized-id="p_1_13" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Unless Trump succeeds in cleaning out of the US government all anti-American forces, a vast ensemble, a subsequent government can walk away from an agreement that ends the conflict and renew the conflict or start a new one.</span></p>
<p wcount="17" data-sanitized-id="p_1_14" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The problem with the West is that governments have lost character and integrity. Can they be trusted?</span></p>
<p wcount="58" data-sanitized-id="p_1_15" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Just as American propaganda destroyed the confidence of the German people and turned them into self-accusing anti-semites, the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe used the dissatisfaction of life under the Soviet Union to place Russian hopes in the West, and there they remain among many of the Russian intellectual class, few of whom are Russian nationalists.</span></p>
<p wcount="28" data-sanitized-id="p_1_16" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">With all of these considerations, I still think that the expectations created by statements of Trump and Putin are too high for them to renege on a deal.</span></p>
<p wcount="71" data-sanitized-id="p_1_17" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">If we can say goodbye to conflict with Russia, the remaining question is whether Trump in truth is really Israel’s puppet and can be led into a war for Israel’s behalf with Iran. At this point I think not. Has Trump been playing along with Israel to avoid attacks by the Israel Lobby on top of attacks by the whore media, Democrats, corrupt judiciary, EU morons, and RINO Republicans?</span></p>
<p wcount="26" data-sanitized-id="p_1_18" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">AI generated propaganda videos of Trump turning Gaza into a Gold Coast Resort not withstanding, Israel might yet find itself ordered to stand down or else.</span></p>
<p wcount="21" data-sanitized-id="p_1_19" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I don’t think it is a good bet that a person of Trump’s ego would subordinate himself to Israel.</span></p>
<p wcount="23" data-sanitized-id="p_1_20" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">If Trump stops the wars and throttles the criminal regime in Israel, will a successor regime in Washington undo Trump’s good work?</span></p>


guid: https://www.unz.com/?post_type=item&amp;p=544469
title: Joy Reid Is Gone, by Gregory Hood
author: ;Gregory Hood
link: https://www.unz.com/ghood/joy-reid-is-gone/
hash: E.K5�q��� P\"�
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<div readability="7" data-sanitized-id="i_1" data-sanitized-class="image imagecenter container">
<div data-sanitized-class="image-holder"><span data-sanitized-class="contents"><a href="https://www.amren.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Joy_Reid.jpg"><img src="https://www.amren.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Joy_Reid.jpg" alt="Credit Image: © Michael Nigro/Pacific Press via ZUMA Wire"></a></span></div>
<p><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Credit Image: © Michael Nigro/Pacific Press via ZUMA Wire</span></p>
</div>
<p wcount="97" data-sanitized-id="p_1_1" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">If “journalism” lived up to the lofty image journalists have of themselves, Joy Reid would have been unemployed long ago. On her old blog, the Reid Report, she mocked homosexuals, called for Ann Coulter to kill herself, and compared John McCain to the Virginia Tech shooter. None of this is sending me to the fainting couch, but much of it, especially the “homophobia,” is grounds for termination in the chattering classes. In 2018, when these posts came to light, Joy Reid <a title="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/27/17286392/joy-reid-msnbc-lgbtq-gay-hack" href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/27/17286392/joy-reid-msnbc-lgbtq-gay-hack">claimed</a> her blog was hacked and somehow, she never noticed. She even said the FBI was <a title="https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/joy-reid-homophobic-blog-posts-hacking-claim/" href="https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/joy-reid-homophobic-blog-posts-hacking-claim/">investigating</a>.</span></p>
<p wcount="52" data-sanitized-id="p_1_2" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">It would be a strange hacker who posts comments not dissimilar to some of her others, but none of this matters. She kept her job and lectured America nightly on racism, Russia, and fascism. Her implausible claims were forgotten, aside from the <a title="https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/whatever-ever-happened-to-joy-reids-alleged-hackers-and-that-fbi-investigation/" href="https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/whatever-ever-happened-to-joy-reids-alleged-hackers-and-that-fbi-investigation/">occasional opinion column</a>, and ignored by her superiors at MSNBC.</span></p>
<p wcount="77" data-sanitized-id="p_1_3" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">This might be justified if Joy Reid had something to say, but you already know everything she believes. She is a non-white who demands (and gets) <a title="https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2024/07/24/joy-reid-people-of-color-who-do-not-vote-for-kamala-harris-are-real-weird/" href="https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2024/07/24/joy-reid-people-of-color-who-do-not-vote-for-kamala-harris-are-real-weird/">tribal political loyalty</a> from her fellow blacks. She is a regular on Verified Hate/The X Files and in American Renaissance news headlines. She routinely accuses President Donald Trump and his supporters of racism and claims he is in league with Russia. She is a “<a title="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/style/joy-reid-msnbc.html" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/style/joy-reid-msnbc.html">daughter of immigrants</a>,” barely American herself.</span></p>
<p wcount="4" data-sanitized-id="p_1_4" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Among her greatest hits:</span></p>
<ul><li><a title="https://www.amren.com/features/2024/04/race-and-the-decline-of-american-justice/" href="https://www.amren.com/features/2024/04/race-and-the-decline-of-american-justice/">It was</a> “wonderfully poetic” that the first person to criminally prosecute Donald Trump was black and that a black woman was doing the same in Georgia. Donald Trump, she <a title="https://www.amren.com/news/2024/04/msnbcs-joy-reid-declares-dei-prosecutors-are-targeting-trump-and-she-loves-it/" href="https://www.amren.com/news/2024/04/msnbcs-joy-reid-declares-dei-prosecutors-are-targeting-trump-and-she-loves-it/">claimed</a>, was being held to account by the “very multicultural, multiracial democracy that he’s trying to dismantle.”</li>
<li><a title="https://www.amren.com/news/2024/02/joy-reid-black-people-literally-physically-built-this-country/" href="https://www.amren.com/news/2024/02/joy-reid-black-people-literally-physically-built-this-country/">Blacks</a> “literally, physically, built this country.”</li>
<li><a title="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/nov/6/joy-reid-claims-nra-desires-american-warlords-priv/" href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/nov/6/joy-reid-claims-nra-desires-american-warlords-priv/">The NRA</a> wants bands of “warlords” who “kill at will” dominating America. rural voters are the main threat to American democracy, so the Electoral College <a title="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/nov/27/joy-reid-of-msnbc-calls-rural-voters-core-threat-t/" href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/nov/27/joy-reid-of-msnbc-calls-rural-voters-core-threat-t/">must go</a>.</li>
<li><a title="https://www.foxnews.com/media/msnbc-joy-reid-kyle-rittenhouse-acquittal-slave-catchers?msockid=3f158e27a6b6694907349ba0a7ea6823" href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/msnbc-joy-reid-kyle-rittenhouse-acquittal-slave-catchers?msockid=3f158e27a6b6694907349ba0a7ea6823">Kyle Rittenhouse’s</a> acquittal came from the criminal justice system’s links to the “slave catchers” that were part of the “foundational creation of the United States.” The people who tried to kill Mr. Rittenhouse were “defending black lives.”</li>
<li><a title="https://www.amren.com/news/2022/01/msnbcs-reid-selfish-white-christian-conservatives-think-america-was-built-for-them/" href="https://www.amren.com/news/2022/01/msnbcs-reid-selfish-white-christian-conservatives-think-america-was-built-for-them/">”Selfish”</a> “white so-called Christian conservatives” mistakenly think the country “was built by them for them.” (If they think that, they’re right.)</li>
<li><a title="https://www.amren.com/news/2024/01/joy-reid-blames-nikki-haleys-third-place-iowa-finish-on-racism/" href="https://www.amren.com/news/2024/01/joy-reid-blames-nikki-haleys-third-place-iowa-finish-on-racism/">Nikki Haley</a> finished third in the Iowa caucuses because “she’s still a brown lady that’s got to try to win in a party that is deeply anti-immigrant.”</li>
<li>“The majority of white people are <a title="https://www.amren.com/news/2019/08/msnbc-panelist-on-most-white-people-destroy-them/" href="https://www.amren.com/news/2019/08/msnbc-panelist-on-most-white-people-destroy-them/">not the majority of this country</a>. You do not negotiate with these people, you destroy them.”</li>
<li>“If Wayne LaPierre <a title="https://portside.org/2018-02-23/remember-week-its-beginning-end-nras-reign-terror" href="https://portside.org/2018-02-23/remember-week-its-beginning-end-nras-reign-terror">doesn’t understand</a> that the next generation and the next will be unavailable to him and his vile philosophy, he needs a quick lesson in demographic math. . . .One way or another, the NRA and its extremist ideology are on a path to extinction.”</li>
<li>“[I]t <a title="https://www.amren.com/news/2023/08/joy-reid-says-trump-faces-demographic-reality-in-dc-court-with-jamaican-born-woman-of-color-judge/" href="https://www.amren.com/news/2023/08/joy-reid-says-trump-faces-demographic-reality-in-dc-court-with-jamaican-born-woman-of-color-judge/">has to be a humbling day</a> for Donald Trump to finally face justice, particularly there in Washington DC. . . . The magistrate judge is Moxila Upadhaya. A woman of color. The judge he will be facing in the trial, a Jamaican-born woman of color. He seems to be facing sort of demographic reality.”</li>
<li><a title="https://www.amren.com/news/2021/09/msnbcs-joy-reid-dismisses-focus-on-gabby-petito-case-as-missing-white-woman-syndrome/" href="https://www.amren.com/news/2021/09/msnbcs-joy-reid-dismisses-focus-on-gabby-petito-case-as-missing-white-woman-syndrome/">Media reports on missing 22-year-old Gabby Petito</a> were just “missing white woman syndrome.”</li>
<li><a title="https://www.amren.com/news/2021/03/msnbcs-joy-reid-conservatives-would-trade-tax-cuts-to-openly-say-the-n-word/" href="https://www.amren.com/news/2021/03/msnbcs-joy-reid-conservatives-would-trade-tax-cuts-to-openly-say-the-n-word/">Republican voters would trade tax cuts for the right openly to call blacks ni**ers</a>.</li>
</ul><p wcount="42" data-sanitized-id="p_1_5" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">This made Joy Reid a “heroine of the Resistance,” allowing her to don the mantle of American patriotism and call MAGA the party of traitors. She is a lightweight, but she had the legitimacy and credibility that came with a prestigious post.</span></p>
<p wcount="119" data-sanitized-id="p_1_6" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Now that’s gone, a casualty of President Trump’s victory, which has “normalized” MAGA. Joy Reid’s declarations now look unhinged and politically obtuse. Her confident predictions of a Kamala victory or the legal doom awaiting Donald Trump were fanciful, and MSNBC’s audience may feel betrayed. In the critical 25-54 age bloc, MSNBC has lost about half its viewers <a title="https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/msnbc-anchor-joy-reid-s-show-canceled-as-network-experiences-historic-low-ratings/ar-AA1zCwxd?ocid=BingNewsSerp" href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/msnbc-anchor-joy-reid-s-show-canceled-as-network-experiences-historic-low-ratings/ar-AA1zCwxd?ocid=BingNewsSerp">since</a> last year. For daytime shows, the network drew just 45,000 viewers; internet streamers easily beat that. Last month was the worst January in the network’s history, a sign that leftists are demoralized, not rallying to “The Resistance.” Meanwhile, Fox News has seen a strong ratings increase, with “Fox &amp; Friends” <a title="https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/fox-friends-extends-ratings-lead-as-msnbc-s-morning-joe-loses-nearly-half-its-audience-since-election/ar-AA1zRajv?ocid=BingNewsSerp" href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/fox-friends-extends-ratings-lead-as-msnbc-s-morning-joe-loses-nearly-half-its-audience-since-election/ar-AA1zRajv?ocid=BingNewsSerp">increasing</a> viewership by 29 percent since last year.</span></p>
<p wcount="76" data-sanitized-id="p_1_7" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">In February, the black woman who was president of MSNBC, Rashida Jones, <a title="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/rashida-jones-exits-president-msnbc-rebecca-kutler-1236108456/" href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/rashida-jones-exits-president-msnbc-rebecca-kutler-1236108456/">announced</a> she was leaving—voluntarily, we are told. She was the first black woman to head a cable news network. Rebecca Kutler, who mostly worked at CNN during her career, <a title="https://www.soapcentral.com/human-interest/news-who-rebecca-kutler-all-veteran-news-executive-set-replace-msnbc-chief-rashida-jones" href="https://www.soapcentral.com/human-interest/news-who-rebecca-kutler-all-veteran-news-executive-set-replace-msnbc-chief-rashida-jones">is</a> her replacement. The documentaries and television programs she has <a title="https://starsunfolded.com/rebecca-kutler/" href="https://starsunfolded.com/rebecca-kutler/">produced</a> (including on the U.S. Holocaust Museum and homosexuals in the military) reflect her views, but she is not obsessed with black issues.</span></p>
<p wcount="91" data-sanitized-id="p_1_8" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">One reason for the shakeup is that Comcast is trying to spin off MSNBC into a separate company and needs a short-term ratings increase to make such a company attractive. President Trump has <a title="https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/trump-targets-comcast-ceo-brian-roberts-as-msnbc-plans-new-lineup/ar-AA1zGtUm?ocid=BingNewsSerp" href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/trump-targets-comcast-ceo-brian-roberts-as-msnbc-plans-new-lineup/ar-AA1zGtUm?ocid=BingNewsSerp">attacked</a> Comcast as “an illegal arm of the Democrat Party” that should be “forced to pay vast sums of money.” Joy Reid was an obvious candidate for a pink slip because of her low ratings and crazed views. Her show <a title="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/low-ratings-likely-cost-joy-reid-her-show-at-msnbc/ar-AA1zHPyR?ocid=BingNewsSerp" href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/low-ratings-likely-cost-joy-reid-her-show-at-msnbc/ar-AA1zHPyR?ocid=BingNewsSerp">has lost</a> almost 30 percent of its audience in the last year. People are tuning out takes such as:</span></p>
<ul><li>Black women <a title="https://www.amren.com/news/2024/11/joy-reid-says-black-women-no-longer-interested-in-saving-america-after-betrayal-by-white-female-voters/" href="https://www.amren.com/news/2024/11/joy-reid-says-black-women-no-longer-interested-in-saving-america-after-betrayal-by-white-female-voters/">are no longer interested</a> in “saving America” after President Trump’s election victory and will focus on “black spaces.”</li>
<li>Florida <a title="https://www.express.co.uk/news/us/1972245/donald-trump-victory-MSNBC-anchor-meltdown-florida" href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/us/1972245/donald-trump-victory-MSNBC-anchor-meltdown-florida">has</a> a “right-wing, fascist type government.”</li>
<li>“<a title="https://www.amren.com/news/2024/11/msnbc-star-blames-white-women-after-kamala-harris-loses-north-carolina-to-trump/" href="https://www.amren.com/news/2024/11/msnbc-star-blames-white-women-after-kamala-harris-loses-north-carolina-to-trump/">Black voters came through for</a> [Kamala] Harris, white women voters did not. This will be the second opportunity that white women in this country have to change the way they interact with the patriarchy.”</li>
</ul><p wcount="34" data-sanitized-id="p_1_9" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Joy Reid has been there since the beginning, on the panel when Ann Coulter famously predicted that Donald Trump could win the 2016 election, to the laughter and incredulity of Bill Maher’s studio audience.</span></p>
<blockquote data-width="500" data-dnt="true" readability="12.864238410596" data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr" xml:lang="en">Now that Joy Reid is looking for a new job, I should hire her to follow me around every moment, night and day, to react with open-mouthed, saucer-eyed astonishment at every prediction I make,which of course will then come true. <a href="https://t.co/JY60KJIpAh">pic.twitter.com/JY60KJIpAh</a></p>
<p wcount="5" data-sanitized-id="p_1_10" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) <a href="https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/1894220371571744991?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2025</a></span></p>
</blockquote>

<p wcount="88" data-sanitized-id="p_1_11" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Since the election, progressives have been looking for a message. Many seem to be settling on the idea that the second Trump Administration is a government of “oligarchs.” Elon Musk is a convenient foil. If the President cannot bring down prices on staples quickly, the Democrats may retake Congress in the midterms with a message of economic populism. Tax increases on the wealthy, an increase in the minimum wage, and more government regulations might win over some working-class people of all races who broke for Mr. Trump in 2024.</span></p>
<p wcount="61" data-sanitized-id="p_1_12" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Republicans in Congress are already <a title="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/us/politics/house-republican-budget-bill.html" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/us/politics/house-republican-budget-bill.html">pushing</a> the same tax cuts that disproportionately help the rich, as they did in 2017 — the one major legislative accomplishment of President Trump’s first term. Speaker Mike Johnson says it would violate conservatives’ “core principles” to give taxpayers a rebate with the money saved by Elon Musk’s DOGE, thus robbing spending cuts of popular appeal.</span></p>
<p wcount="51" data-sanitized-id="p_1_13" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Still, progressives will have to show restraint: not yell about every Republican voter being a racist or President Donald Trump being a fascist. Joy Reid is the perfect example of what <em>not</em> to do. On her final broadcast, she even said that fascism is not just coming; <a title="https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/joy-reid-opens-final-msnbc-show-with-message-of-resistance-fascism-isnt-just-coming-its-already-here/ar-AA1zIuON?ocid=BingNewsSerp" href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/joy-reid-opens-final-msnbc-show-with-message-of-resistance-fascism-isnt-just-coming-its-already-here/ar-AA1zIuON?ocid=BingNewsSerp">it’s <em>already here</em></a><em>.</em></span></p>
<p wcount="66" data-sanitized-id="p_1_14" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Therefore, for conservatives who do <em>not</em> want progressives to learn anything, it is good that many of them see Joy Reid as a martyr. There are signs of rebellion within MSNBC. Nicole Wallace <a title="https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/tv/joy-reid-bids-farewell-as-msnbc-hosts-compare-her-show-s-sudden-cancellation-to-losing-a-limb-during-emotional-segment/ar-AA1zItZJ?ocid=BingNewsVerp" href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/tv/joy-reid-bids-farewell-as-msnbc-hosts-compare-her-show-s-sudden-cancellation-to-losing-a-limb-during-emotional-segment/ar-AA1zItZJ?ocid=BingNewsVerp">compared</a> her departure to “losing a limb.” Lawrence O’ Donnell said working with her had been an “honor.” Rachel Maddow <a title="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rachel-maddow-joy-reid-bad-mistake-indefensible_n_67bd957fe4b088756003cdf4" href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rachel-maddow-joy-reid-bad-mistake-indefensible_n_67bd957fe4b088756003cdf4">said</a> that it was a “bad mistake” to fire her and went further:</span></p>
<blockquote readability="11">
<p wcount="60" data-sanitized-id="p_1_15" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">It is also unnerving to see that on a network where we’ve got two — count them — two non-white hosts in primetime, both of our non-white hosts in primetime are losing their shows, as is Katie Phang on the weekend. And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them. That feels indefensible. And I do not defend it.</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p wcount="19" data-sanitized-id="p_1_16" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">How many non-white hosts does it take to be “defensible”? Perhaps Miss Maddow can give up her own slot.</span></p>
<p wcount="6" data-sanitized-id="p_1_17" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Others on social media saw “racism.”</span></p>
<blockquote data-width="500" data-dnt="true" readability="11.76357827476" data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr" xml:lang="en">Cancelling Joy Reid means the door she held open for the next generation of Black voices will slam shut. Without her, the next her, won't get platformed by white media. That, of course, is why white media pushed her out.<br>My latest in <a href="https://twitter.com/thenation?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@thenation</a> <a href="https://t.co/oUpnUSJwLP">https://t.co/oUpnUSJwLP</a></p>
<p wcount="5" data-sanitized-id="p_1_18" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) <a href="https://twitter.com/ElieNYC/status/1894420991394066843?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2025</a></span></p>
</blockquote>

<blockquote data-width="500" data-dnt="true" readability="11.037735849057" data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr" xml:lang="en">They didn't even try to hide the racism by firing an unnecessary white anchor like Tur or Ruhle as cover</p>
<p wcount="20" data-sanitized-id="p_1_19" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">I discussed what this is, in today's podcast. For half an hour at about 27:00 in <a href="https://t.co/wSJAEviyPx">https://t.co/wSJAEviyPx</a></span></p>
<p wcount="5" data-sanitized-id="p_1_20" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) <a href="https://twitter.com/KeithOlbermann/status/1894077057102950455?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2025</a></span></p>
</blockquote>

<blockquote data-width="500" data-dnt="true" readability="5.2788461538462" data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr" xml:lang="en">We've got your back, Joy. <a href="https://t.co/U4WO4Sez9e">pic.twitter.com/U4WO4Sez9e</a></p>
<p wcount="5" data-sanitized-id="p_1_21" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">— Stacey Abrams (@staceyabrams) <a href="https://twitter.com/staceyabrams/status/1894106305981280494?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2025</a></span></p>
</blockquote>

<p wcount="104" data-sanitized-id="p_1_22" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">In fact, MSBNC is starting a new show with a panel of three. Two are black: <a title="https://www.amren.com/news/2024/11/msnbcs-symone-sanders-points-finger-at-white-women-for-harris-losing-to-trump/" href="https://www.amren.com/news/2024/11/msnbcs-symone-sanders-points-finger-at-white-women-for-harris-losing-to-trump/">Symone Sanders</a> and former RNC chair <a title="https://www.amren.com/news/2009/11/whos_afraid_of/" href="https://www.amren.com/news/2009/11/whos_afraid_of/">Michael Steele</a>. The former has politics not much different from Joy Reid’s, while Michael Steele has followed the traditional black Republican route of moving on from his unjustified high positions in the party to bashing it for being racist. The third host is reportedly Alicia Menendez, daughter of convicted Hispanic Democratic ex-senator Bob Menendez. Black journalist Eugene Daniels is also reportedly getting a show. MSNBC is not backing away from wokeness. It’s changing the faces in hope of better ratings.</span></p>
<p wcount="116" data-sanitized-id="p_1_23" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">It’s best if MSNBC stays the course. Unfortunately, white identity tends to be reactive. Most of us don’t become aware of our “whiteness” until it is attacked by non-whites pushing their own racial interests. And it’s easy to appease whites with even a symbolic retreat from “identity politics.” Joy Reid may be gone — for now — but the firestorm around that mediocrity and MSNBC’s continued diversity show that wokeness is far from dead. If ratings continue to fall, it will be interesting to see if MSNBC can trim its sails or if it is captive to extremists. We need people like Joy Reid. Let’s hope she gets a huge megaphone somewhere else.</span></p>
<blockquote data-width="500" data-dnt="true" readability="8.6926829268293" data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr" xml:lang="en">Joy Reid, who ridiculed white people for their tears, breaks down in tears over her show getting canceled. Karmic perfection here: <a href="https://t.co/yEdjpt4nOJ">pic.twitter.com/yEdjpt4nOJ</a></p>
<p wcount="5" data-sanitized-id="p_1_24" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) <a href="https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1894129209066356852?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2025</a></span></p>
</blockquote>


guid: https://www.unz.com/?post_type=item&amp;p=544455
title: Pro-Israel Think Tank WINEP Outed as ‘Dark Money’ Operation Driving US Wars, by Robert Inlakesh
author: ;Robert Inlakesh
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<div><img src="https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2048px-The_Washington_Institute_president_Martin_Gross_introduces_Secretary_of_Defense_Chuck_Hagel.jpg" data-sanitized-class="ff-og-image-inserted"></div><p wcount="76" data-sanitized-id="p_1_1" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The AIPAC-aligned Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), which often refers to itself simply as The Washington Institute, was recently outed as a “dark money” think tank for its lack of transparency on donors and is continuing to push the United States to engage in conflicts overseas to Israel’s benefit. Its case raises questions about how the Israel Lobby functions through think tanks across the board, shaping U.S. foreign policy behind closed doors.</span></p>
<p wcount="52" data-sanitized-id="p_1_2" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">WINEP has a long history of shaping U.S. foreign policy. It was deeply involved in the neoconservative push for regime change in Iraq, joining calls for the Clinton administration to topple Saddam Hussein as early as 1998. They also pushed for U.S. military intervention and helped justify the eventual invasion in 2003.</span></p>
<p wcount="64" data-sanitized-id="p_1_3" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">At the beginning of the year, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft <a title="https://quincyinst.org/research/big-ideas-and-big-money-think-tank-funding-in-america/#executive-summary'" href="https://quincyinst.org/research/big-ideas-and-big-money-think-tank-funding-in-america/#executive-summary'" rel="noreferrer noopener">unveiled</a> the “Think Tank Funding Tracker,” a one-of-a-kind project that examined the funding sources of the top 50 U.S. think tanks since 2019 and rated their transparency from 0 to 5. WINEP and 16 others—including the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD)—received a zero transparency rating, exposing its reliance on “dark money” contributions.</span></p>
<p wcount="126" data-sanitized-id="p_1_4" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">While WINEP <a title="https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/about/our-mission-history" href="https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/about/our-mission-history" rel="noreferrer noopener">claims</a> “to be funded exclusively by U.S. citizens” on its website, it does not publicly disclose its donor list. Its AIPAC roots were first exposed in 2006 by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer in “The London Review of Books,” where they described WINEP as an AIPAC cutout advancing Israel’s agenda under the guise of independent research. The pair <a title="https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/getFile.aspx?Id=209" href="https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/getFile.aspx?Id=209" rel="noreferrer noopener">wrote</a> at the time that “The Lobby created its own think tank in 1985, when Martin Indyk helped found WINEP. Although WINEP plays down its links to Israel and claims instead that it provides a “balanced and realistic” perspective on Middle East issues, this is not the case. In fact, WINEP is funded and run by individuals who are deeply committed to advancing Israel’s agenda.”</span></p>
<p wcount="58" data-sanitized-id="p_1_5" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">This claim that AIPAC created WINEP was later <a title="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/does-pbs-know-that-washin_b_533808" href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/does-pbs-know-that-washin_b_533808" rel="noreferrer noopener">corroborated</a> by former AIPAC official MJ Rosenberg, who wrote in HuffPost: “How do I know? I was in the room when AIPAC decided to establish WINEP.” The now-deceased WINEP co-founder, Martin Indyk, was also the head of the Saban Center for Middle East Studies, funded by Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban.</span></p>
<p wcount="76" data-sanitized-id="p_1_6" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Recent U.S. foreign policy developments have only strengthened WINEP’s influence. The Biden administration’s unwavering support for Israel’s war on Gaza, including a $14 billion emergency military aid package, aligns with WINEP’s long-standing push to ensure that U.S. military assistance to Israel remains untouchable. WINEP actively shaped public discourse as the war progressed, with Executive Director Robert Satloff praising Biden’s refusal to support an early ceasefire, calling it “correct and courageous.”</span></p>
<p wcount="85" data-sanitized-id="p_1_7" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">When House lawmakers convened hearings in late 2023 to attack the administration’s Iran policy, their rhetoric mirrored WINEP’s narratives, particularly opposition to any sanctions relief. Witnesses from WINEP-adjacent institutions like FDD and JINSA were brought in to reinforce the case for a more aggressive posture toward Iran. Meanwhile, WINEP continues to push for U.S. military leverage in post-Assad Syria, another key policy area where the Biden administration has quietly followed its recommendations by maintaining a military foothold and targeting Iranian assets with airstrikes.</span></p>
<p wcount="74" data-sanitized-id="p_1_8" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">WINEP’s revolving-door relationship with the U.S. government does little to shed its reputation for shaping policy. In May 2023, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan delivered a keynote address at WINEP’s annual Soref Symposium, praising Satloff’s “extraordinary work.” Sullivan’s participation wasn’t just symbolic—it reinforced WINEP’s position as an informal but essential policy hub. This is evident from the administration’s embrace of the Abraham Accords, another WINEP priority.</span></p>
<p wcount="98" data-sanitized-id="p_1_9" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Former WINEP fellow Dan Shapiro was appointed the State Department’s senior advisor for regional integration, carrying out the think tank’s long-standing vision for Arab normalization with Israel. WINEP is currently led by Michael Singh, Robert Satloff, Dennis Ross, and Dana Stroul. Stroul, who <a title="https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/experts/dana-stroul" href="https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/experts/dana-stroul" rel="noreferrer noopener">serves</a> as WINEP’s Research Director, returned to the position after serving as the Biden administration’s deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East from 2021 to 2024. During her tenure, she played a central role in Washington’s anti-Iran initiatives, the response to the Gaza war, and shaping U.S. Syria policy.</span></p>
<blockquote data-width="500" data-dnt="true" readability="10.60773480663" data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr" xml:lang="en">THROWBACK: Ex-Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for the Middle East Dana Stroul gloats that the US 'owns' the most hydrocarbon &amp; grain-rich one-third of Syria🇸🇾 and that the US will use it as leverage to pursue regime change</p>
<p wcount="13" data-sanitized-id="p_1_10" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The architect of Syria’s tragedy is the USA <a href="https://t.co/wjdqWQXkPB">pic.twitter.com/wjdqWQXkPB</a></span></p>
<p wcount="5" data-sanitized-id="p_1_11" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">— Afshin Rattansi (@afshinrattansi) <a href="https://twitter.com/afshinrattansi/status/1863641871802658889?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 2, 2024</a></span></p>
</blockquote>

<p wcount="98" data-sanitized-id="p_1_12" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Beyond WINEP, the broader issue of think tank influence is now facing increasing scrutiny. In 2023, lawmakers introduced the Think Tank Transparency Act, which requires policy organizations to disclose foreign government funding and contractual agreements. While WINEP does not receive direct funding from Israel, watchdogs have highlighted that its pro-Israel agenda is sustained through wealthy American donors closely linked to AIPAC. Using domestic contributions to advance a foreign policy agenda has enabled WINEP to operate without falling under the scrutiny of foreign lobbying laws, even as its “scholars” shape U.S. positions on Iran, Syria, and the Israel-Palestine conflict.</span></p>
<p wcount="75" data-sanitized-id="p_1_13" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Currently, the two primary issues on WINEP’s agenda are how to best leverage American influence to shape outcomes in post-Assad Syria and how to assure regime change in Iran. Indicative of the think tank’s influence is that not only was its hardline Syria strategy the exact model used by the U.S. to aid regime change in Damascus, but its chief researcher was taken on as a senior official by the previous administration.</span></p>
<p wcount="40" data-sanitized-id="p_1_14" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">As demonstrated by the Quincy Institute’s new report, the lack of transparency over who exactly finances the AIPAC lobby’s “cutout” think tank presents serious questions about who is actually shaping U.S. foreign policy and to whose benefit.</span></p>

link:
https://www.unz.com/article/pro-israel-think-tank-winep-outed-as-dark-money-operation-driving-us-wars/


guid: https://www.unz.com/?post_type=item&amp;p=544471
author: ;John Helmer
hash: �o�# �庖�ǻDs
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title:
Nothing’s Over Bar the Shouting — This Podcast Explains the Warfighting Limits of Trump, Starmer, Zelensky, by John Helmer

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<p wcount="42" data-sanitized-id="p_1_1" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Several hours before Vladimir Zelensky arrived at the Oval Office, Nima Alkhorshid led the discussion of each of this week’s negotiations on the Ukraine war by President Donald Trump, and by the only brain in the room, Vice President JD Vance.</span></p>
<p wcount="6" data-sanitized-id="p_1_2" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Click for the hour-long podcast <a title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCGtyGgi7Ig" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCGtyGgi7Ig">here</a>.</span></p>
<p wcount="29" data-sanitized-id="p_1_3" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Follow the entire Oval Office <a title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYtQ72mE8oU" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYtQ72mE8oU">press conference</a> between Trump and Zelensky. This is as revealing of Trump’s limitations in negotiations as it is in exposing Zelensky’s vulnerabilities.</span></p>
<p wcount="55" data-sanitized-id="p_1_4" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Note the pat which Vice President JD Vance reached out to give Trump in the last seconds of the session. That was the reassurance Vance knows Trump needs. As explained in the podcast, and also in this <a title="https://johnhelmer.net/trumps-incomprehension-thank-you-dear-donald/" href="https://johnhelmer.net/trumps-incomprehension-thank-you-dear-donald/">analysis</a>, French President Emmanuel Macron also understands and displayed during his visit to the White House on Monday.</span></p>
<p wcount="15" data-sanitized-id="p_1_5" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Quite another reassurance, without the hand pats, is understood in Moscow, as the podcast explains.</span></p>

link:
https://www.unz.com/article/nothings-over-bar-the-shouting-this-podcast-explains-the-warfighting-limits-of-trump-starmer-zelensky/


guid: https://www.unz.com/?post_type=item&amp;p=544473
title: The Incredible Vanishing Liberals, by Ted Rall
author: ;Ted Rall
link: https://www.unz.com/trall/the-incredible-vanishing-liberals/
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<div><img src="https://www.unz.com/wp-content/themes/unzSite/IMAGES/unz_large_logo.png" data-sanitized-class="ff-og-image-inserted"></div><p wcount="71" data-sanitized-id="p_1_1" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">For this essay, let’s not debate the pros and cons of our new old president. Detailing specific reasons that many Americans are upset with/scared of/annoyed by President Donald Trump and the Republican Party would be a distraction from a point that desperately needs to be made. Suffice it to say, millions of people are angry, disappointed and would prefer entirely different political policies and priorities out of Washington.</span></p>
<p wcount="25" data-sanitized-id="p_1_2" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">The fact that we should linger upon is this: Many, many liberals feel very, very impotent. And this should be a major cause of concern.</span></p>
<p wcount="33" data-sanitized-id="p_1_3" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">When Republicans celebrate their win by mocking their opponents, they’re whistling past the small-d democratic graveyard of history. Winning an election is good. Crushing your opponents’ political will to live is dangerous.</span></p>
<p wcount="93" data-sanitized-id="p_1_4" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">For liberals, there is a lot not to like about politics since Jan. 20. Trump has signed a blizzard of sweeping executive orders on myriad controversial issues. His administration is attempting a radical revamp of the relationship between the American people and their government, much of it carried out by a brash “break things, move fast” tech-bro billionaire. Given the high stakes and the polarizing nature of the issues involved, and that Trump’s approach is so radical, resistance should be expected from both Democratic politicians on high and street demonstrations from the grassroots.</span></p>
<p wcount="64" data-sanitized-id="p_1_5" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Instead, Democrats at all levels have been compliant and largely silent. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a centrist Democrat, complains: “(Congressional Democrats) are failing to do what is their fundamental responsibility constitutionally — to be a check.” Republicans barely control the Senate, yet all of Trump’s nominees have been approved. Democrats even voted unanimously to support a far-right neocon, Marco Rubio, as secretary of state.</span></p>
<p wcount="92" data-sanitized-id="p_1_6" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Activists have been passive. There have only been sporadic protest marches. Trump’s proposal to annex and ethnically cleanse Gaza, a would-be war crime, elicited little measurable reaction from the anti-imperialist Left, certainly no protests analogous in size to last year’s pro-Palestinian campus protests. Compared to the antiwar movement of the 1960s and similar demonstrations opposing Ronald Reagan, attendance at marches has been anemic. Seven out of 10 Democrats are tuning out political news. Liberal-leaning cable news networks CNN and MSNBC have seen their ratings plummet and are shaking up their lineups.</span></p>
<p wcount="33" data-sanitized-id="p_1_7" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Democratic donors, taking note of the disarray, are closing their checkbooks. “(Democrats) want us to spend money, and for what? For no message, no organization, no forward thinking,” a donor told The Hill.</span></p>
<p wcount="25" data-sanitized-id="p_1_8" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">When a substantial portion of a republic’s population believes there is nothing it can do to influence political leaders, the system is in trouble.</span></p>
<p wcount="89" data-sanitized-id="p_1_9" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">With Trump barely a month into his second term, history may record Democrats’ current beaten-down-dog mien as a momentary blip preceding a spurt of determined reenergization and a journey to recovery, reinvention and future victory. A devastating 1964 defeat left the GOP crestfallen and depressed. “Barry Goldwater not only lost the presidential election yesterday but the conservative cause as well. He has wrecked his party for a long time to come and is not even likely to control the wreckage,” James Reston wrote in The New York Times on Nov. 4, 1964.</span></p>
<p wcount="49" data-sanitized-id="p_1_10" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">He was wrong. Ray Bliss, chair of the Republican National Committee from 1965 to 1969, led the GOP out of the wilderness by patching up ideological divides and organizing at the local level. Nixon won in 1968 — barely — and in a landslide in 1972. Reagan shaped much of the way government looks today.</span></p>
<p wcount="122" data-sanitized-id="p_1_11" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">But Democrats don’t seem likely to pull off such a trick. As they say in 12-step programs, the first step is admitting you have a problem. The party is addicted to campaign contributions from corporations like Big Pharma and Big Tech who influence it against doing much to appeal to the working-class voters they need to win elections and who are migrating to Trump and the Republicans. But there’s no evidence they see that as a problem. Some top Democrats want to wean themselves off big corporate money by adopting Sen. Bernie Sanders’ proven small-contributor model, but the only suggestion we’ve heard from new Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin is that the party needs more and better messaging.</span></p>
<p wcount="79" data-sanitized-id="p_1_12" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">“We also need to give people a sense of who we are as Democrats, what we believe in and what we’re fighting for,” Martin said on Feb. 17. While Democrats say they oppose Trump, they don’t seem to believe in much at all. They’re not fighting, whether for or against anything. Don’t take my word for it. Listen to them: “The courts,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says, “are the first line of defense” against Trump.</span></p>
<p wcount="28" data-sanitized-id="p_1_13" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">What of the Senate, where Democrats hold seven more seats than needed to jam up legislation with filibusters? They’re abdicating their checks and balances to the judiciary.</span></p>
<p wcount="44" data-sanitized-id="p_1_14" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">If you’re a liberal voter, the ideological battlefield currently looks like the Ukrainians’ situation. You keep losing. You’re deploying the same old failed strategies and tactics. No new miracle weapons are coming. There’s no reason to think that anything will improve.</span></p>
<p wcount="14" data-sanitized-id="p_1_15" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Liberals see that there’s no hope. So they’re alienated and checked out.</span></p>
<p wcount="9" data-sanitized-id="p_1_16" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">So Trump runs wild and the streets remain empty.</span></p>
<p wcount="105" data-sanitized-id="p_1_17" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">If you’re conservative, the prospect of a Great Liberal Vanishing should spook you. In late-stage Rome, citizens got tired of politics and allowed themselves to be distracted by bread and circuses. The Republic slid into autocracy. German liberals disengaged from Weimar Republican politics as the Social Democratic Party, the dominant left-leaning party at the time, governed in a coalition with bourgeois parties who blocked attempts to address popular priorities like unemployment relief after the depression began in 1929. In our time, low voter turnout correlates with stagnant governance and populist takeovers — and U.S. elections begin with a lower turnout rate than many other countries.</span></p>
<p wcount="43" data-sanitized-id="p_1_18" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">A democratic republic can limp along, hollowed out, for a while. But the less people care about the system, the easier it is for a demagogue to step in and claim, “I alone can fix it.” By then, no one’s paying attention.</span></p>
<p wcount="22" data-sanitized-id="p_1_19" data-sanitized-class="container"><span data-sanitized-class="contents">Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis.</span></p>


