Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Towards a US-China War? The Creation of a Global Totalitarian System, A “One World Government”?

By William F. Engdahl

Global Research, August 11, 2020: If we step back from the details of daily headlines around the world and try to make sense of larger patterns, the dominant dynamic defining world geopolitics in the past three years or more is the appearance of a genuine irregular conflict between the two most formidable powers on the planet—The Peoples’ Republic of China and the United States of America. Increasingly it’s beginning to look as if some very dark global networks are orchestrating what looks to be an updated rerun of their 1939-1945 World War. Only this time the stakes are total, and aim at creation a universal global totalitarian system, what David Rockefeller once called a “one world government.” The powers that be periodically use war to gain major policy shifts.

On behalf of the Powers That Be (PTB), World War II was orchestrated by the circles of the City of London and of Wall Street to maneuver two great obstacles—Russia and Germany—to wage a war to the death against each other, in order that those Anglo-Saxon PTB could reorganize the world geopolitical chess board to their advantage. It largely succeeded, but for the small detail that after 1945, Wall Street and the Rockefeller brothers were determined that England play the junior partner to Washington. London and Washington then entered the period of their global domination known as the Cold War.

That Anglo-American global condominium ended, by design, in 1989 with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union by 1991. Around this time, with the onset of the Bill Clinton presidency in 1992, the next phase– financial and industrial globalization– was inaugurated. With that, began the hollowing out of the industrial base of not only the United States, but also of Germany and the EU. The cheap labor outsourcing enabled by the new WTO drove wages down and destroyed one industry after the next in the industrial West after the 1990s. It was a necessary step on the path to what G.H.W. Bush in 1990 called the New World Order. The next step would be destruction of national sovereignty everywhere. Here the USA was the major obstacle.

“A little help from our friends…”

For the PTB, who owe no allegiance to nations, only to their power which is across borders, the birth of the World Trade Organization and their bringing China in as a full member in 2001 was intended as the key next step. At that point the PTB facilitated in China the greatest industrial growth by any nation in history, possibly excepting Germany from 1871-1914 and USA after 1866. WTO membership allowed Western multinationals from Apple to Nike to KFC to Ford and VW to pour billions into China to make their products at dirt-cheap wage levels for re-export to the West.

One of the great mysteries of that China growth is the fact that China was allowed to become the “workshop of the world” after 2001, first in lower-skill industries such as textiles or toys, later in pharmaceuticals and most recently in electronics assembly and production. The mystery clears up when we look at the idea that the PTB and their financial houses, using China, want to weaken strong industrial powers, especially the United States, to push their global agenda. Brzezinski often wrote that the nation state was to be eliminated, as did his patron, David Rockefeller. By allowing China to become a rival to Washington in economy and increasingly in technology, they created the means to destroy the superpower hegemony of the US.

By the onset of the Presidency of Xi Jinping in 2012, China was an economic colossus second in weight only to the United States. Clearly this could never have happened–not under the eye of the same Anglo-American old families who launched the Opium Wars after 1840 to bring China to heel and open their economy to Western financial looting–unless the Anglo-Americans had wanted it.

The same British-owned bank involved in the China opium trade, Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC), founded by a Scotsman, Thomas Sutherland in 1865 in the then-British colony of Hong Kong, today is the largest non-Chinese bank in Hong Kong. HSBC has become so well-connected to China in recent years that it has since 2011 had as Board member and Deputy HSBC Chairman, Laura Cha. Cha was formerly Vice Chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, being the first person outside mainland China to join the Beijing Central Government of the People’s Republic of China at vice-ministerial rank. In other words the largest bank in the UK has a board member who was a member of the Chinese Communist Party and a China government official. China needed access to Western money and HSBC and other select banks such as JP MorganChase, Barclays, Goldman Sachs were clearly more than happy to assist.

“Socialism with Xi Jinping Characteristics…”

All told until 2012 when Xi took charge of the CCP in Beijing, China seemed to be willing to be a globalist “team player,” though with “Chinese characteristics.” However, in 2015 after little more than two years in office, Xi Jinping endorsed a comprehensive national industrial strategy, Made in China: 2025. China 2025 replaced an earlier Western globalist document that had been formulated with the World Bank and the USA, the China 2030 report under Robert Zoellick. That shift to a China strategy for global tech domination might well have triggered a decision by the globalist PTB that China could no longer be relied on to play by the rules of the globalists, but rather that the CCP under Xi were determined to make China the global leader in advanced industrial, AI and bio-technologies. A resurgent China nationalist global hegemony was not the idea of the New World Order gang.

China:2025 combined with Xi’s strong advocacy of the Belt Road Initiative for global infrastructure linking China by land and sea to all Eurasia and beyond, likely suggested to the globalists that the only solution to the prospect of their losing their power to a China global hegemon would ultimately be war, a war that would destroy both nationalist powers, USA AND China. This is my conclusion and there is much to suggest this is now taking place.

Tit for Tat

If so, it will most likely be far different from the military contest of World War II. The USA and most of the Western industrial economies have “conveniently” imposed the worst economic depression since the 1930’s as a bizarre response to an alleged virus originating in Wuhan and spreading to the world. Despite the fact that the death toll, even with vastly inflated statistics, is at the level of a severe annual influenza, the insistence of politicians and the corrupt WHO to impose draconian lockdown and economic disruption has crippled the remaining industrial base in the US and most of the EU.

The eruption of well-organized riots and vandalism under the banner of racial protests across the USA has brought America’s cities to a state in many cases of war zones resembling the cities of the 2013 Matt Damon and Jodie Foster film, Elysium. In this context, anti-Washington rhetoric from Beijing has taken on a sharp tone in their use of so-called “Wolf Diplomacy.”

Now after Washington closed the China Consulate in Houston and China the US Consulate in Chengdu, both sides have stepped up rhetoric. High tech companies are being banned in the US, military displays of force from the US in the South China Sea and waters near Taiwan are increasing tensions and rhetoric on both sides. The White House accuses the WHO of being an agent of Beijing, while China accuses the US of deliberately creating a deadly virus and bringing it to Wuhan. Chinese state media supports the explosion of violent protests across America under the banner of Black Lives Matter. Step-wise events are escalating dramatically. Many of the US self-styled Marxists leading the protests across US cities have ties to Beijing such as the Maoist-origin Revolutionary Communist Party, USA of Bob Avakian.

“Unrestricted Warfare”

Under these conditions, what kind of escalation is likely? In 1999 two colonels in the China PLA, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, published a book with the PLA Press titled Unrestricted Warfare. Qiao Liang was promoted to Major General in the PLA Air Force and became deputy secretary-general of the Council for National Security Policy Studies. The two updated their work in 2016. It gives a window on high-level China military strategy.

Reviewing published US military doctrine in the aftermath of the 1991 US Operation Desert Storm war against Iraq, the Chinese authors point out what they see as US over-dependence on brute military force and conventional military doctrine. They claim, “Observing, considering, and resolving problems from the point of view of technology is typical American thinking. Its advantages and disadvantages are both very apparent, just like the characters of Americans.” They add, “military threats are already often no longer the major factors affecting national security…these traditional factors are increasingly becoming more intertwined with grabbing resources, contending for markets, controlling capital, trade sanctions, and other economic factors, to the extent that they are even becoming secondary to these factors. They comprise a new pattern which threatens the political, economic and military security of a nation or nations… The two authors define the new form of warfare as, “encompassing the political, economic, diplomatic, cultural, and psychological spheres, in addition to the land, sea, air, space, and electronics spheres.”

They suggest China could use hacking into websites, targeting financial institutions, terrorism, using the media, and conducting urban warfare among the methods proposed. Recent revelations that Chinese entities pay millions in ad revenues to the New York Times and other mainstream USA media to voice China-positive views is one example. Similarly, maneuvering a Chinese national to head the US’ largest public pension fund, CalPERS, which poured billions into risky China stocks, or persuading the New York Stock Exchange to list dozens of China companies without requiring adherence to US accounting transparency increase US financial vulnerability are others.

This all suggests the form that a war between China and the US could take. It can be termed asymmetrical warfare or unrestricted war, where nothing that disrupts the enemy is off limits. Qiao has that, “the first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden.” There are no Geneva Conventions.

The two Beijing authors add this irregular warfare could include assaults on the political security, economic security, cultural security, and information security of the nation. The dependence of the US economy on China supply chains for everything from basic antibiotics to militarily-vital rare earth minerals is but one domain of vulnerability.

On its side, China is vulnerable to trade sanctions, financial disruption, bioterror attacks and oil embargoes to name a few. Some have suggested the recent locust plague and African Swine Fever devastation to China’s core food supplies, was not merely an act of nature. If not, then we are likely deep into an undeclared form of US-China unrestricted warfare. Could it be that the recent extreme floods along the China Yangtze River that threaten the giant Three Gorges Dam and have flooded Wuhan and other major China cities and devastated millions of acres of key cropland was not entirely seasonal?

A full unrestricted war of China and the USA would be more than a tragedy. It could be the end of civilization as we know it. Is this what characters such as Bill Gates and his superiors are trying to bring about? Do they plan to introduce their draconian dystopian “Reset” on the ashes of such a conflict?
___________
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

29 comments:

  1. Please take a look at this:

    https://louisproyect.org/2020/08/12/how-leftist-conspiracy-mongers-ended-up-on-the-side-of-the-barricade-as-the-alt-right/


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    1. Hm! What motivates this fella is a puzzle to me. Is he really a Commie? His commitment dates from the 60's when socialism looked like it could be the winning side. The Soviets had opened up a "missile gap", launched the world's first artificial satellite, exploded the world's biggest ever bomb, boasted, so it was claimed, that it would "bury" capitalism, the ChiComms had fought the US to a standstill in Korea, and with Soviet/Chinese-backing the Vietnamese Communists where proving the United States to be a "pitiful helpless giant" despite drafting over two million Americans to fight the VietCong.

      But for someone to remain a Communist 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and after the transformation of the leadership of the CPC into a billionaire oligarchy is difficult to understand. Unless, that is, one is a professional socialist, i.e., a US agent, FBI, CIA, whatever. keeping an eye on the subversives and doing propaganda for the New World Order. That would explain the venom directed at, for example, Off Guardian, a harmless enough outlet of minimal influence, devoted to humorously skewering the globalist Guardian.

      But why the attack on the Unz Review? Unz is pro-China and pushes the line that Covid19 was inflicted on China by the US (if so, a remarkable own goal, as it turns out), not exactly an anti-Communist position.

      Altogether, the man is an enigma t me. But I wonder what you think.

      Delete
  2. I read the article on the global research site, and the first thing that it stands out is that it opens with the discussion of the global elite secretly orchestrating the 1941-45 war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, who presumably otherwise would have gotten along just fine. No evidence is produced to support this, it is brought out as a generally accepted fact in support of the arguments in the rest of the article, none of which have anything to do with World War 2. If I was editing the article I would cut this out, it accomplishes nothing but undermining the rest of the argument.

    The heart of the argument seems to be that the concentration of the world's industrial production in China was a secret globalist plot to weaken China, so really the whole thing is demented.

    Now I think the COVID 19 scam has partially unveiled what is a secret global government encompassing at least the English speaking countries, and which may be world wide. We could see this from the coordinated worldwide lockdowns in March and April, even in areas not affected by the "virus", though it was partially walked back by varying the extent of the later partial re-opening. And the extent to which the People's Republic of China is part of this is an important question. But there is no way at present to determine this, and this article doesn't exactly help.

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    1. "the first thing that it stands out is that it opens with the discussion of the global elite secretly orchestrating the 1941-45 war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union .... If I was editing the article I would cut this out, it accomplishes nothing but undermining the rest of the argument."

      The argument is that there is a Anglo-US Money Power that seeks global dominance, so an Anglo-US plot to destroy other rivals for world dominance is relevant. And there is no doubt that the Soviets sought global dominance, that was the objective of the Soviet-funded Commintern, which engaged in Communist sabotage and subversion abroad. As for Hitler, his plan was to crush France, create an East European empire extending to the Ural Mountains. After that he would surely have turned on England and taken over the British Empire. Global dominance would then almost inevitably have followed, the US soon coming within reach of Werner von Braun's ballistic missiles.

      "The heart of the argument seems to be that the concentration of the world's industrial production in China was a secret globalist plot to weaken China" My understanding was that the industrialization of China was intended to destroy the industrial might of the US. That anyway has been the result.

      "Now I think the COVID 19 scam has partially unveiled what is a secret global government encompassing at least the English speaking countries, and which may be world wide."
      Covid paranoia is understandable, but where's the evidence that it serves the purpose of any globalist conspiracy?

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    2. I agree.

      I also went to the pdf of the Unrestricted Warfare paper cited by, and linked by, the article. I was not impressed. It is 278 pages long and I haven't read all of it, but what I did read was enough to see this isn't A-list material from the Chinese. It could be more "stirring the pot" smoke and mirrors from who knows whom, or precisely why.

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  3. "His commitment dates from the 60's when socialism looked like it could be the winning side."

    Yes, and that is why I change "unrepentant Marxist" to "Marxist who never ever learned one damned new thing."

    I think the man is a child, an innocent, and a naif. He has had a remarkably sheltered, and yes, privileged, life. (He's also an example of why, if you want to stay in touch, and consistently perceive and deal with reality, you stay far away from the private Eastern universities.)

    I followed him for a long while back during the "golden age of the internet" when he had hundreds of comments for each blog post.

    I started to realize he had stopped thinking and learning because of the way he reacted to anyone who disagreed, or criticized his work. He is venomous alright. Invariably he would attack their intelligence or sanity. He would shame, and he would ridicule. This may well be a reason for losing his audience. I wasn't the only one who saw his shaming of others as shameful for himself. You couldn't tell him that, either.

    His attack on Unz, Off Guardian, and others is based on his entirely shallow examination of them. He takes one glance and thinks he has them pegged. There's no nuance here. There's no subtlety or remembrance there is no thinking without it.

    Now for the first time, in this time of dire distress, I also wonder if he is even genuinely a Marxist. A Marxist would care about the material needs of the people, and that would include their health, certainly. It would, however, be more comprehensive than that, and more far sighted. Unemployment, as just one example (and I know you don't need me to give you examples, anyhow) is through the roof, at levels, I believe, higher than during the Great Depression. Proyect hasn't mentioned this, or any other indicator, at all. He is not concerned. He is not at all concerned with trying to be concrete, as Marx would say, in his analysis.

    I believe I could go through Marx and pick out at least a dozen theories Proyect would, if somehow kept blind they were from Marx,ridicule as "conspiracy theoristic". This is not even mentioning what I could come up with from Lenin. Whatever else, Lenin was a shrewd dude. His theory of WWI is "conspiracy theoristic" through and through. (His solid evidence for that conspiracy has never made it in any shape or form into American texts, even Marxist, so far as I know. Yet I know of it, and I'm not the most erudite man around. I believe so-called Marxists would be a bit more circumspect in their ridicule.)

    He probably censors, and without compunction. That's part of why I am going off on him here rather than there. I hate being deleted.

    Still, it blew my mind Proyect had been to Unz Review, commented on Hopkins and Whitney and so on. I'll give him that.

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    1. "Now for the first time, in this time of dire distress, I also wonder if he is even genuinely a Marxist. A Marxist would care about the material needs of the people ...

      The chief appeal of Marxism to its most ambitious adherents is the justification for dictatorship. In which connection, I note that Kamala Harris (America's next president but one?) is the child of a reputed Marxist (also the descendant of slave owners).

      And, as you note, Proyect is truly superficial. He ridicules those who compare social unrest in America today with that of the 1960's:

      "Whitney is beside himself with anger over BLM protests, which at the time he wrote an article (July 20), had become overwhelmingly peaceful. He told Unz’s fascist readers “These aren’t protests, this is political warfare the likes of which we haven’t seen since the 1960s.” Most people on the left have fond memories of the 60s, either from direct experience like me or from reading memoirs by people like Daniel Ellsberg."

      That is absurd. The 1960's was a decade of deep discontent in America driven by fear of the Soviets and opposition to the Vietnam war. Those with fond memories of the decade have presumably forgotten that it was the decade of the Tsar bomb, Russia's fusion bomb test of one thousand megatons (1961); the murder of one US President (1964); his successor's humiliating stand-down (1968) as anti-Vietnam-war protesters outside the White House chanted "LBJ, LBJ, how many kids did you killed today."

      The same year, the girl I was to marry arrived in Chicago from England — out-of-touch with the news after ten days of travel from England by sea and rail — and headed down Michigan Avenue in search of a YWCA hostel to the sound of gunfire during a protest demonstration during the Democratic National Convention. She sure thought Chicago was a lively place.

      And the decade ended with the Nixon administration, the bombing of Cambodia, heightened anti-war demonstrations, the Kent State University massacre (four anti-war protesters killed, others wounded by the National Guard) and ultimately the resignation of the President.

      Yeah, some happy decade.

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  4. I thought I had you blocked but the last two digits of your IP address changed. Now it is 107.77.205.23, the last time it was 107.77.205.72. So now I have it blocked as 107.77.205. The IP checker I use says that you are in Eugene, Oregon, not Fairbanks, Alaska. Anyhow, I have strict rules about using proxy servers. If you want to post comments here, you have to use the IP that was assigned to you by your provider, not some mother-fucking proxy server that are abused by trolls. I’ve yet to see anybody using one who is on the level. Bye-bye.

    Comment by louisproyect — August 14, 2020 @ 1:38 am

    See, Canspeccy, you are 100% on the money, as always. Louis Proyect blocked me after my initial comments. I thought he might, but I didn't know he had tried. Through a technical fluke, I was able to comment again. I thought this comment to him was particularly civil and open and deserved some kind of thoughtful response. Proyect did not respond, but blocked me a second time, as he describes above.

    I most certainly am in Fairbanks, Alaska and not Eugene, Oregon. What a loon. A dangerous loon at that. The thing is, these people cannot win elections, they cannot persuade, they cannot lead, at least in the noble and honorable sense of the word. They think they are the smart guys who know best for the rest and will find no problem using any dirty rotten trick to achieve the power to dictate that. It is unnerving to me, but I am getting used to it and I am much, much less threatened and fearful of them.

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    1. My impression is that most bloggers allow comment only in order to amplify their own message. Challenge the message with sufficient pertinacity and they will likely block you, as for example, Unz has on several occasions personally disappeared some of my comments on his site.

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  5. Yeah, and to compose a complete list of shits hitting the fan during the 60's would require a considerable period of time. It is not worth doing because we both know what the 60's were.

    By describing the 60's as happy, Proyect is placing himself within the sheltered, privileged, out of touch context I have described for him. What is he? Buddha the prince before he left the confines of his palace? Or a big, big baby, shaking his little rattle and calling it thinking?

    Note Proyect confirms Unz is banned from Facebook, something which troubled and hurt Unz. (I completely sympathize with Unz. I know that would hurt. I also know it is deeply wrong and a frightening phenomenon.) He believes Unz deserves this, doesn't question Facebook's (the guy is a Marxist? Does he not understand Facebook is a highly profitable privately owned (through shareholders of the corporation)) right to act as censor... I can't go on here. What struck me is Proyect believes Unz deserves it because Unz is a "white supremacist", a label Unz does not in my opinion deserve. The way this works is anyone Proyect or these others tag arbitrarily "white supremacist" can, if they get away with this, be censored with impunity. It can be the cudgel by which they drive and deprive a vital political segment of voice.

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    1. Merely because FB is a for profit venture, does not mean that the owners are without a a point of view they wish to promote. It seems only natural, therefore, that they would rubbish people like Unz who allow the expression of views that FB's owners wish to suppress. What surprises me about FB is that they apparently engage in censorship, meaning that they edit their content and are thus performing the function of a publisher, yet they are apparently immune to prosecution for libel. But others may have a better idea than I have concerning the relevant legal issues.

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  6. I am an Unz reader on occasion, though I no longer comment. So I am thereby a fascist? Hmm. Proyect and his ilk throw that fascist accusation irresponsibly. Because the guy is so childish,there is something disarming about him. Nevertheless, if he called me a fascist to my face, I'd bust his jaw right then and there. That'd be stupid and costly, not worth it. Yet a guy can only be expected to take so much.

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    1. "I am an Unz reader on occasion, though I no longer comment. So I am thereby a fascist?"

      Obviously not. One might, after all comment at Unz.com in order to condemn the fascist leanings of some Unz authors and commenters.

      For example the writings of Ron Unz himself, who has been described by the ADL as a anti-Semite (a ridiculous term for a Jew hater), which seems a reasonable contention on the basis not only of what Unz has himself written, but the anti-Jewish comments he allows to appear on his site.

      I am not, incidentally, saying that Jews are beyond criticism. In the case of some individuals and organization, I would say far from it. But the kind of blanket condemnation that is frequently expressed on the Unz site seems clear evidence of prejudice.

      Moreover, as an apparent admirer of Hitler with a contempt for his most eloquent adversary, Winston Churchill (of whose vast, Nobel Prize winning literary output Unz seems entirely unaware), there does seem reason to suppose that Unz is either a Fascist or someone who seeks to encourage Fascists to participate in discussion at his site.

      This impression is reinforced by the very frequent expression by commenters at Unz, of contempt for black Americans and black people in general, despite the fact that without African slaves the American Republic would never have been successfully founded.

      It is these features of the Unz Review that fascinate me. I am continually drawn back in the hope of grasping What the Hell is it about?

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    2. I think you may have been on the right track when you speculated a CIA connection.

      I also think you may have a point about Louis Proyect having the same.

      I went to a link (supplied by Louis Proyect, remarkably) to a CJ Hopkins article about him getting the boot from Counter Punch, his former outlet, and a place where Louis Proyect also contributes. Proyect had something to do with CJ's ouster. CJ notes Louis Proyect, while not an editor at Counter Punch exercises a great influence there. CJ says he wonders why that is.

      https://consentfactory.org/2018/09/29/how-to-maliciously-smear-your-critics-and-not-get-away-with-it/comment-page-1/#comments

      I like C.J.'s writing. I find him witty and to the point. I also thought the comments his article drew were many times outright brilliant.

      In the comments, more than one person takes up the question of "creepy" Louis Proyect and how it can be he exercises such great influence both in "Marxist" and "Leftist" circles and at Counter Punch. There is almost a consensus Proyect is connected.(Somehow. No one provides direct evidence or details.)

      The article was from 2018 and most of the comments followed shortly after its publication. There was one fairly recent comment. I wrote a comment because I wanted to inform C.J. he's being smeared yet again, but unfortunately I didn't save it on my computer-- and it vanished into the ether when I pushed publish. I believe this is because I had gone to the site from Proyect's where I am blocked and so somehow I am also blocked at sites linked from Proyect.

      The CIA's presence in media, cinema, and academia is much more widespread than commonly perceived.

      I remember a story Jesse Ventura told about a meeting he had been summoned to attend shortly after being elected governor of Minnesota in 1998. He went to a large conference room in the Capitol, I believe it was in the basement, where thirty or forty or so people were seated around a square of conference tables. These were CIA. Ventura remarked at how there were people there from many walks of life and whom one would never guess had a CIA connection. He said, "You're outside your jurisdiction." (In 1998 I might have said that, too.) Later, Ventura was asking a friend what that was all about. The friend said, "You surprised them. They really didn't think you had a chance of winning."

      If Proyect had been in the fray back in the sixties, there's no way he'd have rosy-colored glasses on. He's a fake.

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    3. I also wanted to add: I don't believe identifying an Unz's underlying ideological orientation is going to be the clue to what's going on. If the purpose of the site is to monitor and somehow quantify anything outside the dominant narrative, on the left, on the right, or just plain more perceptive than is allowed, this is best served by having a diversity of opinions from the columnists and what appear to be contradictory points of view and opinions from Unz himself.

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  7. One of the interesting things I've learned is Ron Unz donates considerable amounts of money to some surprising choices of organizations. He has donated at least $75K to Counter Punch. This is surprising in both directions-- that he would give and they would accept. Here he is giving a big chunk of change to an organization which calls him a fascist and a Nazi. If Unz is in fact aligned with them ideologically, that would explain his opinions on the virus and China's response. If Unz has some sort of understanding with them, their calling him a fascist and a Nazi could have a tactical advantage for both. It would for one thing disguise their alliance and the common cause underlying the alliance. Anyway, it is damned interesting.

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    1. "He has donated at least $75K to Counter Punch. ... Here he is giving a big chunk of change to an organization which calls him a fascist and a Nazi."

      Yes, that is interesting. It indicates that Ron Unz seeks to be identified as a Fascist, pro-Nazi, white supremacist, anti-Semite. Why? Presumably to make the Unz Review a magnet for people of the same ilk. As a Jew, this he can do without paying much if anything in the way of penalty. But for what reason?

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  8. 1.
    "Between 2007 and 2015 the Unz Foundation gave $185,000 to the far-left Counterpunch magazine and $80,000 to Mondoweiss, an explicitly left-wing, anti-Israel publication." --https://www.influencewatch.org/person/ron-unz/

    "Watson, Michael. “The Far-Left’s Alt-Right Friend.” Capital Research Center. August 23, 2019. Accessed October 28, 2019. https://capitalresearch.org/article/the-far-lefts-alt-right-friend/"

    2.
    "The New Republic reported Unz was a donor to right-of-center and libertarian public policy organizations the early 1990s, such as the Manhattan Institute and the Reason Foundation."https://www.influencewatch.org/person/ron-unz/ (This is the same link as item #1

    and,

    3.
    "This Man Controls California
    Ron Unz's Improbable Assault on the Powers That Be in California
    BY MATTHEW MILLER • NEW REPUBLIC • JULY 19, 1999"

    --http://www.onenation.org/opinion/this-man-controls-california/

    The above article, though over twenty years old, is a fascinating sketch of Ron Unz. He's an eccentric-- in fact, downright strange. At 37 and a multi-millionaire, he was eating half his meals at Burger King, liked listening to Neil Diamond music on a Walkman, and lived alone in a house almost devoid of furniture.

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    1. Thanks for that link. Clearly Ron Unz has a powerful urge to change the world. Some of his impulses I'd support. But there are times he seems to be playing a double game. For instance, his proposal a year or so back for a massive increase in the minimum wage which, far from aiding low paid workers, would surely if enacted have resulted in massive job losses, as low-skilled American workers lost jobs to illegal immigrants flooding into the black economy. What that his intention, or is he an economic ignoramus?

      Overall, the main thrust of his political initiatives seem to be globalist. Making illegal immigrants a burden on the American taxpaper, for example, and his desire for greater numbers of H1b visa immigrants, who by lowering wages and reducing opportunities for American-trained tech workers, undercuts STEM education in America.

      But his position on economic issues seem to have no connection with his bizarre promotion by way of the Unz Review of negrophobia, Anglophobia and anti-Semitism. Is that just the expression of personal prejudice, or does it serve some other purpose? As far as I can see, there is no way to know.

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  9. It was also fascinating to see he has a degree in theoretical physics from Harvard University.

    I had often noted any time Unz attempted to use statistics to argue one of his positions, it was a botched effort. He appears to have a statistical software package such as SAS or something else which makes it easy to plug numbers in without knowing what you are doing. I didn't find it hard to believe that was the case for a former software engineer, but for a scientist? Very odd.

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    1. You'd think someone who made a bundle writing software for packaging mortgages according to risk and return would understand stats. But that neither Ron nor anyone else in the business did, presumably explains the financial meltdown of 2008.

      But as a scientist, Unz seems not to have advanced far. He wrote a couple of non-statistical papers on Kaluza-Klein Theories while a grad student at Stanford, but neither has been much cited (less indeed than my graduate studies publications) and soon turned to a more rewarding career.

      As for SAS, yes, at one time everyone seemed to use it. In the days before the micr0-computer, a senior colleague of mine managed to misprogram SAS in such a way that it burned through ten thousand dollars worth of mainframe time in a futile loop.

      I preferred to design experiments that gave clear cut results. As one professor of statistics remarked concerning experiments in forest management, if you look at the hillside and can see the effect, you don't need statistics. Now that it has been shown that most scientists misuse statistics, I feel vindicated in my approach.

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  10. My comment vanished. I was thanking you for entertaining these speculations.

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  11. Philip Giraldi is ex-CIA:

    "Philip Giraldi (born c. 1946) is an American columnist, commentator and security consultant. He is the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a role he has held since 2010. A Ph.D holder and multilingual, he was previously employed as an intelligence officer for the CIA, before transitioning to private consulting."

    "Girardi's 18-year stint with the Central Intelligence Agency focused on counter-terrorism efforts. He spent time serving in numerous European and Middle Eastern theaters, including an appointment as the deputy base chief for the field office in Istanbul in the late nineteen-eighties.[2][3] From 1989-1992 he was designated as the agency's senior officer for Olympic Games support, assuming the title of Chief of Base for the Barcelona summer Olympics."

    "Since 2010, Giraldi has served as the executive director of the Council for the National Interest, a non-profit political group that purports to provide independent analysis of U.S./Middle-Eastern policy, however, critics of the group perceive an anti-Israel agenda. He is also the national security editor for The Unz Review, a webzine described by the Anti-Defamation League as "a forum for writers who demonize Israel." The foundation of Ron Unz has made grants to Giraldi."

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Giraldi

    --

    Some say there is no such thing as "ex-CIA". No one ever really leaves "The Company."

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  12. I don't see anyway to get firm handle on Ron Unz or the Unz Review. With significant lump sums of money being paid by Unz to the likes of Philip Giraldi of the CIA (When I referred to Giraldi as CIA in a comment on one of his Unz Review articles, the comment was not refuted, merely deleted), political operative Paul Craig Roberts, it is natural to suppose there exists a relationship between Unz and these authors other than the usual publisher/author relationship.

    Arguably, these people provide value by giving the Unz Review a patina of professional journalism that persuades the typical Guardian, Economist, Time Mag. reader that they are getting an insider's view of the world instead of just a load of pontifical piffle (cf Giraldi's latest twaddle telling you absolutely nothing whatever about the Beirut blast).

    What is more puzzling about the review is the mass of negrophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-Anglo/American drivel about race, IQ and Jews, plus the clear tilt in favor of Communist China.

    So is it some kind of flypaper, to identify certain types of citizen for further scrutiny by one of America's numerous and seemingly quite useless and misnamed "intelligence" agencies?

    The only obvious alternative is to suppose that Ron Unz, the most intelligent man in the world if his self-reported IQ of 214 is correct -- indeed, one in a trillion, the most intelligent man ever likely to walk this Earth -- is just a crackpot. That could be. Intelligence and nuttiness are rarely far apart.

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  13. Another wonderfully incompetent propaganda piece over at the Unz Review by another anti-Semitic (ostensibly) Jew named Larry Romanoff:

    "In 1940, these European Zionist and media owners (hiding behind the stage-set of the UK government) initiated what they called an “anger campaign” with the stated cause of “instilling personal hatred against the German people and Germany” ...
    The anti-German hysteria became so severe that King George V had to change his German name of ‘Saxe-Coburg’ to ‘Windsor’ ..."


    LOL. In fact, by 1940, George V had been dead five years. But then trivial blunders hardly matter when the entire narrative is propagandistic trash*.

    *The British Royal family actually adopted the name Windsor not in 1940, but 23 years earlier, in 1917.

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  14. Yeah, it is so damned fascinating. The current royals, descended from the so-called Hanoverian monarchs, as they are sometimes known, are "German", not "English", whatever it is "German" or "English" means.

    The royals had whipped up anti-German hysteria in England through extensive propaganda campaigns, yet for a time failed to realize their Germanic origins were obvious to all knowing the name "Saxe-Coburg" is a "German" name. Windsor feels more "English" though to some extent the very concept of "English" is thought to be synonymous with "anglo-saxon" and that means a mixture decidedly impure between the two.

    I once had a weird argument with a "German" guy I admire and like, about Handel. The "German" guy had been in Hitler youth, but after being orphaned by WWII, ended up in NYC. He overcame all the poison of Hitler youth more than anyone I ever knew, but insisted Handel was a terrible composer who never wrote a single note of music.

    Handel, this quintessential English composer, was born in Hanover, "Germany". My "German" friend did not know this.

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    1. Although born in Hanover, Germany, Handel studied in Italy, then migrated to England in the hope of receiving the patronage of the newly appointed Hanoverian monarch, George the First. He was later naturalized as a English citizen by an act of Parliament.

      To say Handel was a terrible composer seems an overstatement. But on a level with JSB or Mozart? Hardly.

      Handel achieved enormous fame in England chiefly as the founder of a great institution: Handel's Messiah. Although first performed in Belfast, Ireland, the Messiah was subsequently performed in London every Christmas, as a benefit concert in aid of the newly founded children's hospital.

      Today, The Messiah is still performed at the Foundling Hospital. And because the English have a great love of choral music, it is now performed before Christmas throughout the English world, and must be among the most popular musical events the world has ever known.

      Still, beside the Messiah, what of Handel does anyone listen to now? The Water Music is nice enough, likewise the Fireworks Suite -- both commissions from King George -- but hardly profound? As for the rest of Handel's works, who listens to them, or would want to?

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    2. I have Handel's The Concerti Grossi Opp. 3 & 6 performed by La Grande Ecurie Et La Chambre Du Roy, conducted by Jean-Claude Malgoire, of which I am inordinately fond. I would even say it is one of my favorite pieces of music.

      You taught me a lot about Handel. I had always assumed he'd been invited to England by King George I.

      "-- is just a crackpot. That could be. Intelligence and nuttiness are rarely far apart."

      The phenomena of techies entering into politics and having vast influence in the public realm is one I find remarkable. They would never win elections, and they are not "leaders". No one in their right mind would follow a Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, or Jeff Bezos into battle. There is something way off in these men, and nearly all recognize it.

      It was very interesting to see Ron Unz initially popped into the spotlight through his seizing upon the possibilities of modern technology to influence people politically. (That one article compared Unz to Matt Drudge.) His strategies were brilliant. However, Unz's attempt to unseat Pete Wilson resulted with him in a three-way tie for tenth place.

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