Unicorns, Cupcakes and Puppies

Look at a map of China and see how big it is and where it is. Now remember that China has more people than any other nation. For decades they have been the world’s factory, making things and earning piles of money. They used to be a manufacturing powerhouse (using all those bodies for labor), but they were considered short on design capability and creativity, the norm being the more advanced countries would tell them what to build. The dragon nation has been catching up in creativity and science.

They have also been modernizing in terms of quality. Much of their fortunes were made by cutting corners and slashing costs, so as a result many of their products were extremely shoddy, laughably so on the world market’s stage. (Don’t get me started on instruction manuals in “English” written by Chinese.) Asian competition compelled China to increase quality, an inexorable economic force, and bottomless coffers of government cash have enabled the rapid advance of Chinese research and manufacturing, which are now world-class.

They have also been building up and modernizing their military, making advances in their navy, air force and army — who has the most soldiers in the world? — plus their space-based capabilities are stronger, involving satellites, communications and improved electronic warfare. They have become masters of internet management, disinformation and cultural control. Embedded in god-only-knows how much of the world’s telecomms  hardware and software is Chinese-made equipment used to listen in. They are capable if not menacing, and they play the long game. They could probably buy much of Asia, but taking land and command of the nearby seas — seas through which much of the world’s trade is transported — by force is another option. Communist Party leaders want China to be dominant in the future, dominant as a people, as opposed to most greedy leaders nowadays who hunger for dominance not as a people but by specific people, namely themselves.

From all that manufacturing wealth they are in many ways a kind of international bank, loaning cash outright to neighboring Asian countries or in Africa, thereby gaining advantage. Also, they will offer to build mega-infrastructure projects in foreign countries using Chinese companies and financing, but with many geopolitical strings attached. A strategic intangible is that China has a historical chip on its shoulder. The proud ‘Goliath’ China had been bested by the much smaller ‘David’ of Japan, left miserably ashamed in the dirt. China feels like it has been slighted by history and deserves more, more respect, more power, more everything.

Look at Europe, and consider that it’s about to be ripped apart by the United Kingdom’s self-inflicted amputation — a limb severed with a hacksaw — from the European Union of prosperous countries such as Germany, France and Holland. This team of European nations, also including Austria, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and more than a dozen others, had not only built a very successful trade federation of sorts, but also a defensive arrangement. This coalition made it more difficult for an outsider to be aggressive, since the others on the team had promised to help fight back if one of their number were attacked.

The United Kingdom is about to be led by the lad Boris Johnson, who is as egotistical and incompetent as Donald Trump, and as the UK tears itself off from the EU, there will be considerable turmoil and chaos, crashing markets and currencies, and plunging the former Great Britain into a status far less great. All of Europe will be dragged down, will suffer. Hardship will inflame nationalist passions and stability will dissolve. As Europe convulses, predators will seize the opportunity, wolves plucking ailing sheep from the herd. Russia hungers for its Soviet days of power and influence — much like China hungers for its former glory — and Vladimir Putin is the smartest and greediest direwolf among that species, more deadly than anything found in Siberia. Putin wants more of Europe and the Arctic, but while it might not be able to buy it like China could, Russia also has the option to take what it wants by force and/or political maneuvering. (Where have the greatest chess players come from? Russia.)

Here in the United States we are anything but united, led by a racial arsonist madman whose best friend is an enchanted mirror that tells him he is greater and more wonderful than he really is. Trump is an empty black hole of narcissism and insecurity, craving attention and adoration constantly to be shoveled in, in spite of the fact that the hole can never be filled. Loathsome and disgusting in every way, devoid of human sentiments such as empathy or shame, using truth as a malleable tool and tweets as weapons, he has drugged millions of Americans into thinking he is a saint. These GOPedophiles somehow think he’s a saint, in spite of his incompetence, his hatred, racism, bigotry and misogyny, his ignorance, and the sneering behavior of a 7th grade schoolyard bully. He remains in power because he uses the White House as a privileged filling station for the wealthy, filling the tanks of the titanic armored black SUVs that are corporate America. In order to make more money, these corporations flash a credit card (their Trump card) and suddenly they can mine national parks, drill for oil or gas anywhere they damn please, dump corrosive chemical effluents into lakes and rivers, and kill any endangered species that gets in their way.

The health of the air, water and land — and the living creatures found there — are of no consequence, problems only for the little people. “We the people” are the little people who suffer from this assault on our environment. We are also under assault from among ourselves because we haven’t evolved our thinking enough to understand that there is only one race of people, and that is Earthlings; there exists no basis for a ranking system of human beings based on skin color, in spite of what the racist/white supremacist morons think; we are all the same sentient bags of meat.

China, if you will recall, has more of these sentient bags of meat than any other country, and meat bags need food and water, plus a little air so that it can marinate. The Chinese will grow in number, and like locusts will take over territory, regardless of existential constructs such as international borders. Like locusts they will consume scarce resources like water, food and rare earth elements. Their military will guard them and protect them, these insatiable creatures inhaling earthly cultures and life like the Borg on Star Trek consumed planets.

Europe and the Americas will erupt in civil and uncivil wars, suffering due to economic decline adding fear to countries tearing themselves apart internally by the cancerous forces of racism and nationalism, as if throwing themselves into the cannibal’s pot to be eaten. China and Russia, the superpowers of the future, will expand as the United States, and former Asian and European nations all fade into obscurity. Africa will suffer further, even while it becomes hotter and less habitable.

Short-term-focused greedy bastards shun the climate scientists, global warming burns the forests, throw more crap into the atmosphere and melts the ice that helped to keep the planet alive, and the remaining land and the people on it will cook until the fires are put out by the rising oceans. The wealthy will think they’re safe in the obscenely expensive fantasy bubbles they will construct, until math catches up with them.

I’ll be dead by then, thank god. But as for right now, the next twenty-five or so years for those unlucky enough to not be dead will be dreadful.

“Good night, Mrs Calabash.”

The Perils of Butina

The Russians are expert in gathering and implementing intelligence. Masters of manipulation. Most of history’s greatest chess champions came from Russia; does that suggest something? They can even transform vulnerable Americans into unwitting Russian spies, or if not “spies,” carefully crafted pipelines of info known as “intelligence assets.”  Often these assets, these people, are identified as having weaknesses (gambling, kinky sex, need for flattery) that could be exploited, a future chess piece that does not even know they are part of this pipeline, delivering knowledge that Russians see value in, even if the duped American does not. Some Americans are overly proud that they are too smart to become duped by Russians…

Not enough is said about Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin’s past as a spy. He grew up in the KGB, Russia’s infinitely assiduous national security force, where his specialty was counter-intelligence. As the tumult of East Germany and then the Russian coup of ’91 shook the ground, he shifted into politics, hitching his wagon to winners, which led to Moscow. There he rose in power via escalating presidential staff positions, and then in ’98 became director of the FSB, the KGB’s spawn.

He became Russia’s president on the last day of 1999, and immediately decreed that his successor would not be prosecuted for corruption charges. (He is nicely attuned to Trump, as you can see.) Much of Mother Russia’s vast oil, gas and mineral resources were looted by cronies of Moscow’s powerful, and there’s no doubt Putin’s own bank accounts expanded. The details of those secrets, similar to the perceived protection of Trump’s financial secrets, are probably secured deep within the fortress by the Moskva River in the Kremlin. He has been president for twenty years and runs the largest country in the world with a very sure and aggressive hand. Putin looks at the world map like the classic Hasbro board game Risk, and he has been successful in building his empire in Europe and elsewhere. He is always watching, thinking, planning, maneuvering. After all his experience (and accompli$hment) he is basically a spy, one who likes to be in charge. We need to look into Trump’s taxes — we must follow the money — to learn more of the extent of Putin’s influence over the patsy sitting at the poker table.