I think Jacques Baud nails it!!

This is the key part...



"Israel has become a liability" (to the West) ~~Jacques Baud.

Once you finish hearing this segment, go back and listen to Jacques Baud's entire talk from the beginning. You will be rewarded with what is arguably profound insight.

If indeed Israel became a liability to the West, following the events of October 7th, 2023, then Hamas rolled a 7 or 11 on that critical "throw of the dice":



...And a postscript, of sorts on Iran.

The Unfolding Middle East War

Alastair W. Crooke CMG is a former British diplomat, and was a ranking figure in both British intelligence (MI6) and the European Union. Historically, MI6 and the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States have worked in close collaboration: "The close ties between the CIA and British MI6 were evident in Iran where CIA coup master Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., worked closely with MI6 to coordinate the overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh, who had tried to nationalize Iran’s oil industry." He expounds on the current unfolding Middle East War.



If the above video is taken down, you can access the audio of the interview with Alastair W. Crooke HERE.

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...But wait a minute, haven't we been here before?

Trump has backed himself into a corner. The self-imagined dealmaker sincerely believed that by applying economic pressure on Iran, backed up with the threat of force, the Iranian government would come to the negotiation table and agree to a nuclear deal that denied it everything it had achieved through diplomacy with the Obama administration. Trump believed he could bully America’s allies in Europe to go along with him. And, in the end, when he asked his military leaders to provide him with options to forcefully compel Iran to bend to his will, Trump was told that nothing short of an all-out war, involving more than 500,000 troops, could provide the outcome he sought, and even then only at great cost. Trump had run on a platform that promised an end to costly wars of choice in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. If he pulled the trigger on Iran, his chances of reelection in 2020 would be all but eliminated.

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As a way of widening the historical context to this war, it is important to note that said conflict transcends any particular US administration. As General Wesley Clark once admitted in public, this war turns out to be merely the latest in a string of seven planned Middle Eastern wars since the ill-fated invasion of Iraq.

Instead of giving a comprehensive history of the lead-up to the current Iran war, suffice it to say that around three years ago, the stage was being set. On 14 July 2022, then US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid signed a document called the Jerusalem US-Israel Strategic Partnership Joint Declaration, indicating the US would use all of its “national power” to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. I would furthermore argue that additional events underlay and eventually accentuated the urgency for the USA to "take down" Iran.

Around the same time the US-Israeli Joint Declaration was being signed in Jerusalem, Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to Tehran for a summit with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader. According to analyst Patrick Lawrence,

...the centerpiece of the occasion was a simultaneous memorandum of understanding signed by the National Iranian Oil Company and Gazprom. In an agreement worth $40 billion, the Russian energy supplier is to assist on the technology side as Iran develops two gas fields and six oil fields. Further out, this is part of a long-in-the-making project that will connect Russia, Iran, and India by sea, road, rail, and, eventually, a very significant Iran–to–India gas pipeline.

It is noteworthy that by this time China had already signed a 25–year, hundreds of billions dollar agreement with Iran which included tech transfer, infrastructure development, oil sales, and so on — that had been years in gestation. Needless to say, the prospect of Eurasian integration struck terror into the heart of the United States:

The [International North-South Transport Corridor] INSTC was announced back in the early 2000s, but progress was slow until recently when the West’s actions put it into overdrive. The sanctioning of Moscow and Tehran and the severing of Europe from Russian energy created the incentive to accelerate investments by key stakeholders. The authorities in Tehran realize their centrality on the India-Russia trade route, and considering that India’s imports from Russia quadrupled last year, one can deduct the potential upside for Iran. With an investment boost from Russia, Tehran has been trying to speed up the completion of improved railway networks that will connect to the existing railways of Russia and Azerbaijan and Chabahar Port in southeastern Iran.

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Postscript

So what are we to make of this new Middle East War? As I (and others) have stated before, this new phase of jingoism accompanied by rank xenophobia we are experiencing in the West is part and parcel of a declining US empire:

There is a certain cadence to decline, a rhythm of arrogance and desperation, of miscalculation and delusion. The late-stage empire, unmoored from reality yet clinging to myths of its own indispensability, lashes out at perceived threats not because they are real, but because it cannot conceive of a world in which it is no longer the gravitational centre of history. In this way, Russophobia and Sinophobia function not merely as ideological constructs, but as symptoms of systemic decay, the fever dreams of a civilisation struggling to process its own obsolescence.

Unfortunately, the US empire doesn't seem to want to go quietly into the night. Hopefully, Iran's preparations over the years for this current conflict will help it emerge victorious.

Disjointed Musings about my First Decade of Travel to China

Wow! I can't believe it has been just over ten years since I first traveled to China. My first trip was in 2014: On 20 August, I presented a research paper at the China Goes Global Conference at Jiaotong University in Shanghai. Following the conference, I promptly went on a tour to all the typical tourist hotspots one visits on a first trip to that wonderful country. That is me (in the back with a black cap with red lettering) surrounded by a fine group of multinational tourists prior to the customary trek up the Great Wall.

The next photo was taken of me standing next to Mao Zedong at Tiananmen Gate.

One very interesting albeit minor occurrence oddly (or perhaps not) remains engraved in my mind although it had virtually little or nothing to do with my tour, or with China at all. This merits a brief digression. Those who follow major geopolitical events of this century may notice the coincidence of the year of my visit to China with the "Maidan Revolution" which took place in Ukraine (The Maidan coup had occurred several months earlier in February). Said coup unleashed a series of events that included the Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, and marked the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which continues to this day.

Throughout my entire touristic journey in China, I was closely following the events unfolding in Ukraine as best I could (I was particularly pleased that I could access the online blog of the late United States Army officer and private intelligence analyst, and author, Col.Walter Patrick "Pat" Lang, Jr.. On one occasion our group was travelling on the tour-bus through Beijing and the topic of the Ukraine conflict came up. I was suprised by how our Chinese tourguide (a fine young fellow with an inquisitive mind) had accepted without questioning the western narrative of (largely) misinformation regarding Russia's alleged "actions" in the Ukraine conflict. When his words contradicted the authoritative analysis I had read of Col. Lang and others, I interrupted and corrected him. Astonished at how I came up with information that contradicted his own, he naturally asked me for the source and I responded (to his further amazement) that Col. Lang was a graduate of:

...the U.S. Army War College, the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and the Armed Forces Staff College. He ... [was] a decorated veteran of several of the United States' overseas conflicts. During the Vietnam War, he served in the U.S. Army Special Forces and Military Intelligence. He was trained and educated as a specialist in the Middle East and served in that region for many years. He was the first professor of Arabic at the United States Military Academy,...

My intrigued Chinese tourguide asked for more information and I immediatedly provided him with the URLs for several entries to Col. Lang's blog, including the background to NATO expansion, the devious role and origins of the National Endowment for Democracy, the 'dark' origins of influential West Ukrainian nationalists, and a contrast between the opinions of propagandists and actual scholars, among others.

Now here is an interesting detail I always hark back to: In those days, Col. Lang had a blog app that highlighted the geographic location of people accessing his blog entries (via little dots of light on a world map) utilizing visitor tracking widgets and map integrations. When I first entered China, I noticed there were no "dots of light" within Chinese territory on Col. Lang's blog app (except one single dot of light corresponding to me!), which meant that nobody in China knew who Col. Lang was or accessed his blog. Most of his readers were either from Europe, the Americas or the Middle East (and Japan). HOWEVER, in the ensuing days after I gave my Chinese tourguide the abovementioned URL's, there suddenly appeared half a dozen highlights from Beijing, Shanghai and other major cities in China!! I can only surmise that my inquisitive tourguide had spread the word far and wide (knowingly or unknowingly), and that there was a growing interest in a different (and authoritative) depiction of the Ukraine conflict within China.

End of my digression!

My last trip to China was in December of 2024. There had been a number of other excursions previous to that one which included this place (can you guess the name of this famous river?):

...and this place (can you guess the name of this snow-covered peak?):

However, there are just too many places to mention at once.

I was reminded of a particular encounter during last December's trip to Dali in Yunnan Province while reading up on some current trends in international economics and commerce. I'm talking about the BRICS:

The BRICS countries have established Hong Kong as the most important financial center in their new system, while HK's banks also serve as a conduit between China's factory sector and the rest of the world. The new BRICS economy, ironically, still uses dollars as the primary medium of exchange between member countries, while completely bypassing the US and SWIFT-regulated financial systems.

Actually, why read it if you can (better) watch a video?


In the second half of the video, Mr. Walmsley noted:

Tether bought 8,888 bitcoin. Eight is a lucky number in China. Chinese pay a high premium to have a lot of 8’s in their phone number, or on their car license plate. It’s especially important in Chinese culture for their home address. These are the three lucky numbers, and why, and 8 relates to fortune.

That statement prodded me to look through my photo collection from Dali. I found the photo I was looking for:

No! Not that one! That is me in Tiger Leaping Gorge.

YES! That's it! That structure is part of the Chongsheng Temple in Dali. You know whose statue is inside? Cai Shen, the Chinese God of Wealth, who is often associated with the number eight. The number eight is considered lucky in Chinese culture, and "888 Cai Shen" is a term used to amplify the promise of prosperity and abundance. Meet Cai Shen:

Feeling Lucky, yet? Well, I do.