China and Central Asia becoming more integrated. Here from the Xian Summit in May 2023. Photo: Xinhua.
Central Asia has been the essential “centre” of the geopolitical chessboard of Eurasia for centuries. Both the Soviet Union and the American Global Empire have tried to make claim of it, and now, China is moving in as an essential part of their new economic and infrastructure project called the “Belt and Road Initiative”.
If China controls Central Asia, they gain significant strategic advantage in Eurasia. Photo: Wikipedia.
Gaining control of the central area of Eurasia is also crucial for securing the new “Silk Road” between China and Europe, while significantly increasing China’s leverage towards India, the Middle East and Russia.
And the Western media seems uninterested or oblivious to what is happening.
The plans from China and President Xi are quite extensive: “In his keynote speech at the summit, Xi put forward four visions of what kind of Central Asia the world needs, four principles for building a China-Central Asia community with a shared future, and eight proposals for developing bilateral cooperation.”
Nations in Europe might be more protected in a Chinese System, vs. a “Globalist” EU and West.
Now in 2023 we’ve just seen an interesting contrast between the two Global Systems with the International summits of G7 in Japan, and a Chinese-Central Asian Summit in Xi’an, the Ancient starting point of the the Silk Road.
For Europe, as being in between these two super powers and systems, and increasingly moving towards a position of “US Allies, Chinese Partners”, it is becoming instructive to have a new look at which system really would benefit our national interest and the objective aspects of realpolitik.
The driving force behind the West in the recent decades seems to increasingly have been the transnational “Globalists” in the pursuit of a World Empire seeking to eradicate Nations, Cultures and the Basic Right of People to have a “home”. The US has actively promoted this destructive trend especially over the last 10-15 years. Would China have done the same? This is rapidly becoming a serious issue for the Peoples and Nations of Europe.
The Prideful being purified by forced connection to the ground, meaning Realities. Ill: Gustave Doré
We are currently reading through Dante’s Divine Comedy and have just now reached the first Terrace of the Mountain of Virtue, those who are atoning for the Vice of Pride.
The relevance is as stunning as always.
And it’s very interesting to note how America and perhaps even the West at large corresponds so well to the role that Florence is given in the Divine Comedy. The City State of Florence was a major power in Europe at the time and is depicted as the source of Pride, Greed and “New Money”, and has its prominent figures and public personas spread out all throughout the nine realms of Hell.
In the 11th canto of Purgatory we’re getting a timely reminder of the smallness of Human Pride and Power in the much bigger picture:
Oh, empty glory of all human power!
How soon the green fades from the topmost bough,
unless the following season shows no growth!
Once Cimabue thought to hold the field
as painter; Giotto now is all the rage,
dimming the lustre of the other’s fame.
Thus referring to the great fame of the first two major figures in Renaissance painting: first Giovanni Cimabue, and then his student Giotto di Bondone, both Florentines, who were later surpassed in fame by artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raffaello, Brunelleschi, Botticelli, and many others.
And as for the longevity of fame, Dante writes:
Your earthly fame is but a gust of wind
that blows about, shifting this way and that,
and as it changes quarter, changes name.
Were you to reach the ripe old age of death,
instead of dying prattling in your crib,
would you have more fame in a thousand years?
What are ten centuries to eternity?
Less than the blinking of an eye compared
to the turning of the slowest of the spheres.
The idea of inflated egos and lack of perspective quickly brings the mind to the absurd level of Vices in the current Western culture, both among many people in the population in general, but especially among those who are using their great influence on the governing of the country, and imposing dysfunctional ideas into the culture.
The Prideful behavior of much of the Western Culture today needs to change quickly. Putting oneself above Reason, above Objective Morality, above rational arguments, and guiding oneself and our nations according to emotional whims, is through and through Pride. And thus we are currently seeing the Fall of the West, and the Goddess Nemesis with her little sword hovering above the Prideful and already starting to strike down upon us.
The Remedy suggested by Dante? A forced connection to Realities, to re-gain Humility and a realistic and true outlook. No more self-indulging in one’s ego, no inflated superiority complex. Acknowledge your flaws, your limitations and your mistakes. And keep growing and learning.
There are two choices now: Meritocracy, or subservience to a Chinese Global Order. Photo: The Telegraph.
Things are rapidly changing in the world in 2022 and 2023, after about 30 years of “one tune” with Western Global Dominance in political terms.
The West is facing a very simple choice now, and it’s quite close to being an either/or decision. Either we get back to merit, achievement, performance, hard work and rewarding the best, or, we will become a small part of the Chinese International System and increasingly being governed by a Chinese Global Economic framework. And that will be a context in which we will not feel at home, and in which we will lose a significant part of our autonomy and self-determination.
From a column in the Telegraph today, by David Frost:
“If we want growth, in this world of fierce international competition, we have to support excellence. It doesn’t work to say we want it and then do everything we can to stop it in practice. So if we want to prosper, we are going to have to take tougher decisions as a country than we have so far. If we can’t face that, then we are doomed to decline.”
We’ve been living through some very strange times with the Internet over the last 10-15 years in the US and parts of Western Europe. Free fantasy and wishful (but self-indulgent) thinking has proliferated, and indoctrination and brainwash have gradually saturated public life into a form of Bizarro World where nothing eventually works.
We’ve never been a supporter of Tucker Carlson from Fox News, but when the day has now come when his opinion pieces emerge as a plain source of truth and realism, things are probably about to change.
His latest extended tweet is worth reading in its fullness:
“TUCKER CARLSON: Good evening, it is Tucker Carlson!
One of the first things you realize, when you step outside the noise for a few days, is how many genuinely nice people there are in this country. Kind and decent people who really care about what is true, and a bunch of hilarious people. It’s got to be the majority of the population, even now. So that’s heartening.
The other thing you notice when you take a little time off is how unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are. They’re completely irrelevant. They mean nothing. In five years, we won’t remember that we had them. Trust me, as someone who has participated.
And yet, at the same time, the undeniably big topics, the ones that will define our future, get no discussion at all. War, civil liberties, emerging science, demographic change, corporate power, natural resources. When was the last time you heard a legitimate debate about any of those issues? It’s been a long time. Debates like that are not permitted in American media. Both political parties and their donors have reached a consensus on what benefits them and they actively collude to shut down any debate about it. Suddenly, the United States looks a lot like a one-party state.
That’s a depressing realization, but it is not permanent. Our current orthodoxies won’t last. They’re brain-dead. Nobody actually believes them. Hardly anybody’s life is improved by them.
This moment is too inherently ridiculous to continue, and so it won’t.
The people in charge know this, and that is why they are hysterical and aggressive. They’re afraid. They’ve given up persuasion and they’re resorting to force. But it won’t work. when honest people say what is true, calmly and without embarrassment, they become powerful. At the same time, the liars who have been trying to silence them shrink, and they become weaker. That is the iron law of the universe. True things prevail.
Where can you still find Americans saying true things? There are not many places left, but there are some and it is enough. As long as you can hear the words, there is hope.”
There are now two Global Orders; The Chinese which is successful, and the Western which is collapsing and failing. We need a bigger Rebirth to survive. Photo: Xinhua.
After the last couple of months with several “shocks” to Western leaders in the US and here in Britain, there are still some leading public figures that are lagging behind when it comes to catching up with the current realities. One example of this was a quote from British ex-PM David Cameron last week: “Beijing doesn’t just pose an immediate danger to Britain – it threatens the entire global order.”
This is partly right, but it also assumes one dominant global order, which is not the case anymore. China is building and has built its own global order, on its own terms, and that has already become a separate International System that can function well without the West, and which is soon likely to become stronger economically than the West as well. So Beijing is therefore not “threatening” the global order, nor “replacing” it, but building a second Global Order, that is significantly more successful.
And this brings us to a very important point – why is the Chinese International System so successful and growing, while the West’s International System is collapsing, failing and shrinking?
A couple of ideas: the US and some West European countries have embraced and elevated incompetence over the last 10-15 years. This is disastrous. To survive in today’s competition, we need to get back to merit, and support and embrace the best people. There is no alternative at this point, to maintain and protect a minimum of self-determination on the Global Stage.
The culture in the West has also lost track of the big picture, and become too focused on emotional politics. This is also disastrous. We need to find our way back to a rational basis that is connected with realities, and rebuild a culture that is functional and constructive longer term. The word “culture” has roots from “cultivate”, “grow”. The current culture is destructive, short term, over-emotional, too self-centered, and again with a lacking understanding of the overall big picture.
A third point, of a much longer list, is the loss of orientation about values and the bizarre suggestion that Moral Relativism is both correct and some kind of progress. It is neither. It is technically wrong and a big step backwards to pre-historic and barbaric times. We need to get back to achievement, honesty, generosity, fair treatment of everyone, and expose and condemn the vices of lies, greed, pride, envy and blaming others for one’s own shortcomings.
It’s getting urgent. The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called the West a “minority” in the World at the UN headquarters this month. This is correct. And we need a complete rebirth of our society to be able to survive. No more imperialistic and overbearing attitudes, no more wishful thinking and imaginative ideologies, no more rewarding and punishing people for their external characteristics.
Back to realities. Back to hard work, results, achievements, and back to making sure that we have both countries and a world to live in, where we can feel at home.
Tomorrow is the scheduled date for the first launch of the Starship!
The launchpad before take-off tomorrow, April 17th, 2023. Photo: Sawyer Merritt.
The plan is to have 3 scheduled departures for Mars every day, and building 1,000 starships for regular traffic and building a civilization on Mars. It’s an enormous threshold for life on Earth to start founding settlements on other planets, after 3,5 billion years of evolution!
Former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers admitting that the US is becoming sidelined and increasingly less relevant. Photo: Chatham House, Creative Commons 2.0.
Former World Bank chief economist and US Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers spoke to Bloomberg News this week, and admitted that it is now getting “lonely” for the US on the world stage:
“There’s a growing acceptance of fragmentation, and – maybe even more troubling – I think there’s a growing sense that ours may not be the best fragment to be associated with,” Summers said on Friday in a Bloomberg News interview. He made his comments following a week of World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings in which finance chiefs reportedly discussed efforts to “reshape supply chains away from China and other strategic competitors.”
Summers, a former World Bank chief economist who was an adviser to President Barack Obama and served as treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, suggested that US tactics have alienated some governments. “Somebody from a developing country said to me, ‘What we get from China is an airport. What we get from the United States is a lecture. We like your values better than we like theirs, but we like airports more than we like lectures.’”
America as “not the best fragment”. Finally it’s starting to sink in for even old establishment figures in the US. The rot has been festering for over twenty years, and now most countries have stopped listening. There are better alternatives for economic partnership than the US. Hopefully, things will start changing very soon for America. But at least, more people are indeed waking up these months.
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