Russia is the last Colonial Empire; having conquered, at one time or another, most of her neighbors, many of whom are still subjects. China is the latest wanna be colonial power with their floundering Belt and Road initiative. This article points out a fatal flaw in their plans for world domination that has reoccurred throughout history.
Category: Geopolitics
Maasai Are Getting Pushed Off Their Land So Dubai Royalty Can Shoot Lions
Tanzania’s government wants big tourism money. Herders don’t want to lose their livelihood
A friend from Tanzania had this response to this outrage…
Started Last year, they started moving villages out of the reserve when they have been living for 100’s of years, some refused and had to be moved by force. Very Sad story, and not the first time. They even had big middle east military plane suspected to be loaded with wildlife for Zoos in Emirates.
T.I.A (That Is Africa)
Critics have argued that the Tanzanian government doesn’t want Maasai herding cattle where safari-goers expect to see giraffes and elephants.
As noted in this Bloomberg article
Scientists insist proper land use planning could have helped avoid today’s conflicts, and conservationists say photographic tourism concessions would bring far more money into the state budget than hunting, leading to suspicions that the corruption uncovered in 1996 and 2017 persists.
One Masai, who has an Economics degree pointed out that…
Uneducated Maasai women have few options beyond marriage, and in polygamist societies, that often means as a second or third wife. Since women in such situations compete for status by having more children, “if you want to depopulate this area, just educate every Maasai girl to university level,” he says. “It’ll be solved in 15 years.”
The Brutal Unspoken Mafia Prison Rules that Russia Lives By
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/05/16/russia-prisons-wagner-group-ukraine-crime-culture/
The criminals that ran the black market during the Communist days, came to power during the chaos of the 1900s, during the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In November 1996, to consolidate his power, Putin and his friends founded the Ozero Cooperative, which bonded together oligarchs and the mafia families. Over the many years of the state within the state that was the gulag system, a bizarre caste system arose in the prisons. At the bottom of the cast where the so-called Roosters. Recruiting these Untouchables into the Ukraine “Special Operation” has upset this brutal hierarchy and troop morale.
The lowest caste, and the one that every prisoner fears degradation to, are the roosters, also known as the “offended,” the “pederasts,” or the “downcast.” That is a position to which it is extremely easy to fall down to, but one that you can never climb up from. They’re forced to do all the worst jobs—such as cleaning the cell’s latrine, washing everyone’s underwear—because no, your average Russian prison does not have any washing machines—and often serving as sexual slaves. They also get the worst sleeping spots in the cell, usually next to the latrine.
A rooster is untouchable outside of sex. One is not allowed to share anything with a rooster except as a payment for services—not only is it taboo to touch them, but also anything that they have touched, as that instantly moves one to their caste. Their kitchenware is explicitly marked as such, for one, and whenever transferring cells, they’re supposed to publicly announce their suit status and move in with “their own” accordingly.
. Gay and transgender prisoners are automatically placed among the roosters, but so are those who foolishly admit to having given oral sex to a woman—an act that, as among the ancient Romans or the modern Italian mafia, is seen as fundamentally impure.
A rooster’s status is truly miserable. It’s driven many people to suicide and made people so miserable that they used to rebel and intentionally touch blatniye inmates as a last attempt of revenge—sure, they would be instantly killed by other inmates, but the prisoner who previously belonged to the higher caste would instantly be a rooster inside the prison system and out, and would never be able to move upwards in the hierarchy
Russia’s Nukes Probably Don’t Work — Here’s Why
https://wesodonnell.medium.com/russias-nukes-probably-don-t-work-here-s-why-bd686dec8b6
Lack of Maintenance Like the Rest of their Equipment
6 min read
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, a curious thing happened: Putin’s modern, lethal fighting force turned out to be a broken-down, two-bit shadow of its former self.
There are many reasons for this, but the biggest seems to be unbridled corruption at a level that shook even the most hardened analysts in Western defense intelligence.
Particularly egregious was the poor maintenance on display with most, if not all, of Russia’s war machines.
Looking back now, with the benefit of time (and watching Russia flounder around in Eastern Ukraine for over a year), it’s easy to see how funds intended for operations and maintenance might have been diverted.
Hell, this story of a Russian army commander stealing engines from Putin’s prized T-90 tanks is a perfect example.
How The West Industrialized Russia
Russia is often portrayed as the invincible military power. And
yet, this reputation is based on two wars – Napoleonic and
WWII. In both cases Russia won only thanks to the alliance
allied with the leading economic powerhouse of that era.
China wants their Russian seized land back again
This is the map that Chinese children are taught should be the borders that rightfully belong to China are in purple and the current borders are in red.
Russia is the last colonial power. Just before Putin’s recent invasion of Ukraine, some of his retired generals warned him that Ukraine wasn’t their enemy. It was China.
Every #Chinese schoolchild and adult citizen knows how Tsarist Russia exploited Chinese weakness and seized Chinese territory in the 1858 Treaty of Aigun and the 1860 Treaty of Peking, two “Unequal Treaties” that Tsarist Russia imposed on the decrepit Qing Dynasty.
China will now wait for NATO to bleed Russia so that they end up a vassal state of China. Previous Chinese Dynasties have not invaded their neighbors , but forced them to become vassal states that paid tribute to the emperor. Xi is trying this with his Belt and Road initiative. China prints 4 to 5 times the amount of money in relation to the the US Fed. That pays for the initiative and ghost cities. Is it sustainable?
Who’s been showing up at our Southern border?
With title 52 expiring, and a flood of immigrants expected at the U.S. Southern border, it is interesting to see the composition of where they have been coming from. Most recently the big increase has been Venezuelans fleeing Maduro’s “workers Paradise”. That is why there is some talk of trying to have some kind of detente with him to try and slow the exodus.
Chinese Urban Renewal
Russian “Field Wives” are back again like in WWII
Chinese Debt Problem Worse Than US
It’s fascinating to see everyone focusing on how bad the #Real_Estate market will get the #US but completely ignoring the real estate situation in #China, which is by a magnitude much worse.
You think the #FED will print and “dilute” the #USD? Wait till you see the #PBOC
Here are some numbers to put things into perspective 👇
#US:
#GDP: $25 trillion
#Money_Supply (M2): $21 trillion
#FX_Reserves: It has the USD
#Banking_Assets: $24 trillion
#Non_Performing_Loans (Dec 2022): $143 billion
#Real_Estate: Represents 36% of Americans household wealth
#China:
#GDP: #Officially: $18 trillion
#GDP: Unofficially: $14 trillion (shorturl.at/deMU8)
#Money_Supply (M2): $40 trillion
#FX_Reserves: Total: $3.1 trillion
#FX_Reserves: Liquid: $900 billion
#Banking_Assets: $55 trillion
#Non_Performing_Loans: ??
#Real_Estate: Represents 62% of Chinese household wealth
Here… https://t.co/qixr0vKKgP
(https://twitter.com/mnicoletos/status/1645717845144219648?t=-wQsTKoPUOeYkSEzj69hTQ&s=03)