controversial topics

The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China demonizes the Chinese, day in and day out, with members preferring not to mention the group’s origins and funding.

Why? Because IPAC was birthed by the National Endowment for Democracy, which took over the “soft power” side of the CIA’s regime change operations from its launch in 1983.

It specifically works worldwide to demonize the Chinese to advance US interests.

The initial focus was to beef up the Uyghur genocide hoax, for which the groundwork had already been laid.

When that flopped badly (the Uyghur minority grew more rapidly than other ethnic groups), this was switched to the Uyghur slave labor hoax. This broadened to general demonization of the Chinese using all the Washington narratives -- they wrecked Xinjiang, they wrecked Hong Kong, they're trying to take over the world.

many people now know about the NED and what it does.

Also problematic is the fact that hundreds of thousands of people have visited China, including Xinjiang and Hong Kong, and seen the truth for themselves. These are not smoldering ruins but thriving, safe communities. Western countries can learn from them.

Monday, May 11, 2026

Learning from history or not

Angelica Oung

As we go through a tumultuous time in the world, there is no better time to learn about Chinese history. You see, China was unified more than 2,000 years ago, and since then it's been its own unipolar world with some messy interstitials. While Great Powers competition happens in overlapping parallels in the rest of the world, Chinese history unfolds as a series of dynasties.

Every new dynasty that holds the baton of legitimacy is painfully aware of all the other dynasties that has gone before, and as a result, is determined not to make the same mistakes. The first task of the new dynasty is to write the official history of the old dynasty it replaced.

In the west in contrast, the failure of a rival was rarely internalized as an existential warning. Instead there's what I call a "Lol Those Fools Lost" mentality. The assumption is when two rivals clash, the one with the superior system would naturally prevail. Failure is externalized as something done to you by somebody else instead of something you become through internal imbalances that build up inexorably over time. Dynastic cycles? Wasn't that something that happened to the Romans?

Well...it's happening to us now. I believe my late-onset interest in Chinese history is not just because China became so strong, but also because the vocabulary of Chinese history suddenly became startlingly legible and relevant.

"elite overproduction" "loss of legitimacy" "center-periphery breakdown" "peasant immiseration" "fiscal exhaustion" "military overextension" "bureaucratic sclerosis" "monstrous courtiers" "inability to reform due to entrenched interests"

My model of the world has changed from "in the end there can be only one system (liberal democracy)" to "in any system success itself generates the conditions of decay." There is no escape from history. We are trapped in dharma.

In the end, dynastic cycle theory isn't really about China at all. It's about becoming historically self-aware through feeling connected to the past. A unipolar civilization system like dynastic China could not help but confront themselves over and over again. In a multipolar system, we can still do it, but only as a choice.

Saturday, April 25, 2026

Rob Rook: UAE dollar swap

The fact Trump has stated he is thinking about giving the UAE a currency swap signals a lot of things, but part of why they make it a currency swap is not many people understand what that actually means. The truth is it is a loan without technically giving a loan.

The petrodollar system works, because the UAE constantly has a large amount of oil that leaves their country, exchanged for US dollars, and those US dollars buy things like food and western goods, and then the remaining dollars go into their eight sovereign funds which then pump trillions of dollars into the US economy.

Trump isn't necessarily being altruistic here. What a currency swap would do is allow for the petrodollar system to still work even without the inflows of US dollars that used to come in naturally through the sale of oil. Keep in mind, 90% of the food the residents of the UAE eat has primarily been flowing from China and Iran ever since this war began. That continues as the US has clarified they won't stop this food from entering even with a blockade, but that food can't be bought with US dollars even if we don't stop it because Iran is stopping any shipments that would have been bought in USD. In other words, US dollars are abnormally worth less than normal in the country, because they don't buy as much anymore, but Chinese Yuan are abnormally valuable, because they do buy things that can't be imported otherwise.

The fact they are asking for a bailout is a signal they want to stay with the petrodollar system for now rather than jump ship to China. The way it would work is the US would take UAE dirham (their version of a dollar). This is a bit of a formality, because we won't use any of that currency. It is strengthening the value of that currency despite the fact it is pegged to US dollars. They then get US dollars that they will use. At some unspecified time in the future, the US can ask for any number of US dollars the two think is fair in exchange for the UAE dirham we've been keeping in a vault. Normally this would work like a loan with more US dollars required compared to the number of dollars the US previously provided factoring in a calculated interest rate, but if this is a long conflict that might turn out to be impossible if we want their oil industry to return to full strength as fast as possible. It is possible we give their currency back for a very small amount of dollars in return turning this whole exercise into a gift.

But hidden within this exchange is the thing I see being missed by most of the Republicans that focus heavily on where Iran will be in the future. In reality, Iran is pretty inconsequential to the future of the US. It is near guaranteed at this point they will have a nuclear weapon, and it is highly likely that they won't use that weapon on the US as they couldn't reach the US even if they wanted to. If they are rational, they won't use any nuclear weapons at all, because the US may respond with its own nuclear weapons, and Iran cannot directly counter-attack the US. Iran using a nuclear weapon likely would lead to an Iran far more devastated by nuclear warfare than the devastation they do on others.

As far as oil, we haven't used their oil nearly at all since 2018. In fact, the sanctions shrunk their oil from 85% of their economy to 10%. The global oil supply is not reliant on anything going on with Iran at all. Iran is irrelevant. The UAE on the other hand is highly relevant. The reason why even Trump that gripes about NATO freeloading is talking about bailing them out is the people around him know how important the UAE is to US dominance.

If you have been reading what I've written for a while, you will know the world order that created a US system of dominance was established with the Bretton Woods Agreements after WW2. I won't go into too much detail other than the fact it allows us to run higher deficits with lower inflation and there is a periodic natural transfer of wealth into the US year-over-year through hidden mechanisms built into how the global trade system functions. The US position since 1979 has been that this global system of trade that rigs the system in the favor of the US is far more valuable than anything we might want out of Iran. This is the real reason no one has done what Trump has done in Iran. This war risked that system that provides US dominance with very little possible gain in return for the risk.

The key issue here is that currency swap they are asking for is a band-aid. It is only the first of many dollar infusions it is going to take to keep the petrodollar system working, and there are more countries than the UAE that we have to support to keep this system going. The underlying issue is with or without our blockade, the only way they can buy food right now is to lean primarily on China. Eventually, we have to either give up on the system that matters more for the US than Iran, the petrodollar system, and just let China take over, or we are just going to have to keep shouldering the cost of keeping multiple countries afloat on the Persian Gulf even as they produce only a fraction of the oil they used to.

I get the naive view is these countries own their own oil, and they trade it to countries that aren't the US, and we have our own oil. I get some may not want to take the time to understand why the Gulf States ever mattered to the US, but even if you don't want to learn why they matter, their importance should still be evident if you think about the actions of Bush Sr. and Trump. Bush invaded Iraq over Kuwait, because of this system. We were not the primary customer of Kuwait. Trump is sitting here openly voicing his desire to help UAE out even though we are not the primary customer of the UAE.

We care, because this is our system, and the number one issue is do we maintain the Gulf States or not. Do we get them back up to producing or not. Don't focus on whether Iran is facing shut-in wells. Focus on whether the UAE is facing shut-in wells. It's flashier to talk about Iran where our bombs are being dropped, but the truth is the real issue here is what happens to countries like the UAE. If you are an American that cares about American interests, then you have to realize that historians will measure whether we won or lost this war based on what happened to countries like the UAE, not based on what happened to Iran.

Currency Swaps Explained Currency swaps involve central banks exchanging currencies at spot rates, with an agreement to reverse at predetermined future rates, providing temporary liquidity without being loans or gifts. The US Fed would lend USD to the UAE Central Bank against dirhams (held but unused), reversed later at the same rate—no interest or unequal exchange as claimed. This maintains the dirham peg (3.6725 AED per USD since 1997) amid war-disrupted oil dollar inflows, signaling UAE commitment to dollar stability over yuan shifts.

Saturday, March 7, 2026

The Shah of Iran

https://www.facebook.com/groups/151000744973882/?multi_permalinks=34340930725554113&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1657886891483220/posts/1805737580031483/?comment_id=1805911726680735

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

Thursday, February 26, 2026

smuggled nematode worms

https://www.michiganpublic.org/criminal-justice-legal-system/2025-09-11/judge-says-3-months-in-jail-are-enough-for-chinese-scientist-in-us-smuggling-case

Han was also accused of sending petri dishes that contained nematode worms, known as C. Elegans. Authorities said the packages were not properly labeled and that Han didn't have approval to ship them.

"C. Elegans is easy to obtain, easy to study, nonharmful," defense attorney Sara Garber said.

She said Han's research focuses on how organisms detect light, touch and temperature.

"This is not a case of smuggling in some sort of virus or a crop-destroying something or other," U.S. District Judge Matthew Leitman said. "From what I can tell, this material was not a threat at all."