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The Second Coming of the Heartland

Samarkand.
© Photo by Pepe EscobarSamarkand.
It's tempting to visualize the overwhelming collective West debacle as a rocket, faster than free fall, plunging into the black void maelstrom of complete socio-political breakdown.

The End of (Their) History turns out to be a fast-forward historical process bearing staggering ramifications: way more profound than mere self-appointed "elites" - via their messenger boys/girls - dictating a Dystopia engineered by austerity and financialization: what they chose to brand as a Great Reset and then, major fail intervening, The Great Narrative.

Financialization of everything means total marketization of Life itself. In his latest book, No-Cosas: Quiebras del Mundo de Hoy (in Spanish, no English translation yet), the foremost German contemporary philosopher (Byung-Chul Han, who happens to be Korean), analyzes how Information Capitalism, unlike industrial capitalism, converts also the immaterial into merchandise: "Life itself acquires the form of merchandise (...) the difference between culture and commerce disappears. Institutions of culture are presented as profitable brands."

The most toxic consequence is that "total commercialization and mercantilization of culture had the effect of destroying the community (...) Community as merchandise is the end of community."

China's foreign policy under Xi Jinping proposes the idea of a community of shared future for mankind, essentially a geopolitical and geoeconomic project. Yet China still has not amassed enough soft power to translate that culturally, and seduce vast swathes of the world into it: that especially concerns the West, for which Chinese culture, history and philosophies are virtually incomprehensible.

Shaki Zinda
© WikipediaShaki Zinda.
In Inner Asia, where I am now, a revived glorious past may offer other instances of "shared community". A glittering example is the Shaki Zinda necropolis in Samarkand.

Afrasiab - the ancient settlement, pre-Samarkand - had been destroyed by the Genghis Khan hordes in 1221. The only building that was preserved was the city's main shrine: Shaki Zinda.

Much later, in the mid-15th century, star astronomer Ulugh Beg, himself the grandson of Turkic-Mongol "Conqueror of the World" Timur, unleashed no less than a Cultural Renaissance: he summoned architects and craftsmen from all corners of the Timurid empire and the Islamic world to work into what became a de facto creative artistic lab.

The Avenue of 44 Tombs at Shaki Zinda represents the masters of different schools harmoniously creating a unique synthesis of styles in Islamic architecture.

The most remarkable décor at Shaki Zinda are stalactites, hung in clusters in the upper parts of portal niches. An early 18th century traveler described them as "magnificent stalactites, hanging like stars above the mausoleum, make it clear about the eternity of the sky and our frailty." Stalactites in the 15th century were called muqarnas: that means, figuratively, "starry sky".

Black Magic

West will brush Ukraine biolab allegations under the carpet just like those of Kosovo organ trafficking

Nicholas Burns
FILE PHOTO: Nicholas Burns. Western narrative control kicks into overdrive to shift blame, whitewash culprits, or make sure inconvenient lines of questioning are never pursued.
In crisis after crisis, Western narrative control kicks into overdrive to shift blame, whitewash culprits, or make sure inconvenient lines of questioning are never pursued

Soon after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's recent descent on Taiwan, the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, called out Nicholas Burns, America's ambassador to China, for "keeping an embarrassed silence" regarding the "insolent stunt."

The silence was quite a change from how vocal Burns had been a mere month prior at the World Peace Forum in Beijing, where he demanded that China stop relaying "Russian propaganda" by "accusing NATO of starting" the conflict in Ukraine. He used the opportunity to accuse the Chinese Foreign Ministry's spokesperson of "telling lies about American bioweapons labs, which do not exist in Ukraine."

Bad Guys

US 'on brink' of war with Russia and China - Kissinger

Henry Kissinger
FILE PHOTO: Henry Kissinger
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has told the Wall Street Journal that Washington has rejected traditional diplomacy, and in the absence of a great leader, has driven the world to the precipice of war over Ukraine and Taiwan.

Kissinger previously courted controversy for suggesting that Kiev abandon some of its territorial claims to end the conflict with Russia.

"We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it's supposed to lead to," Kissinger said in the interview, published on Saturday.


Comment: The US and its allies are solely to blame for the political crises currently threatening the planet.


Comment: If the US thought it could win a war against Russia or China it would have attacked them directly already. As for Kissinger, he seems well aware that America's power brokers will, ultimately, work with Russia and China, but how that will look once the US and EU have finished imploding their own economies, will depend on what there's actually left to work with.


USA

US threatens Africa with sanctions if it buys anything except grain and fertilizer from Russia

Linda Thomas-Greenfield
© APUS ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, in Accra, Ghana, on Friday.
The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, warned African countries last week not to purchase anything from Russia besides grain and fertilizer, or else they could face sanctions.

Thomas-Greenfield said during a visit to Uganda that countries could buy "Russian agricultural products, including fertilizer and wheat" but added that "if a country decides to engage with Russia, where there are sanctions, then they are breaking those sanctions."

"We caution countries not to break those sanctions because then ... they stand the chance of having actions taken against them," she added. Thomas-Greenfield said that purchasing Russian oil risks sanctions, even though many of the US's European allies are still buying Russian crude before a ban takes effect at the end of the year.

Comment: In recent months there have been a number of incidents that reflect Africa's growing confidence in rejecting US diktats, and its likely that this threat will only catalyze their pivot to the East:



See also:


Attention

China-US decoupling gushes out

China-US decoupling
© Indian Punchline
In a flurry of statements on Friday against the backdrop of escalating US-China tensions, five of China's biggest state-owned companies announced their intent to delist from the New York Stock Exchange — PetroChina Co Ltd, China Life Insurance Co, China Petroleum & Chemical Corp, Aluminium Corp of China and Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co. which represent over 300 billion dollars in market cap.

As of August 2022, the market cap of these Chinese giants are as follows: PetroChina ($132.11 billion); China Life Insurance ($94.88 billion); China Petroleum & Chemical Corp ($70.23 billion). Aluminium Corp of China ($10.29 billion) is also the world's second-largest alumina producer and third-largest primary aluminium producer; and, Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co.($3.77 billion) is a subsidiary of Sinopec (market cap: $68.45 billion), and is one of the largest petrochemical enterprises in China..

At work here primarily is a greater scrutiny of Chinese companies listed in the United States that the American regulators are insisting upon since the Congress' legislation passed in 2020 during the Trump administration in this direction. The legislation followed the failure of protracted negotiations for the American regulators to gain full access to inspect the audit papers of US-listed Chinese businesses, which Beijing views as "crackdowns" on Chinese companies and as "financial decoupling."

Both in terms of the market cap of the New York Stock Exchange as a whole (which currently stands at $26.2 trillion) and in terms of American depository shares in the five Chinese companies, this development per se is not earthshaking but has implications.

Will it bring a bad name to the New York Stock Exchange? Maybe, eventually. Will it seriously impact on the Chinese companies' operations? Unlikely. (For example, American depository shares in PetroChina represented approximately 0.45 percent of the total share capital of the company.)

Nonetheless, it is a signpost that will be noted in financial markets, even as a growing number of Chinese firms are also positioning to delist from the US markets. Interestingly, the 2020 US legislation also includes a push to delist US-listed companies by changing audit rules. The US Securities and Exchange Commission has put 159 Chinese concept stock companies (companies that operate in China) on its delisting watch-list as of end-July.

Document

What was in the Trump Documents creating such fear in DOJ and FBI

Trump
© UnknownFormer US President Donald Trump
  • In Part One we outlined the background of the modern Deep State {Go Deep}.
  • In Part Two we outlined the specifics of how President Trump was targeted by political operatives using tools created by the DC system {Go Deep}.
  • In Part Three we outlined how and why President Trump was blocked from releasing documents {Go Deep}.
  • Here in Part Four, we begin to assemble the specifics of what documents likely existed in Mar-a-Lago.
It is important to remember, the presidential records act -the presented pretext for the document conflict- is not a criminal statute. An FBI raid cannot be predicated on a document conflict between the National Archives and a former president.

The DOJ-NSD warrant, and the subsequent raid on Mar-a-Lago can only be related to records the U.S. government deems "classified" and material vital to national security interests. Hence, DOJ National Security Division involvement.

In prior outlines we have exhaustively covered the details of President Trump's desire to publicly release information about DOJ and FBI conduct in their targeting of him during the fabricated Trump-Russia claims. However, to understand the nature of the documents he may hold, we first review the declassification memo provided by President Trump to the DOJ upon his departure from office.

Comment: A read-worthy article shedding new light, context and - up to now - unrevealed information, connections and moving pieces guaranteed to impact the future and expose the past.


Attention

Democrats are 'coming after middle-class hard-working Americans - Tulsi Gabbard warns 'Our democracy is in grave danger'

Tulsi
© AppRiver/UnknownTulsi Gabbard
Tulsi Gabbard unleashes a torrent of facts in what most on the left in Washington would call 'conspiracy theory' and 'hate speech' pointing out the fact that everything from the IRS to the Department of Homeland Security is "blatantly being weaponized to target political opponents of those in power and anyone who dares to dissent or question or challenge their actions and policies."

By way of example, Gabbard notes that with regard to the massive increase in the size of the IRS, the messaging from Democrats is 'this will only apply to to the wealthy'. Well, as Gabbard points out, "that's only 1-2% of all taxpayers, so why in the world do they need $80 billion and 87,000 new hires in order to go after 1-2% of taxpayers?"

Simply put, she explains, "their math absolutely does not add up," which she says "should be frightening and concerning" to all Americans, because "this means, they're coming after us - the entrepreneurs, small business owners, and the middle class hard-working Americans."

Whistle

Exclusive: Whistleblower names another FBI official who allegedly pressured agents to pad domestic extremism stats

Wray
© Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesFBI Director Christopher Wray
A whistleblower came forward with the name of a second FBI official who allegedly pressured agents to label cases as "domestic violent extremism" to boost case numbers, according to House Judiciary Committee Republicans.

Jill Sanborn, a now-Roku employee who worked at the FBI for more than two decades, is one of now two officials a whistleblower has identified as having "exerted pressure on agents to reclassify cases as DVE [domestic violent extremism] matters," according to a letter sent to Sanborn on Wednesday and obtained by Breitbart News.

The letter, written by Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and committee member Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), comes on the heels of the whistleblower contacting Jordan's office in July and accusing another FBI official, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault, of also seeking to inflate domestic violent extremism case numbers.

No Entry

Ukraine urges US to sanction all Russian banks - Bloomberg

Bank
© Unknown
Ukraine is calling on President Joe Biden's administration to sanction all private Russian banks, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing Kiev's envoy to Washington Oksana Markarova.

She told the media outlet that President Vladimir Zelensky's government wants the US to add a couple of banks per week to its list of sanctioned financial institutions. The ambassador noted that she's conveyed the request to the US Treasury Department.

Markarova, a former finance minister, said in the interview that adding that any Russian bank is a legitimate sanctions target.
"Sanctions are as important as weapons. As soon as one bank is sanctioned, some other private bank suddenly becomes a financier of the industry or military."
She's also pushing for the State Department to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Comment: This one-trick pony strategy has worked so well? Ask Russia.


Magnify

Explosions rock military airport in Belarus days after Crimea air base attack

Zyabrauka air base
A satellite image from March shows a military presence at the Zyabrauka air base, which is located some 30 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
Several explosions have been reported in an area of Belarus near a military airport that Ukrainian authorities say has been used by the Russian Air Force to attack Ukrainian territory.

The Belaruski Hayun and Flagshtok Telegram channels quoted witnesses on August 11 as saying at least eight blasts were heard and flashes were seen near the Zyabrauka military airport in the southeastern Homel region of Belarus overnight. The base is some 30 kilometers from the border with Ukraine.