Geopolitics, Culture, History,.... Things to explore about the world

[Cara]

And, here is Part 6, the final part of the talk:

IV. The “Air Sea Battle” Will Not Solve the U.S.’s Problem

America brought up the concept of “Air Sea Battle” when designing responses to China’s rise. It was first introduced in 2010. As a war concept, it meant jointly combining the powers of the air force and the navy when fighting against China. The creation of this concept showed that the American military was getting weaker. In the past, the U.S. thought that it could use either air strikes or the navy to strike China. Now it finds that the use of only one source does not provide it with military superiority over China. It needs to join the two forces together. That’s how this “air sea battle” concept came into being.

The Americans think that China and the U.S. won’t get into a war in the next ten years. After studying China’s military development, the Americans realize that the U.S.’s current military capability does not guarantee itself an advantage over China’s strengths, such as China’s ability to attack aircraft carriers and to destroy space systems. Therefore, the U.S. needs to spend another ten years to develop a more advanced battle system to offset China’s advantage.

It may mean that the U.S. has moved the timetable of a war with China to ten years from now. Though there may not be a war for ten years, we must prepare ourselves for it. If we don’t want a war to happen in ten years, we need do get our things done within the next ten years, including preparing for war.

V. The Strategic Meaning of the “One Belt, One Road” Strategy

The Americans like basketball and boxing. Boxing shows the American’s typical nature of respecting power: a direct hit with full strength and the hope of knocking the opponent out. Everything is straightforward.

The Chinese are quite the opposite. Chinese prefer ambiguity and “using softness to conquer strength.” One doesn’t seek to knock his opponent out, but he will defuse all of his opponent’s attacks. Chinese like Tai-chi, which is a higher level of art then boxing.

The “One Belt, One Road” strategy reflects this philosophy.

Throughout history, whenever a great power rises, there is a corresponding globalization movement. This means that globalization is not a phenomenon that has continued from the past all the way to the present; rather it belongs to a great power. The Roman Empire had its own globalization. The Qin Dynasty in China (around 200 B.C.) had its own globalization.

Every globalization was initiated by a rising empire. And that globalization was also limited by the empire’s own strength. The farthest location that the empire’s power could influence and its transportation means could reach defined the boundary of its globalization. Therefore, in today’s view, both the Roman Empire’s globalization and the Qin Dynasty’s globalization were only considered to be a regional expansion. “Globalization” on today’s terms started with the British Empire. The U.S. continued the British trade globalization for a while. Then it switched to U.S. dollar globalization.

China’s “One Belt, One Road” is not simply to join the global economic system, which is a globalization under the U.S. dollar. As a rising super power, the “One Belt, One Road” strategy is the beginning of China’s own globalization. It is a necessary globalization process that a super power must have during the phase of its rise.

“One Belt, One Road” is the best super power strategy that China can bring up at this moment, because it is a counter measure to the U.S. strategy of shifting focus to the East.

Someone may ask: “A counter measure should be in the opposite direction of the force coming toward you. How can you turn your back on the U.S.?” (The U.S. is pressing China from the east over the Pacific Ocean, but China turns its back on the pressure and moves to the west.) That’s right. The “One Belt, One Road” strategy is China’s indirect counter to the U.S. shift to the East. China turns its back on the U.S. [to avoid direct confrontation]. You pressure me [from the east], I walk to the west, not because I want to avoid you, nor because I am afraid of you, but rather because this is a smart move to defuse the pressure you bring to me.

The “One Belt, One Road” strategy does not require the two paths happen in parallel. It should have priorities. Sea power is still China’s weakness, so we can focus on the land path first. The “One Belt” is the primary direction. This also means that we need to revisit the importance of the army.

Some people say that China’s army is the best in the world. It is true if it is inside China: the Chinese army will beat whoever invades China’s land. The problem is that China’s army may not have the capability to go outside China to fight and win a war?

I talked about this issue last year at the Global Times annual meeting. I said that America chose a wrong opponent when it chose China as its opponent and pressured China. The real threat to the U.S. in the future is not China, but rather the U.S. itself. The U.S. will bury itself. That’s because it has not yet realized that a big era is coming and the financial capitalism that the U.S. represents will reach its peak and then start falling. On the one hand, the U.S. has already taken full advantage of benefits that capital generates. On the other hand, via the technological innovation that the U.S. leads, the U.S. pushes the Internet, big data, and cloud computing to an extreme. These tools will eventually become the forces that end financial capitalism.

Taobao.com and tmall.com, both under the Alibaba company, registered 50.7 billion yuan (US$8.2 billion) in sales on November 11, 2014. A few weeks later, the total Internet sales plus the in-store sales in the U.S. market in the three-day Thanks-giving weekend was only 40.7 billion yuan (US$6.6 billion). The 50.7 billion yuan is only the sales for one-day on Alibaba, not including 163.com, qq.com, jd.com, and other online stores in China, nor including any physical store sales.

All Alibaba’s sales were done via Alipay (an electronic payment system). What does Alipay mean? It means that currency is out of the trade platform. The U.S. hegemony is based on its dollar. What is the dollar? It is a currency. In the future, when we stop using currency to complete sales, the traditional currency will be useless. Will the empire that is established on currency still exist? That is the question that the Americans should think about.

3D printing also represents a future direction. It will create fundamental change to the human production process. When the production process changes and the trading process changes, the world will go through a fundamental change. History shows that these two changes, not other factors, are the real cause for society’s change.

Today’s capital may disappear when currency disappears. When the production method changes along the line of 3D printing, the human world will step into a new social mode. At that time, China and the U.S. will stand at the same starting line of the Internet, big data, and cloud computing. The competition at that time will depend on who will be the first to step through this new door, not on who will press the other down. From this point of view, I say that the U.S. has chosen the wrong opponent.

America’s real opponent is itself and this change. America has shown a surprising slowness in realizing this point. That is because America has too much invested in keeping its hegemonic position. It does not want to share power with other countries, nor does it want to step together with others into the new social door behind which there are still many things unknown to us.

Endnotes:
[1] China Publication Online, “Qiao Liang: The U.S.’s Strategy of Shifting Focus to the East and China’s Strategy of Going to the West – China’s Strategic Choice in the Game between China and the U.S.,” April 15, 2015.
http://www.chuban.cc/dshd/jqjt/20150...15_165579.html.

From here: http://chinascope.org/archives/6458/76

=============

Whew! Long speech, but I think very interesting to read this outline and explanation of world events from a Chinese perspective.

Of course, the Chinese response and counter actions are not covered in this speech so it is one sided and short of this perspective. Nevertheless, I think this is a very helpful review of how different tactics and plans are synchronised across both conventional and non-conventional “fronts” in what is obviously a multi-decade Great Power rivalry “game”.

I reiterate what I mentioned in the second part of the speech that I posted: there is a missing piece of the puzzle in this outline, that of non-state actors, such as Joseph Farrell’s Nazi International.

Another piece that is missing from this analysis is the corporate/oligarch/money powers factions, which I believe have no real ties to nation states except perhaps to use them to support their particular interests and agendas. Maybe these players and factions have ties to broader groups of states (such as NATO) but I think this is more a matter of convenience for them and perhaps also where they have been able to “leash” or payoff officials.

[Jayke]

Posted by Searcher (here)
What are “imaginable cells”? Does this mean people / individuals or something else?

When you speak of octaves here, this prompts me to think of harmonic doubling (octaves) and perhaps also the creation of 4ths, 5ths, 6ths etc. and their harmonics which allow music to have probably infinite light and shade, nuances and expression. Maybe the higher levels are about holding many shades/tones?

Those Leonard Bernstein lectures (“The Unanswered Question”, here for those interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB7Z...jrbu6XHchNDCv9) that Dr Farrell sometimes refers to might be pertinent here - I will have to rewatch them (I tend to be a visual rather than auditory thinker so I find them quite tough!).

The imaginal cells in a social system would be those who see through the illusions of the current, dominant, paradigm and try to point out to others that there's a higher level of order that people could be aligning themselves to for more efficient results (the people who often get labelled as conspiracy theorists). As a group, the imaginal cells would be something like the Project Avalon forum, where there's a whole host of people organising to establish new, more effective, more harmonious paradigms, creating new systems of belief for others to reorganise their thinking around.

The musical aspect to the Graves system is definitely interesting, Graves says there's an entering, nodal and exiting stage for each level. So when you count all the sub-levels, you end up with 22 divided by the original 7 = 22/7= the mathematical way of writing Pi.

Then there's fields such as Archetypal Psychology, which look at how the planets (the music of the spheres) influence character development and behaviour in broad general terms. There's definitely a musical aspect to character development, and the infinite variety of notes and melodies that can be played, are as varied as the dramas and stories that we see in the movies. Inter-archetypal dynamics I guess you could call it, or as others prefer to call it, systems theory.

Now, anyway, time to enjoy this long speech you've just posted.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Searcher (here)
So I came across a speech given by Qiao Liang, a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Major-General in China, which although long, is a very good explanation and outline of how economic war is waged in the Great Game of geopolitics.

Well worth the read -- all six parts.

The Chinese, such as in this speech, and the Russians, such as in Lavrov's recent interview posted here, have a major advantage over the Anglo-American empire.

The Chinese and the Russians speak with a decent level of awareness, intelligence and integrity.

The public pronouncements and actions of the British and American "leaders", and of their various satraps around the world, have for the most part descended into a mockery of awareness, intelligence and integrity, not to mention cruelty on a scale seldom seen. It's sad.

[Cara]

Posted by Paul (here)
The Chinese, such as in this speech, and the Russians, such as in Lavrov's recent interview posted here, have a major advantage over the Anglo-American empire.

The Chinese and the Russians speak with a decent level of awareness, intelligence and integrity.

The public pronouncements and actions of the British and American "leaders", and of their various satraps around the world, have for the most part descended into a mockery of awareness, intelligence and integrity, not to mention cruelty on a scale seldom seen. It's sad.

Yes, Paul I agree that the coherence and cogency of the Chinese and Russian public discourse and narrative is at a different level to those of the western powers.

It’s as if the western powers’ belief in the “dumbness” of the public completely drives the tone and level of their narrative; and so, perhaps in a vicious downward spiral, by confining themselves to this terrain, they themselves come to have rather limited capabilities.

On the other hand, the Chinese and Russian narratives seem to expect the reader to “meet them at their level” and “raise their game”.

Another factor here is that there may well be lots of peurile, low level domestic media narratives in China and Russia and we are just not exposed to them because we’re reading the things that
(a) they thought important enough to make available in English,
(b) some westerner thought important enough to translate into English, and
(c) are written by well educated and intelligent, and probably senior-level, Chinese and Russian people who are able to write in English

These three things provide a kind of filter.

[Cara]

So, while we have all been focussed on events in Syria and the various duplicitous behaviours of the France/UK/US/Saudi/Israel team, the two Koreas have been busy:

North & South Korea may announce official end to war – local media
Published time: 17 Apr, 2018 12:14 Edited time: 17 Apr, 2018 14:11

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and the South’s president, Moon Jae-in, are scheduled to meet at a rare inter-Korean summit on April 27. A local media report indicated that the date could put an end to more than half a century of confrontation.

Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in are to meet in the demilitarized zone in the village of Panmunjom, 53km north of Seoul. It will be the third event of its kind in the history of the two nations. Two previous meetings in 2000 and 2007 focused on political and economic issues.

Delegations from the North and the South have been holding meetings prior to the high-level talks to discuss a joint statement. The document may lead to “the end of confrontation,” newspaper Munhwa Ilbo reported Tuesday, citing a government official.

War broke out between the two Koreas in 1950, and they formally remain at war despite the de facto end of hostilities in 1953.

The thaw in relations began on the eve of the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea, when the two nations formed a joint women’s ice-hockey team and agreed to march under a unified banner at the opening ceremony.

On Monday, South Korean envoy to Russia Wu Yun Gin said that Seoul will “do its utmost” to persuade the North to support the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula during the forthcoming talks. North Korea has repeatedly stressed that it is not going to stop its nuclear program until the US abandons its ‘hostile’ policy towards Pyongyang and halts military drills on the country’s doorstep.

From here: https://www.rt.com/news/424375-north-south-korea-peace/

[Cara]

Intermission; a short fable from Rudolf Steiner on RealPolitik.

This story is told by him in the last lecture of a series he gave towards the end of the Second World War titled “The Karma of Untruthfulness”.

This last lecture is number 25 and it can be listened to here: http://www.rudolfsteineraudio.com/ka...untruthv2.html
(Note that there is a great deal of esoteric anthroposophical content in these lectures)

He tells the story as a means of articulating the problem of people becoming captivated by ideas and concepts and not perceiving the true reality of what is occurring in the world.

Suppose the lion were to found a social order for the animals, dividing up the kingdom of the earth in a just way. What would he do?

I do not believe it would occur to him to push for a situation in which the small animals of the desert, usually eaten by the lion, would have the possibility of not being eaten by the lion! He would consider it his lion's right to eat the small animals he meets in the desert.

It is conceivable, though, that for the ocean he would find it just and proper to forbid the sharks to eat the little fishes. This might very well happen. The lion might establish a tremendously just social order in the oceans, at the North Pole or wherever else he himself is not at home, giving all the animals their freedom. But whether he would be pleased to establish such an order in his own region is a question indeed.

He knows very well what justice is in the social order, and he will put it into practice efficiently in the kingdom of the sharks.

From Rudolf Steiner’s “The Karma of Untruthfulness, Volume II”, Lecture 25, Page 217

[Jayke]

I'll build on the intermission while things are fairly quiet on the geopolitical front.

He tells the story as a means of articulating the problem of people becoming captivated by ideas and concepts and not perceiving the true reality of what is occurring in the world.

This is actually the definition of enlightenment according to the Buddha as well. In 'The Complete Enlightenment Sutra', the Buddha outlines this same issue, he uses the metaphor that if you point at the sky and tell people to look at the clouds, they don't see clouds at all but lotus flowers dancing in the sky (he refers to delusional thinking as sky-flowers). It's interesting then that the Buddha refers to himself as the great 'Tathagata', a sanskrit word meaning, "He who sees reality as it really is". To become enlightened is to merely rid yourself of the erroneous illusions of conceptual thinking and ground your views in empirical, observable, factual and truthful sensory information—without distorting that information through the filters of conceptual, imaginary, thought—easier said than done since concepts are necessary to communicate with each other.

This is why understanding the importance of rhetoric and character development, in relationship to systems theory, is crucial for discernment imo. Plato described rhetoric as "the ability to explain the truth", which aligns perfectly with the Buddhas goal of teaching the Dharma, 'the eternal law of the cosmos, inherent in the very nature of things'. The Chinese and Russians excel in their rhetoric because they're attempting to explain the truth to people with factual, verifiable, information and evidence. The Western propaganda machine tries to shape foreign policy based on hypothetical, imaginary, scenarios...like this piece from the BBC where the interviewer suggests to Peter Ford "Let's move on from whether this is fact or not"... the West is stuck in anti-rhetoric mode; where the world of virtual realities, imagination and conceptual thinking becomes more important than empirical reality (which is a symptom of how the Clare Graves level 6 mind operates).

So how do you become a Tathagata? How do you develop skilled rhetoric and learn to see reality as it really is? This is where, I feel, the Buddha was a master of systems theory...in his discourse on the 10 powers of the Tathagata.

.................................................................................................... ...........

https://dhammawiki.com/index.php?tit...of_a_Tathagata

1. The Tathagata understands as it actually is the possible as possible and the impossible as impossible.
(by aligning to the empirical world, you can discern the rules of nature to identify what is supported by reality and what is just an imaginary flight of fancy...you get an inclination for how the system operates, like waking up within the Matrix)

2. The Tathagata understands as it actually is the results of actions undertaken, past, future and present, with possibilities and with causes.
(The reason people get into systems theory is because it gives them greater ability to make predictions about the future, prophecy)

3. The Tathagata understands as it actually is the ways leading to all destinations.
(requires a multi-track mind, character level 7 or above, to see reality from multiple angles and multiple divergent paths)

4. The Tathagata understands as it actually is the world with its many and different elements.
("the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right name" - Chinese proverb)

5. The Tathagata understands as it actually is how beings have different inclinations.
(did the Buddha understand the various stages of character development?)

6. The Tathagata understands as it actually is the disposition of the faculties of other beings, other persons.
(This is why I love the Graves system of character development, as it gives this same skill.
side note: I'm not a fan of Spiral Dynamics, Ive not attended their courses but from what others have said and what I've seen, it seems like a very sanitised and PC version of what Graves taught in the original source material of his books)

7. The Tathagata understands as it actually is the defilement, the cleansing and the emergence in regard to the jhanas, liberations, concentrations and attainments.
(This, I believe, is a statement on the Process aspect of systems theory i.e. how to manage the transition from one character level to the next)

8. The Tathagata recollects his manifold past lives, that is, one birth, two births, three births, four births, five births, ten births, twenty births, thirty births, forty births, fifty births, a hundred births, a thousand births, a hundred thousand births, many aeons of world-contraction, many aeons of world-expansion, many aeons of world-contraction and expansion. Thus with their aspects and particulars he recollects his manifold past lives.

9. “Again, with the divine eye, which is purified and surpasses the human, the Tathagata sees beings passing away and reappearing, inferior and superior, fair and ugly, fortunate and unfortunate, and he understands how beings pass on according to their actions.”

10. “Again, by realizing it for himself with direct knowledge, the Tathagata here and now enters upon and abides in the deliverance of mind and deliverance by wisdom that are taintless with the destruction of the taints.”
(the taints are from the same system of Oriental Alchemy, Vajyrana Buddhism, that made it into renaissance Europe and was adopted by scholars like Giordano Bruno and Jacob Boehme to become the four complexions...i.e. "a treatise on the four different temperments that characterize the state of the soul, how to identify which temperament we fall under, and how we may deliver ourselves."

[Cara]

Thanks Jayke, I have not read much about the details of Buddhism so it’s interesting to see the outline of this in such a clear manner.

In your presentation of the ideas it seems pretty clear that there are some strong guidelines for living real life. Sadly what I have mostly come across in people’s writings on Buddhism comes across to me as obscure and cloudy. Thank you for the clarity.

[Cara]

So, here is a some theory on the ideas of Antonio Gramsci, who was an Italian communist/Marxist philosopher.

Of late some of the commentary criticising the negative effects of postmodernism have also pointed to the ideas of cultural Marxism. It is not always clear what the writers of these pieces actually mean by the term but they frequently cite Antonio Gramsci as being one of the “original” cultural Marxist philosophers.

Gramsci developed an idea he called Cultural Hegemony, which was necessary as a part of bringing about large scale change. While it is identified with thinkers on the political right as a tool of subversion of the political left, there is actually no reason why it could not be used by any ideology.

It may be that Cultural Hegemony is a key aspect of what our western media and politicians seek to achieve as part of their plans for the world.... the term cultural hegemony is perhaps a different expression of the idea of social engineering.

Here is an explanation of the concept of Cultural Hegemony. Bear in mind this is written by a politically left leaning author but it could equally be framed against another ideology:

Cultural hegemony
by Stephen Duncombe

“The most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance.” David Foster Wallace

In Sum
Politics is not only fought out in state houses, workplaces or on battlefields, but also in the language we use, the stories we tell, and the images we conjure — in short, in the ways we make sense of the world.

Origins:
Antonio Gramsci; further developed by Stuart Hall

Cultural hegemony is a term developed by Antonio Gramsci, activist, theorist, and founder of the Italian Communist party. Writing while imprisoned in a Fascist jail, Gramsci was concerned with how power works: how it is wielded by those in power and how it is won by those who want to change the system. The dominant idea at the time amongst Marxist radicals like himself was that in order to attain power you needed to seize the means of production and administration — that is, take over the factories and the state. But Gramsci recognized that this was not sufficient. In his youth, he had witnessed workers take over factories in Turin, only to hand them back within weeks because they were unsure what to do with the factories, or themselves. Gramsci had also observed the skill of the Catholic Church in exercising its power and retaining the population’s allegiance. Gramsci realized that in order to create and maintain a new society, you also needed to create and maintain a new consciousness.

The repository of consciousness is culture. This includes both big-C Culture, culture in an aesthetic sense, and small-c culture, culture in an anthropological sense: the norms and mores and discourses that make up our everyday lives. Culture, in this sense, is what allows us to navigate our world, guiding our ideas of right and wrong, beautiful and ugly, just and unjust, possible and impossible. You may be able to seize a factory or storm a palace, but unless this material power is backed up by a culture that reinforces the notion that what you are doing is good and beautiful and just and possible, then any gains on the economic, military and political fronts are likely to be short-lived.

The power of cultural hegemony lies in its invisibility. Unlike a soldier with a gun or a political system backed up by a written constitution, culture resides within us. It doesn’t seem “political,” it’s just what we like, or what we think is beautiful, or what feels comfortable. Wrapped in stories and images and figures of speech, culture is a politics that doesn’t look like politics and is therefore a lot harder to notice, much less resist. When a culture becomes hegemonic, it becomes “common sense” for the majority of the population.

No culture, however, is completely hegemonic. Even under the most complete systems of control, there are pockets of what Gramsci, and later Hall, called “counter-hegemonic” cultures: ways of thinking and doing that have revolutionary potential because they run counter to the dominant power. For Gramsci, these cultures might be located in traditional peasant beliefs or the shop-floor culture of industrial workers; for Hall they might be found in youth subcultures like Rastafarians and punks, and even in commercial entertainment. The activist’s job, according to Hall, is to identify and exploit these cultural pockets, build a radical counter-culture within the shell of the old society, and wage the struggle for a new cultural hegemony.

An important caveat: Gramsci never believed that cultural power alone was enough. The fight for cultural hegemony had to be part of an overall strategy that also incorporated struggles for political and economic power.

From here: http://beautifultrouble.org/theory/cultural-hegemony/

============

Given Thierry Meyssan’s analysis of Britain’s foreign policy (posted earlier on this thread: https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...#post1217192):

Posted by Searcher (here)

Theresa May’s Foreign Policy
by Thierry Meyssan

Global Britain
...

Indeed, the United Kingdom and Russia are two diametrically opposite cultures.

...

Yes, Russia is indeed attempting to delegitimise the Anglo-Saxon model, ...

... Sir Nick Carter confirmed the necessity of having many more ground troops, of developing the British arsenal, and of preparing for a war in which the images broadcast by the medias would be more important than victory on the ground.

The day after this shock conference at the Royal United Services Institute (the Defence think tank), the National Security Council announced the creation of a military unit to combat « Russian propaganda » [7].

...

From here: http://www.voltairenet.org/article200375.html

...

So, the lens of cultural hegemony gives a way to frame up all the false flags, psyops and anti-Russia propaganda - as a Western / Atlanticist rivalry with Russia (and maybe China) for Cultural Hegemony in the international arena.

Given that these power players are certainly not relying on cultural dominance alone, the endless sanctions against Russia - economic hegemony -, the aggressive behaviour in the United Nations - diplomatic hegemony -, and military strikes can be seen to fit into a single strategy.

HOWEVER, it seems these strategies are not working as effectively as in the past and they seem rather easy to unpick and see through... which leads to the question:

Are they meant to fail?
I.e. is this an orchestrated failure of the West?

Which would line up with Paul’s speculations here - https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...he-distraction

[Jayke]

I’m fairly certain a global recession would not be in the globalists best interests. A great Western depression could be on the cards but I’d be surprised if even that takes shape. It’ll take something as drastic as a nuclear war, asteroid strike or the sun going dark to create depression at the global level. Pulling all the fiat money out of an economy isn’t going to stop food from growing in the ground, it’s not going to stop people from waking up in the morning and feeling the urge to be productive, it’s not going to remove people’s innate need to problem solve and organise.

The Phoenix rises from the ashes of the old order, just as people would bypass government and instigate their own trade and barter networks, unhindered from the scrutiny of global institutions. Too many vested interest groups, who enjoy the benefits of the current system, to allow that to happen. “Constantly changing and reshuffling like the complexity of colours in a kaleidoscope...or...re-organising like iron filings along magnetic lines of force” (not my words, paraphrased from, Walter Russel Mead, of the Council of Foreign Relations, in his book Special Providence).

Also Mead talks a lot about Hard Power, Soft Power and Smart Power...the 3 principles of social engineering. Soft power is the cultural influence card that Gramsci and other Marxists utilise to further their agendas. People naturally gravitate towards higher orders of coherence though, so, while communism may have been the counter culture to mercantilism in the last few centuries. The rise of nationalism, self-sovereignty and inter-independence is the counter culture to communist and socialist ideologies. Different ideologies Reacting against each other like the chemical diffusion waves of Dr Paul Laviolettes subquantum kinetics ether model.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=PpyKSRo8Iec

In the corporate world, did you ever hear about the work of Adam Grant? In his book Give and Take he looks at studies in corporate leadership, including differences in management styles and how those different styles impact the culture of businesses and impact the overall results of companies. The studies conclude that Takers (people who exert hard power to rise to the top) might win the sprint to global domination but burn out quickly (because they make too many enemies, stamping all over people on their rise to the top); whereas Givers (those who exert soft and smart power to the benefit of all) lose the sprint but win the marathon because they foster strong bonds of collaboration and cooperation.

What we’re seeing in geopolitics, in my opinion, is a macro-cycle of the same dynamics all corporations experience, just played out on a more visible stage, and with all the drama, propoganda, fear-mongering and subterfuge of a poetic epic wrapped around it. It’s not so much an orchestrated failure of the West then—more a natural, karmic, consequence of their own short-sighted, pillaging and greed, in asserting their hegemonistic tendencies—and now they’re starting to encounter some chemical diffusion-wave blowback, in the ether of human consciousness.

https://www.ted.com/talks/adam_grant...ver_or_a_taker

[Jayke]

Interesting article by Jeff J Brown, symbolic of the times we’re in. And just to help contextualise my mindset a little better, Clare Graves described Western society as being within the level 4-5-6 spectrum, which is a spectrum of consciousness he determined to be equivalent to the world of George Orwell’s 1984. An authoritarian (level 4), Mercentalistic (level 5), Socialism (level 6). As the kind discussed, promoted and formulated by The Fabian Society, of which George Orwell was a member.

The interesting thing about Vajyrana or Mahayana Buddhism however, is that they both map consciousness (while providing the process techniques for attaining those shifts in consciousness) up to at least, what would have been Level 9, on Graves theoretical framework. Graves had to stop at level 8 though because in his 25 years of research, he only encountered 6 people with a level 8 physiology and biochemistry, he didn’t have enough samples to elucidate any further on the upper aspects of his model.

Graves called level 1-6 the animalistic levels. Level 7 marked the shift to the humanistic, more heart-centred, layers of awareness.

What I’m seeing in China then, based on Jeff J Browns insights, is a culture that spans a greater bandwidth of human consciousness than the West. Sure they still have the level 5 drive for growth and expansion, with level 6 communism, but due to their grounding in daiosm and Buddhist philosophy, the mercentalistic, animalistic tendencies seem to be better tempered with more sophisticated layers of awareness.

============

• http://chinarising.puntopress.com/20...noland-180421/

The big story about China’s new ban on foreign (Western) waste imports has been completely misrepresented by Eurangloland’s (NATO, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Israel) governments and media. There is a reason for this. Baba Beijing’s (China’s leadership) decision is being driven by democratic demands of the citizens to stop it. This news is a prime example of China’s vibrant people’s democracy, the most participatory and responsive in the world (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/20...orship-171227/). In Eurangloland, China’s uber-successful communist-socialist reality must be zealously denied and suppressed.

Everybody in China hates the idea that their country imports Western garbage (http://en.people.cn/n3/2018/0419/c90000-9451550.html). It’s not only humiliating, but also extremely dirty, dangerous and very unhealthy for all those involved, as well as for the national environment. In-country polls showed that the people were fed up with the practice and wanted it stopped (http://www.scmp.com/news/china/polic...rbage-overseas ). Taking their lead, President Xi Jinping has made green tomorrows a huge policy bullseye for the government to realize and the results are already impressive. As a real participatory democracy that sincerely and proactively responds to citizens’ desires, this vile practice of garbage imports is rapidly coming to an end.

It’s not like super-consuming Western wastrels have not been warned. China started its Operation Green Fence back in 2013 (http://www.waste360.com/business/wha...eant-recycling). This has nothing to do with the new and ongoing Sino-American tariff war. In 2016, 1,500 containers of American garbage were being shipped to China every day, with likely at least that many coming from much more populated Europe (https://www.rt.com/business/416180-e...garbage-china/). That container number is dropping precipitously and by December 31, 2019, it is expected to be zero.

Ships are already being turned away at Chinese ports (https://www.rt.com/business/423798-u...a-garbage-ban/), while garbage mountains are piling up in Europe and the US. The US is bluntly asking – demanding is a more accurate term – that China rescind these new policies (https://www.rt.com/news/422255-us-ch...lables-import/ and https://www.reuters.com/article/us-c...-idUSKBN1GZ2WI). Don’t hold your breath, because the Chinese people have spoken, and their democratic leaders are listening and responding in kind. Baba Beijing’s reputation, legacy and heavenly mandate are on the line.

Uncle Sam even meekly suggested that it is an international trade violation. Really? We don’t want your garbage anymore should be taken up with the WTO? Maybe the West ought to force the Chinese to buy illegal, banned opium again, like it did for 110 years, until communist liberation in 1949. Should that be a WTO case too? The West’s externalization of deleterious and deadly production costs is the logic of capitalism (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/20...noland-180410/). The following quote from an above-linked article says it all:

If the Asian giant closes off its waste management market [sic], recycling centers across the US will be faced with a hard choice. They can either hire a much more expensive workforce which would raise prices for their services, require households to sort their own waste or be forced to use more landfills across all fifty US states.

Oh My God – OMG! Americans have some hard, and I mean really hard choices to make!

What do you mean? We should hire people to do in-country what China has been doing for the West, since the early 1980s? Are you suggesting that we have to pay people and increase our costs? Provide jobs? HELL NO! Next thing you know those upstarts will want to unionize and we can’t allow that commie plot to hatch. And how dare you expect our overfed, indebted-to-the-hilt, brainwashed super-consumer citizens to actually sort their own garbage? You insult Eurangloland’s Great White Race, pal! Toiling in garbage is for dark skinned people, or poor White trash to sort the trash. And make us buy more land needed to dump our own garbage? Get outta here! Send it to those stupid yellow zipper heads in Chee-nah. They’ll figure something out… Now, where’s my TV remote, so I can turn on CNN and BBC, to find out how evil Muslims, North Koreans, Russians and Chinese really are, as a threat to our superior way of life.

And you gotta love Baba Beijing’s response to their former drug-dealing colonial masters:

China’s representative agreed to take the comments into account but said that every country had a responsibility to dispose of its waste, and with its large population China was obliged to restrict imports of waste while cleaning up at home. “China is seeking a path toward harmonization of man and nature,” the trade official quoted China’s delegate as saying.

That’s something you would never hear a Western politician say, except some marginalized Green Party member in a local or regional assembly, and the West’s masters are making sure those two-legged threats to capitalism never get a chance to govern in any significant fashion. But, this is exactly what the Chinese people have been telling their leaders for years. Within this are the concepts of harmony, balance and yin-yang, tapping deep roots into Daoism and Buddhism, chanting in their inner souls. Baba Beijing is responding to its people’s democratic dreams by singing back,

Right on, comrade citizens, we hear you loud and clear. The import ban is ON!

=========

A communism that listens to the democratic voice of its people. Now that’s a lesson the West desperately needs to adopt if it wants to survive any upcoming crashes, without being completely left behind by their Eastern counterparts.

[Cara]

Posted by Jayke (here)
... What I’m seeing in China then, based on Jeff J Browns insights, is a culture that spans a greater bandwidth of human consciousness than the West. Sure they still have the level 5 drive for growth and expansion, with level 6 communism, but due to their grounding in daiosm and Buddhist philosophy, the mercentalistic, animalistic tendencies seem to be better tempered with more sophisticated layers of awareness....

Thanks Jayke for the previous two posts. Your analysis is interesting. It may be that a culture that has a wider time horizon in its thinking can encompass a greater variety of ideas and hence may orient itself differently? I am thinking here about the often spoken of idea that cultures in the east, particularly in Japan and China, have much longer planning horizons, 50 years or longer even.

I do think there are secret societies and brotherhoods in the West that have equally long (if not longer) planning horizons but these are kept away from public discourse and hence the plans are “inflicted on” the society, which only sees the short term actions (unless the study history and see broader patterns).

There are surely also secret societies and groups in Asia but there seems to be more public discourse in China that includes long range thinking and ideas.... perhaps this is a key part of shaping the society’s consciousness level?

==========

Related to this, here is a short article from a Chinese publication in August last year (2017), speaking of the order represented by the Chinese and the chaos represented by the West. It’s rather interesting in that it ascribes some of the difference as being the result of different views of globalisation.

The Systematic Cause for Chaos in the West Versus the Great Order in China
Reports | | October 19, 2017 | Economy/Resources Social Stability

{Editor’s Note: Qiushi published an article praising China for having a system that is superior to that of the West. It argued that the West has entered into a chaotic state. Its economic and social models face severe challenges. However, at the same time, China has achieved great peace and order, thanks to its superior system.

The following are excerpts from the article.} {1}

In recent years, the Western countries have faced frequent chaos. The situation got even worse in 2016 when Trump, a political outsider, was elected President of the United States. Many of his policies have created huge controversies, have caused fierce fighting among the political parties, and have further deepened the divisions in society.

The large number of refugees from the Middle East pouring into Europe has caused political turmoil in almost every European country. The Brexit Referendum brought continued uncertainty to the world’s economy. With the rapid spread of anti-globalization and populism, the right-wing forces continue to grow in many countries. Terrorist attacks have never been this rampant in the Western countries. Debt, financial crises, and welfare calamities have caused people’s living standards to stop improving or even to decline.

In summary, the chaos in the West has become a major reason for the insecurity and instability in the world. The Western model faces serious challenges.

China’s political order is in sharp contrast to the West. In the past few decades, China has risen rapidly in the world in a way that the West thought was unbelievable. It has shocked the West and the world.

The chaos in the West and the order and the achievements in China all took place with growing globalization as the background. Why, when the West fell into disorder or even great chaos, was China able to achieve great order?

I. It was because of the difference between China’s and the West’s understandings of and strategies for globalization.

The nature of globalization that the U.S. and the European countries have spent endless efforts promoting is the globalization of neoliberalism. It was meant to serve international monopolistic capitalism. The main characteristics of neoliberalism are liberalization, privatization, and marketization. It promotes loosening economic control and utilizing capital to maximize profit. In any business fields, it even adopts the rule, “the strong wins over the weak.” Meanwhile, in order to maximize the interests of capital, these countries also inserted the so called demand of “political democratization” into their neoliberalism.

Economic globalization under neoliberalism has enabled many Western countries to achieve extraordinary wealth. However while the Western countries gained the growth of capitalism overseas, they also had to face domestic issues such as a loss of manufacturing jobs, deindustrialization, as well as an alarming rise in the rate of unemployment. These countries have not established a real and fair (wealth) distribution system. Therefore, only a few elite classes have been able to monopolize the gains from globalization, while the general public has had to bear the burden of globalization. The end result is a rapid growth in poverty, a widening wealth disparity, and a wide spread of social divisions and contention.

The neoliberalism policy that the West promotes worldwide has also enabled the capital from the West to control the economic lifeline of the developing countries. Wall Street financial giants rob the people of their wealth. For those countries that have accepted the “democracy” that the West has exported, they have either become dependent of the West, are in a deteriorating political state, or are trapped in internal chaos or even war.

China has been actively and smoothly adapting to globalization. It has clearly defined globalization as economic globalization not political globalization or “Westernization.” Therefore not only will China not give up socialism; but it will also utilize the superior nature of the socialist system to overcome the shortcomings and deficiencies of globalization and of neoliberalism and will eventually surpass capitalism.

II. It was because of the different political systems between China and the West

As for the political system, the political parties in the West are known to represent the interests of certain groups of people. Different parties represent the interests of different groups. Therefore the country’s policy is often shifting and caught in the fights that the political parties and various special interest groups have with each other. These shifts can easily cause a country to miss its goal, but the Chinese Communist Party is a party that represents the interest of all of the groups.

From the perspective of the economic system, in order to protect its capital interests, neoliberalism advocates a free market and is strongly against any form of governmental control or intervention. This type of free globalization of capitalism and financialization has weakened the stability that the government’s macroeconomic policy can bring. It could drive a country into a financial, debt, and economic crisis and stop the growth of its people’s income. However the socialist market economy that China is developing is a new model that enables the development of both the public and the private sectors. This type of system surpasses neoliberalism’s economic model.

From the social governance perspective, neoliberalism emphasizes personal rights and lean government. It believes that the role of a country is limited to protecting people’s personal rights and freedoms. If the economy is doing well and the interests of vast groups are relatively balanced, the country will run smoothly. If the economy is declining, welfare is hard to sustain, wealth disparity is widening, and conflicts among various races, interest groups, and social classes are deepening, a Western democratic government will have a hard time dealing with various types of crises. In contrast, through the exploration and practice China has taken, it has reached unprecedented social stability. It has formed a complete social system that fits the unique situation in China. The most unique aspect is the positive exchange between the country and the society. It has formed a social governance model where the political party leads, society assists, and the people participate.

III. It was because of the difference between China and the West of three forces in the political system

From a deeper perspective, behind the West’s chaos and China’s order and achievements, there is a huge difference in the three types of powers used in managing a country: the political, social, and economic powers.

In many Western countries, the political, social, and economic powers are seriously unbalanced with the economic powers weighing significantly heavier than the others. It means that the country’s political power lacks a much needed independence and neutrality and the economic power infiltrates its social power. It is just like the media that has the power of the “fourth estate.” Because the monopolized economic party controls them, they can only move in the direction that group tells them. They are truly unable to represent the will and wishes of the majority of the people. The direct result is that the West’s democracy has changed to a type of democracy that only serves the monopolistic economic powers and where the interests of the people have to give in to the interests of the economic power. It has resulted in a sharp increase in wealth disparity and the majority of the people are unable to receive the actual benefits of globalization.

China’s political power, on the other hand, has maintained its independence from the influence of social and economic powers. While it maintains the balance between social and economic powers, it is also able to sustain its own style and the ability to lead the social and economic powers. This is the key reason why China has been able to overcome the disadvantages of globalization and to rise successfully.

Endnote:
{1} Qiushi, “The Systematic Reasons for the West’s Chaos and China’s Great Order,” August 2, 2017.
http://www.qstheory.cn/dukan/qs/2017...1121422337.htm.

From here: http://chinascope.org/archives/13487

I do think this glosses over the problems in China’s system and that it is certainly not all rosy but the diagnosis of the West’s catch-22 of its neoliberalism is interesting.

Overall, my reading of this piece is that this is probably intended as a piece for a Chinese audience who are looking at the West and trying to figure out just what on Earth is happening... hence it is not too surprising to see the high level glossing over of things Chinese and the more detailed assessment of the issues and problems of the West.

[Cara]

Pepe Escobar gives his latest analysis on pipeline politics in the Middle East and Asia, what he calls pipelanistan.

Caspian games: Central Asian ‘stans’ vie for connectivity market
'Pipelineistan' has a long history, but with its Belt and Road Initiative, China is set to be the top game-changer

By Pepe EscobarApril 20, 2018 3:18 PM (UTC+8)


The Caspian Sea is an important hub in a Eurasia-wide system of gas pipelines and trade corridors.

Azerbaijan held a presidential election this month. Predictably, incumbent leader Ilham Aliyev won his fourth consecutive term with a Kim dynasty-esque 86% of the votes.

International monitors for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) stressed “widespread disregard for mandatory procedures, numerous instances of serious irregularities and lack of transparency”; the Azeri electoral commission replied that such observations were “unfounded”.

Then the whole issue simply vanished. Why? Because, from a Western strategic perspective, Azerbaijan’s post-Soviet petro-autocracy is simply untouchable.

Much has to do with the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, facilitated by the late Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski during the first Bill Clinton administration to bypass Iran. The BTC de facto unleashed the energy chapter of the New Great Game that I have called Pipelineistan.

Now, Baku is harboring great hopes for its new port at the desert wasteland of Alat (“Your hub in Eurasia!”), simultaneously connected to the West (Turkey and the European Union), the South (Iran and India) and the North (Russia).

Alat is also designed as a top logistics/manufacturing/connectivity hub of the New Silk Roads, aka Belt and Road Initiative. Its top strategic location straddles the BRI’s central connectivity corridor; links to the newly opened Baku-Tblisi-Kars railway, connecting the Caucasus with Central Asia; and also links with the International North-South Transport Corridor that connects Russia to India via Iran.

Transportation corridors are all the rage. For Azerbaijan, oil and gas may only last up to 2050. So the priority from now on is to engineer the transition toward becoming a logistics hub; actually, the premier Caspian Sea hub.

Do (Caspian) opposites attract?

Baku’s drive revisits and propels to the forefront the role of Pipelineistan and connectivity corridors in Eurasia integration. The overall picture may finally point to a “third way,” Europe-bound, for Caspian energy exports, for the moment mostly concentrated on Russia and China.

Turkmenistan is actively promoting itself this year as “the heart of the Great Silk Road.” Yet that’s centered more on reviving Ancient Silk Road sites than on digital connectivity.

Still, Ashgabat did anticipate the BRI when the 1,800-kilometer Central Asia-China gas pipeline, from Turkmenistan to Xinjiang via Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, carrying 55 billion cubic meters (bcm) a year, was inaugurated in 2009.

Ashgabat and Moscow have had a tortuous spat that eventually led to Gazprom completely ceasing imports of Turkmen gas into Russia more than two years ago.

And that’s how Beijing, and not Moscow, ended up being configured as Central Asia’s top energy customer – and trading partner.

Because of its idiosyncratic practices, Turkmenistan in the end never managed to diversify its export markets. It operated the switch from Russia to China but could not land the lucrative European market.

It has been a mantra in Brussels for ages now that the EU needs energy diversification away from Gazprom – even as member nations are incapable of agreeing on the mere lineaments of a common energy policy.

European companies at best are developing major oilfields in Kazakhstan. But on the “blue gold” Pipelineistan front, so far no gas from Central Asia is flowing to Europe.

The traumatic experiences of the past are epitomized by the Nabucco soap opera – a pipeline from Turkmenistan via the Caspian to Turkey and beyond that in the end will never be built.

Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan are actually stiff competitors on opposite shores of the Caspian. Baku was delighted with Nabucco’s failure because that boosted the prospects of its own gas from the sprawling Shah Deniz field hitting Europe. The key Nabucco problem was the mystery surrounding Turkmenistan’s real gas-production capability, considering that most of its gas is now directed toward China.

A complicating factor is that any pipeline that crosses the still legally undefined Caspian (is it a sea or is it a lake?) is also not exactly welcomed by either Russia or Iran.

Gazprom has its own plans to increase its share of the European market via Nord Stream and Turk Stream. Iran would aim finally to crack European markets via a possible pipeline from the massive South Pars field in cooperation with Qatar, a revamped version of the Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline that was one of the key reasons for the war in Syria.

TAP meets TANAP

So in the end the only realistic Pipelineistan gambit in terms of Caspian gas connections to European markets is bound to be the small, €4,5 billion (US$5.55 billion) Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), carrying 10bcm of gas a year from Baku.

TAP, only 878km long (northern Greece 550km; Albania 215km; Adriatic Sea 105km; southern Italy 8km), is supposed to come online by March 2020.

TAP will be a sort of extension of the way more ambitious, $8 billion Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), which will ship gas from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz 2 to western Turkey, as configured by the so-called Southern Gas Corridor. TAP and TANAP will connect at the Greek-Turkish border.

It’s enlightening to compare how Azerbaijan is betting on Europe while Turkmenistan bets on China.

And then there’s Kazakhstan – which deploys its own, branded, “multi-vector” foreign policy involving Russia, China, the US and the EU.

At the same time that Astana is a key node of the BRI, a member of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), it welcomes investment from EU majors and US oil giants.

Going forward, the trend is Beijing enjoying a strategic advantage as the top trading partner of every Central Asian “stan” except Kazakhstan, while Moscow maintains its multiple roles as security provider, trading partner, source of foreign investment, employer to millions of Central Asian expats, and Soft Power Central (Russian is the lingua franca in Central Asia, and Russian TV and culture are ubiquitous).

And this will all play within the framework of interpolation between BRI and the EEU.

But what about Iran and Turkey in the Big Picture?

Azerbaijan, as a Caspian nation, maintains deep ethnic and linguistic links with Turkey. Yet Baku prizes secularism in an Ataturk vein – which sets it at odds with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic-tinged neo-Ottomanism.

The major complicating factor is that Ankara and Moscow are collaborating on Turk Stream – in essence a Pipelineistan move from Siberia to Europe under the Black Sea directly competing with Azerbaijan’s own gas exports.

Iran for its part deploys ample cultural and linguistic influence all across Central Asia. In fact Persia, historically, has been the top organizing entity across Central Asia. Iran is as much a Central Asian power as Southwest Asian (what the west calls the Middle East).

But in a BRI environment shaped by the building of roads, railways, bridges, tunnels, pipelines, and fiber-optic networks, the real game-changing player in Central Asia will continue to be China – allegedly more than Turkey, Iran and Russia.

Chinese companies already own roughly 25% of Kazakhstan’s oil production and practically all of Turkmenistan’s gas exports. And they have their sights on Baku as a major BRI node.

Call it a sort of digital revival of the Tang dynasty, when Chinese imperial influence extended across Central Asia all the way to northeastern Iran. Any bets on the Caspian soon becoming a Chinese lake?

From here: http://www.atimes.com/article/caspia...tivity-market/

==========

For reference, here is the Tang Dynasty at around 700 CE:

[Cara]

I came across this interesting article a couple of days ago and it promoted me to do some further research and exploring, which I will share in the next post.

The article itself is about Russia contemplating creating two offshore financial centres - one in Kaliningrad in the West and one near Vladivostok in the East.

==========

Here is a definition of what an Offshore Financial Centre is:

An offshore financial centre (OFC) is a jurisdiction specializing in providing corporate and commercial services, such as offshore banking licenses (international banking license) or the incorporation of offshore companies (international business companies). Often due to territorial taxation, OFCs also levy little or no taxes on corporate and/or personal foreign income. Offshore companies incorporated in those jurisdictions are usually less regulated, but prohibited from engaging in local business activities. The term was first coined in the 1980s[2] and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) defines an offshore financial centre as "a country or jurisdiction that provides financial services to nonresidents on a scale that is incommensurate with the size and the financing of its domestic economy."[3]

There is evidence that OFCs have captured a significant amount of global financial flows, and function both as back doors and partners of leading financial centre especially since the 1970s.[4]

From here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offs...nancial_centre

Essentially, these are financial services “free zones” that have different legislation and requirements regarding tax, capital flows and disclosure/reporting.

===========

And here is the article on what Russia is contemplating:

Russia Looks At Creating Offshore Financial Centres Similar To Delaware & Hong Kong
Russia BriefingApril 11, 2018

Russia’s Vedomosti newspaper has reported that the Russian Government is planning the creation of two offshore financial centers (OFCs) with special legal systems in the Kaliningrad Region and the Vladivostok in Russia’s Far Eastern Primorsky Krai territory to support business and trade.

Kaliningrad is based in the Western Baltics and is a Russian enclave surrounded by the European Union. The OFC may be situated on its Oktyabrsky Island, to allow customs and financial operations to be physically separated from normal commercial applications at standard national tax rates. A similar plan is envisaged for Russky Island near Vladivostok in Primorsky Krai.

The relevant legislation is expected to be adopted during the Russian parliament’s spring session. If implemented, the project will allow money withdrawn from Russia to be quickly returned via the OFCs. Overseas businesses,including expatriate Russians targeted US sanctions will then be able to return their companies to Russia without putting any risk to the firms’ legal and financial infrastructures or disclosing sensitive information. The companies that will operate in the OFCs will get a number of tax privileges.

Hong Kong has long operated as a quasi OFC as has Delaware in the United States and jurisdictions such as Jersey (UK), the British Virgin Islands and other, similar tax havens. The establishment of a Russian OFC in Kaliningrad would prove advantageous to EU businesses wishing to trade with Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union. China is currently negotiating with the EAEU over a Free Trade Agreement (http://www.china-briefing.com/news/2...mic-union.html) which would be of enormous attraction to European businesses with access to an Offshore subsidiary entity in Kaliningrad OFC.



Meanwhile, a Vladivostok based OFC would be beneficial to Asian based businesses and especially Chinese, Kazakh, Korean, Japanese and Mongolian companies as well as close potential links to Hong Kong & Shanghai.



“These developments, could if realized make a significant impact on Russian trade, and with an OFC sited in both Western and Far East Russia be a boom for both European and Asian businesses wishing to access not just Russia but the routes to and from China and beyond” says Chris Devonshire-Ellis of Dezan Shira & Associates. Having distinct regional zones offering preferential tax treatments would be a huge economic draw and would potentially herald a boomtown status for both Kanliningrad and Vladivostok. These are exciting developments and if passed will shake up the global offshore financial services industry with new products to sell of direct benefit to the entire Eurasian business community.”

From here: https://www.russia-briefing.com/news...ong-kong.html/

==========

Taking into account some of the ideas presented in the long, six part speech given by Qaio Laing shared above, it seems that these measures are specifically created to address the economic war being waged on Russia. They provide a mechanism for companies to circumvent sanctions and may also convince some Russian oligarchs who are having second thoughts about their alignment with the West to return some or all of their business dealing to Russia.

This is a fight for capital flows and the associated benefits that accrue from these.

[Cara]

So, as promised here are some of my further explorations into the landscape against which the above article might be viewed.

When I first came across it, I asked my husband (an Economist who analyses markets) about it. What surfaced in our discussion was a view of the way that financial capital flows are sought and fought for. I will try to convey the essence of the conversation.

==========

First, back to the Wikipedia definition of what an Offshore Financial Centre is:

An offshore financial centre (OFC) is a jurisdiction specializing in providing corporate and commercial services, such as offshore banking licenses (international banking license) or the incorporation of offshore companies (international business companies). Often due to territorial taxation, OFCs also levy little or no taxes on corporate and/or personal foreign income. Offshore companies incorporated in those jurisdictions are usually less regulated, but prohibited from engaging in local business activities. The term was first coined in the 1980s[2] and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) defines an offshore financial centre as "a country or jurisdiction that provides financial services to nonresidents on a scale that is incommensurate with the size and the financing of its domestic economy."[3]

There is evidence that OFCs have captured a significant amount of global financial flows, and function both as back doors and partners of leading financial centre especially since the 1970s.[4]

Definition:
Whether a financial centre is to be characterized as "offshore" is a question of degree.[5][6] Indeed, the IMF Working Paper cited above notes that its definition of an offshore centre would include the United Kingdom and the United States, which are ordinarily counted as "onshore" because of their large populations and inclusion in international organisations such as the G20 and OECD.[3]

The more nebulous term "tax haven" is often applied to offshore centres, leading to confusion between the two concepts. In Tolley's International Initiatives Affecting Financial Havens[7] the author in the Glossary of Terms defines an "offshore financial centre" in forthright terms as "a politically correct term for what used to be called a tax haven." However, he then qualifies this by adding, "The use of this term makes the important point that a jurisdiction may provide specific facilities for offshore financial centres without being in any general sense a tax haven." A 1981 report by the United States Internal Revenue Service concluded: "a country is a tax haven if it looks like one and if it is considered to be one by those who care."[8]

...

Views of offshore financial centres tend to be polarised. Proponents suggest that reputable offshore financial centres play a legitimate and integral role in international finance and trade and that their zero-tax structure allows financial planning and risk management and makes possible some of the cross-border vehicles necessary for global trade, including financing for aircraft and shipping.[12] Proponents point to the tacit support of offshore centres by the governments of the United States (which promotes offshore financial centres by the continuing use of the Foreign Sales Corporation (FSC)) and United Kingdom (which actively promotes offshore finance in Caribbean dependent territories to help them diversify their economies and to facilitate the British Eurobond market). Opponents view them as draining tax revenues away from developed countries by allowing tax arbitrage, and rendering capital flows into and out of developing countries opaque. Very few commentators express neutral views.

Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a U.S. government agency, when lending into countries with underdeveloped corporate law, often requires the borrower to form an offshore vehicle to facilitate the loan financing. One could argue that US external aid statutorily cannot even take place without the formation of offshore entities.[13][14]

From here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offs...nancial_centre

The part that prompted my explorations was that one could view the UK (and the US) as being an offshore financial centres. This implies that they must offer less regulation and oversight of financial dealings and also that these financial dealings comprise a substantial part of their economy.

==========

My husband suggested that after the Enron scandal and collapse in 2001, the increased financial regulations of the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation made the US less attractive for capital and hence much of it had been invested instead in the UK, resulting in the strong British currency, supported by capital.

I found some bits and pieces that might support this view.

First, about Enron and it’s collapse:

At the end of 2001, it was revealed that Enron's reported financial condition was sustained by institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned accounting fraud, known since as the Enron scandal. Enron has since become a well-known example of willful corporate fraud and corruption. The scandal also brought into question the accounting practices and activities of many corporations in the United States and was a factor in the enactment of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002.

...

As was later discovered, many of Enron's recorded assets and profits were inflated or even wholly fraudulent and nonexistent. One example of fraudulent records was during 1999 when Enron promised to repay Merrill Lynch & Co.'s investment with interest in order to show profit on its books. Debts and losses were put into entities formed "offshore" that were not included in the company's financial statements, and other sophisticated and arcane financial transactions between Enron and related companies were used to eliminate unprofitable entities from the company's books.

...

Soon after emerging from bankruptcy during November 2004, Enron's new board of directors sued 11 financial institutions for helping Lay, Fastow, Skilling and others hide Enron's true financial condition. The proceedings were dubbed the "megaclaims litigation". Among the defendants were Royal Bank of Scotland, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup. As of 2008, Enron has settled with all of the institutions, ending with Citigroup. Enron was able to obtain nearly $7.2 billion to distribute to its creditors as a result of the megaclaims litigation.

...

From here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron

And here:

...The settlement includes payments of $2.4 billion from CIBC, $2.2 billion from JPMorgan Chase and $2 billion from Citigroup, according to court documents. Smaller amounts come from Arthur Andersen, Lehman and Bank of America.
...

From here: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/09/09....html?_s=PM:US

So, aside from the accounting fraud, the banks were “in on it”; principally involved were:

• Royal Bank of Scotland
• Deutsche Bank
• CIBC
• JPMorgan Chase
• Citigroup
• Lehman
• Bank of America

A hit job perhaps? Or as Catherine Austin Fitts might characterise it, a harvesting operation?

(Side note:
And might some of the decisions about which companies to save in the mortgage loan crisis perhaps have been driven by questions of:

• Which players had a long term grudge that they wanted payback for?
• Which companies had records which needed to be disappeared?)

========

And now onto Sarbanes Oxley. The act is targeted more at accounting procedures but still has an impact on free flows of capital.

The Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 (Pub.L. 107–204, 116 Stat. 745, enacted July 30, 2002), also known as the "Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act" (in the Senate) and "Corporate and Auditing Accountability, Responsibility, and Transparency Act" (in the House) and more commonly called Sarbanes–Oxley, Sarbox or SOX, is a United States federal law that set new or expanded requirements for all U.S. public company boards, management and public accounting firms. There are also a number of provisions of the Act that also apply to privately held companies; for example, the willful destruction of evidence to impede a Federal investigation.

The bill, which contains eleven sections, was enacted as a reaction to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals, including Enron and WorldCom. The sections of the bill cover responsibilities of a public corporation’s board of directors, adds criminal penalties for certain misconduct, and required the Securities and Exchange Commission to create regulations to define how public corporations are to comply with the law.

....

Debates continued as of 2007 over the perceived benefits and costs of SOX. Opponents of the bill have claimed it has reduced America's international competitive edge against foreign financial service providers because it has introduced an overly complex regulatory environment into US financial markets. A study commissioned by NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and US Sen. Charles Schumer, (D-NY), cited this as one reason America's financial sector is losing market share to other financial centers worldwide.[4] Proponents of the measure said that SOX has been a "godsend" for improving the confidence of fund managers and other investors with regard to the veracity of corporate financial statements.[5]

...

From here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes–Oxley_Act

So some commentators have argued that the legislation inhibited the US’s ability to attract capital.

And there are some others who agree with these inhibitory aspects of the regulations. These points are from a presentation given at the American Bar Association:

Consequences of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act
Perhaps Unintended Consequences (continued)

• Desire by foreign registrants to delist and deregister from U.S. market, giving rise to the foreign deregistration rulewriting
• Desire by U.S. registrants to delist and deregister from the U.S. market, giving rise to the “going dark” phenomenon

...

Foreign Private Issuers are Increasingly Cautious About Registering in the United States:

• From 1996-2002, NYSE averaged 51 international listings per year. From 2003-2006, that average declined to 21.
• In 2006, only two of the 25 largest IPOs in the world chose to register and list in the United States; both are domestic companies.

...

Capital Raising Requirements:

• In 2006, 244 non-US IPOs raised US$ 149 billion globally.
• ...
• 147 of these 204 companies listed only on their home market, 35 listed on a non-domestic exchange, either exclusively or in addition to their
• home market, and 22 Chinese companies listed on HKEx.

...

From here: https://apps.americanbar.org/buslaw/...erials/pp8.pdf

So there are some who saw enough evidence to believe that the increased regulation of Sarbanes Oxley had caused capital to find more attractive places than the US markets.

It’s suggested that these consequences are unintended. Were they?

I speculated earlier in this thread that there might have been a kind of reversal of the US Declaration of Independence and the resulting emergence of an Anglo-American money power entity. Maybe this was a part of engineering that outcome?

(Note that this presentation was given before the 2008 global financial crisis. Given a read of the above long six part speech, it would seem that “crisis” might have been engineered.)

==========

Now to the UK. If we take the view that the UK is a very large offshore financial centre for the EU (and the global economy), then we might have some part of the argument as to why certain factions of the pro and anti Brexit factions are fighting so desperately with each other.

First, here is an article from 2013 indicating that the EU is increasingly placing pressure on the UK for greater integration into the EU by requiring the UK to locate some operational parts of its financial structures in the EU. This would give the EU some level of oversight and these operations in turn would be subject to increased legislation in the European locations.

If the UK were to do the things the EU asks for, this would erode their position as a relatively “light touch” legislation hub for capital - on which it depends for it’s power in world affairs.

ECB's Noyer ups pressure on London as Europe's finance hub
MARKET NEWSAPRIL 22, 2013 / 10:30 PM / 5 YEARS AGO

LONDON, April 22 (Reuters) - Trading of derivatives and other products denominated in euros in the financial markets should be backed up by support systems - such as clearing houses - based in euro zone countries, a senior French policymaker said on Monday.

Bank of France Governor Christian Noyer’s comments turn up the heat on Britain, which is fighting a European Central Bank plan to require clearing houses that handle a substantial amount of euro-denominated derivatives trades, such as London-based LCH.Clearnet, to be located in the euro zone.

Noyer, who also sits on the ECB’s governing council, said in a Bank of France overview of global derivatives market reforms that the processing of foreign currency-denominated instruments with a “systemic dimension” for the issuers must be located in the relevant currency area.

Noyer has made similar comments in the past and these latest could be a signal that the ECB is not willing to back down.

Britain has already gone to the European Union’s highest court to challenge the ECB policy plan, which could pose a threat to the City of London financial centre.

The focus on providing back-up for derivatives trades is part of efforts to make these products safer after the financial crisis, when the near-collapse of U.S. insurer AIG exposed the risks of the opaque derivatives markets.

From here: https://www.reuters.com/article/g20-...0D91LV20130422

At this point it’s important to note that there are other finance hubs in or close to the EU.

• The Netherlands and Ireland (part of the EU) offer tax incentives and low tax rates.
• Luxembourg (part of the EU) offers “private” financial services.
• Switzerland (not part of the EU) offers “private” financial services and some areas of lower tax rates
• There are also smaller low tax / low legislation places scattered across Europe - e.g. Andorra, etc.

And the UK itself has some offshore financial centres in the form of the Channel Islands. So this is a multi-layered situation.

In terms of capital flows, what might be happening is that the UK and these other light touch financial hubs benefit from investors making money from the industrial base in countries like France and Germany and then those investors moving their dividends to financial hubs where there is less oversight and more freedom. These financially oriented economies in turn would tend to specialise in services supporting capital flow. And so a situation is created where benefits from industrial production do not accrue to the place where the production is located but rather to where the capital flows.

For the UK, the ideal scenario in terms of continuing their financially derived world power status would be to remain able to “extract” the EU industrial base capital and act as a channel for capital into the EU, while being allowed to continue to have their light touch legislation.

On the one hand, moves by EU authorities to limit this freedom (as evidence by the article above from 2013 and I am sure there are others) undermine the UK’s ability to be attractive to global capital flows. On the other hand, threats by Brexiteers to divorce the UK entirely from the EU mean the UK will be cut off from its priviledged position as a nexus of capital flows into and out of Europe. This subtext might explain some of the messiness in the Brexit discussions and plans.

===========

Regarding Brexit, and how long it has been under consideration by some players, I found a House of Commons Library briefing from 2013 (the year of the article quoted above) on the economic impact of membership of the EU.

Here: http://researchbriefings.files.parli...30/SN06730.pdf

I am sure it is not the only document of its type nor the earliest (in fact it cites findings from a number of earlier studies) but it does show that the topic was considered quite seriously well before the Brexit vote.

[Cara]

As a postscript to the post above, related to offshore financial centres and the murky business that takes place through them, I recommend this excellent truth-telling through fiction mini-series, The Worricker Trilogy:

Page Eight, Turks & Caicos, and Salting the Battlefield form The Worricker Trilogy—three gripping films that follow the exploits of the intensely private and scrupulous Worricker—from MI5 headquarters in London to exile on a Caribbean island to life on the run with his former lover and fellow agent Margot Tyrrell (Helena Bonham Carter). A spy who prefers the black-and-white certainties of the Cold War, Worricker (Bill Nighy) finds himself increasingly out of his element as the distinction between ally and enemy dissolves into the amorphous alliances of the 21st century.

From here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/shows/worricker/

Also on YouTube:

1. Page 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD8s0SsWy7E
2. Turks and Caicos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3baMm8Giz70
3. Salting the Battlefield:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiY2mF9r7OU

[Cara]

Final post on this thread today.... a reminder of the power of money:

The City of London, Wall Street and the Reconquest of America in the Age of Financial Capitalism

A picture speaks a thousand words

From this article: https://www.sott.net/article/383335-...ial-Capitalism

It’s a long article which covers some of the history of the City of London and Wall Street.

[Foxie Loxie]

WOW! What an Eye Opener on The City of London!! Thanks so much, Searcher, for that article! Guess there is no separating the Anglo-Am entanglement unless the Muslim contingent has made an inroad into the mosaic.

It is so good to learn the REAL history of what has been going on! I take it this all started after the Napoleonic Wars....mighty helpful in understanding the Big Picture!

[Jayke]

Posted by Foxie Loxie (here)
WOW! What an Eye Opener on The City of London!! Thanks so much, Searcher, for that article! Guess there is no separating the Anglo-Am entanglement unless the Muslim contingent has made an inroad into the mosaic.

It is so good to learn the REAL history of what has been going on! I take it this all started after the Napoleonic Wars....mighty helpful in understanding the Big Picture!

I’m always amazed Foxie at your ability to absorb complex information. I’m convinced that if you got started in this type of research 20 years ago you’d be shaping foreign policy with Catherine Austin Fitts right now. I’m still trying to wrap my head around this capital flight thing the Worricker is definitely going to be on my playlist when I get home tonight.

Keep the articles coming Searcher, your ability to find high quality sources is exceptional.

[Foxie Loxie]

Thanks for the compliment, Jayke! Since I was able to break out of the tiny religious box I had been raised in, about 3 years ago, I have been like a sponge trying to absorb all that I can! Once I figured out why my "religion" had ruined my entire life I wanted to learn about how the world is run! Thanks to Avalon, one can start to figure out our "real" history! It is SO interesting, isn't it?!

Thank you, Searcher, for opening my understanding into new areas!