RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.settimananews.it/news/soft-war-for-chaos/

As Russian failures on the Ukrainian battleground emerge more starkly by the day, so former successes of Russian propaganda in the West become more naked and are being exposed daily. China’s TikTok, whose CEO was recently grilled at a U.S. Congressional hearing, apparently is not faring much better. Still, perhaps we must step back to gain some perspective on this.

According to some Cold War stories, perhaps America’s significant blow to the renewed ambitions of Soviet politics, galvanized by the students’ protests in America and Europe after the 1960s, was favoring a strategy of chaos. It moved the rebellious proto-revolutionaries in the West to compete and rebel against each other.

Another element then was undermining the leftist high discourse. The systematic penetration of derision, levity, astrologers, beauty counselors, fashion shows, and makeup artists was a mine under the feet of leftist ideology’s high and noble discourse.

Putin’s systemic weakness

In the last ten years in the West, Russian President Vladimir Putin has possibly used American lessons against America. He supported the left as pro-communist and backed the right as a champion of the defenders of betrayed traditional values. He turned everything against everyone through the easy and cheap new tool of the internet.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19527/china-arming-russia

Just as Iran has used Ukraine’s brutal war to test the effectiveness of its drone and missile technology, so China’s emerging industrial-military complex is reportedly looking for opportunities to conduct a rigorous evaluation of its new weapons systems; Chinese arms manufacturers are reportedly keen to test the effectiveness of their new weapons systems in Ukraine.

Chinese drones, which reports say are due to be delivered to the Russian Defence Ministry next month, would enable the Russians to deliver warheads weighing between 35 and 50 kilograms.

China’s People’s Liberation Army is in the midst of a massive military build-up, outspokenly aimed at making China the world’s dominant military power by the middle of the century. Global defence spending fell by 1.7 percent in 2021, and the US defence budget for 2024, with a supposed increase of 3.2 percent, after factoring in an inflation of 6 percent, is actually a net cut. Meanwhile, Chinese defence spending grew by 5.1 percent to $293 billion.

As part of its military build-up, which began in 2013, Beijing is aiming to integrate artificial intelligence in its command and control structures by 2035. In addition it is investing heavily in new fleets of warships and warplanes.

The Chinese military is said to be actively preparing to launch a military offensive to capture Taiwan, most likely before or during the US presidential election in November 2024, while the US is still under the administration of President Joe Biden, regarded worldwide as stunningly weak, and while the country is likely to be distracted.

Biden’s repeated statements that he seeks “competition not conflict” with China, and that “We don’t want a conflict” with Russia, can only be viewed as pleas not to escalate, rather than as a thundering deterrence.

“[T]he entire military must… concentrate all energy on fighting a war, direct all work toward warfare and speed up to build the ability to win.” — Chinese President Xi Jinping, to China’s armed forces’ operational command center, Fox News, February 15, 2023.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/in-a-dutch-election-globalists-lose-big/

During the year or so between my first visit to the Netherlands, in August 1997, and my move to Amsterdam from New York, I not only put myself through a one-man crash course in Dutch; I also read every book I could find about Dutch history, society, art and culture, customs and character. But one key fact that I somehow missed entirely, and that only recently found its way onto my radar, is that the Netherlands is, after the U.S., the world’s largest exporter of agricultural products.

At first blush it seems impossible. Yes, the U.S. being #1 is a no-brainer: nobody has anywhere near as much first-class farmland. But the Netherlands, which is 1/231 the size of the U.S.? Really? To travel across the Randstad, the crescent-shaped urban conglomeration that contains most of the major cities, is to imagine that this little land must be a significant agriculture importer. How, then, can it possibly beat out giants like Russia, Canada, Brazil, Indonesia, and Australia? Well, as it happens, most of those giants are near the top of the export list: Brazil for coffee; Indonesia, palm oil; China, rice; Canada, oats. But if they’re not at the very top of the list, it’s because Russia and Canada are largely tundra, Brazil and Indonesia mostly jungle, and Australia almost entirely desert.

But the Netherlands? What’s the secret? One word: innovation. Which shouldn’t come as a surprise. Much of its current farmland wouldn’t exist if not for the reclamation of land from the sea – a practice that is now some seven hundred years old and that, thanks to extraordinary technological innovations during the previous century, has more than doubled the country’s area.

Last year, in an article for Dutch Review, Jesse Rintoul summed up some of the more impressive recent examples of innovations in Dutch farming. The University of Wageningen, thanks to “an alternative soil composite made of coco peat and rock wool,” managed to grow bananas in the Netherlands’ not-exactly-banana-republic climate. A company called Nijsen/Granico produces “about 90,000 tons of animal feed a year entirely from human food waste.” And in Rotterdam, there’s a “floating farm” that feeds cows “with leftovers from local restaurants.” The Dutch, notes Rintoul, have sought to “produce twice as much food using half as many resources.”