Geopolitics/Geoeconomics Thread - June 2015

sanman · Post by **sanman** » 02 Nov 2023 04:39

Deep State have people on both sides of the aisle. NeoCon Victoria Nuland served under Bush-Cheney and Obama-Biden.

She helped orchestrate both the illegal US invasion of Iraq, and also the meddling in Ukraine to overthrow its pro-Moscow-leaning govt.

The result is that the US is now over-extended on multiple fronts, and was ripe for a retaliatory response.

Iran has now struck at Israel thru Hamas, in order to derail the looming Israeli-Saudi peace deal that was to underpin the very ambitious India-MiddleEast-Europe Economic Corridor.
It's entirely possible (likely) that Iran has done this with security assurances from Russia and China both.

Hriday · Post by **Hriday** » 02 Nov 2023 09:01

Cyrano wrote: ↑02 Nov 2023 01:19 The question is 'to what end?'

As per @Starboy2079 the short answer is, with the destruction of religious/spiritual and economic destruction it will be easier to control or rule the people. It is explained in his thread. Link given below.

https://twitter.com/Starboy2079/status/ ... WwYow&s=19

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 04 Nov 2023 02:55

Very interesting data

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 04 Nov 2023 20:55

sanman · Post by **sanman** » 05 Nov 2023 03:11

While India is promoting multi-polarity in the world order, we can see US is responding by promoting multi-polarity in SouthAsia, as a counter-reaction. US is now suddenly sharply trying to meddle in Bangladesh internal politics/elections in order to get rid of Sheikh Hasina / Awami League, who are seen as too close to India. US would like to have Khaleda Zia / BNP in power in Bangladesh, because this will result in more Indo-Bangladesh frictions, which US can exploit. Khaleda Zia / BNP would work closely with China to destabilize India's Northeast, which US could again exploit to gain more leverage with India. The Americans feel that we're behaving too cockily because we have it too good, and want to see us cut down to size.

bala · Post by **bala** » 06 Nov 2023 06:56

via Jaipur Dialogues summit on geopolitics and geoeconomics - Abhijit Iyer Mitra, Sushant Sareen, Ankit Shah, Vijay Sardana and Vibhuti Jha as participants.

Dr. Ankit Shah is very clear on direction - de-radicalization, de-dollarization for the world. Apparently, Saudi Arabia has ditched the islamic hijri calendar. Saudi Arabia has officially endorsed the use of the Gregorian calendar for all governmental matters. Rest of the world says you are the body, soul does not matter. Bharat says you are atma not the body, many rebirths and karma at play. Bharat is the only civilization that celebrates ethical profits on community festival Danteras, no concept of individual wealth. Bharat has two concepts - Sampathi (built together, family enterpreunership) and Lakshmi (common goals/objective). The Mandir ecosystem survives its entire lifecycle without any Govt support.

drnayar · Post by **drnayar** » 09 Nov 2023 01:40

In this 6-year-old clip, the UAE's foreign minister warns Europe that its complacency and political correctness will prove disastrous and make it a hub for Islamic radicalism, extremism, and terrorism

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/pc61WgPE ... ture=share

chanakyaa · Post by **chanakyaa** » 15 Nov 2023 07:00

Article in the Chronicles

The World De-Dollarized

The dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency has enabled the United States to act as a militaristic global hegemon. The coming end of this system is good news, including for the American people....

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 15 Nov 2023 10:54

Do not know if this is the appropriate thread, but, seems like Myanmar troops have surrendered to Indians!!! And, 5000 Mynmaris have crossed over as refugees!!!!@!

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 19 Nov 2023 03:11

Data points for those who interested in Geo affairs

bala · Post by **bala** » 20 Nov 2023 23:00

So what has happened in the last 2 weeks in geopolitics and geo-economics? Find out the answers by Dr Ankit Shah

The world is undergoing de-dollarization, de-globalization, de-risking and so on. Emperor is being involved in the endeavor since the Deep State has decided to withdraw manufacturing from China and relocate to India. The Communist party top brass is being destroyed by the Emperor knowingly/unkowingly. All the industry leaders in the US took notes when Emperor landed in US since some of their investments are still stuck in China and they want to wring out the last profits from the continued supply via Mexico/Vietnam and other nations. For G2 to be close, Bidenwa established hotline in terms of military adventures so that Taiwan does not become a hotspot. Meanwhile China is tarred by Hamas tangle (PLA soldiers in the tunnel) and is in a bind, no big power wants to take on Israel overtly. It is touch and go for Emperor. Iran is backing out, otherwise it would become the target of Israel and US.

As part of de-dollarization, de-globalization, de-risking the US will see some upheavals in the banking sector. Citigroup is expected to layoff quite a few and this is not like what happened to SVB or Federal Republic banks. Other banks may follow suit.

All the petro dollars used for radicalization across the globe is dwindling and in a few decades crude's importance is going away. The impetus to de-radicalization is now in the works. India has a firm stance on terrorism, Canada was told in no uncertain terms by EAM. The Pukes are reporting "unkown gunmen" are taking out high profile terrorists. Israel is well on its way to rid Hamas (which some Islamic nations are cheering).

Ankit is predicting that Tier 2, Tier 3 and India's farming sector will see fastest growth. NRI influx back into Tier 1 cities will boost real estate values. Global IT sector will face some downward winds (it already has started in the US - high profile layoffs in Facebook, Google, AWS, MickySoft, etc) . For Indian IT they have to diversify both nation mix as well as domain product mix. Global defence manufacturing is moving to India, all western MICs will be parked in India similar to the IT sector companies. Jobs galore in manufacturing sector!

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 22 Nov 2023 08:37

Neocon at his best

bala · Post by **bala** » 24 Nov 2023 02:23

Modi and Changes in India's Foreign Policy Doctrine:

1. India is handling China with Russia instead of US. (Since China listens to Russia)
2. Paki were being handled via Iran, Now we handle the Pukes with Saudi-UAE. (Since Saudi is maa-baap of the Pukes)
3. India was handling the US with Russian interaction. Now we handle US with Israel's input. (Israel has a powerful lobby in the US)
4. India was asleep about neighboring nations, now India has neighborhood policy first.
5. India was dealing with UN issues with Russia. Now UN issues are handled by France, US, UK & Russia (any of them can be mobilized depending on the needs). Effectively India has invisible UNSC Veto!

More here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rnwMeGUyO4

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 25 Nov 2023 04:11

Time to ban BBC (along with Al Zajeera) from Bharat. They have provided a chance to do so.

BBC bans staff from attending London march against antisemitism

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 25 Nov 2023 05:16

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 28 Nov 2023 07:10

This intrusive set of ideas is dangerous and needs to be aggressively destroyed.

"hy Bill Gates Is Pushing for Global Digital IDs and Taking Over America’s Farmland "

48 minutes long, but we need to organize to stop this.

ricky_v · Post by **ricky_v** » 28 Nov 2023 13:53

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... oviet-role

What if we had a new cold war — and we were the Soviets? That was the question I found myself asking during this week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit

You know it’s a cold war summit when there’s automobile one-upmanship. The Chinese president showed up in a fancy electric limousine manufactured by Hongqi (“Red Flag”). Not unimpressed, Biden likened it to his armored Cadillac, which he calls “The Beast.” Fifty years ago, Richard Nixon presented Leonid Brezhnev with the keys to a dark blue Lincoln Continental during the Soviet leader’s visit to the US. (Nixon recalled in his memoirs being taken for a terrifying spin in the vehicle at Camp David. Brezhnev drove the way he drank: hard.)

Cold war superpower summits are so choreographed as to resemble the royal pageants of medieval Europe. This often leads to unintentional comedy. Everyone regarded Brezhnev as something of a rube when he came to the US in 1973. He wore two watches, one on Moscow time and one on Washington time, to help him manage his jet lag. But, as Henry Kissinger recalled in his memoirs, the Soviet leader “kept forgetting whether Moscow was ahead of or behind Washington.” Despite the watches, Brezhnev repeatedly messed up the White House staff’s meticulously planned timetables.

Somewhat similar conversations took place in California last week, but by 1970s standards they were about peripheral issues. According to the White House’s official read-out, the US and China made progress in five areas. First, they will resume high-level military-to-military communications, which were put on hold after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022. Second, they will set up a bilateral counternarcotics working group to curb the illicit export of fentanyl to the US. Third, they will address the risks arising from advances in artificial intelligence. Fourth, they will increase the number of commercial flights between China and the US and expand “people-to-people” as well as business exchanges. Finally, they will cooperate more closely tackling climate change.

In the Chinese read-out, unlike the American version, Xi called on the US to show “in concrete actions” that it does not support Taiwan’s independence, to cease sending arms to Taiwan, and to accept Taiwan’s “peaceful reunification” with China as “inevitable.” The US side offered no comment. The Chinese statement also condemned the US for using export controls, investment reviews and unilateral sanctions against China. Again, no comment.

In short, the really significant thing about the Xi-Biden meeting was what wasn’t discussed, not what was. The summit thus left Cold War II pretty much where it found it. This was détente lite.

Meanwhile, the US itself looks on closer inspection more and more like “late Soviet America,” a phrase Princeton’s Harold James coined in 2020. There’s a soft budget constraint, in that the US federal government is issuing $776 billion in marketable debt per quarter to fund a deficit running at around 7% of GDP — a shocking number at a time of near-full employment. According to Bloomberg, annualized interest payments on the federal debt exceeded $1 trillion at the end of last month — a figure that has doubled over the past 19 months. This quarter, for the first time since World War II (with the sole exception of the first quarter of 1998) interest payments will exceed defense spending.

In a cold war there are two ways of losing. One is internal collapse. The other is that you become like your enemy. “Convergence” was something people worried about in the 1970s, when it seemed as if the imperatives of espionage and the arms race were causing the US to develop a national security state similar to the Kremlin’s.

The equivalent phenomenon today, as N.S. Lyons points out in a brilliant essay, is that “both China and the West, in their own ways and at their own pace, but for the same reasons, are converging from different directions on … the same not-yet-fully-realized system of totalizing techno-administrative governance.”

What makes a superpower summit at once sinister and comical is this uncanny sense that the two superpowers are not quite the polar opposites they purport to be. Remember: if the Cuban Missile Crisis repeats itself over Taiwan the side imposing the blockade will not be, as in 1962, the US. It will be China. In the Taiwan Semiconductor Crisis of 2024, we would be the Soviets.

It is, to say the least, a strange role to want to play.

ricky_v · Post by **ricky_v** » 30 Nov 2023 14:22

https://www.city-journal.org/article/th ... ver-israel

The effectiveness of networked tribalism tells us that Israel is on track to lose U.S. support in less than a generation. It also tells us, due to the mechanics of networked tribalism and its effectiveness at waging moral warfare, that the U.S. won’t just be unsupportive of Israel; it will be antagonistic to it.

Until recently, Israel was able, with the support of citizens and others living abroad, to control to a significant degree the flow of information and the moral framing of its wars.
This helped provide Israel with the steady backing from Western governments and their institutional media—ranging from financial aid to weapons to military intervention to diplomatic cover—that the nation needs to survive. That control is disappearing.

Networked tribalism has rapidly emerged to wage moral warfare in opposition to Israel. We have seen it drive rapid shifts in consequential public perception in the recent past, at both domestic and international levels, in situations ranging from anti-racism (Black Lives Matter) to anti-Russia/Putin/fascism (Ukraine). Tribal moral warfare bypasses traditional media by directly delivering information and moral framing to people using social networks. It has proved highly effective at persuading—and coercing—traditional media companies into alignment with its preferred moral frames.

Empathy trigger. We see a video, picture, or story depicting victims of aggression (the more horrific, the more effective). We become involuntarily connected with the victim when we see empathy triggers in our information feeds (think George Floyd).

Moral framing (tribal pattern matching). Networked tribes, built to wage war online, put these empathy triggers into a moral frame and then amplify them, spreading them across the network. These frames demonstrate that the aggressor fits the pattern of behavior for the existential threat in question (racism, sexism, fascism, and so forth).

Fictive kinship. When people see tribally framed empathy triggers, they instantly forge a fictive kinship with the victim. Suddenly, for those affected, it wasn’t some poor child in a distant land killed in a conflict but a child in their extended family, neighborhood, or country, killed by pure evil.

bit of a tangent, an area that researchers have not adequately explored till recently was the role played by online gaming communities formed in late 90s to the current day. Valve with half-life 2 and counter strike was the defining moment of most of the generation growing up during that time, and at core its message was wariness of the higher-ups and societal control, then steam came around and gaming and indie gaming at that exploded, no more were there levers by the usual jackals of the msm to apply and force their thoughts into every fertile minds as with their tvs, films and prints, here was a medium where everyone could publish and participate without the necessary blinkers required for consumption of every other entertainment, and with this absence of the prying eyes a steady chunk of population worldwide in a sense grew up together... naturally, this instance of free speech without moderation is not kosher in this world

sanman · Post by **sanman** » 02 Dec 2023 15:55

North Korea Warns US, Says Attack On Spy Satellite Will Be "Declaration of War"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvtmbbVIObs

drnayar · Post by **drnayar** » 02 Dec 2023 16:35

ricky_v wrote: ↑28 Nov 2023 13:53 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... oviet-role

What if we had a new cold war — and we were the Soviets? That was the question I found myself asking during this week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit

It is true to the extent Soviets bankrupted themselves waging the cold war and an ever going on military race for supremacy.
The US is now in the place of Soviet Union and is not too soon when they find they cant go for a military race with the Chinese.. with the petrodollar skiing downhill this looks like a matter of time. "The dying throes of an empire trying to shore its power and prestige" .. this is what is happening to the americans. Arrogance and sheer stupidity of the state dept reeks of Nero's delusions.

Why is this important to India. ? Because the Americans will soon try to coddle upto the Chinese and present a bipolar world choice dividing the world into two spheres of influence. This will happen once the current phase of "sanctions and regime changes fail to work. . At the same time outwardly showing all the bravado and swagger of American imperialism.

India needs to be particularly careful at this critical juncture sometime in the 2040's .It would be a defining moment.

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 02 Dec 2023 20:10

There are a couple of diagrams on "deep state", that the good Lt. Gen. has produced that are worth a look:

bala · Post by **bala** » 02 Dec 2023 21:39

All these western Sanskrit reading pretenders ensconced in American Universities spewing bile against Hinduism and Hindutva are being exposed for their shallowness and duplicity. One of them is Audrey Truschke who has been whitewashing temple destruction that took place during the Mughal rule of India. She blatantly misrepresents incidents from all Indian text including Rāmāyaṇa through mis-translations and fanciful imagination - a classic Britshit trait.

Subhodeep Mukhopadhyay and Manogna Sastry expose the fraud called Audrey Truschke and her work in the book 'Ten Heads of Ravana' research. Truschke’s work is riddled with poor data and sloppy conclusions giving her an 'F' grade in research. Trusche has no scholarship in Sanskrit or Indian history. She represents the deteriorating standards of American universities. She is a true Jihadi disguised as an academic. She does not respond to genuine questions questions posed about her narratives. In other words, she is the classic "class room idiot" who revels in her own make believe world of fantasy. Clearly Indians should not even bother with such duds but the western press and deep state keeps propping up such airheads into their report that it requires a firm rebuttal/rejection of her so-called scholarship.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_Asa8J0NVc

sanman · Post by **sanman** » 07 Dec 2023 09:06

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 07 Dec 2023 09:34

Bharat is arriving ..............................on the global stage. Get your chai biscut and chips and popcorn.

The US Is Endorsing India and Israel’s Campaigns of Occupation and Oppression

Dec 4, 2023.

Teaser.

As economic and geopolitical ties among Israel, India, and the U.S. have only continued to strengthen, Joe Biden has chummed it up with both Netanyahu and Modi, averting his eyes from their all-too-violent national visions.

Hey, during WW2, 60,000 French civilians were killed due to Allied bombing related to D-Day. 35,000 Germans died in one night in Dresden, when the B-shit and Americans bombed to advance their objectives!! UN Article 99 should have been invoked long back. Not when the Islamo-Leftists are losing.

BTW, an unconfirmed audio claims that a higher up Iranian is vehemently against IMEC. What else is new?

The battle lines are being drawn. Bharat better print that $50 billion and arm up. Not too late.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 11 Dec 2023 08:43

Telegraph is crying that Putin is winning Ukraine War

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/1 ... g-victory/

Please post the article excerpts.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 11 Dec 2023 08:45

drnayar

In chess. terms XJP castled his king in SF.

ricky_v · Post by **ricky_v** » 13 Dec 2023 15:01

https://www.theamericanconservative.com ... bt-empire/

something that is very visible but rarely spoken of, homo-faggotry is a policy tool of us

Our LGBT Empire
Why is it America’s business to queer the Donbass?

Are we fighting in Ukraine in order to “queer the Donbass”? That phrase, which I believe originated with TAC’s editor-at-large Rod Dreher, implies that the ideological package that NATO rallied to Ukraine to defend includes not only freedom and democracy but also pride parades and drag queen story hour. That would, of course, be a ridiculous reason to fight a war. Many Americans don’t want to queer their own kids’ elementary school, much less an industrial Slavic province five thousand miles away.

In theory, it ought to be possible to be part of the democratic world and not buy in to America’s particular version of non-traditional sexual morals. In practice, apparently, it is not.

The story of how gay rights came to play a role in American foreign policy is a curious one. It started under Barack Obama and continued, surprisingly, under Donald Trump. It was folded into our broader support for human rights at a time when every single referendum on gay marriage here in the United States had failed and support for gay marriage at home was far from unanimous. In light of that, it should be unsurprising that the answer to our original question is: Yes, in fact, we are fighting to queer the Donbass. The average American may not be interested in that goal, but our State Department is.

In 2004, billboards appeared in the Macedonian capital of Skopje with pictures of gay couples and the slogan “Face Reality, The Campaign to Promote the Rights of Sexual Minorities.” At the bottom right corner of each billboard was the seal of the U.S. embassy. The billboards had been purchased by a local gay rights group called the Center for Civil and Human Rights, which two years earlier had received a $20,000 grant from the U.S. government. The ambassador to Macedonia at the time, Lawrence Butler, was a Clinton appointee rumored to be personally hostile to the “family-values agenda” of Macedonian president Boris Trajkovski. The embassy nevertheless disavowed the posters, saying the CCHR had used the seal “inappropriately.”

The controversy over the Macedonian billboards put a chill on efforts to incorporate gay rights into American foreign policy. Proponents would absolutely continue working toward that goal. They just realized they would have to be cautious. When Barack Obama was inaugurated in 2009, his State Department appointees got to work on how to frame an international gay rights agenda. After two years, they were ready to proceed.

The founding charter of American gay rights diplomacy was a speech given by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Geneva in December 2011. In the speech, Clinton modified a line from the famous speech she gave in Beijing as first lady about women’s rights: “Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.” She told gay and transgender people around the world, “You have an ally in the United States, and you have millions of friends among the American people.” She also promised to “use all the tools of American diplomacy, including the potent enticement of foreign aid, to promote gay rights around the world.”

This was a sweeping new agenda backed by a formidable threat. The caution lay in the narrow definition of gay rights that the State Department would promote. Embassy personnel abroad would not advocate for gay marriage, gay adoption, or even civil unions. They would simply condemn acts of violence against gays, laws criminalizing gay sex, and disparate treatment of gays under the law, such as unequal ages of consent. The idea was to make gay rights seem to be something everyone could get behind.

Normally, when the U.S. government funds a development program abroad, beneficiaries must mark products of this assistance with American branding. However, human rights grantees are exempt from this branding requirement due to the politically sensitive nature of their activities. Gay rights groups that receive money from the U.S. government are free to disclose this funding; they are also free not to.

A list of examples of grants quickly gets rococo. American taxpayers sent $19,808 to an NGO called Queer Montenegro to introduce Gay Straight Alliance clubs in Montenegrin schools; $24,000 to stage a gay film festival in South Korea; $32,000 to produce a comic “featuring an LGBTQ+ hero” in Peru; $42,000 for the gay classical group the Well-Strung Quartet to perform in Kazakhstan. An NGO in Ecuador received $20,600 to “host 3 workshops, 12 drag theater performances, and produce a 2 minute documentary.” When Fox News ran a story about it, a State Department spokesperson replied that the purpose of the grant was to “promote tolerance” and “provide new opportunities for LGBTQI+ Ecuadorians to express themselves.”

U.S. ambassador to Poland Georgette Mosbacher—a Trump appointee—said in an interview with a Polish news outlet in 2020, “I fully respect that Poland is a Catholic country, but you need to know that, regarding LGBT, you’re on the wrong side of history.” As ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel put his political weight behind a national anti-discrimination bill and called on Japan to implement gay marriage, which annoyed many Japanese who felt he had overstepped his bounds.

Croatia and Slovenia both passed anti-discrimination and civil union laws because the European Union told them they had to. American pressure is usually not quite so heavy handed, although sometimes it is. We have withheld aid to countries such as Egypt and Uganda over gay rights. As for more subtle pressure, the results speak for themselves: a global map of gay marriage is a map of American influence. Outside Europe, the place where it is strongest is Latin America. The only East Asian country with gay marriage is Taiwan, where it was accomplished by means of a constitutional court decision in 2017.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was, in a previous life, the president of the Boy Scouts who pushed the organization to change its policy on gay scoutmasters. Ric Grenell became the highest ranking gay federal official in American history when Trump made him director of national intelligence in 2020. He had spent the previous year leading a campaign to decriminalize homosexuality in the 70 countries where it remains, to one extent or another, illegal.

Which gets to the other reason for inaction on this issue under Trump: the usual deep state insubordination. Trump’s political appointees and the entrenched federal bureaucracy did not always cooperate with each other. On the issue of gay rights, the true believers in the State Department will only put a brake on their advocacy if forced to do so. Professor Burack, in her book, lists the actions she expected the Trump administration to take, which conveniently doubles as a list of action items for Trump II. In addition to obvious steps like pulling out of the GEF, she floats the idea of a gay rights equivalent of the “Mexico City policy” on abortion (which Trump did reinstate). It’s a blunt instrument, but that’s what it would take.

One victory Trump did have was on flags. Previously, American embassies abroad had blanket permission to fly the rainbow pride flag below the national flag on official flagpoles. The Trump administration modified the rule so that embassies had to request permission to display it; no such requests were approved. But even this rule was flouted. Embassies and consulates found creative ways to display the rainbow flag on their buildings, hanging from windows or balconies.

According to one scholar cited by Burack, the reason so many Third World gay activists felt “alarm” at Trump’s election was that they “feared an immediate drop in material and moral support” and “view the U.S. and U.S.-based organizations as critical sources of funding.” They really did believe that without American financial support their organizations would not be able to continue their work. Which, when you think about it, is a shocking admission. If these organizations would not exist without us, then why should the American taxpayer be propping them up?

why indeed? some questions can never be answered

The American concept of homosexuality is quite unique. It resembles no previous culture’s idea of gay relationships. We certainly do not have a monopoly on acceptance of gay sex. It’s a wild world out there. There is, if I can put this delicately, something funny about the idea that we have anything to teach the Arab world about sodomy. Or Southeast Asia. Albanian sworn virgins are a tradition that originates in the Kanun of Lek. Do we want to send a bunch of Westernized NGO staffers to tell these ladies that they’re actually “trans”?

Even many places that are inclined to be chill about private acts between adults balk at how far America is taking things. In America, tens of thousands of people cut off their breasts or genitals every year trying to change their sex. Judges tell parents they will lose custody if they don’t let their children be castrated. Rising STD rates among gay men have led the CDC to approve the continuous use of antibiotics as a prophylactic (DoxyPEP), even though this will surely result in antibiotic-resistant superbugs. Our birthrates are collapsing, and almost half of the children we do have are out of wedlock. There are lots of reasons other countries might look at us and think maybe we don’t have our sexual norms exactly right.

When Hillary Clinton gave that speech in Geneva, she was joined by a beautifully diverse bunch of gay activists from all around the world—Malawi, Lithuania, the Philippines, Moldova, Jamaica. One of them was Ukrainian. That man, Zoryan Kis, now works for the Foreign Ministry in Kiev, after stints at the National Democratic Institute, Amnesty International, and Freedom House.

Being a gay rights advocate in Eastern Europe seems to be a good way to attract favorable attention from big Western institutions. Bart Staszewski organized a pride parade in the Polish city of Lublin and for this achievement was selected to receive fellowships by the Obama Foundation and the Atlantic Council. Maksym Eristavi, a gay activist in Lvov, was a Poynter fellow at Yale in 2015 and more recently had fellowships at the Atlantic Council, the Millennium Leadership Program, and the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C.

It makes sense. These fellowships are about picking individuals and investing in them, tying them to your networks and boosting their careers. If you pick a homosexual, you can be certain his loyalty to the American empire will remain absolute. As long as America stands for giving gay people special legal protections and high social status, self-interest will urge him to maximize its influence.

Eristavi’s chapter, on gay rights, describes how, in countries from Vietnam to his native Ukraine, American diplomats used the power of their office on behalf of gay rights and had their influence enhanced in return by this exercise of sway. Being the gay empire alienates some people, but it inspires others to rally to America’s cause, and perhaps the latter make up in usefulness for what they lack in numbers.

That sounds a bit conspiratorial, even for the deep state, so let me end with the second possible explanation, in which I have more confidence. Gay rights have always been a useful mechanism for liberals to politically neutralize conservatives. When it becomes illegal to disfavor homosexuality in any way—which is what anti-discrimination protections do—it becomes difficult for any person or institution with traditional values to operate in the public square. Catholic adoption agencies, Yeshiva University, and that poor funeral home director in the Bostock case were all told that their beliefs were incompatible with running a charity, a school, or a business. Traditionalists can believe what they want only on the condition that they remain politically and commercially inert.

Adding a gay rights dimension to foreign policy takes the above maneuver to a whole new level. In October 2022, Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin stated that the war in Ukraine was justified because “Moscow right now is a hub of corrupt tyranny [and] a world center of antifeminist, antigay, anti-trans hatred, as well as the homeland of replacement theory for export.” As TAC’s backpage columnist Matthew Schmitz observed on Twitter, Raskin “has laid out a casus belli that applies to a significant portion of the American public,” including anyone who is not a feminist, rejects trans ideology, or worries about demographic replacement.

If you make adherence to gay ideology the standard for national allegiance, as Representative Raskin did, then dissent from it becomes treason. You can read your domestic enemies out of the nation. That is the left’s goal, which explains why they are pushing a sexual revolution abroad that has not been fully accepted at home. They want to make it so that anyone who criticizes the latest trans excesses can be painted as Putin’s dupe and America’s enemy. That, and not the plight of the drag queens of Senegal, is a sufficiently compelling motivation to make sense of the mystery.

Cyrano · Post by **Cyrano** » 13 Dec 2023 16:48

Its not just the US, even France has added a dimension of LGBTQ++ rights to its foreign policy, and created the post of LGBTQ+ ambassador in 2022 and a certain Jean-Marc Berthon has been appointed to this post.

He toured many African countries since, has rankled many heads of state and was declared persona non grata by some.

Another form of western universalism, but encountering increasing resistance.

bala · Post by **bala** » 13 Dec 2023 22:08

The emphasis on material things in Abrahamic faiths causes people to chase material goals instead of understanding the nature of humans and their purpose on earth. This schism in emphasis has caused deviant behaviour, a culture of aggrandisement, conflicts and unsustainability of resources. One resource which is fast disappearing is oil. The number of years left to extract oil from reserves is dwindling and that brings up the question of middle east countries and their future. What will the Middle East do, once its reserves are gone?

At a macro level de-dollarization is happening and with that comes de-radicalization, de-cololonialization and much more. The fiat money and petro dollar are dwindling. This has an impact on money supply. There are many industries affected by such changes - tech sector, movie sector, commercial real estate, banking sector and others. All consumption based, next quarter profits model are in jeopardy. Add to this, the falling birth rates and aging population in many developed nations and the picture becomes murkier. The US China old days of consumption, production has fallen apart and the world is tired of Covid of China lockdown.

The notion of rights provided by a constitution paper is a false promise. Nations that wanted to throw out colonial powers that were oppressing them, created such documents and the rest followed blindly. But the state cannot be a guarantor of rights. Your right to vote can be taken away by a mob and your recourse is to have the judiciary/police to address the issue, but it is too late since you did not vote. All the judiciary/police/state redressals cannot correct the original problem. In India we believe in dharm and karm, many villages in India don't have police stations, but how are they conducting day to day lives without an enforcer? It is because of dharm and karm that the behaviour of people is modulated. The community enforces proper behavior, the family unit enforces proper behavior, and destruction of either family and/or community is counter productive to proper behavior.

Increasingly, the world is looking for a way out of the mess of wanton consumption, hectic lifestyle which has no peace or tangible rewards. The urgency for alternates is acute, where would they go for such an alternate. This is why many, in the world, are looking at Bharat/india for the alternates. The ancient wisdom of the vedic lifestyle has already found resonance in the west, many follow yoga, krishna consciousness, vegetarian lifestyle, minimal consumption, sustainable living, back to family units, sustenance in a nurturing community and much more. These durable value systems are the future blueprint for living on earth. Actually, many nations are looking at Bharat for leadership so that they can follow in the footsteps. This is not a new paradigm, since Bharat for a very long time led in terms of culture, direction of lifestyle by celebrating life as ordained by the creator/brahman, economic activity and forward progress by being all inclusive (Vasudev Kutumbakam). So clearly, a future with Bharat is what the world requires.

Watch and learn from Dr. Ankit Shah's take in YT..

drnayar · Post by **drnayar** » 14 Dec 2023 00:31

bala wrote: ↑13 Dec 2023 22:08 The emphasis on material things in Abrahamic faiths causes people to chase material goals instead of understanding the nature of humans and their purpose on earth. This schism in emphasis has caused deviant behaviour, a culture of aggrandisement, conflicts and unsustainability of resources. One resource which is fast disappearing is oil. The number of years left to extract oil from reserves is dwindling and that brings up the question of middle east countries and their future. What will the Middle East do, once its reserves are gone?

Watch and learn from Dr. Ankit Shah's take in YT..

Iran would take the place of KSA !! https://www.worldometers.info/oil/oil-r ... y-country/

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 15 Dec 2023 06:10

Going to post this short video here because imo events have gone way beyond Israel-Hamas, river-to-the-sea. It is IMHO a global issue. And, IMHO, related to multiple time I have suggested that Bharat should print $50 billion and arm herself.

This guy, and MANY Israel (YT based) analysts are so behind the curve, that it is ridiculous.

The Hamas attacks and the attack on the Bharatiya Samsad should not have happened. The perpetrators, in the future, should not even think of such events. Else we have failed.

And, Bharatiyas better get involved, and stop analyzing.

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 15 Dec 2023 06:59

No Whites invited .. in Boston.....

bala · Post by **bala** » 15 Dec 2023 23:18

This is amazing coming from Saudi Arabia: the three main ‘goddesses’ of the pre-Islamic polytheistic pantheon – Al-Lat, Manat, and Al-Uzza – as “our ancient history” and symbols of female empowerment. Claiming that in Arabian culture women “were the ideal, integrated entity among the Arabs”, allowing belief in goddesses to flourish.

Tweet from Saudi Arabian Govt source:

we’re as Saudi Arabians, deeply connected with our past. doesn’t matter if we’re Muslims or not. It’s an arabic history. Saudi government gives so much importance for the ancient Arabian gods. our past is a part of our future.

In order to “secularize their country", the Saudi authorities are allowing the revival of the pagan idols that Islam destroyed. The effort by the Saudi government to revive its national heritage, however, comes amid other moves promoted by Riyadh to build a more nationalist and historical narrative, such as the implementation of the Saudi Founding Day for the first time in 2022. Set on 22 February, the Founding Day commemorates the enthronement of the Saudi royal family’s forefathers Muhammad ibn Saud in 1727, when he became emir of the oasis town of Diriyah.

The Sahwa movement was a political Islamic branch consisting of religious scholars and figures, holding significant influence in the kingdom and over its policies throughout the decades. Anyone who talked about antiquities seemed as if he was talking about something polytheistic or about bringing back the worship of idols to Saudi Arabia. This was opposed by Sahwa. It tried to erase such memory in a Saudi person. However, It was Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman who eventually moved against the Sahwa movement and many of its scholars since 2017, promoting and implementing a wave of drastic reforms that got rid of many of the restrictions on Saudi society and the entertainment industry. Tourism and national heritage go hand in hand.

read here..

vijayk · Post by **vijayk** » 15 Dec 2023 23:47

Cyrano wrote: ↑02 Nov 2023 01:19 The question is 'to what end?'

The great reset?

ricky_v · Post by **ricky_v** » 16 Dec 2023 05:05

Cyrano wrote: ↑13 Dec 2023 16:48 Its not just the US, even France has added a dimension of LGBTQ++ rights to its foreign policy, and created the post of LGBTQ+ ambassador in 2022 and a certain Jean-Marc Berthon has been appointed to this post.

He toured many African countries since, has rankled many heads of state and was declared persona non grata by some.

Another form of western universalism, but encountering increasing resistance.

i think this line from the article would sum up this relationship: As for more subtle pressure, the results speak for themselves: a global map of gay marriage is a map of American influence. In this new marriage of the us and euro values, us brings homosex to the table, euros bring in anti-natalism, both are geared towards willful culling of the human race

as for african nations, i recall when uganda passed an anti american values law, there was quite a furor in the western media

S_Madhukar · Post by **S_Madhukar** » 16 Dec 2023 11:47

- Natural cycle of US decline and Asian rise.
- India a friend for NOW for the US but will likely change in future
- India good at away game (foreign affairs + English), Chinese good at home affairs
- China could fund IVF (+legal incentives) to ensure population growth
- China very relevant still due to manufacturing prowess
- Chinese diaspora could suffer from pushback going forward
- India should go straight to robotics (automating muscles + mind) to leapfrog in manufacturing like we did from landlines to mobiles ... Indians in US have many robotics startups

There is a follow up podcast more on geopolitics that suggests India keep head down and gain strength like China and ABSOLUTELY avoid open war before it becomes a target like China has today.
Future will be a cold war between India's open systems and China's closed system, US will be a diminishing power like British empire

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 17 Dec 2023 01:49

Folks don't flood us with videos. Most are empty windbags and love the sound of their voices.
And many often bandwagon on each hot topic.
So the thread loses its grip.
Please desist.
TIA

vimal · Post by **vimal** » 17 Dec 2023 03:04

ramana wrote: ↑17 Dec 2023 01:49 Folks don't flood us with videos. Most are empty windbags and love the sound of their voices.
And many often bandwagon on each hot topic.
So the thread loses its grip.
Please desist.
TIA

It's time to remove the youtube embed from post creation form. Its becoming a nuisance.

bala · Post by **bala** » 19 Dec 2023 10:52

India, Russia, USA and China, where does India stand? Good discussion on "realpolitik" pretty much all are discussed, including EU and Global south. It would be interesting to revisit this topic when India becomes #2, #3 is inevitable in a few years. India has to plan ahead for the eventuality of India becoming #1, this is where Chanakya level thinking would help. In the US there is a large desi population, many in the top echelons of society and there could be a day that the US Pres could be Indian origin like the UK currently has.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e-lEpAQXR4

Personally I think China is on a downward slide. Their key strength was manufacturing for the world, but the US has put an end and the wind up is happening over some time. Militarily China has quantity (quality is dubious) and many systems are based on older Russian origin items. It is belligerent with every neighbor and the combined angst it has created would backfire sometime. The demographics of China is a disaster waiting to happen soon. The CCP could break up very suddenly and things would go out of control.

Cyrano · Post by **Cyrano** » 20 Dec 2023 00:11

We should be in no hurry to become no 1 etc in economic or military terms. Being a Chakravarty comes with it's own burdens and won't last forever...

The world is a big place, technology is a great leveler. What Bharat should aim for is prosperity for itself, be in very good relations with at least two of the top 5 in a multipolar world, and be very influential with the global south. And build a multi layered défense with economic interdependence with all major players, and a strong domestic MIC.

Let US and China fight for the top dog spot with their MAD policies. We will watch and have curry.