Looking to the Left Field
(Thanks to People’s Daily)
New readers should know that my Substack posts are dedicated to surveillance of matters related to a central premise, and that premise, put at its simplest, is that the collective West, made ever more desperate and ruthless because of its unsustainable debt load, is attempting to beat back the multiple forces of multipolarity. It is currently doing this on three main fronts: against Russia over the proxy excuse of defending Ukraine; against Iran over the proxy excuse of defending Israel; against China over the proxy excuse of defending Taiwan. But there is no limit to the number of fronts that the West will entertain.
Technology Solutions (or Disasters)
If in the Trump era we should be alert to the likelihood of a continuous stream of strikes from left field, then I am inclined to look even more attententively to China, Russia and India than I am to the US or any part of Europe.
Is Chinese fusion experimentation a promise of endless energy that will at a glance solve our climate change and energy dilemma; is it just another very expensive way of boiling a kettle? Or will it collapse and destroy the planet. Really, the competition for this status is already intense.
China está próxima a replicar los procesos del Sol
Chinese news agency Xinhua reports that the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) maintained a steady-state high-confinement plasma operation for a remarkable 1,066 seconds on Monday, setting a new world record and marking a breakthrough in the quest for fusion power generation. The ultimate goal of an artificial sun is to create nuclear fusion like the sun, providing humanity with an endless, clean energy source, and enabling space exploration beyond the solar system. Only after reaching temperatures over 100 million degrees Celsius, sustaining stable long-term operation, and ensuring controllability can a nuclear fusion device successfully generate electricity. A fusion device must achieve stable operation at high efficiency for thousands of seconds to enable the self-sustaining circulation of plasma, which is critical for the continuous power generation of future fusion plants.
On a similar theme, if you want to find out how China’s AI is quickly closing the gap on American, see here: (Economist on China's AI)
Financial Implosion
Writing for World Socialist Web Site, Nick Beams chronicles the troubling implications of current turbulence on bond markets.
“The bond market is being moved by concerns over how much longer governments can continue to finance the mountain of debt they have accumulated. The International Monetary Fund estimates total global government debt to be $100 trillion. This is the result of the continual outlays governments have incurred in propping up their economies and corporations…
“Significant attention has focused on the UK which experienced severe financial turbulence in October 2022 because of the attempt by the short-lived Liz Truss government to finance tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy by increasing debt. This set off an escalation in bond yields requiring the intervention of the Bank of England to prevent a full-blown financial crisis, leading to the resignation of Truss”.
The underlying causes of the near meltdown have remained. Ray Dalio, founder of the global hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, told the Financial Times (FT) this week that Britain could be headed for a “debt death spiral.” This is a situation where increasing amounts of money must be borrowed just to pay the interest on existing debt.
“There was a risk that the combination of rising interest costs, now at £100 billion a year, and the need to roll over existing debt at a higher interest rate would produce a self-reinforcing cycle…The supply-demand problem means that the issuing of government bonds (debt) exceeds the demand for them at a given price. Consequently, investors are only prepared to purchase bonds if their price is lowered with a consequent rise in the yield. (The two have an inverse relationship.)
“While the UK may be characterised as the “sick man” of the major economies as far as debt and interest payments are concerned, the position of the US is objectively even worse. However, it is able to sustain massive government debt, now approaching $36 trillion, with an annual interest bill heading for $1 trillion, because the US dollar is the global currency and in demand.
“But there are growing warnings that even with this “exorbitant privilege” the US financial position is ultimately not sustainable.
“In his FT interview Dalio did not confine himself to the UK but pointed to the situation in the US. He called for the deficit to be cut from its present level of 6 percent of GDP to 3 percent. This burden will be borne, without any doubt, by the people.
“US government spending is around $6.3 trillion, of which nearly $1 trillion is on the military and the same amount on interest payments to bond holders. Neither of these items will be reduced which means that the target will be social services, health, education and other vital areas impacting the working class”.
Lunacy Score for Donald Trump
Is Donald Trump devilishly clever - almost (DCA)? Or is he a marginally moronic blabbermouth (MMB)? I can report, based on my own research for all of a few minutes, that he lies somewhere in betwee these two points of a continuum but that the prevailing winds are indicative of an MMB trajectory.
If there is any significant correlation between lunacy, on the one hand, and being totally wrong, on the other about important facts in public statements; telling flagrant lies; manifesting utter ignorance about important life-and-death issues; threatening punitive actions against others that will hurt oneself first and even more lethally than they will hurt their targets; talking about weighty, complicated issues in a reckless or heedless fashion; uncritically parroting information fed from provenly dubious sources (namely, Biden-staffed US intelligence outlets); or issuing wild and meaningless threats; and exhibiting nauseous self-satisfaction and narcissism, then the arrow on my lunacy continuum is shifting darkly rightwards towards the MMB extreme.
The lies? How about that 65 million Russians were killed in World War 2 - it was 27 million; or that Russia kindly helped the US win World War Two - Russia, more than any other single nation, won the war; that many more Russians than Ukrainians have died in the present conflict (it is strongly the reverse); Russia’s economy is tanking - Russian economy has actually been growing, and will continue to grow but at a slightly less frenetic pace).
At the WEF, a forum in which only suspected MMBs are foolish enough to show themselves, Trump, having expressed in one breath his deep love for the Russian people and then in the next telling them he wants to destroy their economy unless they humbly kow-tow to his unreasonable demands, says he will destroy Russia by bringing down the price of oil and that the Saudis, ever so kindly, will help him do that by lowering the price of OPEC oil.
Saudi Arabia did create a challenge for Russia in the 1980s, after having instigated a massive oil price rise in the 1970s which almost destroyed the West under Carter, and which created difficulties for Russian exports - but was far from being a major factor leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Saudis, in a bid to protect market share, also dropped their prices after 2014. If Russia was indeed an intended target, and it is doubtful, the Russian economy was barely shaken.
Russia today is not existentially dependent on oil prices because energy contributes less than 10% of its revenues.
The Saudis, on the other hand, are very anxious not to be seen as US imperial dotes. Their regional credibility and their credibility in OPEC requires this. They are already members of the BRICS - a little unsteady, perhaps, but they can see which way this wind is blowing. They like high prices for their oil, not low prices because, among other things, there are a lot of Saudi princes and they have big ambitions for the desert.
A liking for high oil prices is something that Saudi princes share with US oil producers. Russia likes high prices too, and gets them because there is very high demand for Russian energy, a demand that enables Russia to overcome and work around every manner of sanction, price cap, tariff, shipping penalty, third party sanctions that the US and its European vassal states have thrown at it (even while, like Von der Leyen, they still spin the egregious lie that it was Russia that cut off energy supplies to Europe).
If the US successfully puts pressure on Saudi Arabia to lower its prices (and why doesn’t Trump put pressure on domestic US or North American producers?), then Russia can react by lowering production to push prices back up, and engineering a reduction in the value of the ruble which will sustain the ruble denomination of a barrel of oil on international markets.
In today’s Russia, Gilbert Doctorow notes in a column today:
‘Gas and oil revenues to the state are lower than the taxes it collects from the industrial economy, which are surging. Russia’s economy is far more diverse and healthier than it has been in more than 100 years. The balance of payments of Russia in 2024 was positive to the tune of $50 billion and there is little that Mr. Trump can do to change that fact”.
On the question of more US sanctions on Russia, Russian elites are laughing, as Doctorow reports:
“Russia’s Sixty Minutes program this afternoon discussed all of the points of possible punishment that Trump put into his Truth Social text. They laughed aloud at the idea of raising tariffs on Russian goods sold in the United States, since the total volume of Russian exports to the USA in 2024 was 350 million dollars, and much of that was for uranium which US power stations badly needed to stay operating. Th also ridiculed Trump for some foolish and ignorant statements that he made to journalists this morning: that he didn’t want to hurt the Russian people, since ‘Russia had helped us to win WWII,’ and that Russia had lost 60 million of its citizens in that war. For Russians, the question of who helped whom to win WWII is precisely the inverse, and their war dead, bad as they were, amounted to 26 million”.
Israeli Lunacy and the Struggle for Hegemony in the Middle East
There seems to be little happening in the wake of the strategic partnership agreement just signed a few days ago between Russia and Iran that would make one worry any further than one should already be worrying, about a potential Israeli strike on Iran or a preemptive Iranian strike on Israel.
Almost certainly, Israel has outstretched itself for the time being in Gaza, Southern Lebanon, and Southern Syria. From Gaza, Israeli attention has shifted to the West Bank, where there are so many more people for Israel to murder. With the complicity of its lackey, the Palestinian Authority, Israel has staged its latest expedition for the annihilation of Palestinians.
This follows immediately, as Robert Inlakesh notes today for Consortium News, the lifting by Trump of all sanctions previously placed on Israeli settlers in the West Bank. On Monday night, with the backing of the Israeli military, settler groups launched a series of violent assaults on residents in the West Bank. The most severe attacks occurred in two villages near Qalqilya, where masked settlers set fires and fired indiscriminately.
Inlakesh details US support for Israel murder and land-theft against Palestinians.
“The role of U.S. citizens and their donations in enabling messianic-extremist settler movements cannot be overstated. However, the Trump administration has adopted one of the most hardline pro-settler positions in American history, a stance made abundantly clear by the individuals selected to fill key cabinet roles”.
In Gaza, the return of HAMAS to de facto authoritative functionality is an illustration of what, without the support of US zionists and their Presidential godfather, the fundamental weakness of the Israeli zionist project and an explanation for Israeli terror campaigns in its fear of finally falling apart under the weight of internal fractures, international revulsion, US dependency, demographic decline, diminishing economy.
Israel, Turkey, Syria and Iran
The collapse of the Assad regime weakened Iran, first and foremost, by weaking Hezbollah, a militia that was part-funded by Iran, and that was and continues to be very important in sustaining life in Lebanon in the midst of a barely-functioning political and military system.
But Hezbollah, like Hamas, will arise from the ashes, and restore to Iran the kind of influence it has for long been able to sustain. This will happen, first and foremost, because Syria - as was obvious from the first day of HTS rule - is already a mess and will become more and more of a mess, providing many vacuums of power and fissure points for the reintroduction of Hezbollah and Iranian influence both in Syria and Iraq. HTS-aligned death squads have already been mobilized to murder Alawites and harrass Christian in Latakia and the northwest. This may involve Turkey more directly: it is currently present in the north and northeast through its proxy SNA army, which is in combat against the US proxy army, said to be 60,000 strong, of the Kurdish SDF, while Israel is in the process of permanently settling into southern Syria (Quneitra and Daraa provinces).
Turkey may formalize its position in Syria, partly on the pretext that it is protecting Alawites and other Syrian minorities from the (Turkish-backed) HTS, also to motivate Russia to sustsin its presence in Syria, a superpower force that Turkey might seek to manipulate in its attempts to maintain control over Israeli and and Kurdish expansionism. HTS cover for the terrorist East Turkestan Islamic Movement of anti-China Uighurs (there were 15,000 of them in Idlib before the HTS invasion) will further complicate relations between the Syrian “authorities” and many of the nations between Central and Eastern Asia that are already having to deal with affiliated terrorist organiztions seeking to destabilize Chinese Belt and Road initiatives and efforts to induce regime change where they can.
Desperation in Syria
As was entirely predictable, the situation in Syria following the Western-backed Turkish/HTS invasion of Syria and the undemocratic installation of a pro-Western extreme Sunni Islamist government, is catastrophic and far worse, in my view, than in any previous time in Syrian history. Oritro KarimReprint reports for IPS that according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the end of Assad’s rule led to an eruption of hostilities across Syria, mainly concentrated in eastern Aleppo, Al-Hasakah, Ar-Raqqa, Quneitra, and regions along the Tishreen Dam.
“Intensified violence had also led to the Tishreen Dam becoming damaged and non-functional for the past six weeks, depriving 413,000 people in Menbij and Ain-al Arab of water and electricity. The Menbij National Hospital has also been compromised due to lootings, with medical equipment, ambulances, and generators being at low stock, making healthcare efforts increasingly difficult. Repair efforts have been impeded due to persisting insecurity.
“Heightened insecurity and displacement has plunged Syria into a state of economic emergency. Devaluation of Syrian currency and inflation have made the cost of food and other basic goods nearly inaccessible for the vast majority of the Syrian people. Poverty in Syria has been described as “near universal” by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), with approximately 90 percent of Syrians being financially insecure.
“Living conditions for the majority of Syrians have exacerbated significantly in the past two months. The World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that approximately 13 million people struggle with extreme hunger. Additionally, IRC estimates that over 100,000 children under five years old suffer from acute malnutrition.
“636 displacement shelters have had their water, sanitation, and hygiene services suspended due to underfunding, leaving approximately 636,000 people without access to clean water. OCHA states that the situation is particularly dire in northeast Syria, with 24,600 internally displaced persons (IDPs) residing in 204 collective shelters in dire need of water, latrine service, heating, winter clothing, and mental health support.
“Poor sanitation and overcrowding in displacement shelters has led to the emergence of a cholera outbreak in Syria. Disease outbreaks have been a persistent threat in Syria since the eruption of hostilities and have significantly worsened in late 2024. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there have been over 200 confirmed cases of cholera in Syria.
“According to a 2025 situation overview from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are currently about 7.2 million internally displaced people in Syria, as well as 6.2 million refugees, primarily based in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Türkiye, and Jordan. Additionally, rates of displacement have increased significantly since the transition of power, with approximately 627,000 people, including 275,000 children, having been displaced across the country, especially in Idlib and Aleppo”.
Israel in Syria
For Mint Press News, Jessics Buxbaum (Buxbaum) recalls how within hours of Assad’s fall on December 8, 2024 (suggesting Israeli complicity with Turkey and HTS), Israeli forces seized the buffer zone separating the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from the rest of Syria and raised Israel’s flag atop Mount Hermon. They still remain stationed in the United Nations-patrolled area — raiding government buildings and summoning residents for questioning. As in Southern Lebanon this Israeli invasion enjoys the strong backing of Israeli settler movements. Buxbaum details the Uri Tzafon movement, and the Nachala movement.
Israel’s government has recently approved plans to expand Israeli settlements in the occupied Golan Heights, and Netanyahu has said he wants to double the settler population in the Golan, which currently has a settler population of approximately 30,000 concentrated in 35 settlements. There are urgent calls for Israel to seize a “security belt” to include Mount Hermon.
“In June 2024, at Uri Tzafon’s “First Lebanon Conference,” Dr. Hagi Ben Artzi, Netanyahu’s brother-in-law and Uri Tzafon member, told participants that Israel’s borders should be expanded to include Syria — according to what was promised in the Bible.
“We don’t want even one meter beyond the Euphrates River. We are humble. [But] what we were promised, we must conquer,” Ben Artzi said.
“Southern Lebanon and southern Syria have long been part of the Zionist vision of a Jewish state. In fact, Zionist leaders were in conversation with the United Kingdom and France to include these areas while working to establish a state”.
“Local Syrian sources say Israel has expanded beyond the buffer zone to occupy the villages of Arab al-Sudi, Shabraq, Sihyun, Nofa and the east of the town of Sayda. Israeli forces have also taken control of Syrian water sources, including the Saharan al-Julan Dam. Taking control of the water supply is part of the settlement strategy, Ayoub explained.
“Israel won’t leave the new occupation area,” Ayoub said. “They need new settlers to control the land and the water. So they need a new settler power to continue controlling the area.” And with Uri Tzafon and Nachala, they already have Israelis ready to take up that mantle”.
Stability for Iran?
Formalization of Iranian partnership with Russia, as noted in previous posts, almost certainly will enhance Russia’s role in Iranian commerce, banking and military affairs. But the softness of the agreement gives comfort both to, those who believe that Iran will now be even more loathe to develop a nuclear bomb and to those who see in this a credible effort to keep the doors open between Iran’s otherwise pro-Western government and the West.
Feeble Resolution of NATO’s Proxy War Against Russia
Politico confirms that in one of his first acts as president, Donald Trump froze all foreign aid for 90 days, pending reviews by the new administration of whether existing aid aligns with US values.
The extent to which this impacts military aid to Ukraine has been disputed and I am finding considerable confusion in mainstream and alternative news sites leading me to think, as confirmed by Scott Ritter, that there has probably been no cessation of military support to this point in time. It would hardly make sense for Trump to deescalate so significantly in this respect while escalating his threats of sanctions, tariffs, penalties and so on.
Some commentations had suggested that the number of days was significant because Trump has given his Ukraine advisor, General Kellogg, 100 days to secure an agreement to end the conflict, and three months is about what it will take for Ukraine to eat its way through the $50 billion funding provided in his last days by former President Biden. Commentators have also suggested that resumption of the flow of weapons might depend on investigations of budgetary irregularities both in the Pentagon and also in Poland and Ukraine taken to maximize the volume of weapons.
But Ukraine’s military aid is said (by Ukrainian sources) not be affected, as Trump’s executive order applies to international assistance under the “development programs” of United Nations agencies, peacekeeping initiatives and refugee support programs. Ukraine receives assistance from the United States under the Presidential Drawdown (PDA), Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), and Foreign Military Financing (FMF) programs. The executive order does not apply to these programs. Trump's order seems to be mainly aimed at programs run by USAID, responsible for handing out $22 billion in civilian and development. This harms Ukraine as it includes initiatives like restoring bombed energy facilities and demining, said Maksym Samoiliuk, a monetary and fiscal policy expert at the Centre for Economic Strategy, a Kyiv-based think tank.
Zelenskiy at Davros was busy encouraging European leaders to make up, if necesssry, the withdrawal from NATO of 60% of NATO’s budget in the event that Trump takes the US out of NATO, and urging them to be prepared to pony up a 200,000 NATO-staffed “peace-keeping” buffer force that would in practice, most assuredly, keep Russia at war. Zelenskiy insists that such a force should include Americans. This would ensure, he thinks, that in the event of a violation of any ceasefire (easily engineered by Ukraine or the CIA) all of NATO, including the US, would become implicated in a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia.
Trump keeps claiming that Zelenskiy “wants peace.” Yet Zelenskiy has done nothing to remove his edict against any negotiation between Russia and Ukraine, while Putin has said no peace negotiation could be conducted with Zelenskiy without the restoration of elections, and Zelenskiy has rarely said anything convincing that suggests he is no longer seeking a complete Russian climb-down.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, his own political survival in increasing doubt (thanks, in part to Elon Musk’s campaign to revitalize a scandal about how Starmer, as Musk puts it, “was complicit in the rape of Britain when he was head of Crown Prosecution for 6 years.”), and who has just signed off on an incredibly foolish 100 year friendship treaty with Ukraine, does not want negotiations either.
Putin today, as reported by RT and CNN Friday January 24, said that “the crisis in Ukraine” might have been prevented if Donald Trump was in power at the time, and that he was ready to talk with the new US president about the conflict.
“Trump has long claimed that the war in Ukraine would not have happened under his watch, but Friday marked the first time Putin suggested the same thing – while also repeating Trump’s false claim that the 2020 US election was “stolen.”
“I can’t help but agree with (Trump) that if his victory had not been stolen in 2020, then maybe there would not have been the crisis in Ukraine that arose in 2022,” Putin told a Russian TV channel, presumably referring to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine which he himself had ordered in February 2022”.