Pelosi Re-Unifies China and Smashes the Petro-Dollar?!
China-Saudia Arabia-BRICS:
China’s premier, Xi Jinping, is travelling to Saudi Arabia. This follows a major agreement between China and Saudi oil interests. Mercouris (see link further down below) predicts that this may facilitate Saudi Arabia’s pending application to join the BRICS and I cite from his recent broadcast.
BRICS countries are planning an alternative international reserve currency to compete with the dollar. Saudi Arabia might therefore be participating in this currency when it joins the BRICS and then, logically, it would demand payment for its oil in the new reserve currency.
This would be the end of the petro-dollar, which is not the same as the reserve currency but is an important part of the international trading system that secures the dominance of the dollar. Because everyone needs oil and everyone has had to use the dollar to buy oil, up until now. If oil is no longer traded only in dollars then countries around the world will have to hold some of their foreign currency holdings in the new reserve currency so that they can buy oil from countries that use the new reserve, and they will therefore hold fewer dollars, a major step towards replacing the dollar as reserve currency. This will not happen right away but it is pointing in a certain direction. China’s talks to Saudi Arabia - their relationship goes back to the 1980s - may form another Chinese reaction, blowback, to Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.
China, Taiwan and Pelosi
New Atlas discussion between Brian Berletic and Angelo Guiliano (New Atlas 08.12.2022). Guiliano lives in China and has lived in Taiwan.
Actions are more important than words: politicians like Pelosi may claim to abide with the one-China policy but their actions consistently show a determined support for Taiwanese independence.
China would rather have a peaceful reunification with Taiwan but there is no doubt that it will use force if necessary to head off US interference and Taiwanese independence.
The current leader of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, and her party, the DPP, in effect are agents of the USA; in 2004-2005 as Wikileaks cables demonstrated, she was having meetings with US officials of AIC. This is a democracy that has been hijacked. This was what the 2014 color revolution, the Sunflower Movement, was all about. Taiwan’s constitution clearly recognizes only one China. The Kuomintang opposition has always pointed to the illegality of the movement to independence.
Color Revolution shenanigans since 2006 have encouraged young Taiwanese to think of themselves as superior (even “western!”) to mainland Chinese, just as happened also in Hong Kong in 2019 (Hong Kong Chinese being encouraged by the NED to think of themselves as superior to mainland Chinese), and has happened in Ukraine (western Ukrainians being encouraged to think of themselves as superior to Russian-speaking eastern Ukrainians). They are falsely encouraged to think of themselves as being Taiwanese, not Chinese, even though they are very much Chinese in culture and language and history (i.e. a history of 3,000+ years before 1949 when the Kuomintang, losers in the war against Mao, settled in, or rather, took over Taiwan).
In the 1972 Nixon treaty the USA recognized China as the legitimate government of all of China, including Taiwan, and the US undertook to remove its occupying troops. Taiwan is not a country. The USA was clear: it does not recognize Taiwan as an independent country. Since the UN recognizes only the one China, the US is not supposed to have any diplomatic relations with Taiwan at all.
Pelosi did not listen to Beijing when she visited Taipei, when Beijing warned she would be violating China’s sovereignty. She flew in on an air force plane; she is third in line to the presidency; of course, her visit was the simulacrum of an “official” visit, but illegal.
The subsequent Chinese military exercises were well thought through, and China has started to reposition, reassert, itself on the way to re-securing Taiwan as part of China. The One China policy is accepted at UN level and accepted by most countries.
There has been a trend towards independence in Taiwan, yes, but even according to Taiwanese government polls the vast majority (over 90!) of Taiwanese want stability, the status-quo, over independence. Because they don’t want war.
Who invented the idea of Taiwanese independent identity? Not so long ago everyone (well, not the indigenous, of course, nor the remaining Japanese) in Taiwan would identify themselves first and foremost as Chinese. But the NED has been propagandizing independence and Taiwanese identity. It is the NED that is responsible for seeding these ideas.
If Taiwan was independent its economy would be destroyed. Just like Ukraine in 2014 when the color revolution created a divorce of Ukraine from Russia, with grave economic consequences. Taiwan, as part of China, is part of the world’s largest economy in terms of spending power parity: why would it NOT want to be a part of that, especially when most of its exports go to China and it buys most of its stuff from China? Even the threat of independence is encouraging some of its important high tech, semiconductor industries to think of relocating, perhaps to the USA. Thus an independent Taiwan, just like a Ukraine divorced from Russia, threatens to be a de-industrialized and impoverished version of its previous self.
The Pelosi visit may have stimulated the Chinese military exercises, and might have set China off in the direction of formalizing and executing the actual One China, moving beyond the red line of convention established in practice since 1972. China is no longer playing the game of polite deference to US superpower vanities.
Kherson
UK MOD says today that Russians have managed to carry out “superficial” repairs to the Antonivskyi Bridge, which the MOD claims likely remains structurally undermined but that this still does not allow them to ensure ground resupply for the troops. It says that the two main road bridges leading to the Russian occupied territory (“several thousand troops”) on the west bank of the Dnieper River are now probably out of use for military resupply. It notes that Russia has been using a pontoon ferry near the railway bridge. The MOD claims that Russian military personnel have started to take their families out of Kherson.
Followers of Alexander Mercouris (who in turn draws a lot of his information from the Military Summary channel) will recall his judgment that while the impacts of missile strikes have caused only superficial damage, not structural, to both the bridge and the dam, that the road may have been closed, but that the railway was still passable, and that the road was mainly of value for civilian use and supplies to Kherson city. He talked of two pontoon bridges and a ferry. He talked of the advantage of rail over road for the transportation of large amounts of ammunition to Russian troops on the west banks of the Dnieper, and also pointed to the possibility of shipping, about which we have not heard too much, perhaps because it is relatively slow and vulnerable.
Mercouris today (Mercouris 08.12.2022) also notes that the Russians are west of the Dnieper in Kherson, and in Belarus not far north of Chernobyl. There is still time for the Ukrainian counteroffensive but the time window is beginning to close and there is no sign of this getting under way; more and more people are expressing their doubts that it will ever happen (views expressed in the US by the likes of Col. McGregor and Scott Ritter). Re-deployment of Ukrainian troops from Donbass to Kherson subjected them to more danger than they faced in Donbass and enabled the Russians to make their important breakthrough in Peskiy.
Donbass
Mercouris praises both Russian and Ukrainian journalists for their front line reporting something which very few western reporters do to any degree. Most war reporting in western media comes from Kiev, Lviv and western capitals.
Eyewitness reports by Russian reporters confirm Russian and allied troops are heavily engaged in Bakhmut and Solidar, and moving beyond the suburbs of these two towns and into the city centers. On this occasion the Russians are doing the reverse of what they did in Mariupol and Severodonestsk: they have cleared the industrial areas before they move deeper into the residential areas.
The fall of Bakhmut is now only a matter of time.
Some Ukrainian troops have moved into the giant salt mines near Solidar, presenting a situation of underground resistance comparable to that of the Azovstal plant a couple of months ago, but one that could quickly become a death-trap.
Further north, near Seversk, the Russians are fighting more aggressively with a view to taking that too. Mercouris notes that the Ukrainian concentration around Sloviansk and Kramotorsk has been for reserve troops and command headquarters and is not as well defended as the area around Bakhmut. So it will be captured more quickly. There has been continued fighting around Peskiy opposite the city of Donetsk, where video footage shows the immense damage impacts of Russian missile launch systems TOS-1 and TOS-2, at least as or more impactful than the Western HIMARS. The ferocity of the TOS-1&2 provides an explanation, but not justification, for Ukrainian use of residential areas and buildings for Ukrainian military and artillery use (a war crime). But note that the buildings we see in Peskiy were cleared years ago of civilians in the 2014-2015 war.
There are lots of reports of Russian recruitment campaigns throughout Russia with a view to preparing for offensives beyond Donbass. (This might explain western claims that Russia is running short of troops).
Zaporizhizhia
The nuclear power station is located east of the Dnieper River. Notwithstanding obfuscation about who is doing the shelling it seems obvious, as it did to the UN yesterday, that the Russians, who occupy the nuclear power station, would hardly be shelling it!
Of course, it is Ukraine that it is shelling the power station. Why are they doing it? Mercouris speculates that this is a substitute for the Kherson counteroffensive in a situation in which Ukraine is under great pressure to provide the appearance of a victory somewhere of some kind.
There are growing reports of Russian plans to hold referenda in the Zaporizhizhia area, scheduled for September (11th), to determine whether residents wish to become part of Russia. The Ukrainians are motivated to disrupt these elections even if their legitimacy will not be accepted anyway by either Ukraine or the West. Some kind of nuclear accident that would keep people at home might be a rationale.
So far, it seems that the amount of damage is not sufficient to cause dangerous disruption to the facility. The Ukrainians might knock out the refrigeration facility enough to require it to be closed down, but because the plant also provides electricity to Ukrainian-controlled areas this might not seem wise. There is a lot of spent nuclear fuel in the area, stored in plywood boxes (some Russian commentators blame Westinghouse for this carelessness) but if shelling causes this fuel to leak then this too might provide a reason for emergency. But nothing on the scale of Chernobyl 1986. The Russians say they have strengthened their air defenses around the area (and they also say they are getting a handle on the HIMARS strikes on the bridges in Kherson region).
Ukrainian Sharing of Battle Plans
Zelenskiy has recently declared his annoyance with Ukrainians who have shared battle plans with the media.
Some media link this event to the recent explosions at the airbase at Saki, Crimea and the unofficial Ukrainian claims that Ukraine was responsible. If sabotage was involved in causing those explosions then Ukrainian claims of responsibility will have confirmed to the Russians that there was indeed an element of sabotage and that they must now be hunting down the saboteurs or those who helped them, since they must have had some kind of inside help in gaining access to the base. That assumes the incident really was sabotage (and not negligence as Mercouris had previously thought). A reliable source who has senior experience with fighting fires has told Mercouris that video footage shows evidence of fuel burn that could well be the result of an attack on a fuel tank. Responsibility might also be attributable to western intelligence. Either way, Russia is likely very concerned and tightening up security.
Zelenskiy’s concern about blabbing might also be linked to the story of the Kherson counteroffensive, given the potential for embarrassment in the event the offensive does not occur. Mercouris actually think this is a more likely explanation (for the blabbing that concerns Zelenskiy) than the Crimean link.
Marinus
Mercouris cites some of the observations of a US marine officer who writes in a military publication under the pen name of Marinus. His view is contrarian. He considers that the Russians have conducted the war with great skill, they have carried it out in way consistent with their operational philosophy and Russian way of war that crystalized in World War II, and has spoken highly of Russian ability in long-range artillery attacks. Along with McGregor and Ritter this indicates that some serving officers and former officers in the USA see the war in a very different way to that to which we are exposed in western media