The sheer stupidity of the people on tweet with the woke crap….. one of these days, they are going to regret it. Besides, American journalism are mostly liars anyway so really, I can understand why the Russians would be willing to put a bullet in him and honestly if he did, I would’t feel any sympathy
Miscellaneous News
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US extends rivalry with China to the moon as it resists cooperation and seeks control over mining
- Nasa claims its Artemis lunar programme will promote diversity and cooperation, but fellow space powers China and Russia have been left out in the cold
- With the US attempting to lay down rules for mineral extraction, the new space race looks set to divide the world – and the moon – along Cold War fault lines
Opinion
There’s enough strife on land, sea and in the air to keep US Cold Warriors and their Wolf Warrior counterparts in China sparring for a long time to come, but the race to create zones of influence and secure resources doesn’t begin and end with planet Earth.
With the roll-out of Nasa’s rocket and Orion spacecraft last March in support of the US Artemis Programme, the moon has been added to the mix.
“Through Artemis, Nasa aims to land the first woman and first person of colour on the moon,” the mission statement reads. The US will “collaborate with commercial and international partners and establish the first long-term presence on the moon”.
At first glance, both China and Russia would be logical international partners, but the statement has a distinctly American accent.
It’s not the first time the US has tried to set the terms by which other nations can explore Earth’s only natural satellite. A US-scripted “Moon Treaty” was drawn up in 1979 but eventually withered away because the tiny handful of nations capable of competing with the US in space were not interested in signing away their rights.
Even the flag-waving president Donald Trump came to disdain the treaty because it suggested that the moon should be treated as part of a “global commons” rather than as a private resource base that individual nations and corporations could exploit.
Eager to approve American on the moon, Trump issued an executive order on April 6, 2020, “Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources”. The moribund 1979 Moon Treaty was thus scrapped. In Trumpian terms, it was “a failed attempt at constraining free enterprise”.
The executive order issued by Trump is still in effect and the language has been altered only slightly. The goal of sending the “first woman and next man” to the moon was amended by the Biden administration to read “first woman and first person of colour”.
There are several ironies inherent in the way US leaders talk about the space programme. One is the partisan political flavour; the Democrats emphasise its links with identity politics, while Republicans emphasise the capitalist free market element.
But neither party wants to be stuck with the budget shortfalls and delays that have dogged the programme from day one. And no one is talking about including China.
Given the way Nasa promotes astronaut identity, there’s a further irony in the fact that China happens to have a at this very moment, and has been sending, by the arcane terms of the US mission statement, “persons of colour” into space since the inception of their programme.
If human diversity was really a serious goal of the Artemis programme, there would be scant reason not to cooperate with China. Or Russia for that matter. But why should China and Russia sign on to a day-late, dollar-short programme jump-started by Trump that defines the rules of exploitation on US terms?
The US has solicited a number of allies to sign on the , including members of the intelligence sharing bloc, as well as Japan and South Korea. But it is the recent inclusion of Ukraine that speaks volumes about the political cast of the programme.
What the mission statement is really saying is that the US reserves the right to exploit the mineral resources of the moon, and will do so with allies of its choosing and within guidelines of its own creation. As for China and Russia, the only two serious rivals to the US in space, they have been left out in the cold.
The Artemis Accords add another brick to the regulatory firewall the US has built regarding cooperation with China in space. The 2011 Wolf Amendment prohibited such cooperation, with the unsurprising result that China has taken a go-it-alone approach ever since.
Furthermore, the inclusion in the US space bloc of Ukraine, a bitter adversary of Russia, only serves to increase the likelihood that China and Russia will look to one another as partners in space. Already, plans for a Sino-Russian are being touted.
The implicit anti-China gist of the Artemis programme is symptomatic of US party-driven politics in general. On the one hand, there’s a seemingly unbridgeable political divide at home; on the other, one administration looks the same as the other when viewed from afar.
The ostensible aim of the Artemis programme is to promote cooperation, diversity and set down rules for lunar exploration. In reality, it is dividing the world into two camps, following the familiar East-West fault lines established in the last Cold War.
Source:
UK’s propaganda leaflets inspired 1960s massacre of Indonesian communists
Pamphlets attacked the president and foreign minister.Shocking new details have emerged of Britain’s role in one of the most brutal massacres of the postwar 20th century.
Last year how British officials secretly deployed black propaganda in the 1960s to incite prominent Indonesians to “cut out” the “communist cancer”.
It is estimated that at least 500,000 people linked to the communist party (PKI) were eliminated between 1965 and 1966.
Documents newly released in the National Archives show how propaganda specialists from the Foreign Office sent hundreds of inflammatory pamphlets to leading anti-communists in Indonesia, inciting them to kill the foreign minister Dr Subandrio and claiming that ethnic Chinese Indonesians deserved the violence meted out to them.
The British wanted the Indonesian army and militias to overthrow elected president Sukarno’s government. He and Subandrio were considered to be too close to the PKI and communist China, and Britain wanted to end Confrontation, the low-level military and political campaign launched by Sukarno and Subandrio against the Malaysian Federation.
The newly discovered pamphlets, dating from the mid-1960s, targeted the leftwing foreign minister, repeatedly challenging the anti-communists to kill Subandrio, describing him as Sukarno’s pet “cockerel”. The propagandists reserved special venom for Subandrio. “The Army has only pulled out a few of the cockerel’s many feathers, they haven’t even clipped its wings,” the pamphlets complained. The bird needed its “neck wrung; and the whole of Indonesia will rejoice”.
Hundreds of pamphlets were also sent to Muslim anti-communists, claiming agents of communist China would take over Indonesia. Following an abortive coup in which six generals were kidnapped and murdered, which the army blamed on the communists, “it was inevitable” that “many innocent Chinese would suffer in consequence”, one covert British pamphlet claimed. “We may deplore the unbridled fury” unleashed on Indonesia’s Chinese, but “we realise that for the most part they only have themselves to blame”.
The British also wrote the script for a ghoulish radio broadcast, purportedly from the dead generals whose bodies had been dumped in a well. “Worms may feed upon our rotting flesh,” cried the dead generals “but our voices have become the voices of the Nation’s conscience.” “Oh Subandrio!” they shrieked, “Do you not think that a hangman’s rope is too easy a way out for such a man as you?”
Immediately after the coup attempt, took control of the Indonesian army and oversaw the massacres of the anti-communist purge. Over the next months, the rightwing, pro-west Suharto usurped the ailing Sukarno. He was appointed acting president in 1967 and then president the following year. His dictatorship lasted for 32 years.
Hundreds of pamphlets were also sent to Muslim anti-communists, claiming agents of communist China would take over Indonesia. Following an abortive coup in which six generals were kidnapped and murdered, which the army blamed on the communists, “it was inevitable” that “many innocent Chinese would suffer in consequence”, one covert British pamphlet claimed. “We may deplore the unbridled fury” unleashed on Indonesia’s Chinese, but “we realise that for the most part they only have themselves to blame”.
The British also wrote the script for a ghoulish radio broadcast, purportedly from the dead generals whose bodies had been dumped in a well. “Worms may feed upon our rotting flesh,” cried the dead generals “but our voices have become the voices of the Nation’s conscience.” “Oh Subandrio!” they shrieked, “Do you not think that a hangman’s rope is too easy a way out for such a man as you?”
Lenah Susianty, whose father was arrested and detained in the crackdown said: “The whole Chinese community in Sukabumi bore the brunt for a long time.” Susianty, who is now on the board of the Indonesian human rights organisation Tapol, added: “They were afraid to say anything and had to silently bear extortion, harassment and other ill-treatment from others in the society. They were an easy target because they were considered as ‘communists’.”
Soe Tjen Marching’s father was also tortured and imprisoned for two-and-a-half years because the military suspected him of being a member of the PKI. Now a lecturer at Soas University of London, she says that the targeting of the Chinese community in 1965 had “a huge part in sustaining suspicion as well as discrimination between Chinese and non-Chinese in Indonesia. It is therefore urgent for the British government to apologise”.
In October the Observer revealed the first hard evidence that British officials secretly deployed black propaganda in the 1960s. The material purported to come from exiled nationalist Indonesians. In fact it was written by Foreign Office psychological warfare experts working from a comfortable chalet in Singapore in cooperation with MI6. For five decades the Foreign Office has denied any involvement in the murders.
As the massacres started in October 1965, British pamphlets called for “the PKI and all communist organisations” to “be eliminated”. The nation, they warned, would be in danger “as long as the communist leaders are at large, and their rank and file are allowed to go unpunished”.
At least 500,000 people were massacred, and some estimates go as high as three million. These included ethnic Chinese, many who were killed by Muslim and other militias.
Steve Alston of Tapol yesterday said his organisation was “appalled that the British government engaged in a disinformation campaign to incite violence”.
“In the face of such evidence, the British government must now commit to launching an inquiry by independent counsel to be completed within 18 months.”
Moon was always going to be a place rivalry. Anyone who ever thought or suggested otherwise is delusional
Mining is far too important to be used for "peaceful cooperation" and other such bs
You mean the invasion of Ukriane by the USA ?
This already happening, they made a pupet goverment, and now sending military units to prevent any uprising .
The Russian answer will be different , and way more painfull for the USA.
Like stationing nuclear bombers in Venezuela-Cuba-Nicaragua, and starting economical cooperation with them.
Lithuanian wine was selling for 31 yuan per bottle in Mainland China, now selling for the equivalent of 137 yuan in Taiwan. Those Wanwanese are a true friend of Lithuania...LOL
Yeah.. I think its gonna get very spicy.. Because you have now a fanatical element like Azov battlion who has recruited alot more now and they are ready to embrace martyrdom besides the army has now called up all reservers and volunteers who will be stationed behind the line meaning in the cities hence Ukraine is militarized to the teeth now.. Expect a fight of all fights to go down.. A very interesting and exciting combat scenario.. Mainly Russia will deploy CSTO they may not say it publically but they will deploy couple of Kazakh divisions, Belarusians, Wagner group, Tatars, Chechen spatnaz (these are crazy).. Including half of Russia's army.
This is gonna be one hell'va collision once the bang goes and first bullet is fired expect high intensity engagements across all lines.. Russia is the clear favourite here but they are all dogs on all sides and always ready for a good scrap hence this is gonna be fuking wild
As John Mearsheimer pointedly said about the Republicans and Democrats when it comes to foreign policy are like tweedle dee and tweedle dum, they are all one and the same. But most Americans never seem to realize that reality.
Republicans were hyping the Saddam/Iraq threat with their lies of WMD the Democrats were pretending to be against it in spirit but they overwhelmingly voted for the illegal invasion including Biden, Clinton, Kerry only to change their tune and became anti-Iraq war after the fact. Pathetic losers.
solarz
Brigadier
LOL, moon mining is a pipe dream. The transportation costs are literally astronomical!