Biden Administration Pressed Beijing to Help Avert War in Ukraine

At the New York Times, "U.S. Officials Repeatedly Urged China to Help Avert War in Ukraine":

WASHINGTON — Over three months, senior Biden administration officials held half a dozen urgent meetings with top Chinese officials in which the Americans presented intelligence showing Russia’s troop buildup around Ukraine and beseeched the Chinese to tell Russia not to invade, according to U.S. officials.

Each time, the Chinese officials, including the foreign minister and the ambassador to the United States, rebuffed the Americans, saying they did not think an invasion was in the works. After one diplomatic exchange in December, U.S. officials got intelligence showing Beijing had shared the information with Moscow, telling the Russians that the United States was trying to sow discord — and that China would not try to impede Russian plans and actions, the officials said.

The previously unreported talks between American and Chinese officials show how the Biden administration tried to use intelligence findings and diplomacy to persuade a superpower it views as a growing adversary to stop the invasion of Ukraine, and how that nation, led by President Xi Jinping, persistently sided with Russia even as the evidence of Moscow’s plans for a military offensive grew over the winter.

This account is based on interviews with senior administration officials with knowledge of the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the diplomacy. The Chinese Embassy did not return requests for comment.

China is Russia’s most powerful partner, and the two nations have been strengthening their bond for many years across diplomatic, economic and military realms. Mr. Xi and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, two autocrats with some shared ideas about global power, had met 37 times as national leaders before this year. If any world leader could make Mr. Putin think twice about invading Ukraine, it was Mr. Xi, went the thinking of some U.S. officials.

But the diplomatic efforts failed, and Mr. Putin began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Thursday morning after recognizing two Russia-backed insurgent enclaves in the country’s east as independent states.

In a call on Friday, Mr. Putin told Mr. Xi that the United States and NATO had ignored Russia’s “reasonable” security concerns and had reneged on their commitments, according to a readout of the call released by the Chinese state news media. Mr. Xi reiterated China’s public position that it was important to respect the “legitimate security concerns” as well as the “sovereignty and territorial integrity” of all countries. Mr. Putin told Mr. Xi that Russia was willing to negotiate with Ukraine, and Mr. Xi said China supported any such move.

Some American officials say the ties between China and Russia appear stronger than at any time since the Cold War. The two now present themselves as an ideological front against the United States and its European and Asian allies, even as Mr. Putin carries out the invasion of Ukraine, whose sovereignty China has recognized for decades.

The growing alarm among American and European officials at the alignment between China and Russia has reached a new peak with the Ukraine crisis, exactly 50 years to the week after President Richard M. Nixon made a historic trip to China to restart diplomatic relations to make common cause in counterbalancing the Soviet Union. For 40 years after that, the relationship between the United States and China grew stronger, especially as lucrative trade ties developed, but then frayed due to mutual suspicions, intensifying strategic competition and antithetical ideas about power and governance.

In the recent private talks on Ukraine, American officials heard language from their Chinese counterparts that was consistent with harder lines the Chinese had been voicing in public, which showed that a more hostile attitude had become entrenched, according to the American accounts.

On Wednesday, after Mr. Putin ordered troops into eastern Ukraine but before its full invasion, Hua Chunying, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said at a news conference in Beijing that the United States was “the culprit of current tensions surrounding Ukraine.”

“On the Ukraine issue, lately the U.S. has been sending weapons to Ukraine, heightening tensions, creating panic and even hyping up the possibility of warfare,” she said. “If someone keeps pouring oil on the flame while accusing others of not doing their best to put out the fire, such kind of behavior is clearly irresponsible and immoral.”

She added: “When the U.S. drove five waves of NATO expansion eastward all the way to Russia’s doorstep and deployed advanced offensive strategic weapons in breach of its assurances to Russia, did it ever think about the consequences of pushing a big country to the wall?” She has refused to call Russia’s assault an “invasion” when pressed by foreign journalists...

More.

 

Majority in U.S. Sees Russia-Ukraine Conflict as Critical Threat

It's not a huge majority, but the survey ran from February 1st to the 17th, ending about a week before Russia's attack on Ukraine.

It's all broken down at Gallup, "U.S. Public Sees Russia-Ukraine Conflict as Critical Threat."

President Biden Announces Harsh New Round of Economic Sanctions Against Russia (VIDEO)

I watched Biden's speech and press conference live this morning. He looked sharp, actually. Seemed fired up and outraged by Russia's invasion and he announced some serious motherfucking sanctions. The U.S. is going hit Russian financial institutions hard, basically shutting down four major banks controlling $100s of billions dollars, and going directly after the assets of Vladimir Putin's billionaire oligarch stooges. 

There's still much economic damage the U.S. can inflict. On the military side, the Pentagon's announced it's sending 7,000 U.S. service personnel to Europe, to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania.

There's so much on the line and the news coverage is voluminous and literally impossible to read and view it all. I'll have updates through the night. 

At the Wall Street Journal, "Biden Aims Sanctions at Russian Military, State-Owned Enterprises":

WASHINGTON—President Biden promised to make Russian President Vladimir Putin an international pariah as he announced a wave of new sanctions intended to cripple Russia’s economy, military and elites, the latest effort to punish Moscow for launching a large-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“Putin is the aggressor. Putin chose this war and now he and his country will bear the consequences,” Mr. Biden said during a speech at the White House on Thursday.

The president said the coming sanctions would stunt Russia’s military growth, limit the country’s ability to compete on the world stage and put restrictions on its largest state-owned enterprises. The Treasury Department said the actions target 80% of all banking assets in Russia and limit the country’s access to the global financial system.

Taken together, the sanctions announced by the Biden administration this week are unprecedented in their scope and impact on Russia’s post-Soviet relations with the West. Moscow’s markets are signaling the scale of the potential impact on Russia’s economy. Since Western nations began warning three months ago that they would respond with a tough sanctions package, the Moscow Exchange has lost 50% of its value and the ruble depreciated by 20%.

Senior Biden administration officials have said the threat of sanctions was intended in part to deter Mr. Putin from invading Ukraine. But the Russian leader attacked the country anyway. Mr. Biden said it would take time for Moscow to feel the effects of the financial penalties. ”Let’s have a conversation in another month or so to see if they’re working,” he said.

Thursday’s announcement, which Mr. Biden said was coordinated with the Group of Seven countries, came after lawmakers of both political parties called on the U.S. president to come down on Mr. Putin with the full suite of sanctions at the government’s disposal.

Among the targets of the new sanctions: Russia’s first- and second-largest financial institutions, Sberbank and VTB. The package sanctions additional Russian elites and their families, and places new restrictions on exports to Russia of technological goods used in the country’s defense, maritime and aerospace sectors.

The restrictions on goods destined for Russia, which took effect Thursday, apply to technology such as semiconductors, computers, telecommunications, information security equipment, lasers and sensors. They cover items produced in the U.S., as well as foreign items made using U.S. equipment, software and blueprints, the Treasury Department said in a statement. U.S. officials said they are also restricting exports to 49 additional Russian military entities, placing them on a blacklist.

The administration expanded its bans on trade of new government debt, adding short-term securities and new equity of 11 Russian state-owned companies and two major privately owned firms in the financial services sector. Those include the natural-gas behemoth Gazprom; Sovcomflot, Russia’s largest maritime and freight shipping company; plus its biggest telecoms firm and the No. 1 power company.

“We have purposely designed these sanctions to maximize a long-term impact on Russia and to minimize the impact on the United States and our allies,” Mr. Biden said.

The administration also announced sanctions on 24 Belarusian individuals and entities, including two state-owned banks and nine defense firms, for supporting the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Mr. Biden said in his remarks that any country that helped Russia would be “stained by association.”

The new effort doesn’t take steps to disconnect Russia from the Swift global payment system, a move that policy makers said could be a significant blow to Moscow. “The sanctions that we have imposed on all their banks are of equal consequence, maybe more consequence, than Swift, No. 1,” Mr. Biden said. “No. 2, it is always an option, but right now that is not the position that the rest of Europe wants to take.”

The blacklisting won’t hit Russia as hard, nor cause the collateral damage to Europe or the world economy that cutting off the world’s 12th-largest economy—and a top oil exporter—from the global-payments system would wreak, say economists and former U.S. officials.

Top officials in Ukraine and countries along the European Union’s border with Russia, as well as U.S. lawmakers from both parties, called for Moscow to be disconnected from the Swift system. Some U.S. lawmakers have privately pressed the White House on the issue, according to people familiar with the matter.

Removing an economy of the size and geopolitical importance of Russia’s from Swift would be an unprecedented sanction by Western allies—one that would eliminate Russia’s ability, at first, to conduct basic commerce with the outside world. But opponents say such a move could help build up workarounds to circumvent the global American-led financial order.

The Swift option is a bludgeon in the economic warcraft arsenal, compared with targeted sanctions, which provide precision and diplomatic flexibility for policy makers. The West has much better control of the flow of international finance and can raise or lower the pressure. Cross-border payments are still possible under the current package, and governments could carve out exemptions.

Mr. Biden suggested on Thursday that he is weighing additional economic penalties. He told reporters that he would consider sanctioning Mr. Putin directly...

 Keep reading.

War in Ukraine

As certainly everyone now by knows, Russia is now undertaking a full-black military attack on Ukraine. (Headlines at Memorandum.) 

Most major Ukrainian cities are being enveloped by rocket fire, artillery shelling, and airstrikes. Casualties have been reported (though not by official U.S. sources.) That war has broken out now, at this moment, when Russia's Vladimir Putin has had his eyes on taking Kiev (Ukraine's capital) since at least 2014, is no surprise to those who've followed events closely with a realist eye on Moscow's ultimate designs. 

This is not a partisan moment.

Presidents, diplomatic, intelligence, and defense officials in both parties are in one way or another implicated in what must be seen as a major failure of U.S. foreign policy, and that too of the institutional/diplomatic/military leaders in Europe, at NATO and the E.U., etc., not to mention presidents and prime ministers in the leading capitals across the continent. For 77 years, the policy of the Western democracies has been to deter a Soviet/Russian war in Western Europe, but here we are. 

At the video below, CNN correspondents were reporting live last night (our time) from Ukraine as the first artillery fire hit cities in the east. It's been reported that most all the major population areas are under attack and regime change in the Ukrainian capital city is a real possibility.

The is the first large-scale land war in Europe since 1945. It's a BIG deal with major implications for the United States and the world. 

It's actually very sad. Russia and the Ukrainians signed a non-aggression pact in 1994, when the Ukrainians gave up their nuclear weapons left over from the Soviet Union's Cold War arsenal. The U.S. then made guarantees to Kiev's protection but it looks now they've been betrayed, by parties all around. 

I'll have more throughout the day. 

Jesse Singal, The Quick Fix

At Amazon, Jesse Singal, The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can't Cure Our Social Ills. 

Eileen Gu Is Golden Again at the Beijing Olympics After Win in the Freeski Halfpipe

The "Genocide Olympics" end tonight. Thank God! 

And now Eileen Gu/Gu Ailing's being hailed --- after wining three medals --- as the most successful athlete at the Winter Games. 

I didn't see it, but #EileenGuTraitor might as well have been trending on Twitter.

At WSJ, "She will leave Beijing as the first athlete—man or woman—to win three freestyle skiing medals in a single Olympics":

ZHANGJIAKOU, China—Eileen Gu snapped up another gold medal for Team China at the freestyle skiing halfpipe event on Friday, capping off the 18-year-old’s first Olympics with three medals (two golds and a silver) and cementing herself as the belle of the Games in the host country.

She will leave Beijing as the first athlete—man or woman—to win three freestyle skiing medals in a single Olympics. The big air event, in which Gu won a surprise gold, debuted at these Games. Gu earned a silver medal in the slopestyle event earlier this week.

Gu’s performance was so dominant that her final trip down the halfpipe was a de facto victory run, as her 95.00-point second run was the highest in the field by nearly five points. Defending gold medalist Cassie Sharp of Canada attempted a third run with the highest degree of difficulty of any competitor in the field, but fell short, earning 90.75 points—placing her in silver medal position. Rachael Karker, also of Canada, took bronze with a 87.75-point run.

Of all the medals Gu won in Beijing, her gold on Friday was the most expected. Across five competitions during the 2021-22 season, Gu was undefeated in the event. She made her victory on Friday all but a foregone conclusion with a solid first run that scored 93.25 and vaulted her to the top of the standings. When it came time to climb the podium, she did so wearing an Anta-branded panda hat, a nod to the Beijing Olympics’ pudgy panda mascot Bing Dwen Dwen.

“I have an Olympics panda hat. This is the coolest thing ever,” Gu said, pointing to the Bing Dwen Dwen mascot sewn on the left side of her hat. “Bing Dwen Dwen is very hard to get now so I want to wear it and show off,” she said in Mandarin. The skiing supernova spent nearly an hour walking through the mixed zone to take questions from broadcast and print media. Looking back at her two-week Olympic run fraught with both plaudits and controversies, Gu said: “These few weeks have been emotionally the highest I have ever been and the lowest I have ever been.”

“At the end of the day, I feel very proud, and feel very grateful for the people who have supported me. And for the people who don’t support me, I’ve actually genuinely made peace with it. I’ve dismissed it,” she said.

“My motto is now if they don’t think I’m doing good in the world, then they can go do better,” she added.

Though the score from her first run was high enough to win the competition, Gu improved upon her margin on the second run. She laid down a more difficult final trick involving twists on two different axes and put up 95.25 points. It was the third-highest score she has posted this season, having put up 97.50 points at a World Cup event in California in January.

“She’s competing against herself now,” said the announcer at the Genting Snow Park, as Gu readied for her second run. Starting last in a field of 12 women, her score from the first run topped the field even after the other 11 women had completed two trips down the pipe.

After Sharp failed to top Gu’s score during her third run, despite landing a combination of tricks that no other woman in the field attempted, Gu just needed to wait for two more skiers to throw down. Estonia’s Kelly Sildaru, bronze medalist in the women’s slopestyle competition earlier in the week, scored 85 points; Karker fell.

With a gold medal assured, Gu appeared visibly emotional ahead of her third and final run. She slid down the halfpipe with a few effortless tricks, appearing to have fun by posing with her poles between spread legs after catching big air and whizzing to the bottom to a euphoric home crowd.

Remi Lindholm: Finnish Cross-Country Skier Gets Frozen Penis During Race at Winter Olympics

Umm, definitely not optimal. 

Yikes!

At CNN, "Cross-Country Skier Remi Lindholm Suffers Frozen Penis":

Lindholm explained that he used a heat pack to try to thaw out his appendage once the race was over.

Well, that was a hard one! 

Putin Orders Deployment of Troops to Breakaway Regions in Ukraine (VIDEO)

Seems like Putin's going to get just about everything he wants. He's in the driver's seat for sure. Declaring "independence" of Donetsk and Luhansk is a prelude to reincorporating these areas into the Russian Federation, just like swiping the Crimea was in 2014.

Am I right about this? Who the fuck knows? 

I was talking with a buddy the other day, before the latest round of chest-thumping, nuclear-military demonstrations, and mentioned Putin's most likely to destabilize Kiev with targeted assassinations, including the murder of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. While that Foreign Policy piece was way more detailed than my conjectures, I'm not surprised the intelligence community came up with that angle. While a massive ground "incursion" --- the hip term for the media's CNN-Democrat-MSNBC nightly news psyops --- it's unlikely at this point. Modern warfare is waged on a multilevel cyber-disinfo-techno grid (so it's complicated), and don't forget Russian propaganda, the oldest disinformation technique in the book, and Moscow's psychological warfare spooks are the world's best.

In any case, a full-on invasion of Ukraine's going to take more than 150,000 troops. Putin needs to go in like the U.S. in the Persian Gulf War of 1991, in Operation Desert Storm of January 17th of that year. It took the Pentagon six-months to get enough troops on the ground. Putin seems to be assembling a massive Russian Army of the Donbas. If he goes in big, like the U.S. in the Gulf, he'll need at least 35-40 divisions, perhaps more. That'll take a long time to organize, equip, and establish an experienced officer corps. 

In any case, at the Wall Street Journal, "Putin earlier recognized their independence, escalating tensions with West":

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the deployment of Russian troops to two breakaway regions of Ukraine after recognizing their independence, a move that threatened to scuttle negotiations with the West over the future security of Eastern Europe.

His two decrees were published on the Russian government’s legal portal after the conclusion of Mr. Putin’s televised address late on Monday. In it he went through a litany of grievances about the West’s support of Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Western arms deliveries to Kyiv against the backdrop of a massive Russian troop build-up near its borders.

Mr. Putin said Russian forces would act in a peacekeeping role once Russia has signed mutual assistance with the two regions.

“The situation in Donbas is becoming critical,” Mr. Putin said before launching into a lengthy examination of the relationship between the two countries and the Donbas region, where the two breakaway regions are located. “Ukraine is not just a neighbor. It is an inherent part of our own history, culture and spiritual space,” he said.

Before the address, Mr. Putin called French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and told them of his decision, the Kremlin said in a statement. The European leaders expressed their disappointment with this development, but indicated their readiness to continue contacts, the Kremlin said.

The decision to recognize the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk came as Kyiv, Ukraine, asked the United Nations Security Council for an urgent meeting to tackle the threat of a Russian invasion.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said he made the request Monday after a substantial escalation in military activity between Russian-backed forces and Kyiv government troops.

Press secretary Jen Psaki said the White House would also announce additional measures in response to “today’s blatant violation of Russia’s international commitments.” She said those moves would be in addition to economic measures the U.S. has been preparing with allies should Russia invade Ukraine.

In a statement Monday evening, the European Union’s top officials called the step by Mr. Putin “a blatant violation of international law.”

They said the EU “will react with sanctions against those involved in this illegal act.” No further details were provided.

Tensions have been steadily rising across the region, despite signs that diplomatic initiatives had been making tentative progress.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has proposed a meeting with Sergei Lavrov, his Russian counterpart, this week in Europe that could lead to a summit between Messrs. Biden and Putin. On Sunday, in a move brokered in part by Mr. Macron, Mr. Biden agreed in principle to meet the Kremlin leader, provided that Russia pulls back from a potential attack on Ukraine.

Deciding to recognize the two territories in Donbas would likely grant the Kremlin greater sway over these regions, already proxies of Moscow, and hand Mr. Putin an additional trump card in negotiations in his current standoff with the West over the long-term security of Eastern Europe.

A White House official said Monday that President Biden was meeting with his national security team at the White House and was getting regular briefings on the situation with Russia and Ukraine. A White House official said Mr. Biden also spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and is also speaking with Messrs. Macron and Scholz.

In response to Mr. Putin’s announcement that he will recognize breakaway regions in Ukraine, the White House said Mr. Biden will issue an executive order that will “prohibit new investment, trade, and financing by U.S. persons’’ in those areas.

The White House said the order will also “provide authority to impose sanctions on any person determined to operate in those areas of Ukraine.” It’s unclear when the order will be issued.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said he made the request Monday after a substantial escalation in military activity between Russian-backed forces and Kyiv government troops.

Deciding to recognize the two territories in Donbas would likely grant the Kremlin greater sway over these regions, already proxies of Moscow, and hand Mr. Putin an additional trump card in negotiations in his current standoff with the West over the long-term security of Eastern Europe.

A White House official said Monday that President Biden was meeting with his national security team at the White House and was getting regular briefings on the situation with Russia and Ukraine. A White House official said Mr. Biden also spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and is also speaking with Messrs. Macron and Scholz.

In response to Mr. Putin’s announcement that he will recognize breakaway regions in Ukraine, the White House said Mr. Biden will issue an executive order that will “prohibit new investment, trade, and financing by U.S. persons’’ in those areas.

The White House said the order will also “provide authority to impose sanctions on any person determined to operate in those areas of Ukraine.” It’s unclear when the order will be issued.

Press secretary Jen Psaki said the White House would also announce additional measures in response to “today’s blatant violation of Russia’s international commitments.” She said those moves would be in addition to economic measures the U.S. has been preparing with allies should Russia invade Ukraine.

In a statement Monday evening, the European Union’s top officials called the step by Mr. Putin “a blatant violation of international law.”

They said the EU “will react with sanctions against those involved in this illegal act.” No further details were provided.

Tensions have been steadily rising across the region, despite signs that diplomatic initiatives had been making tentative progress.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has proposed a meeting with Sergei Lavrov, his Russian counterpart, this week in Europe that could lead to a summit between Messrs. Biden and Putin. On Sunday, in a move brokered in part by Mr. Macron, Mr. Biden agreed in principle to meet the Kremlin leader, provided that Russia pulls back from a potential attack on Ukraine.

On Monday, Mr. Putin appeared to make the case for invading Russia’s smaller neighbor, describing Ukraine as a tool being used by the West for confrontation with Russia that “poses a very large threat” to the country, he said.

Mr. Putin also accused Ukraine of taking a hostile stance toward Russian-controlled areas of Donbas and said the government in Kyiv wasn’t willing to implement the Minsk cease-fire agreement signed after Ukrainian forces were routed in Donbas in 2015. Ukraine has rejected Moscow’s interpretation of the deal, which it says provides Russia’s proxies in the region a veto over any attempt to align Ukraine more closely with the West.

The Russian leader also repeated his objections to Ukraine being allowed to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, saying that Kyiv would use it as an opportunity to forcibly try to retake the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014.

“If Russia faces such a threat as the admission of Ukraine to NATO, then the threats to our country will increase,” he said...

You got me why Ukraine's going to the Security Council --- where Russia has the veto and hence no major collective action agreement on sanctions or the authorization of military force can be enacted under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter. 

I don't know. Maybe the Ukrainians just want to foment some international drama and urgency, for without Russia's vote, the Security Council can't do jack. 

Still more.

Jason M. Kelly, Market Maoists

At Amazon, Jason M. Kelly, Market Maoists: The Communist Origins of China’s Capitalist Ascent.

Xi Jinping's Power Grab

From Jude Blanchette, at Foreign Affairs, "Xi’s Gamble: The Race to Consolidate Power and Stave Off Disaster":

Xi Jinping is a man on a mission. After coming to power in late 2012, he moved rapidly to consolidate his political authority, purge the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of rampant corruption, sideline his enemies, tame China’s once highflying technology and financial conglomerates, crush internal dissent, and forcefully assert China’s influence on the international stage. In the name of protecting China’s “core interests,” Xi has picked fights with many of his neighbors and antagonized countries farther away—especially the United States. Whereas his immediate predecessors believed China must continue to bide its time by overseeing rapid economic growth and the steady expansion of China’s influence through tactical integration into the existing global order, Xi is impatient with the status quo, possesses a high tolerance for risk, and seems to feel a pronounced sense of urgency in challenging the international order.

Why is he in such a rush? Most observers have settled on one of two diametrically opposite hypotheses. The first holds that Xi is driving a wide range of policy initiatives aimed at nothing less than the remaking of the global order on terms favorable to the CCP. The other view asserts that he is the anxious overseer of a creaky and outdated Leninist political system that is struggling to keep its grip on power. Both narratives contain elements of truth, but neither satisfactorily explains the source of Xi’s sense of urgency.

A more accurate explanation is that Xi’s calculations are determined not by his aspirations or fears but by his timeline. Put simply, Xi has consolidated so much power and upset the status quo with such force because he sees a narrow window of ten to 15 years during which Beijing can take advantage of a set of important technological and geopolitical transformations, which will also help it overcome significant internal challenges. Xi sees the convergence of strong demographic headwinds, a structural economic slowdown, rapid advances in digital technologies, and a perceived shift in the global balance of power away from the United States as what he has called “profound changes unseen in a century,” demanding a bold set of immediate responses.

By narrowing his vision to the coming ten to 15 years, Xi has instilled a sense of focus and determination in the Chinese political system that may well enable China to overcome long-standing domestic challenges and achieve a new level of global centrality. If Xi succeeds, China will position itself as an architect of an emerging era of multipolarity, its economy will escape the so-called middle-income trap, and the technological capabilities of its manufacturing sector and military will rival those of more developed countries. Yet ambition and execution are not the same thing, and Xi has now placed China on a risky trajectory, one that threatens the achievements his predecessors secured in the post-Mao era. His belief that the CCP must guide the economy and that Beijing should rein in the private sector will constrain the country’s future economic growth. His demand that party cadres adhere to ideological orthodoxy and demonstrate personal loyalty to him will undermine the governance system’s flexibility and competency. His emphasis on an expansive definition of national security will steer the country in a more inward and paranoid direction. His unleashing of “Wolf Warrior” nationalism will produce a more aggressive and isolated China. Finally, Xi’s increasingly singular position within China’s political system will forestall policy alternatives and course corrections, a problem made worse by his removal of term limits and the prospect of his indefinite rule.

Xi believes he can mold China’s future as did the emperors of the country’s storied past. He mistakes this hubris for confidence—and no one dares tell him otherwise. An environment in which an all-powerful leader with a single-minded focus cannot hear uncomfortable truths is a recipe for disaster, as China’s modern history has demonstrated all too well...

Keep reading.

PHOTO CREDIT: "Xi giving a speech at the U.S. Department of State in 2012, with then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then Vice-President Joe Biden in the background. Seated in the front row is former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger." (Wikipedia.)

Sports Reporter Annie Agar Apologized for Old Racist Tweets

I posted this lady on Super Bowl Sunday. 

A blonde bombshell. 

Actually, they're not racist. They're funny, but she's a conservative and if you're conservative you can't say shit like that and keep your job. This country's fucked.

Here, "NFL Reporter Annie Agar Apologizes For Controversial Tweets."

And on Twitter:

I want to apologize for the insensitive tweets from my past. They were written when I was a teenager and do not reflect who I am today. I have the utmost respect for the athletes and teams I cover. I hope you can forgive teenage me and we can get back to laughing together again. 

Lottie Moss

More of this lovely lady.

She's on Instagram.

Boris Johnson, Under Fire, Apologizes for Pandemic Party (VIDEO)

I meant to post this earlier, at the New York Times, "The British prime minister, on the defensive after a series of ethical lapses, said, “There were things we simply did not get right” about a gathering at Downing Street during a lockdown in 2020."

It's never too late for a Jonathan Pie video, though. He's Tom Walker in real life. I posted him once before and I almost fell down laughing.

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, British people have been largely law abiding and civic minded. They followed the stay-at-home orders through three lengthy lockdowns, many losing their jobs, missing birthdays, weddings and even the funerals of their loved ones in the process.

So when evidence began to emerge in late November that the staff at 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s residence and the central office of government, had held a Christmas party during lockdown, people were angry, to say the least. But then, after a steady stream of breaking news made clear it was not one or two but at least 16 parties, several of which Prime Minister Boris Johnson knew about and in some cases apparently attended, that anger transformed into fury. On Thursday, four members of his staff resigned, with one citing his reference to a debunked conspiracy theory while speaking to Parliament as a contributing factor.

To explain exactly why the British are so enraged with Mr. Johnson, who was already infamous for his troubled relationship with the truth, we produced a satirical Opinion Video with Jonathan Pie, a fictional broadcast reporter created and performed on YouTube by the comedian Tom Walker, whose acerbic, satirical monologues have gone viral.

The video contains strong language and adult humor you wouldn’t normally see in The Times, but after being taken for fools, the British public is through being polite.

 

Monday Cartoon

The Trudeau Dictatorship:

San Francisco's Asian-American Political Power

At the New York Post, "Why Asian Americans like me are the rising new parental power."

Britney Spears Scores $15 Million Book Deal with Simon & Schuster.

A tell-all memoir. *Hmm.*

At the New York Post, "Britney Spears set to pen tell-all book in bombshell $15M deal."

Russian Proxies in Eastern Ukraine Mobilize Troops, Kill Two Ukrainian Soldiers

I'm actually not paying much attention, especially to television news, which I've quit for the last couple of weeks. But this is some very serious shit going down over there, with heavy duty implications for the future of the international order. I'm against America starting new wars as much as the next guy, but all these people saying that we shouldn't be there, we have no interests there, and "I DON'T CARE ABOUT UKRAINE," well, that's just not me. 

If we're going to be involved in the world, attempting to hang on to our post-WWII role as thy system's hegemonic power, then we should't fuck around. 

Right now the U.S. looks cowardly and weak. Yes, get out of Afghanistan, but at least get out neat and in control, and don't abandon thousands and thousands of Americans --- and Afghans who risked their lives, and those of their family members, to help the mission succeed. And it did succeed for a while, but not in the way everyone thought it should. We were never going to establish a stable democratic republic in that corrupt and godforsaken outback. But we gave millions of people a chance for a better life. That's all gone now, and it's heartbreaking. But the U.S. could have --- quite easily, in fact --- kept a few thousand troops and held key airbases and strategic outposts, with little money (relatively speaking) and little loss of life. 

But it was time to go, sure, popular even. But Americans won't stand for embarrassing failures for too long, even when we're getting out of Dodge. And now Biden's blundering us into a potential global conflagration, and our European allies lie prostrate, if they're not selling us out or knifing us in the back (hello Germany!). 

Just pray we come down from the brink. This is all so crazy.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Amid intensified shelling, Kyiv dismisses call-up and moves to evacuate residents of Russian-held Donetsk and Luhansk areas as provocation":

The Russian-led breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine mobilized able-bodied men against what they said was an imminent attack by Kyiv, as shelling across the front line intensified, killing two Ukrainian soldiers.

Kyiv dismissed the call-up and moves to evacuate civilian residents of Russian-held Donetsk and Luhansk areas to Russia as a provocation. The escalation followed Western warnings that Moscow is about to launch an all-out invasion of Ukraine.

“It’s a fake mobilization in response to a fake threat,” said Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskiy, who came under shelling near the front line on Saturday. “What they are trying to do is to create panic and fear, also on our side and among our people.”

Russian-installed authorities in Donetsk and Luhansk on Friday night instructed the areas’ women, children and elderly to leave for Russia, organizing convoys of buses. On Saturday, Denis Pushilin, head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, ordered the general mobilization of men between 18 and 55 years old, including reservists, telling them to report to enlistment offices. Men of that age were banned from leaving the enclave.

“I appeal to all the men of the Republic, who are able to hold weapons in their hands, to stand up for their families, their children, wives, mothers,” Mr. Pushilin said in a televised address. Russian-installed authorities in Luhansk announced a similar decision.

Ukraine denies it has any plans to recapture by force the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk that Russian-backed forces seized in 2014. President Biden has said that he expected his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to invade Ukraine in the coming days, with targets including the Ukrainian capital.

Some two million people live in the Russian-controlled parts of Donetsk and Luhansk, and Russian authorities said they are bracing for hundreds of thousands of refugees. Moscow promised each of these refugees accommodation and a $130 cash bonus.

Kyiv has said that while the security situation is deteriorating, it doesn’t share Washington’s apocalyptic predictions. Speaking Saturday at the Munich Security Conference, where he received a standing ovation, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine isn’t living in a delusion but continues to carry on in the face of an existential threat.

“Just putting ourselves in coffins and waiting for foreign soldiers to come in is not something we are going to do,” he said. “But we stand ready to respond to everything.”

Until last week shelling and firing incidents along the front line averaged five to six a day, but that number has surged more than 10-fold in the last three days, said Lt. Gen. Oleksandr Pavliuk, the commander of Ukrainian forces in Donbas.

“The enemy artillery is shooting from behind civilians,” he said. “And, in accordance with our principles, we do not fire back at civilians.”

Washington and Kyiv have warned that Moscow is looking to use fighting in Donetsk and Luhansk, where roughly 14,000 people have died since Russia fomented an uprising in 2014, as a pretext for a broader military operation against Ukraine. Russian officials said Saturday that two artillery shells fell inside Russia near the border, causing no damage. Kyiv denied its forces fired in that direction.

Mr. Monastyrskiy, citing Ukrainian intelligence, said Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group have arrived in Donetsk and Luhansk with orders to blow up critical infrastructure and pin the blame on Kyiv. The claim couldn’t be independently confirmed.

Shelling could be heard throughout Saturday in Stanytsia Luhanska, the Ukrainian-controlled town where the only crossing point between Russian-held areas and Ukrainian parts of Donbas—as the Donetsk and Luhansk regions are collectively known—operates daily.

So far, the crossing has remained open, with more than 840 people, mostly women and children, traversing the front line to enter Ukrainian-controlled areas on Saturday, according to Ukrainian border officials. Some 50 fighting-age men were prevented by Russian-installed officials from leaving, they said...

Russia Planning Arrest and Assassination Campaign in Ukraine

This is spiraling way, way out of control. 

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky excoriated the Western allies for abandoning Kiev to the clutches of Vladmir Putin. He did not mince words.

Russia's said to be launching ICBMs to rattle its sabers, in so-called "Russian nuclear readiness drills."

What a godawful cluster. It goes without saying, people will die.

At Foreign Policy, "Russia Planning Post-Invasion Arrest and Assassination Campaign in Ukraine, U.S. Officials Say":

FEBRUARY 18, 2022, 9:52 AM

The United States has obtained intelligence that Russia may target prominent political opponents, anti-corruption activists, and Belarusian and Russian dissidents living in exile should it move forward with plans to invade Ukraine, as U.S. President Joe Biden warned on Thursday that the threat of a renewed Russian invasion of the country remains “very high” and could take place within the next several days.

Four people familiar with U.S. intelligence said that Russia has drafted lists of Ukrainian political figures and other prominent individuals to be targeted for either arrest or assassination in the event of a Russian assault on Ukraine.

A fifth person, a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the United States has been downgrading its intelligence classification regarding threats to specific groups within Ukraine to share this information with Ukrainian government officials and other partners in the region positioned to help.

A spokesperson for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “As we’ve seen in the past, we expect Russia will try to force cooperation through intimidation and repression,” said a U.S. official who spoke on background on condition of anonymity.

“These acts, which in past Russian operations have included targeted killings, kidnappings/forced disappearances, detentions, and the use of torture, would likely target those who oppose Russian actions, including Russian and Belarusian dissidents in exile in Ukraine, journalists and anti-corruption activists, and vulnerable populations such as religious and ethnic minorities and LGBTQI+ persons,” the official said.

The Biden administration has also been startled by how formalized the lists are, which appear to target anyone who could challenge the Russian agenda. Five Eyes intelligence partners have also tracked Russian intelligence agencies, such as the FSB and GRU, building up target and kill lists. One congressional aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the moves were typical of Russian doctrine, using armed forces to seize military objectives, while special operators shape the conflict and intelligence operators come into the country to get rid of opposition elements.

The first official noted that dissidents from Russia and Belarus, where a brutal crackdown on dissent following mass protests in 2020 prompted many to flee to neighboring Ukraine, faced particular challenges should they need to flee. Unlike Ukrainian citizens, they require visas to travel to other countries in Europe.

Franak Viacorka, a senior advisor to Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, said that his team had issued sets of specific recommendations to Belarusians living in Ukraine in the event of a Russian attack, but that they had not been informed of a specific threat to Belarusian dissidents.

Russia has amassed around 150,000 troops near the border of Ukraine, ostensibly for joint military drills with neighboring Belarusian dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko’s military forces. Russia has steadfastly denied it has any plans to invade Ukraine and has accused the West of manufacturing the crisis.

The U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Michael Carpenter, said on Friday that the United States assessed that Russia had amassed between 169,000 to 190,000 personnel in and near Ukraine, a sharp increase from the end of January. The United States has asked Russia for clarification about its “large-scale and unusual military activities,” Carpenter said, including the precise location of the operations and the number and types of military units involved.

Even as U.S. and other NATO members raise concern of a possible invasion, Zelensky has downplayed the threat in recent weeks, insisting an invasion is unlikely and that Washington isn’t helping defuse the crisis by stoking alarm.

Speaking during a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken sketched out a detailed and disturbing picture of what a Russian invasion of Ukraine could look like, beginning with creating a false pretext for an invasion and the Russian government convening emergency meetings to address the manufactured crisis. Some Western officials have pointed to Russia’s new claims that Ukrainian military forces are perpetrating a “genocide” against the Russian-speaking population in Donbass as the possible false pretext—a claim they dismiss as wholly false.

“Next, the attack is planned to begin,” Blinken said. “Russian missiles and bombs will drop across Ukraine. Communications will be jammed. Cyberattacks will shut down key Ukrainian institutions.” After that, he said, Russian tanks and soldiers “will advance on key targets that have already been identified and mapped out in detailed plans. We believe these targets include … Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, a city of 2.8 million people.”

In his speech, Blinken briefly alluded to U.S. intelligence indicating Russia would target political opponents with arrest or assassination: “And conventional attacks are not all that Russia plans to inflict upon the people of Ukraine. We have information that indicates Russia will target specific groups of Ukrainians.”

On Friday, Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine announced plans to evacuate civilians to Russia, accusing the Ukrainian government of plotting an assault on the region...

 

Police Clear Ottawa Truckers at Gunpoint (VIDEO)

Canada's a police state.

I can't ever recall --- in my 45 years as a political scientist --- such an unjust authoritarian crackdown in a Western democratic country. French truckers shut down the entire country nearly every year or two. It's just a thing. I mean, Black Lives Matter is a protected group in American politics (thanks to coastal/beltway elites in cahoots with the Democrat media complex), but it's still something that riots continued throughout 2020 --- at least from the moment of George Floyd murder, practically up until today --- without a nationwide crackdown, fucking martial law! Regardless of ideology, most American cities won't allow citizens to burn it all to the ground. (But then there's always Portland. *Eye-roll.*)

It's the working class that's a threat to global elites, and their only response is to call fed-up workers racists, Nazis, and the "fringe minority." And freezing all assets of lawfully protesting Canadians (soon coming to America) is Beijing-level totalitarianism. Canada is a pariah state. Expect a mass voters' revolt now, especially in the rest of the country --- outside dirtbag Ottawa --- among the manly agricultural, rustic burgs across the plains, as citizens everywhere refuse to surrender their God-given rights, regardless of what civil liberties Canada's worthless "Charter" allegedly protects. 

What a damned disgrace. A woman was purportedly trampled to death under hoof, as Trudeau's mounted assassins charged overwhelmingly protesters. 

The New York Times is bad enough, but I've already checked the bloodthirsty Canadian newspapers, and I just can't. 

So, at NYT, "Ottawa Protesters Cleared From Parliament Encampment":

OTTAWA — The center of a sprawling protest in the Canadian capital was cleared of demonstrators for the first time in three weeks on Saturday, following an aggressive push by armed police officers to drive out the protesters.

Starting about 10 a.m. police advanced on trucks that had been parked on Wellington Street, the thoroughfare in front of the Parliament building, drawing guns on some vehicles, and arresting protesters inside and nearby the trucks.

The operation was an escalation by the authorities to finally end the protests, which began with a convoy of truckers rallying against vaccine mandates, and later inspired demonstrations around the world.

Officers, some brandishing batons, others holding rifles, pushed to regain the area in front of Parliament, expanding an operation that began on Friday to remove demonstrators and parked trucks that have blocked the city’s downtown core.

In the heart of the encampment, the police pushed people back with batons and irritant spray. They advanced methodically truck by truck as demonstrators shouted, “Shame on you!” At points, officers trained guns on individual trucks, or pointed them at the vehicles’ windows. They banged on doors, opening them up in an attempt to check for or dislodge any occupants who were still inside.

A recording played in French and English, as the police advanced. “You must leave,” it said. “Anyone found in the zone will be arrested.”

The police operation appeared to be a final salvo in the government’s belated effort to break up the occupation. In recent weeks, the demonstrations have attracted a variety of protesters airing grievances about pandemic restrictions, claims of government overreach and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s stewardship of the country.

By midmorning, police had cleared the demonstrators from what had been the occupation’s core, Wellington Street, in front of the house of Parliament, and set up barricades. Most of the trucks entrenched there for the past three weeks drove off when the advance began; a few abandoned vehicles remained...

Keep reading. 

The Truth About the Ottawa Truckers' Convoy

As the cliche goes, if you read one thing about the Ottawa freedom convoy, make it this. 

From N.S. Lyons, at the Upheaval, "Reality Honks Back:About those truckers…":

To simplify [his thesis], let’s first identify and categorize two classes of people in society, who we could say tend to navigate and interact with the world in fundamentally different ways.

The first is a class that has been a part of human civilization for a really long time. These are the people who work primarily in the real, physical world. Maybe they work directly with their hands, like a carpenter, or a mechanic, or a farmer. Or maybe they are only a step away: they own or manage a business where they organize and direct employees who work with their hands, and buy or sell or move things around in the real world. Like a transport logistics company, maybe. This class necessarily works in a physical location, or they own or operate physical assets that are central to their trade.

The second class is different. It is, relatively speaking, a new civilizational innovation (at least in numbering more than a handful of people). This group is the “thinking classes” Lasch was writing about above. They don’t interact much with the physical world directly; they are handlers of knowledge. They work with information, which might be digital or analog, numerical or narrative. But in all cases it exists at a level of abstraction from the real world. Manipulation and distribution of this information can influence the real world, but only through informational chains that pass directives to agents that can themselves act in the physical world – a bit like a software program that sends commands to a robot arm on an assembly line. To facilitate this, they build and manage abstract institutions and systems of organizational communication as a means of control. Individuals in this class usually occupy middle links in these informational chains, in which neither the inputs nor outputs of their role has any direct relationship with or impact on the physical world. They are informational middlemen. This class can therefore do their job almost entirely from a laptop, by email or a virtual Zoom meeting, and has recently realized they don’t even need to be sitting in an office cubicle while they do it.

For our purposes here, let’s call these two classes the Physicals and the Virtuals, respectively.

When considering the causes and character of the current protest, and the response to it, I would say the divide between Physicals and Virtuals is by far the most relevant frame of analysis available. In fact I’d say this is among the most significant divides in all of Western politics today.

Much has rightly been made of the “working class” and their alienation from “the elite.” But this phrasing comes mixed up with associations about material wealth and economic class that aren’t necessarily helpful. Many (though not all) of those who support “populist” politics in opposition to the elite tend to frequently be either fairly solidly middle-class skilled tradesmen, relatively successful small businessmen, or land-holders (e.g. farmers, ranchers, real estate entrepreneurs) who are often actually relatively well-off. It is the character of their work that seems to shape the common identity and values of each side of the class divide more than income.

So too does this difference appear to widen – and perhaps even help explain the root of – the huge and growing gender divide in politics, given the fairly well-established preference (on average) by men to work with “things” (more concrete) and women to work with “people” (more abstract).

Meanwhile, this class divide also maps closely onto another much-discussed political wedge: the geographic split between cities, where most of the Virtuals are concentrated, and the outlying exurbs and rural hinterlands, where the Physicals remain predominant. I would suggest the nature of these two classes plays a significant role in shaping the local cultures of these places. And as anyone following events in the United States, U.K., Australia, or Europe over the last few years (such as Brexit, or the Yellow Vest protests in France) could tell you by now, partisan differences between urban metropolitan cores and provinces seem to have become one of the defining features of politics across the Western democratic world.

Below is a map of the eastern half of the United States showing at very high detail the geographic distribution of votes cast in the 2016 presidential election. The urban-rural divide between political parties couldn’t be more stark.

Differences in the Canadian electoral system mean I can’t show you a similar map for Canada, but you can be assured that the urban-rural divide there is just as significant.

But the most relevant distinction between Virtuals and Physicals is that the Virtuals are now everywhere unambiguously the ruling class. In a world in which knowledge is the primary component of value-added production (or so we are told), and economic activity is increasingly defined by the digital and the abstract, they have been the overwhelming winners, accumulating financial, political, and cultural status and influence.

In part this is because the ruling class is also a global class, and so has access to global capital. It is global because the world’s city-brains are directly connected with each other across virtual space, and are in constant communication. Indeed their residents have far more in common with each other, including across national borders, than they do with the local people of their own hinterlands, who are in comparison practically from another planet.

But the Virtual ruling class has a vulnerability that it has not yet solved. The cities in which their bodies continue to occupy mundane physical reality require a whole lot of physical infrastructure and manpower to function: electricity, sewage, food, the vital Sumatra-to-latte supply chain, etc. Ultimately, they still remain reliant on the physical world.

The great brain hubs of the Virtuals float suspended in the expanse of the Physicals, complex arterial networks pumping life-sustaining resources inward from their hosts. So when the Physicals of the Canadian host-body revolted against their control, the Virtual class suddenly faced a huge problem.

When the truckers rolled their big rigs, which weigh about 35,000 pounds, up to the political elite’s doorstep, engaged their parking breaks (or removed their wheels entirely), and refused to leave until their concerns were addressed, this was like dropping a very solid boulder of reality in the Virtuals’ front lawn and daring them to remove it without assistance. And because the Virtuals do not yet actually have the Jedi powers to move things with their minds, the truckers effectively called their bluff on who ultimately has control over the world.

It turns out that not only do the Physicals still exist, and are (for now) still able to drive themselves into the heart of the cities, they actually still have power – a lot of power. In the middle of a supply chain crisis, those truckers represent the total reliance of the ruling elite on the very people they find alien and abhorrent. To many of the Virtuals, this is existentially frightening.

The reaction of the Virtual ruling class – represented by the absolutely archetypal modern progressive male, Justin Trudeau – to this challenge has been extremely telling, and rather predictable...

RTWT.