CHINA WILL PLAY MAJOR ROLE IN RUSSIA-UKRAINE DISPUTE

(Tinyurl.com)

Tensions are mounting throughout the world concerning the possibility of a war between Russia and Ukraine. One question that has experts on edge is what role China might play in such a conflict, and how such an event could set a dangerous precedent for China’s global ambitions – particularly in relation to Taiwan.

Russia has demanded that Ukraine never be allowed to join NATO. As of this week, it has amassed 130,000 troops at the eastern border of Ukraine to intimidate Western nations into disallowing Ukraine from ever joining the alliance and to pressure the global community away from further militarizing the region.

Despite the temptation to compare the current crisis to Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, experts say that the geopolitical and economic landscape is quite different in 2022.

Perhaps the most notable difference, they say, is that China will play a prominent, if not dominant, role in any potential conflict and its eventual resolution.  (“China will play major role in Russia-Ukraine conflict,” Epoch Times, 1/29/2022)

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DIRTY MONEY COMPLICATES DISPUTE

US State Department officials sounding the alarm over Russian “dirty money” in London was The Times’s lead story this morning. According to diplomatic sources, Washington officials have expressed a fear that they will be unable to impose effective sanctions on Moscow if Russia invades Ukraine “because of years of British tolerance of suspect money flooding into Londongrad.”   (The Week, 1/28/2022)

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EUROPEAN MILITARY EXERCISE

Amid escalating tensions between the West and Russia, the Pentagon has announced the next large-scale Defender-Europe exercise to train the deployment of US troops at the Russian border. According to NATO, Defender-Europe 22 will begin in May and last until mid-June. Approximately 33,000 troops from 26 nations – including the Bundeswehr – are scheduled to participate, according to the Pentagon. The exercise, that will rehearse the rapid deployment of large combat units from the USA to eastern and southeastern Europe, is but one in a series of the NATO countries’ planned combat exercises for the coming months, aimed at Russia. They include naval combat exercises in the Baltic Sea, airborne operations near the Russian border, and hunting Russian submarines in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic. A permanent deployment of NATO battalions in Rumania and Bulgaria is also in discussion. To set an example, the Bundeswehr has recently announced that it plans to build barracks for its NATO battle group in Lithuania.  (German Foreign Policy, 1/27/2022)

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The government in Kiev is predicting that up to five million people would be forced to flee Ukraine if the Kremlin gives the order for a Russian invasion.

Poland is preparing to take up to a million “real refugees” from the neighbouring eastern European nation, where 1.5m people have already been “displaced from their homes by fighting in the east of the country,” The Times reported.

Officials in Slovakia and the Czech Republic also “estimate that tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees might arrive if Russia attacked,” the paper added. And Kiev’s ambassador to London has said that the UK and France could also face a “wave of people fleeing conflict” that “could be the equal of the exodus seen in Syria,” according to The Telegraph.  (The Week, 2/1/2022)

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GERMANY

While some Western governments have sent defensive arms to Ukraine, Berlin has so far refused. It argues that arming Kyiv would encourage both Ukraine and Russia to escalate the conflict. Germany is not only reluctant to send weapons to Ukraine, but it has also scuttled attempts by NATO states, like Estonia, to deliver German-made arms to Ukraine. (Berlin retains some authorization rights over exports of their weapons.) Germany has also refused to back a proposal to cut Moscow off from the global electronic-payment system known as SWIFT.

Facing criticism, Germany’s new government has said that the country’s reluctance to arm the Ukrainians is in part the result of its pacifist foreign policy – an approach required by Germany’s militarist past. But analysts say that German reliance on Russian natural gas – which accounts for half of all its gas imports – better explains Berlin’s hesitancy to draw the Kremlin’s ire.  (Gzero Signal, 1/26/2022)

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HEALTH

As we reach the second anniversary of the Covid pandemic, perhaps the most surprising thing is how many Americans have lost their lives compared to how few have perished in China. How are we to explain this astonishing divergence?

The simple answer is that, despite being the source of the virus that caused the pandemic, the Chinese managed containment very successfully, while the U.S. bungled everything from testing to mask-wearing to quarantining.

Some people go even further, arguing (as does Chinese Communist Party propaganda) that the difference in death tolls illustrates the superiority of China’s political system over America’s corrupt and self-indulgent democracy. However, I have never bought this second argument. And I am no longer satisfied with the first.   (“China’s  Covid Victory over the US may be pyrrhic,” Niall Ferguson, Bloomberg, 1/29/2022)

From today, a ban on the routine administration of low doses of antibiotics to groups of healthy animals has come into force across the EU. Experts are concerned that the practice breeds untreatable “superbugs” which could spread to humans, said The Independent. UK ministers have refused to commit to an outright ban on preventive use in the past, but a public consultation is being held this year. The use of farm antibiotics has significantly decreased over the past few years, but campaigners argue that the reduction hasn’t gone far enough.   (The Week, 1/28/2022)

Record numbers of women are reaching the age of 30 without having any children, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). More than half (50.1%) of women in England and Wales born in 1990 were child-free when they turned 30 in 2020 – almost three times higher than the 17.9% of those born in 1941. The ONS also found that the average number of children women have by the time they reach 30 has fallen to its lowest-ever level (0.96), reported The Guardian.  (The Week, 1/28/2022)

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COLONIAL REFLEXES

Mali’s government is escalating its confrontation with EU countries and, for the first time, is forcing the withdrawal of a European troop contingent. On Monday, the military government in Bamako declared that Danish soldiers had entered the country to join the French-led Opération Takuba without the necessary authorization, and that they must leave the country immediately. Denmark claims that the deployment of its troops had been approved by Bamako, but announced yesterday that it would withdraw the disputed unit from Mali. With this conflict, the Malian government’s protest against the behavior of European powers, accusing them of having “colonial reflexes” enters its second round. The dispute hat already previously escalated, when Bamako decided to postpone elections, initially planned for February, and to invite Russian military instructors into the country. With Sunday’s putsch in Burkina Faso toppling a president closely aligned with France, the European powers’ influence is beginning to wane in yet another Sahel country.   (German Foreign Policy, 1/28/2022)

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TO THE POINT

• Ministers will target the British investments of oligarchs and businesses with links to the Kremlin if Russia invades Ukraine, said The Times. Westminster is expected to announce today that it will impose asset freezes and travel bans on individuals and entities that have a “strategic significance” to Vladimir Putin’s government. Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, told Times Radio on Sunday that new legislation means there will be no hiding place for “those who are supporting the Russian regime.”   (The Week, 1/31/2022)

• Thousands of middle-class families pay more than £1m in tax over a lifetime, reported The Daily Telegraph. New analysis by low-tax campaigners has found that the long-term tax bill faced by households with an annual income of over £60,000 now stands at £1.1m. This means they would have to work the equivalent of 18 years just to pay off HMRC. A spokesperson from the TaxPayers’ Alliance said that “with the tax burden at a 70 year high, typical families are now tax millionaires.”  (The Week, 1/31/2022)

• The bridge that just collapsed in the city of Pittsburgh was set to be restored in 2016. Instead of replacing the completely rusted out supports, they diverted the money to bike lanes, green energy programs and lanes for self driving cars.   (Comment on Twitter 1/30/2022)

• A report from Amnesty International, which is due to be published this week, accuses Israel of “enforcing a system of apartheid against the Palestinian people” and of treating Palestinians as “an inferior racial group.” Israel’s foreign ministry has described the report as a “collection of lies” which seeks to “deny the right of existence of the state of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.”  A spokesperson from Amnesty clarified to The Daily Telegraph that the report was a critique of “the Israeli government, not the Israeli or Jewish people.”  (The Week, 1/31/2022)

• Every migrant who drowns in the Channel is Britain’s responsibility, President Emmanuel Macron told a French newspaper. Macron called once again on Boris Johnson to establish a legal route to Britain for asylum seekers. “The responsibility for those who die at sea does not fall upon France but upon this British refusal,” he said. The French president added that the UK economy relies on low-paid, illegal immigrant labour and “the British continue to have a system from the 1980s, which manages economic immigration through hypocrisy.” (The Week, 2/2)

• A new study has found that refusal or reluctance to take a Covid vaccine may be connected to traumatic events in childhood, such as parents separating, neglect and sexual abuse, said The Guardian. The study, funded by Public Health Wales, showed that the more trauma people had experienced in childhood, the more likely they were to mistrust NHS Covid-19 information. “A better understanding of how to increase their trust in health systems and compliance with health guidance is urgently required,” said researchers. (The Week, 2/2/2022)

• Whoopi Goldberg has been suspended from a US talk show after saying the Holocaust involved “two groups of white people.”  ABC News said the actor would be off-air for two weeks after making “wrong and hurtful comments.”  Goldberg has since apologised for claiming that the Nazi genocide of the Jews was “not about race.”  CNN said Goldberg is “no stranger to controversy” and she once remarked that Roman Polanski was not guilty of “rape-rape.”  (The Week, 2/2/2022)

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FINAL THOUGHT

Our nearest grocery stores are Kroger and Aldi, so that’s where we do most of our shopping.    Last week, when coming out of Aldi, I was approached by a beggar who asked me for $20.   The last time I was approached, it was only $10.   Clearly, inflation is affecting everybody!

You must have noticed how prices keep on going up and up.   This is especially true when it comes to gas (petrol) and food, two things not included in the official inflation figures, as they are both considered seasonal.   While the official rate is 7%, when you take into account food and gas, experts say we are being hit by 15% inflation.

Even Dollar Tree, where “everything is $1” has upped its prices to $1.25, an increase of 25% (plus tax).

The fact is that government is the primary cause of inflation, which has been defined as “too much money chasing too few goods.”   In other words, the generosity of the new president has pushed up prices.

But 15% is nothing when compared to what other countries have experienced.

When we first arrived in Ghana in May 1978 the inflation rate was 600%.   I remember buying a pineapple at the side of the road.  When I took it to the car, my wife asked me to get another one.  When I went back, it was double the price.  Now, that’s inflation.

Try and get your mind around this figure:  “Zimbabwe’s peak month of inflation is estimated at 79.6 billion percent month-on-month, 89.7 sextillion percent year-on-year in mid-November 2008.^”  (Wikipedia)

Inflation was a major contributor to the collapse of the Roman Empire.   One history site says that “hyperinflation, soaring taxes and worthless money created a trifecta that dissolved much of Rome’s trade.  The economy was paralyzed.”  (visual capitalist.com)  The same article adds that an influx of illegals and  an outbreak of plague were going on at the same time!

We’re not there yet.   But inflation is soon out of control.   Hyperinflation follows, then the collapse of the currency, reducing a country to bartering goods.

The Bible speaks of a time when inflation will be a major problem.

“You have sown much, and bring in little; You eat, but do not have enough; You drink, but you are not filled with drink; You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; And he who earns wages, Earns wages to put into a bag with holes.”   (Haggai 1:6)

How do you stop it from happening?

Nations, like people, have to live within their means.  This means that the US government has to stop over-spending, cut back the government programs that are seriously bleeding the country dry.

It’s not likely to happen, so you can expect the inflation problem to get worse.   Eventually the dollar will collapse.  It will no longer be able to sustain its role as the world’s trading currency.  This would end America’s preeminence, which is already under great pressure from China.  

The only currency that could replace the dollar at this time is the euro. 

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