FOREST COMMENT

This is horrifying - the arrangement between Tony Blair and the US billionaire Larry Ellison (a major funder of Israel) who is now the worlds leading media mogul. It is clear that Blair intends to - literally - run the world. This is why we need to oppose the Digital ID scheme. If this was REALLY about making life better I would support it - but these people are simply evil. “I have to tell [the] AI model as much about my country as I can,” Ellison  said  in a recent onstage discussion with his old friend Tony Blair at the World Governments Summit. “We need to unify all the national data, put it into a database where it’s easily consumable by the AI model, and then ask whatever question you like. That’s the missing link.”.... In an Oracle financial analysts meeting in September, Ellison told investors that AI will usher in a new era of surveillance that he said, gleefully. will ensure “citizens will be on their best behaviour.” It is almost as if Ellison read Orwell’s 1984, Hu...

Alex Krainer outlines some concerns about the whole digitalisation of everything push - with reference to the story of Thanos and the scam it was involved in.  The Tony Blair insititute now covers the world.  ' Blair has been a relentless promoter of the Digital ID scheme for the UK with the view of extending the scheme globally. Ellison has backed Blair in his many endeavors by  contributing £257 million  to the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) since 2021, supporting its expansion to over 900 staff across 45 countries.' A golden rule arising is this`: whenever you see the involvement of Blair - be very careful.  “The police will be on their best behavior. Because we’re constantly recording, watching and recording everything that’s going on. Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.”  

The recent loud declarations of Russian breaches of Plich, Estonian and Romanian airspeace are almost certainly orchestrated by NATO to raise the temperature around the war because it is being lost. The USA is happy to sell weapons to 'Europe' but will not commit itself to 'kinetic engagement'. We can expect a lot more 'false flags'. They are part of wider warfare. Russia is accused all the time of conducting such operations - but all sides do it. It is part of 'Information Warfare'.  'The human mind is increasingly viewed as a battleground. As technology advances and information becomes overwhelming, personal cognitive skills struggle to formulate an informed opinion. This situation in Ukraine has paved the way for a novel idea of cognitive warfare, a term that has, over the years, gained traction in military language and that has existed within NATO since 2020/2021 before being incorporated into NATO doctrines, which were inspired by the Alliance  ...

  An essay in New Left Review about the corruption of  Nicolas Sarkozy, recently sentenced to a mere 5 years in prison for chronic and ongoing corruption which begs the question - corruption seems endemic in France. Has the condition continued to exist under Macron? And what kind of politics comes from this?  

This article by Warwick Powell looks at developments in terms of hydrogen in China and locates it within its energy infrastructure and global development strategies. Cheap energy = cheap hydrogen.  China has an up-to-date energy distribution system and generates twice the energy of the USA, and is the world leader in renewables.. 'When hydrogen gets cheap, a lot of things will change with it'. 'Steelmaking, cement production and other heavy industries rely on high-temperature heat and reducing agents, traditionally supplied by coal or natural gas. Hydrogen can substitute for both.  Cheap hydrogen makes green steel economically viable , allowing for the decarbonisation of one of the most carbon-intensive sectors of the economy. Downstream, this shifts the competitiveness of entire manufacturing ecosystems toward regions that adopt hydrogen-based industrial platforms early. Again, China is playing a globally leading hand in this arena, and  some expect  it to become th...

More on China and its breathtaking scale and speed, and intelligence, of development. President Xi knows he is riding a tiger: using the market to develop infrastructure will INEVITABLY create an elite capitalist class that has to be controlled. This is the 21st century equivalent of the Dictatorship of the Proletariet. Those who say that China is 'capitalist' have no idea of what the CCP with its hundreds of millions of members is undertaking: theirs is, literally, a civilisation mission for the whole of the world NOT by military intervention but by technology and development throught the Belt and Road initiative. China is making itself indispensible to the world. IT IS OUR ONLY HOPE. '.... While Silicon Valley’s leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic build largely closed, proprietary systems, Alibaba is giving away the keys to the kingdom. Alibaba reports that the open-source Qwen ecosystem now includes 300+ released models, 600M+ cumulative downloads, and 170K+ derivativesac...

There isn't a cat in hells chance that 'we' can reduce emissions to the level we need to in order to avoid catestrophic global heating. Those who refuse to adopt the policies to achieve this do so by simply denying that carbon (and associated) emissions cause climate change. I knew this would happen decades ago - understanding the science but also understanding capitalism and geopolitics. As climate change intensifies the economic tensions will give rise to social and international conflict - and the risk of war. I retreated to somewhere safer but under no illusions that this will entirely protect me. People (and communities) need to become more resilient and self reliant. The only hope for the planet is advanced technology - and the major player in that will be China. It has a plan. It will stop generating power using coal and develop the renewable and other alternatives in the next 5 years, and then massively reduce emissions. It will save the world. 'The UK’s net zer...

Excellent commentary by Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute for Responsible statecraft - one of the few people who makes me proud to be British. His commentary is spot on in examining Trumps rambling speech at the UN (which Trump insists was sabotaged by the UN)... '....the most important moment in the speech was when Trump denied the existence of climate change, calling it “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”, and denouncing alternative energy as useless. With this, Trump set himself at odds with clear evidence backed by common sense observation, with the vast majority of the countries represented at the UN, and with reality itself. By ruling out the development of alternative energy in the US, Trump did not just deliberately concede the leading role in a critical area of industrial and technological development to China; he gave China the right to portray itself as the leading global representative of a rational, scientifically-based view of the world and of hum...

This article from Peoples World - the press organ of the Communist Party of the USA - outlines precisely what Trump is trying to do with the Ukraine war - he wants to wash his hands of it. Trump is an idiot - but he knows the war is lost. If you follow the conflict in detail with the daily reports you see this. (See U-Tubes Military Summary Channel or Willy OAM - the most objective coverage) 'Europe' and particularly the Baltic states are going ballistic precisely because they know that they are losing and feel threatened with their politics generated by hate and fear. So they are looking to beef up a new 'Iron Curtain'. Russia will accept this. It doesn't 'face' Europe any more. It faces Eurasia. The rest of the world and most politicians in Europe understand this. When the appallingly stupid Kaja Kallas recently addressed the EU Parliament there only 6 people were in the Chamber.  The problem we have is that the current manufactured group of European polit...

  This essay by David Betz (from the Department of War Studies, Kings College, London)  who will be labled as a right wing academic and  Australian Professor  M.L.R. Smith  looks at  the growing threat of civil war in Western societies (by which they seem to mean 'white' societies). The Military Strategy Magazene has obvious links with the military and both Betz and Smith are on its editorial panel. It touches on a range of issues but hones in on the issue of immigration as the major reason for 'breakdown'. It only mentions the growing economic crisis in passing, and fails to look in any detailed way at the division between the rich and the rest that is the cause of much conflict but it does mention a number of material issues that are relevant including the decline of organic societies and the erosion of the democratic process by 'elites'. It also fails to mention the 'forever wars' that wrecked countries that many recent immigrants lived in and were ...

  What can you say about Gaza? This is Editor Jeffrey St.Claire's weekly report. Read and weep.... Gaza is a turning point. It represents the utter bankruptcy of 'the west'. 

  Ex-British Ambassador Craig Murray highlights the role of Britains SIS (Secret Intelligence Services) in working with a designated terrorist organisations in Syria. But this is just the tip of the ice-berg.  MI6 set up the "White Helmets' who worked alongside ISIS. They are behind many of the 'secret' attacks in the Ukraine war - the attacks on the Kerch Bridge and within Russia, the planning of the failed Kursk intervention and the attempts to cross the River Dnieper at Krinky. Ukrainian blood is used to advance 'British interests' against their long-term adversary Russia. Britain poses as a peace-loving democracy but it really is a complete shgam.

  Trump has upped his rhetoric once again on Ukraine - now deciding that Ukraine (and Europe) need 'support', but if you look closely it's only the rhetoric that has changed. Having not made any advance, true to form he resorts to threats. The post by Simplicius below explains things. But we need to take a step back. The screams of manufactured outrage from Estonia, Poland and now Denmark who claim that Russia is invading their airspace are orchestrated nonsense to stoke up the pressure - and it has predictably worked because such orchestrated propaganda does. The compliant western media does its job to 'manufacture' consent. Behind all this we have another war in the Middle East developing with round two of Israel against Iran likely.  We have a US fleet gathering off the coast of Venezuela slaughtering people without warning and accusing them of being drug runners without any evidence at all:  clearly the aim is to threaten and de-stablise Venezuela.  We have the ...

  This is a timely comment on the situation in the Middle East. As the UK, Canada and Australia 'recognise' Palestine as a state it is clear that this is just tokenism.  This article puts everything in context....

This is a prescient article by Warwick Powell (an Australian Economist) on the future of the UN. I have copied some of the key points as a precis of the article but it merits study.  'Research published by American scholars Duffy Toft and Koshi in their 2023 book  Dying by the Sword , shows that the US initiated 2.4 military interventions on average each year between 1946 and 1990; and that between 1991 and 2019, this increased to 3.7 interventions per year on average. The UN could do nothing about this....... The UN was never intended as a neutral world government or governance architecture with global purview; it was born as a forum where hegemonic power could be dressed in multilateral language..... the sense of western liberal superiority that came with unbridled political and economic power cast its shadow, as western ‘values’ were pushed as ‘universal’ values. As for the UN’s security function, it was circumscribed by bipolar rivalry..... The UN was a state-centric insti...

  Ukraine (and NATO) are losing the war and so they are trying to ESCALATE by allegations of interventions of Polish and Estonian airspace. This is desperate and also dangerous. Having watched a number of videos from Ukraine it is clear that they are in denial of what is happening. They are reduced to calling Putin a 'fascist' and maintain they are 'winning'. It really is pathetic. Simplicius (who does fairly accurate twice weekly reports on the war) outlines where we are.

  Oxford and Cambridge are no longer the top universities in the UK - but the reality is that you need to look at the assessment criteria....

 'The West' (the USA, the UK and 'Europe') hate China. Western billionaires (aka the ruling class) wanted as a pool of cheap labour so they could get rich. They deprived it of technological support as much as possible. They treated it as a vassal and used racial stereotypes to deride Chinese people. Look at how 'the west' treated China just in one area - space research and then tell me - 'Why should China do any favours for the West'? 25 years ago my advice to China was - grow your economy and arm yourself to the teeth because sooner or later they will come for you. That's just what they've done.  Now, as western capitalism flounders will those politicians like Trump and Starmer and Von Der Leyen and Mertz and Napolean Macron fall back on war. If they do, we will be in the firing line and we will all loose. BUT DON'T BLAME CHINA FOR NOT ACCEPTING THE SERVANT STATUS THAT THE WEST WANTED FOR IT.

Sylvia Demarast, author of the Populist Talk substack, raises key issues following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the Conservative blogger. Some key issues relating to how the Trump administration is using the murder to curtail free speech are raised. We have the same issues in the UK.      

  A fine polemic by Chris Hedges that argues how the actions of some groups play into the hands of Trump. I remember (and knew) some of the members of the Angry Brigade who were used as the excuse by the Police to attack those who were opposed to what the British Government was doing in Ireland. Antifa is almost certainly heavily infiltrated by the Police just as many ultra leftist and activist groups have been in the past.

More on how China is fighting back against US attempts to make it technologically subservient. 'With hundreds of billions of dollars at stake, numerous new entrants are joining in the race, further eroding Nvidia’s dominance in the long run. One outcome is certain – Nvidia will be locked out of the Chinese chip market, the largest in the world, and Chinese companies will have the market for itself. China is set to build a completely separate and parallel AI system from the US. The China system may still lag in compute performance for now but has zero dependence on the US'.

  Yugoslavia’s CIA, NED and USAID-orchestrated   “Bulldozer Revolution”   in 2000 was the world’s first “color revolution”. Over subsequent decades, the US   has ousted   governments the world over using strategies and tactics identical to those that successfully dislodged Slobodan Milosevic from office. In almost all cases, youth groups have been key regime change footsoldiers. In Belgrade, after almost a decade of lethally   destructive sanctions , capped off with a criminal 78-day-long NATO   bombing campaign , many residents of the country had legitimate grievances, and wished to see Milosevic fall.