FOREST COMMENT

 Ex CIA analyst Larry Johnson looks at weapons available in the Ukraine conflict...

There is a lot to recommend this article by Aurelien - in the analysis that the PMC has a shared belief system that transmits itself - it needs critical reading. What he tends to miss out is the 'material forces' at play and how the blinkered approach of PMC thinkers completely fails to analyse and understand them. Here is a bit - my underlining.... 'In the West as a whole, we haven’t really had that kind of coherent context since the Reformation, but at least it was possible until recently to identify shared patterns of belief, and understand why a party of the Left would generally behave differently from a party of the Right once in power. That’s no longer the case, but neither has there been a blanket replacement with an organised ideology of extreme social and economic liberalism, even though that’s part of it. Rather, the current western ruling class, like the Party in  1984,  has no ideology in the traditional sense. It is interested in power and wealth, and it has f...

  Sylvia Demarest outlines how the USA came to be in the Trade War with China - and how China anticipated and prepared for it, and why the USA will lose. ' In a series of 35 articles over a 3 month period in 2018 China’s Ministry of Science and Technology detailed the country’s weaknesses.  Each article discussed a “chokepoint”, a technology or item critical to the Chinese economy that China did not produce and relied on imports to obtain. The series was entitled “What is Choking Us? China had grasped that a trade war was coming and catalogued her own weaknesses. China then set about rectifying those weaknesses and identifying the US’s weaknesses. What did the US do in response? Nothing except continue to threaten, bully, and try to contain China. Now we find ourselves in a possible trade war with China that the US provoked. What has the leadership of the US, including the government agencies charged with US national security, been doing all these years if the US is unable to ...

The wonderful Ann Pettifor gets Bolshie...the main debate at the moment that Labour has dismally failed to address is the appropriate balance of regulation over the economy. Instead we get from the odious Steve Reed (Minister for Housing and Planning) the absurd mantra (aping Trump) of 'Build, Baby, Build'....they simply lack strategic vision and that feeds into their erratic politics which react to rather than plan for : like an amateurish game of ping-pong..... 'De-regulation........ removes the democratic element and consigns society’s great power to ‘the invisible hand’ of markets. This issue is fundamental to the failure of today’s US Democrats to mount a fight against the blatant authoritarianism, climate denial and looting of the current American president. Professor Trevor Jackson in a brilliant review of a recent book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson highlights Democrat impotence. He is scathing about the failure of Democrats to deal with the Trumpist threat - not...

  This prescient article makes the point that the new rising world order must not make the same mistakes that were made after the First World War - and the mistakes that the USA, always a recepticle of hate for anything it that it doesn't control, made after the collapse of the USSR. 'The moral authority of the “political West” lies in tatters, its financial and security architecture fraying, and its promises of universal prosperity exposed as self-serving myths. The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and elsewhere; the weaponisation of sanctions and finance; the double standards on sovereignty and human rights - all have eroded trust in the Western model and driven much of the Global South to seek alternatives. The unipolar moment, far from consolidating peace, produced a world of permanent conflict and alienation. The temptation for the ascendant powers - China, Russia, and the wider Global South - is now to meet this Western decline with their own form of triumphalism, to “put...

  Dave Cook died following an accident in Turkey over 20 years ago: I wrote this obituary.

China is too powerful to kick around. The USA must change its confrontational approach It is being beaten.... 'The US, being the pernicious by-blow of the late British Empire, has inherited all the hawkish trappings of its former parent. RAND here attempts to ween the US political culture away from this perpetually adversarial and hostile approach to foreign diplomacy because, as it has become apparent, the people ‘behind the scenes’ have slowly recognized not that confrontation with China will lead to some kind of global war, but rather the much barer reality that the US simply isn’t what it once was, and does not have the sheer overwhelming capability to bully the world’s foremost ascendant power. Thus, this RAND call to action is not—as they would have us believe—some kind of de-escalatory peacenik measure, but rather a desperate attempt to stave off the US from a historically fatal humiliation and geopolitical defeat at the hands of China.'

This is excellent - and shows the way that Chinese theoreticians are using the market to build infrastructure as the basis for socialism: how do you go from a relatively backward society to an advanced one? The Chinese learned as a result of the failures of Soviet Socialism with all the planning and organisation problems associated with the 'command economy' bureaucracy. Basically strong political leadership utilises 'state capitalism' to develop capacity - building infrastructure and educating and training people as the primary step towards a socialist transition. This is the only way to control the energy of the market and suppress inevitable class antagonisms: it needs a strong but flexible central leadership They are on course. The maintain the primary stage will be completed by c2050 and class antagonisms should then reduce. 'At first, this form of socialism could not have even qualified as the lower stage of communism, and this determined the relatively long p...

Peter Polish died on 231st August 2024 and was buried in late September. I wasn't capable of attending the fumeral but wrote this obituary.... underneath is the last photo I took of him at his 'living wake'.

China is developing a comprehensive submarine detection system that integrates sonar in the oceans with sattelites in space. Eventually it could integrate with a space detection system to give total round the clock real time surveillance of any potential hostile activity. 'The People’s Liberation Army is building an  “invisible net”  across the western Pacific, a five-layer, seabed-to-space sensor architecture known as the  Transparent Ocean  strategy that challenges the ability of U.S. and allied submarines (our “black sharks”) to maneuver and hide.'

  This is a significant article by Simplicius that looks at two US 'think tanks' and their take on the Ukraine conflict. The first (consistent with the arguments put forward by the analyst Brian Berletic) looks at the need for the USA to embrace 'strategic sequencing' which seems to have been adopted by some elements in the Trump Government, and the second shows how Russia has adapted to the war. Both crucial to understand...

'At the United Nations climate summit in September, President Xi Jinping announced that China was committing to cut carbon dioxide and other pollution by at least 7 to 10 percent by 2035 – the first time that China has set a concrete target for reducing emissions as part of its Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement. Credible evidence suggests that China’s greenhouse gas emissions have already peaked, FIVE YEARS EARLIER THAN PROMISED...... Mainstream political and economic discourse in the West has been dominated by the notion that “markets will fix everything”, consistent with the neoliberal paradigm that has reigned supreme for the last several decades. The forces of supply and demand were supposed to bring about a green transition, as fossil fuels became more expensive and renewables became cheaper. Since this has failed to materialise, another neoliberal fantasy has taken hold: that individual consumers can save the planet by changing their lifestyles. We...

  This is an important and impressive briefing on climate change and China's pursuit of non- fossil fuel based alternatives.... 'As China had driven two-thirds of the growth in global oil demand in the decade to 2023, global demand set to plateau then drop before 2030. This makes continued investment in fossil fuel exploration, or power plants, increasingly risky. Banks that have traditionally put huge resources into FF investments are beginning to get cold feet, even as they row back on explicit green commitments. This is, paradoxically, putting the US Fossil Fuel drive at odds with markets. This is because the sheer scale of China’s investment is mind boggling and this is increasingly the core driver of China’ economy; which in turn is having a global knock on effect. With just 17.2% of the world’s people, China has half of the world’s solar, half of the world’s wind power and half of the world’s electric cars.  Of every four” offshore wind turbines installed globally in 202...

This is a superb article by Warwick Powell that looks at the different approaches to AI in China and the USA - the former is seen as a practical aid and the latter treats it as a ' metaphysical force ' to advance human understanding (a kind of 21st century hippyism ) - with the inevitable lapse into the film and entertainment industries where it is most profitable along with the huge draw on energy that the USA cannot provide...it looks at entropy (disorder) and its opposite, negentropy (order). 'The U.S. AI landscape, with its emphasis on AGI as a horizon goal, mirrors this obsession. When the promise of AGI fails to materialise (or at the very least, quietly fades away from the attention of the markets), attention pivots to entertainment and ephemeral applications, creating cultural and informational noise rather than systemic order. Contrast this with China’s approach to AI, which is less encumbered by metaphysical or theological ambitions. Chinese AI strategy is p...

  How MI6 operates in Syria and played a key role in installing the jihadist one-time Al Qaeda leader al-Julani (now known as Ahmed al-Sharaa) as President of Syria following the western financed 'dirty war' against Assad. MI6 was up to its eyeballs in this.  It used ARK - a non-Governmental front organisation set up by an ex-MI6 agent Alistair Harris. The White Helmets was another such organisation set up by (the now deceased) MI6 agent James LeMesurier.

Article in 'The Forester' 15th Oct 2025. 

The Tomahawk is another 'wonder weapon' that experts see as sheer theater. It has to be operated by highly trained US personnel unlike the ATACMS system which has been found to be effective but can be intercepted most of the time. Read the full report below (rather long and technical).... The main aim of using it is to try and un-nerve Russia so it will escalate out of desperation and thus breath life into 'western' support for Ukraine.........in other words it is part of the propaganda war. ' ...For warmongering commentators and lobbyists, invoking the “Tomahawk” has marketing value. It conjures images of shock-and-awe campaigns and technological supremacy, while diverting attention from the more mundane but realistic systems that Ukraine actually operates. In this sense, the Tomahawk serves not as a practical option but as a symbol—a shorthand for escalation, resolve, and the promise of game-changing capability. The fact that it is logistically and operationally i...

  More and more I come across US substacks that show a high level of understanding about just how dire the situation facing the worlds hegemon is.... And during those same years, the beacon of Freedom represented by the Statue of Liberty morphed into delineation of the globe into military control zones under various  military Commands , military representatives of which made regular visits to the nominally independent nations within their  Command  area. Compare this world view of military control along with about 67 “regime changes” initiated by The Hegemon since WW-II, to the vastly different cooperative approach of China with their BRI, Belt and Road Initiative bringing funding and developmental expertise to developing countries. And since after George H.W. Bush, all Presidents have been funded by the Zionist Entity. They were very upset with H.W., so supported and  funded Bill Clinton  for President. And all the bad military inventions have followed tha...

  'China issued a new trade policy on October 9th.  If this new policy Is enforced aggressively, it could mean “lights out” for the US AI boom. It could also seriously impair the US’s ability to wage war.  Taken to an extreme, it could lead to a recession or economic crisis in the US. The US foreign policy establishment has been openly discussing the need to “confront and contain China” for years. There have been discussions of “going to war” with China. During Donald Trump’s first term, tariffs were placed on China. The rhetoric continued under President Joe Biden. US foreign policy, especially under Donald J. Trump, has is achieving what has been impossible for the last several centuries-- pushing India’, China and Russia together.'

  What should Palestrinians do now? This article makes the point that they have tried everything. The world watched as they were exterminated. There will be no salvation for Palestine until there is a change in the USA and its policy towards the Middle East changes. This may happen as the USA becomes more and more isolated and weakened because one thing that became clear in the Gaza genocide was the double standards of 'the west'. Western 'liberalism' bit the dust in Gaza.

  Western media stays silent about Nazism in Ukraine. Andriy Biletsky has just been promoted to the rank of Major in the Ukrainian Army and is an outright Nazi who, in the past, was overtly antisemitic. With General Sysky 'losing' the war there is talk that Belitsky may replace him.  This is part 1 - the formative years of Biletsky...

Sylvia Demerest outlines in detail how 'the west' seeks to control electronic media to manufacture consent. 'The veracity of claims that AI had been used to create automated killing systems, was confirmed by Brigadier General Y.S. (Yossi Sariel then head of 8200) when he stated that  an AI directed system called Lavender  had been used to mark tens of thousands of Palestinians for assassination without any human intervention. This is the work of the same elite Israeli intelligence unit 8200, now embedded in big tech companies in the US. The unit is called the Human-Machine Team, and reflects a hybrid composed of humans and machines applied to warfare. It has resulted in the first automated genocide in history..... Now, imagine that all the data collected by government, financial institutions, credit card companies, big tech, along with everyone’s electronic medical records--centralized, digitized, put in a dossier along with a unique identifier. Such a system would know whe...

This VERY optimistic article by Cyrus Janssen looks at how BRICS has developed an alternative trading system that deals NOT ONLY in gold but ALL precious metals. This is why Putin proceed at the grinding pace he is in Ukraine - he has the backing of China and BRICS. One thing we DON'T know is just how much gold either the USA or China and Russia actyuially hold. According to Paul of 'The Sirius Report' who has experience in international finance it is 40,000 metric tons!! Cyrus mentions much lower amounts.  We know that the US has been importing gold from London with some speculating that it will refix the dollar to gold and then, unilaterally, massively increase the price of gold (in dollars) to inflate away its $37trillion debt.  Cyrus doesn't mention this - but devaluing the dollar is actually part of what Trump wants However, gold bullion dealers know that if the price of gold is increased radically it could trigger hyperinflation and economic collapse. 'The cre...

   Warwick Powell outlines the predicament the USA is in - 'Washington tried to isolate Beijing. In doing so, it isolated itself.' 'It is one thing to announce subsidies and grand industrial acts ; it is another to rebuild entire production ecosystems hollowed out over 40 years of offshoring . The United States faces a threefold constraint: time, resources, and knowledge. In terms of time developing new mining, refining, and magnet manufacturing capacity is not a matter of quarters or even years; it’s a decade-long process. Environmental permitting alone can stall U.S. projects for years, while Chinese firms are already vertically integrated and continuously upgrading. As for material resources, even if the U.S. opened every known domestic deposit tomorrow, it still lacks the refining and separation facilities to make those materials usable. Mining without refining simply shifts the bottleneck. Lastly, the US faces knowledge and equipment constraints. China’s near-monop...