Episode 11 Middle Kingdom Dynasty XII

The History of Ancient Egypt

Professor Robert Brier

Film Review

Brier describes the period under Dynasty XII as an Egyptian renaissance, with a revival of all the cultural traditions that preceded the chaos of the First Intermediate Period (see Egypt’s Dark Ages: The First Intermediate Period). Nearly all the information about Dynasty XII pharaohs comes from inscriptions they left on the inner walls of their pyramids.

• Amenenhut I (1991-1962 BC), who launched Dynasty XII, was a commoner, the vizier (prime minister) of the last pharaoh of Dynasty XI. Born in Thebes in southern Egypt, he moved the capitol from Memphis to Faiyum, in a lush green area 35 miles southwest of modern day Cairo. He renamed the capitol Itali (“binder of two lands”). He divided Egypt into 42 nomes, each governed by nomarchs who collected taxes. One of these officials was Khnumhotep, whose tomb inscriptions reveal he completed a new geographical survey (the ancient origin of geometry) of Egypt. Amenenhut also began the tradition of appointing his son a co-regent to rule during the last ten years of his reign to cement his ascent to the throne.
• Seostrist I (1962-1907 BC) Following Amenenhut’s death (murder?), his son Sesostrist I discovered a manuscript (which Sesostrist may have written himself predicting the murder and warning him to beware those plotting against him and to not trust his friends nor his brother. It suggests one of Amenenhut’s guards committed the murder. Sesostris built two forts in Kush (aka Nubia, in modern day Sudan), one on each bank of the Nile. Although his troops never marched on Nubia, it’s likely Seosostris sought to intimidate the Nubians into paying tibute (in gold) obtain Nubian gold without charging the heavy tax the Nubians charged on the gold trade.
• Amenenhut II (1907–1897 BC) Sesostris I made his own son Amenenhut co-regent before he died. The latter led an expedition to Punt (Eritea) via the Red Sea and greatly expanded foreign trade. Jars carrying his name have been found in Lebanon.
• Sesostris II (1897-1878 BC) Amenenhut II’s son reclaimed land on the banks of the Nile and built irrigation works to significantly expand agriculture. He build a pyramid for himself and all his princesses and queens.
• Sesostris III (1897-1839 BC) His son was six feet six inches tall (at a time when the national average was five feet five inches. Due to increased sophistication in art during his reign his face is much more detailed (and tired looking). He built two pyramids, one for himself and one for the princess Neferu Fatah.

• Amenenhut IV (1839-1787 BC) The last pharaoh in Dynasty XII, Amenenhut IV didn’t build a pyramid.
• Queen Sobeknefru (1787-1782 BC) As Amenenhut IV left no male heirs the dynasty ended with queen.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/1492791/1492819

Rhoda Wilson

Much has been made of the draft of the International Health Regulations released last week.  Although some changes have been made and some wording moved around, the World Health Organisation’s (“WHO’s”) plans are the same as they were before.

This week, from 22 and 26 April, the 8th meeting of WHO’s Working Group on the International Health Regulations (2005) (“WGIHR”) is convening. The WGIHR’s task has been to incorporate 300+ proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005) (“IHR”).

Please note that there are two instruments that WHO is attempting to have ratified at the next World Health Assembly taking place from 27 May to 1 June 2024: the IHR amendments; and, the Pandemic Treaty, also referred to as the Pandemic Accord, Pandemic Agreement and WHO Convention Agreement + (“WHO CA+”).  Both instruments are intended to achieve the same aim.  The Globalists require only one of them to be adopted next month to achieve their aims.

Although there have been several drafts of the proposed Pandemic Treaty, there has been little official information released regarding the IHR amendments.  The proposed 300+ amendments to the IHR were released in February 2023 and, a year later, an unofficial draft of the amended IHR was leaked, in February 2024.

Last week, on 17 April, the WGIHR released another draft of the proposed amended IHR labelled ‘Proposed Bureau’s text for Eighth WGIHR Meeting, 22–26 April 2024’.

With the release of this draft, it appears as if WHO has taken out some of the more controversial provisions.  While some have claimed WHO is “backing down” and this is a “major victory for freedom,” they may have been too hasty.

Related: Dr. Meryl Nass: WHO’s pandemic plans are built on lies and misdirection

Dr. Meryl Nass, who has been following WHO’s negotiations and various drafts of both the IHR amendments and Pandemic Treaty closely, has said: “The current language has been watered down, and is a bit trickier to disentangle, but the plan is exactly the same.”

Referring readers to an article published on Door to Freedom comparing the latest draft of the amended IHR to the currently applicable IHR, Dr. Nass wrote on her Substack:

People said surveillance and censorship: control of misinformation and disinformation had been removed. Not so. They are just moved to an Annex and inserted elsewhere … The control of information is now even more stringent, as “surveillance” and managing misinformation are now considered “Core Capacities” that all nations will have to develop, and on which they will be scored using a monitoring system still to be developed.

So what if the term “non-binding” is no longer crossed out? The document is still binding on nations due to other language, the requirement to report back to the WHO on how well nations are complying, and the new compliance and implementation committee, which will ride herd on nations that do not comply.

Human rights, which were crossed out in the earlier draft, are now back. This shows you that those negotiating these treaties think your human rights are negotiable and can be given or taken away with the stroke of a pen.

The language stating that the WHO [Director-General] could designate potential pandemics has been replaced with likely pandemics. A weasel way of saying the same thing.

Door to Freedom team shines a light on how little has really changed in the new version of the April 2024 amended IHR, Dr. Meryl Nass, 24 April 2024

[…]

Via https://expose-news.com/2024/04/25/who-is-not-backing-down-on-its-pandemic-plans/

Caitlin Johnstone

It’s just a tough situation, with victims on both sides. On one side you’ve got people being slaughtered in droves by genocidal massacres and siege warfare, while on the other you’ve got people whose feelings get hurt when these atrocities are opposed. Hard to say which is worse.

I have dedicated every day of my life to the project of spreading awareness of the depravity and deceitfulness of the western empire, but I will never write anything more effective toward this end than what the empire is doing itself on university campuses right now.

I mean, you kind of have to wonder what they’re thinking. “Yeah, that’s it. Violently quash pro-Palestine protests at universities, ban TikTok to ensure the suppression of pro-Palestine content, and saturate the boomer media with obvious propaganda. That’ll make the kids love Israel.”

Meanwhile the US empire is still playing games with each and every one of our lives by continually taking insane risks in its world-threatening brinkmanship with a nuclear superpower. It turns out last month the Biden administration secretly sent Ukraine long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which Ukraine has reportedly already used to attack a Russian base in Crimea.

In 2022 when Ukraine first started urging the United States to send it the ATACMS— which has nearly four times the range of the HIMARS weapons the US has been supplying — Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova immediately responded with a warning that their use on Russian territory would make the US a direct participant in the conflict, and Russia would respond accordingly. Crimea is considered Russian territory by the Russian Federation.

In an article published in Antiwar last year titled “ATACMS: Be Very Afraid of This Acronym,” West Suburban Peace Coalition president Walt Zlotow wrote that this missile system “has potential to draw the US and NATO into all out war with Russia”:

ATACMS are long range US missiles that can strike up to 190 miles. Top US officials, likely including President Biden, are seriously considering giving ATACMS to Ukraine in their battle to take back all Russian gains in Ukraine, including Crimea. They can reach both Crimea and the Russian mainland.

If so used by Ukraine to attack Russia, it may be a missile too far that could ignite Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Further escalation into nuclear confrontation between Russia and the US/NATO alliance seeking Russia’s defeat becomes more likely.

Biden proclaimed it “a good day for world peace” when he signed the World War 3 bill which will pour weapons of death and destruction into Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. This is the inverted reality the US-centralized empire premises its narratives about itself upon. They’ve got the mainstream public espousing a completely backwards and upside-down worldview, which is why we live in a completely backwards and upside-down civilization.

[…]

Via https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/04/25/quashing-university-protests-and-banning-tiktok-to-make-the-kids-love-israel/

Tsarism 

Mercenaries have long been used on both sides to fight in the Ukraine conflict raging in Eastern Europe. The Wagner Group is an infamous example of the use of paid fighters by Russian forces.

Tsarizm’s sister site, ArmedForces.press reported on this several years ago: US Special Forces Operator Tells AFP He’s Killing Russians In Ukraine – “I Stopped Counting At 500”

The Kremlin this morning alleged thousands of mercenaries, most of them with a background in the United States, are also involved in fighting for Kyiv.

Over 3,100 foreign mercenaries fight for Ukraine during Russia’s special military operation and most of them come from the United States and Canada, the press office of the Russian Investigative Committee said in a statement on Thursday, reports Russian state news agency TASS.

“Investigators have information about an overall number of over 3,100 foreign mercenaries taking part in combat activities on the Ukrainian side and the majority of them come from the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Georgia,” the statement reads.

The committee added that measures are underway to locate their whereabouts and bring them to criminal liability.

[…]

Via https://tsarizm.com/news/eastern-europe/2024/04/25/russia-says-over-3100-mainly-u-s-mercenaries-fighting-in-ukraine/

Dr Eddy Betterman

Some good things happened this past week concerning the World Health Organization‘s (WHO) Pandemic Treaty.

In response to widespread public outcry, the WHO substantially revised its proposed International Health Regulations (IHR) amendments, dialing the tyranny back a notch.

According to the group Us for Them UK (@UsforThemUK on X), the changes represent a serious victory “for national democracy, free speech and human rights.”

Almost all of the substantive concerns presented to the WHO Working Group for the IHR amendments have been trimmed back, one of the biggest changes being that the WHO’s recommendations will be non-binding.

“Article 13A.1 which would have required Member States to follow directives of the WHO as the guiding and coordinating authority for international public health has been dropped entirely,” Us for Them UK tweeted.

Another change is the erasure of a proposal that would have struck from the amendments wording that recognizes the “dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms” of human beings.

“This proposal marked a particularly low water-mark, and should never have been suggested,” Us for Them UK says.

If you are concerned about the WHO suddenly attaining dictatorial powers at the mere “potential” of a public health emergency, worry not: the WHO will only be able to gain total control if it can demonstrate “that coordinated international action is necessary.”

(Related: Victims of the COVID jab genocide are taking action with new lawsuits.)

WHO won’t be your daddy; corrupt Congress will

As for the controlled flow of information by the government, a process more commonly known as censorship, the WHO will have no jurisdiction over this, either.

What happened during the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) “pandemic” in terms of how the WHO applies its IHRs will also remain the same rather than be expanded to also include “all risks with a potential to impact public health.”

Of great remaining concern, however, is the explicit recognition in the revised IHR amendments that Member States – in our case, the United States – will be the ones responsible for implementing whatever WHO recommends, as they so choose.

What this means, of course, is that the always smart and never corrupted U.S. Congress, meaning the Zionists and multinational corporations that control them, will have the full and unfettered privilege of deciding how We the People get treated during the next public health “crisis.”

Other provisions that were “diluted,” according to Us for Them UK include details about the surveillance mechanisms that would have allowed the WHO to mandate the finding of thousands of potentially new so-called pandemic “signals,” as well as provisions that would have pushed the adoption of digital health passports.

Keep in mind that the entire published document as it currently exists from the WHO remains an interim draft, so it could be modified further. The IHR Working Group will pore over it and make final negotiations as to how it will appear in its final form.

If you would like to read over the latest draft of WHO’s IHR Amendments, you can do so at this link.

“We won’t be safe until the WHO are disbanded, though,” commented someone on X (@Free_ByTheSea).

“It is not acceptable that our nation is influenced by an unelected group who conceived the original amendments. Nor is it reasonable that members of our government tried to persuade us they were nothing to worry about. We shouldn’t have to defend ourselves from groups like this. The WHO needs to go.”

Another responded that while these latest developments might seem like a win for medical freedom, we must still be vigilant because the WHO is untrustworthy.

“WHO has shown itself to be an abusive partner to free nations,” this person added. “The solution to a relationship with an abusive partner is to LEAVE. Leave the WHO.”

[…]

Via https://dreddymd.com/2024/04/25/who-backs-off-pandemic-treaty-addresses-tyranny/

Michael Snyder

In 2024, virtually all major U.S. cities have certain things in common.  First of all, if you visit the downtown area of one of our major cities you are likely to see garbage, human excrement and graffiti all over the place.  As you will see below, some of our core urban areas literally look like they belong in a third world country.  Most of our politicians don’t seem too concerned about doing anything to clean up all the filth, and so it shouldn’t be a surprise that rat populations are absolutely exploding all over the country.  In some of our largest cities, the total rat population is numbered in the millions.

Meanwhile, rampant theft, out of control violence, endless migration, predatory gangs and the worst drug crisis in the entire history of our nation have combined to create a “perfect storm” of social decay that is unlike anything that any of us have ever seen before.  Millions of law-abiding citizens and countless businesses have been fleeing America’s largest cities, and property values in our core urban areas have been absolutely crashing.  We really are in the early stages of a full-blown societal “collapse”, and things just keep getting worse with each passing day.

In this article, I want to focus on the three largest metropolitan areas in the United States: New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

John Williams recently took his camera with him as he walked through downtown Los Angeles, and he described what he witnessed as “hell”…

Decades of failed policies have transformed one of the greatest cities in the entire country into one of the worst.

At this point, theft has become so rampant that even the ultra-progressive politicians in California have come to the conclusion that something must be done.

So several bills that would “crack down on shoplifting” have been introduced in the state legislature…

Shoplifters beware.

The California Assembly has introduced a comprehensive package of seven bills aimed at addressing the rising concerns over retail theft across the state.

One of the key initiatives is Assembly Bill 2943, jointly authored by Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur (D) and Speaker Robert Rivas (D). The bill targets serial retail thieves by introducing a new crime with penalties of up to three years behind bars for possession of stolen property with intent to resell. It also allows for the aggregation of similar thefts from different victims to charge grand theft, under specific criteria.

Hopefully something will get done, because right now a criminal in the state of California can “literally walk into a retail store every single day of the year and steaI $949 worth of merchandise” and never spend a single minute in jail.

Los Angeles has become a paradise for shoplifters, but many would argue that things are even worse in the Big Apple.

As I discussed a few days ago, New York City has “a $4.4 billion shoplifting economy”.

And approximately 90,000 packages are stolen in New York City every single day.

This is just one of the reasons why we have seen a mass exodus.

Countless New Yorkers have already left for greener pastures, and lots more are thinking of leaving…

About 7 million New Yorkers plan to leave the state, a new survey revealed this month.

In a new Marist poll, 37 percent of New Yorkers—roughly 7 million people—said they plan to move away. The number was slightly more concentrated among Republicans, as 46 percent said they plan to leave the state compared to just 29 percent of Democrats.

Unsurprisingly, many of those that are fleeing are heading to Florida…

For many, Florida remains one of the top places to move, but Southern states in general have been recording the biggest influx in transplants.

According to Realtor.com, Philadelphia, Miami, Atlanta, Tampa and Orlando remain some of the top locations for New Yorkers to start again.

I wouldn’t want to live in the Big Apple either.

The rat problem alone would be enough for me to move.

It just continues to escalate, and politicians are now proposing to use “rat contraceptives” to deal with “the millions of rats lurking in subway stations and empty lots”…

In New York City, the idea to distribute rat contraceptives got fresh attention in city government Thursday following the death of an escaped zoo owl, known as Flaco, who was found dead with rat poison in his system.

City Council Member Shaun Abreu proposed a city ordinance Thursday that would establish a pilot program for controlling the millions of rats lurking in subway stations and empty lots by using birth control instead of lethal chemicals. Abreu, chair of the Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management, said the contraceptives also are more ethical and humane than other methods.

Unfortunately, New York City doesn’t have the worst rat problem in America.

That title actually belongs to the city of Chicago…

Chicago has once again been declared the rattiest city in the U.S. according to Orkin’s annual ranking.

Los Angeles surpassed New York on this year’s list now holding the #2 spot and bringing the Big Apple down to #3, Orkin shared.

Other notable shifts included Houston, which moved 10 spots up to #20, and Charlotte, North Carolina that rose 16 spots to #21.

Somehow, the rat problem in Chicago has gone to an entirely new level in 2024.

In fact, one local resident says that it is now the worst that she has ever seen in her entire lifetime…

A resurgence of rats has gotten out of control in Chicago’s Portage Park neighborhood, multiple residents explained Friday as they called for city leaders to take further action.

Diana Gazda, a resident of the Far Northwest Side community for seven decades, said she has never seen an infestation like it.

“We never had a rat problem like this,” she stated. “I’ve been here 71 years in my house.”

In addition to being world famous for rats, the Windy City is also world famous for violence.

In Chicago, you can be gunned down at any time of the day or night.

Nobody is safe, and that is especially true for police officers…

A Chicago police officer was shot to death early Sunday in Gage Park on the Southwest Side in what sources are saying was an apparent carjacking.

Officers responded to a ShotSpotter alert about 2:55 a.m. and found Officer Luis Huesca with multiple gunshot wounds in the 3100 block of West 56th Street, a police spokesperson said in a statement.

Huesca, 30, was driving home from work, according to city officials. Huesca, who was still wearing his uniform, was taken to University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

So which of these cities will completely collapse first?

I think that is a very good question.

They are all headed downhill very rapidly, and they are all being run by radical leftists.

Of course the exact same things could be said about dozens of other U.S. cities.

[…]

Via https://michaeltsnyder.substack.com/p/which-major-city-will-completely?r=83qir&triedRedirect=true

Dr Eddy Betterman

The largest press conference ever held by major media outlets concerning the health damage caused by Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) “vaccines” took place in Japan this week, drawing much-needed attention to a very serious issue.

Now that billions of people around the world have taken the injections either by force or because they were lied to and told that it would keep them “safe” from a fictitious “virus” bioweapon, the chickens are coming home to roost for many of these people’s now-failing immune systems.

In Japan, jab-injured citizens are raising hell, demanding compensation for their injuries. Sadly, many victims are now deceased, while others are developing AIDS-like immune wasting and other problem as a result of Operation Warp Speed and everything it unleashed.

In the above video, you can see a portion of the press conference at which a class-action lawsuit was introduced. Japan has a compensation program in place through which COVID jab victims can potentially receive restitution for what happened to them.

As you will see in the English subtitles, younger people who are single and living alone can only receive a few hundred thousand yen in compensation, which for the most injured and debilitated will never be enough to sustain them throughout their lives.

Conversely, elderly people who have nobody to support are automatically entitled under Japan’s unfair vaccine injury compensation laws to receive 44.2 million yen in compensation, “which seems excessively disproportionate when compared” to younger people.

The purpose of the class-action suit is to thus level the playing field to make sure young people and single people also receive what older people receive as far as compensation for vaccine injuries that have left them debilitated or paralyzed in some way.

The video below features another testimony that was shared at the press conference – have a look:

Keep in mind that the above video mainly features the family members of victims speaking in tears about what became of their loved ones after obeying the authorities and “doing their part” to “stop the spread.”“The vaccine damages are not shared with the public, not at all,” the person in the above video states in Japanese. “Neither information nor the media are disseminated. They make the damages from the new coronavirus vaccine seem smaller or ignore them altogether as if to suggest it’s being circulated in such a way.”“People are dying and the reality of what is happening is being hidden. They are gone. There are people currently existing who suffer from side effects and damages, yet even this is hardly broadcasted by the media, almost not at all.”

[…]

Via https://dreddymd.com/2024/04/24/japan-press-conference-lawsuits-compensation-covid-vaccines/

Dmitry Orlov

“We are on the verge of World War III!” Is this phrase beginning to sound familiar? And is the fact that it is being endlessly repeated somehow indicative of the fact that we are on the verge of World War III, or is this something else entirely? I believe that it is something else entirely: it is the fact that Europe’s politicians are on the verge of a nervous breakdown. They are the product of negative selection performed by the CIA to select the most feckless and unprincipled bunch of nincompoops to perpetuate their policies in Europe. And now it is turning out that the US has become the most feckless and unprincipled of them all! It is past the stage of nervous breakdown (that happened during the first Trump administration) and is now in the throes of psychotic rage. There is more to say about the psychology of all this, but for now let us dismiss the notion that World War III is nigh.

There are currently three armed conflicts under consideration as the main candidates for starting World War III: the former Ukraine, the Jewish state in Palestine (I hesitate to use the term “Israel” since it’s more of a mystical-biblical thing than a real place) and Taiwan. With regard to each of these, a certain game is being played. It’s geopolitics and finance, not poker, but let’s use poker as a metaphor. The losing side, which is the collective West, does not have the option of raising the stakes beyond that which it can afford to put at risk. It also has the option of folding, theoretically, but not politically, since the act of folding is equivalent to political suicide for any Western leader. What I believe is going on is that the breathless talk of World War III is part of a psychological mechanism being used to mask the inevitability of folding — abandoning the conceit of world leadership and spending the next few centuries trying to patch things up and licking their wounds.

Let us dismiss the Zionist-occupied Palestine and the Nazi-occupied former Ukraine from further consideration. With regard to the Zionists, the Iranians recently showed them who is boss, the US very quietly and discretely folded and the Zionists went back to what they do best: killing Palestinians. As a result, we should expect the Zionists to be somewhat better behaved as their economy, down by a quarter to a third already, continues to spiral the drain. Nothing threatens the existence of the Zionist state as much as the fact that they are a bunch of Zionists and there is no nuclear escalation path that leads out of this predicament.

Similarly with the Nazi-occupied former Ukraine. There, we are witnessing the early stages of a certain awakening: the magic healing power of military defeat coupled with no electricity and no running water in major cities is reducing the effectiveness of Western anti-Russian propaganda. No matter how much the propagandists would like, there is no Ukrainian nation and never has been, while individually more and more notional Ukrainians (by passport, if not by culture or language) are realizing that their path to salvation runs through Russia. Some NATO states and statelets (France + the Baltics) are discussing sending their own troops to try to defend the Nazi-occupied former Ukraine against the Russians, but if those troops do join the fray they will get killed and their death will not result in any sort of escalation.

Starting nuclear Armageddon out of sheer embarrassment seems rather less than likely, for there are much easier and less expensive ways to distract public attention. Yes, the loss of the former Ukraine will be even more humiliating for the US than the loss of Afghanistan, but to cover it up Biden could take another pratfall and Kamala could suffer an aneurism from laughing too hard, and then the US national media could discuss nothing but that for a month, after which point the US public will no longer remember what is Ukraine and what that was all supposed to have been about. Instead of Ukraine in the news, there will be a vibrant new democracy called Hawyschtschynya with its capital Lwyw, and since nobody will be able to pronounce any of that, the less that’s said about them, the better.

>Moving on to our third global hot spot, Taiwan. Taiwan’s main trading partner is mainland China, to which it is tied culturally and linguistically (except for a bunch of extra strokes in the Chinese characters). Taiwan’s most highly prized asset is TSMC, the big chipmaking company, but China is making strides in making its own chips. The US is also trying to catch up but is mostly failing (as usual, money has been spent but there is nothing to show for it). Thus, both the US and China depend on Taiwanese chips and if they start a war there, both will lose.

The US is attempting to use its political technology, which it has used to destabilize countries all over the world, to drive a wedge between China and Taiwan, with mixed success. Here, the main determinant of the outcome is the relative rate of economic development (China is not too interested in fighting hot wars): China is developing, the US is decaying. The US is dependent on Chinese technology exports (spare parts of all sorts) to stay economically functional while China’s trade is with the entire world and it is less and less dependent on the US for anything critical.

Militarily, Taiwan is right next to China and across the Pacific Ocean from the US. If a military confrontation were to occur, it would be, first of all, on the high seas, and modern rocketry (which China has and the US doesn’t) makes it quite routine to sink any fleet the US tries to sail all the way over to China’s shores. After the sinking of one or two US aircraft carriers, the US will find that it can’t afford to raise the stakes any further without risking financial collapse and will be forced to fold; and then it will suffer political collapse because folding in the game with “America’s #1 enemy” is politically suicidal.

Thus, it is not in the national interest of the US to escalate to a hot war, and neither is it in China’s. They are both interested in feeding their respective military-industrial complexes, and that may look like they are arming up for war, but what they are really trying to achieve or maintain (and, in the case of the US, failing) is military parity and, in the case of the US, a stratospheric level of systemic corruption that makes the US defense establishment at least 10 times less cost-effective than Russia’s or China’s. The ultimate determinant of success or failure in the conflict between US and China is economic and societal success, and, if judged in this manner, China has already won.

There are those who are able to take this argument on board and yet persist in saying that the US endgame with China is inevitably nuclear war because the US establishment will take death over defeat: a sort of “suicide by China.” The problem there is that the state of the US nuclear triad will not allow the US to even attempt a nuclear attack. The Minuteman III’s haven’t been successfully test-launched from a silo in ages; the Trident II, submarine-based, recently almost killed the UK’s defense minister during an attempted test launch, and the nuclear-armed Tomahawk cruise missiles are none too reliable either and, being slower than a 737 passenger jet, rather easy to shoot down. Add to this the fact that the US is no longer able to produce fissionable materials for updating its nuclear arsenal and has not tested any of its existing arsenal in ages. Probably the best it can hope for is to cause some rather nasty nuclear contamination. But then pulverized uranium and plutonium, being twice as heavy as lead, have a tendency to disappear beneath the waves or underground, never to be seen or heard from again.

Looking at the other side, we have China, Russia and North Korea, each with up-to-date strategic weapons and delivery systems against which the US has no countermeasures. Also, Russia now has air and space defense systems that the US can’t even dream of developing — it is still poking around with its hopeless Patriot batteries which the Russians can blow up at will. The US will never launch a nuclear strike given such odds. There may be no money in abandoning the fiction of world leadership and simply folding, but there is even less money in getting killed.

[…]

Via https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/099ad8cd-804c-4b07-b629-8892631cee20