BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary will seek to opt out of any NATO operations aimed at supporting Ukraine, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said Friday, suggesting that the military alliance and the European Union were moving toward a more direct conflict with Russia.
“We do not approve of this, nor do we want to participate in financial or arms support (for Ukraine), even within the framework of NATO,” Orbán said, adding that Hungary has taken a position as a “nonparticipant” in any potential NATO operations to assist Kyiv.
“We’ve got to redefine our position within the military alliance, and our lawyers and officers are working on … how Hungary can exist as a NATO member while not participating in NATO actions outside of its territory,” he said.
Orbán, said he doesn’t share the concerns of some other Central and Eastern European countries that Russia’s military wouldn’t cease its aggression if it wins the war in Ukraine.
Russia has unilaterally redrawn its maritime borders in the Baltic Sea with Lithuania and Finland, claiming additional areas as internal waters. The move, announced in a government decree, affects parts of the eastern Gulf of Finland and waters near the Kaliningrad cities of Baltiysk and Zelenogradsk.
The decree cites outdated geographic coordinates from a 1985 USSR Council of Ministers decree as the reason for the change. It argues that the old coordinates, based on mid-20th century maps, are no longer accurate and hinder the determination of Russia’s internal sea waters.
The proposed adjustments target areas near several Finnish islands and the northern entrance of the Narva River. On the Lithuanian border, the Curonian Spit, Cape Taran, and the Baltic Spit are under review.
The timing of these events, coupled with Latvia’s recent investment in a new maritime border surveillance system, suggests a growing unease in the region.
Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s trip to China apparently failed last week to secure a project key to the hopes of Moscow’s struggling energy sector.
Putin’s state visit produced a joint statement heralding a “new era” for Beijing and Moscow’s “no limits partnership,” while the hug shared with Chinese counterpart Xi made headlines. But the long-ruling Russian leader walked away without a contract for a pipeline between his country and its largest export market.
Russia has offset some of the business it lost over its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine by rerouting natural gas and oil to China. This relationship continues to deepen with the first Power of Siberia pipeline expected to reach full capacity this year and pipe 38 billion cubic meters (bcm) into China annually.
However, the outsized importance of the Chinese market gives Beijing more control over the terms. Gas is flowing into China at a rate of $257 per 1,000 cubic meters, compared to the $320 for its remaining European markets, and this discount is set to increase to 28 percent next year.
The thing about trade wars is they really stop you from trading…
Reports have piled up about how Big Tech companies have turned on their money hoses to poach top AI talent from each other. They’ve also turned on the charm — both OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg have reportedly been personally involved in courting candidates and offering lavish salaries. But a larger and more intractable talent war is brewing between the US and China.
U-S-A-I
China has had a habit of overtaking the US in technology, like EV adoption or 5G rollout. But when it comes to the hype-beast of generative AI, the US holds the reins. That’s partly because of how the tech industry is set up — Big Tech companies are developing AI in-house, but they’re also forging partnerships with startups like OpenAI, Anthropic, and France-based Mistral AI, because the cloud and computing infrastructure needed to run AI models is dominated by Microsoft, Amazon, and to a lesser extent, Google.
Meanwhile, the US wants to box China out of AI development, arguing that it might use it for military or otherwise nefarious purposes. Its ever-escalating chip trade war is aimed at depriving China of physical infrastructure, and the US is reportedly considering banning exports of AI models (although that seems a little nonsensical). The US is even fighting by proxy: The New York Timesreported in November that US officials were feverishly dissuading Dubai-based G42 to cut its AI links to Chinese businesses.
The goal of the Ukraine War is now and always has been to kill as many young Ukrainians as possible while also driving away as many other Ukrainians as possible. This has been a great success: 500,000 Ukrainian young men killed and half the rest of the population driven away since the war began. Who is going to own Ukraine in future and who is going to live there when the war is over? The Ukrainians who have fled say they will never return. It is fair to wonder at this point (and before) if the war was: 1) a backup plan for Israel if they are overwhelmed and driven out of the Middle East in a regional war; or 2) that has always been the main plan. When/if Israel falls, they all move to Ukraine. ABN
(first posted this FEBRUARY 7, 2024, but seems just as true today, only situation worse)
The US worries that models like ChatGPT could allow China to launch cyberattacks or even design biological weapons.
Reuters reported on Wednesday that the US government might escalate its trade war with China by blocking US companies from selling powerful proprietary AI software models to China, along with the data used to train those models. The question is: What company in its right mind would sell its model to begin with?
AI Can Do Anything Better Than You
The US and China have been battling over computer chips since the Trump administration, and the fervor has increased with the advent of generative AI. The US has piled export bans on state-of-the-art chips essential to provide the computing power to run generative AI software. Keegan McBride, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a lecturer at the Oxford Internet Institute, said the US has fought to preserve its AI lead over China because it’s a rare area of technology where it’s had a head start. “The US has gotten trashed in other sorts of technological competitions with China, particularly if you think about things like 5G, and quantum [computing],” McBride said. “AI is a specific technology that is important, where [the US has] advantages pretty much across the board,” he added.
The German Army is expected to join an exercise with Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force as early as next year, according to German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, against a backdrop of China’s military buildup in the Indo-Pacific region and territorial claims in the South China Sea.
In a recent written interview with Kyodo News, Pistorius revealed that the upcoming joint exercise, set to take place in Japan, will be the first of its kind between the two countries’ ground forces. The development comes as Germany has bolstered ties with Indo-Pacific partners and emphasized its mission to “maintain the rules-based international order.”
Pistorius pointed out that no signs indicate that China will abandon its territorial claims in the South China Sea, as Beijing continues to deploy coast guards, maritime militia as well as sea and air forces in the waters concerned to enforce its claims.
…”Our military experts tell us that Russia would theoretically be able to attack NATO territory in five to eight years. Regardless of whether Moscow would take this risk or not, we must be prepared for anything,” he said while emphasizing that the country’s goal is deterrence.
Russia has China, a dubious partner and vice versa. USA has Germany and Japan, both reliable partners, incapable of serious backstabbing. Notice the timeline—five to eight years—before the Western cabal attacks Russia or provokes war with China. No way to be sure of details, but these bits of information do reveal real alliances and against whom. Russia would gain nothing and lose everything if it attacked Europe. This is too obvious for words. Russia can only hope to stave off its annihilation. The question arises: does USA possess a superweapon? We know DARPA is many decades ahead of publicly known weapons development. My thoughtful guess is USA does possess a superweapon. There is a strong now-or-never feel about USA behavior domestically and internationally. From the POV of the Western comitatus, the stage has already been set. The pieces are in place. Encroachment will continue apace and escalate. ABN
UPDATE: This video is well worth watching. Without saying as much, they detail cabal/comitatus moves at the top where the only rules are KOBK rules—Kill-Or-Be-Killed.
Top leaders in USA have nothing else in mind long-term but world domination. Russian and Chinese leaders both know this full-well and have no choice but to respond accordingly.
While China surely has long-term strategies for world domination itself, it is not today strong enough to pursue them boldly and thus must stay off center stage. Russia, rightly, sees an escalation of Western threats against it and has acted accordingly by threatening to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine if certain lines are crossed.
These events cannot be understood without understanding that all three parties—Russia, China, and USA—are playing by KOBK rules, the only rules possible for them.All three are ruled by tight gangs led by strong leaders.
The gang or comitatus in control of USA is almost entirely secret and thus, a true cryptocracy. We do not know who is in control or where the center even is. When it comes to KOBK conflicts, none of what top leaders do has anything to do with their citizens’ well-being, except to avoid riling them too much.
It is important to understand what KOBK means and why it is a useful term: KOBK describes the forced ‘morality’ of top international combatants who today rule USA & the West, Russia, and China. World history at many stages and places has operated on KOBK rules. KOBK is nothing new but is distinct from all other political philosophizing, let alone moralizing. Kill-Or-Be-Killed situations are stark and morally unambiguous.
Top leaders cannot but fight by KOBK rules and nothing in the world today will change that. New technology or a much smarter global population through digital breeding may change everything but that is not going to happen in the immediate future. Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, Taiwan and more are all KOBK flashpoints. Conflicts entailing them must be understood as strategic moves toward global domination or to prevent rivals gaining it. ABN
UPDATE 2: Their whole discussion toward the end of the video on strategic ambiguity and national politics suffers from their not being aware of or not having the terminology to discuss these events in KOBK terms. See the situation for what it is: USA has boldly begun war in Ukraine and boldly expanded war in Israel/Gaza. These are KOBK moves strategically aimed at world domination, probably through controlling the Middle East by neutering Iran and further threatening Russia. ABN
UPDATE 3: The Western comitatus ostensibly led by USA is not being ‘stupid’ or ‘imbecilic’ as Mercouris says. They are doing KOBK with the goal of world domination. That goal entails complete and total subjugation of Russia, ‘killing’ it as it were. Russia absolutely knows this and is responding in kind—‘if you try to kill us we will kill you’. None of this is fundamentally about messy diplomatic wording or what a puppet like Macron says. These are not trial balloons or strategic mistakes. It’s pure KOBK. USA provoked the war and they are not going to back down. Each move brings them closer to subjugating Russia, then China. ABN
…Netanyahu took advantage of the wave of global sympathy by unleashing an unprecedented military assault against Gaza’s more than two million civilians, apparently intending to kill huge numbers of them and drive the remainder into Egypt’s Sinai desert, allowing Israel to annex their territory and resettle it with Jews. Soon afterward, the Israeli government began distributing assault rifles to the Jewish Settlers of the West Bank, ordering some 24,000 of those automatic weapons for that purpose. Putting such armaments into the hands of religious fanatics would surely lead to local massacres and these might provide an excuse for driving all the millions of Palestinians over the border in Jordan. The ultimate result would be the creation of a racially-pure Greater Israel stretching “From the River to the Sea,” the longstanding dream of the Zionist movement. And if he were successful, Netanyahu’s place in Jewish history might become a glorious one, with his many venal sins and blunders easily overlooked.
As American airlifts supplied an unending flood of the necessary munitions, the Israelis began a massive aerial bombardment campaign against densely-populated Gaza and its helpless residents. Secure in their underground tunnels, relatively few Hamas fighters were killed, but Gaza’s civilians suffered devastating losses, much of it inflicted by two thousand pound bombs, almost never previously deployed against urban targets. Large portions of Gaza were soon transformed into moonscapes, with some 100,000 buildings destroyed, including hospitals, churches, mosques, schools, universities, government offices, bakeries, and all the other infrastructure necessary for maintaining civilian life. After just a few weeks, the Financial Times reported that the destruction inflicted upon much of Gaza was already worse than had been suffered by German cities after years of Allied bombing attacks during World War II.
Although Netanyahu was strictly secular, he played to his religious base by publicly declaring the Palestinians to be the tribe of Amalek, whom the Hebrew God had commanded be exterminated down to the last newborn baby. Many other top Israeli leaders voiced very similar genocidal sentiments, and some of the more zealously religious Israeli soldiers and commanders probably took those statements quite literally.
This gigantic bloodlust was further inflamed as the Israeli government and its supportive propagandists began promoting outrageous Hamas atrocity-hoaxes such as beheaded or roasted Israeli babies, sexual mutilations, and gang-rapes. The notoriously pro-Israel global media credulously reported these stories, using them to deflect attention from the enormous ongoing slaughter of Palestinian civilians. To ensure that the coverage remained one-sided, the Israelis targeted independent journalists in Gaza for death, killing some 140 of them over the last few months, a figure as large as the combined total in all the world’s other wars over the last several years.
…the direction of travel is unmistakable: once regarded among Western multinationals as the great business opportunity of this century, foreign businesses are pulling out of the country in growing numbers.
The danger for China is that what started as a trickle may quickly become a flood – if it hasn’t already. The list of major companies heading for the exit may be greater than those still operating in China.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on Sunday downplayed Huawei Technologies’ latest microchip breakthrough, arguing that the U.S. remains far ahead of China in the critical technology.
The comments, which were delivered on CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” align with her stance that the Biden administration’s restrictions on chip sales to China are working, despite an advanced made-in-China chip surfacing in a Huawei phone last year.
“It’s years behind what we have in the United States. We have the most sophisticated semiconductors in the world. China doesn’t. We’ve out-innovated China,” Raimondo said during the interview, which aired Sunday evening in the U.S.
Israel, Gaza and West Bank should be seen as an opening of the New Cold War.
In what can be considered the most crucial podcast of 2024 so far, Professor Michael Hudson – the author of seminal works such as Super-Imperialism and the recent The Collapse of Antiquity , among others – clinically lays down the essential background to understand the unthinkable: a 21st century genocide broadcast live 24/7 to the whole planet.
In an email exchange, Prof. Hudson detailed he’s now essentially “spilling the beans” about how, “50 years ago when I worked at the Hudson Institute with Herman Kahn [the model for Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove], Israeli Mossad members were being trained, including Uzi Arad. I made two international trips with him, and he outlined to me pretty much what has happened today. He became head of Mossad and is now Netanhayu’s advisor.”
Prof. Hudson shows how “the basic Gaza plan is how Kahn designed the Vietnam War’s division into sectors, with canals cutting off each village, as the Israelis are doing to Palestinians. Also already at time, Kahn pinpointed Balochistan as the area to foment disruption in Iran and the rest of the region.”
It’s not by accident that Balochistan has been CIA jewel territory for decades, and recently with the added incentive of the disruption by any means necessary of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) – a key connectivity node of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Prof. Hudson then connects the major dots: “As I understand it, what the U.S. is doing with Israel is a dress rehearsal for it to move on to Iran and the South China Sea. As you know, there is no Plan B in American strategy for a very good reason: If anyone criticize Plan A, they’re considered not to be a team player (or even Putin’s Puppet), so critics have to leave when they see that they won’t be promoted. That’s why U.S. strategists won’t stop and re-think what they’re doing.”
American Buddhist Net 