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Researcher & writer based in Hong Kong. Former academic. Longform articles archived at https://lauraruggeri.substack.com and https://laura-ruggeri.medium.com. Email: lauraru852@yandex.ru
No surprise here. John Ratcliffe, former Director of National Intelligence, is Trump's pick for CIA Director. He is an anti-China hawk and says the US should conduct joint attacks on Iran with Israel. @LauraRuHK
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Trump has officially picked Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense. Hegseth is known to Americans as a Fox News host who often lashed out at wokeism for weakening the Armed Forces. Hegseth has advocated for a tougher stance against China and Iran and is a staunch supporter of the Zionist genocidal entity.
He served in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay and reportedly persuaded Trump to pardon three American soldiers (Blackwater contractors) convicted of war crimes. They had murdered Iraqi civilians. @LauraRuHK
Marco Rubio & Joshua Wong, the Hong Kong secessionist currently serving a prison term for his subversive activities. Rubio is under Chinese sanctions for interfering in China's internal affairs - he openly supports secessionist forces and sponsored The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019, a federal law that requires the U.S. government to impose sanctions against mainland China and Hong Kong officials accused by bogus NGOs of suppressing human rights. If Marco Rubio is appointed Secretary of State, China-US relations will nosedive. @LauraRuHK
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Donald Trump has picked China hawk Mike Waltz as his National Security Advisor.
In addition to being a Neocon war hawk who worked for Cheney and Rumsfeld, Waltz is also a proponent of a deeper relationship with India. In 2023, he went on the say that the United States should formalise the alliance with India. Waltz supports U.S. military interventions, is pro-NATO, and advocates for increased military spending. @LauraRuHK
Is it clearer now why the Deep State let Trump win the elections? As the green agenda and wokeism had actually weakened the US, domestically and on the global stage, a correction was needed. Enter Trump.
"Trump, with his competitive instincts, inclination to disrupt the status quo, and sense of urgency, could be the kind of leader to push the United States much closer to where it needs to be. As president, he would need to build up the country’s military capabilities, fortify the domestic industrial base and reduce foreign economic dependencies, and consolidate key political alliances, all in service of strengthening the United States’ hand in the face of mounting geopolitical risks. (...)The Biden administration has reversed several of Trump’s policies, shifting focus to action on climate change. In a second term, Trump would be determined to take advantage of the United States’ abundant supplies of oil and gas, which could also offer opportunities to support European and other allies.
A return to a policy of energy dominance, which acknowledges the central role of fossil fuels until other sources can both meet energy needs and do so at a competitive price, would allow the United States to break out of a harmful cycle with China. As the United States and Europe look to replace oil with alternative energy, they turn to China as the world’s leading provider of solar, wind, and battery products. By instead leaning on fossil fuels as the United States’ principal energy source while giving renewable industries time to build up in Western countries, Washington can increase its room for maneuver."
The US military-industrial complex is worth trillions of dollars. The US will continue to fabricate threats to sell weapons to its allies vassals, regardless of who sits in the White House. If Washington decides to disengage from Ukraine it's only because its strategy failed and cannot push any further without triggering a major escalation, which no one wants. Washington is more than happy to let Europeans deal with the mess as long as they keep paying for the privilege of picking up crumbs. Israel on the other hand is a different ally. Though it's not such a good customer since it's used to freebies, it will continue to get a preferential treatment. As to the rest of US vassals, they will be forced to cough up more money for 'protection'. @LauraRuHK
Can birds of different feathers fly together and function effectively as a flock? In 2017 Giulio Gallarotti argued that great diversity not only does NOT inhibit the effectiveness of the BRICS as a bloc, indeed it demonstrates that greater diversity in fact augments the effectiveness of the BRICS as a vehicle for generating soft power in the international system for these nations. In the case of the BRICS, more diversity leads to greater influence. https://shs.cairn.info/journal-hermes-la-revue-2017-3-page-183?lang=en#re4no4
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During the plenary session of the Valdai Discussion Club, Vladimir Putin made these very important remarks about the conflict in Ukraine:
"Our opponents find new ways, instruments, to try to get rid of us. Now, they use Ukraine as such instrument, they use Ukrainians, whom they shamelessly drill against Russians, effectively turning them into cannon fodder."
Kiev received orders from overseas to hold the ground in Russia’s Kursk Region at all costs until the US presidential election. As a result, Kiev lost over 30,000 troops over more than three months of hostilities - "more than the Kiev regime’s total losses during the entire year of 2023."
Good-neighborly relations between Russia and Ukraine are impossible without Kiev’s neutrality. This is the main precondition to make sure that Ukraine does not become an instrument in someone else’s hands: "The basic preconditions for the normalization of relations will not be established, and the situation would unfold by an unpredictable scenario. We would very much like to avoid it."
The border between Ukraine and Russia should run along the line determined by the sovereign decision of the residents of Donbass and Novorossiya who joined Russia following the results of the referendum: "Everything depends on the dynamics of the ongoing events."
Moscow is ready for peace talks on Ukraine, based not on Kiev’s "wishlists that change from month to month but <…> on the situation on the ground and the agreements that were reached in Istanbul."
Ukraine needs not a temporary truce, but a long-term settlement, which is crucial for the two brotherly peoples: "It should not be about a truce for half an hour or six months, just for weapons and ammunition to be delivered there. We should create favorable conditions for restoring relations and future cooperation in the interests of the two peoples, which are certainly brotherly, no matter how much the situation has been complicated by rhetoric and today’s tragic events." (Source: TASS) @LauraRuHK https://tass.com/politics/1869419
Over a year ago i asked the question "Who will be the fall guy for the US fiasco in Ukraine?" Trump's victory makes it easier for Washington to blame failure on the previous administration. Actually, if Harris had won it would have been more complicated to find a way out because Democrat donors are far more invested in Ukraine than Republican ones. Washington is in a
Zugzwang, and none of the moves it can make in Ukraine will lead to a good outcome. Trump delivering on his campaign promise to end the conflict would be a safer option for the US than escalating it. That might explain why the Deep State chose not to rig the election. /channel/LauraRuHK/6482
The ruling 'traffic light' coalition made no sense to start with, something that recent elections in Eastern Länder exposed very clearly. It was so fragile it collapsed after Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced he will fire Finance Minister Christian Lindner.
Politico points out the latest crisis "came just hours after Donald Trump’s clear win in the U.S. election, a result that stunned German political leaders who fear Trump’s tariff policies will give Europe’s biggest economy a hard ride." Oh, really? The U.S. blew up the Nord Stream, dragged Berlin into its proxy war in Ukraine, demanded financial and military aid for Kiev, Brussels imposed boomerang sanctions on Russia and tariffs on Chinese EVs... but they fear Trump. 😂 @LauraRuHK
NATO has no prospects and therefore should disband.
"In my opinion NATO's prospects are gloomy because it has become an aggressive and cynical political bloc" - the head of the State Duma Defense Committee Andrei Kartapolov said on November 7.
He clarified that after dissolving the organization, NATO's countries need to find their separate path for development or join the BRICS. Earlier, on August 29, retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel and political consultant Earl Rasmussen said that a split had formed among NATO countries due to doubts about the alliance's policy of confrontation with Russia and China. (Source: iz.ru) @LauraRuHK https://iz.ru/1786844/2024-11-07/deputat-kartapolov-prizval-nato-samoraspustitsia
Some reflections prompted by the debate surrounding my latest article. ▪️If we agree that the state is a tool of class rule, we should ask ourselves which class is ruling. The US government has outsourced even its core functions to unelected interest groups heavily invested in the MIC, MICI or in Ray McGovern’s definition MICIMATT (Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank) complex. That complex is virtually unaffected by popular vote, it can easily accommodate the negligible deviations proposed by either party. It doesn’t matter whether you get a Democrat or a Republican in the White House. ▪️Many pundits offer interesting observations about the so-called Deep State but fail to see the big elephant in the room: class relations. The capitalist state organizes the interests of the dominant classes and disorganizes the dominated classes. That is what it does, did and will continue doing unless it faces an organized resistance that cannot be coopted. An empirical approach is necessary to understand the nexus of power, but insufficient. It needs to be informed by a coherent theory of the state otherwise we end up naming all the agencies and organizations that form this mind-boggling network and miss the forest for the trees. ▪️The outsourcing of more and more functions of governance from representative institutions to public private partnerships, NGOs, corporations and private actors hasn't dissolved state power, it has made it more pervasive and internalized (ideology serves this purpose). The dominant class cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. All that is solid doesn't disappear when it melts into air, to paraphrase Marx. And that applies to class domination as well. The silver lining is that contradictions don't disappear either and we should learn how to leverage on them. @LauraRuHK
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Unleashing Chaos. The Sorcerer's Apprentices. The unholy alliance between American finance and NGOs involved in regime change. 🔸My latest article🔸Gene Sharp, widely considered the godfather of colour revolutions, published his first book, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, in 1973, at a time when the U.S. was mired in a series of crises — economic, political, military — that were eroding confidence in its government domestically and thwarting its geopolitical ambitions. The response to those crises set the course for the following decades.▪️After fifty years it is abundantly clear that though these responses disrupted the post-war global order and led to the U.S. ‘unipolar moment’, they did nothing to address issues that are systemic and structural. If anything, these ‘solutions’ created more, and more intractable, problems for the hegemon that culminated in the crisis of legitimacy the U.S. is currently facing.
Due to the division of academic fields into distinct disciplines, each with its own research focus, so far no one has noticed this strange concurrence of events - the publication of Gene Sharp’s first work, aptly described as a Hybrid War field manual, coincided with the end of Bretton Woods, a turning point that gave new impetus to the financialization of the American economy. Finance was ‘liberated’ from any functional connection to the real economy, becoming a source of great wealth from speculation but also the grand destabilizer of both the domestic and global economy.
Those who had a vested interest in this ‘liberation of the economy’ invested millions of dollars in the ‘liberation from Communism’ and the grooming of new elites that would put an end to the controlled economies and politics of the Eastern Bloc. The fall of the Berlin Wall led to what George Soros called an “explosive period of growth” for his hedge fund (...) While large multinational companies and financial capital organized a takeover of political power, labour and middle-class interests were pushed to the sidelines. Dollar dominance in the global financial system led to an era of hyper-globalization characterized by the primacy of shareholder capitalism, with deregulation and privatization acting as its handmaidens.
❗️ US citizen who helped Russian forces says the process of granting him asylum has already begun
Daniel Martindale, a US citizen who voluntarily aided Russian troops in the Ukrainian conflict zone by supplying them with intelligence, said he believes the process of granting him political asylum in Russia “is already in motion.”
Having ended up in the (at the time) Ukraine-controlled part of Donbass after the escalation of the conflict in February 2022, Martindale managed to find a way to contact Russian forces and started informing them about facilities related to the Ukrainian military, while himself evading discovery.
After two years of helping Russia in this way, Martindale was extracted from behind enemy lines in a daring operation carried out by Russian forces.
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The turnout in the second round of the Moldovan presidential election has exceeded 54% as of 19:00 GMT, with over 1.7 million citizens having cast their vote, the Central Electoral Commission says.
Former Moldovan Prosecutor General Alexandr Stoianoglo got more votes (51.19%) inside the country than his rival, incumbent President Maia Sandu (48.81%)
However, Sandu took a lead in total count, which also includes polling stations abroad. With 95% of all ballots counted, Sandu has 51.68% of the vote, while Stoianoglo has 48.32%. (Source: RIA Novosti) @LauraRuHK
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
"I am pleased to announce that the Great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with American Patriot Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency ('DOGE'). Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies," Trump said in a statement.
🔴 DA GENE SHARP A SOROS: ORIGINI E DECADENZA DELLA "STRATEGIA DEL CAOS"
Ironia della sorte, ciò che sembrava un’espressione di potere, monopolio e dominio del dollaro, ha portato all’erosione di quello stesso potere.
L'ANALISI DI @LAURARUHK
(Lettura altamente consigliata del giorno)
https://www.lantidiplomatico.it/dettnews-la_strategia_del_caos__laura_ruggeri/5871_57659/
Fast forward 9 years and the Zio-Con puppet is set to become Secretary of State. Marco Rubio has built his brand in Washington on playing tough with Iran and China. Rubio was the most hawkish option on Trump's shortlist for secretary of state, and he has in past years advocated for a very aggressive stance on China, Iran and Cuba. Trump may still reconsider his choice, but appears to have settled on this "perfect little puppet". @LauraRuHK
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“According to available information, the Americans and the British are viewing the sabotage on the Nord Stream pipelines as one of many methods to advance their economic interests. They could attack other infrastructure facilities, including undersea fiber optic cables that provide communications throughout the world.”
“Since the hegemony of the West began to falter, Washington decided to bring chaos to the energy market, including by destabilizing maritime transportation"
The secretary of Russia's Security Council Sergei Shoigu will visit China on Nov. 11-14 for talks with top Chinese officials.
Shoigu will hold meetings with Wang Yi and Chen Wenqing, and visit the Zhuhai Air Show.
Consultations will address strategic security issues as well as a wide range of topics related to bilateral cooperation. Shoigu has an excellent working relationship with Chinese officials and his visits tend to produce significant results. @LauraRuHK
Mon dernier article, en français. Merci, Zanzibar, pour la traduction. https://substack.com/home/post/p-151269865
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Elon Musk’s SpaceX asked Taiwanese suppliers to transfer manufacturing of satellite components outside Taiwan due to "geopolitical risks."
Starlink suppliers such as China-Moon Industrial have confirmed SpaceX's request to move production to Thailand. Another partner, Wistron NeWeb, has already started manufacturing Starlink components in Vietnam and plans to expand production. (Source: SCMP) @LauraRuHK https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-war/article/3285352/spacex-asks-taiwanese-suppliers-move-production-abroad-geopolitical-risks?module=perpetual_scroll_0&pgtype=article
Vladimir Putin at the Valdai International Discussion Club.
"The modern world is unpredictable. If you look back 20 years and evaluate the scale of changes, and then project these changes onto the coming years, you can assume that the next twenty years will be no less, if not more difficult. And how much more difficult they will be, depends on the multitude of factors. As I understand, you are coming together at the Valdai Club exactly to analyse all these factors and try to make some predictions, some forecasts.
There comes, in a way, the moment of truth. The former world arrangement is irreversibly passing away, actually it has already passed away, and a serious, irreconcilable struggle is unfolding for the development of a new world order. It is irreconcilable, above all, because this is not even a fight for power or geopolitical influence. It is a clash of the very principles that will underlie the relations of countries and peoples at the next historical stage. Its outcome will determine whether we will be able, through joint efforts, to build a world that will allow all nations to develop and resolve emerging contradictions based on mutual respect for cultures and civilisations, without coercion and use of force. And finally, whether the human society will be able to retain its ethical humanistic principles, and whether an individual will be able to remain human."
Messaggio rivolto a coloro che si indispettiscono perche' scrivo in inglese. Questa critica l'accetterei da chi abitando fuori dall'Italia da decenni pubblica in italiano oltre che in altre lingue. Chapeau. Magari se mi passate il suo nome gli chiedo come fa. In un mondo ideale avrei una giornata di 48 ore e tradurrei tutto quello che scrivo in cinque lingue. Siccome pero' vivo nel mondo reale, esistono dei limiti oggettivi.
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Lithuania can no longer afford the cost of living in a parallel universe 🤣 https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202411/1322587.shtml
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27 Oct 2021 - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) invested US$75 million in the first Ukrainian Green and Sustainability-Linked Eurobond ("SLB") ever issued by the Ukrainian corporate, "National Power Company "Ukrenergo."
6 Nov 2024 - Ukrenergo announces it will suspend payments on its green sustainability bonds. ▪️The EBRD is Ukraine’s largest institutional investor and has significantly increased its finance to Ukraine since the war. Last June the EBRD reconfirmed its deepening partnership with USAID by signing an MoU with shared objectives regarding Ukraine’s "resilience and recovery." I am trying to keep a straight face while writing this post. 😅 @LauraRuHK
In my latest article i argue that the creation of the Colour Revolutions industry was encouraged by the neoliberal turn of American capitalism that called for outsourcing government and military functions.
Gene Sharp, who would later be described as the “Clausewitz of nonviolent warfare,” offered an alternative to the dominant view that security and defense must be provided by the state. As early as the 1960s the executive branch had encouraged the outsourcing of non-inherently governmental functions to private firms. The practice would gradually increase and eventually extend to military functions — at the end of the Cold War military contracting exploded. It became so prevalent that The New York Times called contractors the fourth branch of the government.
The strategy and tactics outlined by Sharp would enable the U.S. to weaponize social forces behind the Iron Curtain without triggering a military conflict, an option deemed too dangerous since the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear warheads. But most importantly, the job of capturing intellectual elites, inciting division and conducting ideological infiltration could be outsourced to non-state actors such as NGOs, media organizations, lobbies, religious groups, aid agencies, and transnational diaspora communities. As the number of stakeholders and their agendas increased, so did their involvement in shaping the national and foreign policy of the U.S. But as the saying goes, too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth.
Social media increase and shape polarization by moving people into echo chambers and incentivizing intergroup conflict. We all know that simplification, manicheism, fear-mongering, bias-confirmation, rumour-mongering, bombastic claims, wishful thinking, personal attacks, amped up moral and emotional messages result in more views, which in turn generates revenue for media platforms and those who create content to make this business model profitable. There is little room for nuances, complexity and rational debate in that space. And yet this is what we need the most. If you want to take a break from simplified narratives and generalizations, this report by the Valdai club is a good reference for assessing the position and activities of different international partners of Russia and the potential for developing cooperation. @LauraRuHK https://valdaiclub.com/files/45663/
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Taiwanese secessionists attack Cantopop superstar Andy Lau - Recently, Hong Kong singer Andy Lau held a concert at the Taipei Arena, where he performed the well-known song "Chinese People." Created to celebrate Hong Kong's return to China, the song has been a staple in Andy Lau's concert tours for over 20 years. However, in Taipei, some politicians from the pan-Green camp (pro-secession in the island's political spectrum) reacted strongly, claiming that "Andy Lau is here to engage in united front work" and stating that the concert "is not worth seeing."
This reaction reveals just how fragile the mind-set of "Taiwan independence" supporters truly is.
"Hand in hand, regardless of you and me; heads up high, walking forward; let the world know we are Chinese …" In the eyes of "Taiwan independence" secessionists, these lyrics have already made them feel "attacked." They resorted to their usual tactics, attempting to label Andy Lau as "pro-Communist" and unleashing a wave of hate-filled reports and comments to incite online attacks against him, thereby politicizing a normal cultural exchange.
However, they likely overlooked the fact that both the lyricist and composer of this song are from Taiwan. During the concert, when Andy Lau sang "Chinese People," the chorus from the entire audience further demonstrated the sentiments of the people on the island.
"Taiwan independence" secessionists collude with anti-China forces by selling out Taiwan region's interests, while on the island, they are overly sensitive and view everything as a threat. Any association with the "mainland" or "motherland" is met with all kinds of suppression.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202411/1322388.shtml
Hugo Dionisio nails it. The degradation of the Western education system is one of the clearest examples that neoliberal capitalism is a parasite destroying its host.
"The more aware the peoples from the global majority have been about the predatory nature of the Western oligarchy, the less aware the Western peoples are of the reasons why their living conditions are worsening. Western peoples are in a counter-cycle with the peoples of the global majority, in every way. As the latter gain self-awareness, the former become increasingly unaware of their own being, alienated as they are from their roots, cultures, families, communities…A fundamental vector for the production of this unconsciousness, translated into a growing critical and analytical incapacity on the part of Western populations, has been precisely the area of education. The degradation of public education systems is not only one of the most repugnant characteristics of the systems that succumb to revanchism, historical and scientific revisionism, it is also the driving force behind this reactionary process."