Wednesday, July 19, 2017

China, Russia, and the new "silk road"

If you scroll down StrategyPage's essay on Russia you will find a discussion of how China is economically trying to take over the southern former Soviet Union states and even eastern Siberia.

read the whole thing.

There is also a mention how low gas and oil prices are slowing the Russian economy.

Yes, fracking in the US (and excess pumping by the Saudis) is keeping the price of oil low, and a great boon for ordinary people in poor countries.

But it is bad for places like Russia, and also Iran: SP essay here where the (Obama) treaty with Iran hasn't helped as much as they thought it would, because of low oil prices.

oh, by the way, that essay note that Turkey is busy building a wall on it's borders with both Syria and Iran:


The wall is meant to make illegal crossings more difficult and easier to detect. The wall is directed at smugglers, illegal migrants and Islamic terrorists.

this isn't the only country building a wall for security:

India is building one too to stop terrorism in Kashmir.

Historially, but Rome and China built walls to stop barbarian invasions and to regulate business with these outsiders.

Both did not work in the long run, because they only work if the government reinforcing the wall is strong. But there is a joke that Rome fell because China built a wall so the Huns decided to move westward instead of southward. Not quite true, but it shows that even in 400 AD that the world was interconnected (not to mention the various plagues that came in from the east.

How much of Islam's and the Arab's success was due to the depopulation from Justinian's plague? 

So today's big worry on Drudge is that scientists have managed to manufacture horsepox from DNA segments bought legally. Whoops. Of course the problem with germ warfare is that it blows back and would kill one's own folks.

unless, of course, it is done by the same crazies who want depopulation to save mother Gaia (as in various conspiracy movies from Inferno to Kingsman).

but that's another conspiracy theory for another day...

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