Pakistan opposition colludes with West in regime change effort

The United States, United Kingdom and European Union are pushing for regime change in Islamabad at this time.

Western governments are bribing and weaponizing corrupt opposition figures against the government of PM Imran Khan, to oust him in the current no-confidence vote.

Representatives of the US, UK and EU have openly met with opposition figures willing to collude with them and make the country subservient to the West.

Opposition figures representing foreign interests

From what the Pakistani government has said, Western agents are successfully bringing in what the British and later the CIA called "King George's cavalry" - suitcases of cash - to bribe politicians willing to betray their country. Evidence of such funding, which has gone to various members of the National Assembly of Pakistan, is set to be provided soon by the government.

The current confrontation over the no-confidence vote represents a clash between the patriotic government of the PTI and the corrupt PPP and PMLN, whose only desire is to return to power even at the cost of their country's sovereignty.

West is seeking foreign policy compliance

Western interference seems to originate from dissatisfaction in the US government at Imran Khan's refusal to accommodate US military strike bases on his country's territory, with the corrupt opposition elements particularly complaining about this. Opposition leader Shahbaz Sharif has openly said that "Imran Khan should not have said 'Absolutely Not' to the US". Another area of dissatisfaction may be the government's refusal to side with EU countries in their condemnations of Russian military action in Ukraine (although this position is no different than any of Pakistan's neighbours, the West seemed to focus on Pakistan).

It seems that disloyal and corrupt opposition figures are signalling to their Western masters that they will unquestioningly obey, even at the cost of their own nation’s interests.

An ongoing rally in Islamabad has shown the significant support for Imran Khan within Pakistan, and he has remained confident that the people are on his side. In the view of many patriotic Pakistanis, corruption and foreign puppetry have gone hand in hand and the people deserve to be free of it.

-  ClubOfInfo

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High-ranking psychopaths are pushing for a nuclear war with Russia, seemingly intentionally

If the US leaders wanted to wage a thermonuclear war that would destroy America and the world, we would not be here to talk about it. President Biden has explicitly ruled out a direct confrontation with Russia, no matter what happens in Ukraine.

However, there are disturbing indications that some individuals in high places in the US (or representing the thinking of many in such high places) are okay with a nuclear war that will destroy the United States, or in fact are encouraging such a war.

A "no fly zone" of death would expand across the globe instantly

Imposing a no-fly zone in Ukraine will trigger a third world war because it will require targeting Russian airfields, radar and defense systems on Russian territory with American missiles. Russian defenses have vast ranges that prohibit the use of US aircraft over Ukraine. Russian weapons can also easily reach all American airfields in Europe that would be involved in any such operation. The vastness of the Russian military means that the US would have to launch a devastating attack on Russia to neutralise all the threats to US planes as they attack the Russians. Russia would invariably respond by attacking US airfields in turn, and very quickly targeting the US mainland and cities in response to its own territory being attacked by America.

Despite this, there are calls from seemingly well-qualified individuals to go ahead and start this suicidal conflict anyway.

Here are just three examples. There are no doubt others, possibly more influential, but these are just picked at random for being prominent examples of Anglo-American leadership on both sides of the Atlantic.

General Philip Breedlove

This man is no crank. Breedlove is a US general and the former supreme military commander of NATO (Supreme Allied Commander Europe, or SACEUR). He has explictly pleaded, "How many casualties does it take before we take a different approach to this war?" While this may simply seem like a stupid remark, based on emotion, this man is trained and competent enough to be fully aware that what he is advocating will entail killing not just everyone in Ukraine but everyone in Russia, Europe and North America too. Why, then, is he advocating it?

Lindsey Graham

Lindsey Graham, an influential and powerful US senator, has stated that the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine (which he will only blame on Russia) will make the moral case to forget about the risk of nuclear war and begin attacking the Russians. He is also too well-informed in briefings to be unaware that his suggestion to start a world war against Russia would kill far more people than a chemical attack and would quickly kill everyone in the United States and Russia under the fire of hydrogen bombs.

Jonathan Powell

The former Downing Street Chief of Staff under Tony Blair from 1997-2007 has advocated against "appeasement" and argued for launching a war on the Russians if they use a chemical weapon in Ukraine. He cites the example of Syria and the need to take a firmer moral stand (apparently that will do a whole lot of good when we are all skeletons). He is advocating this despite the fact that Western governments were never even fully confident that Syria used chemical weapons, and they bombed Syria merely because of intelligence assessments stating it was "likely". Apparently, we will be very impatient to immolate ourselves and not bother to wait for any investigation in Ukraine, too.

As horrifying as the pictures may have been, the use of chemical weapons in Syria barely killed anyone and had little to no effect on the battlefield other than prompting Western strikes. More people died from knives in Syria. The nuclear exchange that would be guaranteed by attacking Russia on such a flimsy, emotionally manipulative pretext about "chemicals" would kill almost everyone in Ukraine, and then kill almost everyone in both the West and Russia. Apparently, politicians don't see a moral issue with the scenario of mass immolation of people, followed by the larger group of us whose skin will melt and their eyeballs will fall out, followed by another percentarge who will be vomiting blood. No, these scenes don't worry them; they are just worried about the "chemicals" and the idea of people choking, such that they think it is worth risking the nuclear scenario.

These interventionist leaders we are talking about may be insane, but the unique mental health problems of those with power are less important to talk about than the need to stop them.

Who will stop these men?

The answer is... currently serving American officers and generals, who want their troops to live, and probably want their families to survive too.

It should be observed that military experts and officials tend to always warn against what will cause a nuclear war, as happened in Syria. Here we are again, and the same kind of "hawks" are trying to impose a situation where deescalation could become too difficult for the military personnel tasked with a nation's safety, as if the politicians had reached out and ripped the brakes from your car to make sure you crash.

Getting closer and closer to Russia and trying to enforce the US's will closer and closer to them potentially creates an ever more uncontrollable and unpredictable series of conflicts between the US and Russia that make it almost impossible for troops to avoid a nuclear war, even if they have the maximum will to avoid one.

Being responsible for a larger population, if the US gets into a nuclear war with Russia, it will suddenly make the world record for being the country with the biggest piles of dead bodies in human history. Every American officer and general's family will most likely perish, meaning that they have utterly failed not only in their duty as a soldier but even as a human being.

The only solution can be that American officers must continuously resist the pressure of politicians to put them in a situation of nuclear escalation that they cannot escape. Finally, if American officers are unable to prevent themselves being put in that situation, it would become their duty to preserve their country by, in the worst case scenario, mutiny. One should be prepared, privately, to kill their own political leaders and seize control of the government, even at grave risk to their own lives, if the alternative is to obey orders that will directly lead to nuclear war.

- ClubOfInfo

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Three ways for Russia to punish the West

Due to the ongoing operation to eliminate radical anti-Russian nationalists in Ukraine, Russia is under pressure unseen since the Axis powers attacked its territory in the Second World War. The following are three decisive methods the Russian government could consider, to severely punish the NATO countries.

1. Proxy war in Ukraine

Americans have already taken the lead in making a European proxy war possible, suggesting the supply of armaments to rebels and foreign volunteers who are expected to arrive in Ukraine. They want to copy the success of foreign fighters in Afghanistan during the 1980s, believing only the Russians will suffer from this policy, but Europe could be more at risk itself. After all, this "Afghanistan" would be in Europe, and Ukraine already has a problem with armed neo-Nazis.

In fact, NATO has more reason to fear this scenario of a failed state in Ukraine than Russia.

Unlike Afghanistan, Russians are natives of this area, with large populations and families supporting Russia in parts of Ukraine. They will not be withdrawing like the Soviet Army. Returned to Russian protection, they could contribute to a strong buffer zone of sympathetic forces to help secure Russia's Ukrainian frontier. There is already the Donetsk People's Republic, DPR, and Lugansk People's Republic, LPR, able to provide Russia with mutual security against Western nationalist proxies in Ukraine. Russia could be restrictive about travel from Ukraine to Russia, but the European Union would never be so strict, having opened its doors to Ukrainian exiles and aided their travels. If Ukraine becomes a ruined failed state, filled with protracted warfare and resentment, home to many shadowy groups including local Russian proxies, Russia would be able to use Ukraine to threaten Europe, while enjoying security itself. The inevitable blockback of weapons and radical ideas into Europe from a European repeat of Afghanistan could be uncontrollable, and may result in armed insurgents seizing cities across Europe and spreading civil war and chaos. We must remember that the foreign fighters of the Afghan jihad set about trying to topple the local regimes after they returned home, for example in Algeria, being convinced of their just cause. Foreign fighters who are radicalised in Ukraine would be returning to places like Berlin and Paris.

2. Impounding ships

Russia encompasses a huge amount of land with a vast coastline, meaning potential dominance at key shipping routes, especially those icy seas along its north. It possesses a powerful navy and air forces, more than enough to interdict shipping. In retaliation for sanctions, Russia could impound all cargo ships and tankers it encounters if they belong to the countries carrying out sanctions on Russia, taking their cargo as compensation. The US already did this to Iran, and France even was bold enough to do this to Russia itself. The occasional disappearance of a tanker could produce negative economic effects and denying them passage could be just as disruptive.

With the French declaring "total economic and financial war on Russia", Russia has no reason to let any French cargo ship pass if it can intercept it. An even more aggressive option is for Russian navy vessels to actively hunt, intercept and board all vulnerable ships of the European Union and throw their cargo overboard, destroying the goods (unless they contain things that are extra valuable, such as gold!)

European countries could retaliate in a number of ways, but they would likely be too costly. Freight shipping is a notoriously cost-averse business, maintaining ageing ships often of dubious quality and crews on fairly minimal salaries, so it seems unlikely that warshups will be used for this task or assigned for protection in peacetime.

3. Turning off the gas to Europe

Russia can simply turn off the gas to Germany and instead supply its gas to China and other Asian countries. If done in combination with delaying, diverting or seizing US LNG shipments bound for Europe, this could be catastrophic to European economies, forcing them to shut down industry and even fail to keep their citizens warm.

Owing to its size and resources, Russia has proved to be invulnerable in many ways as a country, and numerous alliances have shattered when trying to take this country on.

- ClubOfInfo

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Assange and Navalny should be swapped, blog suggests

Julian Assange and Alexei Navalny should be swapped by the opposing regimes of America and Russia. The suggestion comes from the Lordre blog, posted at the end of January.

Assange is clearly the better and more valuable of the two dissidents, the blog claimed, focusing on how Assange tended to release unedited raw content while Navalny produced partisan propaganda. Nevertheless, geopolitically, "each man is the other's parallel", the argument went.

Expecting the Americans to be too cynical about the welfare of Navalny to agree to such a swap, the blog predicts "the Americans would never let go of Assange", but suggests Moscow should make the offer to embarass Washington and improve things a little for Assange. In doing so, Russia might benefit:

A swap offer would give the Americans a difficult choice: either expose the worm they support in Russia, by showing their refusal to take him, or send Assange to Russia and risk a resurgent WikiLeaks. A successful swap would be a coup for Russia's reputation, and a failed swap would be equally incriminating for the US and make the US hesitant to harm Assange.

Finding Navalny lacking in comparison with Assange, the blog derided him as being no whistle-blower but a "dishonourable propagandist whose goal is power, not revealing facts to the public". The blog condemned the "profound inferiority of the West's championed dissident", a "miserable little worm" - words originally used by a British politician for Assange.

- ClubOfInfo

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Truth Social app to fail, but boost Trump presidential run - blog

Donald Trump's "Truth Social", a social network planned by the businessman seemingly just to replace the role of Twitter for him after he was kicked off the platform, is likely to fail. However, it could still boost him during a bid to be elected president again in 2024.

This is the view expressed at the relatively new blog Lordre, which took over a space used to display announcements relating to the small internet dissident group Mont Order until late last year.

Elaborating on this view, the blog asserts:

Truth Social will probably be a failure, especially if it is solely for political benefit and not as an actual social network with unique selling points and adequate moderation. If it is going to actually try to compete with Twitter and accommodate hard line conservatives kicked from Twitter, it will fail, but it could still have a positive effect on a hypothetical future Trump campaign. Whether that boosting effect on Trump's attempt to get re-elected will be decisive enough to return him to the White House remains to be seen.

What might boost Trump is the expected immediate censorship of his social network, with it likely to be denied a place on the Apple App Store. Large tech companies have been almost universal in their condemnation of Trump and his supporters, which will likely translate to them not giving his app any chance and forcing his supporters to log into the website instead.

Censorship of Trump would likely be ineffective and backfire in this case, as everyone would still be able to read the content easily and be more keen to see it (the Streisand Effect). The censorship would only boost Trump's case against Democrats and "Big Tech" suppression of his supporters.

The Lordre blog also expressed regret about supposed alternative social networks failing to offer much to users, especially focusing on Gab, saying "The best analogy is that if Twitter is a park, Gab is a lunatic asylum where the inmates are able to leave their cells and do whatever they want."

The blog dismissed Gab users as mostly being neo-Nazis, an extremely narrow and bizarre section of American society that promotes intimidation and undermines freedom of speech.

- ClubOfInfo

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Western intelligence agencies "using every trick in the book to destabilise Pakistan"

Western agents follow a policy encouraging the dismemberment of the Pakistani state. This was the observation of the Editor of Voice of East, a Pakistan-based media website, as part of a recent email Q and A in late November.

"Ground realities and the geopolitics of the region" indicate Western countries encourage seditious activity in the country, the online magazine's Editor claimed. The offending countries regard Pakistan as "an influential strategic partner of China", with that nation in turn perceived to be "a threat to US/NATO hegemony".

Western regimes turn away from friendship with Pakistan in favour of India. Also from the insightful Q and A:

I strongly believe that the US is committing a strategic blunder by giving preference to India over Pakistan. It would have been pragmatic to engage with both South Asian countries. Pakistan’s role is crucial in bringing peace and stability in Afghanistan and the region. Far from acknowledging the importance of Pakistan, the Biden admin is side-lining the state of Pakistan in a very provocative manner. 

Significant destabilization efforts in Pakistan followed the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, although the US has no sway over the Taliban's restored Islamic Emirate:

Pakistan's security situation was affected immediately after the Afghan Taliban took over in Afghanistan. Pakistan witnessed resurgence of terrorist attacks in the provinces bordering Afghanistan, KPK and Balochistan after many years. Previously the TTP (Tehrik Taliban Pakistan) had been carrying out terrorist activities in Pakistan through safe havens in Afghanistan. Ghani govt. under the patronage of the US was protecting these terrorists, and also it was pro-India. It’s an open secret that the Indian intelligence agencies were working hand in glove with the Afghan intelligence agency NDS and also funding the TTP.

Recommended: Voice of East website

The Editor gave further clarity on Pakistan's foreign policy situation:

The beginning of Afghan Taliban’s rule was a big blow to Indian designs against Pakistan which were being enacted on Afghanistan’s soil. The TTP too were displaced after Afghan Taliban’s takeover and their sleeper cells in Pakistan were activated.

Citing Pakistan's history of survival against severe threats and the continued power of the Pakistani military (more than sufficient to stand up to its much larger opponent, India) the Voice of East Editor expressed confidence that extremists will fail to seize power in the country. This rubbishes the views of such individuals as former Trump administration diplomat John Bolton, who even expressed a harsh view that "preventive action" was needed to prevent this scenario.

From this, it appears that the fall of the Afghan government had more of a chaos-spreading effect rather than presenting a coherent or strong threat to Pakistan. The organized threat to Pakistan, in fact, could be diminished, since it was a state-led effort with the involvement in the former Afghan government and India, both of whom are now expelled from Kabul.

- ClubOfInfo

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Successful Taliban "will not act as proxies" for America

The idea that the Afghan Taliban could act as agents of the United States and the West to spread chaos to regional countries is contradicted by ground realities.

Such a claim exists among some in the pro-Iran and possibly pro-Russia media, with an article at Press TV being available as an example.

Contrary to such claims, the Taliban "want to have diplomatic relations with all countries" and on "an equal level", as observed by the Editor of the Pakistan-based Voice of East website in a recent Q and A. As such, the Taliban's new Islamic Emirate "will not act as proxies of any power".

Responding to a different question, the Editor drew a distinction between the Afghan Taliban and the TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan), also called "Pakistani Taliban". The latter are a "motley crew of brainwashed mercenaries who have nothing to do with religion". The TTP can be considered Takfiris (they do Takfir, or declare other Muslims to be infidels), whereas the Afghan Taliban are not.

The TTP is infiltrated by Western intelligence agents as well as those of India and Israel with the aim to harm Pakistan's security. The same is true of al-Qaeda and Daesh cells, the Editor commented.

Recommended link: Voice of East website

Responding to another question, the Voice of East Editor confirmed that there was widespread surprise in Pakistan at the Taliban's "lightning fast" success in Afghanistan. Most observers expected the Afghan National Army (ANA), even devoid of "moral and popular support" and dependent on US help, to hold out longer.

The Taliban's victory has left many concerned, including in Pakistan, about possibly extremist revival and the terrorist fallout that may follow. However, it appears that the new authorities based in Kabul are currently interested in building a secure homeland rather than exporting terror to other nations.

- ClubOfInfo

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US intentionally breaking Europe: Kristian NF Interview

 

Europe is split along more lines than just a conflict with Russia. As Eastern European countries are protective of their national sovereignty and hold conservative views of culture, they are on a collision course with the economic powerhouses of the liberal West.

"While liberal ideologues dream of the United States of Europe, a different trend is emerging in Eastern Europe", emailed Kristian NF, a German dissident blogger also using the name Mars von Padua, in response to a question on whether divisions are forming between eastern and western member states.

Despite the division with the overbearing Brussels, countries like Poland are unlikely to find themselves back in any kind of favorable relationship with Russia. It is more likely that these nationalistic states will be stuck between Russia and the EU and supported by the Americans against both. They will fight a two-front Cold War in which they denounce liberal adversaries to the west and the speculative Russian military threat to the east.

In Kristian's words:

...one must not forget the transatlantic influence of NATO on the question of the EU. The USA in particular has a special interest in preventing Germany and Russia from getting closer. An alliance between Moscow, Berlin or even Paris would be a nightmare. That is why the Intermarium project was refocused, a geopolitical draft that was developed after the Second World War. An alliance of the Eastern European countries from the Baltic to the Black Sea under Polish leadership. The Polish Marshal Josef Pilsudski called this project Międzymorze. And this project has been under discussion again since 2016, with the Viségrad states being the first cornerstones. The USA is promoting this project, in which Hungary, Croatia and Romania, both NATO countries, are also involved. Just like the Baltic states. If this project is realized, there will be no rapprochement with Russia, but only a strong division with Western Europe. 

Poland's tensions with the EU elites, based on Kristian's assessment, arise from its aggressive foreign policy goals to establish itself as a great power. The US encourages these goals, despite the risk of Poland clashing with all its neighbors in Warsaw's attempts to establish itself as master of Eastern Europe.

These comments were received as part of an email-based Q and A series that replaced what would normally be an annual discussion among Mont Order members. The full series is available as a printout at Academia.edu, titled Mont Order November 2021 Conference Text.

- ClubOfInfo

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Trump foreign policy continues: Hugo Turner

US aggressive foreign policy has not abated, only realigning itself increasingly against China, argues Hugo Turner, author of the Anti-Imperialist U blog.

What we see is a consistent pattern that, even if associated by many with Donald Trump, already existed and continues in the present day. Turner sums this up:

there is a realignment of priorities going on behind the scenes China is increasingly becoming the main imperial target. The Cold war with Russia continues. The war on left wing governments in latin America has continued fairly consistently from Bush II to Obama to Trump to Biden. Currently the US seems focused on meddling in Africa fermenting coups and civil wars. 

There is a "consistent imperial strategy that continues regardless of who is President although some presidents may aggressively escalate attacks on certain countries".

This evident reality makes a mockery of the views of those who saw Donald Trump as everything wrong with America. Much of what he represents pre-dated him and is now embodied by current president, Joe Biden.

Another topic addressed was the softer treatment Biden received by US news media. It may be that this is the only reason why so many impressionable American liberals believed Trump was really so exceptionally bad, despite policy being almost exactly the same as the new administration they adore.

The blogger gave these comments as part of a short email-based Q and A. The email-based Q and A forms part of a series replacing what would normally be an audio discussion of the online Mont Order group for the year 2021. The full series is available in a printout at Academia.edu, titled Mont Order November 2021 Conference Text.

- ClubOfInfo

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Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and US policy: Q and A on Asia with Voice of East Editor

This is a full email interview with the Editor of Voice of East. Voice of East is an independent, non-profit media organisation with core focus on issues related to Pakistan and the Muslim World.

Q: On Afghanistan: I have heard claims that the US and Britain will use the Taliban as allies or proxies against the regional countries, due to some informal agreement that may have been reached by them with the Taliban. I do not personally see how this is possible, because NATO has exited the country and all its clients fell from power. What do you think of this claim about the Taliban becoming agents of the West?

A: I absolutely do not see this happening. Ground realities are contrary to this claim. The Taliban want to have diplomatic relations with all countries including Western countries, even the US and to deal with them on an equal level. They see themselves as legitimate rulers of Afghanistan and will not act as proxies of any power. 

Q: On Afghanistan: I expected the Afghan government to survive for several months at least. Even the resistance groups against the Taliban collapsed, meaning the situation is even better for the Taliban than ever, including before 2001. Are you surprised by how quickly the Afghan government collapsed? 

A: Yes and no. 

Yes, because even we (Pakistanis) were surprised by how quickly the Afghan Taliban took over. We always knew that they would come to power once the US left the region but had no idea it was going to be so quick. Their lightning fast takeover of Afghanistan even took us by surprise.

No, because everyone in the region knew that Ghani’s government was installed by the Americans and that the Afghan National Army was piggybacking on the US Army; they did not have any real sway in Afghanistan. It was obvious their government would collapse once the American forces left. Despite the logistical support provided by the US Army, the ANA had no moral authority and popular support inside Afghanistan to stand on their own feet. 

Q: On Pakistan: I have heard the claim that Western intelligence agencies encourage separatism in Pakistan and are siding with India on that front, because they believe this will disrupt China's Belt and Road Initiative. How do you see this idea?

A: The ground realities and the geopolitics of the region support this claim. The Western intelligence agencies are not only encouraging separatism in Pakistan, they are using every trick in the book to destabilise Pakistan. The West has increasingly started to see Pakistan as an influential strategic partner of China and as it fallaciously believes China to be a threat to US/NATO hegemony, Pakistan also becomes a country they believe needs to be dealt with. On top of that, Russia’s balancing act in the Eurasian region where it is extending military and economic cooperation with Pakistan while keeping traditional relations with India intact, is also worrisome for the US.

Q: On Pakistan: Some people have warned that Afghanistan will be very chaotic now and that this will affect Pakistan's own security situation, specifically believing extremists will try to take power in Pakistan. How do you respond to this?

A: This warning holds true to some extent. Pakistan's security situation was affected immediately after the Afghan Taliban took over in Afghanistan. Pakistan witnessed resurgence of terrorist attacks in the provinces bordering Afghanistan, KPK and Balochistan after many years. Previously the TTP (Tehrik Taliban Pakistan) had been carrying out terrorist activities in Pakistan through safe havens in Afghanistan. Ghani govt. under the patronage of the US was protecting these terrorists, and also it was pro-India. It’s an open secret that the Indian intelligence agencies were working hand in glove with the Afghan intelligence agency NDS and also funding the TTP.

The beginning of Afghan Taliban’s rule was a big blow to Indian designs against Pakistan which were being enacted on Afghanistan’s soil. The TTP too were displaced after Afghan Taliban’s takeover and their sleeper cells in Pakistan were activated. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Pakistan, the govt. of Pakistan demanded from the Afghan Taliban to deal with the TTP: either control them and stop them from crossing into Pakistan or eliminate them. That option was not viable for the Afghan Taliban. Now they are mediating between the TTP and the State of Pakistan so that TTP would stop being a security threat to Pakistan. I personally do not see any fruitful results of Pakistan-TTP talks. 

There is a fine line separating the Afghan Taliban from the TTP (Tehrik Taliban Pakistan). Some differentiate between them by simply calling the Afghan Taliban, ‘Good Taliban’ and TTP the ‘Bad Taliban’. The truth is more complex. We know that both of them are extremists in their interpretation of religion, but Afghan Taliban cannot be categorised as terrorists. They are not Kharijites and do not do Takfir (declaring other Muslims infidels) like the TTP do. Even when Afghan Taliban were fighting other Muslim groups like Tajiks, Hazaras or Ahmad Massoud group, they did not declare them non-Muslims. The TTP consider the State of Pakistan legitimate target as they declare the civil and military leadership of Pakistan to be in collusion with the ‘infidels’. It is a documented fact that the TTP has been infiltrated, even led by intelligence agents of different Western, Israeli and Indian intelligence agencies who pose as Muslim Imams/Mullahs and encourage suicide bombing and other terrorist activities. This has been happening even more frequently in terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and Daesh. The sad truth is that TTP is a motley crew of brainwashed mercenaries who have nothing to do with religion. It’s a very lengthy topic and cannot be comprehensively covered in this brief space.

“Believing extremists will try to take power in Pakistan?” Looking at our country’s history and the powerful role of our military, I do not see that happening, ever. 

Q: On India: Do you see the Biden administration as being more on the side of India than Pakistan? How does this compare with Trump? I am aware that American strategists wanted partnership with India, neglecting to mention Pakistan.

A: The Biden administration’s bias for India is very apparent. President Trump had good chemistry with Pakistan’s PM Imran Khan and if he had stayed in power, US-Pakistan relations would have improved (as much as the US’ deep state would have allowed). The US admin (mistakenly) believes that their interests lie in fully supporting India as they see it as an antidote to China. This is fallacious thinking. India can never compete or defeat China in any field. The truth is that India is imploding from within. There are multiple separatist movements going on in different Indian provinces, not to mention the freedom struggle in Kashmir, which is like a gigantic volcano waiting to erupt and destabilise the whole region. Secondly, the RSS’ political wing BJP has pushed the country’s economy into a downward spiral ever since coming into power.

I strongly believe that the US is committing a strategic blunder by giving preference to India over Pakistan. It would have been pragmatic to engage with both South Asian countries. Pakistan’s role is crucial in bringing peace and stability in Afghanistan and the region. Far from acknowledging the importance of Pakistan, the Biden admin is side-lining the state of Pakistan in a very provocative manner. 

Q: On India: Russia wants good relations with India, Pakistan and China all at the same time. This may be difficult because India is strongly opposed to China, and the US is using this to get closer to India. Some people in India believe Russia is their ally against China, although Russia and China are now strategically closer together than ever in their history. Would you agree that India is more under American influence than the influence of other countries?

A: I completely agree that presently India is more under American influence than the influence of other powerful countries. We are witnessing a clear recalibration of alliances taking place in the region. Slowly but surely India is moving away from the ‘Russian camp’ and strategically aligning with the US, as it too sees China as a threat just like the US does. Talking about Russia, we see that it continues cooperation with India, apparently ignoring the Indian overtures to the US. But there are subtle signs that Russia is not happy about India preferring the US over it. Russia is now even warming up ties with former Soviet era rival Pakistan, and increasing military and economic cooperation with it. Russia and Pakistan have been holding joint military exercises named ‘Druzhba’ since 2016. 

In July this year Russia and Pakistan signed a deal for the construction of ‘PakStream Gas Pipeline' in Pakistan. One only has to look at Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s diplomatic visit to both India and Pakistan in April this year to see in which direction the wind is blowing. Where it was cold and stony in India, the diplomatic meeting between foreign ministers of Pakistan and Russia was oozing warmth and familiarity. Secondly, relations between Russia and China have never been better in history than they are at the moment. Russia seems to be thinking about the whole Eurasian region and it seems highly unlikely that it will give preference to just one country (India) over other regional powers.

This Q and A is part of a series replacing a Mont Order November 2021 discussion. It was handled via email on 21-26 November. The full text of the series can be read on Academia.edu as the Mont Order November 2021 Conference.

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US election period saw web traffic throttled

Traffic to this very blog was being choked, decreasing to about a quarter of its typical numbers of visitors, during the US regime's heavily criticized election.

Tech companies are inherently protective of the regime and its institutions, committed to every goal of the regime from police-order within the US to US victory in foreign wars. The heads of the companies are statists, seeking to augment the US state's power over citizens, the way some armed US militias are statists and want to augment law enforcement any way they can.

The election, which was won by the pro-censorship Democratic Party, was filled with calls for the suppression of points of view that differed from the heavily favored Democratic candidate using any means. Major US companies such as Twitter and Google evidently took part in suppressing criticism, using their dominance of search engines and online commentary to create favor towards the current president.

That even small blogs aimed at non-US readers, such as clubof.info, would be caught in the crossfire of pro-establishment censorship gives some insight into the tools used by Google to protect the institutions of the regime from criticism and doubt among US citizens.

Constant calls in the mainstream media for people to have faith in the regime's institutions and its elections, as well as official news networks, indicate fear at the widespread lack of trust in US officials. Despite being the result of the repeated lies of the regime with regard to every policy since at least the Iraq War of 2003, the regime seems to see this backlash and the access of its citizens to foreign media (even small blogs like this one in the UK) as a huge threat.

Walls are being put up, to stifle alternate points of view, and they are getting taller every day.

Note that some liberals and libertarians don't see the actions of private organizations as censorship, instead looking in dictionaries and only using the word "censorship" if the state can be proven to have done it (Wikipedia dissents from this view, and the fact church institutions rather than state institutions were among the biggest abusers of censorship historically also dissents from this view).

What is happening is almost state censorship. In the current censorship crusade, many of the involved individuals at Google and other companies such as Eric Schmidt are deeply involved in the state (including through actual contracts) and securing its interests, much like private military contractors (PMCs), even having visited Iraq to aid US war aims. Tech executives, like PMCs, are individuals tied to the state informally and using private means to achieve state censorship precisely to weasel out of being accused of state censorship, just as PMC outfits might be created to enable the state to get away with war crimes.

- ClubOfInfo

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Petition calls on Biden to restore Obama-era "We The People" site

A petition launched by American libertarian writer Thomas Knapp calls on the Biden administration to restore (ironically) an Obama-era petition website cancelled by Biden.

Launched at Change.org, the petition argues:

"We The People," while imperfect, served a valuable function. While it could not compel action on an issue, It put the executive branch on the spot, requiring it to explain itself when Americans demanded such action.

We call upon President Joe Biden to restore the "We The People" site, and, in keeping with his inaugural comments lauding "the will of the people," to commit to responding in a timely manner to petitions which gather 100,000 or more signatures.

One signatory had written, "I believe one of the most important things that President Obama did was to actively seek the involvement of his fellow citizens in creating policies and providing the political pressure needed to pass controversial legislation. And the White House's "We The People" web page was probably the best example of that. So I was shocked to discover today that the Biden Administration had pulled the plug on it."

The arrival of signatures has slowed since last month. If you support the restoration of the White House's former petition site, you can take part in the signing at https://www.change.org/p/joseph-r-biden-restore-the-white-house-s-we-the-people-petition-site

- ClubOfInfo

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Are people finally noticing CENSORSHIP hurts citizens and helps elites?

The alignment of US tech companies with US foreign policy is drawing more attention. Online political censorship is now impacting people who identify themselves as being on the American left, including those who mistakenly endorsed censorship because they believed it was aimed at hatemongering conservatives.

THREAD: With time to reflect, & seeing Silicon Valley's censorship onslaught, I regret this tweet made in heat of moment.

Whether certain cable/YouTube outlets mislead audiences w/ dishonest claims lacking real evidence, they shouldn't be targeted...https://t.co/h2eWsVLIQq

— Jordan (@JordanChariton) February 3, 2021

Many of us did try to point out the folly of supporting arbitrary censorship (against anyone, even if we hate them) early on, but we were ignored.

#Biden being the candidate of #censorship is much worse than anything the recent suppressed story could have contained. https://t.co/2sAoNYavd5 pic.twitter.com/TNacCgBiIa

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) October 15, 2020

Accepting social media #censorship is unhelpful to all except those doing it, it concentrates power so you have even less. #stoptheleftpurge is a thing we'll hear again. https://t.co/Evz0K5uGxU

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) January 9, 2021

Now, we're in a situation where presidents and platforms are being removed from the internet with insufficient cause. The US has a pro-censorship administration that endorsed taking all opposition TV channels off the air in a country, as noticed in a US Embassy tweet in relation to a legally dubious decree in Ukraine.

Countries will take greater liberty to block or attempt to place limits on US entities, because they can point to the US government's zeal to suppress dissent and the censorship taking place on US social networks themselves. If US companies are censorship-prone, nothing will be missed if they get blocked or censored themselves.

Seen this way, the US is losing its "cold war" with Russia and China. It has compromised its ideology and changed tone away from "freedom" and towards state security, giving the initiative to countries like China and Russia to repeat the US's pro-censorship rhetoric back to it and block US influence.

Although it is consistent with the views of the state in China and Russia, blocking foreign interference in the US and not consistent with the US state ideology (capitalist liberal democracy). Effectively, the US is destroying its own ideology and system faster than any foreign adversary could do so.

Based on the US state ideology, the US is the "melting pot" of foreign interference; the Biden administration should welcome foreign interference and set up new agencies to accelerate it rather than prevent it. For example, Chinese students should be welcomed by Biden, rather than getting accused of being enemy spies as they were under Trump's revisionist policies.

- ClubOfInfo

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Russia dominates US social media users as US censorship is bungled

Obsessions with Russia interfering in an innocent America (Russiagate) failed to lead to "smoking gun" evidence of anything devious. However, as American social media and tech companies bungle their attempts to censor conservative politicians and users, they may have begun really surrendering ground to Russia.

It has been reported that Parler, a platform popular with American Republicans as an alternative to Democrat-siding Twitter, may now be reliant on servers located in Russia to evade US corporate censorship. As servers are key in deciding which government controls a social network's off-button, this means the social network could be under Russian dominance to a similar extent Twitter and Facebook are under US dominance.

This may be how it can backfire. Blocking or banning things aggressively means losing all influence over them once they come back or people find a way around the block. Russia didn't have influence in the US but now it really will, thanks to US censorship. https://t.co/pMLfDoGSDU

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) January 19, 2021

Going by the outcry of American commentators, this is an entire social network used by Americans that the United States has lost control of and Russia captured. Given the significance of social networks to modern politics, it is a bit like Russia taking a chunk of US territory for itself, only this chunk is online.

Alaska, formerly part of Russia, had a population under one million in 2020. At the same time, Parler had a number of users well over a million.

About 70 million Americans voted for the Republican incumbent President Donald Trump. By attempting to gag and deplatform all right wing pundits with little thought, Democrat-leaning social media companies are potentially forcing their millions-strong audiences to now enlist on a social network dependent on the territory of Russia. This could give Russia real influence and inroads into US conservative political messaging that the alleged Russian-orchestrated email hacks or leaks decried in 2016 and 2020 could not provide. You can thank the overconfidence and lack of foresight by US tech companies, overconfident in their power and eager to pull the plug on people.

Of course, we can say American conservatives are patriotic and will not use a social network if they learn of its servers being located in Russia. They do try, and would continue to do so if it is up to them, but in this scenario they have no choice. The suffocating and repressive environment being newly generated by Democrat-leaning providers is forcing them.

To sum up: hamfisted attempts to stamp out imaginary Russian influence by damaging the ability of Americans to use their own country's social networks can backfire. As these millions of voices flee, they may eventually find their way to Russia, and this can provide Russia with its first real influence in the homes of millions of Americans. This would be such a favorable result to Russia that it almost appears to be by design, with US social media bigwigs taking predictable measures of repression and serving as useful idiots to the benefit of Russia, a country that lagged behind the US in "soft power".

Of course, any company can be placed under US sanctions eventually or its website blocked by the US, but such an exchange of blows is still a net loss to America as it yields to Russia the right to launch a reciprocal crackdown on a US website. Russia has potentially won a big success as a result of the US's foolish censorship crusade, and it is something the US can't win back easily.

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Is it okay not to vote?

The purpose of voting is to make your view heard. If your view is not represented because the candidates on offer are all rotten or you don’t believe them, you have no reason to vote. 

Some friend or family member will try to convince you that because your own interests aren’t represented by a party, you should instead cast your vote for their preferred party, at least because that’s nice to them. Don’t. Democracy works on the assumption everyone will vote based on their own self-interest, not someone else’s.

If you vote because of someone else’s plight, you are amplifying the votes of others and disregarding your own right not to vote, making it less likely your interests will ever be taken into account. If your interests are not represented, it makes sense not to vote whatsoever, as the election is fake as far as you are concerned. Abstaining denies oxygen to parties that don’t take your interests into account. It forces them to try harder and offer a real spectrum of choices next time.

More Americans vote for no-one than vote for any party platform, so you are not alone. This suggests the US is an ineffective democracy that struggles to define or represent the interests of its citizens. If we consider the narrow two-party system and legalized bribery of candidates and lawmakers (“lobbying”), the US government can’t even be defined as a republic.

Forced to consider two horrible parties, it is illogical to vote for those who don’t represent your views. And, in such circumstances, it is logical to vote for nothing. In fact, that in itself is very often the radical gesture the state is scared of.

If you were going to vote for the “lesser of two evils”, just imagine for a moment someone uncorking their bottle of champagne to celebrate having tricked you – with no real regard for you or your interests. That is effectively what you are allowing by voting that way.

Not voting sends a message to a rotten regime that its election is fake, and your interests are not represented by anyone taking part.

Yes, it’s okay not to vote. More than that, it is often the right thing to do. – ClubOfInfo

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US social media reassure Americans on the regime's dodgy election

Despite a long and sordid history of irregularities and accusations of fraud in US elections, US-based social media are desperately soothing the suspicions of Americans about their country's corrupt system.

This time, it's saying you don't trust mail-in ballots that will get Twitter all over you to hide your tweet behind content warnings and assure American voters there is nothing to worry about. The disturbing idea of "pre-bunks" has been introduced to auto-detect any suspicions about the election and flag them as false before anyone has even investigated the exact claim.

What Twitter doesn't understand is how this backfires:

(1) People who believe Donald Trump will only think this is more evidence he is being unfairly attacked by partisan media, as he claims.

(2) If any substantial fraud does actually take place by either side (which is already established to be at least possible according to politicians from both sides of the debate), Twitter will be hiding it from voters at least until they are corrected and forced to show the information. This could actually lead to legal consequences for them for defrauding the American people.

"Regime nice. Election very real. Must believe. Don't listen misinformation." - Twitter pic.twitter.com/APnAJyowix

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) October 27, 2020

Similar to previous censorship gaffes, Twitter's latest move will do nothing to ease the suspicions of Americans about their election. Desperately pleading with people to believe in the system, marking information as sensitive, and automatically stamping propaganda on content to assure people, is only going to increase distrust in the US electoral process (which is questionable in the first place).

The assumption of US elections being normally secure is very poorly founded, according to all experts. Based on concerns of US politicians themselves (both Republican and Democrat, including those who are most respected), there are almost limitless ways to interfere in the elections. They have no integrity whatsoever, and the efforts of third parties and media to try and achieve integrity look like yet more interference (a kind of counter-interference or destructive interference, effectively ruining the elections even more in an attempt to fix them). The clubof.info Blog believes this applies to Twitter's newest gaffe. - ClubOfInfo

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2020 protests: American Spring? US regime-collapse?

The Trump regime is presiding over a viral outbreak that slaughtered over 100,000 Americans, embarassing the US as the worst-hit country in the world. It is likely to kill even more, and meanwhile the failing regime carries out abductions and killings of its own.

Here are some points to be aware of:

* People from neglected and brutalized African American communities are reported to overwhelmingly be the victims of both the COVID-19 outbreak and also police violence. The infamous killing of George Floyd was only the most public example of the latter, but the rage it unleashed was aimed at avenging all similar such murders. Neglect, as well as living in what is effectively a failed state under a racist military occupation modeled on the armor-plated brutality of Israel, put these communities in desperation and led to inevitable resistance.

* High-level US government insiders from the regime's Republican and Democratic wings (e.g. Susan Rice) are hostile to the protesters, exposing the sham two-party system.

* US media are hostile to the protesters, exposing servile pro-regime media outlets such as CNN.

* Celebrities keep indicating support to protesters but condemn the actions of protesters and offer no substantive criticism of the regime, showing they are stooges who defend the status quo.

* Social media platforms appear to be allowing encouragement of the protests, although this is based on their own sensitivity to their users' wishes and is likely to terminate if the regime comes into danger and decides to put pressure on social media.

* Trump is pursuing labelling the protesters as "terrorists".

* Trump hid in a bunker during protests.

* Trump is considering military action - at the level of the Federal government itself - against the protesters. This could effectively mean a regime crackdown against citizens all across the US.

* Police have stuggled to respond to the protesters, with protesters regularly gaining the upper hand and managing to force even armed security personnel out of buildings and public spaces. Given that the US police are highly militarized, this result is astonishing.

* The ongoing COVID-19 lockdown probably hampers the regime's ability to coordinate a response to its deteriorating situation. Parts of the US government will struggle to meet and coordinate responses as many officials are likely to be self-isolating or unable to attend physical gatherings, whereas protesters are free to take whatever action they wish.

In terms of how technology impacts the future trajectory of this situation (the main topic of this blog), we are in a unique situation. Although the internet was used to disseminate the footage of George Floyd's murder, we are no longer seeing dissidents forced to interact online while the regime takes action in the real world. Instead, members of the regime have to stay at home in front of a screen while protesters and dissidents are the ones who can take action in the real world.

Where this will go is hard to predict. It may continue to escalate to the point that there is a deployment of military force by the US government against protesters - something already being considered by Trump according to some reports. This would be hugely embarassing to the US, a severe stain on its human rights record for decades to come, and potentially seen as a humiliation of America in the ongoing cold conflict with China and Russia. Blaming Russia or China for it will only make this situation even more embarassing to the US, since this only turns the tables on a country constantly funding and leading protests in other countries.

On the other hand, the US government may manage to drain the energy of the protesters through mass arrests and downplay the impact of the protests through its servile mainstream media. Owing to the lack of organizing power of the protesters and the fact this is not a planned but spontanous uprising, such a result seems like the most probable conclusion. If on the other hand the protesters begin attacking sensitive sites in Washington DC like monuments and the White House itself, or if protesters begin storming prisons and the armories of the already overpowered police forces, this story could enter a new chapter - for better or worse.

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Do Iranians want regime-change in Iran?

The top 3 most ridiculous Iranian “opposition” groups (extra points for being funded by the US government)

With Iran’s apparently sinister regime supposedly on the verge of collapse every weekend for the last 41 years, you would think people would get bored and stop listening to compromised fake Western news sources.

Also having waited very impatiently for 41 years for the regime to fall, various “Iranians” who dislike the regime are offering their support for US President Donald Trump to bomb their beloved country on their behalf. In doing so, they know Trump would kill millions of Iranians and eradicate Persia’s priceless cultural sites in the process - but it is the price they are willing for other Iranians to pay. Staying on that topic, let’s take a look at the top three most ridiculous Iranian “opposition” groups, all of which either get money off the US government or want it desperately.

#3 “Restart”

The silliest of the three, this is a strange group led by some kind of comedian. More accurately, he is apparently a radio host who believes America will defeat Iran and install him as its new leader if he begs them and posts memes about it on Twitter. Really, he is probably just hoping the US government will believe his claims and donate a lot of taxpayer money for him to live off while he stays in America.

Opposed to the MKO and the Shah-supporters, but even more obsessed with asking America to bomb Iran and magically install him as the ruler of a new Iranian regime, the guy in charge of “Restart” is only active on Twitter. He spreads a lot of spam there and appears to have no real support, but uses a number of memes about Donald Trump and the hashtags #MIGA and #MakeIranGreatAgain to pretend he has the support of Trump. He seems to have successfully duped a number of conservative Americans at least online, who don’t know the difference between him and the other two groups. He claims to have 20 million members in his “opposition” group but you can only find a few on Twitter, and their accounts are fake.

#2 Shah supporters

Unemployed US resident Reza Pahlavi (some dunce who thinks he is the king of Iran) has supporters who think he can become the puppet dictator of Iran, restoring the failed US-backed regime overthrown in 1979. If that is his goal, he seems to believe he can do it by appearing in interviews in US military propaganda, rambling about the “democracy” he doesn’t want in Iran and praising the US government’s idiotic policies and missteps in the Middle East. Although almost non-existent among Iranian expatriates, his “opposition” group is possibly bigger than #3.

If we consider the fact the original Shah was a US puppet, it is highly likely this wannabe puppet is also paid by the US government and kept as a future dictator if the US tries to forcibly change the Iranian regime. His appearances in news sources compromised by the US government seem to strengthen that possibility.

#1 MKO

Largest of the three, this one might confuse you if you are a US anti-Iran conservative. A Marxist group who originally opposed the Shah of Iran before joining Saddam Hussein’s regime in the Iran-Iraq War, the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization is considered a terrorist group in Iran and hated by the population. They were even also blacklisted as a terrorist group by the US government until recently.

Its bizarre ideology mixing communism and Islam and its history of violence have not been noticed by anti-communist US crusaders, who somehow support this group as the rightful rulers of Iran if the regime falls. Led from Europe by Maryam Rajavi, the now pro-West sycophant group is cheered by neocon drone-enthusiasts who call for America to attack Iran to install its power-hungry members as Iran’s new regime. While this may be what they actively call for, it is likely that the group really just wants dole from the US government like the other two. Despite that, the organization has killed Iranian scientists and other civilians on US orders in recent years and helped the US’s policies to immiserate and oppress Iranians.

Trump administration figures like John Bolton considered the MKO to be ideally placed to rule Iran, and promised them that the Iranian “regime” would be overthrown and the MKO would be celebrating with US conservatives in Tehran by 2019. Despite the MKO continuing to kill Iranian civilians, after 41 years it is no closer to the bloodthirsty regime-change it talks about.

What happens next?

In conclusion, it isn’t likely any of these dodgy and untrustworthy groups of exiles will ever be in power in Iran. At best, their support for US action against Iran will only fuel further US sanctions that will harm the welfare of Iranians over the coming decades or culminate in limited US bombing raids against Iranian nuclear reactors, causing a huge loss of civilian lives. In such a case, these ineffective groups will only be blamed for their support of the US actions and find it even harder to continue operating.

Finally, if the US does attack Iran and force one of these groups to form a puppet government, they will most likely die on arrival in Iran or end up on US taxpayer-funded life support machines while wishing they stayed in America.

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Wikipedia propaganda and disinformation habits exposed

While still soliciting funds for being a supposed neutral community-based encyclopedia edited by everyone across the world, Wikipedia's politics pages are prone to be stuffed with clownish North America First propaganda.

On the topic of alleged interference by Russian spies in the North American regime's disputed 2016 election, the paranoid claims of the regime and its media are treated as unquestionable and the matter is regarded as closed:

"The Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with the goal of harming the campaign of Hillary Clinton, boosting the candidacy of Donald Trump, and increasing political discord in the United States."

Read no further, it is a closed matter! According to the logic of its lackeys, the North American regime is the most neutral source - not just for talking about its own internal matters, but also Russia's.

With the regime-loving press being cited to back every point, North American loyalists and apologists have been sneaked into Wikipedia's editing circles and given carte blanche to edit the English language version of the site to only publish their opinions.

Doubt is not tolerated at Wikipedia, where there is an inquisitorial insistence on certainty and the sole kind of opinion it is permissible to have. To establish that absolute certainty, only the sources approved by the North American regime are deemed reliable in every case. Opinions from Neocons and bellicose propagandists rambling about the regime's democratic purity and the martyrdom of the regime-picked ruler Hillary Clinton are defended as factual statements conforming to impeccable standards of neutrality. All the supposedly neutral sources jokingly trace back to the North American regime's own newspapers and television networks, where the lies are faxed in directly from the regime to be adored by its sycophants and employees.

As for the scandalous possibility of any Russian contributing to a Wikipedia article about his or her own nation on this supposedly neutral international website, that cannot be contemplated by the editors, who refuse even to respond on the matter. No Russian version of the article is allowed, as that would require the cooperation of culprits who have not shown enough adoration of the North American regime like Wikipedia's editors.

Without receiving any direct answer from the editors, one user put the question to the article's authors in its talk section:

"The article presents assessments by various US bodies as factual because they said so, and no comparable effort is made to show responses and perspectives from Russia. The complete lack of a Russian language version is curious. Is there an active effort here to prevent any Russian-speakers or Russian IP addresses from being involved at the page, and why?"

A quick scan through the extensive talk archives at the contested Wikipedia page shows many North Americans have taken issue with the way the article presents its dodgy claims and tries to encourage adoration of the regime.

A common tactic in North American propaganda is to load any lead section of text or television broadcasting with the most overbearing and least credible claims of the regime, using fact-file-like media to portray these as verified facts told with great integrity.

The intention is to abruptly stop readers from reading further, encouraging sleepy acceptance of regime statements. As far as the Wikipedia editors are concerned, only the first sentence of their article should be read as it contains sufficient propaganda from the regime and closes the case, encouraging loyalty and discouraging questions.

This tactic occurs over and over again in North American propaganda on many websites, and now affects the supposedly neutral Wikipedia too. Wikipedia is especially useful to the regime because it allows its lackeys to obfuscate their circular reasoning, clouding criticism and wasting the time of potential critics wishing to look further. Such dissidents will be directed on a long chase through supposedly "neutral" sources that ultimately trace back to nowhere except the regime and its choir.

For the North Americans to have loaded their supposedly "neutral" Wikipedia with state propaganda and shallow nationalism is a loss to the internet and shows us something about the regime's ideology. Whatever it is really fighting for, it is not accuracy or accountability. This regime and its lackeys are guilty of treating everything - including encyclopedias and perhaps even maps and dictionaries - as Cold War geography. For them, all things can be used as cover and every critic is a Russian assassin. Things like neutrality and trust, as far as the North American regime is concerned, are worth destroying to win their war.

What the regime may not have considered is that its erosion of journalistic integrity and neutrality only fuels the ridicule and criticism of its policies. So far, no evidence shows the regime achieved any success in reversing the North American people's criticism of its violence, repression and bellicosity.

Wikipedia is already not taken seriously in any proper political discussion, although its Cold War hijacking may help the regime misinform less politically-aware members of the public. In discussions on propaganda, critics should be quick to point to Wikipedia's already discredited status on political matters and poor record in challenging lies. It is just a rag.

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The clubof.info Blog

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Buying a Robot Army: are drones the future of defense?

This essay argues that there is a path to the replacement of armies with a national defense system consisting entirely of automated responses and weapons. Based on the future many national armies already see in unmanned weapons, this culmination of military evolution may be closer than it seems. Should we continue reacting with horror to unmanned weapons? They may be inevitable, and we could hope they will form part of a strong deterrent structure that minimizes violence and helps push us to pacifism.

It is well-known that many countries manufacture and operate unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as weapons,[1] and this is leading to an interest in solutions to guide similar armed drones without the need for remote control by humans. We can see this already in the concept of "drone swarms", groups of semi-autonomous drones that could participate in battles.[2] Weapons equipped with artificial intelligence (AI), are pursued by the US, Russia and China.[3] Russia's military chief Valery Gerasimov considered in 2013 that "a fully robotized unit will be created, capable of independently conducting military operations."[4]Taken together, such news reports suggest the seemingly fictitious pursuit of robot armies by states is real.

Relying mostly on news reports, this essay will consider the merger of two different areas of military technological innovation. The first is the development of reliable unmanned aerial, naval and ground combat units. The second is the more hypothesis-laden topic of military artificial intelligence (AI), which may be applied to coordinate individual combat vehicles and eventually entire units on at least a tactical level. Military experts have not suggested the breakthrough of artificial general intelligence referred to by AI experts[5] is necessary to hit targets or outperform a human tactician, so that concept will be irrelevant here. This essay will be new in its attempt to make possible the concept of a complete national defense system that can consist wholly of automated units, reliant on automated responses and measures, to entirely replace a manned army. In doing so, this essay will address some military and political challenges such a national defense system could face and argue that its creation is achievable.

Before addressing the present direction of the two major areas of innovation concerned, we can consider an example of a similar defensive initiative. Unmanned defenses and automated retaliatory measures are not new ideas, although similar projects have never been seen as desirable. Nuclear weapons in Russia have been considered as possible components of an automated retaliatory system, in response to the close proximity of NATO forces to the Russian capital. In such a system, launches of the opposing (US) side's nuclear missiles would be detected and automatically trigger a retaliatory strike from Russia without requiring any human authorization.[6] If such powerful weaponry can be launched automatically, why not much less drastic military options deployed in a purely defensive manner?

On the less ambitious end of the spectrum, automated defenses including self-aiming stationary defenses like turrets with machine-guns already exist[7] and intelligent mines have already been advanced as ideas.[8] What seem to be persistently absent from this mix are unmanned anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) launchers and other towed or man-portable launchers. Even the most advanced such weapons known to exist only gained "fire-and-forget" technology and still require crews exposed to danger[9] to perform loading and firing. If better types of stationary defenses were to be relied on more heavily in future wars, they could significantly reduce the need to endanger human personnel with the low-value task of guarding a single point and help deter the most common low-tech threats.

Beyond stationary point defense is the adoption of mobile unmanned weapons. Russia,[10] China,[11] the US,[12] the UK[13] and others[14] all fund programs that consider drones as essential players in the future of warfare. Unmanned weapons such as these are best examined when divided into the different domains of ground, naval, aerial, and space combat and will be addressed in that order here. For a state to fully automate its defense, it would need to have capable responses to threats in all military domains.

The biggest current obstacles to unmanned warfare exist on the ground. Hostile personnel, being flexible and fast, can present a never-ending source of confusion and challenges to drone tanks. Such remote-controlled tanks, called unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), have been trialed in combat by the Russian Federation but are hindered by difficulties in signal,[15] cheap and unreliable design features,[16] and optics.[17] One summary of such problems may simply be that engineers have so little historical experience of creating full-scale unmanned vehicles, in contrast with manned vehicles, that almost all the problems are new and the solutions are still decades away.

Plans to overcome signal problems and the threat of jamming by making drone tanks drive autonomously may be complicated by the "cluttered and unpredictable" nature of battlefields.[18] Whatever targeting software is involved also appears to be too simple to deal with the huge array of threats from a speedy and proficient enemy.[19] The answer to such problems seems to lie in machine learning analogous to the same elusive way image recognition bots are developed.[20] For weapons, that would mean testing them repeatedly with the help of massive volumes of recorded data from real and simulated combat situations until results are promising enough for them to learn in real situations.

Done tanks appear to be the most challenging of all types of military robot to develop. Commercial self-driving cars are likely to remain drastically ahead of them for the foreseeable future. Due to their relationship, advances in self-driving car software can be expected to result in successes that filter down into the technologies carried aboard drone tanks.[21] The weapons will become more reliable as this happens. Self-driving car software appears to already be based on the same machine learning mentioned previously,[22] verifying that this is the likely route that will be taken to create smarter autonomous weapons. Machine learning used for image recognition should be just as applicable to all other data, including audio, radar and sonar, that may be recorded and acted upon in a combat situation.

The future of naval drones shows promise, with the adoption of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs).[23] With the most concerning challenges to armed drones arguably existing in the domain of ground warfare, potential dangers to naval drones are not as significant. Naval armed drones are being trialed in various countries,[24] including a Russian drone torpedo called the Poseidon that acts as an autonomous nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered torpedo[25] and has strengthened Russia's nuclear deterrent.[26]

UUVs may have some of the best prospects as unmanned weapons in actual combat, since a non-operating drone underwater could at least be difficult for an enemy to locate. Such a drone could lose signal and be useless for a time, but not be truly lost or surrendered like its air and land counterparts. It can be hypothesized that an underwater drone could be created with the option to remain inert on the seabed, in order to gain an opportunity to reactivate and attack when the enemy is not ready.

Air-to-ground drone warfare is often thought to be fully developed already, but is totally ineffective in contested airspace.[27] Present technology appears to be inadequate to challenge a human pilot. Air-to-air drone warfare may remain too difficult at present, but development in that direction does seem to be of interest to China.[28] The most common use of lethal drones so far seems to be in ethically questioned assassinations by the US.[29] Because these are aimed at non-state targets, with the expectation that they will be undefended and unaware that they are being targeted, the effectiveness of drones as front-line weapons remains untested by the US. What is clear is that current drones and other unmanned weapons are effective only when acting in uncontested and remote spaces. It can be concluded that current unmanned weapons are very far from being flexible enough to compete with enemy manned weapons or enemy personnel in direct combat. Just as with drone tanks, however, this would be overcome by making the weapons autonomous and capable of learning.

Space warfare can already be considered entirely unmanned, because all space objects with potential military value are unmanned satellites[30] heavily dependent on computers and mission control centers on Earth. The fact the only presence held by states on other planets is robotic, too,[31] warns us that robots will be central to space militarization if and when it speeds up. Creating a "space corps", meaning military combatants stationed in orbit,[32] could prove to be a catastrophic mistake while space flight continues to be such a fragile task. This is because opposing states may instead solely focus on robotic satellites[33] that are much less vulnerable and much more menacing in the vacuum of space than any pressurized vehicle or suit. Small satellites, new missiles,[34] and intentionally placed debris[35] created by a desperate enemy could easily inflict overwhelming losses on a space corps and bring them burning down to Earth. Unmanned craft could also survive longer away from the Earth without resupply. Of all the different areas of warfare today, therefore, space warfare would be the most likely to see effective dominance of unmanned weapons, and that is because personnel would be too hard to sustain there. Space is already favorable to the non-living.

Lack of autonomy in drone weapons is their greatest handicap. They are little more than oversized remote-controlled toys in their present form, not much different than their World War 2 era predecessors, remote-controlled "Goliath" mines.[36] They may be even more vulnerable because signals can be disrupted and jammed[37] and obstacles can block signals,[38] potentially surrendering vehicles and their armaments to the enemy or leaving aerial drones vulnerable to interception by a much cruder enemy aircraft.

We can see the creation of lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs) is being pursued by states despite the push for international prohibitions against them.[39] Engineers are likely to consider autonomy important to overcome aforementioned problems inherent to remote-control by human operators, especially in the case of drone tanks. Given the current situation, military competition between states can reasonably be expected result in significant strides in the development of autonomous drone weapons in coming decades, possibly as commercial self-driving software filters into military software.[40] If Russia's military chief is correct,[41] this will lead to robotic units that can continue to carry out decisive combat actions even when their signal is severed, and perhaps fight to restore their connection with their commanders. These designs could, we can speculate, be able to defend their own technology from capture and even self-destruct when parts of their casing are opened by unauthorized personnel. Whether this is possible or useful will have to be explored by the relevant professionals.

Beyond the future engineering breakthroughs in lethal autonomous weapons, it is predictable that a whole different form of warfare will emerge in the long-term. This form of warfare will be the result of artificial intelligence continuing to be incorporated onboard military drones[42] or in the signals infrastructure used to control them from afar, or both. Although a completely automated army is not a stated goal of any country, evidence of amazing military engineering will make it increasingly plausible to propose much heavier funding for such projects in the future. It may not even emerge as a specifically funded project at all, but a simple reorganization of robotic forces and integration of future weapons and other systems into that national defense system once the machines are reliable.

Whether leadership of tactical-level decisions for drones could be handed over to a form of artificial intelligence like a robot general is a much more difficult topic to address than the drones themselves, so the following is highly speculative. The breakthroughs to artificial general intelligence and "super" AI[43] are almost certainly not necessary, although the state achieving these first may have a big advantage.[44] The success of computers in chess[45] and various games[46] can be viewed as precedent they can already make swifter and superior decisions than a human expert, but we must respect the fact real wars are much more complicated than any game.[47] It is possible some biological elements of creative thought and aggressiveness are required to act decisively in the fog of war and turn the tide of a battle, but it is not clear if these require anything like a human mind. What is clear is that, because war is so complex, it will be hard to maintain the flow of sufficiently detailed data between drones and an artificial general to allow it to make the type of fast or well-informed decision it would make in a game. This brings us back to the issue of maintaining signal. Whereas food and medicine would never be issues, a whole set of new baggage and responsibilities would drive the actions of an army consisting only of robots.

The biggest engineering problem, even in the exceedingly hypothetical idea of a fully automated military, may not be the creation of competent artificial generals to manage artificial armies but the already discussed problem of maintaining communication in a chaotic environment. It makes sense that such a problem would only be further compounded if a remotely-based artificial intelligence was giving instructions to robotic units and waiting for their feedback. The data being transmitted to and from the units would be immense. Time delays would exist. However, it is possible that the challenges would then be overcome simply by building ever more specialized and larger drones. Antenna-carrying models could be assigned to carry signals over buildings and other troublesome objects and overpower jamming attempts. These hypothetical vehicles may need to be very large, costly, and high-powered to provide maximum coverage. They would become high-value targets that require significant protection from other drones. Other types of supporting drone could be created specifically to attack sources of interference detected by them. Some drones could be adapted to act as commanders by interpreting many signals from lower-ranking drones and issuing orders back to them.

What is not speculation is the way funding and policy preferences of governments are going to be the deciding factors in whether defense becomes more automated, and to what degree. Current military robots and drones can be accurately described as being of limited variety and low cost,[48] indicating governments fund them grudgingly and wait for results before deciding what to do next. The production of war machines capable of acting autonomously and being led by other machines will likely depend on the creation of many more ambitious variants of military drone, with ever increasing size and cost. Whether this is purely science fiction talk or the next big revolution in warfare will depend on the choices of political leaders in the country prepared to take that leap.

The crossover from human warriors and their horses to machines as the main agents of warfare has been in the works for hundreds of years already, but may be close to its ultimate conclusion. It can be argued that drone armies and AI will eventually overtake humans in their ability to win wars. The end result, although still remote, may be that humans become obsolete in all domains of war. Over sufficient generations, it can be hoped that this reduces the militaristic upbringing and values of much of the population and reduces warlike sentiments and policies. Whether that is a helpful prediction has not yet been discussed in any literature so far and is worth further inquiry.

Harry Bentham

Exclusively for The clubof.info Blog

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