The old world broke this week. It was blown up cynically by someone who thought this would advance their agenda the most.
The act of vandalizing a major piece of physical infrastructure, targeting civilian populations, isn’t unprecedented in history, but it does signal that everything we thought we knew about the rules of the current game was wrong.
Well, for most people anyway.
When I spoke in June at the Ron Paul Institute Conference on Foreign Policy I described the game of geopolitics as a seven-player game of the ancient Chinese game, Go.
And in that game we’ve reached an inflection point where some factions are coalescing and others are splintering. The faction that is unwilling to compromise on their future is the most dangerous one at the table.
My conclusion then was that those ‘who think they are entitled to run the world’ will flip the game board.
They will change the rules of the game without remorse or a case in the world for those they harm and the aftereffects of their actions. In fact, the chaos they engender is preferable to them than losing.
We got the first inkling of this when the West didn’t just freeze Russia’s foreign exchange reserves but seized them.
Now undersea assets in international waters are fair game. The good news it that this flipping of the game board was only a couple of gas pipelines. The potential is still for something far more unthinkable, not that that’s off the table.
In the immediate aftermath of proof the pipelines were blown up everyone (including myself) came forward with their theory as to who did it. Sadly, I can construct arguments for nearly every major player in the game having done this.
But understand the significance of this act. Another redline in international commerce and relations was crossed. The burning question is by whom?
We can rule out the most idiotic takes, like the Russians blew up the pipelines themselves. Why blow up an asset which is literally your biggest piece of leverage on this particular game board when you can do what Putin has already done, shut off the taps?
The only people putting forth this idea are frothing neocons who never met a global problem they couldn’t blame on Putin. Their arguments simply confirm what we already knew, they are jumping for joy at the news.
Many are reflexively pointing to statements by Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland about getting rid of the Nordstream 2 pipeline before the war in Ukraine broke out. But, so what? Why wait seven months to make good on that threat? And why also take out Nordstream 1 at the same time?
The argument is based on this idea that the US is now a rogue state fully controlled by neocons who see their opportunity to get their geopolitcial two-fer, going to war with Russia while also regaining dominance over a vassal Europe.
Indeed this is the prevailing sentiment across the whole of the anti-US alternative media. From Pepe Escobar to Bernard at Moon of Alabama the rush to put together the motive (Escobar) and the means (MoA) is quite compelling.
I, however, do not agree.
And the reasons are many. But it starts with the basic premise is that it is too easy.
Sure, the neocons wanted NS1 and NS2 removed from the game board. Neocons staff the lion’s share of important positions in the “Biden” National Security Council, his State Dept. and the Dept. of Defense. But the neoconservative axis doesn’t stop at the mouth of the Potomac. Their roots are deep within British Intelligence, Whitehall, City of London and yes, even Germany.
When you invoke the term neocon it is a very specific term for a very specific faction of people. They are rapacious, unwilling to compromise, indefatigable and embedded like ticks all across the Western political and intelligence infrastructure.
They are also incredibly easy to manipulate because all you have to do is give them a green light for mayhem and they will take it like a pit bull seeing a squealing rabbit.
So while Bernard did a fine job of laying out all of the circumstantial ‘facts’ of this case, he didn’t make a conclusion either. He’ll leave that job to his partner in Anti-US Empire leftism Escobar and the imaginations of so many rightfully disillusioned with the US.
They and other have made the case and all that has to be done now is allow the amplifier of social media and global anxiety to run wild. Spoon feeding people cynicism today is easy. Hating on the US is now fashionable.
The groundwork for this has been laid for months with Europe shooting itself in the foot repeatedly while allowing its sympathetic chorus to try and portray them as the victim of US aggression.
Personally, I think that conclusion is nonsense and have stuck to my guns for months saying both the EU and ‘The US’ want this war with Russia but for different reasons. In other words, no one is a victim of the other’s aggression, they both want the same thing, a divorce and/or war with Eurasian integration but who gets to be the decision makers in the end is what they are fighting over internally.
I’ve laid this out in so many blog posts, but this one from January lays out all the arguments of the factions at play. While I was wrong about war in Ukraine being off the table, the interplay of the factions was still spot on.
The basic premise was always to use the neocons to destabilize the world over Ukraine, amplify the US/UK belligerence to the level of terrorist state, and portray Europe as the victim of whatever happened.
But once Putin invaded Ukraine everyone’s true motivations were exposed. Europe couldn’t back down and allow Russia to take Ukraine because Davos needed Ukraine to draw everyone into its vortex. The Minsk agreements were simply a time-buying device for everyone’s plans.
They all wanted this war with Russia but Putin chose the terms of the battle and the timing. To still think that Europe is a victim of US colonial ambitions betrays a naivete that borders on pathology.
And yet everyone fell for the silly Rand Corporation “Report” from January that prepped the ground for blowing up the Nordstream pipelines conveniently ‘leaked’ into the world two weeks before the weekend everyone had circled on their geopolitical calendar as the most significant of the year.
Yeah, and you could pull my other leg, it plays “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute.“
Make no mistake, I’m not about to absolve ‘The US’ of any malfeasance here. Some aspect of ‘The US’ was involved. To think otherwise is also terminally naïve. No, what I’m going to do is remind everyone of the motivations, incentives and deficiencies of the players in the West and give you what I think is the best answer we will ever get (and why) as to the curious whodunit of the demise of Nordstream.
I wrote a massive Twitter thread yesterday on this which I am going to list below along with some fill in commentary where appropriate. Original Tweets in Bold, Commentary in italics.
- Just so we are clear. I believe and have believed the hyper-aggressive Neocons (or Straussians) are a faction easily manipulated into doing things that look like they are to their benefit but ultimately aren’t.
- People this single-minded and radical can easily be directed like a missile at a particular target, especially if that target is their White Whale, i.e. Russia.
- Davos is obsessed with preserving the EU and transferring that power to the UN for global government through the end of commercial banking and total surveillance.
This is incontrovertibly true. Their pushing hard for CBDCs to replace the current monetary system. - Getting the neocons to over-react to the current state of play in Ukraine by blowing up two vital pipelines to Europe is child’s play. You are goading them to do what they want to do anyway.
Screw Germany and Russia simultaneously.
Again, think Pit Bull and squealing bunny rabbit. - But the real win for them isn’t giving Germany no way to back down wrt Russia. It is to get Germany to see themselves as a victim of US colonialism.
Cue the RAND report. And the protests over energy costs in Germany over the weekend.
This leads to a critical mass of people seeing the US as the world’s leading cancer, deflecting from the real perps.
Given the state of the commentariat today, mission mostly accomplished. With the Fed pushing interest rates to the moon this will be even easier for people to believe. - That this is happening after the US got major wins in the UK and Italy electing Truss and Meloni while the Fed starves global markets of dollars, the source of Davos’ real strength … Eurodollar futures and shadow banking.
See my articles about Draghi’s fall from July and Truss’s rise from last week. Joe Biden’s called Truss to threaten her over Northern Ireland before she even sat down at 10 Downing Street. Tell me again who “Biden” works for if not Davos? - In the short run, the neocons think they’ve won a big victory. In the long run, it seals Europe’s fate by crashing their markets so they can blame Russia and the US for their bankruptcy while defaulting and consolidating power in Brussels.
Blowing up NS1 and NS2 is a brilliant tactical move, it takes options from Putin and leaves him with more military than economic options. Why does anyone think the EU and Davos don’t benefit from this since this is what they actually wanted, prolonged war with Russia. Or am I misreading EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, EU Foreign Minister Josep Borrell and NATO Sec. General Jens Stoltenberg? Curious.
In the long run this is a terrible strategic move because it now puts everyone’s infrastructure on the table. Everything is fair game now. - France is happy to see this happen b/c bringing Germany down elevates them. Blackmailing the Italians is next on the flowchart… has to happen while Italy is in a gas deficit, i.e. Libya offline. France has been instrumental in cutting off Italy’s gas supply from N. Africa. There is no love loss between Italy and France. And EU sanctions keep Italy in gas deficit. With hostilities in Libya ending, gas will flow. So, destabilizing Italy’s financial markets now is paramount… or did no one see the blowout in BTP yields this week?
- The Neocons are Straussian in their thinking. Better to burn down everything rather than lose. I don’t agree with all of this article, but the basics are sound.
Theirry Meyssan — voltairenet.org/article217976.…
In short, the Neocons are not the only Straussians at this gaming table. Davos’ whole strategy is predicated on tearing down the old system, liquidating as many liabilities as possible (people, systems, debt, etc.) and then offering a new replacement at the depth of everyone’s despair. - Europe’s only solution, said many times by Soros, is to default by issuing perpetual debt, consols, and rolling up all the political power in Europe to the EU Commission and the ECB.
To do that you NEED a collapse of the German middle class.
With the ECB losing to the Fed over keeping rates low and going for MMT, 80% of the ECB’s balance sheet is at risk. The EU cannot function with a bankrupt ECB. The eurozone ceases to exist. President Lagarde is now losing control over internal bond spreads now that the BoE intervened. - But you also need a scapegoat to focus German anger on otherwise you lose them. So, bring in the hyper-aggressive Yanks and the hated Russians. Perfect patsies for this operation.
Turn Western Europe as anti-American as Eastern Europe is anti-Russian.
The neocons have walked willingly into this trap. Russia was given the option surrender or fight. They chose to fight. - Turning the US into a global terrorist state in the minds of everyone is an attempt, lame as it may be, to stop capital outflow while the reset of Europe’s finances occurs.
Only communists are so committed ideologically to their cause that they would threaten the world with nuclear blackmail in order to overthrow the only bastion of legal human rights superior to that of the State’s left in the world. I hate to break it to America’s haters but us getting our shit together is the world’s only real hope. It’s a thin hope, I realize. But the world is not made better by turning the US into a failed state like the same people I’m fingering today did to Russia after the USSR fell. But when you cheer on us Yanks ‘gettin’ what we deserve’ and apologizing for the crimes of Europe, you are cheering your own destruction. - Hence, the US neocons likely blew up NS1 and NS2 but under the ‘guidance’ of Davos from within the “Biden” Junta.
This is the nuanced take. Davos had the motive, means and opportunity to pull this off. So far, I’ve only presented why the neocons would have done this. Now, here’s why Davos is the real culprit. - This was an act of war. No doubt. The UK and France have been trying to get NATO officially into a war with Russia since it moved into Syria… Remember the IL-20 ELINT shootdown?
That was a French/UK op. that everyone else covered up.
September 2018 a Russian ELINT plane is shot down over Syria. The official explanation is a complete fabrication. Reports of a missile fired from a French frigate offshore are memory-holed. Israel and Syria take the blame for the screw up which could have led to a NATO Article 5 if the Russians retaliated.
We will simply not get the full story on this like we never got the real story about MH-17. But if Russia doesn’t respond overtly and whatever they do in parallel response “The US” doesn’t respond to then back channels have been working to stop any further insanity. The relative silence from everyone tells me a third party ordered this and the primary victim/alleged aggressor are trying to hold things at bay. - This pipeline explosion smells of a similar setup.. The goal? Same as always. Get Russia to over-react, weaken Putin at home for being soft.
Set the US and Russia on a path to open, not proxy, war. - The same strategy is being employed with China/Taiwan. Reckless provocations to weaken Xi and get China to over-react to save face with the domestic population.
Or did we miss the endless reckless provocations with China over the past 20 months? - Why? Because if these folks are all fighting while Europe hunkers down and ‘rebuilds’ itself, then they are all weakened through war and relatively speaking the EU comes out of that coma to a more-level playing field.
This point has been routinely misunderstood. This is a long-range projection of what the ultimate goal is. By the end of the decade Europe wants to be free of Russian energy, transitioned to a hydrogen/nuclear economy with digital money, no debt and a surveillance state it can leverage around the world. They want the same thing for the US and the UK Commonwealth, but the jury is definitely out as to whether they will achieve those goals in those places… that the third US faction I keep talking about, the NY Boys and the Fed, saying no to all of this. - This is the plan. It’s stupid. It’s insane. But it’s clearly what’s on the table.
The leaked RAND Report everyone was so hot and bothered about was pure psy-op to set up this latest atrocity.
Even RAND was like. Okay, this is some serious Bellingcat/MI6 bullcrap. - If you think this is far-fetched:
Who directed everyone to lock down the world over a freaking flu?
Who tried to bankrupt you for not getting the jab?
Who is pushing for UBI, MMT and you owning nothing?
It ain’t the Neocons and it ain’t Russia. And it ain’t the Fed either. - There are clearly forces resisting this insanity but it’s not clear as to whether they are winning or not. What is clear is that most people are done with globalists, but which globalists?
- This now opens up the possibility of the East Med Pipeline from Israel to Greece, which “Biden” took off the table earlier this year. Why? Davos wants us off oil and gas.
Meaning, why did “Biden” pull the funding plug off of East Med? Because Davos told him no new pipelines into Europe. Davos also hates Israel, being a US/UK satellite. Realize that once you see the enmity between the Continent of European Colonial Powers and the UK/US and the former Warsaw Pact countries, you can’t unsee it. But, please continue to think it’s all just “one big club… and we ain’t in it.” - The bombing of NS1 and NS2 is as significant a red line being crossed as seizing Russia’s forex reserves. Both assets were considered ‘verboten.’
Not any more. Who ordered that? Davos.|
Who went along with that? The EU
Who’s putting more sanctions on Russia today? The EU
How can anyone seriously look at the last seven months and see the EU as a victim of US imperialism without seeing the imperial aspirations of the EU itself? I’m not saying anyone isn’t dirty here. They are all filthy and disgusting. But I am saying know what the real game is and what the real motivations are.
Because if you do that work you just might see some things that don’t comport with the simple view which fuels your anger and frustration, which, in the end, is just childish. The stakes are too high here.
FYI, the EU just put on an EIGHTH package of sanctions on Russia over the referenda in the now former territories of Ukraine. No outrage over the loss of NS1 and NS2. No furious statements about the heinous and cowardly attacks on public infrastructure serving the needs of real Europeans. No pearl clutching or hand wringing even over the immense amount of greenhouse gases being blown into the atmosphere. Just more vilification of the victim and nigh-endorsement of this act of terrorism.
But, please, keep believing Europe is the victim of US aggression and not the complicity of your own leadership. - The point of this act was to freeze all pipeline construction worldwide.
If these assets are on the table, then nothing is off the table.
Do you really think it’s far-fetched to false flag something like this to achieve global dreams of control?
Who has those dreams?
If you look at this dispassionately, you know who and that’s why you know who ordered it, regardless of whose military operators put the bombs on the pipes.
I can’t stress enough folks that we are in very perilous waters here. I’m no US apologist. This country has crimes it will have to answer for. And the biggest one may be allowing this globalist assholes to corrupt it nearly beyond repair. But don’t let that blind you to what’s really happening.
The important thing I keep trying to point out that thinking in terms of ‘country’ is ultimately the wrong lens to view these people’s actions. Factions are the better lens. Factions cross political borders.
Only when we’re talking about the people and elections do countries matter here and how they interact with these factions.
I’ll leave you with that and echo Bernard at MoA…. now draw your own conclusions.
Join my Patreon if your faction is in trouble
I realise that your essay was short and therefore could not cover every player’s motivation for blowing up NS1&2 but I noted the absence of monetary gain as an incentive. LNG and oil exports to Europe from NA must factor in to your thinking?
Of course. I missed the following thing pointing at Davos. “Biden” is doing everything imaginable to restrict US oil and gas exploration. DEI/ESG, EO’s to ban development. Nothing in the infrastructure bills for new supply…. This US is going to reap billions selling LNG to starving Europeans is a meme. We can’t possibly replace Russia here and there was already plenty of opportunity for US LNG in Europe.
Remember, Europe needed NS3. NS2 was just the thing needed to keep up with demand. The neocons get the audience in the media because this is the story they want you to believe… that they are in control of “US” policy. They aren’t, but they are too stupid to realize it.
The patriots here at home are now really freaking out as to what’s going on.
People are making themselves too big with the geopolitical/financial game playing theories. For all you know many of these theorists trying to get attention by sensational theories, and the commentors reacting to it, if you multiply them by the millions might be responsible themselves for the situation which affords the WEF and the EU power. I would go so far as that anyone who tries to get undue power through his own government is responsible, regardless of what he aims at. How many little Schwabs created the statist/socialist/liberal hyper-control states, guided by ideological blabla?
What do you care if you are under the dictatorship of a national government, elected by the people, or globally operating bandits in combination with elected bandits of the state. In the latter case, the people will get it good and hard, the global oligarchy being the most ambitious, so they will feel the hot breath of dictators in their neck, and hopefully finally start to rethink the function of government. A cause which if our attention is not there, will lead to this situation anyhow at some point.
Great essay! I always appreciate your nuanced analysis; without such detail, things just don’t make sense.
As for what the Neocons might be up to, over the last six months, my mind always seemed to drift back to this paper and I see Alexander Mercouris doing the same thing. When we both first read it, we thought it was nutty/insane, but now I see that Alexander is not so sure:
A Strategy for Avoiding Two-Front War ~ by A. Wess Mitchell
“Rather than attempting to woo or court Russia into a conciliatory stance, we should present it with a combination of insuperable obstacles to westward expansion (including, if necessary, by inflicting a far more serious defeat than it has heretofore experienced in Ukraine) while presenting new opportunities for cooperation, investment, and growth in Russia’s east. Simply put, the goal should be to alleviate America’s simultaneity problem by giving Russia incentives to be less of a European power—and more of an Asian one. ”
“Paradoxically, the very fact of this deepening dependency is likely to increase Russian fear of becoming a sidecar to Beijing’s ambitions and create incentives for Moscow to reorient its foreign policy.”
“To work, the strategy would require the door to westward expansion to be slammed—hard. The worst of all worlds would be to open up opportunities for Russia in its east while going soft in the west. An effective pivot requires a fulcrum, and Ukraine is that fulcrum. ”
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/strategy-avoiding-two-front-war-192137
The destruction of the pipeline fulfills: “the door to westward expansion to be slammed—hard”.
So, if this is the “script” the Neocons are following, I would surmise the next step would be to bring the Ukraine war to a halt through a diplomatic settlement. (?)
I guess we will just have to wait and see. (sigh)
Yeah, we’ll see. Because if soros et.al. Are running things then no. Kissinger told the neocons this not how this should play out.
And thank you for the kind words. I do appreciate them
I think that in this article, Mr. Luongo has turned a simple arithmetic equation into the mathematical equation for the Apollo moonshot. Most things in the history of international relations can be understood quite simply, much like the politics of the schoolyard, eg: bully wants smaller child’s marbles and he hits smaller child and takes said marbles. I don’t think that the international situation today is any different, except that there seem to be two factions at work here in the United States, you have one faction that is hell-bent on reducing the population of the world with the covid shots, promotion of aborton, teaching children to become trannies etc (Bill Gates, Yuval Harari, Klaus Schwab et al). the other group are desperate to keep the United States on top internationally but either are too stupid to realize or too stubborn to admit that the US military has been ravaged by the covid shots and has thousands of the smartest and best have either been discharged or have resigned their posts. This leaves the US military as consisting of weakened, third-rate troops that are barely able to take on a small army, far less a large one like Russia or China. The only thing they can do is talk loudly about unleashing nuclear weapons and engage in isolated acts of sabotage. This is the sign of weakness and Russia realizes this. By not retaliating tit for tat, Russia is showing strength and is just continuing with business as usual in the Ukraine. As Russia makes gains and consolidates control in the Ukraine, the dying US and European alliance will huff and puff, trying to externally project an image of unity and strength as one government falls after another to an angry voter base. A very important turning point will be if the Republicans win in November (provided that the democrats don’t cheat en mass again). If the Republicans win in November, the Biden dictatorship will lose a large part of their power and the support for Nato. Most thinking people in the US, (there still are some), can see that the need for Nato ceased by 1990, but it was kept propped up by the neocons as a vehicle for the projection of US power in Europe and around the world. The CIA made sure only weak, easily controlled politicians ever got into European parliaments. Those days are over as nationalists and populists take over all over Europe.
Hi Tom,
I am in awe of what you have been able to foresee and what you have been able to put together, however, you said you were actively looking for push-back and feedback.
So here is a potentially serious question: “Isn’t it a really thin reed to economically collapse Europe, then ‘hopefully’ blame the United States for it, and then miraculously rebuild Europe (with windmills & solar panels) to overtake China (factory rich) and the United States (energy rich) before they can recover and respond?”
That is a lot of dependent “ifs” and dominoes to fall in the exact right order. Furthermore, it neglects everything that we learned in the 20th Century. Stalin and Mao killed millions of their people in order to industrialize. Industrialization has been the key to power and influence throughout the last few centuries of human history. It was American industry that won the Second World War and the rise of China over the last three decades has been due to industrialization, in addition to Japan and South Korea previously.
So, how is Davos and the EU planning to institute a great reset or new world order without industrialization or natural resources? The G7 looks like a caricature of its former self compared to the G20 and if the West continues down its present green energy path, in ten years the G7 will be ready for Saturday Night Live. IMHO
So, I pose this as a rhetorical / maybe unanswerable question: “How does anyone in Europe (or the West) think that this will work?” It is essentially self-imposing the Morgenthau Plan on all of Europe (and the United States) and has to be the most backassward plan since Butch & Sundance robbed a train that coasted over a railroad trestle.
You correctly point out that the West seems to be chock full of differing factions, but it also appears it is chock full of conflicting crackpot plans & ideologies?
***This was in response to your “Market Report 9 28 2022” on Odysee and to what what BoltShackle posted above. I don’t want to become a gadfly on your comments section, so please nuke if you feel appropriate… just offering something to think about.
Europe wants to transition to a nuclear/hydrogen economy. That’s the real plan. Wind and solar are a way to distract and make life more difficult. How else can you trap people if you don’t destroy their access to reliable energy.
You have to get people dependent on the State as the giver of all life and then you can control them through the ultimate forms of centralized energy production. Massive nuclear power plants and synthetic fuels
“centralized energy production”
Of course the guys on top are not ideological imbeciles that they do not know that it is absolutely impossible to generate enough energy through windmills and solar. It taking such a huge amount of materials, some also rare, an enormous investment, and on itself an enormous amount of (fossil fuel based) energy. that is is impossible.
Thus, they are deliberately destroying.
More deliberate imbecility.
Some time ago already, the Belgian and Dutch governments forced the so called liberalization of the energy market, under the banner of introducing ‘market mechanism’ (demand and supply, thus prices being based on that).
This is actually not capitalist free market mechanism though, big capitalist industry does not want such kind of market mechanism in the area of energy, it wants stability, scalability, and long term contracts. To change energy type means that a whole infrastructure has to be adopted or built anew, to change Russian oil for another type of oil, if even possible, means that a whole chain of infrastructure and equipment has to be replaced and adapted, which costs a huge amount of money, time, and requires lots of expertise, which is not readily available.
In Holland, medium and small business is going bankrupt, the imbecile politicians are claiming: this is how the market works. It is not, they are destroying the market themselves under the banner of alleged human cause climate change, and the war with Russia. It is ideological destruction of business, imagine how brutal and imbecile it is to claim that it is due to the usual market processes, when it is obviously one hundred percent politics.
Frustrating free markets is what European statist/socialist/economy control governments have been doing throughout the twentieth century, but this time they are out to kill. And this even in The Netherlands, which for centuries has been thé place of pragmatism, commercialism and trade, now ruled by imbecile ideologists.
“So, how is Davos and the EU planning to institute a great reset or new world order without industrialization or natural resources? ”
Imo, destroying the capitalist free market system is the goal, so to arrive at greater state control, the rest is the temporary means and pretence. To most of these things there is little logic, it is fear and belief which they rely on. The whole program is fraught with inconsistencies, impossibilities and contradictions. but they are getting away with it so far. It is all or nothing, taking huge risks? So much of what has changed through the statist/socialist hyper control governments itself is already based on plain belief, on bubbles. Many things are already crackpot, the statist/socialist/liberal model is in itself crackpot.
Service economy, the fashionable model for over a decade itself is a bubble of belief. AI itself is bubble, AI is by far not advanced as it is hyped to be, to give another example.
You ban Russian gas, but you import it through other routes, one example of make belief, while things do not crash totally. People are not paying attention, they think black and white, while many things keep on running. Carbon free in 2030, while the amount of emissions in the world is increasing. But that does not matter, it is a scheme of destruction and reshaping, a carbon free world is not the real goal.
The Europeans themselves have prepared the way, this is what the statist/socialist governments have been saying to the people (who themselves elected their politicians):
‘We are going to take 40 to 60 percent of your money as taxes, we are in detail going to regulate your business, take care of your health, your security, your old age, your economy, your environment, city planning, landscape planning, etc, to make you happy’
This is what the WEF says:
‘You will own nothing, and you will be happy’
A logical step beyond. Since a lot of countries world wide have been adopting more or less the same Western statist/socialist/liberal/guided economy model, it is imaginable that more will step in. Anyway, you have to aim high?