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Tuesday, Feb 21, 2023 - 17:36 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Of Gas, Guests and Guesses

One can hardly wake up without getting the feeling that a lot's passed one by these days, and with Zelensky now warning of literally World War were China to (formally) ally with Russia hitting the headlines, this can't be much of an exaggeration. This, of course, comes on the back of Biden popping up in Ukraine to his credit (though still not a patch on the Orange Legend going behind enemy lines singlehandedly), which however followed the unofficial Blinken-Wang chat on the sidelines of the Munich conference. This had Blinken refuse to apologize for wasting taxpayer money and warning that there must absolutely be no more Red balloons (over the U.S. at least), which had a giant one pop up over Hawaii as if on cue. Meanwhile, China's envoy to the U.N. placed the blame for the Ukraine war firmly at NATO's feet, so yeah, not looking good.

On the war itself, for all of America's signalling of support for as long as it takes, the Team Blue narrative shift to this being a "race of logistics" (some days after a meatgrinder Arms Race was noted here) might be worth a consideration. Norway for one appears to have hit their supply limits, not that the currently-pledged aid from the rest of NATO appears likely to make much of a dent anyway. Blinken (and Zelensky) taking pains to sound the alarm over potential Chinese "lethal support" (such as drones) might be a reflection of how dire the materiel situation is on the Blue end - or merely another bluff. Hilariously, the CCP has made the same request of the U.S. to stop sending weapons to Ukraine - and of Europe to stop calling for complete Ukrainian victory - for many deserved troll points.

There have also been whispers of the U.S. putting out peace feelers to Moscow - including the concession of as much as 20% of Ukraine, if the Neue Zürcher Zeitung paper is to be believed, which makes logical sense if they are going to switch their attention to the main Team Red Big Bad - who, as it turns out, are drifting about the Cape of Good Hope about now...


Turn 13, Action Round 1 (Team Red)

Team Red plays South African Unrest for its Event.


Togetheid, no longer apartheid!
(Original sources: twilightstrategy.com, bloomberg.com)


Team Blue's headlining of Red Scare/Purge with their return to a McCarthy-led anti-China House committee, alongside concurrent moves against the CCP by the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon might be the clearest sign of Cold War 2.0 yet - which is mechanically represented by a malus to Ops value from cards played by Team Red, for the rest of this Turn. There are ways to mitigate this effect, however, and here we see the Reds demonstrate one of those: playing cards for their Event instead.

While it appears in fashion to downplay the significance and strength of BRICS on Reddit and other "acceptable" social media these days, it remains accounting for over a third of the global population and production. This, of course, is before one begins to consider the rest of the Global South, including Africa where Russia has been quietly bankrolling a mini sphere of influence for themselves, for all of America's (and Europe's) outreach efforts. On this, one figures it takes a special kind of audacity for Team Blue's core players to return selling "democracy" barely a century after invading and brutally enslaving large swathes of the continent, and regularly Couping the (oft-elected) locals after that - but hey, I ain't judging - this is The Greatest Game, anything and everything goes!

That makes +2 Influence in South Africa (now 1/4), who for one have moved on from a chequered segregationist past to forge their own path in the world, which looks to be an alignment with Team Red on available evidence. The Kremlin has reaffirmed South Africa's support for a "redesigned global order" in late January, an understanding which has been backed up by a joint naval exercise with both Russia (who are showing off their own hypersonic missiles) and China off Durban in the Indian Ocean. South Africa have for their part insisted that they're neutral, but that's not what their Influence stats are showing, frankly...

Oh, and South Africa has also apparently discovered another huge offshore gas field in their waters, which might take us back to that very desirable commodity:



It has been about a fortnight since Seymour Hersh's explosive revelations on the perpetuators of the Nord Stream undersea gas pipeline bombing, which indubitably objectively qualifies as a terrorist act by any standard international criteria. The story would see a near-total media blackout in the American press for their former favourite muckraker, with some speculating that the whole overblown balloon panic was in large part to divert from the leak. Hersh's once-unimpeachable reputation came under renewed attack in parallel, to which it might be noted that dismissals of his more-recent supposed-misses (e.g. on Osama actually being held prisoner and then offered up by Pakistan, rather than being independently discovered and raided by U.S. Navy Seals per the official tale) tend to be misrepresented, and make much more sense in their original form.

If anything, this reflects far more on the decline of the U.S. mainstream media (a.k.a FAKE NEWS), that in days of yore* at least had the moral conviction to run (some) stories that were antithetical to Deep State-adjacent national interests; My Lai etc. might have been heavy blows to American prestige especially in the shorter term, but the exposés did earn the press respect for (at least an attempt at) unravelling the truth. Instead, one now has half of Americans believing that news organizations deliberately mislead them according to Gallup, to which the major shock is at the credulity of the other half.

On the actual material critiques (other than the use of an anonymous source), they have revolved about the inaccuracy of certain details, some of which appear minor nitpicks or entirely addressible, with others readily verifiable. Hersh has for his part dispelled any doubts as to authenticity of authorship with multiple video and radio interviews defending his sources and work, with a promise of more evidence to come. Even without that, however, the unescapable implication - that the U.S. would go to such an extent to dislodge Europe from Team Red for Cold War II - has already drawn outrage from Irish and German MPs. Although one expects Russia's bid for UN Intervention (and an extra VP) to go nowhere, China's backing up Hersh's claim and calling for a full investigation should keep the theatre going.

[*Yes, it was never that good and pure. Which just goes to show how utterly crap it is nowadays**.]

[**An eye-opening recent example being WaPo's hit piece on Musk allegedly ordering his tweets to be boosted, after his tweet of support for the Eagles supposedly fell behind POTUS's. The real kicker from the primary source was however that it supposedly took eighty engineers to do the job. Well, maybe I haven't worked on a microblogging platform myself, but if it takes that many personnel to push a user's tweets, it has to be surmised that Twitter indeed had a lot of fat to be cut.]


Turn 13, Action Round 1 (Team Blue)

Team Blue are understandably eager to change the subject, and Pete Buttigieg hurries up with their card... and slips. Whoa, careful there! No harm done and it's all smiles as the attendants scurry over to help the U.S. Secretary of Transportation back to his feet... as an ominous boom sounds from afar?

Team Blue plays Chernobyl For 3 Ops.


Not like East Palestine is in America, so who cares?
(Original sources: twilightstrategy.com, snopes.com)


The derailment of a train carrying various hazardous materials in Ohio early this month has been dubbed as "Chernobyl 2.0" especially in China and on Weibo, which given that the toxic fumes from the ensuing controlled burn could be easily seen from space, was probably not an entirely unfair comparison. That the smoke vortex looked like a negative exposure of the Nord Stream sabotage aftermath was perhaps not lost on many, which has led to whispers of foul play from Team Red, if uncorroborated for now. Instead, the official (FAKE NEWS) line has been that the chemical spill is no biggie, with the NYT tweeting that "...right-wing commentators have been particularly critical of the response, using the crisis to sow distrust about government agencies" [?!]. Well, East Palestine seems to have other (well-founded) opinions, and thankfully at least one President has seen fit to draw attention to their plight.

2 Ops: +1 Influence in Iran (1/3). The nuclear component of this card will then have to be satisfied elsewhere, and for this we have to look a lot closer to East Palestine's namesake. As if the world were not heating up enough already, Iran has reportedly enriched uranium to 84% purity, just short of weapons-grade (or more than enough, if they're willing to compromise on the payload). Tehran has denied the statement from the IAEA, but this must surely have set alarm bells ringing over in Israel, which has Iranian nukes as their red line.

Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, the spluttering protests over in Iran have flared up again, with entirely open U.S. support and approval. One figures they might not make a concrete impact after the initial wave - which came on the heels of Iran's Shanghai Cooperation Organization (i.e. Team Red) accession - got squashed, what more with Mossad agents reportedly arrested. The latest news is that Israel's U.S. ambassador has given them carte blanche to act on Iran, represented here by an expensive 2 Ops to insert Influence and break Team Red Control there - for now, at least.

1 Ops: +1 Influence in the Philippines (4/2). The U.S. has been focusing on their former Pacific colony for some months, and these efforts have borne fruit with access to four more existing military bases in the country, a clear expansion of U.S. Influence - and arguably Control. The Philippines' possible induction into Team Blue has been further bolstered by agreements with other members such as Japan, which has seen a laser assault by China's coast guard on their Filipino counterparts. The U.S. State Department appears more than eager to step in on their vassal's partner's behalf at that, which one imagines can't be doing the supposed U.S.-China rapprochement much good.



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