History made — Tianwen-1's landing on Mars serves as a warning to US imperialists

15 May 2021

I'm impressed, are you?

Consider this news:

[T]oday China says it safely landed a spacecraft on Mars—for the first time in its history and in its first attempt, becoming the only other nation besides the U.S. to achieve such a feat.

Its Zhurong rover, named after a god of fire from Chinese folklore, successfully touched down in Utopia Planitia around 7:11 P.M. EST as part of the Tianwen-1 mission, according to the China National Space Administration.

Soon the rover should drive down the ramp of its landing platform, ready to explore its unearthly surroundings.

If there was any doubt about China’s spacefaring prowess, it has been dispelled now that the nation has added interplanetary landings as a coveted notch on its belt.

“Mars is hard,” says Roger Launius, NASA’s former chief historian. “This is a really big deal.”

Reinforcing Dr. Launius' point is . . .

. . . the fact that the number of Chinese names on the world's scientific papers very probably exceeds those of the United States:

Taking account of increased citations to Chinese-addressed articles relative to the global average as well, we attribute 37 percent of global citations to scientific articles published in 2013 to China.

With shares of articles and citations more than twice its share of global population or GDP, China has achieved a comparative advantage in knowledge . . . .

© 2019 Qingnan Xie and Richard B. Freeman, Bigger Than You Thought: China’s Contribution to Scientific Publications and Its Impact on the Global Economy, China & World Economy, Vol 27, No 1 (2019) (published by the Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)

Meanwhile — Washington DC keeps trying to provoke China

For instance — in addition to just throwing insults (see here and here) — by parading US Navy vessels in seas adjacent to China.

See the below account, in particular:

U.S. Daily Military, China Angry: Beijing Condemns US Warship for Disrupting PLA Navy Exercise in the South China Sea, YouTube (30 April 2021)

That incident — featuring a US Navy destroyer apparently intentionally interfering with a Chinese naval exercise, so as to prove an unnecessary point about American power — reminds me of the bullshit that the US conducted around North Vietnam, just before we started the Vietnam War in earnest. That onslaught, coming via a faked naval incident in the Gulf of Tonkin. More than 3 million eventually people died — completely unnecessarily (according to any thoughtfully sound interpretation of non-idiot geopolitical strategy).

The Pentagon's false flag schemers are probably back at work now. Preparing to create a fog on China-adjacent waters that will conceal who actually did what to whom. Fake the spark and off, we will happily go, again.

The argument in support of continually provoking China in this way is that these are international waters. Holy Angel America needs to protect them from Devil China's, allegedly combative, claims of ownership.

Contemplating that logic, level-headed Americans might think back to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and recall how we reacted, when the Soviet Union was caught infiltrating our hegemonic backdoor.

World War 3 would have started right then and there — with nuclear arms — save for one Soviet submarine officer's courageous display of solid reasoning and honed warrior's judgment.

Very few Americans know who flotilla commander (later vice admiral) Vasily Arkhipov was. Nor how much, millions on this planet owe him.

With that recollection in mind, do tell me . . .

How is America's current activity in Chinese seas different from the Soviet Union's violation of American clout within 'our' Hemisphere in 1962?

Who (really) is provoking whom?

I do not think that this plan of enthusiastically undertaken self-immolation . . .

. . . is going to go especially well.

Not when (necessarily) generated from the opposite side of the planet and in the face of China's much shorter, essentially interior battle lines — land and sea.

And certainly not with an alleged foe that can keep up with us technologically and gargantuanly exceeds us in its manufacturing sector's breadth, depth and capacity.

One could, therefore, call the United States' continuing provocation of China (and Russia) plain stupid.

American strategy consists of a self-initiated contest that tries to demonstrate whose dick is bigger. And ours — given the strategic vacuity of these macho-dumb displays — is likely to get substantially shortened by creating an incident — with a reasonably powerful hegemonic adversary that is located logistically too far from our shores to adequately control. Without, of course, initiating nuclear annihilation.

The moral? — China's Tianwen-1 mission intentionally sent us a message

Only dopes would miss it:

Zhurong — god of fire.

Mars — god of war.

Unfortunately, most of American leadership is composed of sociopathically aggressive dullards.

PeteFree.com

History made — Tianwen-1's landing on Mars serves as a warning to US imperialists