Larry Kelley Author Home Page 2024-03-14T21:19:24-07:00

Prelude

On a July afternoon in 1800, when I was 18 and my brother, Robbie, was 15, we sailed our family’s one-masted skiff into the greater Boston Channel. I had finished my first term at Harvard. The sky was clear and the salty breeze was wet, warm, and brisk. As we entered the main harbor, we solemnly gazed up at Bunker Hill where Warren Jones, our grandfather we never knew, was killed in the second battle of our war for independence. 

It had only been nine months since George Washington died. There was still a somberness that affected commoners in the local taverns and privileged wealthy Americans in their salons. The country still mourned his loss.

We rounded the point and saw vessels anchored in the harbor, a huge two-masted Brig from Spain, a full-rigged frigate from France, a number of American merchant schooners, and even an Ottoman galley. Boston had become a major international port and merchant center. The sight of these new foreign vessels now seemed normal.  Although we had not lived through the war, my brother and I understood who we were, the sons of an American revolutionary and his grateful beneficiaries. The site of so many foreign ships appearing in our harbor signaled to us that a new century and a new world had opened unlimited opportunities for us. With enormous pride, we basked in the knowledge that we were first-generation inheritors of the world’s newest constitutional republic.

On December 30 of last year, from its Beijing Bureau, Reuters filed a little-noticed yet incredibly important report.  President Xi executed a sweeping purge of many of his most senior generals which has “weakened the People’s Liberation Army.”

Wei Fenghe, China’s former Defense Minister who had moved over to head China’s new Rocket Force, is one of a few of China’s most senior military officers who have recently vanished. His supposed successor, Li Shangfu, was mysteriously removed as supreme defense minister last October without explanation. 

Chinese state-controlled media would not say where they were reassigned. When asked about their whereabouts, a defense ministry spokesman only said, “The military has zero tolerance for corruption.”

Knowledgeable China watchers agree the purges are a stunning setback for Xi who has pumped billions into buying and developing equipment as part of his modernizing efforts to build a “world-class” military capable of defeating the West.  Like Putin, his new ally in their mutual quest for world dominance, Xi’s purges expose deep-rooted corruption in his military’s opaque procurement department which spends billions annually.   

Since Xi took power in 2012, he has embarked on a wide-ranging anti-corruption crackdown among Communist Party and government officials, with the PLA being only one of its main targets.  Obviously, loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party can only be commanded by the threat of imprisonment. or execution.  

“It is a clear sign that they are being purged,” said Andrew Scobell, Distinguished Fellow for China at the United States Institute for Peace. “More heads will roll.”

The West Fights – And Steals from Russia’s Thieves 

Once Putin’s invasion looked imminent, many so-called military experts predicted Russia would destroy Ukrainian resistance in a matter of weeks.  As in Xi’s China,  Russia’s corrupt military procurement is one of the primary sources of graft and corruption for the men close to Putin.  When his invasion of Ukraine became bogged down in the winter of ’22, it came to light Putin had on paper more men and weaponry than actually existed, so much had been stolen. He was embarrassed on the world’s stage when Zelenskyy’s far smaller military has fought the Russians to a standstill.   

To make matters worse for the man who fashions himself the new Czarist conqueror, a multinational task force, REPO (standing for Russian Elite Proxies & Oligarchs), headed by the U.S., is confiscating the assets of Russian oligarchs surrounding Putin. Seizures include a superyacht, the 300 million-dollar, 106-meter ship owned by Suleiman Kerimov which arrived in San Diego in June of 2022. 

Owning private luxury mega yachts is just one of the ways Putin’s inner circle hides its millions stolen from Russia’s indentured subjects.  The good news is estimates have it that Putin’s kleptocrats have lost $30 billion to western government seizures. The process is known in government speak as disintermediation.  One wonders if it could be used against Putin, the biggest Mafia don of all time.  

Probably not. Tom Cotton, Senator from Arkansas, avers Putin’s assets are untouchable given that his wealth is inextricably tied up in Russian state-owned assets, where he might own a secret controlling interest in the Bolshoi Ballet or Aeroflot, etc.

Can the Tyrants Feel Safe?

The Ukraine war has cost Russia 315,000 dead and injured troops, or nearly 90% of the personnel it had when the conflict began. In a previous issue of this column, we reported that a general commanding one of Putin’s mercenary battalions, the Wagoner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, went into rebellion and led his army out of Ukraine and to within 120 miles from the gates of Moscow.    

Laurie Chen of the Reuters Beijing office writes, “The chronic problem of corruption will persist in the Chinese military because the root causes, low pay for officers and opacity in military expenditure have not been addressed.”  

As the Western Allies watch Putin suffer staggering losses in Ukraine and Xi purge his generals, it begs the question—Do these tyrants have a strong hold on power?

Envisioning Mustapha, the Dey of Algiers, can we assume that Xi and Putin are lonely tyrants afraid of their own courtiers?  Can Putin even contemplate a war against the U.S. and NATO in the West?   Can Xi confidently prosecute a war with the U.S., Taiwan, Japan, and Australia, in the East?  Or might they be more worried about the loyalty of their militaries or even a would-be assassin in their midst?   We can only hope.  


You can stay informed about our compatriots in other countries who are fighting for freedom, by subscribing to our newsletter. In these Freedom Chronicles, I will continue to discuss the freedom movements that are attempting to destabilize Xi’s China, Putin’s Russia, and the Iranian Mullahs. 

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    In a recent interview, Admiral John Aquillino, commander of all military forces, Indo Pacific, stated that despite its faltering economy, China has accomplished the largest and fastest military build-up of any nation since World War II.  From war planners to everyday citizens among our allies, Taiwan, India, Australia, Indonesia, Korea, and the Philippines we need to hope deterrence will hold until the regime running China, the CCP, collapses or is overthrown. President Xi’s frequently stated objective is, quite simply, the complete subjugation of the West, by force, if necessary.  

    In previous issues, I have reported on the freedom fighters inside our foes, Iran, and Russia and those of our ally, Israel, now fighting a multifront war against the genocide seekers on their borders. In this issue, and several to follow, I will seek to discover—can the freedom fighters inside China hasten the demise of their CCP overlords?

    What are the forces inside China which can aid the new Chinese revolutionaries?  For one, the size of its labor force is collapsing. Its current demographic implosion is rooted 35 years ago, in Deng Xiaoping’s Orwellian decision to limit Chinese families to only one child. Once imposed, it did free up much of the population for work. 

    Prior to the ban, the average Chinese female gave birth to 6 or 7 children in her lifetime. By the late 1990s, it had fallen to less than 2, the number necessary to keep a population from declining. It has stayed that low since. The relief from child-rearing needs freed more people to man China’s factories, enabling a surge in exports and feeding monumental infrastructure projects. The economy boomed, growing over 10 percent a year for several decades.

    But now, thirty years later, the population has aged and there are not enough young workers to support the old who cannot work. China in 2000 had 6.5 people of working for each retiree. Now each requires 3.6 workers to finance their food, clothing, shelter, and medical service.   By 2040, the OECD projects the ratio will fall to 1.7. It won’t matter whether the retirees have pension resources on paper or if they will depend on family or on public support, the unworkable economics are the same. The days of an economy growing at 10% are fading memory.

    Making matters more untenable for China’s massive, retired population, one out of five young people, age 16 -24 are not working.  In December of ’23, the government published an unemployment rate of 21%.  The very next month, the CCP quickly revised the number down to 15%.  

    No one, not even the average Chinese government official believes the government’s new unemployment numbers. The actual economics are now so bad, a top Chinese intelligence unit last month elevated even a discussion of the economy to a matter of national security and made it plain that anyone who disparages the Chinese economy on social media or elsewhere may be held criminally liable. 

    An Ominous Surge of Chinese Military Age Illegals  

    Immigration could help, at least theoretically, but few are clamoring to get into China. Indeed, to make matters even more dire, the country has a net out-flow migration, or so it would seem. US news agencies have recently broadcast film of long lines of Chinese military age men braving the Rio Grande, crossing our open southern border. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported just 127 people to China in 2022. That’s compared to 28,000 total undocumented Chinese immigrants encountered at the land border, sea, and airports, a 20-fold increase in 2023.

    (More on China’s vast population of potential revolutionaries in the next issues of The Freedom Chronicles)

    Today the Israeli freedom fighters are every man, women, and child living inside Israel who wishes to live free of the fear of being killed or worse. While their forces are winning the kinetic war inside Gaza, Israel is losing the propaganda war worldwide. 

    As of this writing, Hamas continues to hold 132 captives. France, Germany, and the UK are now urging a cease-fire, to which Netanyahu responds, “We are in a war for our existence.”  Moreover, many of my fellow historians have asserted Israel is a member of the West, fighting at the front against the totalitarians, in the war between good and evil.  

    Tragically, IDF fighters killed three Israeli hostages who they mistakenly thought were disguised Hamas fighters. According to an Israeli official, the families of the three hostages killed as well as those of the soldiers who killed them lie in ruins. 

    The Hamas-sympathizing Washington Post reports that 1800 Palestinians have been killed, with no corroboration from the Hamas-controlled health officials and with no delineation of fighters versus civilians killed. It goes on to report that Israel drops leaflets on city sections scheduled for bombing, alerting the civilians to vacate, or be considered enemy combatants.  This the paper incongruously asserts, “Is the reason there has been such high levels of civilian deaths.”

    One might ask the Post or any Hamas-sympathizing news outlet, “Did the Palestinians drop leaflets on Southern Israel before showering it with thousands of rockets, swooping in and killing 1,100 Israeli citizens, including 36 children, 373 security guards, 71 foreigners, and inflicting mass sexual violence?”

    Should the US have dropped leaflets on Tokyo warning the civilians of the daring Doolittle’s bombing raid, staged four months after Pearl Harbor? Obviously, to leaflet before an attack is to forfeit surprise and one’s own soldiers’ lives. Israel is the only country in the world or in the history of the world, for that matter, that, having suffered an attack, is held to such an absurd standard. 


    Larry Kelley’s first work of comparative history has been revised and released under a new publisher. The new edition of Lessons From Fallen Civilizations Volume 1; Why Great Societies Fail, is available exclusively through the Larry Kelley Amazon Author Amazon Publishing. Please use the button link below to purchase Larry’s books directly from the publisher via amazon.com.