A worrying and convincing post @ #18 - (not sure Orac, if you were quoting or commenting yourself?).
But the picture is very worrying - we might be seeing the beginning of World War 3.
I am not a conspiracy theorist...but..... Russia and China could be working together to defeat the West. China could have invented and engineered the Covid virus to weaken the West mentally and physically, (they might well have all had the antidote before the virus was released, and are just making up infection figures in their own countries). Russia and China could have meddled and influenced political elections in Europe and the USA, (and probably Brexit as well), the aim being to destabilise the West. China is flooding markets with goods, undercutting and reducing Western countries' own manufacturing capability - which could be an issue if the West needs to start making arms and war machines.
The UK armed forces currently seem to be concentrating more on gender issues and ethnic minorities, than actually recruiting the very best personnel - more evidence of political meddling behind the scenes from Russia and China ?
Apparently Finland have recently closed all their border crossings with Russia, because the influx of immigrants and asylum seekers from Somalia etc into Finland via its border with Russia has suddenly increased hugely, and this is known to be owing to Russian involvement.
The boat crossings of enormous numbers of immigrants into the UK are therefore probably also organised or at least heavily encouraged by the Russians, with the aim of destabilising the UK further, having already split the UK away from Europe. Other countries, such as The Netherlands and France are apparently also finding immigration to be causing big problems. As are Italy and Greece.
Immigration to the USA via Mexico could be engineered and/or encouraged too, to destabilise the USA.
Meanwhile, China is apparently placing military 'assets' on small uninhabited islands in the seas around Japan and Taiwan, as well as sabre rattling.
Then we have the provocation of Israel by Hamas, and the resulting war, sponsored no doubt by Iran.
America, and the UK - to mention just two countries - seem to have been vulnerable in recent years to the election of ineffectual or crazy Presidents/Prime Ministers. Has election meddling, via social media, been going on?
The UK armed forces and hardware assets are a fraction of their previous complement. Would we and NATO be able to prevent and defeat an invasion by Russia of the Shetland islands and the Faroe Islands ?
Putin has just announced that he will stand for a sixth term - and it is hard to believe that he will be defeated in the elections. He and his ego seem to want a big place in history, and starting a World War would certainly give him that.
Please tell me I am imagining all this and am just having a bad dream.