Bulgaria to sign Artemis Accords
NASA yesterday announced that Bulgaria will sign the Artemis Accords tomorrow, becoming the 32nd nation to join the alliance.
The full list of signatories is as follows: Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.
The competing alliance of communist nations, led by China, includes only Russia, Venezuala, Pakistan, Belarus, Azerbaijan, and South Africa. That former deep Soviet block nations like Bulgaria and Romania went with the west rather than China illustrates the international distrust of China and its authoritarian methods.
Regardless, we now see a rough outline of the coming cold war in space.
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Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
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NASA yesterday announced that Bulgaria will sign the Artemis Accords tomorrow, becoming the 32nd nation to join the alliance.
The full list of signatories is as follows: Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.
The competing alliance of communist nations, led by China, includes only Russia, Venezuala, Pakistan, Belarus, Azerbaijan, and South Africa. That former deep Soviet block nations like Bulgaria and Romania went with the west rather than China illustrates the international distrust of China and its authoritarian methods.
Regardless, we now see a rough outline of the coming cold war in space.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
How very interesting that Kazakhstan hasn’t yet joined the China/Russia alliance.
Matt in AZ: Russia did itself no good invading the Ukraine. It has made Kazakhstan far less interested in working with it as a partner.
Kazakhstan is charting an increasingly independent course anent Russia in all sorts of ways. Another of Bob. Z’s. posts a bit more recent than this one notes that Kazakhstan has just struck a deal with SpaceX that will provide Starlink service to its schools. I think the Kazakhs smell the collapse of Russia rapidly approaching and are preparing for a post-Russian future.
Anent the Artemis Accords, Bulgaria’s accession brings the number of AA adherents – 32 – to exactly 10 more than the total adhering to the godawful Moon Treaty. Seven of the nations on the AA adherent list are also adherents of the Moon Treaty. One of these – Saudi Arabia, somewhat surprisingly – will be officially withdrawn from the Moon Treaty as of early January. One hopes that the remaining nations – Australia, France, India, Mexico, Netherlands and Romania – currently adhering to both will soon do likewise.
Mr. Zimmerman: Your use of the word “communist” in the context of your article is empty and meaningless. This increases my doubts as to whether you are capable of producing qualified political statements and analyses.
If you look at the political processes and the situation in your own country, the US Empire, it is much more likely to be called communist than Russia, the latter is very conservative. Such developments – which you report on almost every day – such as wokism and genderism would not be possible there.
Questioner,
You wrote: “If you look at the political processes and the situation in your own country, the US Empire, it is much more likely to be called communist than Russia, the latter is very conservative. Such developments – which you report on almost every day – such as wokism and genderism would not be possible there.”
Interesting that you consider wokism and genderism to be communist or Marxist ideals in America but not elsewhere. Just as it is possible to happen in the U.S., it is shortsighted to think it cannot happen in communism, if the communist rulers choose to do it.
“Such developments – which you report on almost every day – such as wokism and genderism would not be possible there.”
Of course not – wokism, genderism and other things like racism and uncontrolled “immigration” are things the left nurtures and inflicts on others, as weapons to destroy their societies!
Bulgaria should lie after Brazil for the list to be fully alphabetized.
Michael McNeil: Thank you. Fixed.
Questioner,
It is true that only two of the seven nations in the PRC’s lunar base combine are formally socialist/communist – the PRC itself and Venezuela. The others, though, are all one-party autocracies/kleptocracies with Russia, Belarus and Azerbaijan having communist pasts and South Africa being run by a party, the ANC, that has long regarded itself as socialist/communist. Given that the PRC is avowedly socialist/communist and is also footing most of the bills and providing nearly all of the key technology, calling it’s lunar project a communist alliance is at least first and second order correct.
The project is, in any case, far more communist than the U.S. is an “Empire.” That you trot out this tired old leftist wheeze removes any doubt about your capability of making “qualified” – whatever that means – political statements and analyses. It is impossible to take seriously any “analysis” that starts with a readily demonstrable falsehood.
The U.S. is not only not an empire, the post-WW2 global order established by the U.S. is the first really novel non-imperial form of international organization ever seen. Under this order, all extant empires were dismantled except the one this global order was stood up to oppose in the first place, namely that of the former Soviet Union. For a straightforward explanation of this I recommend to you the written works of Peter Zeihan as well as any of the numerous long-form podcasts on which he has appeared as a guest and in which he summarizes this thesis. His Joe Rogan appearance is particularly amusing.