- The Decline & Fall Of Britain's Labour Party
Brexit has turned British politics upside down, with the consistent failure of the Conservative and Labour parties to deliver or effectively oppose the country’s exit from the EU fuelling a voter exodus, exemplified today with the latest voting intention poll putting Corbyn’s party in fourth place for the first time in its history.
Statista’s Martin Armstrong details that, as surveys by YouGov show, since the last election, Labour have managed to squander a relative wealth of positive public opinion, utterly failing to capitalise on the Tories being weak and wounded.
In the first ‘Favourability Tracker’ after the 2017 vote, a net 7 percent of Brits had a positive opinion of the party, compared to -21 percent for the Conservatives. In July 2019, this figure now sits at -35 percent for the Conservatives, but it is Labour that have fallen most spectacularly, now at -36 percent – a brutal drop of 42 percentage points.
You will find more infographics at Statista
In place of the two almost-slain giants have emerged a resurgent Liberal Democrats and the new Nigel Farage platform – the Brexit Party. The former enjoying the best net rating of -12 percent, and the latter at the same level the Conservatives were at just after their last (narrow) election win.
- NATO Narrative Nonsense: How Stupid Do They Think We Are?
Authored by Patrick Armstrong via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen.
“When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Consumers of the print or electronic output of the League of Copy Typists and their Instructors are expected to believe many impossible things and believe them, not just before breakfast, but all day too.
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Putin kills his enemies by using spectacular methods that can easily be traced back to Russia and preferably when he’s staging some high-profile event like the Olympics or World Cup.
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Russian submarines only fool around in the waterways of neutral countries whose elites want to get into NATO, never in NATO ones.
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Poison is smeared on the front doorknob. This requires the roof of the house to be replaced.
Come to think it, believing any part of the official Skripal story, from the incredibly lethal nerve agent that didn’t kill them, to the spectacular coincidence of the British Army’s chief nurse being on the scene, to the re-wrapped perfume bottle would tax the White Queen’s ability. Here’s a list. But that’s not to say that we’re finished yet: there always seems to be another absurdity like the dead ducks.
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Assad only uses chemical weapons or nerve agents when he’s winning.
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The USAF bombs with great precision and accuracy. But the cities it bombs are turned into rubble. Its “precision” is indistinguishable from random carpet bombing. Fallujah. Raqqa. Mosul.
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Washington’s enemy-of-the-moment always attacks just when Washington warns it might: vide recent Gulf of Tonkiran episode. Or shoots down innocent drones which are absolutely, positively, in international airspace. Or perhaps they aren’t.
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RT is tremendously effective at influencing people even though nobody you know actually watches it.
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Satellite photos vary between amazingly blurry and sharp as a tack. Obviously some mysterious law of optics is at work here: Russian artillery in Ukraine – blurry; Russian aircraft in Syria – sharp.
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Despite spending billions on intelligence agencies and equipment, NATO depends on Bellingcat and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights for its information. They are credible sources despite being on NATO’s payroll (UK in the case of SOHR and the Atlantic Council in the case of Bellingcat); Russian sources are not credible because they are on Moscow’s payroll.
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Putin is unable to rig elections in Ukraine or Georgia but he does it with ease in the USA and Europe.
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Russia is on the edge of collapse but tremendously powerful (Cleverly termed “Russophrenia” by Bryan MacDonald.)
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Democracies are inherently peaceful but always at war.
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No one knows where refugees come from; they just appear. See above and below. (They were warned.)
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NATO, despite its record in destabilising Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and the Balkans, is a force for stability.
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Sanctions, combined with threats and subversions, are not really an act of war. Even if they kill people in Iraqor Venezuela.
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Brian Hook, the US special representative on Iran, told reporters in Saudi Arabia that Iran “needs to meet diplomacy with diplomacy, not military force.” That statement doesn’t stand up to a millisecond’s consideration – sanctions, reconnaissance aircraft, more fighter planes, troop movements, more troops are not “diplomacy”. But the complaisant media re-prints it with a straight face.
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Iran is the principal state sponsor of terrorism; the most deadly terrorist organisation is al Qaida/ISIS. Or so the US State Department has told us for many years. They’re telling us that a Twelver Shiite state is number one but a Sunni Takfiri entity inspired by ibn Taymiyya and Sayyid Qutb, which regards Shiites as even greater enemies, is also number one. Those who say this, over and over again, never quite explain how these two assertions fit together.
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Freedom for same-sex activity is to be encouraged everywhere except in countries where they face the death penalty.
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Russia’s Military Drills Near NATO Border Raise Fears of Aggression. Comment is neither necessary nor possible on that one, is it?
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US declares Venezuela a national security threat, sanctions top officials. Ditto. And that’s from Obama’s time. (“National security threat”? Wow! Little Venezuela?).
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One dollar spent by Russians on Facebook is more effective than 1700 dollars spent by Clinton and Trump. Now that’s PPP!
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An investigation into an airplane crash that gives a suspect veto power and excludes the owner of the aircraft is the gold standard of investigations. Oh, and it’s quite proper to jump to the conclusion before the investigation has even begun. Because, after all, you just knew.
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If you accuse someone of a crime and he doesn’t immediately admit guilt, he’s admitting his guilt. Litvinenko: “Beyond the ‘rogue elements’ theories, pro-Kremlin media outlets in Russia have been pushing a slew of alternative theories“; MH17:The Kremlin’s Many Versions of the MH17 Story or Skripal: “Russia is pushing these 15 mutually contradictory theories to claim they weren’t behind the nerve agent attack“. Why don’t you just ‘fess up and stop wasting our time, Putin?
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AIPAC is not a foreign lobby and therefore is not a matter for FARA.
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Because we are proponents of the Rules-Based International Order we can violate the Vienna Conventionwhenever we want to and try to force military coups in neighbouring countries. And have as many uninvited soldiers in Syria as we want.
Pseudo psychology explains geopolitics. And pretty idiotically too: a whole country on the couch. “Russia is more insecure and paranoid“, “a kind of neurotic disorder that renders Russia’s sense of insecurity” “The deep sense of humiliation, the dread of arrogant Westerners, the fear of NATO encirclement.” or maybe it’s not the whole country, just Putin: Putin’s insecure because of Russia’s “diminished role in the world“. “Well, Russian President Vladimir Putin is a textbook case of someone with a serious inferiority complex.” Anyway, some gasbag pseudo-psychology explains it: there’s no reality, Russia/Putin is just naturally paranoid. Probably nothing you can do about it.
NATO is just going along, minding its own business when, entirely without provocation, hostile nations try to destabilise the world, interfere with freedom of navigation, assault the Rules-Based International Order, and otherwise force NATO to react. From a current Pentagon study:
“Russia is adopting coercive strategies that involve the orchestrated employment of military and nonmilitary means to deter and compel the US, its allies and partners prior to and after the outbreak of hostilities.”
“Deter and compel” – poor little NATO, so weak, so bullied! Russia does this because of its “deep-seated sense of geopolitical insecurity” which it has just because it has. (More geopolitical pseudo-psychology.)
And, finally, Putin is interfering in the West’s interference in another country.
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- Bolton Losing Ground On Venezuela, Iran… But Far From Down-And-Out
Authored by Martin Sieff via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
The wave of wishful thinking articles, including some by friends of mine whose judgment I usually respect was entirely wrong. President Donald Trump has not fired John Bolton for the failed fiasco of his latest inept attempt to topple the legitimate democratically-elected government of Venezuela: At least not yet.
Bolton remains National Security Advisor of the United States with his fingerprints all over the latest “incident” of limpet mine attacks on the two oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.
That is not to see that daylight has perceptibly opened up between Trump and Bolton, first on Venezuela and now on Iran. It most clearly has.
Had Trump still been fully in Bolton’s pocket, he would by now have ordered the ferocious air strikes against Iran that Bolton desperately craved. It is greatly to the president’s credit that he did not.
The failure of Bolton – eagerly supported by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Special Envoy Elliott Abrams and Vice President Mike Pence – to secure the toppling of President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela a month ago clearly cost him badly. Trump is a lifelong businessman. He would have gone for what he regarded as a good deal – the toppling of Maduro in a US–orchestrated coup but Bolton and his gang made an utter hash of it.
Bolton was therefore eager to turn the president’s attention – and that of political Washington – to Iran as soon as possible. The compliant, spineless jellyfish of the US Mainstream Media (MSM) accommodated him as always. Not a whisper of doubt about Bolton’s evident incompetence in the Venezuela Escapade has been allowed to appear in the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Instead, the MSM has settled for fluff gossip stories about how much Trump still loves or does not love his national security adviser.
Bolton retains the strategic support of his wealthy, enormously influential political sponsors: The neocon clans that ran US foreign and national security policy so catastrophically under President George W. Bush and whom President Barack Obama shamefully and complacently allowed to stay in power and perpetrate the destabilizations of Ukraine and Syria and the toppling of the government of Libya.
Bolton also continues to enjoy the total support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. If Netanyahu fails to secure a governing coalition in the September elections in Israel, it is extremely possible that Bolton will lose the crucial Israeli allies he has taken for granted for so long.
Since the days of Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli military has profoundly distrusted the war hungry wild delusional schemes of the neocon chicken-hawks in Washington as much as their opposite numbers in the Pentagon. Netanyahu’s most likely successor, Bluer and White coalition leader General Benny Gantz, a former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff can be a counted in their number.
Indeed, the key takeaway from the events that did – and more importantly did NOT – happen between the United States, Iran and Venezuela over the past three months is that the senior generals in the Pentagon, especially in the US Army – resisted the neocon super-hawks led by Bolton and his allies.
Senior US generals in my observations are not caricature, irresponsible militarists at all but sober professionals who recognize clearly the real rising challenges they face and the need to try and prevent having to fight several full scale wars on multiple fronts at the same time.
That is why the departure of General James Mattis as Secretary of Defense and of General John Kelly left such a worrisome gap at the apex of US strategic policymaking.
Yet the past three months have shown that the departures of Kelly and Mattis did not give Bolton and his fellow warmongers a free hand: The warmongers thought it did, but they blew it. Bolton is not gone yet by a long shot. But the myth of his supposed “genius” (which I have addressed elsewhere in these columns) has been badly damaged. Trump himself is beginning to see through it.
A man as fanatical and relentlessly energetic as Bolton – the mark of the dangerous fool in the estimation of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery – should never be dismissed from consideration until he is finally gone. As long as he still has the chance to whisper in the ear of the President of the United States – and the president lets him – he remains a danger to world peace and the survival of humanity.
The good news is that Venezuela has been granted a brief stay of execution. Iran, which Bolton has obsessed with destroying for 40 years, still remains his primary target. Yet Trump, Bolton’s own president, refused to play by Bolton’s appointed Gulf of Tonkin script on the latest manufactured Gulf crisis.
Bolton and his allies are obvious, brutal, predictable and straightforward: But they are also energetic, never-resting and relentless. They clearly have not given up in their efforts to manipulate Trump into launching a full-scale war with Iran and more provocations can be expected to follow relentlessly each piled upon another.
Bolton is down. But not out. After a strong start, he has suffered several stinging reversals. But his will power is not dented. Nor is his determination to drag his country headlong into multiple needless and avoidable conflicts whose only end can be utter destruction.
- Apple's India iPhone Sales Crash 42%
According to The Economic Times, Apple’s continuing slowdown in India has translated into a 42% decline in iPhone shipments in 1Q19 from a year before. During the first quarter, Apple shipped 220,000 iPhones in India, followed by an improvement in April thanks to carrier discounts. In May and June, however, iPhone sales plunged again.
Neil Shah, research director at Hong Kong-based Counterpoint Technology Market Research, said the full-year estimate for iPhone shipments in India is 1.5 million to 1.6 million, a 10-17% drop from 2018 and as much as 53% collapse from the peak shipment of 3.2 million in 2017.
Apple could start manufacturing its iPhones in India through Foxconn, with an initial monthly capacity of 250,000. About 75% of the iPhones may be exported as Apple figures out how to rework its supply chains outside of China.
“Apple had a disappointing run in 2018 and the outlook for 2019 looks weaker, with shipments having fallen further compared to last year, with the exception of April, thanks to price correction that month,” said Shah.
The Times said Apple is preparing to transform India into a major production hub than a top producing market, and intends to scale up local manufacturing amid US-China trade tensions.
Apple has instructed its key suppliers — Foxconn, Pegatron, and Wistron to move 15-30% of their production facilities outside of China to avoid US tariffs.
“Companies like Apple already have some of their global partner manufacturers in India and with the right environment and possibly incentives, can create a large-scale global hub for making in India and a deep ecosystem for component manufacturers,” said Pankaj Mohindroo, chairman of the Indian Cellular and Electronics Association.
“We are sitting on an opportunity which needs to be lapped up without losing a minute, else we run the risk of these investments going to other countries like Vietnam.”
Foxconn and Wistron have already constructed factories in India and industry experts told The Times that manufacturing volumes are increasing.
“Commercial production of iPhone XR and the models above that should begin by the year-end at Foxconn and exports will be part of the plan from day one,” said an anonymous industry insider.
India is also planning on relaxing its requirements on companies sourcing at least 30% of goods locally, but those requirements have been major hurdles for technology companies to meet. As a result, foreign direct investment dropped 13% in India in 2018. However, the relaxation of local sourcing regulations will allow more companies who are reworking supply chains out of China to find a possible home in India.
- Trump's Citizenship Question Isn't Controversial. Obama Deleting It Should've Been
Authored by Ian Miles Cheong via HumanEvents.com,
President Trump’s citizenship question on the upcoming U.S. census is, contrary to popular opinion, the norm for the decennial survey.
Barack Obama was the first President to exclude a question on citizenship in the U.S. Census.
But today, the Trump administration is being assailed from the Left for its efforts to include the question.
The Left has responded typically, with accusations of racism. The question of nationality, they claim, is a danger to immigrants.
There has also been no shortage of confusion as to whether President Donald Trump would go forward with its addition. Trump’s statements appear to contradict news reports that his administration dropped its plan to ask the question after a Supreme Court ruling.
The planned citizenship question asks: “Is this person a citizen of the United States?”
U.S. Census Letter
The political left’s dominant view is that the question could serve to marginalize immigrants or non-white Americans.
NPR, quoting the Urban Institute, says the census threatens to put “more than 4 million people at risk of being undocumented.” The headline warns the addition of the question could lead to “worst undercount of black, Latinx people in 30 years.”
But the framing implies Trump is the first U.S. President to include a question on citizenship, when in fact Trump is simply following the established and understandable tradition of asking those who fill out the form if they’re actually Americans.
The charge against Trump is one that demands reframing – Obama was the first to not include a question on citizenship, naturalization, or nativity in almost 200 years. The Trump administration is simply undoing Obama’s 8-year effort to distort the status quo.
Obama’s own efforts to not ask the question was limited to the 2010 Census. From 2009 to 2016, the former president’s Census Bureau had no problem asking anyone if they were Americans on all eight of his annual ACSs (American Community Survey), which targeted smaller demographics key to the success of the Democrats in the eight years of his administration.
The ACS even asked the question in both English as well as Spanish.
American Community Survey (Census Bureau)
In the decades prior, administrations from Bush, to Clinton, going all the way back to 1820, had questions on citizenship, nationality, or nativity. The process originated with Thomas Jefferson.
1870 Census
1880 Census
1900 Census
1910 Census
1920 Census
1930 Census
1940 Census
1950 Census
1960 Census
1970 Census
1980 Census
1990 Census
- Starbucks Forced To Apologize After Post-Cop-Ban #DumpStarbucks Campaign Goes Viral
Starbucks was forced to apologize on its website after an incident in a Tempe, Arizona, where a barista asked six police officers to leave the location, went viral. Additionally, the company has deployed its EVP/President of U.S. Retail to Tempe Sunday night after speaking to the city’s police chief.
In a statement addressed to “Chief Moir and the entire Tempe Police Department,” Starbucks apologizes for the July 4th incident, calling it “completely unacceptable”:
Thank you, Chief Moir, for the conversation today. On behalf of Starbucks, I want to sincerely apologize to you all for the experience that six of your officers had in our store on July 4.
When those officers entered the store and a customer raised a concern over their presence, they should have been welcomed and treated with dignity and the utmost respect by our partners (employees). Instead, they were made to feel unwelcome and disrespected, which is completely unacceptable.
At Starbucks, we have deep appreciation for your department and the officers who serve the Tempe community. Our partners rely on your service and welcome your presence, which keeps our stores and the community a safe and welcoming place.
The apology continues, with Starbucks EVP Rossann William stating:
Our strong relationship with the Tempe Police Department has provided us the opportunity to host several “Coffee with a Cop” events in area stores, which bring residents and police together to discuss relevant issues and find common ground. We look forward to continuing to strengthen our relationship with you, and we agree that the experience of your officers requires an important dialogue – one that we are committed to being part of.
What occurred in our store on July 4 is never the experience your officers or any customer should have, and at Starbucks, we are already taking the necessary steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again in the future.
I will be in Tempe this evening and welcome the opportunity to meet with any of you in person to address concerns or questions.
As we reported yesterday, a barista asked six police officers to leave the store – or move out of a customer’s line of sight – because they were making a customer feel “unsafe”, according to Business Insider which first reported the snafu.
As a result, the hashtag #DumpStarbucks started trending on Twitter after the Tempe Officers Association tweeted out a “Dump Starbucks” logo that was first used in 2012 to protest the company’s support of same sex marriage.
Don’t appreciate @Starbucks asking our #Tempe cops to leave your establishment on the #4thofjuly2019. Several of those cops are #veterans who fought for this country! #ZeroRespect pic.twitter.com/oGaDKhlYX3
— Tempe Officers Association (@ToaAz) July 5, 2019
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Six officers, including military veterans, were in the Starbucks – on the 4th of July of all days– to get drinks. A barista then asked them to leave because a customer “did not feel safe” with them present. The officers reportedly left without any confrontations, but the Tempe Officer’s Association said at the time that “such treatment has become all too common in 2019” and said it will “look forward to working collaboratively” with Starbucks to address the incident.
The issue was a topic of discussion on Fox News Sunday, where the President of the Tempe Officers Association said he hopes the issue “encourages a national dialogue”.
2/3 pic.twitter.com/tjSnBDixMh
— Tempe Officers Association (@ToaAz) July 7, 2019
- US Foreign Policy Is A War On Disobedience
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,
In an excellent new essay titled “We’re Not the Good Guys – Why Is American Aggression Missing in Action?”, Tom Engelhardt criticizes the way western media outlets consistently describe the behavior of disobedient nations like Iran as “aggressions”, but never use that label for the (generally antecedent and far more egregious) aggressions of the United States.
“When it comes to Washington’s never-ending war on terror, I think I can say with reasonable confidence that, in the past, the present, and the future, the one phrase you’re not likely to find in such media coverage will be ‘American aggression,’” Engelhardt writes. He then asks a very fair question:
“So here’s the strange thing, on a planet on which, in 2017, U.S. Special Operations forces deployed to 149 countries, or approximately 75% of all nations; on which the U.S. has perhaps 800 military garrisons outside its own territory; on which the U.S. Navy patrols most of its oceans and seas; on which U.S. unmanned aerial drones conduct assassination strikes across a surprising range of countries; and on which the U.S. has been fighting wars, as well as more minor conflicts, for years on end from Afghanistan to Libya, Syria to Yemen, Iraq to Niger in a century in which it chose to launch full-scale invasions of two countries (Afghanistan and Iraq), is it truly reasonable never to identify the U.S. as an ‘aggressor’ anywhere?”
In other words, does it really make sense for any nation to be able to take over the world and then look up with Bambi-eyed innocence saying “I was attacked! Completely out of the blue!” whenever any government pushes back on this? If you ask the empire’s narrative makers, the answer is a resounding yes.
The U.S. has military forces in over a hundred countries. So why won’t the mainstream media call us an aggressor? https://t.co/8jFs4QSyqV
— The Nation (@thenation) July 5, 2019
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This important discrepancy is as close as we’ll ever get to an honest admission from the political/media class that they consider empire-building and endless war to be normal, and any opposition to it freakish. All nations are meant to submit to America’s use of military and economic force upon them, and if they don’t, that’s “aggression”. The official position of the political/media class is that the US is a normal nation with the same rights and status as any other, but the unofficial position is that this is an empire, and nations will either obey or be destroyed.
It’s a machine with the same values as Napoleon or Hitler or Genghis Khan or any other imperialist conqueror from ages past; the only difference is that it pretends not to be the thing that it is. The US markets itself as an upholder of rules-based liberal democratic values, even though it consistently flouts international law, wages imperialist wars of aggression, imprisons journalists, crushes dissent and uses propaganda just as much as any totalitarian regime. The only difference is that it does so in a way that enables its supporters to pretend that that’s not what’s actually happening.
Forget the “war on terror”. If US foreign policy were honest it would unite all its war propaganda sloganeering under a single banner: the War on Disobedience.
After the end of the first cold war there was much celebration. At long last! The USSR was no longer a threat, so America could finally stop pouring its resources into the nuclear arms race and finally just relax and start acting like a normal country in the world. But it didn’t take long after the Berlin Wall fell for the neoconservatives to find their way into key points of influence and steer US foreign policy into the agenda of ensuring that America never again risks losing its status as the world’s only superpower. Which necessarily meant expanding the use of military and economic force to a level never previously seen.
So now you’ve got this weird dynamic where the US is constantly working to make sure that no other countries surpass it and gain the ability to treat America the way America treats other countries. That’s all US military and economic agendas in a nutshell right now.
The nation that poses the greatest threat to US hegemony is of course China. Most of the US war machine’s aggressions right now are ultimately built around securing resource control and geostrategic dominance to prevent China from surpassing it without attacking China itself. Any time you see the US ramping up hostilities toward a given nation, just do a search for that nation’s name plus China (or plus “Belt and Road Initiative”), and you’ll usually find a strong connection.
So the USSR was simply replaced with China, and the nuclear arms race was simply replaced with greatly increased global military expansionism. The plutocrat-owned media and the plutocrat-owned political class have fallen right in line with this and normalized the idea of US imperialism around the world. The cold war never ended, it just shifted its narrative and focus. Neoconservatism never went away, it just went mainstream.
U.S. Foreign Policy for Dummies: pic.twitter.com/jRZh0lSW5f
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) July 6, 2019
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But the thing about neocons and the rest of the increasingly indistinguishable proponents of American imperialism is that their underlying thesis is actually fundamentally correct: the US empire does depend on endless war in order to maintain its dominance over other nations. America doesn’t have the leverage to stay on top using economic prowess alone; it requires both the carrot of US military backing and the stick of US military aggressions. War is the only adhesive holding the US-centralized empire together, and the more its economic dominance slips away in the face of China’s economic rise, the more ham-fisted and desperate its warmongering is necessarily going to get.
This is completely unsustainable, especially in a world where the other major nuclear weapons force, Russia, is on China’s side of the new cold war dynamic. We’ve all now found ourselves trapped on a planet made of limited resources with two major alliances trying to out-consume and out-resource control each other, while hurtling toward a major military confrontation between nuclear superpowers. This puts us on a direct trajectory toward either nuclear annihilation or ecosystemic collapse in the near term. This means the argument that America needs to maintain its dominance at all cost is no longer a viable one, since that cost will almost certainly be everything in the world.
So we’ve all got some important questions to ask ourselves, haven’t we? Do we desire to stay in the familiar US-controlled world order at the price of omnicide and ecocide, or do we wish to roll the dice and bet on humanity instead? Do we wish to stay the course because it preserves a status quo that is all we’ve ever known, or do we take a leap of faith on the possibility that we can de-escalate all geopolitical enmity and move into collaboration with each other and with our ecosystem?
This choice right here is why I write so much about mankind’s need to transcend its old conditioning patterns and move into something wildly unprecedented. Our current fear-based mentality makes a populism-driven leap of faith into transcendence impossible and ensures that we remain on an oligarch-driven trajectory toward extinction. I firmly believe that we have the freedom to either pass or fail this test, but we don’t have the freedom not to take it. We’ll transcend our old conditioning patterns which we inherited from our evolutionary ancestors who lived in a wildly different world from the one we’ve created, or we will perish. It’s an A or B choice, but the choice is ours.
* * *
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- China And Taiwan Are "One Family," Says Chinese Official, Further Complicating Things For The US
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je, touted as a candidate in Taiwan’s 2020 presidential election, on Friday met with Liu Jieyi, director of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, who both agreed on enhancing cross-strait relations, something that could irritate the Trump administration.
Jieyi said both sides of the Taiwan Strait are “one family” but avoided saying phrases like “one country, two systems” and “peaceful reunification” during the closed-door meeting, reported Focus Taiwan.
Wen-je, who was in Shanghai for the Taipei-Shanghai Twin-City forum, met with Jieyi at a guest house Friday night.
“The trend is unstoppable,” Jieyi said, adding that China is committed to improving cross-strait relations following the guidance of Chinse President Xi Jinping.
Even if the meeting was closed-door, the conference is considered a significant gravitational shift, one where Taiwan could lean more towards China than the US.
During a press conference, Jieyi shared the achievements between Shanghai and Taipei in the past decade and his vision of a friendly environment in Taiwan Strait.
Jieyi said he had read Wen-je’s book titled “Taipei — A Proud City with Progressive Values” and said the mayor’s pursuit of serving his constituents and bringing innovation in the city was similar with China’s mission to lift millions out of poverty through technological advances.
He also said, “people from both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family and should help each other,” referring to travel and trade statistics.
While China suspended official contacts with Taiwan, Wen-je said that the Taipei-Shanghai forum is the “only official platform of communications between the two sides.”
Taiwan and China have been ruled separately since the 1949 split. Beijing still regards Taiwan as a province to be reunited with the mainland, by military force if necessary.
The Trump administration has made strong gestures in support of Taiwan, including the “Taiwan Assurance Act of 2019,” which supports Taiwan with “regular sales and defense articles.” There have also been more frequent reconnoissances missions with US warships in the Taiwan Strait. This comes at a time when the trade war has escalated into an almost full economic war, that has severely strained US-China relations.
Readers have to understand the danger is growing of an actual shooting war that could involve China and the US sparring over Taiwan.
- Then They Came For… Betsy Ross? Jefferson? July 4th? America?
Authored by John Derbyshire via The Unz Review,
I hope you enjoyed your July 4th as much as the Derbs enjoyed ours. You should in fact enjoy the Fourth each year now with special zest in the knowledge that it may not be a public holiday much longer.
Our Cultural Revolution advances ever faster.
Nowadays the word “pride” dwells under a cloud of suspicion. Steve Sailer has mused that when the younger generation today learns about the 1942 Gary Cooper movie Pride of the Yankees, their first reaction is probably: “Hey, I didn’t know Lou Gehrig was gay!”
For example, we recently had Pride Week in New York City, with the word “pride” used in just that sense. It climaxed on Sunday, June 30th, in a huge parade of proud Ls, Gs, Bs, Ts, and Qs down Fifth Avenue.
Thus primed, I think I may be forgiven for having misapprehended a headline I saw on the Drudge Report. American Pride Hits New Low. “Uh-oh,” I thought, “what have the homo lobbies been up to now?”
On investigation it turned out that the news report had nothing to do with eccentric sexual inclinations. That headline was actually taken from a new press release out of Gallup, the very respectable polling organization:
As Americans prepare to celebrate the Fourth of July holiday, their pride in the U.S. has hit its lowest point since Gallup’s first measurement in 2001. While 70 percent of U.S. adults overall say they are proud to be Americans, this includes fewer than half (45 percent) who are “extremely” proud, marking the second consecutive year that this reading is below the majority level. Democrats continue to lag far behind Republicans in expressing extreme pride in the U.S.
American Pride Hits New Low; Few Proud of Political System, by Megan Brenan, July 2, 2019
The eye-catching sentence is: “Democrats continue to lag far behind Republicans in expressing extreme pride in the U.S.”
The actual percentages expressing themselves “extremely proud to be American” are: Republicans 76, Democrats 22. That’s a heck of a gap: 54 percentage points. In 2001 it was ten points, 64 to 54.
Here’s my question for Democrats. The biggest issue in our politics right now arises from the fact that millions – tens of millions, likely hundred of millions – of foreigners want to come settle in America, with or without proper permission. Isn’t that an occasion for…”pride”?
Apparently not. This last week, we have seen a couple of major strides toward the abolition of Independence Day: .
- First we have learned that the 13-star Betsy Ross flag is an emblem of fascismbecause of “its connection to an era of slavery.”[Nike Nixes ‘Betsy Ross Flag’ Sneaker After Colin Kaepernick Intervenes, by Khadeeja Safdar and Andrew Beaton, WSJ, July 1, 2019]
The logic on this one was hard to follow. Is it the thirteen stars, representing the original thirteen colonies, in all of which (I think) slavery was legal at the time Ms. Ross offered her flag design? If it was, then the thirteen stripes must be equally offensive. That could be…what’s the cant word here?…oh yes: problematic, that could be problematic to a great many not-yet-fully-woke Americans, as our present national flag retains those same thirteen stripes.
The issue got further confused when diehard counter-revolutionary subversives noted that the Betsy Ross flag was prominently displayed at Barack Obama’s second inaugural bash.
Since it is inconceivable that Saint Barack himself was not fully woke to the shameful associations of the flag, a new justification for the ban had to be thought up.
It quickly was.
The Betsy Ross flag, we are now told, has been appropriated by white supremacists as a symbol of their deplorable movement.
I must say, I wasn’t aware of this. I have never seen the Betsy Ross flag on display at meetings of my own local white supremacy group SCARF (that’s the Suffolk County Assembly of Racists and Fascists) … but perhaps we’re just behind the curve out here in the sticks.
This logical switch illustrates the nimbleness of the Cultural Revolutionaries. In the fullness of time they will no doubt declare that yes, the current national flag is indeed unacceptable. They know, however, that the time is not yet right for a full-scale assault against all our national symbols. They need to proceed methodically, step by step until the moment is ripe to storm the Winter Palace.
The other revolutionary step forward this week:
- the city of Charlottesville, Virginia will no longer celebrate Thomas Jefferson’s birthday as an official city holiday.
Charlottesville is the home of the University of Virginia, which Jefferson founded, and of Jefferson’s Monticello estate.
If we continue along this path it can only be a matter of time—and not much time, given the accelerating pace of the past few years—until George Washington himself is expunged from the nation’s memory… exactly as President Trump foresaw in his speech following the 2017 antifa riot in Charlottesville.
Several people have pointed out that the name of our capital city is doubly outrageous to the legions of the Woke, commemorating as t does not only slave-owner George but also, in the “D.C.” part, Christopher Columbus, who caused West Indian aborigines to be enslaved.
The name “Washington, D.C.” must soon therefore be dragged down into oblivion along with Old Glory.
If, at that point, we are still celebrating July the Fourth, you can be sure it will be the next item on the revolutionaries’ list.
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
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