Monday, March 18, 2024
Supreme Court Appears Reluctant to Limit Biden Admin Contact With Social Media | The Epoch Times
Sunday, March 17, 2024
The Israeli Army Commander's Demand for Unity Is Frightening, and Unnecessary - Opinion - Haaretz.com
A Democratic End to Ukraine's War? - CounterPunch.org
A Democratic End to Ukraine's War? - CounterPunch.org
FM: John Whitbeck
I am taking the liberty of retransmitting below the message and article which I circulated a year ago today.
However, as some may recall, in early June of last year, at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue defense conference in Singapore, Indonesia's president-elect Prabowo Subianto, then serving as defense minister, also proposed democratic voting in the "disputed territories" as an alternative to continued competitive killing, a proposal which the FINANCIAL TIMES reported as "triggering fierce criticism from western security officials but praise from China and highlighting the deep divide between the west and global south over Russia's invasion of its neighbor."
Perhaps Prabowo will revive this proposal when he takes office as Indonesia's president.
Perhaps Western security officials and their associated political leaders, notwithstanding their increasingly delusional and dangerous public pronouncements, would be more open-minded to a face-saving off-ramp from their war in Ukraine now than they were last June, before the costly failure of the "counteroffensive" which they insisted that a reluctant Ukrainian military undertake.
One must hope. Unnecessary wars -- and almost all wars are unnecessary -- must end.
Daring to "Look a Sacred Cow in the Teeth" - TomDispatch.com
Daring to "Look a Sacred Cow in the Teeth" - TomDispatch.com
William Astore, Cutting the Pentagon Down to Size
March 17, 2024
It's one of the stranger phenomena on this planet. By 2023, the U.S. was estimated to spend more money on its "defense budget" than the next 10 countries combined. Yes, the next 10! And yet, whether you're talking about Korea and Vietnam in the last century, or Afghanistan, Iraq, and so many other places involved in what came to be known as the "war on terror" in this one, the U.S. hasn't won a conflict of any significance (or even insignificance) in recent memory.
Take, for example, Somalia. As Nick Turse reports at the Intercept, the U.S. has been involved in a conflict with what became al-Shabab, a local branch of al-Qaeda, since its special operations forces were first dispatched there in 2002. In the years that followed, conventional troops and air power were added to the mix. In 2007, the U.S. military made its first air strike there and at least 280 air attacks and commando raids on al-Shabab have followed. The result, as Turse notes: "Last year, deaths in Somalia from Islamist violence hit a record high of 7,643 -- triple the number in 2020... [including] a 22% rise in fatalities from terrorism in Somalia from 2022 to 2023," while "violence has increasingly bled across the border into Kenya."
And that's about as close to success as the war on terror gets. Meanwhile, last year Congress responded (as always) by passing a record Pentagon budget of $886 billion on its way, it seems, to the trillion-dollar mark in the foreseeable future. Quite a record, all in all, when it comes to squandering your tax dollars on the military-industrial-congressional complex. But let retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, historian, and TomDispatch regular William Astore fill you in on what it would now mean (and would have meant once upon a time) to cut that budget in a significant fashion -- and then, of course, dream on. Tom
House May Refer January 6 Committee Members for Obstruction, Lawmaker Says | The Epoch Times
'Israel' eyes private military contractors for bizarre US pier in Gaza | Al Mayadeen English
After the pandemic, young Chinese again want to study abroad, just not so much in the US | AP News
Supreme Court to Hear Arguments in Biden Admin’s Censorship of Social Media Posts | The Epoch Times
Saturday, March 16, 2024
Democrats Losing Their Hold on California and California Losing Its Hold on America | The Epoch Times
Which saint almost despaired over predestination? - Get Fed™
Which saint almost despaired over predestination? - Get Fed™
Which saint almost despaired over predestination?
St. Francis de Sales was still a young student in college when his great “temptation” came.
The year was 1587.
The Protestant Revolution had recently occurred, and in Francis’s native Savoy, the Calvinist doctrine of predestination had stirred the Church into discussing just where predestination fits into Catholic doctrine.
Francis listened to the college theologians talk about predestination and grew filled with dread. If God truly did predestine souls to heaven or hell, then he, Francis, was surely destined for hell.
For two months, he experienced a great darkness and temptation to despair.
Finally, he fled to the church of St. Étienne-des-Grès and knelt before the statue of Our Lady of Good Deliverance. There, he prayed the Memorare most fervently.
Immediately, joy and consolation flooded his soul.
St. Francis preaching
St. Francis preaching
After this, Francis made a vow of chastity, committing himself to the Blessed Mother. When he became a priest—overcoming the objections of his family—he set himself to refuting Protestant doctrine and bringing souls back into the Church’s fold. His first mission was against Calvinism and its erroneous doctrine of predestination.
St. Francis de Sales was a prolific writer, to say the least. Between church duty and mission preaching, he wrote an astounding number of treatises, leaflets, books, sermons, and letters—many of them to laymen and women. If you’re looking for a great place to start with St. Francis de Sales’ writings, his classic An Introduction to the Devout Life is an essential read for all Catholics. Order your copy today from The Catholic Company!
What Is China’s Future? Economic Decline, or the Next Industrial Revolution? | naked capitalism
US Had Secret Talks with Iran About Houthi Red Sea Shipping Attacks in January | naked capitalism
Young People Get Their News from TikTok. That’s a Huge Problem for Democrats. - Columbia Journalism Review
MSNBC openly attacks First Amendment, says free speech leaves American democracy “vulnerable”
NORAD Commander Warns ‘Thousands’ of Drones Are Infiltrating US Airspace Across the Southern Border | NTD
Let grief refine you into a person of hope - RADIANT - Guest Post
Let grief refine you into a person of hope - RADIANT
Let grief refine you into a person of hope
Spirituality
by Margo White
In the five months since the passing of my father, I’ve come to learn that grief is a process of searching. It is searching through photos on my computer for an image of him. It is searching my mind for a delightful memory that I can share with my husband, family and friends. It is searching my soul for what my dad would have said in response to an idea, an event, a piece of news. It is searching for his features in my own reflection. I am constantly searching for my father in the present to reassure myself that he remains with me despite his physical absence.
“Everyone is looking for you” (Mk 1:37).
Christianity, much like grief, requires recollection and searching in its practice. At the core of the Christian life, we are called to recollect Christ’s light to the world as his body on earth in his absence. We are called to search for Christ in all beings, even the most poor and wretched. We pray that our hearts and minds are open so that the Holy Spirit can use us to evoke him. We hope that our consciences are clear so that we can more easily recall Christ’s will for our lives — what he may say or do in any given situation.
Broken, mended and refined
Grief and the season of Lent are both periods of great solemnity. They are times of refinement. My grief counselor has likened grief to a Japanese art form called kintsugi. Kintsugi is an ancient practice that rejoins broken pieces of an object with gold. The object is brought back together with a stronger substance and, once transformed, is even more beautiful than the original. By highlighting cracks and repairs as events in the life of an object, this ancient artform justifies keeping an object despite its brokenness. A broken bowl is not thrown away simply because it has a crack in it.
In my earliest days of grief, my counselor assured me that though I may be broken by loss, I will become strong again and, hopefully, gain wisdom through this period of immense sorrow. Everyone will experience grief in their lives. I now understand it better. Whenever I drive past a cemetery, I pray for the dead who rest there in hopes that some woman in a hundred year’s time will pray for the repose of my dad’s soul as she drives past his cemetery on her way to the grocery store. Perhaps that is refinement. Perhaps that is wisdom.
Lent similarly brings strength and wisdom as it refines our Christian sensibilities. In denying ourselves, giving more to the poor and praying, we pour Christ — who is much stronger and more beautiful than gold — into our brokenness. We become better, more Christ-like and, hopefully, wiser. Through confession, we reaffirm our knowledge that we are not damned beyond hope. Through the practices of the Lenten season, we can become whole again as we are transformed into a more beautiful version of ourselves.
Holding on to hope
In many ways, the Stations of the Cross evoke the stages of grief as we experience a range of emotions through the process: denial, anger, acceptance and hope, to name a few. We are angry when Jesus is condemned to death because we know that it was unjust. We may be in denial at his passion until we are reminded three times that Jesus fell as he carried his cross. We may begin to hope when Jesus meets his mother, only to fall into despair yet again when Jesus’ clothes are taken away. The stations, like grief, bring us through a range of emotions as we relive the death of Our Lord.
Interestingly, in many of the depictions of the Stations of the Cross, the Holy Mother is depicted as stoic while Mary Magdalene and the other women of Jerusalem weep. It’s believed that Mary is portrayed this way for she knew what was to come: that Christ would conquer death, she would see him again, and the Passion, though heartbreaking, was not the end.
Unlike grief, Lent comes to an end with Easter celebrations. I will carry the loss of my dad for the rest of my life, but thankfully, I can hold onto hope because, like Mary, I know that death is not the end. Rather, I’m reassured that Christ is always present to help me bear this cross. He will come in fulfillment of his promise to conquer death once again. I can hold onto hope that I be reunited with my father at the resurrection of the dead at the end of time. I look forward to that day — the resurrection and life of the world to come. Amen.
Opinion | The real problem with the Trump-Biden choice - The Washington Post
Opinion | The real problem with the Trump-Biden choice - The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/03/13/biden-trump-choice-world-geopolitics/
The real problem with the Trump-Biden choice
By Robert Wright. WASHINGTON POST March 13, 2024
Robert Wright, whose books include “The Moral Animal” and “Nonzero,” publishes the Nonzero Newsletter and hosts the Nonzero podcast. This essay originally appeared in the Nonzero Newsletter.
Super Tuesday has come and gone, leaving in its wake the harsh reality of this year’s presidential election: In less than eight months, America will have to choose between an 81-year-old who sometimes seems older than his age and a 78-year-old who sometimes seems younger than his age — like 12, maybe 13 years old.
Not surprisingly, polls show that there is less enthusiasm within each party for its candidate than there was during the last matchup between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. But that doesn’t mean voters aren’t revved up about the election. True, an NBC News poll found that 62 percent of Biden voters say they’re more anti-Trump than pro-Biden — but it’s possible to be really, really anti-Trump, and a lot of Biden voters are. In a polarized country awash in “negative partisanship,” you don’t have to love your party’s candidate to be gripped by a paralyzing fear that your party’s candidate will lose.
If you suffer from this syndrome, I have some free therapeutic advice: Consider the possibility that whether your candidate wins doesn’t matter as much as you think. And I mean that in the most momentous sense possible. Maybe when it comes to keeping the world from spiraling toward catastrophe, neither Trump nor Biden is up to the job.
There — feel better? Not yet? Well, give me a few more paragraphs.
The source text for this sermon is a recent piece in the Financial Times written by historian Adam Tooze. It begins:
Looking to the future much of the world is frozen in horror at the prospect that American democracy will, by this time next year, deliver a second Donald Trump administration, hell-bent on tearing up the international order. But what about Joe Biden’s record on that score? Clearly, the manners of the Biden administration are less disruptive. It does not indulge in climate denial. It plays nicely with Europe. But …
After the “But,” Tooze notes, among other things, that under Biden the United States “has poured resources into Ukraine and the Middle East, but is unable and unwilling to broker a satisfactory peace.” And “in relation to China the Biden team has, if anything, escalated the tension” even beyond the level that Trump carried it to while he was in office.
In critiquing Biden’s prolific and often unilateral use of sanctions and other economic weapons against China (and against other adversaries), Tooze notes an irony that is typically noted in the context of U.S. military interventions: “Washington is seeking to defend what it likes to call the rules-based international order with a series of unruly self-interested interventions.”
And Tooze has an interesting explanation for this economic variant of the United States’ rules-based hypocrisy: It grows out of a dawning pessimism — the waning of the post-Cold-War belief that an economically interconnected world is a fundamentally good thing. National security adviser Jake Sullivan and other policymakers of his generation “pay lip service to global prosperity, but see globalization as undermining America’s middle class, opening the door to Trump and propelling the rise of China.”
The problem with this Gen X critique of globalization (and this is me talking, not Tooze) isn’t that it’s wrong on the specifics. Free trade has indeed hurt some American workers — by sending American jobs to China and other low-wage countries — and therefore has helped Trump; and certainly it has helped China. The problem, rather, lies in the United States’ atavistic reaction to the resulting challenge — a reaction that was less surprising in the case of the avowedly nationalist and proudly primitive Trump than in the case of Biden.
The reaction involves:
concluding that the “rise of China” is inherently bad (a judgment that, when formed in an economic context, finds unfortunate synergy with comparable views in the national security realm, exacerbating the Blob’s already robust penchant for threat inflation); and
relying heavily on unilateral economic weapons as a way to address globalization’s bad side effects — and matching that with economic warfare in the national security realm, not to mention gratuitous military muscle flexing in China’s neighborhood. (Did you know the United States has sent troops to the Kinmen islands, which are Taiwanese territory but more than 100 miles from Taiwan and only a few miles from the Chinese mainland?)
Meanwhile, the thought of actually sitting down and having sustained discussions with China about working out our differences seems like a quaint idea from a simpler time. More alien still is the idea of building international institutions to systematize such rationality. Indeed, the United States has abetted the decay of multilateral bodies — like the adjudicatory tribunals of the World Trade Organization — that for one bright shining post-Cold-War moment were actually resolving international disputes.
Even if the confrontational approach to China practiced by both Trump and Biden doesn’t lead to war, the next worst thing — a prolonged Cold War — is something we can’t afford, given the number of non-zero-sum problems the world’s nations need to collectively address: climate change, pandemics, the proliferation of nuclear and biological weapons, the militarization of space, threats posed by artificial intelligence, and so on. These dangers, if unaddressed, could in various combinations prove truly catastrophic.
“Non-zero-sum” is a concept that never deeply penetrated the character of either the Trump or Biden White Houses. Sure, the basic idea — that the world is full of non-zero-sum games, and you should seek win-win outcomes and avoid lose-lose outcomes — is one that Sullivan and others in Biden’s administration can recite. But the actual harnessing of international non-zero-sum dynamics is, for them, typically in the service of some zero-sum confrontation; cooperation is something you do with some countries to thwart other countries. Biden adviser Daleep Singh writes that the United States should “attract nonaligned countries into its orbit with positive inducements, and in doing so … gradually isolate China before any conflict unfolds.” (Reminder: Isolation has been known to cause conflict.)
I suspect that if you confronted Sullivan and other Biden officials with Tooze’s diagnosis — that they’re undermining the rules-based order because they “no longer believe in the optimistic historical vision that once framed those rules” — they’d insist that there’s a kind of optimism they retain: faith in the power of America to spread democracy — a distinctively neoconservative version of American exceptionalism, most recently trumpeted by Biden in his State of the Union address. But this claim rings hollow when, with U.S. democracy in disarray, we can’t promulgate our model by example and so must rely on various forms of coercion, none of which seem to work.
There is another kind of optimism, rooted in what I guess you could call a kind of American exceptionalism. Here the idea is that the United States is uniquely positioned, by virtue of power and geographic location and other assets, including ethnic diversity, to draw the world’s nations into a true global community, which then addresses the many challenges nations collectively face.
But this will involve reviving a virtue that has more or less vanished from U.S. foreign policy: humility. We’ll have to give up on reshaping other countries in our political and cultural image (which often backfires anyway) and concentrate instead on pursuing interests we share with them. If we accurately perceive those interests and truly grasp their importance, there will then be enough impetus to achieve the elusive prerequisite for pursuing them effectively: putting war — both hot and cold — aside.
Doing this will take a kind of revolution — an uprooting of paradigms that dominate the U.S. foreign policy establishment, a transformation of political discourse. And that won’t be accomplished before November or for that matter during the subsequent four years. It’s a bigger project than that — and, besides, it won’t find sympathy in the next occupant of the White House. For one thing, neither Trump nor Biden could abide the required national humility. And neither man has a serious interest in international governance (even though, in a deeply non-zero-sum world, it is the only way to fully serve the U.S. interests that Trump claims unswerving devotion to).
This doesn’t mean one candidate isn’t better than the other, or that one candidate couldn’t be much, much worse for the country than the other. I have my views on that, and I’ll vote accordingly. But it does mean there are better ways to spend the next eight months than obsessively following the polls or soaking up the self-righteousness in your particular election-year echo chamber. Namely: Spend the time thinking about, and talking about, what has to happen if we’re to have a better choice the next time around.
Why the TikTok Ban is So Dangerous - by Matt Taibbi
Why the TikTok Ban is So Dangerous - by Matt Taibbi
The bill passed in the House that’s likely to win the Senate and be swiftly signed into law by the White House’s dynamic Biden hologram is at best tangentially about TikTok.
You’ll find the real issue in the fine print.
..
As written, any “website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application” that is “determined by the President to present a significant threat to the National Security of the United States” is covered.
...
A “foreign adversary controlled application,” in other words, can be any company founded or run by someone living at the wrong foreign address, or containing a small minority ownership stake. Or it can be any company run by someone “subject to the direction” of either of those entities. Or, it’s anything the president says it is. Vague enough?
As Newsweek reported, the bill was fast-tracked after a secret “intelligence community briefing” of Congress led by the FBI, Department of Justice, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The magazine noted that if everything goes as planned, the bill will give Biden the authority to shut down an app used by 150 million Americans just in time for the November elections.
Say you’re a Democrat, however, and that scenario doesn’t worry you. As America This Week co-host Walter Kirn notes, the bill would give a potential future President Donald Trump “unprecedented powers to censor and control the internet.” If that still doesn’t bother you, you’re either not worried about the election, or you’ve been overstating your fear of “dictatorial” Trump.
We have two decades of data showing how national security measures in the 9-11 era evolve. In 2004 the George W. Bush administration defined “enemy combatant” as “an individual who was part of or supporting Taliban or al Qaeda forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States.” Yet in oral arguments of Rosul et al v Bush later that year, the government conceded an enemy combatant could be a “little old lady in Switzerland” who “wrote a check” to what she thought was an orphanage.
Eventually, every element of the requirement that an enemy combatant be connected to “hostilities against the United States” was dropped, including the United States part. Though Barack Obama eliminated the term “enemy combatant” in 2009, the government retained (and retains) a claim of authority to do basically whatever it wants, when it comes to capturing and detaining people deemed national security threats. You can expect a similar progression with speech controls.
Just ahead of Monday’s oral arguments in Murtha v. Missouri, formerly Missouri v. Biden — the case so many of us hoped would see the First Amendment reinvigorated by the Supreme Court — this TikTok bill has allowed the intelligence community to re-capture the legislative branch. Just a few principled speech defenders are left now. Fifty Democrats voted against the bill, which is heartening, although virtually none argued against it on First Amendment grounds, whis is infurating. Pramila Jayapal had a typical take, saying the ban would “harm users who rely on TikTok for their livelihoods, many of whom are people of color.”
Contrast that with Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who went after members of his own party, singling out Republicans encouraging a governmental power grab after years of fighting big tech abuses not just at TikTok but other platforms. These people claim to be horrified, he said, but actions speak louder than words.
“Look at their legislative proposals,” he said, noting many want to “set up government agencies and panels” on speech, effectively saying “If you’re not putting enough conservatives on there, by golly we’re going to have a government commission that’s going to determine what kind of content gets on there.”
These, he said, are “scary ideas.”
Friday, March 15, 2024
(15) Is the New York Times losing its credibility on Israel-Palestine? | The Listening Post - YouTube
Yemen's Houthis leader: We'll prevent ships from passing Indian Ocean - The Jerusalem Post
(13) Andrew Bacevich: Trump's "Israel First" Policy Will Likely Lead to More Violence in Region - YouTube
Wake Up Conservatives! Donald Trump Is Not the Second Coming of Grover Cleveland - LewRockwell
[Salon] [Mbrenner] CAMPAIGN CONFETTI -
From: Brenner, Michael
Date: Thu, Mar 14, 2024
CAMPAIGN CONFETTI
Anna Chapman has resurfaced. It had been a while since the erstwhile Russian spy (Anna Vasilyevna Kushenko) had been in touch. A longtime sleeper agent sheltering in Rip van Winkle country on the Hudson River, she had been exposed in Bloomingdale’s lingerie department by a sharp-eyed FBI agent. Repatriated, Anna serves in a shadowed corner of the Kremlin as a special adviser on recondite aspects of American politics and policies. Normally, we communicate using a simple code; so, I was surprised on this occasion by the receipt of an encrypted message that required me to seek assistance from a venerable former CIA man who retains a mastery of both Russian language and Intelligence methods.
The gist of Anna’s brief communication was a request for insights into the unfathomable Presidential election season. It seems that the boys in Moscow could make no sense of the bizarre scene which, to their unpracticed eye, crossed elements of the Rio Mardi Gras with 4th of July fireworks. All very entertaining, but troubling. Could I help – for old times sake? What they needed was not a deep interpretation; rather, a pointed users’ guide that was straight-from-the-shoulder, unvarnished, candi
Here is what I composed
· Joe Biden will not let go. Nor change. He is an aged man who firmly holds to everything that defines his sense of self, of the world, and of how to cope as President. That means ideas, persons – friends and enemies both, and methods. These rigidities prevent any adaption to shifting circumstances. The wheel is lashed in place. The ship of state is locked on course – straight ahead. So it is for foreign policy, domestic policy and electoral strategy.
· This disposition is reinforced by Biden’s entourage. They are a loyal crew accumulated over the years from the Obama era, his long tenure in the Senate and as a mainstay of the Democratic Party establishment. For the most part, narrow-minded and unimaginative old pols who cater to Biden’s fixed orientation and need for undisturbed consistency. The entire team, like Biden himself, represent the sclerotic condition of the Democrats who have been on a steady downward spiral since the Reagan days, bereft of conviction and spirit. In other words, Republican-lite – except on social issues like identity politics and abortion. As a consequence, they habitually are on the back foot – fending off ferocious Republican attacks and depending on the excesses of the increasingly radical Republicans for whatever electoral victories they can eke out. That is how they managed to get beaten by a psychopathic, neo-Fascist showman in 2016, almost lost again in 2020, and now seem headed for another defeat.
· It had seemed that the lifeblood is draining out of the Biden candidacy. A sure sign was that he was becoming the target of mockery on late night talk shows and SNL – a position long held by Trump. Attention focused on his evident diminished capacities in a way that emphasized the impression of his being a weak leader. His surprisingly forceful State of the Union address has gone a ways toward reversing that negative image. Whether he can sustain it remains to be seen. Let’s remember that Biden never was particularly popular or attractive in the public’s eye. He sought the party’s presidential candidacy a number of times beginning in 1988 and never got anywhere. As for the 2020 election, it was in essence a referendum on Trump – few opted for Biden based on his persona or program. His performance in the White House has done nothing to enhance that image, especially over the last year. His failure to get a grip on the immigration problem has cost him. Not only is this widespread upset at the flood of unprocessed illegals sweeping the cities (with no federal aid forthcoming), but he has allowed state governors led by Greg Abbott in Texas to usurp powers that rightly lie with Washington without as much as a public remonstrance. Then there is Palestine. That is proving a double liability. A significant slice of the Democratic electorate is appalled at his complicity in the Israeli crimes in Gaza. Unless there is drastic change in his course, they will refuse to vote for him – instead, staying home in droves or voting for a 3rd party protest candidate. Moreover, his weakness in allowing himself to be treated disdainfully by Netanyahu highlights his lack of leadership.
· Despite these obvious liabilities, Biden insisted on seeking reelection for two reasons. One is his vanity. The other is encouragement from the Democratic establishment (and fat cat donors) who prefer to risk losing with Biden rather than to open the way for somebody else who might challenge their stranglehold on the party or doing things – like cracking down on abuses in the financial sector and Silicon Valley – that are abhorrent to them. This is a replay of what happened in 2020 when they coaxed Biden out of retirement in dread of Bernie Sanders breaking their hold on the party.·
The Biden foreign policy approach is simplicity itself. It is shaped by the notorious Wolfowitz memorandum of 1991. Its core principles: the United States should use all the means at its disposal to establish American global dominance; to that end, it must be ready to act preventively to stymie the emergence of any power that could challenge our hegemony; and to maintain full spectrum dominance in every region of the globe. Ideals and values are relegated to an auxiliary role as a veneer on the application of power and as a stick with which to beat others. Classic diplomacy is disparaged as inappropriate to this scheme of things. For Biden himself, a confident, assertive, hard-edged approach to dealing with others derives naturally from belief in Americanism as a Unified Field Theory that explains, interprets and justifies whatever the U.S. thinks and does. Were Biden reelected, this outlook will remain unchanged. And were he to be replaced by Kamala Harris mid-term, which is likely, inertia will keep everything on the fixed cours·
The TRUMP phenomenon is subject to several misapprehensions. 1) There has been no tidal swing in voter sentiment from 2012 until today. The differences in party preference in one direction or another are in the order of a few percentage points. So, too, the partisan demographic distributions. The same holds for Congressional elections.·
2) What has changed is the dramatic radicalization of the Republican Party now dominated and energized by the MAGA militants. A significant majority of Republican supporters back drastic measures that are illicit or unconstitutional – of the sort that Trump has taken and pledges to go beyond in a second term. Those attitudes represent an extremity of the admittedly gradual shift to the Right in political discourse and party platforms within both parties. The causes are multiple – prominent among them being the sheer ineptitude, passivity and philosophical confusion of the Democratic establishment.
3)To understand the Trump phenomenon, we should abandon conventional political concepts. MAGA dynamics are not those of a party, of a party faction, or even a movement. It is a cult – exhibiting all the traits of that odd species of social grouping. Cults emerge when public authority loses legitimacy, when there is widespread estrangement from public institutions, when established values and norms erode - along with the credibility of the institutions that they are rooted in; when there are strong undercurrents of anxiety, when anomie infects persons and traditional groups. Today’s America is riddled with cults, of which MAGA is the biggest, the most personalized, and by far the most consequential. There is the LBGTQ cult that -in its most extreme forms – has men competing against women in athletic events based on no more than a subjective claim that they ‘feel’ female. There is a plethora of celebrity cults, the Taylor Swift craze being the latest (if she could actually sing, official deification by Congress would be in order, or at least a statue on the Washington Mall). There is the super billionaire cult. There are the Evangelical ‘End of Times’ cults grounded on the Book of Revelation. There is the Mixed Martial Arts cult. There is the anti-China Yellow Peril cult. There is the long-established gun cult – an immutable amalgam of frontier legend and macho strivings. The conditions conducive to the emergence and depth of these cults also serve as facilitators of the Trump-led MAGA cult.
4. How would a second Trump presidency act? Domestically, there certainly would be a comprehensively more autocratic rule. Many of the steps already enunciated could seriously call into question the institutional integrity and legal framework of the American political system. By contrast, prediction as to foreign policy aims and objectives is a low confidence exercise. Trump himself has no worked out conception of the world system, the United States’ place in it or strategies for advancing national interests. Those interests are loosely conceived; they boil down to setting narrow American needs and wants as the sole reference marks. For Trump, everything is transactional. It’s all a zero-sum game. The principal measure of success is tangible gain, in monetary terms. Power and control are to be accumulated for that purpose. No deal with whomever is precluded. Let’s recall the agreement he hammered out with North Korea’s Kim in Singapore – albeit quickly undercut by deputies who arbitrarily reversed the sequence of reciprocating concessions so as to make it unpalatable to him. The exception to this liking for one-on-one bargaining is Iran toward whose mullahs he is strongly antagonistic.
On individual issues, the Trump policies will be impulsive and segmented. There is no plan. Trump neither wants to save the world, recast it in America’s interest or build a structured empire. Rather, it is to be in a position where the U.S. can extract from it whatever it wants. Hence, keeping bases in Syria and Iraq for their own vague sake is not worth the cost. An across-the-board enduring confrontation with Putin’s Russia is not a notion that appeals to him. He is a bully who deep down avoids dangerous fights. In all likelihood, he would push for a negotiated settlement on Ukraine. That said, it is reasonable to judge that the escalating economic sanctions on Russia imposed during Trump’s term put the lie to the accusation that he is ‘soft’ on Russia and would move swiftly to implement a policy of conciliation. He does admire strong leaders and relishes dealing with them – not isolating them. They are manly protagonists who strengthen his own sense of virility in going head-to-head with them. Those occasions allow Trump to show his true mettle in a way that insulting those whom he sees as weaklings cannot. The same holds for China. Here, there is a greater sense of a contest over who is king-of-the-hill. However, he has no antipathetic feelings about the Chinese.
The instinct will be to drive hard bargains with Beijing, especially on economic matters. Likely, he will keep in place the Biden policies designed to undercut and to weaken China’s growth potential as you would any rival. Going to war with China over Taiwan, though. is not a prospect to contemplate. No more talk about the inevitability of a military showdown with 5 or 10 years. Still, there will be strong institutional pressures to strengthen the commitment to an independent Taiwan which could lead to mounting tensions with attendant risks.
5) The Middle East is trickier. Israel/Palestine is the one issue that would defy Trump’s characteristic modus operandi. Whatever the exact situation in January 2025, the effects of the horror in Gaza, the profound repercussions throughout the region, the passions engendered in the country – together they will not allow for dithering, impulsive gestures or showy Presidential interventions. What they will demand is carefully crafted multifaceted strategies along with sustained skillful diplomacy. Those are not Trump’s fortes.
Overall, how a second Trump administration will handle foreign policy depends very much on who winds up in senior positions. Let’s recall that Trump I featured John Bolton and Mike Pompeo – both of whom are soulmates of Victoria Nuland.
CONCLUSION
The lights are dimming all across the SHINING CITY ON A HILL – never to brighten again in our time?
Higher Mortality Found Among Vaccinated Patients Hospitalized for COVID-19: New Study | The Epoch Times
Where Have All the Volunteers Gone?: Behind the Decline of After-College Service | America Magazine
Thursday, March 14, 2024
[Salon] U.S. Funds Should Not Be Used In Israel’s Assault On Civilians In Gaza -\
U.S. FUNDS SHOULD NOT BE USED IN ISRAEL’S CONTINUING
ASSAULT ON CIVILIANS IN GAZA
BY
ALLAN C.BROWNFELD
——————————————————————————————————————-
The October 7 assault on Israel by Hamas was a terrible terrorist attack. Israel had every right to respond. But now, six months later, its attacks on Gaza continue. More than 30,000 people have been killed, the overwhelming majority of them innocent civilians, including thousands of women and children. President Biden has expressed U.S. concern about the indiscriminate bombing of apartment buildings, churches, hospitals and mosques. Gaza is essentially being totally destroyed. Yet, sadly, the U.S. continues to finance this assault as Israel’s Prime Minister and his ultra-right wing cabinet continue to request and spend American taxpayers’ money while rejecting U.S. advice. The U.S. says that the way to lasting peace involves the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel—-the so-called “two state solution.” Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu says such a state will never come into existence while he is in power.
Few Americans understand how extreme Israel’s current government is. Consider The National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who had been previously described as a “political untouchable” due to his overt racism and was described as “the David Duke of Israel.” He first came to prominence as a 19-year-old in 1995 in the wake of a peace deal with the Palestinians signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. According to the Washington Post, “An outraged Ben Gvir brandished a car ornament reportedly ripped from Rabin’s Cadillac and said: ‘We got the car. We’ll get to Rabin too.’ Not long after, a right-wing Israeli extremist assassinated Rabin, and while Ben Gvir was not connected with the killing, he campaigned for the assassin’s release from prison.Ben Gvir himself has been prosecuted for inciting violence and is known to have displayed a portrait of Baruch Goldstein, who in 1994 massacred 29 Palestinian worshipers in Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque, on his wall.”
The Times of Israel referred to Ben Gvir and his allies as moving into areas “where only neo-fascists tread.” The paper outlined a number of positions supported by Jewish Power, Ben Gvir’s party, including encouraging Palestinian citizens of Israel to emigrate; annexing the West Bank; using live fire against Palestinian protestors; and overhauling Israel’s legal system to impede the high court from striking down legislation and giving the government the ability to pack the bench with ideological compatriots.
Consider the extent of U.S. financial support which Israel, a wealthy country, receives from the U.S. Israel. Between 1948 and 2022, Israel has received more than $300 billion (adjusted for inflation) in foreign aid—-more than any other country in the world. It now receives more than $3.8 billion annually. This aid includes numerous provisions that are not available to other recipients. According to the Congressional Research Service, these include providing aid “as all cash grant transfers not designated for particular projects , and transferred as a lump sum in the first month of the fiscal year, instead of in installments. Israel is allowed to spend about a quarter of the military aid for the procurement in Israel of defense articles and services…rather than in the U.S.”
Even long time supporters of Israel are expressing dismay. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman headlined a column, “The Israel We Knew Is Gone.” He recently wrote that, “Israel today is in grave danger. With enemies like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran, Israel should be enjoying the sympathy of much of the world, but it is not. Because of the way Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist coalition have been conducting the war in Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank, Israel is becoming radioactive.”
In Friedman’s view, “No fair-minded person could deny Israel the right of self defense after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. But no fair-minded person can look at the Israeli campaign…that has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza…and not conclude that something has gone terribly wrong there. The dead include thousands of children, and the survivors many orphans…This is a stain on the Jewish state.”
Jewish Americans are expressing growing dismay at what Israel is doing. A new group has been formed called Reform Jews For Justice. It declares: “As Reform Jews, we stand together for justice, in solidarity with Palestine. We unite in our values to call for a ceasefire, the release of hostages, and an end to U.S. military aid to Israel…Reform Jews who strive to live by the values of enacting justice and having mercy, we have come together to call on our movement to engage in solidarity with Palestine.”
A host of Jewish organizations—-Jewish Voice for Peace, Americans for Peace Now, IfNotNow among them—-argue that Israel’s treatment of ts indigenous Palestinian population violates basic Jewish moral and ethical values. In Israel itself many are speaking out against both the killing of civilians in Gaza and terrorist acts against Palestinians inthe occupied West Bank by ultra Orthodox militant settlers who speak openly of annexing this territory and expelling its Palestinian residents. Hebrew University professor of Jewish philosophy Moshe Halbertal says The attitudes toward Palestinians “is now morphing into something new—-a kind of general ultranationalism” that not only rejects any notion of a Palestinian state, but also views every Palestinian citizen of Israel as potential terrorists.”
Prof. Noah Feldman of the Harvard Law School and author of the book, “To Be A Jew Today,” declares that, “Today, progressive American Jews find it difficult to see Israel as a genuine liberal democracy, mostly because some three million Palestinians in the West Bank live under Israeli authority with no realistic prospect of liberal rights.”
Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians goes back to the very beginning of the state. Mark Ethridge, President Harry Truman’s delegate to the Palestine Conciliation Commission, wrote a letter to his wife on Feb. 14, 1949 after visiting a Palestinian refugee camp in Jericho: “I’ve never seen so many horrible things in one day in my life. Huge families live in one tent. But great numbers have not even a tent and live in the open. There are somewhere between 600 and 700,000Arabs who have been driven out of Israel or have left in terror. I don’t know any better parallel than the way we treated the American Indians. The disheartening thing is that I have not heard one Jewish official who seemed to have any sympathy or saw in it any parallel of persecution to what Hitler did to them. I have tried to make it plain to them that I have no sympathy with their attitude and that it is one thing they must do something about or answer to the conscience of the world.”
Today, many Israelis, although none in the current government, are deeply troubled by the mistreatment of Palestinians. Recently, an Israeli journalist won two major prizes at the Berlinale International Film Festival for his documentary about Israel’s expulsion of Palestinians from their West Bank villages. Yuval Abraham, is part of the team behind “No Other Land.” The documentary focuses on the Palestinian activist Basel Adra. In his acceptance speech, Abraham told the Berlin audience: “We are standing in front of you now. Me and Basel are the same age. I am Israeli, Basel is Palestinian. And in two days we will go back to a land where we are not equal. I am living under civilian law and Basel is under military law. We live 30 minutes from one another. But I have voting rights . Basel is not having voting rights. I’m free to move where I want on this land.Basel is, like millions of Palestinians, locked in the occupied West Bank. This situation of apartheid between us, this inequality it has to end.”
Basic American values are being violated by Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, by its more than 50 year occupation of the West Bank in violation of international law and by its continuing assault on civilians in Gaza, which many have categorized as “genocide.” U.S. taxpayers should not be called upon to pay for an enterprise such as this.
##
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Allan C.Brownfeld is a nationally syndicated columnist and editor of ISSUES, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism (www.acjna.org).
The State of Our Nation No One’s Talking About: Tyranny Is Rising as Freedom Falls - LewRockwell
Dear Child Film - The Chris Hedges Report
Dear Child Film - The Chris Hedges Report: A look through the eyes of a child in Gaza. This short film takes the viewer through an agonising, yet hopeful journey of what it means to be a child under Israeli fire in Gaza today. Part one of the Dear Child initiative, longer version coming soon.
Higher Mortality Found Among Vaccinated Patients Hospitalized for COVID-19: New Study | The Epoch Times
Higher Mortality Found Among Vaccinated Patients Hospitalized for COVID-19: New Study | The Epoch Times: Higher Mortality Found Among Vaccinated Patients Hospitalized for COVID-19: New Study
Vaccinated patients had a 70 percent risk of mortality compared with 37 percent in the unvaccinated group.
Judge Asks If Trump Documents Case Is ‘Arbitrary’ Enforcement During Hearing | The Epoch Times
Judge Asks If Trump Documents Case Is ‘Arbitrary’ Enforcement During Hearing | The Epoch Times: Defense attorneys argued that the DOJ chose not to prosecute Biden for retention, and therefore it wouldn’t be criminal in Trump’s case either.
With Kahanists at the Helm, Israelis Have Become the World's New 'Bad Guys' - Opinion - Haaretz.com
Our Nation Must Reject Biden Administration Overreach on March-In Rights | RealClearHealth
Trump Showed Us Who He Is the First Time Around - TomDispatch.com
Trump Showed Us Who He Is the First Time Around - TomDispatch.com
Rebecca Gordon, My “Children” Say They Won’t Vote for Biden
March 14, 2024
Let me start with my own news. At almost 80, I've decided not to run for president. I know it's a shock and, if the presidency were largely a morning or even an afternoon job, I might actually consider it. But 24 hours a day, with crises endlessly multiplying in a world truly on edge (and seemingly at the edge as well)? No, I don't think so. At this age, I find that I already tire out more quickly than I once did. And assuming I won (which I suspect I might), I would be 84 in my final year in office, which I find worrisome. Yes, an 84-year-old or even an 86-year-old could prove to be a perfectly competent, even exceptional president, but is it really something you want to bet your bottom dollar on?
I have a strange feeling that this country deserves someone younger in the White House than Joe Biden, Donald Trump, or me. I mean, comedian Bill Maher even suggested that Joe Biden could prove to be the "Ruth Bader Ginsberg of the presidency." How true! After all, when Dwight D. Eisenhower left the White House in 1961 at age 70, having had a stroke in office that affected his speech, he was the oldest president in our history. When Ronald Reagan left at 77 in 1989, setting a new age record, he might even have had dementia.
Now, we face two men, both of whom would set remarkable age records for that office and both of whom are already often fumbling with words when they speak extemporaneously (though admittedly each always did some of that, even in his better years). Still, only one of them represents a danger beyond compare should he enter the White House a second time and that, of course, is The Donald. In that context, let TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon explore the strange and potentially all too ominous presidential race of 2024. Tom
Subscriber Comments on 'Harvard Tramples the Truth' -
https://www.2ndsmartestguyintheworld.com/p/subscriber-comments-on-harvard-tramples?publication_id=400535&post_id=142608482&isFreemail=false&r=1y80w&triedRedirect=trueSubscriber Comments on 'Harvard Tramples the Truth' -
The other day this Substack published a most compelling article written by an ousted Harvard biostatistician and infectious-disease epidemiologist professor…
Harvard Tramples the Truth
2nd Smartest Guy in the World
·
Mar 12
Harvard Tramples the Truth
by Martin Kulldorff I am no longer a professor of medicine at Harvard. The Harvard motto is Veritas, Latin for truth. But, as I discovered, truth can get you fired. This is my story—a story of a Harvard biostatistician and infectious-disease epidemiologist, clinging to the truth as the world lost its way during the Covid pandemic.
Read full story at https://www.2ndsmartestguyintheworld.com/p/harvard-tramples-the-truth
…Martin Kulldorf is a fascinating example of an “expert” that can be so right about one aspect of the PSYOP-19 scamdemic, while at the very same time so dead wrong about perhaps the most critical aspect of the very field that he is considered to be a specialist in.
Sure, Harvard is a major One World Government indoctrination and networking node that produces future sociopathic young global “leaders;” after all, Henry Kissinger recruited WEF founder Klaus Schwab straight out of Harvard. The university has also recently been in hot water for their plagiarizing diversity hire ex-president, has reinstated mandatory slow kill bioweapon injections for their student body, and what most do not realize is that this institution of higher learning is first and foremost a hedge fund that happens to derive more money from Federal government grants than it takes in from tuition. In other words, Harvard is just another elitist grifter institution operating on the corporate plantation of the United Banana Republic of America.
This Substack’s scientifically literate and astute subscribers have done a bang up job of exposing Martin Kulldorf and the fraudulent observational studies that he used to fallaciously justify the administration of lethal Modified mRNA injections for the elderly.
And now for the most brilliant and incisive comments:
[Salon] The Arab world without Israel ArabDigest.org
The Arab world without Israel
Summary: if the war in Gaza leads to the beginning of the end of Zionism this could signal a return of the Arab Spring and a complete reshaping of the Arab world.
Writing on Israel and Palestine in 1970 the philosopher Bertrand Russell had this to say in his “Last Message on Israel and Palestine”:
Not only does Israel condemn a vast number of refugees to misery; not only are many Arabs under occupation condemned to military rule; but also Israel condemns the Arab nations only recently emerging from colonial status, to continued impoverishment as military demands take precedence over national development.
For more than a century Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa have laboured under puppet regimes and corrupt military dictators who serve the demands of their Western patrons ahead of the needs of their own people.
Absolute dictators have long been the West’s preferred solution for “managing the Arabs” because experience shows only they can be truly relied on to deliver the required results. The more corrupt the authoritarians are the better, as this makes them easier to control and more prepared to act against the national interest, a prerequisite above all when it comes to the issue of Israel.
But now Israel is facing an existential crisis.
The genocide in Gaza is eviscerating its international legitimacy and sapping what sympathies remain for the Jewish state. Despite Israel’s efforts to eradicate it, and with full Western and Arab complicity, the Palestinian resistance continues to strengthen and grow.
Operating under the banner of Islam to maximise their legitimacy and support, while exploiting Israel’s excessive repression in a classic guerrilla manner, Hamas and the other resistance groups have successfully provoked Israel into a giant trap, just like bin Laden did with the US after 9-11.
With no end in sight to the war, more commentators are predicting that this looks like the beginning of the end of Zionism. The war has laid bare Israel and the occupation’s vulnerabilities, that they depend on two factors outside of Israel’s control for survival: Western support and Arab betrayal.
Neither can continue indefinitely.
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog was greeted in Amsterdam on Sunday with signs ushering him to the Hague to be prosecuted for war crimes in Gaza.
Should the Israelis persist in their genocidal war, conditions will change and a process will be triggered that could ultimately lead to Israel’s collapse. It could be fast or slow, but once set in motion it will be irreversible.
If Israel collapses, either through internal strife or under the blows of Palestinian resistance and global revulsion, besides being a calamity of unfathomable proportions for Jews, this would also lead to comprehensive changes in the entire regional system since most of the Arab world has been structured around Israel’s existence.
Without any Israel to protect, Arab dictators would suddenly become much less necessary and though western countries would still seek to maintain their interests in other areas, they could finally abandon them, allowing a much more normal political life to develop in Arab countries with more normal levels of freedom. This would have a deep restorative effect on the long and fraught relationship between Arabs and the West. Democratic elections could be held and all the extremist groups and regimes that are founded on the philosophy of resistance to Israel and the West would lose their reason to exist and would disappear. The Jihad phenomenon in Europe and attacks like that by Salman Abedi in Manchester Arena in 2017 would end.
The obstacles to this rosy picture of Arab liberation and Euro-Arab harmony are Israel, the current Arab regimes and violent jihadist groups.
And like Israel, Arab regimes are not stable either.
Egypt under Sisi is one of the fundamental components of the contemporary Arab political landscape, playing a key role in protecting Israel and suppressing Arab democracy. In return, Sisi enjoys the support of the West and its clients in the Gulf. For now the Egyptian regime’s immense coercive capabilities allow it to continue to maintain the status quo. But if the Egyptian people lose patience and decide the risk of revolution outweighs the fear of repression then nothing the West and the Gulf can do will be able to protect the Sisi regime.
Saudi Arabia is the other pillar of the contemporary Arab political landscape. The Saudis use their diplomatic, religious and economic weight to support US endeavours in the region and to maintain the status quo.
However, despite all its religious and material capabilities Saudi Arabia’s stability is built on a regime of fear that could quickly collapse should its much-hyped economic transformation, Vision 2030, flounder.
A disruption, internal or international, whether due to domestic politics in America, major changes in Israel/Palestine, an internal rebellion or a confrontation with one of its neighbours could collapse the regime. That in turn would have a powerful "domino effect" on Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority which all depend on Saudi largesse, paid both in the service of America and to secure regional stability.
The smaller Arab gulf states depend completely on the regional status quo.
The UAE, for example, where immigrants make up 88.1% of the total population would have no chance in a conflict with any regional entity or armed group. Regime change there, like in Saudi Arabia, would also have a major "domino effect" across the region because the UAE is involved in Yemen, Libya, Sudan, Egypt, the Horn of Africa and to a lesser extent also Iraq, Syria and Jordan.
Despite the success of the post-Arab Spring counter-revolution, resilient pockets remain across the region waiting for the opportunity to mobilise and transform into state level forces.
The Syrian revolution has been stalled by a collusion of forces: the Assad regime, Iran, Russia, Türkiye and America as well as the various Syrian factions allied with them. This has come about only because of a rare intersection of interests between these outside players and should this fragile balance collapse the situation in Syria would change completely.
The revolution will unfreeze and many fighters who had previously been prevented from joining non-state groups would do so, multiplying their cadres and capabilities and paving the way for the end of the Assad regime.
Given the many factions in Syria, Yemen and Libya and the strength of Iran’s proxies, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, an Israeli collapse could open up a Pandora’s box with many countries in the region descending into conflicts between armed groups, violent jihadism and civil war. Whether some form of Arab democracy can emerge from such a scenario is difficult to discern. However America’s leadership in driving forward unconditional support for Israel by Western democracies will only accelerate the dead-end road the Israelis are on. The fuse has been lit and a catastrophic war on many fronts is looming. A new Arab reality will emerge, hopefully one that encompasses freedom both economic and political, but it may be birthed amidst chaos and bloodshed the likes of which the region has never before seen.
[Salon] Fwd: THE DECLINE IN CIVILITY THREATENS AMERICAN DEMOCRACY -
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