Trumps Indictment: Historical and Future Implications II
Josh said:I suggest everyone watch the documantary "Behemoth", available in full here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXAOnIrNsYs
...
... and then comment from a clearer perspective about what really matters.
(I speak as someone who, on leaving school, started off life as a coal-miner in the U.K Lancashire pits in January 1974). I can hardly get my head around the scale of the destruction to feed the capitalist-driven degenerative phase of our current age.
More than ever we need mature leadership in politics but we are likely to get more and more extreme authoritarianism, using the climate crisis as an argumant for 'strong leadership' to sort it all out. Oh how many times we have been there before. That's why Trump-watching on this thread is so important.
That former quote struck me at the beginning, before I realized that the entire documentary is a tragic visual poem interspersed with sparse verse.
After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.
The ghost cities is what got to me, in addition to the obvious.
This is what we're fighting against.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXAOnIrNsYs
...
... and then comment from a clearer perspective about what really matters.
(I speak as someone who, on leaving school, started off life as a coal-miner in the U.K Lancashire pits in January 1974). I can hardly get my head around the scale of the destruction to feed the capitalist-driven degenerative phase of our current age.
More than ever we need mature leadership in politics but we are likely to get more and more extreme authoritarianism, using the climate crisis as an argumant for 'strong leadership' to sort it all out. Oh how many times we have been there before. That's why Trump-watching on this thread is so important.
That former quote struck me at the beginning, before I realized that the entire documentary is a tragic visual poem interspersed with sparse verse.
After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.
The ghost cities is what got to me, in addition to the obvious.
This is what we're fighting against.
This is INSANE.
Members of the House of Representatives returned to work today after their summer break. They came back to a fierce fight over funding the government before the September 30 deadline, with only 12 days of legislative work on the calendar. That fight is also tangled up with Republican extremists’ demands to impeach President Joe Biden—although even members of their own caucus admit there are no grounds for such an impeachment—and threats to the continued position of Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as speaker of the House.
It’s an omnishambles, a word coined in 2009 by the writers of the BBC political satire The Thick of It, meaning “a situation, especially in politics, in which poor judgment results in disorder or chaos with potentially disastrous consequences.”
It fits.
In August, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed 12 spending bills covering discretionary funding—about 27% of the budget—by bipartisan votes, within limits set as part of the deal Speaker McCarthy made with President Biden to prevent the U.S. defaulting for the first time in history.
But the House left for summer break without being able to pass more than one of the 12 necessary bills. The extremists in the House Freedom Caucus oppose the spending levels Biden and McCarthy negotiated, insisting they amount to “socialism,” although with the exception of the Covid-19 blip, discretionary federal spending has stayed level at about 20% of the nation’s gross domestic product since 1954.
The Republican-dominated House Appropriations Committee has reneged on the deal McCarthy struck, producing bills that impose cuts far beyond those McCarthy agreed to. In particular, it cut Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funding for programs to address climate change and the Internal Revenue Service, which has been badly underfunded since at least 2010, leaving wealthy tax cheats unaudited. The cuts are ideological: the bills have cut funding for food assistance programs for pregnant mothers and children, grants to school districts serving impoverished communities, the Environmental Protection Agency, agencies that protect workers’ rights, federal agencies’ civil rights offices, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the IRS (on top of clawing back funding in the IRA), and so on.
Although appropriations bills are generally kept clean, the extremists have loaded the must-pass bills with demands unrelated to the bill itself. They have put measures restricting abortion and gender-affirming care in at least 8 of the 12 bills. Even if such measures could make it through the Democrat-dominated Senate—and they can’t—President Biden has vowed to veto them.
Even fellow Republicans are balking at the attempt of the extremists to get their ideological wish list by holding the government hostage. Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, told reporters she doesn’t see how the Republicans are going to get the bills out of the committee, let alone pass them. “Overall, I think it's going to be very, very hard to get these bills forward,” she said.
Far from negotiating with McCarthy over the break, Freedom Caucus members appear to be increasing their demands as a shutdown looms. In August, the caucus announced it would not support even a short-term funding bill unless it also included their own demands for border policy, an end to what they call “woke” policies in the Department of Defense, and what they call the “unprecedented weaponization” of the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They also oppose funding for Ukraine to enable it to fight off Russia’s invasion.
They have hinted they will use procedural votes to prevent any large spending bill from getting to the floor at all. One of the tools at their disposal is a challenge to McCarthy’s leadership, which thanks to the deal he struck to get the speakership in the first place, a single member can bring. Today, Florida representative Matt Gaetz threatened to “lead the resistance” if McCarthy worked with Democrats to fund the government.
They have offered McCarthy a way to avoid that showdown: impeach President Joe Biden, although there is no evidence the president has committed any “high crimes and misdemeanors” required for an impeachment.
Today, McCarthy availed himself of that escape clause. On the first day back from a 45-day August break, rather than tackling the budget crises, he endorsed an impeachment inquiry into President Biden.
This is a fascinating moment, as the Republicans have opened an impeachment inquiry into Biden with no evidence of wrongdoing. For all their breathless statements before the TV cameras, they have not managed to produce any evidence. Trump's own Department of Justice opened an investigation into Biden four years ago and found nothing to charge. As Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo notes, Biden’s taxes are public, and a U.S. attorney has been scrutinizing Biden’s son Hunter for years; red flags should have been apparent long ago, if there were any.
Just yesterday, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) tore apart the talking points far-right Republicans have been using to smear the president. He noted that none of the bank records Representative James Comer (R-KY) has referenced show any payments to President Biden, none of the suspicious activity reports the Oversight Committee has reviewed suggest any potential misconduct by Biden, none of the witness accounts to the Oversight Committee show any wrongdoing by Biden, Hunter Biden’s former business associates explicitly stated they had no reason to think President Biden was involved in his son’s business ventures, and so on.
This inquiry is not actually about wrongdoing; it is a reiteration of the same plan Trump tried to execute in 2019 when he asked Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to smear Biden before the 2020 presidential election. By launching an inquiry, Republicans can count on their false accusations spreading through the media, tainting their opponents even without evidence of wrongdoing. See, for example, Clinton, Hillary: emails.
McCarthy insisted to reporters that an impeachment inquiry would simply give House committees leverage to subpoena officials from the White House, but during the Trump administration, the Department of Justice issued an opinion that the House must take a formal vote to validate an impeachment inquiry. It did so in reaction to then–House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s launch of an impeachment inquiry without such a vote, and the decision invalidated subpoenas issued as part of that inquiry. Pelosi went on to hold a vote and to launch an official inquiry.
It will not be so easy for McCarthy. He has not wanted to hold a vote because outside of the Freedom Caucus, even Republicans don’t want to launch an impeachment inquiry when there is no evidence for one. Senate Republicans today were quick to tell reporters they were skeptical that McCarthy could get enough votes in the House for an article of impeachment, and they were clear that a Senate trial was not an option. Representative Ken Buck (R-CO), himself a member of the Freedom Caucus, said: “The time for impeachment is the time when there’s evidence linking President Biden—if there’s evidence linking President Biden to a high crime or misdemeanor. That doesn’t exist right now.”
cont. below
Members of the House of Representatives returned to work today after their summer break. They came back to a fierce fight over funding the government before the September 30 deadline, with only 12 days of legislative work on the calendar. That fight is also tangled up with Republican extremists’ demands to impeach President Joe Biden—although even members of their own caucus admit there are no grounds for such an impeachment—and threats to the continued position of Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as speaker of the House.
It’s an omnishambles, a word coined in 2009 by the writers of the BBC political satire The Thick of It, meaning “a situation, especially in politics, in which poor judgment results in disorder or chaos with potentially disastrous consequences.”
It fits.
In August, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed 12 spending bills covering discretionary funding—about 27% of the budget—by bipartisan votes, within limits set as part of the deal Speaker McCarthy made with President Biden to prevent the U.S. defaulting for the first time in history.
But the House left for summer break without being able to pass more than one of the 12 necessary bills. The extremists in the House Freedom Caucus oppose the spending levels Biden and McCarthy negotiated, insisting they amount to “socialism,” although with the exception of the Covid-19 blip, discretionary federal spending has stayed level at about 20% of the nation’s gross domestic product since 1954.
The Republican-dominated House Appropriations Committee has reneged on the deal McCarthy struck, producing bills that impose cuts far beyond those McCarthy agreed to. In particular, it cut Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funding for programs to address climate change and the Internal Revenue Service, which has been badly underfunded since at least 2010, leaving wealthy tax cheats unaudited. The cuts are ideological: the bills have cut funding for food assistance programs for pregnant mothers and children, grants to school districts serving impoverished communities, the Environmental Protection Agency, agencies that protect workers’ rights, federal agencies’ civil rights offices, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the IRS (on top of clawing back funding in the IRA), and so on.
Although appropriations bills are generally kept clean, the extremists have loaded the must-pass bills with demands unrelated to the bill itself. They have put measures restricting abortion and gender-affirming care in at least 8 of the 12 bills. Even if such measures could make it through the Democrat-dominated Senate—and they can’t—President Biden has vowed to veto them.
Even fellow Republicans are balking at the attempt of the extremists to get their ideological wish list by holding the government hostage. Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, told reporters she doesn’t see how the Republicans are going to get the bills out of the committee, let alone pass them. “Overall, I think it's going to be very, very hard to get these bills forward,” she said.
Far from negotiating with McCarthy over the break, Freedom Caucus members appear to be increasing their demands as a shutdown looms. In August, the caucus announced it would not support even a short-term funding bill unless it also included their own demands for border policy, an end to what they call “woke” policies in the Department of Defense, and what they call the “unprecedented weaponization” of the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They also oppose funding for Ukraine to enable it to fight off Russia’s invasion.
They have hinted they will use procedural votes to prevent any large spending bill from getting to the floor at all. One of the tools at their disposal is a challenge to McCarthy’s leadership, which thanks to the deal he struck to get the speakership in the first place, a single member can bring. Today, Florida representative Matt Gaetz threatened to “lead the resistance” if McCarthy worked with Democrats to fund the government.
They have offered McCarthy a way to avoid that showdown: impeach President Joe Biden, although there is no evidence the president has committed any “high crimes and misdemeanors” required for an impeachment.
Today, McCarthy availed himself of that escape clause. On the first day back from a 45-day August break, rather than tackling the budget crises, he endorsed an impeachment inquiry into President Biden.
This is a fascinating moment, as the Republicans have opened an impeachment inquiry into Biden with no evidence of wrongdoing. For all their breathless statements before the TV cameras, they have not managed to produce any evidence. Trump's own Department of Justice opened an investigation into Biden four years ago and found nothing to charge. As Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo notes, Biden’s taxes are public, and a U.S. attorney has been scrutinizing Biden’s son Hunter for years; red flags should have been apparent long ago, if there were any.
Just yesterday, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) tore apart the talking points far-right Republicans have been using to smear the president. He noted that none of the bank records Representative James Comer (R-KY) has referenced show any payments to President Biden, none of the suspicious activity reports the Oversight Committee has reviewed suggest any potential misconduct by Biden, none of the witness accounts to the Oversight Committee show any wrongdoing by Biden, Hunter Biden’s former business associates explicitly stated they had no reason to think President Biden was involved in his son’s business ventures, and so on.
This inquiry is not actually about wrongdoing; it is a reiteration of the same plan Trump tried to execute in 2019 when he asked Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to smear Biden before the 2020 presidential election. By launching an inquiry, Republicans can count on their false accusations spreading through the media, tainting their opponents even without evidence of wrongdoing. See, for example, Clinton, Hillary: emails.
McCarthy insisted to reporters that an impeachment inquiry would simply give House committees leverage to subpoena officials from the White House, but during the Trump administration, the Department of Justice issued an opinion that the House must take a formal vote to validate an impeachment inquiry. It did so in reaction to then–House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s launch of an impeachment inquiry without such a vote, and the decision invalidated subpoenas issued as part of that inquiry. Pelosi went on to hold a vote and to launch an official inquiry.
It will not be so easy for McCarthy. He has not wanted to hold a vote because outside of the Freedom Caucus, even Republicans don’t want to launch an impeachment inquiry when there is no evidence for one. Senate Republicans today were quick to tell reporters they were skeptical that McCarthy could get enough votes in the House for an article of impeachment, and they were clear that a Senate trial was not an option. Representative Ken Buck (R-CO), himself a member of the Freedom Caucus, said: “The time for impeachment is the time when there’s evidence linking President Biden—if there’s evidence linking President Biden to a high crime or misdemeanor. That doesn’t exist right now.”
cont. below
The attack on Biden is a transparent attempt to defend former president Trump from his own legal troubles by suggesting that Biden is just as bad. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin today also defended Trump, saying that his prosecutions show that the United States is fundamentally corrupt. His comment made former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) seem to wash her hands of the modern incarnation of her political party. “Putin has now officially endorsed the Putin-wing of the Republican Party,” she wrote. “Putin Republicans & their enablers will end up on the ash heap of history. Patriotic Americans in both parties who believe in the values of liberal democracy will make sure of it.”
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) summed up the day: “So let me get this straight: Republicans are threatening to remove their own Speaker, impeach the President, and shut down the government on September 30th—disrupting everyday people’s paychecks and general public operations. For what? I don’t think even they know.”
The center-right think tank American Action Forum’s vice president for economic policy, Gordon Gray, had an answer. Ever since the debt ceiling fight was resolved, he told Joan E. Greve of The Guardian, “there’s a big chunk of House Republicans who just want to break something. That’s just how some of these folks define governing. It’s how their constituents define success.”
Heather Cox Richardson, Sept 12, 2023
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-12-2023
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) summed up the day: “So let me get this straight: Republicans are threatening to remove their own Speaker, impeach the President, and shut down the government on September 30th—disrupting everyday people’s paychecks and general public operations. For what? I don’t think even they know.”
The center-right think tank American Action Forum’s vice president for economic policy, Gordon Gray, had an answer. Ever since the debt ceiling fight was resolved, he told Joan E. Greve of The Guardian, “there’s a big chunk of House Republicans who just want to break something. That’s just how some of these folks define governing. It’s how their constituents define success.”
Heather Cox Richardson, Sept 12, 2023
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-12-2023
I'm a Brit but I agree to every single word wrote here.
(especially to the remark about the gop becoming the pukin party.)
I've followed the trouble troubled trump spreads from when he, in a snide emphatic aside said...
" Is he even American! " of, Barrack Obama.
Just one of numerous odious things which spew from that thing's mouth.
(especially to the remark about the gop becoming the pukin party.)
I've followed the trouble troubled trump spreads from when he, in a snide emphatic aside said...
" Is he even American! " of, Barrack Obama.
Just one of numerous odious things which spew from that thing's mouth.
Come on, Carpe. At least contribute something intelligent. You're more than a troll, unless you really do live under a bridge.
If you want to say "I think. . ." then that's your opinion and you're entitled to it. But a flat out accusation with no basis except what you believe is something we're trying to fight: a lie. Like Trump won the last presidential election because he *thinks* that he did ( when in truth it's because he can't stand to lose ).
Pedophilia is characterized by an obsession of seeing children as sex objects, according to Nolo’s Plain English Law Dictionary: "A person who acts upon this obsession, by molesting a child, taking explicit photographs, and performing other acts specified by law, is guilty of a crime."
In Biden’s more than 40 years of public life — including two prior runs for the Democratic presidential nomination and eight years as vice president — there have been no formal accusations, complaints, arrests or investigations that implicate him in any sort of sex crimes involving kids.
He is not a pedophile any more than Barack Obama wasn't an American.
Can we move on to actual ARRESTS and Trumps MAGA Republicans holding our military and government hostage over women's and transgender rights? For which there is proof.
If you want to say "I think. . ." then that's your opinion and you're entitled to it. But a flat out accusation with no basis except what you believe is something we're trying to fight: a lie. Like Trump won the last presidential election because he *thinks* that he did ( when in truth it's because he can't stand to lose ).
Pedophilia is characterized by an obsession of seeing children as sex objects, according to Nolo’s Plain English Law Dictionary: "A person who acts upon this obsession, by molesting a child, taking explicit photographs, and performing other acts specified by law, is guilty of a crime."
In Biden’s more than 40 years of public life — including two prior runs for the Democratic presidential nomination and eight years as vice president — there have been no formal accusations, complaints, arrests or investigations that implicate him in any sort of sex crimes involving kids.
He is not a pedophile any more than Barack Obama wasn't an American.
Can we move on to actual ARRESTS and Trumps MAGA Republicans holding our military and government hostage over women's and transgender rights? For which there is proof.
Just a tiny, itsy bitsy reminder to the world of what trump was capable of doing under the disguise of law & order
" Peaceful Protesters Tear-Gassed To Clear Way For Trump Church Photo-Op "
And to Carpe_Noctem
trump is a sex offender. That isn't my opinion that's a proven fact.
" Peaceful Protesters Tear-Gassed To Clear Way For Trump Church Photo-Op "
And to Carpe_Noctem
trump is a sex offender. That isn't my opinion that's a proven fact.
Ahavati said:Come on, Carpe. At least contribute something intelligent. You're more than a troll, unless you really do live under a bridge.
If you want to say "I think. . ." then that's your opinion and you're entitled to it. But a flat out accusation with no basis except what you believe is something we're trying to fight: a lie. Like Trump won the last presidential election because he *thinks* that he did ( when in truth it's because he can't stand to lose ).
Pedophilia is characterized by an obsession of seeing children as sex objects, according to Nolo’s Plain English Law Dictionary: "A person who acts upon this obsession, by molesting a child, taking explicit photographs, and performing other acts specified by law, is guilty of a crime."
In Biden’s more than 40 years of public life — including two prior runs for the Democratic presidential nomination and eight years as vice president — there have been no formal accusations, complaints, arrests or investigations that implicate him in any sort of sex crimes involving kids.
He is not a pedophile any more than Barack Obama wasn't an American.
Can we move on to actual ARRESTS and Trumps MAGA Republicans holding our military and government hostage over women's and transgender rights? For which there is proof.
Banality of evil. There are more than enough videos on the net of biden behaving inappropriately around children. Sniffing and groping them. Not to mention his story about children rubbing his hairy legs in the pool and it feeling nice.
If the man behaves like this on camera, just imagine how he behaves when no one is looking.
Take Jimmy Savil for example . Good friends with the royals an esteemed member of the BBC. They knew what he was about and covered it up.
Obama got the noble peace prize for carpet bombing the middle east. Says a lot really. Like Blair getting a Knighthood for basically the same thing . A false war to steal resources.
Biden no different.
If you want to say "I think. . ." then that's your opinion and you're entitled to it. But a flat out accusation with no basis except what you believe is something we're trying to fight: a lie. Like Trump won the last presidential election because he *thinks* that he did ( when in truth it's because he can't stand to lose ).
Pedophilia is characterized by an obsession of seeing children as sex objects, according to Nolo’s Plain English Law Dictionary: "A person who acts upon this obsession, by molesting a child, taking explicit photographs, and performing other acts specified by law, is guilty of a crime."
In Biden’s more than 40 years of public life — including two prior runs for the Democratic presidential nomination and eight years as vice president — there have been no formal accusations, complaints, arrests or investigations that implicate him in any sort of sex crimes involving kids.
He is not a pedophile any more than Barack Obama wasn't an American.
Can we move on to actual ARRESTS and Trumps MAGA Republicans holding our military and government hostage over women's and transgender rights? For which there is proof.
Banality of evil. There are more than enough videos on the net of biden behaving inappropriately around children. Sniffing and groping them. Not to mention his story about children rubbing his hairy legs in the pool and it feeling nice.
If the man behaves like this on camera, just imagine how he behaves when no one is looking.
Take Jimmy Savil for example . Good friends with the royals an esteemed member of the BBC. They knew what he was about and covered it up.
Obama got the noble peace prize for carpet bombing the middle east. Says a lot really. Like Blair getting a Knighthood for basically the same thing . A false war to steal resources.
Biden no different.
Rew said:Just a tiny, itsy bitsy reminder to the world of what trump was capable of doing under the disguise of law & order
" Peaceful Protesters Tear-Gassed To Clear Way For Trump Church Photo-Op "
And to Carpe_Noctem
trump is a sex offender. That isn't my opinion that's a proven fact.
Not a pedophile, again though? You don't have a problem with pedophiles or child groomers that mutilate and cut their bits of?
How about bidens daughters diary or all the child porn on hunters laptop.
It's not as if one party is benevolent and innocent here.
" Peaceful Protesters Tear-Gassed To Clear Way For Trump Church Photo-Op "
And to Carpe_Noctem
trump is a sex offender. That isn't my opinion that's a proven fact.
Not a pedophile, again though? You don't have a problem with pedophiles or child groomers that mutilate and cut their bits of?
How about bidens daughters diary or all the child porn on hunters laptop.
It's not as if one party is benevolent and innocent here.
Russia and North Korea today, anyone? —
Russian president Vladimir Putin met with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un today in Russia’s far east. His need to turn to North Korea’s isolated leader is a dramatic fall for Putin, who just four years ago was hobnobbing with then-president Donald Trump at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Now, thanks to his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin, too, is isolated, charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Court, and under an arrest warrant.
It is no wonder that shortly before he met with Kim, Putin said of Trump’s 2024 presidential run: “We surely hear that Mr. Trump says he will resolve all burning issues within several days, including the Ukrainian crisis. We cannot help but feel happy about it.” Trump has said he will end the war in a day if he’s reelected, and has called for withholding funds to Ukraine until the Department of Justice and the FBI investigate President Joe Biden.
At the meeting, Putin and Kim vowed to strengthen the ties between the two countries, and Kim expressed total support for Putin as Russia’s isolation grows, calling their stance a “fight against imperialism” and saying at a state dinner that he is “certain that the Russian people and its military will emerge victorious in the fight to punish the evil forces that ambitiously pursues hegemony and expansion.”
And yet it is Russia that is attacking other nations, including the U.S.: on September 7 the U.S. Department of Justice indicted 11 Russian men for their participation in cyberattacks against governments, businesses, and major hospital chains around the world. The U.S. Treasury Department and the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency say the hackers are associated with Russian intelligence services.
Russia is looking for artillery munitions from North Korea to continue its war against Ukraine; North Korea wants ballistic missile technology from Russia to develop its space and satellite program. Kim cannot get that technology elsewhere because of sanctions intended to keep him from developing nuclear weapons. Sergey Radchenko, a senior professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies who studies Russian and Chinese national security, concluded that we might be seeing an alliance between North Korea and Russia that, among other things, is likely to increase North Korea’s assertiveness.
That Putin feels the need to cozy up to Kim indicates the war is not going as he would like. Indeed, last night Ukraine hit the main base for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, in occupied Crimea, destroying two vessels and the port infrastructure. The Ukrainian military claimed responsibility for the strike, underlining its growing strength in Russian-occupied areas..
In a major speech today at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Secretary of State Antony Blinken explained the place at which the United States finds itself in both foreign and domestic affairs. He told the audience that the end of the Cold War, a period of competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, along with their respective allies, ushered in “the promise of an inexorable march toward greater peace and stability, international cooperation, economic interdependence, political liberalization, human rights.” That postwar period did, indeed, lift more than a billion people from poverty, eliminate deadly diseases, and usher in a period of historically low conflicts between nations, despite challenges such as the 2008 global financial crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic, and regional conflicts like those in Rwanda and Iraq.
“But,” Blinken said, “what we’re experiencing now is more than a test of the post–Cold War order. It’s the end of it.”
The relative geopolitical stability of the post–World War II years has given way to the rise of authoritarian powers, he said. Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine is the most immediate threat to “the international order enshrined in the UN charter and its core principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence for nations, and universal indivisible human rights for individuals.” But the People’s Republic of China “poses the most significant long-term challenge,” he said, “because it not only aspires to reshape the international order, it increasingly has the economic, the diplomatic, the military, the technological power to do just that.”
As partners, “Beijing and Moscow are working together to make the world safe for autocracy,” Blinken warned.
As the competition between the two systems ramps up, many countries are hedging their bets, while the influence of nonstate actors—international corporations, public service nongovernmental organizations, international terrorists, transnational criminal organizations—is growing. At the same time, the sheer scale of global problems like climate change and mass migration is making cooperation across borders more difficult.
The international economic order of the past several decades is flawed in ways that have caused people to lose faith in it, Blinken explained. Technology and globalization have hollowed out entire industries and weakened workers, while laws protected property. Inequality grew dramatically between 1980 and 2020, with the richest 0.1% accumulating the same wealth as the poorest 50%. “The longer these disparities persist,” Blinken pointed out, “the more distrust and disillusionment they fuel in people who feel the system is not giving them a fair shake. And the more they exacerbate other drivers of political polarization, amplified by algorithms that reinforce our biases rather than allowing the best ideas to rise to the top.”
Democracies are under threat, Blinken said. “Challenged from the inside by elected leaders who exploit resentments and stoke fears; erode independent judiciaries and the media; enrich cronies; crack down on civil society and political opposition. And challenged from the outside, by autocrats who spread disinformation, who weaponize corruption, who meddle in elections.”
The post–Cold War order is over, Blinken said. “One era is ending, a new one is beginning, and the decisions that we make now will shape the future for decades to come.”
cont below:
Russian president Vladimir Putin met with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un today in Russia’s far east. His need to turn to North Korea’s isolated leader is a dramatic fall for Putin, who just four years ago was hobnobbing with then-president Donald Trump at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Now, thanks to his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin, too, is isolated, charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Court, and under an arrest warrant.
It is no wonder that shortly before he met with Kim, Putin said of Trump’s 2024 presidential run: “We surely hear that Mr. Trump says he will resolve all burning issues within several days, including the Ukrainian crisis. We cannot help but feel happy about it.” Trump has said he will end the war in a day if he’s reelected, and has called for withholding funds to Ukraine until the Department of Justice and the FBI investigate President Joe Biden.
At the meeting, Putin and Kim vowed to strengthen the ties between the two countries, and Kim expressed total support for Putin as Russia’s isolation grows, calling their stance a “fight against imperialism” and saying at a state dinner that he is “certain that the Russian people and its military will emerge victorious in the fight to punish the evil forces that ambitiously pursues hegemony and expansion.”
And yet it is Russia that is attacking other nations, including the U.S.: on September 7 the U.S. Department of Justice indicted 11 Russian men for their participation in cyberattacks against governments, businesses, and major hospital chains around the world. The U.S. Treasury Department and the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency say the hackers are associated with Russian intelligence services.
Russia is looking for artillery munitions from North Korea to continue its war against Ukraine; North Korea wants ballistic missile technology from Russia to develop its space and satellite program. Kim cannot get that technology elsewhere because of sanctions intended to keep him from developing nuclear weapons. Sergey Radchenko, a senior professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies who studies Russian and Chinese national security, concluded that we might be seeing an alliance between North Korea and Russia that, among other things, is likely to increase North Korea’s assertiveness.
That Putin feels the need to cozy up to Kim indicates the war is not going as he would like. Indeed, last night Ukraine hit the main base for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, in occupied Crimea, destroying two vessels and the port infrastructure. The Ukrainian military claimed responsibility for the strike, underlining its growing strength in Russian-occupied areas..
In a major speech today at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Secretary of State Antony Blinken explained the place at which the United States finds itself in both foreign and domestic affairs. He told the audience that the end of the Cold War, a period of competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, along with their respective allies, ushered in “the promise of an inexorable march toward greater peace and stability, international cooperation, economic interdependence, political liberalization, human rights.” That postwar period did, indeed, lift more than a billion people from poverty, eliminate deadly diseases, and usher in a period of historically low conflicts between nations, despite challenges such as the 2008 global financial crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic, and regional conflicts like those in Rwanda and Iraq.
“But,” Blinken said, “what we’re experiencing now is more than a test of the post–Cold War order. It’s the end of it.”
The relative geopolitical stability of the post–World War II years has given way to the rise of authoritarian powers, he said. Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine is the most immediate threat to “the international order enshrined in the UN charter and its core principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence for nations, and universal indivisible human rights for individuals.” But the People’s Republic of China “poses the most significant long-term challenge,” he said, “because it not only aspires to reshape the international order, it increasingly has the economic, the diplomatic, the military, the technological power to do just that.”
As partners, “Beijing and Moscow are working together to make the world safe for autocracy,” Blinken warned.
As the competition between the two systems ramps up, many countries are hedging their bets, while the influence of nonstate actors—international corporations, public service nongovernmental organizations, international terrorists, transnational criminal organizations—is growing. At the same time, the sheer scale of global problems like climate change and mass migration is making cooperation across borders more difficult.
The international economic order of the past several decades is flawed in ways that have caused people to lose faith in it, Blinken explained. Technology and globalization have hollowed out entire industries and weakened workers, while laws protected property. Inequality grew dramatically between 1980 and 2020, with the richest 0.1% accumulating the same wealth as the poorest 50%. “The longer these disparities persist,” Blinken pointed out, “the more distrust and disillusionment they fuel in people who feel the system is not giving them a fair shake. And the more they exacerbate other drivers of political polarization, amplified by algorithms that reinforce our biases rather than allowing the best ideas to rise to the top.”
Democracies are under threat, Blinken said. “Challenged from the inside by elected leaders who exploit resentments and stoke fears; erode independent judiciaries and the media; enrich cronies; crack down on civil society and political opposition. And challenged from the outside, by autocrats who spread disinformation, who weaponize corruption, who meddle in elections.”
The post–Cold War order is over, Blinken said. “One era is ending, a new one is beginning, and the decisions that we make now will shape the future for decades to come.”
cont below:
The U.S. is in a position of strength from which it seeks to reinforce a rules-based international order in which “goods, ideas, and individuals can flow freely and lawfully across land, sea, sky, and cyberspace, where technology is used to empower people—not to divide, surveil, and repress them,” where the global economy is defined by fair competition and widespread prosperity, and where “international law and the core principles of the UN Charter are upheld, and where universal human rights are respected.” Such a world would serve humanity’s interests, as well as our own, Blinken said; its principles are universal.
“[O]ur competitors have a fundamentally different vision,” he said. “They see a world defined by a single imperative: regime preservation and enrichment. A world where authoritarians are free to control, coerce, and crush their people, their neighbors, and anyone else standing in the way of this all-consuming goal.”
They claim that the norms and values that anchor the rules-based international order are imposed by Western nations, that human rights are up to nations themselves, and that big countries should be allowed to dictate to their smaller neighbors.
“The contrast between these two visions could not be clearer. And the stakes of the competition we face could not be higher—for the world, and for the American people.”
Blinken explained that the Biden administration has deliberately integrated domestic and foreign policy, crafting industrial strategy to rebuild the U.S. and to address the wealth disparities that create deep political resentment, while aligning that domestic strength to foreign policy. That foreign policy has depended on strengthening alliances and partnerships, building regional integration so that regions address their own interests as communities, closing the infrastructure gap between nations, and strengthening international institutions—rejoining the Paris Climate Accords and the World Health Organization, working to expand the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and so on.
Blinken said that such investments will lead nations to stand up to “the Beijings and Moscows of the world” when they claim this system serves the West and try to tear it down, and answer back: “No, the system you are trying to change is our system; it serves our interests.” At the same time, such investments will offer new markets for American workers and businesses, more affordable goods for American consumers, more reliable food and energy supplies, more robust health systems to stop deadly disease, more allies to address global challenges.
Looking back from the future, Blinken said, “the right decisions tend to look obvious, the end results almost inevitable. They never are. In real time, it’s a fog.”
“We must put our hand on the rudder of history and chart a path forward, guided by the things that are certain even in uncertain times—our principles, our partners, our vision for where we want to go,” Blinken said, “so that, when the fog lifts, the world that emerges tilts toward freedom, toward peace, toward an international community capable of rising to the challenges of its time.”
—
Notes: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/FMfcgzGtwzvBKqJMDSkvWhZXczwXHlkB
“[O]ur competitors have a fundamentally different vision,” he said. “They see a world defined by a single imperative: regime preservation and enrichment. A world where authoritarians are free to control, coerce, and crush their people, their neighbors, and anyone else standing in the way of this all-consuming goal.”
They claim that the norms and values that anchor the rules-based international order are imposed by Western nations, that human rights are up to nations themselves, and that big countries should be allowed to dictate to their smaller neighbors.
“The contrast between these two visions could not be clearer. And the stakes of the competition we face could not be higher—for the world, and for the American people.”
Blinken explained that the Biden administration has deliberately integrated domestic and foreign policy, crafting industrial strategy to rebuild the U.S. and to address the wealth disparities that create deep political resentment, while aligning that domestic strength to foreign policy. That foreign policy has depended on strengthening alliances and partnerships, building regional integration so that regions address their own interests as communities, closing the infrastructure gap between nations, and strengthening international institutions—rejoining the Paris Climate Accords and the World Health Organization, working to expand the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and so on.
Blinken said that such investments will lead nations to stand up to “the Beijings and Moscows of the world” when they claim this system serves the West and try to tear it down, and answer back: “No, the system you are trying to change is our system; it serves our interests.” At the same time, such investments will offer new markets for American workers and businesses, more affordable goods for American consumers, more reliable food and energy supplies, more robust health systems to stop deadly disease, more allies to address global challenges.
Looking back from the future, Blinken said, “the right decisions tend to look obvious, the end results almost inevitable. They never are. In real time, it’s a fog.”
“We must put our hand on the rudder of history and chart a path forward, guided by the things that are certain even in uncertain times—our principles, our partners, our vision for where we want to go,” Blinken said, “so that, when the fog lifts, the world that emerges tilts toward freedom, toward peace, toward an international community capable of rising to the challenges of its time.”
—
Notes: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/FMfcgzGtwzvBKqJMDSkvWhZXczwXHlkB
Carpe_Noctem said:
Not a pedophile, again though? [ . . . ].
I don't even know what to say here. I am dumbfounded by this comment. Trump has been found guilty of sexually abusing and defaming women but that's okay because they're not children?! Of course, a man would imply that. No sexual assault is okay against a man, woman, or child. Ever.
The big difference here is that Trump has been found guilty in a court of law and President Biden has never even been accused by so much as a parent. I am so happy you care for the welfare of these alleged child victims of President Biden's affections, because NONE of the parents, not even ONE, seem concerned. EVER. There has NEVER even been a complaint, much less a warrant, arrest, trial, and conviction.
Personally, I think both President Biden and Trump are too old to be running this country. We need strong, new blood to breakup this political fiasco. But we don't have that as of now. So what is left: Biden ( who has never been convicted of what you claim ) or ( most likely ) Trump ( who HAS been convicted of what we claim - not to mention arrested and accused of much more ).
That's the choice whether we like it or not. I'm going with the current president. Actually, I'd like Marianne Williamson. But I don't think she has a chance. She was only polling at 9% in May. And I have got to ensure my vote fights white supremacy.
https://marianne2024.com/
Edit: I just double-checked the polling statuses and Marianne has gained another point and is up to 10% now. Hey! Double-digits.
Not a pedophile, again though? [ . . . ].
I don't even know what to say here. I am dumbfounded by this comment. Trump has been found guilty of sexually abusing and defaming women but that's okay because they're not children?! Of course, a man would imply that. No sexual assault is okay against a man, woman, or child. Ever.
The big difference here is that Trump has been found guilty in a court of law and President Biden has never even been accused by so much as a parent. I am so happy you care for the welfare of these alleged child victims of President Biden's affections, because NONE of the parents, not even ONE, seem concerned. EVER. There has NEVER even been a complaint, much less a warrant, arrest, trial, and conviction.
Personally, I think both President Biden and Trump are too old to be running this country. We need strong, new blood to breakup this political fiasco. But we don't have that as of now. So what is left: Biden ( who has never been convicted of what you claim ) or ( most likely ) Trump ( who HAS been convicted of what we claim - not to mention arrested and accused of much more ).
That's the choice whether we like it or not. I'm going with the current president. Actually, I'd like Marianne Williamson. But I don't think she has a chance. She was only polling at 9% in May. And I have got to ensure my vote fights white supremacy.
https://marianne2024.com/
Edit: I just double-checked the polling statuses and Marianne has gained another point and is up to 10% now. Hey! Double-digits.
More incredible reading ... Britain also had its chaos-makers with the Boris Johnson and Liz Truss Prime-Ministerships -- but what's going on in America seems off the scale. The ante is being seriously upped. It's the kind of scene where some random event could suddenly provide a flashpoint for something to explode. I hope not.
Josh said:More incredible reading ... Britain also had its chaos-makers with the Boris Johnson and Liz Truss Prime-Ministerships -- but what's going on in America seems off the scale. The ante is being seriously upped. It's the kind of scene where some random event could suddenly provide a flashpoint for something to explode. I hope not.
It's totally off the scale, Josh. I have never seen it like this before. But that attests to the attempted rise of a dictator and his mob-mentality that "the squeaky wheel gets the oil".
It's totally off the scale, Josh. I have never seen it like this before. But that attests to the attempted rise of a dictator and his mob-mentality that "the squeaky wheel gets the oil".
