At the start of the pandemic, the head of the World Health Organisation, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, urged the countries of the world to be more collaborative and less confrontational, saying that “this is the time for solidarity, not stigma” and repeating, in the years since, that nations must “work together across ideological divides to find common solutions to common problems.” These wise words must be heeded.
Source: What Follows US Hegemony
On trust in government, we now rank 26th worldwide between Greece and Hungary.
Such findings are ominous, for the very bedrock of democracy is trust—including trust that political and economic rules are fair so that our voices are heard. And it’s hard to imagine many of us feel heard when wealth and income continue gushing to the top, generating economic inequality roughly on par with Haiti’s and more extreme than in 121 countries. Plus, most of us express reluctance to share our views for fear of offending others.
Source: The American Crisis of Trust—Let’s Learn from Leading Democracies | The Smirking Chimp
In what Austin journalist Christopher Hooks has called “one of the stupidest news cycles in living memory,” the entire American political/media class is having an existential meltdown over what the Pentagon claims is a Chinese spy balloon detected in U.S. airspace on Thursday.
The recently leaked US supreme court decision overturning Roe v Wade is perhaps the clearest indication of the danger that this trend poses. By removing a fundamental individual right and once again enabling conservatives to impose their own moral views on women’s bodies, the decision – if passed as written – will be seen on the right as a landmark in how the power of the state can be used to discipline a degenerated culture and regulate morality. Further crackdowns are sure to follow. Locked out of power on the supreme court and facing steep challenges to winning power in America’s unbalanced electoral system, defenders of liberalism will struggle to fight back.
As many Americans feared that freeing Kyle Rittenhouse seemed to legitimize political violence, Republicans competed for the honor of offering him a job on Capitol Hill. Robert MackeyRobert Mackey November 20 2021, 11:29 a.m.
Rep. Paul Gosar, the Arizona extremist who helped plan the pro-coup January 6 rally, and shared an animated video fantasy of himself killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, hailed the verdict by tweeting that he and Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida “will arm wrestle” to see which of them gets to offer Rittenhouse a Capitol Hill internship.
Source: Republicans Fight Over Who Loves Kyle Rittenhouse the Most
Australian Institutions have been historically actively in persecuting left-wing thinking if it moved too far left for conservatives. The false flag cry today has always been ANTIFA ANTIFA
It’s hard to talk about the threat of right-wing violence without sounding alarmist. After all, America has made it this far without succumbing to fascism—and the creaky institutional guardrails have held during national emergencies, including the Trump years. Even the January 6 insurrectionists didn’t have the look of a competent paramilitary force. It can’t happen here, right? But it’s time to start getting alarmed—and for our institutions to respond accordingly. Right-wing and white supremacist domestic terrorism is at highs not seen since the Jim Crow era. QAnon and Q-adjacent conspiracy theories have metastasized political disagreements and underlying racist and misogynist sentiments in the minds of millions of conservatives, some of whom now believe they are engaging in a battle with cannibal pedophile agents of Satan who steal every election. These wild and unfounded beliefs, in turn, provide them justification for almost any kind of violence in response.
There is no Democracy unless one accepts to lose an election.
Washington’s Capitol halls are abuzz this autumn as President Joe Biden attempts to enact his legislative agenda in the face of a Republican opposition hell-bent on political vandalism and chaos.
The wealthiest 1% of Americans are responsible for more than $160bn of lost tax revenue each year, according to a new report from the US treasury.
White supremacist and hard-right groups aligned with “conservatives” in this country are applauding the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, lauding it as a model for a similar takeover of the United States.
Source: Right Wing Extremists Eye Taliban Takeover As Model For US Civil War | Crooks and Liars
America’s white population declined for the first time while US metro areas were responsible for almost all of the country’s population growth, according to groundbreaking new data released on Thursday by the US census bureau.
Source: US’s white population declines for first time ever, 2020 census finds | Census | The Guardian
A Navy training document asks, “Anarchists, socialists and neo-nazis represent which terrorist ideological category?”
Source: Military Training Document Says Socialists Represent “Terrorist” Ideology
The second way out of Germany’s crisis would be through immigration. The country could throw open its doors to people from all over the world to take unwanted and unfilled jobs, pay taxes, and support the increasingly aging population. That is exactly what Germany did. The government of Angela Merkel, in 2015 and 2016, accepted over a million refugees from the Middle East and North Africa. Germany now has the fifth largest population of refugees in the world (after Turkey, Colombia, Pakistan, and Uganda). This headline-grabbing decision, five years later, has been a remarkable success. The million refugees have prospered, reports the Center for Global Development.
Source: For Greying Geriatric Wealthy Countries, Immigrants are the Solution, not a “Crisis”
The For the People Act, numbered in Congress as H.R. 1 and S. 1, would provide for automatic voter registration across the country and would require paper ballots. It would require that early voting be made available, and would expand mail-in voting. It would authorize $1 billion for upgrades to state voting systems. Polling by Data for Progress and Vote Save America shows that the principles in H.R. 1 are very popular, across parties. Sixty-eight percent of Americans approve of the reforms in the bill. Sixteen percent oppose the measure. The items within the bill are also popular. Eighty-six percent of Americans support a plan to prevent foreign interference in our elections; 7% oppose it. Eighty-five percent of us want to limit the amount of politics; 8% oppose that idea. Eighty-four percent of us want more election security; 8 percent do not. Seventy-four percent of us want to see nonpartisan redistricting; 11% do not. Sixty-eight percent want to see 15 days of early voting; 19% do not. Sixty percent want same-day voter registration; 29% do not. Fifty-nine percent want automatic voter registration; 29% do not. Even with the Republican attacks on mail-in voting, fifty-eight percent of us want to be able to vote by mail; 35% do not. Democrats passed a version of H.R. 1 in the previous Congress, but then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to take it up. Now, every House Democrat supports the bill, while Republican lawmakers oppose it.
The For the People Act | The Smirking Chimp
After record turnout in 2020, Republican-controlled states appear to be in a race to the bottom to see who can pass the most egregious new barriers to voting.
Republicans Are Taking Their Voter Suppression Efforts to New Extremes – Mother Jones
Other Republican state legislatures have responded to overwhelming 2020 voter turnout by stripping voting rights from their constituents, introducing 100 voter suppression bills in 28 states ahead of the 2022 midterms. Meanwhile Trump still has not conceded, thus the rationale for violence continues. Trump remains under investigation. Georgia has launched a criminal probe in the wake of the recorded call in which Trump orders election officials to “find 11,000 votes” for him. A commission into the January 6 insurrection also looks likely. However, short of invocation of the 14th amendment, Trump remains free to run for office again. The world will watch these development just as it watched the Capitol attacks. Allies could be forgiven for wondering how the US can come to their aid when it declines to protect its own seat of government. The work of President Joe Biden to repair US standing on the world stage just became a little tougher.The Conversation
Trump evades conviction again as Republicans opt for self-preservation
On Saturday February 13, a month later, Republican senators proved Trump’s “shoot somebody” boast had been dead-on accurate: in his second impeachment trial they voted to let the man who had incited a lethal and seditious riot off the hook.
Senate Republicans Acquit Trump…and Indict the GOP – Mother Jones
Last week, prosecutors announced charges against a California man who was arrested on Jan. 15 for possession of pipe bombs and other weapons. Ian Rogers was apparently intent on attacking Democrats and other “enemies” of Donald Trump and his movement. Law enforcement also seized as evidence a card from Rogers that read “White Privilege Trumps Everything” and had the number “0045” (Trump was the 45th president) repeatedly listed as its account number.
“White privilege Trumps everything”: Jokey meme, or symbol of America’s disease? | Salon.com
Throughout the four years of Donald Trump’s presidency, Joe Biden spent significant time reassuring American allies around the world that Trump’s America is not “who we are” and pledging “we’ll be back”.
‘America First’ is no more, but can president-elect Biden fix the US reputation abroad?
Trump walks Alone: Former US Allies Britain, France, Germany join Russia and China in Forcefully Rejecting Trump Iran Sanctions
Trump walks Alone: Former US Allies Britain, France, Germany join Russia and China in Forcefully Rejecting Trump Iran Sanctions
The outrage over the brutal police killing propelled millions of people to the streets. The mood has been truly rebellious, revolutionary, geared for big changes.
But then, nothing!
Revolution is being postponed. Opportunities lost. Postpone by how many years?
The truth is – there are no shortcuts. Those who sincerely want to change the United States will have to follow the revolutionary formula from other countries. The formula is mainly based on education, knowledge, and determined, selfless work for the country and the world, called “internationalism.”
Unless the US comes up with an absolutely new strategy, formula, but right now, frankly, it seems to be extremely far from coming up with it!
via Why is this ongoing American ‘revolution’ bound to fail?
Yet the real reason the response has been so muted is that Americans have come to expect their government will lie to them about just about anything. It’s an expectation that has fundamentally remade American politics over the past 40 years, one that helped give rise to Trump and one that ensures political turmoil will continue long after he leaves the national stage.
Source: Afghanistan war lies reveal a crisis of faith in democracy
The LNP in Australia is trying to Americanise us. (ODT)
Drugs, Guns, and Despair: How America Is Killing Americans | The Smirking Chimp
The REAL President behind the FAKE President of the USA (ODT)
mansion built in the 1930s and seen in the credits for the TV show The Beverly Hillbillies has been sold for about $150m, the highest home price ever in California.
The buyer of the Chartwell estate is Lachlan Murdoch, son of Rupert Murdoch and co-chairman of publishing company News Corp, the Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday.
via Lachlan Murdoch’s $150m Beverly Hillbillies mansion buy breaks record | US news | The Guardian
today’s Republican politicians are wholly owned agents of corporations and the billionaire class, stoking extreme anger over a few social issues (immigration, guns, God, gays, race) and using it to bring in the Fox rubes that the billionaire Murdochs kindly hand them.
Prior to this betrayal of America by the Supreme Court, politicians generally felt a need to respond to the wants and needs of their constituents. From Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s people-powered election in 1932 to Reagan’s inauguration in 1981, politicians’ proposed legislation and votes tended to reflect what the people in their districts or states wanted.
In cahoots with Bolivian fascists, military and police, along with US imperial tool Organization of American states (OAS), CIA dark forces toppled Morales for not subordinating the country’s sovereign rights to US interests.
via CIA Installed Dictatorship Replaced Democracy in Bolivia – Stephen Lendman
No such thing as “soft diplomacy” when it comes to American involvement in Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Yemen, etc etc (ODT)
U.S. President Donald Trump’s official statement, meanwhile, praised the military coup in Bolivia and noted that the events leading up Morales’s ouster “send a strong signal to the illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua that democracy and the will of the people will always prevail.” What role the U.S. may have played in Bolivia is certainly less clear than the overt attempt at regime change in Venezuela early this year.
America protects its drug business in Aghanistan which began in the 70s could one imagine the profits made over that period. budget The global monetary value of the heroin market is of the same order of magnitude as the defense budget of the USA $717 billion .
Needless to say, the Pentagon not to mention the CIA which launched the opium economy in Afghanistan in the late 1970s are intent upon protecting this multibillion dollar industry. The proceeds of the Afghan drug trade were initially used to finance the recruitment of Al Qaeda Mujahideen mercenaries to fight in the Soviet-Afghan war.
They are changing America’s essence (ODT)
Bill Barr, Grand Inquisitor, Crusades for an Anti-Secularist Christian State | The Smirking Chimp
![The deployment is part of what the US has described as defensive moves following the attack on Saudi Arabia's oil facilities last month [File: Massoud Hossaini/Reuters] [The Associated Press]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2018/10/13/bc6825f4fd6b4adc949d9db6182bb3ca_18.jpg "US to deploy 3,000 additional troops to Saudi Arabia")
Trump’s Troops for Oil, but not for Life of any Kurd (ODT)
via US to deploy 3,000 additional troops to Saudi Arabia | Saudi Arabia News | Al Jazeera
The one-sided pact Morrison has reinforced. America can do what it wants.(ODT)
via Trump ends talk with Taliban leaving Aussie troops in limbo in Afghanistan – Michael West
This the role model nation that all nations are expected to follow(ODT)
US military has just recently returned to Guyana for the first time in a decade. The purpose of this detachment, according to Military.com, is to “shore up relationships amid growing tensions in neighboring Venezuela.”
“the United States has a clear objective in Venezuela: regime change and the restoration of democracy and the rule of law.” A basic understanding of the English language would require that this sentence poses an oxymoron, as US-enforced regime change could never ever amount to the implementation of democracy and the rule of law.
there are at least five US military bases and a number of US military advisers in Colombia, which a simple glance at a globe will tell you is on the other side of Venezuela. By “shoring up relationships” to the east of Venezuela in Guyana, the US military will almost have the Latin American rival completely surrounded. The south is covered by Brazil, which is another stalwart Washington ally.
It bears to remind oneself that as part of this foreign policy playbook, right-wing, nationalist and/or populist ideologies are almost never opposed or rejected by the US, but welcomed warmly with open arms.
According to the Nation, the US has over 800 formal military bases in 80 countries, “a number that could exceed 1,000 if you count troops stationed at embassies and missions and so-called ‘lily-pond’ bases, with some 138,000 soldiers stationed around the globe.”
Collectively, some other 11 countries including Russia, the United Kingdom, Turkey, China, France and India, have barely some 70 bases between them.
US military encircling Venezuela: Regime change preparations? — RT Op-ed
This new turn toward nationalism among American conservatives is troubling for reasons other than its implicit indictment of rootless cosmopolitanism. Right now Muslims, the LGBTQ community, and the undocumented are certainly more vulnerable to Trump’s attacks than American Jews. Trump is telling prominent people of color in Congress — not prominent Jewish politicians — to “go home.” The intended audiences for these messages can interpret the rhetoric according to their favorite intolerance: racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, xenophobia.
But the assault on globalists, on the elite, on financiers like George Soros all push in the same direction: against the internationalism that is in such short supply when it is needed the most.
Trump Demands the Nobel Peace Prize (ODT)
US officials said they are no longer hamstrung and could now develop weapons systems previously banned under the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty with Russia, a Cold War-era agreement that both sides repeatedly accused the other of violating. The treaty was also criticised because it did not cover China or missile technology that did not exist a generation ago.
via US flags new missile test as arms treaty with Russia ends
When world champion bullshitt-er meets world champion cricket-er Trump has to channeling the voice of Kim Jong-Un little rocketman to prove he has a big heart too. (ODT}
Key points:
A superpower has superior military might, and economic, diplomatic and cultural influence
The erosion of America’s global power may be accelerated by the US’ current foreign policy
China is considered an emerging superpower despite still calling itself a “developing” country
When America gives Americans a more than Nth Korean welcome and it’s up 300% more now Trump’s President. (ODT)
via Without Any Warrants, CBP Searched My Devices at the Airport
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olddogthoughts 