The US president has escalated the trade war with China by announcing plans to hike the tariff imposed on 200 billion dollars of Chinese goods.
On the Victory and Cooptation of the Liberal-Left by Global Capitalism 1
A lot of people on the liberal/left end of the spectrum have to psychologically assume the role of the “permanent victim” because their whole worldview involves fighting “oppression” or “social injustice” so there always has to be oppression or social injustice for them to fight. Therefore, 11 white nationalists in the army suddenly means the Fourth Reich is just around the corner.
Actually, liberals have won virtually every social or cultural issue of the last 50 years: civil rights, feminism, gay rights, abortion rights, abolishing the draft, 18-year-olds voting. The demography of the US is becoming more diverse. Institutions are becoming more integrated (the military is the most integrated institution of all except maybe prison). Organized religion is losing its influence. The transgender movement is growing. Weed is being legalized in more and more places. Support for social democratic economic policies is rising. Environmentalism is popular. Overt racism is socially unacceptable. The sexual revolution has become the norm. Republicans have lost the popular vote in every election in the past quarter century except 2004. Antiwar sentiment is high. The political left has taken over universities. Most of the media trends left of center.
Boredom and Suffering and Safety and Liberty 2
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
I’m not going to lie to you, dearest motherfuckers. My life is kind of a dumpster fire right now. In fact, it’s been kind of a dumpster fire for the last few years. Even aside from my clinical crosses to bare: anxiety, depression, OCD, ADD, IBS, Lyme disease, dysphoria, bubonic plague, etc: The last few years have felt like a Macy’s Day Parade of Ballardian car crashes. My grandmother gets dementia and has to be moved through fifty different fucking homes because none of them can be bothered to treat her like a goddamn human being unless their paid in speed boats. My cat and loyal companion of nearly twenty years loses both thyroids, shits everywhere and slowly dies on me. Then my best humanoid friend since high school up and moves to a different goddamn continent. Then my father gets run over by a sleep deprived paper-man and finds out he has cancer in the emergency room. Then some sick fuck shoots a geezer and blows his brains out next door to my loony Nana’s latest nursing home. Then the cops murder another friend in cold blood for being autistic while black. And then and then and then and then….
More…
Keith Preston: US unwilling to give up Afghanistan with eye on minerals Reply
Press TV. Watch here.
The United States is seeking to continue military presence in Afghanistan to pave the way for pursuing American interests in the war-torn country, says a commentator.
At the end of a four-day summit in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, Loya Jirga (grand tribal council) demanded the Afghan government and the Taliban to declare and implement an immediate and permanent ceasefire.
In February, the American officials rejected any time frame for troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, which is seen as a stumbling block in the way of persuading Taliban militants to put down their weapons and respect a peace deal.
In an interview with Press TV on Saturday, Keith Preston, chief editor of attackthesystem.com, said that American foreign policy elite “do not want to give up Afghanistan.”
Pointing to the reason behind the United States’ unwillingness to put an end on its military presence in Afghanistan, Preston noted, “Afghanistan has a lot of valuable minerals and other resources that a lot of American business interest and industrial interest want to develop.”
Keith Preston: US pursuing regime-change policy in Iran Reply
Press TV. Listen here.
The United States is pursuing a regime-change policy in Iran by exerting military and economic pressure and covert operations, according to American political analyst Keith Preston.
Iran reiterated on Wednesday that chances that American and Iranian forces could engage in clashes in the Persian Gulf, or any other region, were high .
US military spending up for first time in 7 years 1
Keith Preston: Trump keeping Saudi Arabia close to serve Big Oil interests Reply
Press TV. Listen here.
US President Donald Trump’s close ties with Saudi Arabia are aimed at serving Big Oil by keeping the global petroleum market stable.
Speaking to Press TV on Sunday, Keith Preston, the Virginia-based director of Attackthesystem.com, said Trump’s recent remarks that he made Saudi King Salman pay more for Washington’s military services was just him being “candid.”
Getting It Reply
This piece by Lind could almost be a left-libertarian or left-anarchist analysis EXCEPT the cultural divide is so vast as to be unbridgeable.
By William S. Lind
Traditional Right
The Left has adopted the word “woke” to describe people who have accepted the ideology of cultural Marxism and are willing to act on it. The equivalent I hear most often for the Right is “getting it”. What does it mean to “get it”?
A False God Fails 1
Apparently, Bill Lind has become an anarcho-Monarchist in the tradition of Tolkien, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, or Hans Hermann Hoppe.
By William S. Lind
Traditional Right
As Great Britain moves towards its independence day, i.e., Brexit, a false god is failing: the god named “democracy”. Prime Minister Theresa May, who should have gone back to her kitchen long ago, has made such a bloody mess of it that Britons are questioning the system that put her in office. The March 31 New York Times says it bluntly:
It has amounted to a hollowing out of confidence in democracy itself.
“I don’t think the central institutions of government have been discredited like this in the postwar period,” said William Davies, who teaches political economy at Goldsmiths, University of London. . . “the political elites–people just want them to get off the stage. I don’t know who they want to replace them. But there’s a sense a reboot would be something people would be in favor of. . .”
“I think people have totally lost confidence in democracy, in British democracy and the way it’s run,” said Tommy Turner, 32, a firefighter.
Fortunately for Britain, democracy, in the form of the House of Commons, does not rule at all. There is still the House of Lords, which is usually more sensible than Commons, and there is the real sovereign, Queen Elizabeth. If all else fails, the Queen can rule as well as reign. Evelyn Waugh put British democracy in its place; when asked why he did not vote, he replied, “I do not aspire to advise my Sovereign on her choice of servants.”
Trans-Tribalism or: Why Traditionalists Should Stop Worrying and Embrace the Queer Revolution 8
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
I like conservatives. Not all conservatives. Not the bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran kind or the endangered white male victim kind. But the Traditionalist kind. The Old Right, Paleolibertarian, fuck-you-mind-your-own-damn-business kind. I like people like Bill Kaufman, Wendell Berry, Ron Paul and H.L. Mencken. I admire the prose and courage of Yukio Mishima. I appreciate the insight of Martin Heidegger. I think Oswald Spengler’s ideas are at least as prophetic as those of Gramsci and Marx. I even think Alain de Benoist has a few good ideas (and about 67 bad ones). Justin Raimondo used to be one of my favorite writers before he mysteriously vanished up Donald Trump’s orange asshole. And I consider antifa-hate-thing Troy Southgate to be a personal friend of mine.
No longer the Kurdish Question, but the Kurdish Alternative 1
By Dr. Hawzhin Azeez
No longer the Kurdish Question, but the Kurdish Alternative – Hawzhin Azeez
It is either a fallacy, or a pure symbolic violence, to continue to assume the “Kurdish Question” as unresolved.
For scholars, policy experts and political bureaucrats the Kurdish Question, with its complex sub and supra-national political implications, remains as the most pertinent dilemma of our modern times. The epic resistance that occurred against Daesh by the YPG-YPJ propelled the Kurdish Question into the international spotlight like never before. Seminar and conferences are held, papers and books are written at a rapid pace and people across social media flock to the hundreds of pro-Kurdish pages and sites thirsty for information.
And perhaps the clinical label of Kurdish Question was employable, for the Kurds and their stubborn refusal to assimilate and Turkify, Arabize or Persianize resulted in increasing levels of violence by the states to address this ‘problem’. Consequently, for decades the Kurds faced ethnic cleansing, ethnic displacement, Arabization policies, genocides, and loss of even the most rudimentary human rights, resulting from the arbitrary and artificial states who themselves were produced by violent colonial pens. Artificial states and their repressive and ideological machinations promoted violent, exclusionary, oppressive unitary identity politics resulting in the construction of imagined national identities and mythical one history, one nation, one language and one flag constructs. This blood saturated identity was not unique to only post-colonial states, but structurally to all modern ‘nation-states’
Why Anarchists and Libertarians Can’t Get Along 5
A reader writes:
“Very thought-provoking posts today, Keith (and great talk with Antony from the other day, on the state as aberration).
I agree that it’s a shame how wide the gap is between lefty anarchists and an-caps (and each camp’s fellow travelers). My feeling is a lot of that can be chalked up to the larger red/blue culture war trap, as well as quite a few instances where (if one looks closely) both sides are basically agreeing but merely prioritizing different issues to such an extent that they end up misreading one another as mortal enemies, rather than potential allies. Both view the other’s potential success as empowering what they deem to be the worst elements in the society (corporations, racists, and social conservatives on the one side; radical SJWs, communists/socialists, and immigrants/cultural aliens [sometimes explicitly non-whites and Muslims] on the other). There is also, of course, the simple communication problem of various groups using seemingly mutually unintelligible political languages each laden with their own wonky terms and ideological histories.
I think it was during that talk with Antony that you mentioned how the red and blue tribes have difficulty conceiving of separation of culture and state (to perhaps the same degree that people in Europe centuries ago had difficulty conceiving of separation of church and state). I’d never thought of it quite in those terms before, but that seems very accurate. The ironic flipside of that reality is that various ostensibly anti-state camps fall into the same trap: they want anarchism with red values, or blue values, and can’t tolerate the thought of co-existence with anarchists who’d want to arrange their societies differently than they themselves would. They’re still, as you put it, universalists. With the predictable end result that too many in the various anti-state groups, despite what they may theorize or envision for some idealized future — in practice just end up throwing their lot in with either the Republicans or Democrats as the lesser of two evils (as they see it), and are thus neutralized and incorporated back into the statist fold.
As someone who came of age at the height of the so-called libertarian moment in the late 2000s/early 2010s, it’s been disappointing and disheartening watching the an-cap/libertarian sphere implode and dissipate, with many getting sucked into the alt-right (or at least, against the SJWs), some into the SJW left (or at least, against the alt-right), and probably not a few just disengaging entirely. That’s not to say the libertarian sphere has necessarily shrunk a huge amount (though admittedly I myself am not too involved in it anymore), but it’s clear that the energy and passion (and numbers of activist-type youth, frankly) are much greater among both the rising progressive movement and the alt-right/alt-right adjacent disgruntled mobs. Neither of which I have much faith in to move us toward anything resembling a freer society.
By and large, they each seem to just want to gain hold of the cudgel of the state to beat the other, out of fear of being beaten themselves should the other get it before they do (in other words, politics as usual). And that fear limits their vision for what could be possible.
There are some silver linings. I’ve noticed that a few people in the progressive camp seem to be genuinely anti-war/anti-empire (supporters of Tulsi, Mike Gravel, and the more radical left supporters of Bernie). They do exist. But will it be enough in comparison to the mountain of progressives who are either apathetic about empire or enthusiastic supporters of it (under the guise of humanitarianism and “anti-fascism”)? Probably not. And of course, as you’ve pointed out, Bernie’s foreign policy views and priorities are problematic at best. He has spoken out strongly against US support for Saudi Arabia and the Likud government, so that’s a plus. But Obama as a candidate was also against the Iraq War and Gitmo.
Things could get interesting if both Tulsi and Gravel end up on the debate stage. But both could also be easily discredited in the eyes of most Western leftists (and in the case of Gravel, much of the public at large). Oh, Tulsi hated gays and likes Assad? Gravel is a 9/11 truther? Conversation over. It’s unfortunate, and it says a lot that that’s where we’re at.
The First Worldism of the Black Panther Movie and Black Americans Reply
An interesting take on First World/bourgeois identity politics. This is more or less my long-held position on these questions as well.
The American Victim Complex: An age-old tradition Reply
A great takedown of victimology and the oppression olympics, Left and Right.
Ron Paul on Noam Chomsky & Crony Capitalism 1
Ron Paul sounds almost like a left-anarchist is this and Noam Chomsky sounds almost like an an-cap. It’s a shame the gap between an-coms and an-caps is so vast when we agree 90% of the time.
The Death of the American People and Empire Reply
Truth Time: Marxism is Stagnating Reply
A great takedown of the old guard Communist parties AND the First World Left by Unruhe. The one thing I disagree with Unruhe on is that I don’t consider the old guard Commies to be moving toward fascism, much less “third positionism,” but toward bourgeois nationalism (in fact, they’ve already been there for a long time, with Putin and Xi being the most obvious examples). And the critique of the embrace of academic leftists gender studies ideology by Western Maoists is spot on as well.
Bernie Sanders Proves 3rd Worldist Theory Reply
This is from late 2015 but still very succinct given the current buildup to next year’s election.
The Empire of Faux Liberalism Reply
A Facebook reader offers some interesting insights about the nature of the present global empire, and empires generally. It is true that empires are often more culturally “liberal” or “progressive” than the societies that they subjugate and conquer. Alexander the Great spread the Hellenistic culture throughout the Ancient Near East. The Romans were certainly more advanced and more of a cosmopolitan culture than many of their backwater provinces. The European colonialists were frequently more liberal than the conquered peoples of their empires (for instance, the Spaniards largely put an end to the Aztec practice of human sacrifice and the British outlawed the suttee). Napoleon was something of prototype for modern liberal imperialism. It was the American empire that ended emperor-worship in Japan.
Keith Preston: Saudi beheadings highlight barbarian nature of regime 1
Press TV: Listen here.
The beheading of 37 Saudi nationals across the kingdom this week underscored once again that Saudi Arabia is “one of the most reactionary and retrograde states” in the world today, says an American political analyst in Virginia.
