Understanding the Trumpian Foreign Policy Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized • Tags:

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Pete Escobar published an article in the Hong Kong press when Trump took office that is a must read for anyone that wants to understand his administration’s approach to foreign policy, particularly US-Russia relations. Read the article here. Virtually everything Trump has done with regard to foreign policy fits with the paradigm described in this article.

The source of the Trump administration’s foreign policy ideas appears to be the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Trump’s foreign policy approach seems to be a move away from the neocon paradigm that has dominated Republican foreign policy approaches since the Reagan period, and a return to the Nixon/Kissinger approach of the Rockefeller Republicans. This is consistent with Trump’s New York background. His administration is moving back toward the Nixon/Kissinger approach and away from the neocon Republican or liberal internationalist (neocon lite) Democratic approaches. He’s been more of a neocon on domestic policy than on international relations, though in a very pragmatic way.

Trump’s economics seem to be the standard right-wing Keynesian approach that has dominated the Republicans since the Reagan period, although on trade he has departed from that a bit (although Reagan did so as well on a selective basis).

My guess is that a lot of folks among the power elite now regard having let the neocons run foreign policy as a mistake, and as having created too many liabilities and are now pushing them to the side. Notice even the neocon mouthpieces at FOX, who have been reluctant Trumpians, are getting upset about the Putin summit. The only exceptions have been Tucker Carlson, the token paleocon on FOX, and Hannity, who only cares about his ratings, and the fact that most of his fans are diehard Trumpians.

Thus far, Trump seems to be pursuing Nixonian detente with Russia for the purpose of reducing the potential for nuclear conflict, expanding the petroleum trade with Russia, containing jihadi terrorism in Central Asia, and wooing Russia away from an alliance with China.

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Trump’s Working Class, Conservative, Populist Realignment Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Electoralism/Democratism, Left and Right

One of the best and most thorough analysis of Trump voters I have seen to date. Trump ran a Ross Perot-like campaign, and was able to take the Rust Belt away from the Democrats. That’s how he won. The question is how sustainable will that be over time in light of demographic and cultural change?

By Robert W. Merry

The American Conservative

Bonnie Smith is a 63-year-old bakery entrepreneur in Jefferson, Ohio, in Ashtabula County. She begins her day in the bakery at 2:30 a.m., making doughnuts, then moving on to breads and pies “or whatever I have going out.” Married with three grown children, she started her business two years ago after more than three decades at the county sheriff’s office, where she rose from cook to dispatcher and then to deputy. Like nearly all her neighbors throughout Ashtabula County, she is a lifelong Democrat. Her parents were Democrats. She married a Democrat. She worked exclusively for Democratic county sheriffs.

But in 2016 she voted for Donald Trump. “I’ve seen the job losses here,” she says, “the rise in crime, the meth and heroin problem, society essentially losing hope; something just gave in with me.”

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You Don’t Have to Like Trump to Hate Russophobic Hysteria Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy • Tags: ,

Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

I hate Donald Trump. Every cell in my body rejects that man like a bad virus. Being a genderqueer anarcho-feminist with a functioning conscience, everything I believe in, everything that I have built my foundation of basic human values upon, is in complete and utter opposition to that depraved, misogynistic, xenophobic, orange-nationalist and everything he stands for. His treatment of women, Muslims, and immigrants in particular makes me physically sick. But this week I am not revolted by Trump, I am revolted by his self-righteous opposition and this makes me one very, very, very, pissed off lesbian bitch. No one gets in the way of my own self-righteous hate without getting a fucking taste of it. The Resistance hasn’t seen shit until they’ve fucked with me and when you fuck with detente, you fuck with Comrade Hermit.

Last Monday Donald Trump did something right for a goddamn change. He met with our “enemy” Russian president Vladimir Putin and appears to have taken a legitimate stab at diplomacy. After the meeting he was polite to his guest and registered doubt that Mr. Putin was behind any sort of interference with the 2016 election. He went on to boldly criticize Robert Mueller’s childish reenactment of the Salem Witch Trials for grievously damaging Russo-American relations and recklessly endangering world peace between the worlds foremost nuclear powers. “I would rather take a political risk in pursuit of peace than risk peace in pursuit of politics” he proclaimed in a defiant display of what looked suspiciously like leadership.

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An Anarchist Survey of Amazon: Crashing the Party and Amazon Go Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Uncategorized • Tags: , ,

It’s Going Down

Since the conclusion of our previous survey, two interesting events occurred in various Amazon facilities. In one instance, a fulfillment center was torched in the British Midlands. In another instance, coordinated strikes hit Amazon in Germany and Northern Italy. All of this preceded the holiday sales blitz and threw Amazon into internal chaos. At the end of the holiday season, all Amazon could tout was its toxic accomplishment of shipping one billion commodities and selling “tens of millions” of talking Alexa units. When the shopping extravaganza was over, the corporate employees of Amazon were rewarded with a lavish spectacle to sooth their overworked souls.

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In Praise of Jeff Bezos Reply

by • Economics/Class Relations, Uncategorized • Tags: ,

By Sean Gabb

According to a report on the BBC website, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is the richest man in the world, with an alleged personal fortune of £113bn. The usual suspects have raised their arms in outrage at the news. Oxfam drew fresh attention to its report from 2017, in which it called “for a fundamental change in the way we manage our economies so that they work for all people, and not just a fortunate few.” A few weeks earlier, The Guardian had lamented:

Amazon’s website is, in the west, the dominant platform for online retail sales…. This is bad for democracy. Commerce ought to reside in markets governed by regulations set by democratic political process not those chosen by the world’s richest man, Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos.

My view is that Mr Bezos, together with Bill Gates and various other people whose names it will be briefer to let my readers guess than for me to enumerate, is one of the greatest men alive. He has increased the wealth and happiness of countless millions. He is helping to bring into being a world that, just one generation ago, the boldest science fiction writers were cautious to describe. He has earned every penny of his great fortune.

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Keith Preston: Trump’s trade war a ‘double-edged sword’ Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Economics/Class Relations, Uncategorized • Tags: ,

Press TV. Listen here.

US President Donald Trump’s aggressive trade policy with China and Europe is a “double-edged sword,” bolstering domestic manufacturing and narrowing the trade deficit while hitting the American consumer with rising prices, says an analyst.

“Tariffs on imports have multiple economic effects and depending on what kind of economic values you assign to a particular policy, they can be beneficial or they could be negative,” Keith Preston, chief editor and director of AttacktheSystem.com, said in an interview. More…

Gallup Shows How Much Americans Really Care About The “Situation With Russia” 2

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Uncategorized

When the ruling class tries to work up hysteria over bullshit, and the people don’t buy it or don’t care, that’s a sign the elite have lost or are losing their legitimacy.

“Gallup recently did a poll of what Americans say is the most important problem facing the country. One finding: the percentage of Americans saying “Situation with Russia” is the most important problem is literally too small to represent with a number. ”

Zero Hedge

EVACUATING UTOPIA: A History of Christian Anarchism Reply

Lecture delivered by Wayne John Sturgeon at the second international conference of the National-Anarchist Movement, England, June 23, 2018.

“Isn’t the world already

At Peace and aren’t we

The only warring faction?”

-Crass

Improvements made straight roads,

but the crooked roads without improvement,

are the roads of genius.

-William Blake

INTRODUCTION

I would like to begin this lecture with a quote from a contemporary theologian, Alasdair Macintyre, who made the following candid observation in reference to our own times, when writing on the fall of the western Roman Empire:

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“They interfered in our election!” -Power Elite Crybabies 1

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized

This is actually a very incomplete list. It only includes acts of imperialist aggression by the USA since 1945, and the many, many examples from before that, and it’s not even a complete list of the post-’45 examples.

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“Plenty folk say they are outraged over Russia possibly interfering in US elections, jeeze fancy any country doing that.
But it does seem Clinton received $400,000,000.00 secretly from a Russian businessman.

Now folk are outraged Trump questions the stories told him by CIA, FBI, It would take a very special kind of special stupid to trust them, and even greater stupid to argue they are trustable.

The bankers owned media sure have folks suckered into what they are told they should think, without any thinking involved.

As if anyone would interfere in another peoples country.” -Russell Malcolm

If Putin Did It: A Hypothetical Defense for a Hypothetical Crime 1

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Uncategorized • Tags: ,

Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

What if Putin did it? That’s the question I’ve been getting a lot of lately. The proverbial ‘it’ being the oft-repeated accusation that the Russian government, under the direction of Czar ubermensch Vladimir Putin, colluded with Donald Trump in the 2016 election. I happen to be one of a handful of people on the left who has never bought into this half baked conspiracy theory, cooked up by Democrats to explain how they lost the White House to a reality TV monster and picked up by the so-called intelligence community to justify their purse shriveling budgets. But still I get asked, usually by some limp-wristed Whole-Foods progressive, what if Putin did it?

Since I’ve grown blue in the face trying to explain to these well intentioned morons that after 18+ months the worst thing that the biggest investigation since Watergate has managed to uncover is a mercenary Slavic clickbait farm and the kind of casual run-ins with Russian oligarchs that are sadly de rigueur for existence in the Washington swamplands, I figured I might as well just answer the goddamn question, which has developed a vibrant new layer of cacophony in the wake of Robert Mueller’s latest wave of baseless indictments against Russian nationals who will never stand trial. So what if Putin did it? I would have to shrug my shoulders and say Karma’s a bitch.

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The Left’s Holocaust Deniers Reply

by • Left and Right, Uncategorized • Tags:

By Matthew Blackwell

Quillette

Looking out across the yellow-washed angular buildings that clutter the inner city of Phnom Penh in 2016, hindsight fills me with anxiety. Imagining myself here in 1975, I recall the jubilant and cheering crowds in the spring of that year who weren’t privy to that hindsight as they welcomed Khmer Rouge communists into Cambodia’s capital city after months of siege.

On the morning of 17 April, word had arrived that the Khmer Rouge had captured the government’s last beleaguered military stronghold on the outskirts of the city. Prime Minister Long Boret could hardly believe the news. He demanded to be driven to the riverside to see it with his own eyes. By the time he arrived, order had already collapsed in the streets and men wearing the black shirts of the Khmer Rouge surrounded his small entourage and demanded his guards put down their guns. Managing to slip away in the chaos, Boret reported back to his cabinet at the Defence Ministry that the enemy was already in the streets. The rush then began to evacuate senior government members from the country on any government helicopters still available amidst the anarchy. Had he taken action, Boret might have escaped with his wife and children on a helicopter reserved for him, but he delayed, trying to find a helicopter with enough space for his extended family.

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Tom Woods Calls Out Power Elite Stupidity on Russia Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized

Some common sense comments from Tom Woods on the anti-Russia hysteria.

“The hysteria over the Trump-Putin summit is astonishing.

There really is a Deep State, and it’s normally pretty subtle. The subtlety is all gone now.

It’s nonstop, round-the-clock hysteria. No president has ever been on the receiving end of this much unhinged abuse — even when they’ve richly deserved it.

With Trump, I find myself criticizing him when all the respectables are cheering him (as in the case of the Syria strike), and (sometimes) defending him when all the respectables are attacking him.

The respectables brought us Afghanistan, the Iraq war, the destruction of Libya, the destruction of federalism, an unpayable debt, the housing bubble, and 1001 other monstrosities. That doesn’t mean they’re always wrong, but, well, it almost does.

In an interview with Rand Paul, Wolf Blitzer demanded to know if the Kentucky senator trusted U.S. intelligence agencies.

Well, this much I know: there’d be far fewer dead people in the world if Wolf Blitzer hadn’t trusted U.S. intelligence agencies.

Trump’s foreign policy leaves plenty to be desired, needless to say. But he does utter important truths from time to time, and they send the creeps, spooks, and profiteers who benefit from mindless bellicosity into fits of apoplexy.

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The China Threat-Not! Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized

It’s interesting how so many right-leaning folks get it right on Russia, only to lose their minds on China. Um, um, Tucker, China has exactly one military base outside it’s national borders (in East Africa). The USA has hundreds. No need to sweat. Much ado is always made about the supposed power of China’s GDP, but China has a large GDP relative only to it’s massive population. The same is true of India. India’s GDP is the third largest in the world that of China or the United States relative to purchasing power parity. Like China, India is also a nuclear armed power. Does anyone seriously think India is a threat to US global hegemony?

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Keith Preston: ‘Trump is trying to set a standard that even the US does not meet” Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized • Tags: , , ,

An interview with Sputnik. Listen here.

NATO nations have agreed to satisfy the US demand to increase defense spending.

This is what US President – Donald Trump – said at a press conference in Brussels during the second day of the NATO summit.

President Trump reiterated his earlier request for doubling defense spending target, saying that four per cent of gross domestic product was – quote – the right number.

Radio Sputnik discussed Trump’s calls to NATO allies to increase defense spending to 4 % of GDP with Keith Preston, the chief editor and director of attackthesystem.com.

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Where the Right Went Wrong on Criminal Justice 1

by • Law/Justice, Uncategorized

This is a decent enough article as far as it goes, but it fails to address the real elephant in the room, i.e. that mass incarceration results from too many laws and the overly broad definition of “crime.”

By Arthur Rizer and Lar Trautman

The American Conservative

Shutterstock/Sakhorn

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a collaborative series with the R Street Institute exploring conservative approaches to criminal justice reform.

Conservatism is not a monolith. There is no one way to be a conservative, think like a conservative, or define the conservative outlook. But there are certain bedrock principles of those on the Right: limited government, economic responsibility, and a belief that our Founding Fathers laid out sacrosanct rights in our Constitution. A firm belief in the importance of family, morality, and, for some, faith has generally guided the application of these principles. While no party can represent the whole of conservatism, the Republican Party’s role as the dominant right-of-center force in modern American politics makes it a good place to take ideological temperatures on the Right.

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