Monday 18 March 2024

“How would Donald Trump end democracy” | Rich Lowry

 What I’ve been wondering for a Kong time. When the Democrats say “democracy is on the ballot” just what do they mean? What do they expect if a Trump wins in November? 


In the first term he didn’t do anything that approached installing a dictatorship let alone a Notler or even a Mussolini. 

But, they say, he could do worse in a second term. Robert De Niro the other day in Bill Maher was crazy enough to say that if Trump is elected both he and Bill will be arrested and out in a gulag! Fantasies.  

Which fantasies Rich Lowry takes apart. This whole “the end of democracy” thing is, he says 

… the stuff of a Philip K. Dick novel and, in the right hands, would make a compelling dystopian Netflix series. It’s not remotely plausible.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/03/how-exactly-would-donald-trump-end-american-democracy/

ADDED: we were studying the life and times of Philip K. Dick (PKD) the other day as we’d just re-watched Minority Report. Still a good movie, based on PKD’s book. As are, by the way, Blade Runner and Total Recall. 
Talking about alternate history PKD also wrote The Man in the High Castle an alternate history where Hitler won the war. Thing is now, with Trump v Biden, we’re looking at actual, real, in our faces reality about to hit us in the face in November. Whatever happens half the country will be pissed off. Would be nice to have PKD’s fantastical take on it.
Sent from my iPad

Sunday 17 March 2024

“Australia and ASEAN” | Fact checking the Aussie haters

From here

There’s heaps of Aussies working at the South China Morning Post I guess because they’re editors and journalists. Whenever there’s an Australia-China article there come the China trolls, attacking Australia. It’s a given, heaps of clicks, heaps of hate. 

Most articles about Oz are negative on Oz. 

Maybe because of the China trolls and maybe also because those Aussie editors and journalists are kind of leftie anti-Oz. 

Whatever: mostly anti-Oz. As in the familiar tropes. Australia is a white colonialist enterprise, as if we hadn’t ditched an exclusivist White Australia policy last century. And as if we are not the most multi-cultural, multi-ethnic country in the region. Certainly China is exclusionary to Chinese; Japan to Japanese; Korea to Koreans. 

Another trope: we’re not engaged enough in Asia. That’s also wrong. Australia has deep engagement economically and also militarily. We are one of the largest military in the region. 

So the bit here:

Australia was 85% of ASEAN in 1980 but is now only 50%. 

So what?

In 1980 ASEAN was only 5 countries and is now 10. Three of those were communist and communism makes nothing but barbed wire for gulags and tins of cabbage. 

On a per capita basis, Australia is TEN times that of ASEAN: Australia $US 60,517 per head; ASEAN $US 5,371. 

Saturday 16 March 2024

"Douglas Murray’s Raw Opinion on the Israel-Gaza Conflict” | Living with L'chaim

Click above for the video
Douglas Murray has been to the front lines of many wars, including in Israel, Lebanon and Gaza. I think he is a sound and trustworthy observer. Those on the side of Hamas won’t like what he says.

The podcast is “History for the Curious” by Living with L’chaim. 

L'Chaim in Hebrew is a toast meaning "to life”.

By contrast, think of the Hamas motto: “We love death more than you love life”. 

Yes, we love life. The Jews love life. And loving death makes you, Hamas, a death cult. Exactly that, by your own saying. 

Golda Meir said: “We can forgive, perhaps, you killing our children. We can not forgive you for making us kill your children”. That’s why Hamas is the one now not accepting a ceasefire. Which both the United States and Israel have offered but Hamas have refused. They want more dead babies. So that they can play the world.

"American empire strikes back at China via economic warfare” | Tik Tok ban bill

"American empire strikes back at China via economic warfare” by Alex Lo.

My comment at the site:

1. Tik Tok has 170 million subscribers in the U.S., but the US has only 22 m teenagers, so clearly it's not just "silly teenagers" using Tik Tok. [This is to the Lo point that “it’s only teenagers posting stupid vids, so why worry?”]

2. The CEO of Tik Tok admitted in Senate testimony that Chinese officials have full access to all data gathered and that alone is a present security threat. IMO. 

3. Other countries have banned Tik Tok, including India, Pakistan… and China itself! ADDED: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Taiwan, the UK and EU governance bodies have all banned or partially banned the app. [Ref

4. China does not allow, in China, anything like a Tik Tok owned by a foreign entity. 

5. It's not just security. There's also the algorithms. These are controlled by China. (See 2 above). We would be naive to imagine they do not tweak the algorithms to suit China needs. 

6. Facebook, etc, being similar to Tik Tok is irrelevant. Because: (a) we are also worried about them, and (b) They are not Chinese-owned. 

7. The Bill was passed by overwhelming majority in the Reps. 

8. The Bill does not aim only at China, but also Russia, North Korea and Iran. These are countries that have been clear in their enmity to the US. (Eg, Iran: "Death to America!”).

ADDED: Some Tik Tok supporters are pointing out in the comments that it’s owned by ByteDance and that in turn is majority-owned by international investors. But ByteDance is based in Beijing, and has to follow Beijing laws. Which require, inter alia, that China-based companies release any information that the government demands. Which the CEO of Tik Tok says it does. (In testimony that was said to be a “disaster” for Tik Tok).  

A Tik Tok apologist claims China only owns 1% of ByteDance. Ok. But then China has one-third of the Board seats. Hmmm.... 

It would be very naive of us to assume that because “international investors” have a majority of the ByteDance (if indeed they do), and China only a small part, that there’s “nothing to worry about”. Nothing to see here. Right. Those same people are more than willing to believe that the US’s National Endowment for Democracy is a CIA cut-out. And that the Confucius Institutes are equally innocent (they aren’t).

Also: why are people so all-fired up about Tik Tok, but would be quite happy to see restrictions on the likes of X or Facebook? Why the difference? Just supporting China? IDK. 

“World on the brink” | Peter T. C. Chang


Online here
To Peter T. C. Chang, I sayThere's no point "forcing Israel to respect the rights of Palestinians through the pursuit of the two-state solution" when it's not Israel that is the roadblock. The Palestinians have been offered a state, numerous times since 1937. Whether the PLO, the Palestinian Authority or HAMAS, they all refuse it. Their solution is the One State, "from the River to the Sea". 

What in earth is the point of banging on about it by badgering Israel? The Palestinians have made it abundantly clear they want to wipe Israel off the map. 

It's Hamas, not Israel, that has a Charter calling for the death of all Jews. It's Hamas not Israel that are the self-defined genocidalists. It's Hamas — and the rest of the Arab world for that matter — not Israel who maintain apartheid states, Judenrein free of Jews. While Israel is 70% jewish, 20% Arab and 10% the rest. There is nothing like that in the Arab world, let alone the Palestinian world of Gaza and the West Bank. Nothing. 

It's a topsy turvy world, when we keep reading articles like this. Banging on at Israel for a "two-state solution"when it's not them in the way. (Israelis now are against it, but that's because of October 7th. Previously they have been willing parties to offers made on at least eight occasions, all rejected by the Palestinian side).

ADDED: Very rich talking about Anwar Ibrahim and Xi Jinping being all about “diversity”. One with a policy of “Bumiputra”, which even Wikipedia says is racist (because it is) and the other running a country where the Han are 93% of the population and exert hegemony over the rest, including most infamously in Xinjiang with the oppression of the Uygurs. 

Ibrahim has allied himself, explicitly and unapologetically, with Hamas, a murderous, genocidal, homophobic, misogynist, etc, etc, etc.... outfit. The most modern, and in the real sense, Nazis. That’s the diversity guy, according to Peter Chang. 

Left-wing bubbles: Biden and the SOTU

 The Thomas O. Falk article is indented. My comment: outdented and purple. I don’t often do this, but this article got me with its unintended ironies and flat-out nonsense.

It’s interesting that on the Left they talk of “right-wing bubbles” which are not denied. But the Left never talk about, or if the do, deny, that there are “left-wing bubbles”. Why? Because all the mainstream media, the legacy media -- the BBC, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, New York TimesWashington Post -- surround us all, like the water fish swim in, we, the Left, think that’s all there is. Not that it’s a bubble, with only a part of the news, but that it’s the news. They’d be wrong about that. As this article shows.

From Thomas Falk:

If I had to give one sentence to provide my takeaway for Joe Biden’s State of the Union address last Thursday, it would be: There is life in the old dog, yet!

My comment: Or, alternatively, my one sentence takeaway would be: “angry old man shouting at the sky”.

For far too long, Biden’s public appearances have had the character of a solar eclipse – seldom and short. Indeed, he has given the fewest news conferences of any American president since Ronald Reagan.

The reasons for Biden’s rather sporadic appearances are apparent. He is not a great public speaker and he never has been, even in his younger years. He is a gaffe machine. Recent moments of confusion and a rather suboptimal special counsel’s report only added further fuel to the idea that Biden has lost a step – one that could be decisive in the race against Donald Trump.
Not that he’s “not a great public speaker”. Or not just that. It’s also that his mental decline has become too apparent. You can easily find clips of old Joe back when he was a younger man and sure, he’s not the most eloquent, but he was far better than he is today. These days he’s as likely to stop mid sentence and stare into space. 
My comment: The “suboptimal counsel’s report” refers to the Robert Hur report on Joe Biden’s possession of classified documents at his home, against the law. Hur’s report exonerated Joe Biden of the charge of hiding classified documents, based on him being age-impaired, a clear unequal treatment vs the Trump Mar-al-lago case. Both are the same, according to Legal experts, and both should be treated the same. Either both should be indicted or both should not be indicted. Falk just slides over that in the (no doubt correct) belief that his readers will slide over it too.

One rightfully wonders why Biden’s staff thought that this approach of limited exposure and risk could ever work. It certainly did the trick during the 2020 election cycle but the circumstances differ significantly this time around and it shows. If the election were held tomorrow, Trump would likely win.

My comment: Any thoughts as to why it might be that Trump would win if election were held now? Nah….

 I have also been very dubious about Biden’s chances so far though not because of his political record. If I were to provide Biden’s résumé without his name on it, most politically astute observers would concur that he has perhaps been the most consequential first-term president since Reagan.

My comment: “...the most consequential first-term president”. Well, “consequential” can be positive or negative. I know that Falk means positive, but is it really? Here are some “consequential” on the downside: Telling Putin that invading just on the eastern borders of Ukraine would be fine; bombing the Gazprom pipeline; disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan; all which encouraged Putin to attack Ukraine. And encouraged Iran, by money and rhetoric, to promoted Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis. Domestically: shoving boatloads of money to tackling Covid, leading to record inflation; unconstitutional Covid mandates, pushing the radical Trans agenda, supporting all sorts of intersectional politics. All up, many “political astute observers” would see his presidency as being a disaster. 

But perception is reality in modern politics. Thanks to unfortunate public mishaps and the inability to communicate his success effectively thus far, Biden is not perceived as a modern Reagan but rather as Jimmy Carter 2.0 and he faces the same fate as the latter.

My comment: Correctly perceived as Jimmy Carter.

This is why Biden’s State of the Union address was so important. Granted, there are two ways of looking at the address, which was – outside the right-wing echo chamber – widely perceived as positive. One can surely argue that, for many Americans, the bar was set incredibly low. For as long as Biden did not fall offstage, it would have constituted a successful speech in many people’s eyes. 

My comment: talking the “right-wing echo chamber” without ever acknowledging that there’s a left-wing echo chamber. In any case, the SOTU was not considered successful by Independents, which are around 20% of the electorate and are critical to any election. The figures from a HarrisX-Forbes poll are that 73% thought the speech was “divisive” and 65% thought that it did not deal with immigration or the economy well enough. 

But while the bar was certainly low, Biden did an outstanding job and showed the United States and the world that he still has what it takes to beat Trump again in November.

My comment: “outstanding job” in the eye of the beholder. “One screen, two movies”. For those most important Independents it was not seen as “outstanding” at all. 

He was alive and in attack mode. He addressed the issues Americans care about, such as the economy, immigration, and freedom. He called out the threat his predecessor poses, sparred with heckling Republicans, felt comfortable and was fully in charge during the entire speech.

However, the key now is to use the State of the Union as a springboard. Biden must go out there and be on the attack constantly. He is not facing a conventional challenger so a conventional style cannot be the answer. He must embrace his age as well as the wisdom and experience that come with it.

My comment: embrace his age?? the “wisdom and experience”?? More like the stuttering and stumbling. 

He must address the press regularly no matter what mistakes he might make, particularly since his opponent is Trump, whose public appearances are not exactly Shakespearean either, to put it mildly.

This reality will only become more apparent to Americans again with the race gaining national attention now that the primaries have effectively wrapped up. Most Americans do not follow politics that closely. Many will have forgotten about how abysmal the Trump presidency was and perhaps even how he was willing to overthrow a fair election to stay in power.

 My comment: “the abysmal Trump presidency”?? Many people are recalling the Trump presidency as one without a single new war, with the Iranian threat contained, with domestic real wage increases and minimal inflation. In short, many recall things as much better than now. And that’s why, that’s why they are now polling more for Trump. Fact. 

One can thus assume that the hotter this race becomes, the more Americans will be reminded of the carnage between 2016 and 2020. Biden can be the beneficiary if he presents himself as a strong and reliable leader – just like he did on Thursday – and the current subpar polls could soon reflect this.

My comment: “carnage”?? between 2016 and 2020? See my comment immediately above. The reason Trump is polling so well is that people recall the opposite of “carnage”. 

However, to be successful, Biden’s message going forward must be more than about saving democracy and beating Russia. While both points are pivotal, he will have to produce something more tangible that makes a difference to average Americans in rural areas across the republic.
Issues such as the economy, crime or immigration are among the deciding factors with voters. These issues have to be addressed accordingly. Biden recently visited the border to make a stand and not leave the scene to Trump, which was a welcoming sign we are moving in that direction.
There is yet another opening for Biden. He even made it clear during his speech that he is inclined to take full advantage of it when he passionately pledged that he’ll restore Roe vs Wade.
Ever since the US Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion, the Republican Party faces a major self-made election liability that was already witnessed during the previous midterm elections.

My comment: Biden visited the border (for the first time, mind) to “make a stand”?? As in walking along, gingerly, like an old man, asking the odd question, licking the odd ice cream, is somehow “making a stand”?? Irony, oh irony. As in: you gotta be kidding me, mate!

What seemed like a win for Trump – appointing three conservative Supreme Court justices – could now backfire, particularly since Trump has always struggled to attract women voters. The Supreme Court’s decision will cast an even bigger shadow on the prospects of attracting them this time around, especially if the alternative is a Democratic president who vows to restore abortion rights.

My comment: Contra the above, the polls show that women are trending Trump. As are minorities, the African-Americans and Latinos, especially, strong swinging to Trump. The abortion issue should always have been one legislated for, not part of the Constitution, to be decided by SCOTUS.

The election is by no means over. If Biden has it in him to become a risk-taker, to take the gloves off and to show Americans that he is not merely the lesser evil but a formidable commander-in-chief, he can and will beat Trump again.

My comment: I refute the “lesser evil” idea. From this perspective in Hong Kong, it’s not that we in this family are Trump supporters. We’ve never been. But we see what Biden has done, what Trump did in his first term, and the safer bet seems to us to Trump. We’re far from alone. 

Thomas O. Falk is a journalist and political analyst who writes about German, British, and US politics. 

 Biden can still win..."