[The Atlantic] - The combination of China’s early coronavirus recovery, the catastrophic health and economic situation in the United States, an administration whose "America First" instincts have turned the country inward, and a mostly every-country-for-itself response to the global pandemic has put China in the geopolitical driver’s seat. So far, Beijing has squandered the opportunity in dramatic fashion.
...The list of what China has done to raise doubts and suspicions is long. Last month, Beijing pursued a deadly border standoff with India, crossing the Line of Actual Control and killing some 20 Indian soldiers. It passed a national-security law that effectively ended Hong Kong’s political freedom, violating internationally agreed-upon commitments. When the Australian government expressed mild support for an international inquiry into COVID-19’s origins, China barred and taxed key agricultural imports. Tokyo says that armed Chinese coast-guard vessels have sailed near the Senkaku Islands every day since April, and Beijing warned its citizens against travel to Canada, citing "frequent violent actions" purportedly carried out by law enforcement. Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu recently reported an "unprecedented" number of sea and air exercises near the island, and the Chinese air force this month conducted live-fire drills in the South China Sea. No perceived transgression seems too small to elicit a hostile Chinese response: When the Dutch renamed its representative office in Taiwan—from the Netherlands Trade and Investment Office to the Netherlands Office Taipei—China threatened to stop sending medical supplies and to boycott Dutch goods.
If this is what Chinese global leadership looks like, many governments are quickly concluding, count us out.
...Former Indian National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon wrote this month that "it is hard to think of a time since the Cultural Revolution when China’s international prestige and reputation have been lower." That’s a remarkable statement, given the advantages Beijing possessed just a few months ago. Machiavelli said that it’s better to be feared than loved. He didn’t say hated.
...Together, these varying motives suggest that the cliché—offered as recently as last week by Attorney General William Barr—that Beijing thinks in decades and centuries, whereas the West can’t focus beyond the next quarter, is often wrong. Its leaders can be just as daft as anyone else.
The United States, however, should take small comfort in that realization. The underlying dynamics remain: China is pulling out of recession faster than North America and Europe, its military grows stronger each year, and countries in economic doldrums may exit the pandemic more reliant on Chinese capital and markets rather than less so. Chinese leaders believe that the future is theirs, as they pass fractious and declining democracies like the United States on the way up.
America has been lucky that Beijing hasn’t acted with more deftness this time around. The world has experienced a six-month geopolitical vacuum, and China has filled it poorly. What happens next may have less to do with Chinese than American policy. An active, revitalized United States can once again compete effectively with China and resume its role as a global leader. If it does, the past six months could look more like an aberration than a prologue. Under President Harris - I sorta doubt it?
#2
Propaganda. 19 million China has spent on our media. Looking for a return on their investment. China is in big trouble at this time, internally and has no good neighbor policy. If you look American in Vietnam you are welcome. If you look Chinese you will get the stink eye.
#3
You think the Chinese are going to change 2000 years of history, culture and behavior for what? They were the middle kingdom. They want to be the middle kingdom again. You are not going to change that.
#5
Except for the Trump Derangement Syndrome frame feeding the addiction of the Atlantic audience, and the unwarrantedly sunny assumption of Chinese resilience, Richard Armitage’s former State Department staffer appears to have a grasp of the facts of the situation, at least as excerpted for us by g(r)omgoru, a service for which I am grateful, as it means I needn’t read the whole thing.
Under President Kamala Devi Harris, delight of India’s left, all of America would look like downtown Seattle.
Red State
Lee Smith has a provocative article up at Tablet Magazine on the prospects — and rationale — for Susan Rice to be named as the Vice-Presidential selection of Joe Biden. Smith notes that while Rice’s name has been ostensibly part of the list of potential selections since Biden pledged to name "woman of color" as his running mate, there has been a recent "boomlet" in favorable coverage of her in the Democrat establishment house organs the NYT, WaPo, and Politico just to name three. So, what is driving this sudden emergence — other than the fact that every other "woman of color" having been given a "road test" has come up wanting? How bad are things behind the scenes really when the face of the Obama Administration’s Benghazi lies becomes a leading candidate for Vice President?
Susan Rice has a rather modest historical involvement in politics.
...Most famously, she wrote the "CYA" memo as her last official act on the day of Pres. Trump’s inauguration, memorializing for the record that Obama had told Sally Yates and Jim Comey that he wanted the investigation into the Trump Campaign’s ties to Russia done "by the book."
Attorney General William Barr has stated that DOJ will take no action prior to election day — in terms of indictments — which could have the potential for influencing the election. At the same time he has noted that to his knowledge, no one running for election is the subject of any DOJ investigation. That would seem to rule out Joe Biden — rightly or wrongly. A good case could be made that Biden’s current mental state would likely render him unable to competently assist in his defense, and on that basis would not be competent to stand trial even if he were under investigation. It’s certainly possible THAT is the reason upon which AG Barr has ruled him out as a subject of any potential prosecution, and not because he and others associated with him might have engaged in criminal wrongdoing. AG Barr would be grinning like the Cheshire Cat if he was to offer that explanation for why Joe Biden is not seen as a target. Not competent enough to stand trial, but more than competent enough to serve as Democrat Party candidate for President. Put that on a bumper sticker.
But is Susan Rice clear of the Durham investigation? That’s hard to know. We know from very early text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that they exchanged messages about "The White House wants to know everything we are doing." From an organizational perspective, the most likely receptacle for the flow of information on Crossfire Hurricane from the FBI to the White House would be to the Chief of Staff or the National Security Advisor. It seems to me doubtful that this is just a passive one-way flow of information from the Bureau to the WH, with no commentary or "direction" going the other direction, especially on matters of counterintelligence. The more natural source of that kind of "direction" would be from the NSA, not the Chief of Staff.
But as a career bureaucrat and creature of Washington think tanks, Rice has zero experience in elective politics and has never campaigned as a candidate. She is pretty much a denizen of Washington DC, so there is no natural constituency that she brings with her from a particular state or region of the country. It’s hard to see how she helps Biden on the electoral map — other than by being a "woman of color" which Biden was already committed to. Now, I just had an interesting thought. Suppose Obama decided that he's a women? Could certain people argue that term limits do not apply to that new person: Barackia Obama?
Legally not a new person, just a new identity — like when I legally changed my last name upon marriage.
...as Smith notes, if Rice was to be joined with Obama and Biden as being "off-limits" of the Durham probe prior to the election, anything Durham does announce would be one step further away from Obama and Biden, giving them further lattitude to blame misconduct on underlings in the FBI and DOJ acting on their own agendas in the months leading up to the election.
If Rice is part of Durham’s case, even without Obama or Biden being named, that "she’et" is going to splash onto them regardless of what AG Barr promised.
#1
If Durham indictments were coming before the election, they'd already be here. The Orange Man believes the election results will not be available on Nov 4th due to massive election fraud. I suspect he is right.
#2
I was always told it was nine. Many avoid testing even with symptoms. Going on vacation, don't say where. Companies are allowing employees to return to work rather than have them in two week quarantine. Rebellion in full bloom. Lots of luck with enforcement. Not going to happen with a free people. The Con virus lives on in the media and political world forever. A never ending story.
#3
Phase-II has begun and we've still got Chinese products jumping off our shelves. Can there be any doubt what these SOB's are up to? Will the betrayal never end ?
If I lived in a potential 'kill box' like New Delhi, I'd be very concerned.
[American Thinker] America's "unchecked immigration is a threat to our ability to hold together as a people, our ability to maintain the Unum while honoring the Pluribus," writes Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) fellow Jerry Kammer. His new book, Losing Control: How a Left-Right Coalition Blocked Immigration Reform and Provoked the Backlash that Elected Trump, insightfully documents America's complex, longstanding politics behind a modern immigration morass.
The Pulitzer Prize—winning journalist Kammer notes that "while I favor clear limits and enforcement that is both humane and firm, I celebrate immigrants as a vital part of our national story." Yet, like centrist-conservative commentators such as Reihan Salam, the son of Bangladeshi immigrants, and Andrew Sullivan, Kammer emphasizes that American national cohesion demands an immigration "pause." Tellingly, after the landmark 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, America's immigrants grew from 9.6 million to about 47 million in 2020, while illegal alien, about 3.5 million in 1990, peaked in 2007 at 12.2 million.
The "liberal restrictionist" Kammer focuses on the unfulfilled promise of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) to stop illegal immigration. ICRA "has proved to be one of the most consequential failures of governance in American history." Accordingly, "I support a comprehensive immigration reform that includes a generous amnesty if — and this is a big if — Congress ensures that it will not repeat the failure of IRCA."
By contrast, a booming fake document industry following ICRA has meant that illegal alien "workers could pretend to be legal, and unscrupulous employers could pretend to believe them," Kammer notes. Past proposals, such as in 1994 to create a Social Security number verification program, have run afoul, among others, of civil libertarians and free-market conservatives worried about "Big Brother totalitarianism." "Republican insider, free-market advocate, and Microsoft lobbyist Grover Norquist orchestrated a protest that likened the proposal to Nazi dehumanization of Jews," Kammer writes.
#1
The problem isn't just illegal immigration, the problem is also legal immigration.
Probably just insisting on above average wages, English proficiency, and proving a clean record and having a sponsor (on the hook for jail fees/ benefits) would just about BREAK EVEN.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.