President Joe Biden says only God will prevent him running for re-election. Should Biden drop out of the race, and would Vice President Kamala Harris turn potential defeat into a viable contest between Democrats and Donald Trump? (more…)
Category: USA
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Martyrdom transforms Trump
Anyone watching the Australian diplomats at the Republican national convention would have quickly seen the backslapping, the warm handshakes with the republican tree people and the Australian understanding that, more likely than not, Donald Trump will be elected president in November. Our diplomats, and those with whom they have intercourse, can read the signs as well as, if not better than anyone else. Australia doesn’t have a vote at the election, and must get on, as best as it can, with the person and the players chosen by the American electoral system. (more…)
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What happens now that Israel has formally rejected a two-state solution?
Given the Israeli Parliament’s overwhelming rejection of a two-state solution the world needs to recognise that it is no longer possible, at least in the short and possibly medium term. It’s a mirage that opinion polls show most Israelis and Palestinians don’t want. Given their long acrimony, the sad truth is that each side wants to overpower the other and have only one nation. (more…)
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How Ronald Reagan started the ruination of the USA
The continuing descent of the United States into polarisation and violence is widely lamented. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 marks the inflection when the descent began in earnest. (more…)
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The drums of war
The drums of war have been beating loudly from successive U.S. administrations for decades. They are getting louder and louder as the thin layer of power-hungry, greedy and heartless elite push and push in an attempt to get us all to the brink of war-minded madness, be it civil or foreign. (more…)
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The Trump assassination attempt: An inevitable result of toxic polarisation?
It is ironic that a past and would be President who has been a strong supporter of 2nd Amendment freedoms to own assault rifles was nearly killed by one. (more…)
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NATO and the deadly strategy of neoconservatism
For the sake of America’s security and world peace, the U.S. should immediately abandon the neocon quest for hegemony in favour of diplomacy and peaceful co-existence. (more…)
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Trump is the old man most likely to win the US election
For most of the past year, Joe Biden has been calming panickers in the inner circles of the Democrat Party, persuading them that the campaign was under control, that things were moving his way, not least because of Donald Trump’s criminal law problems. The big reveal at the first presidential debate showed an emperor without clothes, incoherent in his own attack, seemingly almost incapable of taking the battle to the enemy. It accentuated any impulse to feel that he’s already a dud and would be worse if re-elected. (more…)
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Vassalise allies, destabilise the rest is now US strategy in Indo-Pacific
Divide and conquer, well-honed in Middle East and Latin America over decades, is being applied to only real growth engine of world economy. (more…)
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“Dark foreboding”: Democratic Party campaign confirms skeptics’ fear of US global role
The Democratic Party is waging its 2024 electoral campaign by focusing on two themes: first, a denunciation of all that Trump proposes to bring to the presidency, centring on the destruction of American democracy if elected, and secondly, a positive domestic record of the Biden years with several notable benefits for the American people including jobs and wages, climate, energy policy, social protection, gun control, and a stock market at record highs. What is missing from this rosy picture of America and even more so from Democratic Party advocacy is neither claims nor explanations of foreign policy, only a deafening silence.
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Biden: ‘I’m running the world’
The comment by the sitting U.S. president in Friday’s interview has been ignored by the mainstream, but its megalomania is at the heart of why Joe Biden is defying his party and remaining in the race, writes Joe Lauria. (more…)
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American exceptionalism and the rule of law
There is an oft-quoted legal dictum known as “The Rule of Law” that posits that all people are equal before the law regardless of status or standing, and that all must obey the law. How then (one must ask) does such a widely-held principle conform to the recent ruling of the US Supreme Court that a President (such as Donald Trump) should be immune from prosecution for acts that would normally be considered to be illegal? (more…)
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Impossible trinity drives Southeast Asia’s prudent hedging
In Southeast Asia, hedging is a pragmatic policy that maintains options and mitigates risks. While some ASEAN states, like the Philippines, are aligning more closely with the United States, most are pursuing a more inclusive and selective approach to partnerships, ensuring concurrent engagement with China and the United States. This approach is more desirable in the absence of a clear-cut threat and allows states to maximise other goals while keeping their security options open. (more…)
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Socialist America, state capitalist China
It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. So is a graph or chart. (more…)
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Luckily, Joe Biden did not stumble into a war with China at Second Thomas Shoal
President Bongbong Marcos played down the ramming of a Filipino Navy boat by a Chinese coastguard on 17 June. Calling it an accident, not amounting to an armed attack, when the photos showed otherwise. It was an embarrassing afterthought for a Head of State. (more…)
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Australia’s obsession with the US is getting out of hand
Australia’s obsession with every little political twist or swing in the US seems to grow with each day, with the latest event to gain saturation coverage being the first presidential debate of the current American political cycle. (more…)
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Should Americans die for a single Filipino?
China and the Philippines are battling over control of contested waters in the Pacific. So far there has been no shooting, but there have been casualties. And the Biden administration has committed Americans to go to war if even one Filipino dies—or so Manila apparently believes. (more…)
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Who is running the country?
Biden’s decline has been known to friends and insiders for months. (more…)
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USA – home of the brave?
Can you think of another country which has caused so much grief and violence throughout the world? (more…)
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Peril with Little Promise: The US Presidential Election and South Korea’s Dilemma
The US election is being watched with trepidation in South Korea. Should President Joe Biden be re-elected, Seoul would likely see continuity in the relationship and a continued strong US-South Korea bilateral alliance. But a victory for Donald Trump is fraught with peril. He could throw the alliance into turmoil, try to make South Korea a front-line state in the US standoff with China, threaten overtures to North Korea, and demand South Korea increase defense cost-sharing and defense budget or face the withdrawal of US forces, writes Chung-in Moon. The situation is worrying for all sides of the political spectrum in Seoul.
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The Assange non-verdict: the threat remains
The champers toasting the release of Julian Assange was delightful after many years of struggle against his clearly unjust indictment and years of imprisonment. I am sure we all enjoyed sipping it. After the excitement and sweetness has assuaged however, a certain bitterness still remains, a cold realisation just what his plea bargaining signifies. (more…)
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Sleepwalking towards war: will America and China heed the warnings of twentieth-century catastrophe?
“The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position.” – Shanghai Communique, United States government, 1972 (more…)
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The US is preparing for WWIII while expanding draft registration
So I guess we should probably talk about the way NATO powers are rapidly escalating toward hot war with Russia at the same time the US is expanding its draft policies to make it easier to force more Americans [to] go and fight in a giant war. (more…)
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America’s anti-China psyop programs a 24/7 menace to the Philippines
Major Western news outlets are currently reporting how the Pentagon ran a secret anti-vaccination campaign in order to undermine China’s life-saving COVID vaccination programme in the Philippines – and beyond – from the spring of 2020 to mid-2021. (more…)
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When the powerful control public opinion
“Under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.” – Albert Einstein, 1949. (more…)
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Walking into war with China: an American trap hidden in plain sight
There is no question that the path to war has been set against Russia and China. Nor is there doubt that the brunt will be borne by US allies, as the US has repeatedly proclaimed its “gratitude” to allies without which its geostrategy would be impossible. The question remaining is when war will require allies to shed blood. (more…)
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When convicts rule… civil wars may follow
If convicted felon Donald Trump wins the US presidential election in November 2024 it will probably herald the end of America as the world and as Americans know it. And maybe ignite the Second American Civil War. (more…)
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Backing the US house of cards
“The United States of America is in competition with China, but not ideologically. Who initiated the first agreements with China to outsource factories if not the United States of America themselves? They cannot tell us that it is a fight for freedom… It’s [ ] because China is becoming the world’s leading power, and from there, gradually, dollars will no longer be used as much as before to trade goods. Thus, the empire is hit at its core.” (more…)
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Biden’s distorted D-Day history seeks to rally others to his endless wars
President Biden’s bellicose nationalism was again on display during the D-Day commemorations. In a pair of addresses, Biden not only sacralised war and exalted the virtues of ‘the American’. In the finest populist tradition, he misrepresented the history of the Second World War to rally Europeans to never-ending-war. It all passed with little real deconstruction from the media. (more…)