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I recall forty years ago, when I was a new professor working in the field of Chinese and Japanese international relations, that Edwin O. Reischauer once commented, “The great payoff from our victory of 1945 was a permanently disarmed Japan.” Born in Japan and a Japanese historian at Harvard, Reischauer served as American ambassador to Tokyo in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Strange to say, since the end of the Cold War in 1991 and particularly under the administration of George W. Bush, the United States has been doing everything in its power to encourage and even accelerate Japanese rearmament. Such a development promotes hostility between China and Japan, the two superpowers of East Asia, sabotages possible peaceful solutions in... Read more
There you have it. And then there’s this: The top contenders for the GOP nomination. One nods in agreement with an official who says they need to use force to change Washington and the other says that a military invasion of Mexico is on the table, an idea which has been previously floated by the first one. I know it’s hard to remember what life was like before the Republicans went fully batshit crazy. It was quite a while ago. But they didn’t used to say things like this. But then their voters didn’t used to believe every crazy thing they were told by lying sociopaths. (Yes, they did believe a lot of looney stuff, but this goes way beyond anything even Nixon said publicly. When what he said privately came out, his approval rating dropped to the low 20s.) These people believe they can get away with anything and their true natures are on display. I wouldn’t assume they aren’t serious.
From DKos: Wisconsin is so absurdly gerrymandered, a roughly 50-50 split between the state’s Republican and Democratic voters—Donald Trump edged out Hillary Clinton in 2016, President Joe Biden squeaked by Trump in 2020, and Badger Staters narrowly reelected Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in 2022—has somehow produced gaudy Republican supermajorities in both the state Assembly and Senate. The party currently holds a 64-35 advantage in the Assembly and a 21-11 edge in the Senate… But when liberal Judge Janet Protasiewicz trounced her conservative opponent in the state Supreme Court election in April, it was a big win—not just for those who care about reestablishing their reproductive rights, but for anyone who genuinely cares about representative democracy. In other words, fair legislative maps looked achievable for the first time in more than a decade. Which meant it was now past time for the GOP to squeal. On Friday, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos hinted that impeachment could be on the table if Protasiewicz votes to disrupt the GOP’s plans for a permanent white minority rule over our country—or, worse, if Sen.
… but it is He writes: This scandal also compelled me to grab my camera and visit the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville, where I live, for a history lesson of my own. The Capitol stands as a poignant testament to the deeply flawed logic behind Florida’s new standards. This structure was built with the labor of about 15 enslaved men. These men possessed profound expertise, especially in intricate tasks like carving out the Capitol’s limestone cellar. Their craftsmanship was held in such high regard that the enslaver who “owned” them, A.G. Payne, was compensated more than double the rate a free white laborer could demand. But emancipation did not lead to prosperity, from what I could gather from the sparse historical record. Far from it. Despite their significant contribution to one of Tennessee’s most iconic buildings, they, along with their descendants, faced poverty and systemic oppression.
These days the politics in the Australian parliament is little more than puerile game-playing, echoing what goes on endlessly and tediously in the undergraduate political clubs in our universities. It’s all about organising and winning the numbers. It lacks an ethical core, resulting in the country being paralysed by the politics of ennui and hopelessness. Continue reading »
“What will Australia do in the event of a US-PRC war over Taiwan?” is now a question that must be openly and deliberately addressed. Across nine presidential administrations, “strategic ambiguity” promoted regional stability. The flip-flops of the current Biden Administration have cast doubt on the efficacy of “strategic ambiguity”, as the means of deterring war Continue reading »
The Australian economy is increasingly becoming a war economy. The PM talks of the economic benefits of weapons manufacture, and of how the military and a growing military-industrial-complex is almost a job creation scheme. The media works diligently to build and sustain a sense of fear. But even so, the warmongers of the Australian Strategic Continue reading »
A great illustration of how much of the media totally overlooks the huge grassroots campaign for Yes is the fact that the Jewish community’s far-reaching campaign has been unsighted in mainstream media coverage of the referendum. Australia’s Jewish community has had a special relationship with Indigenous Australia for many, many decades highlighted perhaps by the Continue reading »
The issue of the Voice referendum has again brought to light problems that have to do with a serious lack of understanding of governance systems in Australia and, even more seriously, where major problems exist, lacking a capacity to generate superior alternatives. In this article I will argue that the need to act is both Continue reading »
The West’s decline is no triumph, but nor is it a tragedy. It’s just the latest reminder that all organising systems, even empires, are transient, that success always brings complacency, but that the best of human civilisation is renewed and transformed even as the old order fades away. In the grand theatre of global politics, Continue reading »
For the record: I was born in Ukraine, studied in Russia, and worked in America as a laser fusion researcher and Professor of Mathematics and Physics. I have relatives and friends in all three countries, and for the last 35 years, I have been trying to do my best to make them friends, partners, or even allies. Continue reading »
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – August 13, 2023
by Tony Wikrent
Heather Cox Richardson, August 12, 2023 [Letters from an American]
In Marion, Kansas, yesterday morning, four local police officers and three sheriff’s deputies raided the office of the Marion County Record newspaper; the home of its co-owners, Eric Meyer and his 98 year old mother, Joan Meyer; and the home of Marion vice mayor Ruth Herbel, 80. They seized computers, cell phones, and other equipment. Joan Meyer was unable to eat or sleep after the raid; she collapsed Saturday afternoon and died at her home.
The NY Times: Congressional Republicans have for months repeatedly written to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland demanding he appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, the president’s son, over his business dealings. Some even demanded that a specific man be named to lead the inquiry: David C. Weiss, the Trump-appointed Delaware U.S. attorney who has long investigated the case. But on Friday, after Mr. Garland elevated Mr. Weiss to special counsel status, Republicans in Congress reacted publicly not with triumph, but with outrage. “David Weiss can’t be trusted and this is just a new way to whitewash the Biden family’s corruption,” Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. The reaction was a notable political development, one that underscored both how Mr. Weiss, a Republican, has fallen in conservative circles, and how deeply it has become ingrained in the G.O.P. to oppose the Justice Department at every turn.
Actually, we do. Trump flew in on “Trump Force One” unexpectedly and a brief tour of the fair to the delight of the crowd. Meanwhile: They want a mob boss instead of a creepy weasel. I guess if that’s what’s on offer, it sort of makes sense.
And yet not soon enough Breaking (CNN): Atlanta-area prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia are in possession of text messages and emails directly connecting members of Donald Trump’s legal team to the early January 2021 voting system breach in Coffee County, sources tell CNN. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to seek charges against more than a dozen individuals when her team presents its case before a grand jury next week. Several individuals involved in the voting systems breach in Coffee County are among those who may face charges in the sprawling criminal probe. Investigators in the Georgia criminal probe have long suspected the breach was not an organic effort sprung from sympathetic Trump supporters in rural and heavily Republican Coffee County – a county Trump won by nearly 70% of the vote. They have gathered evidence indicating it was a top-down push by Trump’s team to access sensitive voting software, according to people familiar with the situation. A Jan.
How systematic school defunding and conservative opportunism have opened the door to propaganda machines preying on our country’s students.
Doom has made her way to a satellite above Earth in a new teaser for Doctor Who: Doom's Day - Extraction Point from M.G. Harris & BBC Books.
Mapping the hissy fits If it wasn’t for bad faith, they wouldn’t have no faith at all (with apologies to Albert King). For those who missed MSNBC’s “Alex Wagner Tonight” on Friday, guest George Conway, attorney and former Republican, presented a hand-drawn “GOP Hunter Biden Flow Chart” that made a mockery of the prolonged right-wing hissy fit Republicans keep throwing over President Biden’s son Hunter’s legal troubles. CliffNotes version: Heads, right-wing hissy fit. Tails, right-wing hissy fit. Obviously, Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee missed the show. Or she didn’t and the joke went over her head (not hard). On Friday evening and Saturday morning, Blackburn responded to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment Friday of U.S. Attorney David Weiss as Special Counsel for the ongoing investigation and prosecutions referenced and described in United States v. Robert Hunter Biden. Blackburn’s Xitter posts perfectly encapsulated the bad faith running through the veins of today’s Republican Party like the arrows of Conway’s flow chart.
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Young Justice, Star Wars Rebels, Gargoyles, Rick and Morty, Ahsoka, Doctor Who, Strange New Worlds, and more!
