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Post by jdredd on May 1, 2019 0:46:32 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/us/politics/trump-maduro-cuba.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage"WASHINGTON — President Trump on Monday accused Cuba of aiding the government of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, who the administration evidently hoped would be ousted by day’s end, warning that it would impose an embargo and additional sanctions on the country if it did not end its support. “If Cuban Troops and Militia do not immediately CEASE military and other operations for the purpose of causing death and destruction to the Constitution of Venezuela,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter, “a full and complete embargo, together with highest-level sanctions, will be placed on the island of Cuba.” At the same time, the Trump administration reaffirmed its demand for the immediate installation of Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader, as Mr. Maduro’s successor. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an interview with CNN that Mr. Maduro had planned to flee to Cuba on Tuesday, but was urged by the Russian government to stay. “He was headed to Havana,” Mr. Pompeo said, without elaborating on how the administration knew about Mr. Maduro’s destination or his communications with the Kremlin." Where are the Democrats in all this? If St. Bernie has said a word, I haven't heard it. When Obama lifted Cuba sanctions, the Republicons were all over him. A pox on both their houses.
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Post by jdredd on May 15, 2019 1:44:16 GMT -5
www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/china-strategy-build-economic-military-technological-superiority/"After a time, the now-worrisome huge trade deficits and Chinese cheating were further contextualized as “our fault.” The Tom Friedman school of journalism chided our clumsy republican government as lacking Chinese authoritarian efficiency that could by fiat connect new planned utopias by high-speed rail and power them with solar-panel farms. The Wall Street–investor version of this school saw flabby, pampered Americans getting their just deserts as more productive and deserving Chinese workers outhustled and outproduced us. In such tough-love sermonizing, the more Michigan or Pennsylvania rusted, the quicker culpable Americans would either emulate China or die. China of course again agreed. Then there came a third phase of Chinese contextualization — one of Western arrogance that confused China’s emulation with supposed admiration. We were not to worry about China, because they love buying our rich homes, visiting Stanford, and going to Disneyland. In short, they love being us. Somehow, we forgot that nations that copy the West do not do so out of empathy or veneration. More often, they pick and choose what to buy, steal, or copy, entirely in their own interest. They often see superior Western science arising despite, not because of, Western freedom, and therefore they think it can be improved upon when grafted to a properly authoritarian or totalitarian root. Trump has been an unlikely truth-teller. But as a disrupter who screamed about Chinese mercantilism, he made it acceptable even for liberals to do an about-face and now fault China for human-rights abuses and religious persecution of minorities. As long as such new Western critics do not mention the word “Trump,” they feel empowered suddenly to say about China what heretofore they have repressed." Here is anti-China paranoia of the kind getting trendy even with the libs.
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Post by jdredd on May 28, 2019 17:57:30 GMT -5
www.nationalreview.com/corner/joe-biden-the-new-hillary-clinton/"Biden is vulnerable on foreign policy. His credentials and standing in the bipartisan foreign-policy establishment may reassure Beltway insiders and voters looking for experience and an internationalist outlook. This same resume, however, makes him vulnerable to the charge that the policies he supported for a generation did little to create peace and prosperity. Trump made that argument both in the Republican primary and in the general election in 2016. It worked." I must confess I missed this. I don't remember foreign policy being an issue in the 2016 election.
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Post by jdredd on Jun 8, 2019 1:30:02 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/06/07/opinion/trump-d-day-freedom.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage"Why do we still commemorate D-Day? It’s not a rhetorical question. The event is more distant to us than Custer’s Last Stand was to the men who stormed the Normandy shore. Those men are nearly all gone. The tumultuous events that defined them, and which they defined in turn, are closed chapters in history books that are no longer widely read. Nor do we believe any longer in the ideals for which they fought.Oh, we sound as if we do. For once, Donald Trump hit the right notes in his speech at the American cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, near Omaha Beach. He paid a fitting tribute to the veterans, to the fallen in their graves, and to the institutions that the fallen and the living together made possible. “To all of our friends and partners,” he said, “our cherished alliance was forged in the heat of battle, tested in the trials of war and proven in the blessings of peace. Our bond is unbreakable.” But Trump was only mouthing words. He repeatedly contemplated withdrawing the U.S. from NATO just last year. He considers our European partners to be freeloaders on defense (which they are) and rip-off artists on trade (which they are not). His America Firstism is the direct ideological descendant of those who would have let Britain fall to Hitler to keep America out of the war." Oh, such despairing words from one of the NYT's rightie columnists. Yes, it was inspiring that Americans joined with England AND THE SOVIETS to defeat the Nazis. But what would be inspiring about going to war with Korea, Iran, Venezuela, or even China? Would war with Syria have been inspiring? What has been inspiring about the bloody quagmire in Afghanistan?
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Post by jdredd on Jun 13, 2019 1:17:06 GMT -5
www.nationalreview.com/news/joe-biden-hardens-china-stance-u-s-needs-to-get-tough-on-beijing/"Former vice president Joe Biden plans to announce a new, hardened stance on China Tuesday, when he will tell Iowans that the country is “a real threat” to U.S. interests. “We are in a competition with China. We need to get tough with China,” Biden plans to say at a campaign event in Iowa according to prepared remarks, which add that China engages in “cheating” and “abusive behavior” economically." Oh this is charming. Sleepy Joe jumps on Trump's China-hating bandwagon.
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Post by jdredd on Jun 14, 2019 2:21:23 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/06/13/opinion/foreign-policy-populism.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage"The America Firsters and the New Doves may think of themselves as opposites, but they wind up in the same place. America should not be abroad preserving the liberal world order. The C.A.P. study estimates that less than a fifth of voters are traditional internationalists. The Eurasia Group study estimates that only 9.5 percent are. America is withdrawing from the world; the results are there for all to see. China is cracking down on democratic rights in Hong Kong. Russia launches cyberattacks everywhere. Iran is destabilizing the Middle East. The era of great power rivalry is coming back. We’re in a dark spiral. Americans take a dark view of human nature and withdraw from the world. Wolves like Putin and Xi fill the void and make bad things happen, confirming the dark view and causing even more withdrawal. We need a leader who can grapple with failures like Iraq, build a younger, credible leadership class and embody an optimism that pulls us out of the dark spiral." So David is joining with Bret in whining that Trump is not doing ENOUGH meddling in foreign affairs. Funny they are saying this on the birthday of Che, murdered with CIA assistance. Will the Boomer media elitists be able to rouse unenthusiastic young folk for more American belligerence? Of course it is the Millennials and Gen Z'ers who will have to do the fighting and dying.
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Post by jdredd on Jun 17, 2019 0:09:35 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/opinion/iran-tankers-trump.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=Editorials"Mr. Trump continues to rely for advice on leading hawks, the national security adviser, John Bolton, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who on Thursday went beyond the tanker incidents to accuse Iran of several other attacks without offering proof. At the same time, Mr. Trump has dangled the possibility of talks with the Iranians, and, however inept his international deal-making has previously proved to be, that approach is far preferable to the escalation apparently favored by some of his advisers. But he seems to be backing away from that course. “It is too soon to even think about making a deal,” he wrote in a tweet on Thursday. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was, if anything, more adamant about not even talking. When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, who was visiting Tehran when the tankers were attacked, presented a message from Mr. Trump, the ayatollah, according to Iranian state media, responded, “I do not see Trump as worthy of any message exchange, and I do not have any reply for him, now or in future.” Now if you had a Democrat party that really believed in peace or had a spine there would be an outcry about bloodthirsty thugs like Pompeo and Bolton running our foreign policy. Instead, crickets.
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Post by jdredd on Jun 24, 2019 23:10:32 GMT -5
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/21/us-iran-bernie-sanders-airstrikes-drone-attack-war"Sixteen years ago, the US committed one of the worst foreign policy blunders in the history of our country by attacking Iraq. That war was sold to the American people based on a series of lies about weapons of mass destruction. One of the leading advocates for that war was John Bolton, who served as a member of the Bush administration and is now Donald Trump’s national security adviser. Incredibly, even today, Bolton is one of the few remaining people in the world who continues to believe that the Iraq war was a good idea. That war led to the deaths of more than 4,400 American troops, with tens of thousands of American soldiers wounded, many severely, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed. It unleashed a wave of radicalism and destabilization across the region that we will be dealing with for many years to come. It was the biggest foreign policy disaster in American history. Trump campaigned on getting the US out of “endless wars”, but his administration is taking us down a path that has made war with Iran more and more likely." FINALLY a Democrat speaking out about Trump's foreign policy.
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Post by jdredd on Sept 16, 2019 2:02:03 GMT -5
www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/16/trump-says-us-locked-and-loaded-after-saudi-arabia-oil-attack-as-crude-prices-soar-iran-aramco"Donald Trump has said the US was “locked and loaded” and to ready respond to drone attacks on a petroleum processing facility in Saudi Arabia, saying the US knew who was behind them. The US president tweeted on Sunday night that he had “reason to believe that we know the culprit” behind the series of attacks on the Abqaiq facility, which is the world’s largest petroleum processing plant. The attacks disrupted more than half of the kingdom’s oil output and will affect global supplies. Trump tweeted: “[We] are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom [of Saudi Arabia] as to who they believe was the cause of this attack and under what terms we would proceed!”
Instead of speculating what Bozo would bomb in Iran, and how much bombing he thinks would be enough, it's more interesting to wait to see what the Democratic Dufuses would say about it. Frankly, I suspect they would be as quiet as mice, waiting to see how it all went, instead of sticking their necks out criticizing an attack on Iran before or immediately after. Such inspirational leadership. But being disgusted with both parties is approaching a half century for me. I wonder how longer our corrupt political system will endure? Probably many years after I'm gone.
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Post by jdredd on Oct 9, 2019 10:29:27 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/world/asia/blizzard-hearthstone-hong-kong.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage"The decision to suspend ng Ng Wai, a professional Hearthstone player in Hong Kong, for a year, while forcing him to forfeit a reported $10,000 in prize money, prompted a backlash in the United States similar to the public relations debacle the N.B.A. has faced this week. Gamers posted angrily on social media and in forums, while politicians saw it as another troubling sign of China’s chilling clampdown on speech worldwide. “Recognize what’s happening here. People who don’t live in #China must either self censor or face dismissal & suspensions,” Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, wrote on Twitter. “China using access to market as leverage to crush free speech globally.” Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democrat, concurred, saying on Twitter that Activision Blizzard showed “it is willing to humiliate itself to please the Chinese Communist Party.” Awwwww...isn't that special? Bipartisan condemnation of Communist China. Which is about as politically risky as being against cancer.
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Post by jdredd on Oct 14, 2019 1:37:16 GMT -5
I have to admit I am surprised if Trump is actually sincere about getting us out of "endless wars" in the Middle East. It will not be easy or painless, but I hope he succeeds.
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Post by jdredd on Oct 24, 2019 10:17:58 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/opinion/democrats-neocons.html"Donald Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria has drawn widespread scorn from Republicans and Democrats alike, and with good reason: The U.S. has betrayed an ally and ceded influence to a gallery of rogues — Bashar al-Assad, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Vladimir Putin and Qassim Suleimani, to name a few — in exchange for a hollow talking point about ending endless wars. But give Trump this: He’s turning a remarkable number of foreign policy liberals and progressives into born-again neoconservatives.
That’s a thought worth pondering as the president pursues a foreign policy that, had it been undertaken by a Democratic administration, would likely have been met with considerable approval on the left. After all, getting America out of fill-in-the-blank — Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Iraq, Afghanistan — has for decades been the go-to slogan of progressives." As out-of-touch as I am, I guess I missed these "liberals" who are now criticizing Trump for pulling out of Syria, sort of. I hear from the Democrats what I always hear when it comes to foreign policy: Nothing. But Bret is right: If Obama was doing the little bit Trump is doing to disengage us from the "endless" ethnic battles over there, I would cheer him. Not being in touch with Trump's dupes, I was not aware that they want to pull out from the quagmire over there. I thought they were all pro-military types who love it when the US kicks ass anywhere.
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Post by jdredd on Nov 19, 2019 3:13:56 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/11/18/opinion/china-muslims.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage“Ying shou jin shou” — “Round up everyone who should be rounded up.” The echo of “1984,” “Brave New World” or “Fahrenheit 451” is unmistakable. But this is not dystopian fiction. It’s a real bureaucratic directive prepared by the Chinese leadership, drawing on a series of secret speeches by Xi Jinping, China’s authoritarian leader, on dealing ruthlessly with Muslims who show “symptoms” of religious radicalism. There’s nothing theoretical about it: Based on these diktats, hundreds of thousands of Uighurs, Kazakhs and other Muslims in the western Xinjiang region have been rounded up in internment camps to undergo months or years of indoctrination intended to mold them into secular and loyal followers of the Communist Party." The drumbeat of China bashing just gets louder and louder from both the conservative and liberal American media. Just ignore it, Millennials.
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Post by jdredd on Nov 22, 2019 3:53:37 GMT -5
Post by jdredd on 3 minutes ago www.nytimes.com/2019/11/21/opinion/trump-syria-blunder.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage"According to a report released on Tuesday by the Department of Defense inspector general, President Trump’s withdrawal from Syria has allowed ISIS to “reconstitute capabilities and resources within Syria and strengthen its ability to plan attacks abroad.” By abandoning Kurdish and Arab fighters in Syria who led the fight to eject ISIS from the “capital” of its so-called caliphate, Mr. Trump appears to be following President Barack Obama’s pivot away from the greater Middle East, responding, as his predecessor did, to a desire among the American people to disengage from that region, with its “endless wars.” What's so funny about this quote from this hack from the pro-war American Enterprise Institute? The quotation marks around "endless wars". Apparently our meddling in endless ethnic wars are a valid American enterprise.
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Post by jdredd on Nov 26, 2019 17:08:50 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/business/hong-kong-human-rights-act.html"A bill compelling the United States to support pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong could arrive on President Trump’s desk as soon as Thursday morning, potentially complicating the administration’s talks with China to end the trade war. The bill, passed by the Senate on Tuesday, would require the government to impose sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for human rights abuses in the territory. On Wednesday, the House passed the Senate version 417-1, sending it to the White House. If signed into law by Mr. Trump, the bill will also require the State Department to annually review the special autonomous status it grants Hong Kong in trade considerations. That status is separate from the relationship with mainland China, and a revocation of the status would mean less favorable trade conditions between the United States and Hong Kong. The Senate passed the bill, the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, by unanimous consent. The House had previously passed its own version unanimously, but gave assent to the Senate version in order to expedite the legislation. On the House floor on Wednesday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “If America does not speak out for human rights in China because of commercial interests, we lose all moral authority to speak out on human rights elsewhere.” Talk about your cheesy no-risk vote. And for Nancy: What "moral authority"? This could have gone into the "America the Arrogant" or the "Dismembering China" threads too.
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