Category Archives: Politics – international

Will the US last until 2048?

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In an earlier post I speculated on just how unstable the mix of ideologies and cultural differences in the United States now is.

Nothing lasts forever, but the fracturing of the United States is happening before our very eyes, something I never thought even remotely possible not all that long ago. The question is no longer will it fall apart, but how can it be made whole again?

So now we have this, Exclusive: Angry with Washington, 1 in 4 Americans open to secession.

Some 23.9 percent of Americans polled from Aug. 23 through Sept. 16 said they strongly supported or tended to support the idea of their state breaking away, while 53.3 percent of the 8,952 respondents strongly opposed or tended to oppose the notion.

Only just over half are opposed! When the most decisive issue on everyone’s mind when voting is abortion, Americans really are living in a fantasyland. And it’s not just anger with Washington but it’s anger with their fellow citizens in other states, to which is added, no doubt, a large hispanic desire to return the south west of the United States to Mexico. There was a time I could tell you what the United States stood for, what its ideals are, but no longer. It is fractured and hard to see how it could be made whole.

The weak horse

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From Drudge today:

UPDATE: RUSSIAN NUKE BOMBERS INTERCEPTED NEAR ALASKA…
Buzz Northern Europe…
Warplanes intentionally violate Swedish airspace…

And then there’s this:

Disagreements how to fight war mount between Obama and military leaders…
General: Airstrikes tougher as militants blend in…
Congress votes to arm Syrian ‘rebels’…
FLASHBACK: Syrian rebels pledge loyalty to al-Qaeda…
Threaten West…

And finally this:

CHRISTIE LAUNCHES COMEBACK…
Trump praises…
GOP primary organizers cheer…

Not a ray of sunshine to be seen.

Closing shop

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There is a kind of glibness in this presentation of “The Great Unravelling”. They don’t really believe it, but I do.

Then there is this article about a CBC program warning Canadians that cash may be seized from them by “law enforcement” officers in the US and is quite an eye opener. The title says it all: Canadian News Outlet Warns Canadians That US Law Enforcement Officers Will Pull Them Over And Seize Their Cash. Thus in answering the question posed in the video, this is from the comments:

this country is closing up shop. won’t be here 50 years from now

The wolves are circling but no one seems to be paying attention. Nothing lasts forever, but the fracturing of the United States is happening before our very eyes, something I never thought even remotely possible not all that long ago. The question is no longer will it fall apart, but how can it be made whole again? To this I cannot think of any answer at all. And while the decay is not as advanced in Australia, without the US where do we go from there? What’s fifty years in the scheme of things? Most people alive today will still be alive then. Lots of surprises but there is a brutality in history that you would not want to ignore.

[Both the video and the story from Instapundit]

Selling off the farm, literally

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Yesterday it was merely the price of houses (discussed in the AFR today). Now it is our dairy farms that will have, so far as I can tell, absolutely no Australian content or input other than the physical existence on this continent.

ONE of China’s biggest milk companies is buying up dairy farms in Australia, convinced it can generate higher milk production and bigger profits here than most local dairy farmers are achieving.

The Ningbo Dairy Group says that to produce as much fresh milk as it would like to fly to China from its Victorian farms, profitably and rapidly, it needs to bring in Chinese employees, fast-track construction of a new milk processing plant and cut through government red tape. . . .

Ningbo Dairy vice-president Harry Wang said the key to its profitable Australian dairy investment lay in vertically integrating the group’s Australian operations, with it owning and controlling all parts of the supply chain.

They come here, bring their own workers, build their own infrastructure and export the produce back home. What’s in it for us I am not at all sure. He does, of course, put his finger on the problem faced by our own domestic producers:

The downside of Australian dairying to the Chinese newcomers is the low milk price paid by Australian processors to farmers, high labour costs, excessive red tape, a slowness to innovate and the lack of good young workers.

I will just repeat my conclusion from yesterday’s post. We used to pay for our balance of payments deficits through increased investment and the revenues that previous investments had brought about. Now we pay for our imports by selling off the farm. The first could go on for ever and made us prosperous. The second will be a disaster but no one is willing to stop the inbound flow of funds.

The arc of insanity

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A bit of projection here from the chief Democrat in the House of Reps:

PELOSI: REPUBLICANS ENDANGER CIVILIZATION

It’s only 13 years after Osama bin Laden declared his own private war on the West and think how well he’s done since 2001. This is from The Diplomad:

One did not have to be Nostradamus to see that Obama’s sneering disregard for American and Western interests, and the institutions and principles which maintained those, would have dire consequences for the West and the world. We see those consequences in the arc of insanity that runs from Mauritania to Iran; in Putin’s gleeful mocking of the West and in his drive to rebuild the empire of the Tsars; in China’s growing aggressiveness; in the collapse of our foreign policy in Central and South America epitomized by the wave of illegals blatantly crossing our southern border and the increasingly bizarre politics of Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Brazil. Everywhere we look around the world, the interests of the West–not just of America–are in retreat or collapse.

All driven along by our fools on the left who have been nurtured on their own hatreds of the West and of our religious base. The freest, most open, most prosperous civisilation in history is threatened by some of the most barbaric people who have ever been seen on the face of the earth and not only is there no serious response, you cannot find within the media much of any demand for such a response. This is the description of the American president but in many ways it seems to fit large parts of the left in general:

When discussing Obama and his foreign policy, the range of options are that he is stupid, uninterested, or an evil little worm out to destroy the West. I think, others might disagree, that he is, in fact, all three.

Given the leadership we now have from America, and with the stong possibility of eight years of Hillary after two more from Obama, just where do you think we will be 13 years from now?

Ted Cruz defends Israel

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This is quite an incredible story. In answer to some booing from the audience when he spoke about Israel and the Jewish people, Cruz stood up to the audience as reported here:

“Tonight, in Washington, should have been a night of unity as we came together for the inaugural event for a group that calls itself ‘In Defense of Christians.’ Instead, it unfortunately deteriorated into a shameful display of bigotry and hatred,” Cruz said in a statement provided to Breitbart News. “When I spoke in strong support of Israel and the Jewish people, who are being persecuted and murdered by the same vicious terrorists who are also slaughtering Christians, many Christians in the audience applauded. But, sadly, a vocal and angry minority of attendees at the conference tried to shout down my expression of solidarity with Israel.”

Cruz continued in his statement by noting that detractors “cannot shout down the truth,” and the American people “should not shy away from expressing the truth, even in the face of–especially in the face of–ignorance and bigotry.”

“I told the attendees that those who hate Israel also hate America,” Cruz said. “That those who hate Jews also hate Christians. And that anyone who hates Israel and the Jewish people is not following the teachings of Christ. These statements were met with angry boos. I went on to tell the crowd that Christians in the Middle East have no better friend than Israel. That Christians can practice their faith free of persecution in Israel. And that ISIS, al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah, along with their state sponsors in Syria and Iran, are all part of the same cancer, murdering Christians and Jews alike. Hate is hate, and murder is murder.”

This is one very unusual politician. A conviction politician on the right, with most of his instincts intact and admirable. We shall see.

Nobel Peace Prize winner goes to war

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Well sort of. But he did say this which is a copy of what Tony Abbott has been saying:

The president laid out his plan Wednesday evening in a prime-time televised speech to the nation from the White House, saying that after months of preparations he is “poised to go on the offence” against ISIS. He framed it as not a war but a counter-terrorism action even as he admitted that “we have not yet detected specific plotting against our homeland.” He said, however, that the thousands of “trained and battle-hardened” Islamic foreign fighters, some of whom come from the U.S., “could try to return to their home countries and carry out deadly attacks.”

Who was it who said it was better to fight them over there before we had to fight them here?

No doubt Australia would be part of the Coalition of the Willing, if only Obama was himself willing.

Mr Abbott, who spoke with Mr Obama on Tuesday, said Australia had received no specific request for further military assistance beyond air and weapons drops by RAAF personnel.

“A specific request for military assistance in the form of air capability and military advisers could come, but it hasn’t yet come,” he told reporters in Launceston on Thursday.

All in good time, no doubt, all in good time.

A narcissist can never be wrong since he is always right

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From an article by Richard Epstein on Presidential Indecision:

The Obama personal hesitation stems, unfortunately, from reasons unrelated to the military and political issues. Part of his problem is that he cannot bring himself to acknowledge that he was wrong to oppose the Iraqi surge in 2006, and wrong to pull out American troops from Iraq as President. A strong president learns from his past mistakes, but Obama does not.

One reason for his dogged persistence lies in his flawed world view, which deep down, regards the United States (and Israel) as akin to colonial powers, whose actions should always be examined under a presumption of distrust. His ingrained uneasiness with the values of western civilization makes it impossible for him to think and act as the leader of a western nation. Instead, he much prefers to regard himself as a nonpartisan critic and a bystander to world affairs. He has no firm conviction in the rightness of his cause, and hence no confidence in his ability to get others to act as perils mount.

What makes the situation even worse is that Obama receives support from commentators and public intellectuals who think that his reluctance to commit military force should be commended as part of some grand plan to restore American hegemony by gentler means. Just that kind of thinking was evident in a recent column by Thomas Friedman, “Leading From Within,” which refuses to come to grips with the short-term peril that ISIS presents. Friedman accepts the conventional analysis that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a mistake and ignores the current short-term military crisis in order to piece together some long-term strategic plans to make things better.

I am always leery of perspectives that give Obama the benefit of the doubt, that suggest there is actually a strategic view, however wrong it might be, beneath it all. Ill will and hatred for the West are more my thing. But at least he is being driven by the politics of the moment to take actions he would never personally have authorised under any circumstances. In the meantime, he is trying to manoeuvre so that the Democrats in Congress don’t have to take a position right before the election. It is only fortunate that the enemy in this case is so vile, and continues to emphasise just that every day so that no one is allowed to forget, that makes even this limited response possible.