While the United States has been hypnotized by our domestic battle of Biden versus Trump, China has made a major move in the Middle East.
It has negotiated an alliance of convenience between those thousand-year enemies, the Saudis and Iranians, whose theological feud goes back to the generation after Mohammed.
China has thereby effectively countered the Abraham Accords negotiated by the US, the Arab states (with Saudis in the background) and Israel.
The U.S. military has been prodding Ottawa to buy a privately owned hangar adjacent to a NORAD airbase in the Arctic community of Inuvik, after a Chinese buyer expressed interest in taking over the facility.
For nearly a year, Ottawa resisted American pressure over the property, located near a strategic piece of the continent’s air-defence infrastructure that would make a prime target for foreign surveillance. The Canadian government had previously leased the hangar to shelter military aircraft, but argued it no longer had need of it.
A new report provides some answers to the nagging questions that linger from early February, but it raises others.
According to the “two current senior U.S. officials and one former senior administration official” with whom NBC News reporters Courtney Kube and Carol Lee spoke, the Chinese spy balloon that traversed the continental United States in February was, in fact, “able to gather intelligence from several sensitive American military sites”:
As the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine passed, there are promising signs that the war may soon end.
In something of a Christmas miracle, President Vladimir Putin made an advent day announcement that Russia is “prepared to negotiate some acceptable outcomes” in regard to the war. Last month, China announced its peace plan for the conflict, and President Xi Jinping visited Moscow to explore the plan’s feasibility.
Both Russia and Ukraine are locked in a bitter stalemate, with no real changes on the battlefield in recent months. Now seems to be the perfect time for some sort of ceasefire, armistice, or similar agreement.
It took the US consulate seven minutes to reject Nabil Ahmed Shabbir’s visa application.
Shabbir, a British Shia scholar, had applied for his US visa to assist with the birth of his first child. His wife, an American Shia Muslim, wanted to have the birth in the US.
Shabbir hadn’t even left the embassy gate after handing in his visa application when he got a text message saying it had been rejected.
The Virginia teacher shot by a 6-year-old student filed a $40 million lawsuit on Monday, accusing school officials of repeatedly ignoring warnings that the disturbed youngster had a gun.
Abigail Zwerner, 25, filed the suit nearly three months after she was shot while teaching at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News by a first-grader with “a history of random violence,” according to the lawsuit.
I am a little surprised that we don’t see this type of suit in the news more often given the horrid state of many US public school systems.
Adi Robertson, The Verge’s senior tech and policy editor, makes an impassioned plea to not ban TikTok, China’s popular video-sharing app, on free speech grounds. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), speaking on the floor of the Senate on March 29, also raised First Amendment objections to a proposed TikTok prohibition.
Nonetheless, it is time to either ban TikTok or force the sale of all its shares to American parties. The American owners must also control all the app’s algorithms, in particular, the algorithms curating content. If Beijing does not permit such a sale, the federal government should expropriate TikTok.
This is what a tyranny looks like.
A culture of authoritarian lawlessness is one in which there are two very different standards.
Everyone has probably seen the videos of gun control activists and transurrectionists storming legislatures. But even well before Jan 6, massive BLM riots, including a direct attack on the White House, had politicians and the media denouncing the use of force against the mostly peaceful rioters. Gen. Milley has spent the rest of his career atoning for walking with Trump to the Church of Presidents which BLM had tried to burn down.
This is the only country where I have actually wondered: will these cities ever recover?
They’re calling it “revenge travel”: the desire to make up for the touring opportunities we all lost when we were locked down in our pandemical homes. As a keen professional traveler, I confess I’ve got a fearsome case of this bug: I’ve spent the past twenty months going just about anywhere I can, playing catch up.
It remains unclear why Western governments are so reluctant to return ill-gotten funds to governments that badly need money for social and economic development.
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies exploring their geopolitical options with China has a dimension that the Washington debate has neglected: the kings, dictators, and their relatives across the world have accumulated hundreds of billions of dollars through the “privatization” of national budgets and/or what is known as “state capture,” where public service becomes the most profitable kind of business.
In the 1990s, authoritarian rulers like Presidents Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire or Suharto of Indonesia were accused of stealing not less than $5 billion and $20 billion respectively, sums that were never recovered. In the Mobutu case, Swiss authorities found only several million dollars in accounts that were returned to Mobutu’s family in 2009, while Suharto’s family was ordered to repay just $324 million more than fifteen years after he abdicated from the presidency.
Massachusetts creates a system of decentralized surveillance in public schools
A phenomenon is sweeping many Massachusetts public schools: the “bias incident report.” The inner-ring Boston suburb of Newton (home of Jake Auchincloss, the congressman for the Fourth District) hosts an online portal where a person can report any cases of “hate speech, bias, or discrimination.” Another wealthy suburban district, Acton-Boxborough, lays out a protocol for the reporting and investigation of “all incidents of bias, including prejudice, bigotry, microaggressions and cultural appropriation.” Belmont, Lexington, and Wellesley are among other elite suburbs with these kinds of protocols, though their emergence is not confined to wealthy districts: Boston Public Schools has its own “equity” reporting form.
America is in crisis. More and more Americans are increasingly distrustful of America’s leadership across the board. In one of the latest surveys, Pew Research found only 21% of respondents said they “just about always” or “most of the time” – 2% and 19% respectively — trusted the government to do the right thing. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, that number was 49%. These numbers should frighten everyone. It is hard to imagine how a country functions effectively if only 21% of its citizens believe they can trust their government to do the right thing most of the time. What does this mean and why are the numbers so low?
In ancient Rome, a group of men loyal to the Republic feared that Julius Caesar was going to make his dictatorship permanent and establish a monarchy. In 44 BC. they decided to assassinate him, thereby restoring the Republic.
In the ensuing chaos, and power vacuum, Caesar's… pic.twitter.com/L4eYlOwA0B
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) March 31, 2023
h/t Mauser
We have adapted our system of education to emphasize fear and fragility
Homer goes right at it: “Sing Goddess, the Rage of Achilles.” Adapted to our times: “Sing, Bragg, your rage against the Trumpies.”
Alvin Bragg, who grew up in a section of Harlem aptly named Striver’s Row, is by most accounts one angry man. Since he was elected New York County’s district attorney in 2021, he has set himself to punishing the city for what he takes to be generations of wrongful prosecution of black offenders — and incidentally most other lawbreakers. His policy writ large has been to treat all felonies as misdemeanors, which are promptly dismissed.
“So today, I applaud China for stepping out,” said Joe Biden on Friday before the Canadian Parliament. The members immediately burst out in laughter. “Excuse me,” Biden said, “I applaud Canada.” The Delaware Democrat might have been right the first time.
Under Justin Trudeau, it’s becoming ever harder to distinguish Canada from China, and Trudeau is a big fan of the Middle Kingdom. He made that clear back in 2013, when asked which nation he admired the most.
