“[Herd immunity is] theoretically possible but we as a society have rejected that,” Poland told USA Today. “There is no eradication at this point, it’s off the table. The only thing we can talk about is control.
“What has surprised me most is the incomprehensible rejection of science even among otherwise intelligent people,” Poland added. “I’m truly flabbergasted to be watching this on a grand scale.”
Maybe the “experts” shouldn’t have lied to us every step of the way.
“It’s bad, Sandy.”
“What’s bad?” he asked Hendrickson.
“The Ford and the Miller, they’re gone.”
“What do you mean gone?”
That dialogue is an exchange between two characters in a novel that imagines a future war with China.
The plot includes a devastating surprise attack in which the United States loses two aircraft carriers, 35 other warships, and thousands of sailors after Chinese cyberwarfare blinds the U.S. Navy and disables satellite-reliant weapons.
Democracy was going to be delivered to Libya, they said. The good guys would be propelled to power in Syria, they told us, ridding the world once and for all of the pox of Assadite authoritarianism. Afghanistan would take its place among the league of modern nations, they trilled, its backward, brutal culture of terrorism and misogyny being replaced by a shiny new nation free of the Talbian, the burqa and heroin. And Iraq? Iraq was going to be a post-Saddam paradise. Leftist laptop bombardiers assured us it would be a paragon of multiculturalism, with trade unionists to the fore. Others said it would just finally be a normal nation, a friend to the West. We can ‘cure the world’, as Tony Blair announced in 2001, perusing the globe from the dizzy perch of a new, virtuous imperialism.
Poll: 48% of Americans Say Leaving Afghanistan is a ‘Good Idea’
Russian troops are massing on the Ukraine border, Chinese vessels are swarming Whitsun Reef of the Philippines in the South China Sea, and China’s air force is flying almost daily through Taiwan’s air-defense identification zone. Chinese troops for almost a year have been dug in deep in Indian-controlled Ladakh in the Himalayas. Two large aggressors are threatening to break apart neighbors and absorb them.
The Biden administration has issued warnings to both Moscow and Beijing, but neither looks impressed. American attempts to de-escalate flashpoints are seen in Russian and Chinese circles as failures of resolve.
At least at this moment, those adversaries are right to scoff at the new U.S. leader.
A group of more than 2,000 former high-ranking Israeli military, law enforcement, and intelligence community officials are warning the Biden administration against inking a new nuclear deal with Iran, saying the rush to negotiate with Iran directly endangers Israel and its newfound Arab allies.
The letter, penned by Israel’s Defense & Security Forum, or Habithonistim, is the clearest sign to date that Israel and its Arab allies in the region are united in opposition to the Biden administration’s efforts to rejoin the 2015 nuclear accord, which they view as fundamentally flawed and an immediate threat to regional stability. In addition to Israel, leaders from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia have expressed concerns about America’s diplomacy with Iran and efforts to unwind sanctions that have brought the Islamic Republic to the brink of collapse.
…If by “those other things” which “it’s very important for us to try to keep… away,” Kerry means human rights abuses, then what the United States is saying is that climate change takes priority over calling the Chinese Communist Party out and telling them to knock it off when it comes to genocide and forced slave labor against the Uyghurs, pressuring Taiwan to reunify with the mainland, taking action against the Hong Kong protesters, and more.
Thirty years ago, the United States began to open its doors to China under the “constructive engagement” policy. The hope was to help liberalize China and steer it to be a “stable, open, and non-aggressive” world player, as former President Bill Clinton envisioned.
At that time, China’s technology lagged behind the United States’. It was unthinkable then that China would one day become a tech competitor. After three decades of open trade, the United States is waking up to a world in which China seems to be within arm’s length of replacing it as the world’s top tech provider.
The China class says no.
China is exploiting access to the capitalist economic system to achieve global dominance and ultimately seeks to control the world economy, two former Trump administration China experts warned a congressional commission on Thursday.
Miles Yu, former State Department policy planning official for China, said the U.S. must demand strict reciprocity in dealing with the Chinese Communist Party to level the economic playing field and prevent Beijing from achieving its goals.
“…Why on earth would the administration tell the Iranian leaders before negotiations that it is ready to lift sanctions while it has not yet received anything in return from the mullahs? The Iranian regime, of course, immediately scented weakness and desperation and began increasing its demands. The Biden administration then offered $1 billion to the mullahs in exchange for the regime freezing its production of 20% uranium enrichment. No, Iran wants more. Its leaders demanded $30 billion for one month of freeze.”
“Because of the current situation in Canada, even fully vaccinated travelers may be at risk for getting and spreading COVID-19 variants and should avoid all travel to Canada,” the website now reads. “If you must travel to Canada, get fully vaccinated before travel. All travelers should wear a mask, stay 6 feet from others, avoid crowds, and wash their hands.”
Wait, what? What do vaccines do? And what about airlines? And what about Roxham Rd?
Mitch McConnell and his wife, Elaine Chao, have operated for decades at the highest levels of American government. As the Senate Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has long been a part of the power elite. His wife has been a member of the cabinets of two Republican presidents: secretary of labor in the George W. Bush administration and, most recently, as transportation secretary under President Donald Trump.
In the past dozen years, McConnell’s and Chao’s wealth has grown dramatically. In 2004, the couple was worth an average of $3.1 million, according to their required financial disclosures. Ten years later, they had a net worth of between $9.2 million and $36.5 million. The key to that growth was a 2008 gift from Chao’s father, James, who immigrated from China to continue his education in 1958, then brought his wife and three young daughters, including Elaine, to join him in 1961.
President Biden reportedly will pull all remaining U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11, blowing past a May 1 deadline set by his predecessor while also fulfilling his own campaign pledge to wind down the longest war in American history.
The roughly 2,500 American forces in the country were supposed to leave by May 1 under a deal former President Trump struck with the Taliban last year. Instead, Mr. Biden will withdraw those troops by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks that led to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan two decades ago.
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib has called for the abolishment of police following the fatal shooting of unarmed black man Daunte Wright.
The Michigan Rep. made the radical declaration on Twitter Monday – one day after Wright was shot dead at a traffic stop in Minnesota when a white cop reached for her gun instead of a Taser, which has been characterized as an accident.
‘It wasn’t an accident. Policing in our country is inherently & intentionally racist,’ Tlaib posted to Twitter.
It has been almost exactly 70 years since my father was assigned to a two-man bunker overlooking an anonymous ridge on the 38th Parallel in Korea. The purpose of these outposts was to act as a trip-wire in the event of a mass attack of Chinese troops. Several weeks prior to June 1951, members of Dad’s battalion had been ambushed while patrolling the front, an ambush that cost the lives of several Army soldiers. But they served their purpose: to alert the battalion bivouacked a quarter-mile behind the line.
