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arcticdementor · 2 years

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The post-9/11 “war on terror” was a disaster for Muslims and immigrant communities in the United States. Patriotic, law-abiding Muslim Americans were treated as foreign enemies and hundreds of immigrants were rounded up, detained, and deported. Americans’ constitutional rights were trampled while a sprawling system of mass surveillance took shape. Those brave enough to shine a light on its abuses were, at best, spied on and treated as criminals or, at worst, hounded into the poorhouse and even imprisoned and tortured. The only minor saving grace was that, technically, this “war” was never waged officially within the United States, where it could’ve led to even more alarmingly authoritarian outcomes.

That now seems to be changing under the Biden administration, which, ever since last year’s Capitol riot, has bit by bit ramped up a burgeoning domestic war on terror aimed at criminals and dissidents at home. The latest escalation in this budding campaign cleared the House on Thursday — and, horrifyingly, received the wholehearted backing of the congressional left.

Fast and Furious Bill Passage

The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022 sailed through the House on a strict party-line vote, with not a single Democrat voting against and only one Republican, Illinois representative Adam Kinzinger, voting in its favor. Opposition to the bill was presumably considered politically toxic on the Left, as it was sold as a response to the racist mass murder committed in Buffalo last week, which is presumably why every single member of the “Squad” voted for it.

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The bill creates domestic terrorism offices within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Justice Department, and the FBI. These offices are all set to sunset in a decade. The heads of all three agencies must regularly issue a joint report on domestic terrorism threats, incidents, and arrests and prosecutions. The offices will direct their resources toward the threat categories with the highest number of instances. The bill also requires that they review and investigate hate crime charges with an eye on redefining or connecting them to domestic terror incidents.

The most defensible part of the bill is a section authorizing an interagency task force to “analyze and combat” white-supremacist infiltration of the armed forces and federal law enforcement. The effectiveness of this directive, however, remains to be seen. Although the bill’s language uses the term “combat,” it fails to spell out what this means. Its only specific details are in regard to the reports that federal agencies will be required to submit.

If the bill passes, it will represent at least some progress on a very serious and largely unaddressed problem. On the other hand, it also exposes the contradictory nature of progressives’, particularly the Squad’s, position on matters of civil liberties.

Still a Bad Idea

Joe Biden’s fledgling domestic war on terror has proven a tricky matter for left-wing lawmakers to navigate. The Left’s historical opposition to bigotry of all kinds made it somewhat less fraught for elected progressives to push back against the original “war on terror,” given its tendency to demonize and target Muslims and immigrants.

But ever since the national security state shifted its public-facing rhetoric around terrorism from Islamic extremists to far-right ones — and with progressives now tending to frame issues around the concept of “white supremacy” more and more — the congressional left has become increasingly quiet on the issue. After all, what progressive wants to look like they’re soft on literal Nazis?

But there are good reasons they should push back. For one, the leading progressive concerns about the license granted to the state by the original war on terror remain with this version of the bill. The powers authorized by this legislation can easily be turned on anyone — not simply the odious groups that are invoked for the bill’s passage.

The Biden administration’s official domestic counterterrorism strategy explicitly “makes no distinction based on political views” and name-checks supposed domestic terrorists motivated by a “range of ideologies,” including animal rights, environmentalism, anarchists, and anti-capitalists. In practice, the FBI has already imprisoned one Florida anarchist over what amounted to a series of public social media posts. Domestic terrorism prosecutions have exploded since 2020, now far outnumbering cases defined as international terrorism, and many of those have been racial justice protesters that the Biden administration has continued to prosecute as terrorists.

Even if, despite all this, one believes that a Democratic administration can be trusted to responsibly pursue a domestic “war on terror,” we would do well to remember that the United States is a two-party democracy where power regularly changes hands. Are progressives happy to hand ever-growing national security powers to Donald Trump, who mobilized the DHS for a campaign of repression against the George Floyd protests? Would they be comfortable entrusting them with Ron DeSantis, who just passed yet another law attacking protest rights, this time banning pickets outside private homes? Do they trust GOP-appointed federal agencies not to fudge the numbers and steer prosecutions toward threat categories that aren’t related to the far right?

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Given the long record of the FBI and federal agencies like the DHS targeting vulnerable communities, activists, and dissidents more generally — and given the Bureau’s copious recent use of far-right extremists as informants to target left-leaning protesters — does it really make sense to believe they’ll use these new authorities as progressives intend? It’s a bit of a glaring contradiction that the same bill that treats federal law enforcement as the leading instrument against far-right extremists is also concerned with its infiltration by white supremacists.

The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022 is not as bad as it could have been. To some extent, it’s lucky that Biden’s domestic war on terror has so far been fairly incremental. But as more tragedies like Buffalo pile up — and as politicians continue to do nothing about the availability of guns or the root causes that drive people toward this kind of hatred and violence in the first place — pressure will build to ramp things up.

Right now, progressives like those of the Squad may find it politically easier go along with something that, judging by their past public statements and positions, they quietly know is a bad and dangerous idea. But at some point, they’re going to have to take a stand. And if they don’t, they’ll risk hurting the very communities and political movements they’re fighting for.

#branko marcetic #jacobin magazine #domestic terrorism prevention act of 2022

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loving-n0t-heyting · 6 months

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Isn't "humanitarian Pause" just another way of saying "Ceasefire"?

Both sides put their weapons down long enough for the wounded to be moved off the battlefield, for everyone to perform religious/cultural rites, for soldiers to write to their loved ones, for civilians to get relief, and for journalists to report on the situation (possibly other things too, like if the battlefield is the habitat of an endangered species, the ceasefire might allow conservationists to go in with tranq rifles and extract the creatures to a temporary safezone). Why does it matter what this period of time is called?

Yea, this is an understandable confusion that the expression is clearly trying its best to instill! Which is why I think it’s important to put out clear activist messaging to demystify it. Based king and heart throb Branko marcetic at jacobin had a useful rundown:

In short: a “humanitarian pause” as suggested by the current administration would be greatly reduced in scope as compared w a ceasefire in space, time, and kinds of conflict affected, and would be imposed to facilitate a “humane” prosecution of the war rather than look for a path to an actual cessation of hostilities. If there were no meaningful difference, the administration would not be so emphatic about drawing one! The only ceasefire is a ceasefire, this is just mass murder in a funny little hat

#ask #the cybersmith

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newfiesforpeace · 1 month

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WHO WE ARE AND WHY WE SUPPORT A CEASE FIRE IN GAZA

We are members of the Newfoundland Community who are concerned with the on-going violence in Gaza, Palestine who feel a cease fire is a moral imperative as soon as possible.

According to UNICEF over 13,000 children have been killed in Gaza since October 7th. We agree with Amnesty International and fifteen other human rights organizations that the only way to prevent further loss of life is to begin a cease fire immediately.

If Israel refuses to begin a cease fire then the international community, including Canada should apply whatever political pressure necessary to encourage them to do so. Canada describes itself as having a "steadfast" relationship with Israel but this should end if the humanitarian crisis continues.

Our Newfoundland representative Yvonne Jones recently visited Israel and has yet to call for a cease fire. We do not believe she is representing the Newfie community and we would like her to call for a cease fire to end the needless loss of life.

If you would like to learn more here are some relevant information and links:

Articles

If You Care About the Hostages, Demand a Cease Fire - Branko Marcetic

What a Palestinian-American Wants You To Know About Dehumanization - Hala Alyan

We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other - Arielle Angel

People to Contact

Newfoundland MP Yvonne Jones

Look up your Canadian MP

Facts and Figures

Gaza's Population of 1.6 million is mostly children

38% of Gazans live in poverty

54% of Gazans are food insecure

Israeli military policy has prevented access to 35% of farmland

Over 90% of the water is undrinkable

The United Nations has called the blockade a human rights violation

Source

Charities Supporting Gaza

Palestine Children's Relief Fund

Doctors Without Borders

Oxfam

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society

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kp777 · 2 years

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By Branko Marcetic

Jacobin

Aug. 8, 2022

Something of a meta debate has opened up in the wake of the Senate’s passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the compromise climate legislation that came out of a handshake deal struck by Senate majority leader Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and right-wing Democrat Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV). What stands to be history’s largest US investment in renewable energy has sharply divided climate advocates on its actual merits. Don’t Look Up director Adam McKay, for instance, was sharply criticized by a slew of left-leaning journalists for saying the bill might prove “empty theater” after it was passed.

I can see where these critics are coming from. The IRA’s leg-up to the renewable sector is critically important and gives the world a fighting a chance to avert climate catastrophe. It’s especially exciting after we spent months thinking we’d just blown through the last prospect of doing anything at all about the crisis for who knows how many years. One of its provisions, one of the few to survive from last year, is Medicare’s new legal ability to negotiate over drug prices, something Democrats have been promising to do for literally decades, and which could make a measurable, positive impact on people’s lives. So I wouldn’t go so far as McKay to call it empty theater.

And I get why some want to look at this with a glass-half-full perspective. Climate doomerism is unhelpful, and getting this bill across the line was a major victory for the Left, the fruit of years of direct action by groups like the Sunrise Movement. And there are, understandably, many who hope its passage — a genuine legislative achievement — might revive Joe Biden’s flagging presidency, and the Democratic Party’s electoral prospects more generally, in the face of a hard-right electoral wave on the near horizon.

But we also need to be honest about the IRA and what a modest, and in many ways deeply flawed, piece of legislation it is. It’s not just that it doesn’t seriously deal with transport, the single largest US source of emissions, or that it makes a variety of investments in dubious technological fixes. As environmental groups have variously said, it’s also a “climate suicide pact” and “a renewable energy revolution on top of a fossil fuel build-out.”

They’re referring to the fact that the price of the bill — the price of getting Manchin and a host of other Democrats bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry on board — is a series of carbon bombs that will somehow have to be undone at a later date, the sooner the better. The bill revives the largest oil and gas lease sale in history that Biden had planned in the Gulf of Mexico before a judge blocked it on account of its climate impact and makes the expansion of solar and wind energy infrastructure on federal lands and waters contingent on also selling a total of hundreds of millions of acres of those same lands and waters for oil and gas leasing.

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theculturedmarxist · 2 years

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As predicted, Beijing did not respond well to Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan.

It imposed new trade restrictions while embarking on a series of days-long military drills encircling the island, which at one point saw four Chinese missiles sail over its territory. Yesterday, Beijing sanctioned Pelosi and her family and cut off dialogue with Washington on military matters and climate change, potentially setting back international efforts to deal with what is the most serious and urgent threat to global security.

Pelosi’s provocative visit had come in the face of numerous warnings from experts like Lyle Goldstein. A researcher on Chinese and Russian strategic military development who taught at the US Naval War College for twenty years, Goldstein spoke with Jacobin’s Branko Marcetic shortly after Pelosi’s visit.

Goldstein explains the fraught significance of Taiwan to China’s leaders, the risk of nuclear war, and why the United States could very well lose a war with China over the island.

Why was Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan considered so provocative by China?

Lyle Goldstein

A lot of people already are genuinely surprised, even me a little bit. I thought that Beijing might just send a hundred aircraft into the zone or something, but the reaction seems to be large-scale and involves a variety of unprecedented moves.

But if you read Chinese and see what I’ve been seeing the past five years, this is not surprising. I’d say for at least five years or more, we’ve been in a slow-rolling crisis, where the issue of Taiwan in particular, and US-China relations in general, has been escalating to a very dangerous level. China views this is as one more blow against the One China policy framework, and they don’t like the trend lines. A lot of people say, “Newt Gingrich went there in in 1997, there’s precedent, what’s the big deal?” But that’s not at all how China sees it. Their approach is, in 1997, they hardly had a navy to speak of and couldn’t do anything. They feel like they have the power now to adjust the situation.

Hong Kong has caused many Chinese leaders and the PLA [People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese military] to consign the “one country, two systems” framework, which I think was useful for all sides, to the dustbin of history — concluding that peaceful integration or unification is impossible, and that force is the only solution. That’s a very dark view, but I’m afraid it’s become more and more pervasive.

We would be hard-pressed under any conditions to change China’s mind on that view, but we seem to be doing the opposite, compounding all their fears and sending higher and higher–level visitors. People don’t realize: we sent two senators — and that’s not a minor position in the US government — to Taiwan two months ago, and China did bang its fists and use vitriolic language. But it doesn’t appear in the mainstream media.

On Twitter, I’ve made it a personal mission to document all the threats that China has issued over Taiwan. You at least see one a week. It goes something like this: “The PLA has the will and capability to ensure national unification.” Over the last year, this statement has appeared dozens of times, but it’s willfully ignored by the Western press, because they can’t understand it or they dismiss it or wish to ignore it.

In a nuclear-armed world, to just outright ignore the warnings of the other side is reckless beyond belief, and potentially catastrophic.

Branko Marcetic

Why is Taiwan such a redline for China?

Lyle Goldstein

I think reasonable people, even historians, have disagreement on this. I don’t want to pretend this is a simple right and wrong. How do countries attain their shape? A vast cauldron of mostly gnarly warfare, to put it mildly, that’s caused most countries to have their current shape.

China has had roughly this shape for a couple of thousand years, and for that reason the Chinese are very sensitive to issues of territorial integrity. Of course, layer on that the period of European predations — and most people don’t realize, but the United States was quite involved in that. From about 1850 to about 1920, almost a century, you had the US Navy patrolling the Yangtze, which involved gunboats operating together with the British Navy, and we were policing China. This was a form of imperialism, and if the natives got restless, then the gunboats would circle up. There are myriad instances of the US acting together with Japan and Britain to suppress rebellions.

The predations of Europe were followed by the ultimate predation of Japan, which conquered a lot of China. Where did it begin? In Taiwan, and China remembers that dearly. For Western readers not well acquainted with Japan’s conquest of Taiwan in 1894–95, ghastly atrocities were perpetrated. It was kind of a precursor to World War II, where the Japanese mercilessly slaughtered people in Taiwan during the initial period of colonization.

The Chinese have a particular animus toward Japan, because there was never really a reckoning for all the crimes committed, there were no reparations. But it started in Taiwan, and that’s why it becomes a focal point of Chinese nationalism, which is, to a large extent, built on anti-Japanese sentiment. And I always note to Chinese audiences, they have the United States to thank partly for saving China from Japan. So it’s not a one-sided story.

In 1683, the Qing Dynasty took over Taiwan. There were already a lot of Chinese on the island, and it became integrated into the Chinese empire, and later became its own province. That’s almost a century before the American Revolution, and many years before the United States even thought about Hawaii or California, Taiwan was part of China. So it’s a strong claim.

It wasn’t just in 1972, with the Shanghai Communiqué, that the United States endorsed the idea that Taiwan was part of China. I’d urge Americans and all people around the world to read the statements by Franklin Roosevelt in the Cairo Declaration and Harry Truman in his speech of January 1950, where he states very clearly that Taiwan is part of China that was taken by imperial Japan.

Branko Marcetic

If tensions boiled over and there was a US-China war over Taiwan, how would it actually go?

Lyle Goldstein

I worked at the US Naval War College for twenty years researching Chinese naval development, Chinese military development, so I’m well versed on all their systems. There’s quite a significant chance that the United States would lose a war over Taiwan.

The obvious reason is geographical. China is fighting a war, as they put it, right on their front doorstep, and can bring all their immense military power to bear — not just the manpower and logistics power China has great strengths in, but we’re talking combat aircraft, helicopters, and every kind of ship you can imagine. Every point of China is essentially one day’s sail to Taiwan.

Compare that with the United States. We do have immense military power, but we cannot bring it into the field, and even if we could, could it be supported? Even submarines, which are our ace in the hole — the one force that can get to battlefield and fight strongly against an invasion — couldn’t be supported. They’d quickly run out of torpedoes, as submarines don’t have a large magazine, so in navy speak, they’d be “Winchestered,” meaning out of ammo and useless, and forced to sail the twenty or thirty days back to the rear to refill and refit supply, and then another twenty or thirty days to go back. So even the force that’s most prepared to go into the fight can’t sustain it.

The situation is much more dire when talking about what the air force or army could bring into the fight, which is nearly zero. Let’s not forget, the air force is totally dependent on runways. And while there have been some air force engineers scraping around in Tinian [one of the Northern Mariana Islands, 1,800 miles off China’s coast] — from where we launched the Enola Gay to drop the atomic bomb — as soon as we started playing with air forces there, they’d be right on it. I can give you the citation where they say, “Just add it to the target list.”

And all the runways in proximity would be destroyed: I’m talking about Guam, Okinawa, and further afield. China now has the ability to target Hawaii and Alaska. I’m talking about day one, or at least day seven of a conflict. I briefed an air force general, saying, “Sir, are you aware the assets you’re keeping in Alaska would likely be targeted in the first week or two of a war with China?” He was surprised, but he shouldn’t be. Turnabout is fair play, and they’d strike these targets.

This is a long way of saying, the amount of firepower and the ability to sustain it is not there on the US side, and why, repeatedly, it’s been shown in the open press that China nearly always wins the war games. That’s a bad sign. We have to grapple with reality, and the reality is China wields immense military cards in the Taiwan scenario.

A lot of people point to the Ukraine war. Taiwan is fifteen times smaller than Ukraine. One of Russia’s major problems is that it’s spread its forces too thin and the firepower is dispersed, because Ukraine is a huge country. In Taiwan’s case, the firepower would be much more concentrated in a small area, and half of Taiwan is mountains, so it’s an even smaller area. China’s military budget is also about five times the size of Russia’s, and Taiwan is more easily cut off from arms shipments. You don’t want to be in Taiwan when this unfolds.

Branko Marcetic

What is the risk of nuclear escalation over Taiwan?

Lyle Goldstein

So many people ignore that possibility, and it’s completely irresponsible. If I were to blame Pelosi for anything, it’s that, in the nuclear age, this kind of posturing is ridiculous and should be condemned widely.

One can think of many ways that a nuclear scenario would unfold. One that keeps me up at night these days is that, in the field of US-China military studies, we don’t talk a lot about tactical nuclear weapons, but Chinese strategists talk about this a lot these days, especially because they were a feature of the US-Soviet rivalry.

The Chinese noticed we were putting tactical nuclear weapons back on US submarines and wrote about it extensively. They said, “This looks a lot the kind of weapon the United States could deploy in Taiwan scenario.” And they say, “If the United States is going to go this route, then other countries will” — an obvious reference to the fact that China is developing similar weapons and will be ready for that day. I have no confirmation of them deploying battlefield nuclear weapons — it’s just my suspicion, and they have threatened to do so, and I have a lot more evidence to show.

What it means is that, if war begins between the two, if either side starts to lose — let’s say ours does, they sink a carrier and it looks like the invasion is succeeding — does one of our submarines sitting thousands or hundreds of miles away, launch a battlefield nuclear weapon that hits the invasion force, and they respond in kind against Guam or Hawaii? It could go the opposite way: if China invades and the invasion is stalling or losing, and American forces are surging into the area, do they say, “We can’t afford to lose this the way that Vladimir Putin seemed to be in the initial stages”? We have to wonder, in the nuclear era, at that point would China resort to some kind of nuclear use to warn the others away. I do fear China could use the nuclear card against Japan.

One more thing: China is very energetically developing their nuclear forces. That’s sad — I don’t think it had to be this way, because China previously was quite proud of its low-level nuclear deterrent. But they think the likelihood of war with the US is quite high, particularly over Taiwan, and they want to match the US strength for strength.

Nuclear war could also happen by accident. A lot of US analysts are talking about how China increasingly colocates nuclear warheads with conventional warheads — they fly on the same missile even. So how do we know if Chinese missiles flying at Guam or Hawaii, as they might in this scenario, aren’t carrying a nuclear weapon? You have minutes to decide what to do.

The buildup of missile defenses has also spurred more and more exotic weaponry. There’s a move toward hypersonic weaponry, and the Chinese are, like the Russians, obsessed with how to penetrate missile defenses. One way is to destroy the missile defense radars in the opening salvo. So there are all kinds of disturbing escalation incentives built in here.

Branko Marcetic

The China-US relationship presumably doesn’t have the kinds of Cold War–era safeguards and mechanisms for de-escalation and conflict avoidance.

Lyle Goldstein

A Chinese analyst told me, the US and China have never had a Cuban Missile Crisis. That was a very stark moment. Both sides looked into the apocalypse, literally, and there’s no question in my mind, the world could’ve been destroyed in that moment. The more we learn about it, the more horrifying it is.

I interviewed a Russian submarine captain who literally had his finger on the trigger of a nuclear-armed torpedo that was designed to hit the US amphibious group off the coast of Cuba, and the US Navy did not even know that Russia had deployed tactical nuclear weapons in the crisis. We were operating totally in the blind on that trigger for nuclear war. And the same is true probably in Taiwan. We don’t know completely what weapons they have, and they don’t know completely what weapons we have. Both sides are keeping some cards behind their backs.

Branko Marcetic

There was a 1966 study about US war planning for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan in the 1950s, where officials agreed they would quickly resort to nuclear strikes on China. Is this something that US strategists and military leaders would be discussing today too?

Lyle Goldstein

I think that was an important revelation, and it shows you something about this scenario. People who know the history of the 1950s know that, at the highest levels, the president was thinking about ordering nuclear strikes on China because of these Taiwan-related issues. I say related because it was mostly about these offshore islands. Dwight D. Eisenhower and other American leaders thankfully realized this was crazy, that you’re going to use nuclear weapons to defend these little rocks.

But it didn’t stop there. We know that we deployed nuclear weapons to Taiwan; I think they were there for seven or eight years, these Matador tactical missiles. At some level, brilliant: that’s how you defend Taiwan, since you can’t possibly put enough firepower there to sink the whole Chinese fleet and prevent them from invading, so you use nuclear weapons.

Thankfully, they came out as part of the whole Kissinger diplomacy. But it shows the fundamental principle here, which is that the United States in this scenario can’t possibly bring enough firepower to win unless it resorts to nuclear weapons. That was understood in the 1950s, and nothing really has changed.

I’ve seen idle speculation in the military press that no country would ever think of sinking a US carrier, which is five thousand Americans, and would entail nuclear retaliation for sure. Well, what if China got it in its head to sink two or three or five carriers. I don’t even want to think about that, but it’s quite possible.

One of the worst scenarios I’ve considered over the years is what if China severely damages a carrier, and the carrier is sinking, and we have to rescue the three or four thousand people who are swimming somewhere in the East China Sea. You’re going to have to put together a task force of fifteen or twenty ships to pull off this rescue mission. But of course, in modern naval warfare, when the enemy knows where all the ships are collecting, they’re easily targeted. That’s a scenario to lose at least half the US navy.

Let’s turn it around: what if the United States sinks a Chinese carrier. Could that entail nuclear escalation? Increasingly, when you talk about these kinds of losses, China might. We don’t know where the nuclear threshold is. A major war has never been fought between nuclear powers. Often when I deal with US military leaders, I say what was said during the Cuban missile crisis: “You and I have fought the same number of nuclear wars, so please don’t tell me you know what’s going to happen.”

Branko Marcetic

What can or should we learn from the crisis, and ultimately war in Ukraine, that we can apply to these currently rising tensions with China?

Lyle Goldstein

I get this question all the time, but in a different form: How can the Ukraine war can inform us about defending Taiwan properly? Like if we had sent all these weapons to Ukraine five years ago, then Russia would’ve never considered it. I don’t think that’s true, and, in fact, I think piling in the weapons during November, December, and January partly triggered the conflict. The same thing could occur in the Taiwan context. You’re just waving a red flag in front of a bull. You’re trying to foreclose their options in a military sense and therefore pushing the security dilemma to the breaking point.

The primary lesson that needs to be learned is that you cannot just willy-nilly transgress upon the redlines of great powers. To me, it’s incredibly stark. I circulated Putin’s discourse on redlines, starting around 2020, around Naval War College, where I worked, because I saw my job as saying to my colleagues, “Whatever happens, you’d better understand Russia’s redlines.” Because it was very clear we were getting close to those lines. And we more or less blew right by them, ignored them, said, “This is posturing, this is unacceptable, you can’t say that.” That kind of approach is beyond foolish, it’s catastrophic for the people of Eastern Europe and Ukraine and Russia.

That does lead to the spheres of influence argument. I argued in my book in 2015 that spheres of influence are the only way forward to manage conflict with China and Russia. They’re not something you can accept or not accept, they are just a fact of the world. And so you have to align your policies to accept that, because when you fight against it, you’re swimming against the tide, and it leads to horrible disasters like Ukraine.

There are some specific lessons from a military point of view. I agree Javelins and Stingers and things like that are somewhat useful for Taiwan, though I warn that piling these weapons in could trigger what you’re trying to prevent. Should Taiwan invest in counter-drone technology? Sure. One could work through numerous lessons, but I don’t have a lot of hope that Taiwan could possibly even begin to match Chinese military power. They’ve just now exceeded 2 percent in defense spending, but to really match China somehow, they would have to go well over 10 percent of GDP and continue that for a decade. At that point, they might have a chance. Otherwise, I don’t see any real possibility.

So the real lesson for Taiwan is not a massive buildup — I think they’d have to go full North Korea and dig and pour concrete everywhere, and more or less destroy the island to save it. The main lesson is diplomacy, of course. So many opportunities were missed to avert the war in Ukraine. To state the obvious, if they had simply declared that Ukraine would be a neutral state, how hard would that have been? There are plenty of examples of neutral countries that are very happy and are very well armed. That was a completely feasible option, but it just didn’t fit with our ideology. The idea that we might climb down, that we might compromise — that’s showing weakness, so we can never do that.

Taiwan has all kinds of diplomatic positions. We should be encouraging those. In December 2015, the leaders of Taiwan and China had an excellent, friendly meeting. They have a lot in common. There are so many ties across the Strait. Millions of mainlanders have come across to Taiwan and seen how beautiful the island is and how clean the air is and how well-governed it is. That’s the best way to approach cross-Strait relations. There are all kinds of compromises to be made, people-to-people exchanges, military confidence-building measures. All of that should’ve happened with Ukraine and Russia, but no, we insisted on confrontational approach, and now we have a ghastly war.

Branko Marcetic

NATO recently named China a security challenge for the first time, at the same time that it invited several Asia-Pacific countries for the first time to speak at its summit. How significant of a shift is this? Does it represent some kind of fundamental expansion of NATO’s mission?

Lyle Goldstein

I’ve been observing NATO’s lean to the east for several years now, and I remember watching the British and French send carriers and submarines across. I gave a lecture in Germany a couple years ago, and people in the German navy asked me point blank: “We’re eager to send a ship to the South China Sea, would that help?” And I said, “No, it’s kind of crazy for Germany to insert itself in this. It’s going to do more harm than good for sure.” They didn’t like my answer. “We were hoping you’d be rah-rah and think it’s great.”

That little story encapsulates this dynamic, which is really disturbing. NATO already didn’t have the best reputation in China, for various reasons going back years. Though ten to fifteen years ago, NATO had a reasonable working relationship with China, and the European Union had set up some really good defense exchanges and contacts with China. That was very helpful, and I had urged that Europe act as a cushion for the US-China rivalry and be a friend of the court to both sides, tell each to chill out a little. Help China to mitigate its worst nationalist tendencies, but also help the US contain its seemingly endless desire for rivalry.

I thought Europe was playing thar role pretty effectively until 2016 or so. Then things seemed to start to change, and European discourse on China radically moved to the right and became very anti-China to the point, I’d argue, of even surpassing US rhetoric on China. I found this very disturbing. I could give you endless examples of this, but if you read the Economist magazine, it’s become extremely hawkish on China over the years. In the European mind, they more or less associate Russia and China together, as authoritarianism writ large, though the Russian and Chinese regimes are very different, so lumping them together I think is misplaced.

I remember, in 2017, as the Korean crisis was unfolding, a squadron of French ships came across, and Chinese coverage of that was very upset. It was the Europeans who were leading the carving up of China in the nineteenth century, and China fought multiple wars against France and against Britain. So the idea that you’re going to have these European navies sailing around, it triggers this anger.

The other phenomenon here is NATO’s search for missions. God bless the Ukraine war, because this has given a lot of new life to NATO and given NATO bureaucrats something to do, though I think Turkey’s diplomacy and playing footsie with Russia should make people realize the alliance isn’t as together and cohesive as some would hope. On some level, there’s a silver lining to that — Europe should focus on Europe, and take its nose out of Asian affairs. To put it less charitably: What have you been doing? Was this lurch toward Asia why they seem to have been caught unawares in the war with Russia?

There’s also the cheerleader effect, which is very powerful in Washington, when whatever the United States does, we always hope and expect this round of applause from the Europeans. This has been very destructive, in my view. Would the United States really have spent twenty years in Afghanistan without this cheerleader effect from NATO? Half the argumentation for the last ten years of the mission in Afghanistan was, “Well, we can’t possibly pull out because what would NATO say? We can’t leave our allies in the lurch.”

I’m critical of NATO’s stance here. I think Europeans have surrendered their diplomatic cards, which were substantial, and China has become more skeptical of Europe. And this is sad, because I really thought Europe could help bring about a new, more peaceful world order.

Branko Marcetic

How alarmed should we be by China seeking to expand its foreign bases and strengthen its military?

Lyle Goldstein

First, I always point out to people, the United States has something like eight hundred military facilities abroad, and China has one. It’s sort of like, call me when China gets 799 more. In other words, we’re really not at a place where we should seriously worry about this. What I’ve seen doesn’t really bother me.

Look at their base in Africa. That’s really their only foreign base. Those little reef bases in the South China Sea really can’t be called foreign bases. Regarding the African base, there are some things that are a little concerning, like when it was being built, it has really deep bunkers — it’s built to take punishment.

But other than that, look, this base is in Djibouti. Three miles away, you have a pretty large American base. Around the corner from there is a French base, and around the corner from there is a little Japanese base, and it goes on and on. Everyone and their mother has a base in Djibouti. If China had really nefarious designs on Africa, they probably wouldn’t put their base right there, next to all these other bases, where we can easily monitor what they’re doing.

If I had to summarize Chinese policy in Africa, they do a lot of peacekeeping, and that’s difficult — and they deserve a lot of credit for peacekeeping. Number two, there are a lot of Chinese nationals and businesses in Africa, and I think they’re concerned that they may have to do what in the navy we call an NEO — a noncombatant evacuation operation — and that can be a high-risk operation.

My view is we’re basically in a cold war with China, and they’re acting like we are now. They’re starting to adopt strategic positioning in case they have to struggle and strike the United States. There’s a rumor that we’ll see a base in West Africa. China has legitimate interests in all these places, but would that base bother me? A little bit. I’m not thrilled to see China have a base on the Atlantic. That’s a major step.

But most of the major blame for China wanting to dip their toe in the Atlantic there — I studied a series of Chinese official articles called China’s Atlantic Strategy. One of the things they said very clearly was, “The Atlantic is absolutely critical to the United States, and the United States is coming to our backyard and poking around in the South China Sea, so we have to go to their backyard.”

Branko Marcetic

Western discourse on the war in Ukraine, and this now seems to be being transplanted to China and Taiwan, has tended to be dominated by appeals to progressive values around defending democracy and self-determination. But there is not much acknowledgment of the risk of military and nuclear escalation.

Lyle Goldstein

For progressives around the world, their first take is absolutely, “This is good versus evil, and we have to step up and do what it takes and be the greatest generation.” I’m not sure why they’re not able to appreciate how the subsequent steps are so tragic, and there’s not much thinking about the costs. We seem to be in a period now like the 1940s and ’50s with these proxy wars, like the Korean War, which has been compared to the Ukraine war.

In the 1950s, we had statesmen like Eisenhower, and arguably even figures like Richard Nixon, who had fought in World War II and seen huge numbers of people die with their own eyes. They’d been there and were able to put aside this crusading mentality and realize they had better protect the peace, what peace there was. The United States made a lot of mistakes in the Cold War, but it was able to not go over the edge. And maybe Russia also had that kind of baked-in appreciation for the costs of war that just seems to be totally missing today.

I’m watching a lot of Russian media now. The level of frustration there is immense. They’re more or less calling for American blood, one way or another. Their view of it is that this war is being run out of the Pentagon, and a lot of Russians and Ukrainians are dying, but the Americans are just kind of laughing about it. This is not sustainable, and could really explode. I’m absolutely sure that a lot of smart Russian strategists are thinking about how they can make life very painful and kill lots of Americans in various ways, and that’s a bad thing.

Most journalists that I encounter and people who are educated, they don’t think through steps three and four. They just have a gut reaction — it mostly plays into this good-and-evil narrative — and they just assume blithely that we haven’t had a nuclear weapon used since 1945, so we understand no one is going to go there, and anything else is okay. It’s very sad, that’s for sure.

#us china relations #world war 3 #nuclear war #united states #china #taiwan #nancy pelosi #cold war #taiwan strait

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fifihunterbakariafrocentric · 4 months

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Branko Marcetic: Joe Biden Is No Al Franken | Writer's Voice

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thefree-online · 5 months

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Blood Money: Top Ten US Politicians Taking Most Israel Lobby Cash to okay Genocide and Apartheid of Palestinians

from thefreeonline on December 25 2023 by Mint Press The largest recipient of Israel lobby money is President Joe Biden. #1 Joe Biden, $4,346,264 The largest recipient of Israel lobby money is President Joe Biden. From the beginning of his political career, Biden, according to his biographer Branko Marcetic, “established himself as an implacable friend of Israel,” spending his Senate career…

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ferrolano-blog · 5 months

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El ataque de Israel a Gaza no se parece a ninguna guerra reciente Por Branko Marcetic Desde el ritmo y la escala de la matanza de civiles hasta la matanza de grupos protegidos y el tipo de municiones, la guerra de Israel contra Gaza es una campaña excepcionalmente brutal que no se parece a casi nada que hayamos visto... "Siento que se me están acabando las formas de describir los horrores que afectan a los niños aquí", dijo el portavoz de UNICEF, James Elder... Josep Borrell, también ha calificado la situación en Gaza de “catastrófica, apocalíptica”, con una escala de destrucción “incluso mayor que la destrucción sufrida por las ciudades alemanas durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial”... Además, aproximadamente el 70 por ciento de los palestinos asesinados hasta ahora han sido mujeres y niños. Se trata de una proporción asombrosa que distingue a Gaza de algunas de las peores guerras de este siglo... Lo que se necesita para detener esto no es otra guerra desastrosa o un cambio de régimen, sino simplemente privar al ejército israelí de la armas que necesita para llevar a cabo esta matanza masiva. Lamentablemente, la administración Biden se niega a hacerlo. Al ritmo que las fuerzas israelíes están matando gente, y con las enfermedades y el hambre a punto de empezar a cobrar muchas más vidas en Gaza, permitir que continúe esta carnicería sólo convertirá lo que ya es una campaña militar excepcionalmente salvaje en algo aún más indescriptible (Branko Marcetic)

#crimencontralahumanidad #crimenesdeguerra #genocidio #colonialismoisraeli #guerradepalestina

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fahrni · 8 months

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Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Kim and I had the grandkids overnight so they’re worn out and we’re worn out. Heck, even our pups are worn out. The house is really quiet, just how I like it. I’m sitting here in the dark, sipping coffee, composing today’s post.

This week work was mostly about onboarding a couple new iOS Devs who’ll be working with me on our project to add React Native support to existing native apps. I’m really enjoying it. 😀

Caitlin Harrington • WIRED

Last month, Grindr gave its all-remote staff two weeks to pledge to work from an office two days a week starting in October or lose their jobs come August 31. Many declined to return: 82 out of 178 employees—46 percent of the staff—were let go after rejecting the mandate, according to the Grindr union, which went public two weeks before the ultimatum.

Wow. That’s about all I had to say when I read this piece. I have a friend who took a job there — as a remote test engineer — only to have this mandate cross his desk two weeks later. Needless to say he didn’t move and is now looking for a new gig. It’s a real head scratcher.

Ron Amadeo • Ars Technica

The Federated Learning of Cohorts and now the Topics API are part of a plan to pitch an “alternative” tracking platform, and Google argues that there has to be a tracking alternative—you can’t just not be spied on.

Emphasis is mine. At least they admit what they’re doing and it’s pathetic. 😳

You know what’s worse? People won’t switch away from Chrome.

thehackernews.com

Apple on Thursday released emergency security updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS to address two zero-day flaws that have been exploited in the wild to deliver NSO Group’s Pegasus mercenary spyware.

Update your devices right away. The talent possessed to do this type of ferreting around an OS looking for holes is both impressive and terrifying all at the same time.

Branko Marcetic • jacobin.com

The inflation rate — that is, the pace at which prices are going up — might be slowing down, but that doesn’t mean prices are lower. In fact, they are much, much higher for all kinds of goods and services than they were three years ago.

I’ve definitely noticed this when we go to our favorite Mexican restaurant here in Charlottesville.

It’s really becoming apparent in the streaming business. I just received email saying our Hulu subscription is going up to $81.99/month. We currently pay $64/month. That’s close to a 25% increase. 🤬

Taegan Goddard • politicalwire.com

Pence Calls Trump’s Populism a ‘Road to Ruin’

Wow. Pence finally figured it out. Took long enough.

I know folks have praised him for what he did January 6 — myself included — but the truth is he could’ve done a lot more prior to the sixth to avert this, like call the FBI.

MSRC • msrc.microsoft.com

Upon identifying that the threat actor had acquired the consumer key, Microsoft performed a comprehensive technical investigation into the acquisition of the Microsoft account consumer signing key, including how it was used to access enterprise email. Our technical investigation has concluded. As part of our commitment to transparency and trust, we are releasing our investigation findings.

Reading these reports is fascinating. I love seeing them own up to mistakes and solve the problems that lead them there. I personally like to focus on the problem and not point fingers. These reports come across like that to me.

Greg Jones • enginebuildermag.com

As a kid, Dan Keenan loved fixing things, tearing things apart, and figuring out a way to build something new. But he never dreamed his skills would one day lead to being a key player in designing a brand-new race engine for NASCAR.

This is an older piece but is a great little read if you’re at all interested in engine building. I most definitely am and would love to see some deep dives of all the motors used in the NASCAR Cup Series. The teams use a new motor each week! It’s amazing to me how consistent the builds are from week to week.

They do see the occasional failure but those are rare. It would be amazing to see reports from engine builders outlining the failures and the steps taken to mitigate them, just like that Microsoft Security piece linked above.

Michael Meng • eng.lyft.com

Lyft runs hundreds of microservices to power the company’s offerings. Our team, the Developer Infrastructure team, aims to build the best tools to enable microservice owners (our “customers”) to reliably and quickly test changes in a local and/or end-to-end environment.

When we crossed that line from desktop focused computing on local networks to service based computing on the open web software development became infinitely more complicated. I know a lot of folks who’ll disagree with that assessment and that’s fine. It’s how it feels to me. I’m a simpleton and prefer my little self contained IDE and platform. 😃

GMS Racing • legacymotorclub.com

LEGACY MOTOR CLUB™ Signs John Hunter Nemechek to Drive the No. 42 in 2024

It’s fun to watch NASCAR teams make lineup changes for next season. How many more changes will we see between now and next season? Who knows.

It’ll also be nice to see where the Stewart Haas Racing rumors land. Do they run two or four cars next year? Do they have charters for sale? If so, who picks them up?

Oh, right, when is Dodge coming back! 🤣 Yes, I really do want to see it.

Lane Brown • Vulture

The Ophelia affair is a useful microcosm for understanding how Rotten Tomatoes, which turned 25 in August, has come to function. The site was conceived in the early days of the web as a Hot or Not for movies. Now, it can make or break them — with implications for how films are perceived, released, marketed, and possibly even green-lit. The Tomatometer may be the most important metric in entertainment, yet it’s also erratic, reductive, and easily hacked.

I’d not heard of folks gamifying Rotten Tomatoes scores but it makes sense it would happen. Gotta keep those scores fresh so folks will watch your movie and put money in your pocket. 🍅

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