Here is a very interesting geopolitical assessment of what is going on in China. There are factors. climate change for example, that Henderson does not address, nor does he include technological breakthroughs. But I think his economics given what we can see today is accurate.
While the UK and US, each embroiled in democracy’s perverse consequences, struggle to thwart Putin’s mad ambitions in Ukraine, their respective China strategies face forceful challenge from Beijing. Xi Jinping is pushing brinkmanship to the edge in the Taiwan Straits and doubling down, as in Honduras, on its global efforts to isolate Taiwan.
Meanwhile, leading Western technology companies, alarmed by geopolitical uncertainty and facing hostile data “legislation,” are marching out of China in droves. Microsoft has already taken LinkedIn out and is moving an expert AI team to Canada to avoid local pressure on them.
Risk has been defined as exposure to hostile intentions and capabilities. This dictum omits one vital issue: whether the party at risk is aware of what is going on. Arguably much of the “free” world is either ignorant, or in denial, about Xi Jinping’s policy drivers, intentions and capabilities.
I think this is an early example of a new trend that is growing. Young people know that they are going to be the ones who live through climate change in a way their elders will not. And they are fed up with the incompetent response of the older generations. This is going to become a big factor in the 2024 election. So I see this as good news.
Lead plaintiff Rikki Held on her family’s ranch in southeastern Montana. Behind her, a wildfire burns four miles away. In Summer 2022, this was one of 18 wildfires within 50 miles of her home. Credit: Richard Forbes
Rikki Held headed southeast into the badlands, eyes fixed on the billowing smoke as it reddened with sunset. Rutted tracks wound between scrubby hillsides that hid the wildfire. Brush raked the car.
She’d been home at the ranch in southeastern Montana when she saw the plume. The land was parched, a dull red gravel road, sun beaten grasses, clustered trees lining the river, all within a one-mile-wide strip of irrigated land surrounded by rolling badlands. There was a haze in the air, but nothing like the smoky skies of previous summers.
Rikki called her father as soon as she saw the smudge on the horizon.
“Dad, did you see the smoke when you drove to town?” she asked.
“No, where’s it coming from?” he responded.
To find the answer, Rikki drove through the hills her family has ranched for five generations. This is where […]
If you live in Texas or Florida you increasingly live in an anocracy not a democracy. Gregg Abbott and Ron DeSantis, are blatant christofascists who, with the help of the corrupt Republican mediocrities who make up their state legislatures have for several years now been dismantling their state’s political structures to assure that White christofascist MAGAts permanently control their states.
Gov. Greg Abbott has signed the so-called “Death Star” bill that strips the state’s municipalities of their power to strengthen labor rights, environmental protections, and more.
Texas Republicans this week completed their demolition of local democracy in the state when Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill that drastically limits the ability of cities and counties to enact progressive policies.
House Bill 2127, pushed by corporate lobbyists and signed into law on Wednesday, prohibits municipalities from adopting and enforcing new local ordinances that contradict what’s permitted under nine broad areas of the Texas state code. The new law doesn’t just prevent localities from implementing fresh regulations; it even overturns existing measures that exceed state rules governing agriculture, business and commerce, finance, insurance, labor, local government, natural resources, occupations, and property.
Progressives have long condemned H.B. 2127 as the “Death Star” bill, a reference to the space station the Empire used to destroy self-governing planets in Star Wars. When the law takes effect on […]
For all of your life and mine one of the defining geopolitical realities has been that the United States is by far the most powerful military power in the world with the very best weapons from handguns to whatever you choose to name. Now things are changing. There is a very important trend going on yet this is the only general audience corporate media story I have seen. The United States spends more on its military-industrial complex than the next seven nations of the world combined, and yet China is becoming the most advanced military in the world, and Japan and South Korea, as this article describes, are building ships superior to their U.S. equivalents. How is this happening? Because as with everything else in the America, wealth inequity, corruption, and lack of accountability, are eating away at the foundations of our society. You can’t have a democracy without integrity.
The South Korean Navy’s Aegis destroyer King Sejong the Great, front, sails with US and Japanese ships during a joint drill off the east coast of the Korean peninsula on Feb. 22. Credit: South Korea Defense Ministry/AP
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — It’s a growing problem that has United States naval commanders scratching their heads: How to keep up with China’s ever-expanding fleet of warships.
Not only is China’s navy already the world’s largest, its numerical lead over the US is getting wider, with the head of the US Navy warning recently that American shipyards simply can’t keep up. Some experts estimate China can build three warships in the time it takes the US to build one.
It is just one of the concerns, alongside Beijing’s increasing aggression in the South China Sea and around Taiwan, that’s likely to be weighing on the mind of US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin as he joins top military figures from across the region at this weekend’s Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.
In all too many cities and towns in the United States the defining characteristic of local law enforcement is its aggressive racist brutality. (See SR archive for my research paper on police brutality and racism.) In Minneapolis it has gotten so bad that the Federal government has had to intervene — and Minneapolis is not even in the top fifty most racist departments. If you are a person of color in all too many American cities and towns the police are not there to serve and protect. They are there to harass and bully, and the social outcome data makes this irrefutable. The question is when is America going to recognize that its form of law enforcement is second rate, and what are we going to do to repair this and make protect and serve a reality.
Body camera footage from a Minneapolis police officer taken during the serving of a no-knock warrant. Credit: Screen shot / City of Minneapolis
Fourteen months ago, investigators with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights issued a blistering report on the Minneapolis Police Department.
The 72-page document confirmed what many Minneapolis residents already suspected: The city’s police department used harsher tactics against people of color and Indigenous individuals than they did against their white neighbors.
To many critics, the names of Black men killed by MPD officers — including Terrence Franklin, Jamar Clark and George Floyd— were only the most high-profile examples of this pattern. The state’s report did note that all but one of the people killed by MPD officers between 2010 and February 2022 have been men of color.
But the bulk of the state’s report focused on painting a stark picture of day-to-day policing in Minneapolis.
“What pains me in this is that we needed a report to validate what Black people have been saying for decades,” said Saray Garnett-Hochuli, who is Black and led the city’s Department of Regulatory […]
