Alfred McCoy, Fred Harvey Harrington Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison - truthdig
Stephan:
This geopolitical analysis of what is likely to happen during the upcoming Trump administration, in my opinion, is accurate. I think Alfred McCoy describes the American future with brutal insight. Trump and his gang of MAGAt mafioso, I believe are going to leave office with China the leading nation in the world.
President-elect Donald Trump arrives in Boca Chica, Texas, for the launch of a SpaceX Starship rocket test flight on Nov. 19, 2024. Credit: Brandon Bell / AP
Nearly 14 years ago, on Dec. 5, 2010, a historian writing for TomDispatch made a prediction that may yet prove prescient. Rejecting the consensus of that moment that U.S. global hegemony would persist to 2040 or 2050, he argued that “the demise of the United States as the global superpower could come … in 2025, just 15 years from now.”
To make that forecast, the historian conducted what he called “a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends.” Starting with the global context, he argued that, “faced with a fading superpower,” China, India, Iran and Russia would all start to “provocatively challenge U.S. dominion over the oceans, space and cyberspace.” At home in the United States, domestic divisions would “widen into violent clashes and divisive debates. … Riding a political tide of disillusionment and despair, a far-right patriot captures the presidency with thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation […]
This profile of Harvard Professor Latanya Sweeney, who has been analyzing internet information and its effects on politics and society as a whole confirms my own studies (see SR archive, and search on Consciousness and the Weaponization of Lies). Sweeney though is a bit more optimistic than I am.
Illustration by Taylor Callery
In early 2016, as Donald Trump’s presidential campaign emerged from the Republican pack and Hillary Clinton battled Bernie Sanders through a long Democratic primary season, computer scientist Latanya Sweeney launched a new research project. For more than a decade, information technology had become an increasingly dominant presence in American politics. By that election year, social media, online campaigning, and digital voter records seemed to be everywhere. And so Sweeney, the Paul professor of the practice of government and technology, decided to follow the election more closely than usual. With a group of students, she began studying the places where technological innovation and the electoral process crossed paths. “We wanted to see,” she says, “how technology could make it all go wrong.”
That they did. A few weeks before the March primary in North Carolina, Sweeney and her class found that election board websites were giving incorrect information when voters searched for their local polling places. (She and her students had built a web service to give the correct information to voters everywhere across […]
This is by far the best analysis of what happened at the just closed COP29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan. IT is kind of semi-good news. Rich countries, as the article describes are going to underwrite $300 billion in aid to help developing countries deal with climate change. A not insignificant sum, but a fraction of what is actually needed. Two things stand out for me from COP29: First, humanity is simply not coordinating properly, and making the commitments necessary to deal with what we are doing to our planet. Second, the notable absence of U.S. leadership, and the probabiity that under Trump America will go in the wrong direction.
COP29 Meetings, day two.
Developed nations have agreed to help channel “at least” $300bn a year into developing countries by 2035 to support their efforts to deal with climate change.
However, the new climate-finance goal – agreed along with a range of other issues at the COP29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan – has left developing countries bitterly disappointed.
They were united in calling for developed countries to raise $1.3tn a year in climate finance.
In the end, negotiators agreed on a looser call to raise $1.3tn each year from a wide range of sources, including private investment, by 2035.
Some countries, including India and Nigeria, accused the COP29 presidency of pushing the deal through without their proper consent, following chaotic last-minute negotiations.
Countries failed to reach an agreement on how the outcomes of last year’s “global stocktake”, including a key pledge to transition away from fossil fuels, should be taken forward – instead shunting the decision to COP30 next year in Brazil.
They did manage to find agreement on the remaining sections of Article 6 on carbon markets, meaning all elements of the Paris Agreement have been finalised nearly 10 years after it was signed.
Gillian Booth and Katie Smith, Social Media Editor | Social Media Assistant - MedPage Today
Stephan:
It is clear from reading the social posts of physicians and nurses that they are seriously alarmed by what the Trump administration and the MAGAt Republicans in Congress have in mind for health care. I have selected this story because it offers links you can click on to read these comments. Not a happy story.
The following contains links to social media websites including X, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
“Probably the biggest health threat to our children in decades,” said pediatrician @dr_rossome, referring to president-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead HHS
Meanwhile, emergency physician Darien Sutton, MD, MBA, shared a personal anecdote about treating his first adult case of measles, highlighting the critical importance of vaccinations and herd immunity.
Endocrinologist @med_endo reacted to Trump’s nomination of Mehmet Oz, MD, to lead CMS: “You’re going to have this person who doesn’t believe in evidence-based medicine making decisions about Medicare?”
Beyoncé in the OR? Plastic surgeon Blair Peters, MD, was surprised by his team changing his name to “Beyoncé Peters” on the OR schedule: “Sometimes all you need is a good laugh.”
Christian Shepherd and Katrina Northrop, Reporters - msn | The Washington Post
Stephan:
While America is lost in the nightmare of our culture wars, and we are about to put into office an administration based on the mafia, China is becoming the world leader. What is worse neither our politicians of either party, our media, or the American people seems capable of telling ourselves the truth about what we have become. We don’t lead in anything anymore except our expenditures to the profit of the military-industrial complex and the illness profit system we call healthcare. The United States spent $820 billion on national defense during fiscal year (FY) 2023 according to the Office of Management and Budget, which amounted to 13 percent of federal spending. In 2021, the U.S. spent nearly twice as much on health per person as comparable countries — reaching $4.5 trillion or $13,493 per person. Health spending accounted for 17.3 percent of our Gross Domestic Product, And while we lead the world in expenditures, the social outcome data resulting from those trillions describes the inferiority of the actual results, as I have endlessly reported in SR. I predict that by the time the Trump administration ends, China will be the world’s leading country.
China looks to step into global vacuum as Trump vows to pull U.S. back. Credit: Leah Millis / Reuters
BAKU, AZERBAIJAN — When climate negotiators from around the world began meeting here for the U.N. talks known as COP29, less than a week after climate-change skeptic Donald Trump was elected president again, one country in particular was ready to step into the U.S.-size gap.
China, the world’s renewable-energy leader and its biggest emitter of planet-warming greenhouse gases, is presenting itself as fully committed to the fight against climate change.
“Regardless of how the international situation or other countries’ policies change, China’s resolve and actions to actively address climate change will not waver,” Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang told delegates in the first week of talks, which overran their official closing time Friday.
Beijing sent nearly 1,000 delegates to Baku, and has been highlighting its global support of renewable energy: Ding said China had provided or mobilized $24.5 billion in climate finance for developing countries since 2016, putting it on par with countries such as Britain.
China’s dominance in green technologies is also evident: Chinese […]
