The Aleppo Misdirection

The mess in Syria has been going on for the past six years.  There still is no clarity on the events there with the exception of the facts and the main fact that the US Nobel prize winning president is true to the play book of his predecessor George H.W. Bush. I wanted to write in detail about this a while ago but it was difficult to extract my attention from the humor of liberals whining because their loss to Trump and the sore loseritus was a gift I could not avoid writing about.  But since the U.K., France and U.S. convened this special meeting of the UN Security Council, I had to go in, and I will explain.

I think since Obama announced months ago his plan to attack Mosul (as if he was telegraphing’ to the terrorist, I mean moderates he supports in Iraq and Syria to get ready), he had not perceived that there was even the possibility that Aleppo would be liberated. Given this major lapse in judgement and reasoning, coalition forces have been back peddling ever since. It seems that the manipulation of language (Newspeak) was the first sign that things were all over the place regarding a standard approach on how to deal with Syria.  I say Syria because Aleppo is really a misnomer. They say they just want to help and offer humanitarian aid for the more than a million residents of Aleppo although there is no equal concern for the civilians in Mosul or cities in Yemen. So to try and support their position that Assad must go, the Obama Administration created the term “Moderate Syrian Rebels.”

To be truthful, there is no such thing as a moderate terrorist no more as there is a such thing as a moderate Crip or Blood, in particular with the fluid nature of all of the groups, the alliances they form and assorted reasons for fighting including but not limited to [1] forming a Sunni state run under Sharia law, [2] those who are fighting for autonomous rule (Kurds), and/or [3] the few that want to violently over throw the democratically elected Assad who won a sizable majority last election with more than 70% voter turnout. What has been documented is that militants who are integrated with terror groups like Jaysh al Fatah, Jabhat al Nusra, Ahrar al Sham and Nour al din al Zenki - all of them affiliated with the Al Qaeda terrorist network – are what Western coalition governments consider to be portions of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and at the same time claim to be at war with.

Now before I dive into these so-called moderate rebels, I have to go back to the earlier supposition regarding Mosul and the Obama Administration.  In all fairness, the operation to retake Mosul was not about destroying ISIS but rather to push ISIS back into Syria so they could focus all of their efforts on taking down Assad.  Why do I say this? Well if one reads Carl von Clausewitz, typically the military objective is to close all escape routes and incessantly enclose the enemy and crush them.  The Obama administration had planned operations from all sides with the exception of routes towards the Iraq-Syria border. Thus the objects would have to be removing these terrorist from Iraq and into Syria resulting in the PR circus of claiming a speedy victory in Mosul.  But after three months this is not the case.

Mosul and Raqqa are the two major cities in the self-proclaimed IS caliphate. To destroy IS these must be destroyed. However, when Russia and Iran got involved, the Obama Administration never calculated that they would be able to sway so much influence with the present Iraqi government and subsequently were able to modify the U.S. battle plan to one that would encircle and attempt to destroy all ISIS/ Al Qaeda affiliates in Mosul. This threw a wrench in the Administration’s goal to engender a “Salafist principality” designed to break up or “Balkanize” Syria. It was the same play book used in Libya with the exception of a no-fly zone. So without a no-fly zone, the coalition had to result to other means – namely trying to protect the Salafist in Aleppo they had been funding and arming since they began this proxy war. This is why reports from Aleppo by the West are all over the place.

The information, if any we are getting from Aleppo is really no different than a Hollywood screen play. First the Obama Administration threatened the Russians saying that their planes would be shot down and their troops would be coming home in body bags while at the same time shipping tons of anti-aircraft weaponry to rebels in and around Aleppo when the Obama Administration were supposedly trying to achieve a cease fire. This was at the same time SOS John Kerry was saying he was going to suspend discussions with the Russians regarding Syria, just after US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, vilified the Russian’s for convening a special security council meaning to discuss coalition airstrikes that targeted Syrian government forces, killing more than 80 soldiers. The same US ambassador to the UN would weeks later confront the Russians again, using unverified reports accusing them in concert with Assad of murdering innocent civilians. Now all of this is hard for me to keep track of so I’m guessing it is the same for a lot of people. The reason why is because there never was or has been a civil war in Syria.

The Syrian revolution is a myth. Western Aleppo is being targeted because they resisted these U.S backed Salafist foreign terrorist and the record indicates that clearly more than a half a million civilians left the eastern portion of the city for the west for the same reason. The majority left in Eastern Aleppo are being held hostage by the terrorist or are terrorist and their families. Thus the remaining civilians in this area are being used as human shields and the query remains, if the US narrative of Assad murdering and bombing his own people is accurate, then why would they flee Eastern Aleppo and go to the part held by Assad forces? Makes no sense. Seven million have fled to government held sections over the past four plus years. But the media call these folk Assad supporters when in fact they may or may not be - they just don’t support terrorist or believe that killing and destroying Syria is the best approach for improving their government.

We never check with organizations on the ground like the Aleppo Medical Association about the number of physicians working there because if we did we would see that there are more than 4000 working there and many are being paid by the Assad government (opposite of the narrative of western media). Unfortunately the rebels or opposition which are really terrorist prevent them from coming in and even giving their services. Add to this that Eastern Aleppo is under the control by the Al Nusura front (Al Qaeda in Syria), yet the Obama administration wants to protect these folk. The Free Idlib army are terrorist too. So given the US media isn’t even on the ground in Aleppo, how can they verify their information? Verification isn’t required when it is all for show bearing in mind the main goal has been and remains regime change in Syria. Just like in Iraq the goal is to create a shadow state in Syria to be controlled by and for the benefit of the West.

The more logical and truthful depiction is that Syrian civilians are at last able to flee from terror gangs that have held them under siege. But this is in contradiction to the reporting by Western media on Syria and Aleppo especially since the US and Western narrative about what has been going on in Aleppo and Syria, Assad and Syrian civilians is far removed from the facts. One has to wonder why they are never in Aleppo or even Syria, if so they are there rarely or else they would have been able to at least interview any one of the tens of thousands of civilians who have left areas once controlled by the motley collection terrorist groups.  They preclude they hate the Assad government but never ask them if they do or fail to query as to how life was living under these terrorist groups – journalism 101. We see US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power refer to unverified reports of civilians being executed in Aleppo while asking at the same time if Syria, Iran or Russia have any shame. But they never seem to compare the devastation US coalition forces are delivering in Yemen or Mosul.

The actuality is Aleppo was invaded by Western-backed mercenary terrorist proxies, or fake moderate rebels, whom the Western governments have sponsored in an attempt to overthrow the government of Syria since July 2012.  These same Western-backed mercenary terrorist proxies, or fake moderate rebels have turned the eastern side of the city into terror haven for a caliphate of manic Wahhabi jihadists that take more pleasure in chopping off heads than secular democratic rule. From Jeish al-Fatah (Army of Conquest) to Jabha Fatah al-Sham (Front for the Conquest of the Levant) and Fatah Halab (Conquest of Aleppo)  they are all terrorist the U.S. supports and arms and would never engage in a ceasefire being implemented of any kind and the Obama administration knows this.

They understand that these groups must keep fighting if the breakup of Syria and the take-down of Assad is ever to be achieved. Otherwise, the Syrian national bank will remain free of western influence and will never be brought under the Bank of International Settlements and thus continue to operate without loans from the IMF which means they can decide their own foreign policy and that dream of a natural gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey will never come to fruition. Moreover, Syria will not be made to submit to using GMO seeds. Recall one of the first things US did after the conquering of Iraq was to outlaw seeds stores and force Iraqi farmers to buy international GMO seeds (see order 81 Iraq).

Regardless of what comes out of Washington from the Administration or the media, Syria as Libya before it will be remembered as just another war crime committed by President Obama in the name of humanitarian intervention by the West when the real geopolitical aim was regime change for the fact remains that US or western security interests were never involved or at risk.  Just as with Gaddafi, who never really ever threaten to massacre civilians, the same is true for Assad.  Gaddafi, just as Assad currently, only went after rebels and similarly, offered them amnesty and free passage out if they would drop their weapons. In both cases, the “responsibility to protect”, is just a fancy way to say it is okay to violate the sovereignty of another nation state.

As the Obama era comes to a close, what can be noted is that he will be remembered as the man who destroyed Libya (at the time Africa's most thriving nation) and will have nothing to show for his foreign policy in Syria with the exception of more than a half a million deaths and a Europe in consternation due to a colossal refugee and migrant crisis. So expect for the amplification of anti-Syrian and anti-Russian newspeak in the US mainstream media to continue because the Syrian Army are continuously advancing through Aleppo and routing the US funded terrorist.  

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The Alt-Left is Real & It’s Run By White City Cats

I had never heard of the Alt-Right until Hillary Clinton introduced the term in our lexicon during a speech she gave in Reno this past August. Now I had heard of the alternative right, which had nothing to do with media, but rather an ideology that was juxtapose to the mainstream GOP. Now maybe you had read or heard about it but not me, in particular in the manner in which she framed it as being a platform for white supremacy, which is far from the truth.  And like the sheep in the heard, most, especially liberal democrats engaged in Orwellian newspeak to make it real and tangible. However, if the Alt-Right is as dastardly as folk make it out to be, the Alt-Left is even more destructive and fascist. Yes, the Alt-Left is real and it is run mostly by white city cats. What is the Alt-Left?  Well it is the diametric opposite of the Alt-Right and is manifested in action and word through extreme intolerance.

The examples of Alt-Left activities are both sickening and too numerous to name and I say this because I know if their actions were directed toward President Barack Obama for instance, these activities would be seen in a different vein. Let us look at voter intimidation.  The left has always advocated that voter intimidation is horrible and intolerant.  There are even laws on the books that note that such is a criminal act.  But when it is directed towards electors of the Electoral College, there is not a single statement of outrage from democrats or the mainstream media opined against these occurrences.  When people are receiving death threats urging them to change their vote to support Hillary Clinton it seem as it is swept under the rug.  These threats are not coming from the Alt-Right, but rather the Alt-Left.  Or when the daughter of the President Elect is verbally accosted while riding on an airplane with her kids by two gay men, there is no outrage and it is presented as being acceptable comportment.  Now mind you if this was done to the wife of President Obama, I can only imagine the outrage. Even if it were just a women in general with her kids, no one in their civil mind would consider this as being acceptable behavior.

I used to the think the left was big of bullying but clearly they are not. This in simple terms in bullying.  I take it is okay to bully people who do not think like you or maintain the same political beliefs as one does.  But outside of this it is wrong.  Or the young college student at Bryn Mawr College who was harassed and sent death threats for supporting Donald Trump and now has been forced to leave school for her safety.  Or the University of Pittsburg student who set up a Trump table at his university. This is the Alt-Left although they are constantly speaking on ending hate and violence,these remain their go to weapons of choice.  These students didn’t ask for or need a safe space, they were amenable to open dialogue and discussion and put their views out for all to acknowledge. Nicholas Kristof said it best: We progressives believe in diversity and we want women, blacks, Latinos and Muslims at the table – er, so long as they aren’t conservatives…We are fine with people who don’t look like us as long as they think like us.”

This is the closed-minded intolerant hypocrisy that defines the Alt-Left. How can the left incessantly speak about the necessity of tolerance and openness but write off the political beliefs of others they do not listen to or engage in dialogue with? Most of these representatives of the Alt-Left are educated urban white folk and maintain a descent capability of subject-verb agreement but they would rather vandalize, curse, yell and call others out of their name.  I read that some do not want to do business with Trump supporters. Now if a baker or restaurant said the same about an Obama supporter or a gay couple, it would fall under the banner of bigotry and intolerance – I do not want to serve you because of your beliefs. 

I suspected this rise of the Alt-Left would be problematic since their anti-trumps protest in Chicago, California and Portland. After Trump won, it became even more idiotic: a black man painting racist images on a blackchurch in Mississippi, artist demanding Ivanka Trump take down paintings of their she bought down from her walls (thus the use of the term idiotic), a Muslim women in New York faking an attack by white Trump supporters while in the subway and singers refusing to perform at the inauguration while they have no problem performing for millions for known despots and murderous authoritarian dictators.

These safe space trophy babies are the embodiment of fascist ideology – my way or the highway, authoritarian cultural Marxist.  Yes the Alt-Left is real and these cats are the fascist of tomorrow.

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A Clash of Cultures: Trump versus the Media Elite

The Election of Donald Trump resulted in very severe outbreak of what I call Trumpsessive Trumpulsive Disorder (TDD).  It is something that in my opinion has been created by a uniquely disingenuous cult of protagonist I simply call elitist east coast media.  This is not a geographical description but rather a cultural ethos that can also be applied to big city media cats in general.

From the very beginning there was a bias in the Clinton versus Trump narrative and even before then, the Clinton versus Sanders narrative as presented by this media cult.  If we take the example of race, nonstop coverage has hurled the same invectives towards Trump including but not limited to bigot, racist and xenophobic. They ignored any mention of Clinton regarding her categorization of blacks as super predators or how she loaded her campaign coffers with big money from the corporate prison industrial complex.  They never reviewed any of her past including her 2008 attempt to receive the democratic nomination for president including how her campaign floated around an image of Barack Obama in African/Muslim attire. The media especially the New York Times or Washington Post never discussed this instead they continuously attacked Trump as being a racist who was anti-black, anti-Mexican, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim who repeatedly made insensitive comments about the aforementioned groups. With regards to Sanders several DNC top officials including Debbie Wasserman-Schultz were forced to resign after WikiLeaks emails revealed that not only were they favoring HRC, they were also trying to present Bernie Sanders as an atheist albeit he was a Jew because it was easier to get people to vote against an atheist. Instead of addressing this, they floated fake news that this was a Russian plot and continued to attempt to program the citizenry that Clinton was winning and would win by a wide margin.  WikiLeaks also revealed the high level extent to which collusion between the DNC, Clinton and the East coast media elites was occurring.

What the Trump coverage revealed is that these media big shots considered Trump as being alien to them, as not being one of them and even precluded this same judgment down upon his supporters. It is as if these elite east coast media folk are mad at the folk whom voted for Trump, as if they are the gatekeepers saying we voted the wrong way, or how dare you by pass our suggestions of how bad Mr. Trump is and make up your minds for yourself without our blessings – how dare you go against us who are smarter and know better for you. But are they?

Now to be objective, maybe they are.  Slate, Salon, the Washington Post and NY Times practically served as a PR firms for camp HRC. From NBC’s Chuck Todd hosting dinner for Jennifer Palmieri and John Podesta to John Podesta hosting a dinner for all of the media fat cats at his house, they do have an insight into the HRC camp that the average person doesn’t have.  This is what I call the modern equivalent of the god ole boy’s network.

The website 538 along with Slate, Salon, the Washington Post, CNN, the Nation and NY Times along with many others told us Trump would never become the Republican nominee, let alone President.  They told us that all of these states were in play like Arizona, Ohio, Texas and Georgia when they were not.  Although it would be easier for them to say “hey, we fucked up, we were wrong,” they will likely spend the next 8 years (if Trump gets two terms) trying to prove the electorate that they were wrong, not them.

The media doesn’t know how to cover Trump but hasn’t the balls to admit this. They condemn Trump for turning politics into reality TV theater but they have been presenting politics as theater for the last two decades. For example, they criticize Trump for his use of Twitter but they use Twitter in the same manner and even more than the President- elect.  It is the ultimate hypocrisy reveal for political journalist the likes of Joy Ann Reid, Jamelle Bouie, Marc Lamont Hill, Jake Tapper, Jamil Smith, Rachel Maddow, Paul Krugman, or a Don Lemmon, when they do the same thing in an effort to maximize their outreach and popularity. Would it be so hard for them just to admit they just hate the fact he uses twitter to by pass them?

Since his election the MSM has changed or altered little in their coverage of President Elect Donald Trump. It is a period of media coverage that is no doubt unique.  The clear outcome is that the elite east coast mainstream big city media holds Donald Trump to one standard and democrats, in particular President Obama and HRC to another. They have even invented a new excuse to cover for their lack of ethics and intellect – Fake news. Fake news propaganda is a cover up to justify the failures of the political media’s coverage of the election. In addition it is an overt attempt to marginalize voices and views outside of their belief orientation and personal collective reality yet in basic terms a new age conspiracy theory. By doing such, it allows them to ignore real news stories and dwell on impractical and unsubstantiated figments of their make believe world. For example, they ignore or are weeks late on covering the #NDPL and the Standing Rock Sioux in the Dakota’s. Why, because Obama a Democrat was President.  You can’t mention that while a black liberal progressive democrat is serving as president that under his administration water cannons are being employed on women and children in sub-freezing temperatures at close range, that law enforcement and federal officers are shooting people with rubber bullets and attack dogs are being let loose on native Americans because it would not be a god look. But you can best believe that If Trump was president they would have plastered it all over the 24 hour news cycle opining that this is a representation of Trump’s racist, sexist and white supremacy views. This is why the fake Russia news story is important.  If they didn’t have this, maybe they would have to cover that there were more votes than voters in more than one-third of Detroit precincts.

This is fake news by omission and own its own it is comical. Just think, the same cats that gave us falsified Iraq news coverage in 2003, said that only a score of folk were killed during the invasion of Panama, cry about Aleppo but never what is happening in Yemen or Mosul, have the audacity to complain about the conspiracy theory of fake news as being why they were wrong regarding this past presidential election. Or worse that Russia cost HRC the election, as if they told HRC not to campaign in Michigan or Wisconsin or not to appear in Lousisana during the massive flooding. The political media doesn’t understand their job.  It is to cover the news, to be journalist, not create the news and predict election outcomes. Fake news is the new conspiracy Theory, and it is being promulgated by the biggest culprit of the production of fake news – the elite east coast mainstream media.

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The Forgotten South of Sudan

As we continuously hear from the Obama Administration about Aleppo, among the other international events laid at the feet of President Obama’s foreign policy we do not hear of inclusive of Yemen is South Sudan. Established after a referendum vote to secede from the northern part of Sudan and the Khartoum government, and once touted as a way to formalize peace to Sudan’s long-running civil war, this small oil rich nation has dissolved into pure blood stained disorder. Even famous actors the likes of George Clooney and Don Cheadle advocated for its existence as being a humanitarian necessity to show the people we in the west cared.

For years prior to its formulation (not formation), the US supported rebels in the south of Sudan. After the nation of South Sudan was formed, the U.S. continued to provide billions of dollars in military and security assistance to the fledgling country under the Obama Administration and Hillary Clinton’s State Department. In 2011 then Secretary of State Clinton, at a major conference onSouth Sudan in 2011, spoke of her visions for the future of South Sudan. Ironically, in the same year in which President Obama employed a technicality to get a Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA) exemption for South Sudan.

The logic was feculent and two fold. First being that the law could not be applied to a newly formed nation that recently became independent and second, the administration wanted the country to get on firm ground before the US made any statutory request of its military. Meaning that since the countries subjected to CSPA were already in existence, they could not add the South Sudan to thelist. The Obama administration also openly advocated their support for the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA).  The SPLA according to human rights group worldwide have been documented to have engaged in numerous human rights violations, including but not limited to rape and extrajudicial killings (nice UN saying for murder).

However since the celebration of South Sudan as the world’s newest member state in 2011, a political rivalry between the Dinka President Salva Kiir and the then Nuer Vice President Riek Machar erruptrd dissolving the nation into a civil war along ethnic lines. Since then more than 1 million South Sudanese have fled to neighboring countries like Uganda and many thousands more have been slaughtered, tortured or raped. One UN report noted that South Sudanese army soldiers had raped thousands of women and girls as a reward for their service instead of being paid salaries. Others had been used as part of ritual cannibalistic activities or burned alive.

But none of this mattered to the Obama Administration.  Although in his formal recognition statement for the Republic of South Sudan as a sovereign and independent state he described it as a “historic achievement” after “the darkness of war,” his policy has proven the opposite and has resulted in more bloodshed and insecurity by not ending the use of child soldiers on the one hand and by turning a blind eye to the atrocities committed by the nation he pushed to establish on the other. What the president once hailed as one of his foreign policy success stories, is now merely a failed state in reality - unless it is the desire for Nobel Peace prize winning presidents to leave nations in the ruinous aftermath of war (Yemen, Libya and Syria also included).

Obama in concert with his National Security Advisor Susan Rice vehemently led the crusade for the creation of South Sudan, but since then, we have only seen daily tribal hostilities continuing to fester. Add to this that the economic condition is following a similar descending path and that state sponsored repression remains a major impediment to any form of democratic government, what we get from the President is silence or troops. Nor does he address how the ongoing violence rests as a massive obstacle to peace which on its own serves as a catalyst for the continuing genocide in Darfur and a growing militarization of the party’s involved. In particular since the present administration continues to honor the authorization of more than $120 million in U.S. military assistance and over $20 million in arms sales since FY2013 and an addition request for $30 million in military assistance for South Sudan for FY2017.

Now it would be insincere to place all of this at the feet of President Obama since a sizable amount of his foreign policy was advocated for and proposed by Hillary Clinton. As a presidential candidate, Clinton consistently presented her  foreign policy experience as a major justification for her being president, although she never spoke openly about her desire to intervene in Libya or her role in the failed Russian “reset.” More importantly, there was no mention of the outcome of her efforts in South Sudan. True in 2012 she openly stated her disparagement of the use and recruitment of children as soldiers, however it was a position in dire contrast to her part in allowing South Sudan  receive US military support via her approval of waivers to the nation while it used children as fighters.  Still Clinton’s handling of South Sudan and how the new nation descended into a calamitous civil war that involved the use of thousands of child soldiers is rarely reported.

When President Obama leaves the White House next January, people worldwide will question his foreign policy. This will likely be partisan but the objective individual will note from Yemen to Libya and Syria to South Sudan – he was afailure. Moreover, he managed to make social and economic situations in these places worse. But in Sudan he will be remembered for creating a state and leaving it to rot; a place where he waived to the prohibition on the use of child soldiers  in an untried country that is acknowledged as being one of the most corrupt in the world and the home of a 4-year-old civil war where US installed leaders have used their positions to rob the country of its wealth, while at the same time creating one of the greatest humanitarian disasters today – in essence an embarrassment for the Obama administration. As a newly formed country, the future looked bright for South Sudan and its vast oil reserves. But realty has shown us otherwise, that effective foreign policy demands more than words and dumping huge sums of money in the hands of installed puppets.

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Video: How White Liberals Really View Black Voters

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TV Watchers Miss the Taiwan & Pakistan Big Picture

There were several kerfuffle’s that the alphabet networks and their mindless audience pushed as being calamitous actions taken by Donald Trump this past week.  The two that caught my attention occurred while listening to NPR and applied to Taiwan and Pakistan. Seems that Mr. Trump accepting calls from the democratically elected Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and responding to a similar call from Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif were appalling, shocking and destabilizing, averring that the President Elect supposedly upended the traditional convention on how to deal with Chinese geopolitics, consequently destroying nearly 40 years of standard US diplomacy regarding Taiwan, and our relations with India via Pakistan.

This response was predictable based on how the MSM media has dealt with Trump and hung on his each and every word and tweet. Those critical of Trump say that his actions are just thoughtless blundering mistakes and signs of his ineptness in foreign policy. This was not the case. These single-minded individual elite’s infer that this is a reflection of Trump being a political novice.  I take the contrarian view and assert it is the complete opposite.

The US relationship with China has continuously been all over the place since the end of the Nixon Administration.  Likewise, we can only thank Obama with his droning and unauthorized raids in Pakistan (Bin Laden included) as only bring about more political destabilization with respect to diplomatic actions with the nation. It is as if the pundits do not see how their speculations on behalf of ratings and sensationalization, are being overstated.

Let’s start with Taiwan and China. After the Ford administration, upon taking office, President Jimmy Carter was in such a big hurry to normalize relations with China that in 1978 Congress got involved to make sure that America’s mutual defense treaty with Taiwan would not fall by the wayside. So under the leadership of Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, a bipartisan congressional alliance proposed the Taiwan Relations Act after Carter ignored their concerns. In essence congress indicated that the United States would not hesitate to aid Taiwan if it was invaded by China going against terms of diplomacy established in 1949. Carter like today’s media pundits were afraid this would upset and hurt China’s feelings.

By the Time Bill Clinton was in office, a ‘One China’ policy and de-recognition of Taiwan was in full effect and since his Administration; we have not been honest in our foreign policy objectives. So in simple terms, the current reaction to Trump’s actions in regards to China-Taiwan may be unhelpful and may hurt the fledgling Taiwan democracy and should be considered more important than papers and air time advertisement media outlets sell.

All we can take away from this is that Trump is making good onhis tough talk on China and that he will shake the ways of old off and not be restrained by the bureaucratic practices of the old political establishment guard. Just by going against 37 years of China-US diplomatic protocol of the“One China” policy the US accepts and respects without query. No US President or President-elect has ever called a Taiwanese leader in recent decades. Trump’s independence is what the story should be about not to mention two things are abrogated from the popular analysis: (1) Chiang Kai-shek is no longer the leader of Taiwan and (2) Trump isn’t the first president or president-elect since 1979 to have communicated directly with a president of Taiwan noting that if memory serves me correctly Reagan did the same thing when he was president elect.

Fact is politicians on both sides of the isle have been reconsidering albeit very quietly the US-China-Taiwan relationship since 1989 (Tiananmen Square) and the question if they really want Taiwan to unify with China. In fact I bet I could find support if I really wanted to be super-duper accurate that since Tiananmen Square, the US have been selling more and more weapons to Taiwan, but this is mere speculation on my part. The point is Trump has not only shown himself thus far  to be an effective negotiator, he has also been continuously underestimated every step of the way so far by folk whom think they know it all in the media and has proven that there is more than one way to skin a cat metaphorically.

Adding Pakistan to the mix, we see the same thing if we are truly objective before we are outraged.  It is clear that President-elect Donald Trump may be amenable to similar eccentric methods regarding bilateral ties with the nation and Pakistani Prime Minister. In this case, the media analysts have called Trump’s actions on one end ridiculous and the other distressing.  Based on what I read all he said was that he thought Sharif was “a terrific guy” and wanted to visit what he described as a fantastic country with great people speaking of Pakistan. What all of this suggest is that Trump is not the traditional status quo political cat to the disdain of the traditional American political elite and mainstream media. All he wants is for the US to be a part in trying to secure peace between India and Pakistan.  What’s wrong with that?

The problem is that the reaction of the US media may be the biggest issue with respect to both  China and Taiwan, and Pakistan and India by blowing all of this out of proportion in their desire to “get Trump” by any means necessary. Fact is that US foreign policy is fluid and changes and over stating events as the aforementioned can do more harm than good. It is as if Trump taking a phone call is more problematic for the Chinese than Obama selling four missile carrying frigates and billions in other weaponry to Taiwan.  Then there is the fact that Trump isn’t even in office yet and has not even laid out any foreign policy. So just calm down and wait for something tangible to report on and not personal bias in the form of made-up fears.

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War of Taxes

Around 600 years ago in England there was a war.  It was between the House of Lancaster and the House of York and was called ex post facto the Wars of the Roses. It was a petty and bloody war and ended when Richard III, the last Yorkist king, was defeated by Henry Tudor founder of the house of Tudor at the battle of Bosworth in 1485. We may be in for a similar metaphorical history making period of time if the tea leaves read from Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and with Italian voters rejecting Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s referendum on constitutional reforms and the established world order with a “no” vote this past Sunday. If so, an ample title for this allegory could be the “War of Taxes.”

Here in America, liberals have been so caught up on raising taxes on the wealthy that they missed the picture worldwide in terms on how these policies impact not only the world transnational economics but also the common citizen. This means that tax policy has to consider global and national economic interest equally.

As it stands, Ireland with a 12.5% corporate tax rate, has one of the lowest in the world. The federal corporate tax rate in the U.S. is 35 percent. Thus using basic math, if a company constructs a factory in Ireland that produces $1 million in profit, it will pay $125,000 in Irish tax compared to $350,000 that it would pay if it built the same factory in the U.S. This is a large difference seeing that the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) notes that the U.S. has the highest corporate income tax rate among its 35 industrialized member nations.  What does this mean? Well knowing that Ireland is in the midst of a deep recession, the last thing there economic policy needs is to run-off foreign investment.

The U.K. has a similar economic problem. But after their June 23 Brexit vote to leave the European Union, under the leadership of U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May,they are going out of their way to comfort international companies to show that the U.K. will become an even better place to do business. Although what the U.K. corporate tax policy will be (whether she would be willing to embrace a suggested cut to 15% or to cut the rate by 2020 to 17%), the British government commitment to lower corporation tax is being well received and it is certain that in the future, it will be significantly lower than current levels and would give the nation the lowest corporate-tax rate among G20 nations. Presently the U.K. corporate tax rate is 20%, which is one of the lowest in the G-20 and the same as Russia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. 

President elect Donald Trump has also expressed the importance of addressing the U.S.corporate tax rate. If we look beyond the G20 to the top 188 economic nations, the U.S.’s corporate tax rate is the third highest in the world, lower only than the United Arab Emirates’ rate of 55 percent and Puerto Rico’s rate of 39 percent, with the worldwide average corporate tax rate being 22.5 percent. Trump has proposed reducing the US federal tax from 35% to 15%. If this happens, in particular with a GOP dominated House and Senate, we may see the possibility of additional cuts in other nations. Steven Mnuchin, Trumps U.S.Treasury Secretary-nominee is already on record saying he wants to make tax reforms to increase job growth his main priority.

Before you say that Trump economic policy is impractical, be reminded that the U.S. is not the only country pushing for lower corporate tax rates. In 2015 Italy moved to lower its national corporate tax rate 24% starting in 2017 and Canada and Japan are just two of other countries currently in the process of lowering their corporate tax rates to attract new transnational businesses. Canada currently has a corporate income tax rate of 26.7 per cent. Even Japan, in an effort to promote growth just reduced its corporate tax rate to 30%. Germany along with Ireland made big cuts in an effort to attract corporate investment more than a decade ago and it has proffered effective. 

All of the above may be a forewarning of what may be on the horizon – a war of corporate tax rates around the globe.  This should only be expected since after losing regulatory requirements and closing tax loopholes, the only thing left to promote domestic economic growth in pragmatic terms is to reduce ones national corporate tax rate. Moreover, given that the U.S. doesn’t have a value-added tax (VAT or federal sales tax), having higher corporate tax rates will continue to serve as an impediment to economic growth domestically in terms of increased wages and jobs.  It is not a requirement that we turn into a Greece before we learn the lessons of Greece. So although the War of the Roses is history, maybe 600 years from now, history books will be talking about the war of taxes.

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When Democratic Arrogance Becomes Whining Tantrums

Weeks after the Presidential election and it appears that some folks are still very much in their feelings. Each day it seems that no matter what the President Elect says or does, it is problematic for this segment of the electorate and if given attention to, is considered to be some sort of dangerous attempt to “normalize’ the behavior of a person they consider pathological and profoundly perilous.

This week it ranges from Trumps taking calls from the leaders of Pakistan, Presidentof Kyrgyzstan Almazbek Atambayev or Taiwan, to his cabinet selections. However, any clinician worth their professionalism would note that these are just secondary to the main issue which is that as opposed to accepting reality they prefer to remain in a delusory state of denial, displacement and projection. This became clear to me after I heard the entire two hour and thirty-eight minute exchange between the Trump and Clinton campaign teams at Harvard this past week. 

Obviously, there remains a significant level of grief for losing and animosity against Trump for winning the 2016 Presidential election. Thus no matter what the president elect does, will always be seen negatively. I saw this same sort of bitterness and angst displayed by the GOP and Clinton staffers when Obama won his 2008 run for the presidency.

Although Trump has thus far selected accomplished people who have made a mark in their chosen fields of expertise, many liberals are upset because he has not placed career politicians the likes of Clinton or Kerry in such slots as Obama did, although he ran on this as part of his platform. More indicative of this rage can be observed when they attempt to buttress their interpretations via argument, then seem unable to make any critical comment without invoking Hitler comparisons or worse, vilifying these selections as being images of racism or sexism, or the final election outcome being due to the influence of hackers and Russian meddling as a blogger I frequently read noted.

They ignore the fact that many in middle America outside of the urban landscape perceive that the Democrat party derides the concept of working hard, seem to care about not enforcing laws or supporting the men/women whom they frequently send off to fight in unnecessary wars and have more concern for illegal/undocumented aliens or foreign refugees than thepeople born here – especially the poor and homeless.

Accurate or not, they see the Federal government as a business and think it should be run like a business the way they run their households like businesses. These are some of the same people that gave Obama a chance although he had no business experience and what they see as the result is an America where race relations, poverty, employment opportunity and economic security has gotten worse.  They considered Hillary Clinton fairly but concluded she was not in touch with their life experiences, and like Obama, had never in her life run anything on the level of a business. Not to forget that when President Elect Obama filled his cabinet with political elites, academics and Ivy League professors, there was no complaints. But with Trump bringing in competent people with success in the real world to be his advisors, it is evident that he desires folk that want to put the US before using their government positions to make money for themselves. These people already have money and such selections demonstrate that it is Trump’s goal to run the government like a business.

Even when he follows through on a promise to keep that Indiana Carrier plant from moving to Mexico he is mocked. Yet there was no problem with Obama when he gave $500 million to Solyndra and even called Solyndra a success when he visited the company although most experts considered the company a failure.  This is what most Americans see, and they consider these types of actions as arrogant responses of cry-baby sore losers. Not to mention we all know that he gave Solyndra this money as a favor to Rep. Pete Stark of California so he would push the ACA out of the House health committee. 

Trump is putting together a business leadership coterie of advisers that understand the global economic market. This thus far has proven to be a group of folk that will not be prisoner to special interest. Which is another reason many are turned off by democrats whining and making excuses as if the general populous is so dumb that on our own examination, we are not supposed to see through the artificial veneer that you project Hilary Clinton to be. We, no matter what you tell us we should think or believe will never see Hillary as being smarter than us, let alone as successful as Trump, who although began with a large loan from his father, built his business with hard work and not with $250,000 a pop 45 minute speeches.

Democrats have to stop whining and confront the actuality that they are out of touch and have been out of touch and only have themselves to blame and no one else, so stop crying and pointing fingers at contrived bullshit ranging from James Comey, Fake news, or anything else. It is unfathomable as to how you could not see this coming. This was not an isolated event.  Not only did HRC lose, but the Democratic Party also loss on the state level only holding a majority in 31 of the 98 legislative bodies across America.  

Continuing to blame others for their own failures is a major indication that losing on this level for Democrats may only get worse in the coming years if they do not do some somber reflection and soul searching. And I say this because it appears they have learned nothing as evidenced by re-appointing 76 year old California Representative Nancy Pelosi as the Minority Leader of the House. In her own words she recently indicated how out of touch she and her party is when she stated: “I don’t think people want a new direction. Our values unify us and our values are about supporting America’s working families. That’s one that everyone is in agreement on. What we want is a better connection of our message to working families in our country, and that clearly in the election showed that that message wasn’t coming through.”

Yes it looks bad for the democrats when they don’t comprehend that speaking at or down to others and basically ordering them to do something that they singularly have decided as being unacceptable, and calling the names because they don’t, isn’t communicating, nor is it a message.

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