Day: April 21, 2017

Closing Thought–21Apr17

The Left Shall Rise Again!

Since the last election there has been a new wild swing of young Americans looking into the “Left” of days gone by….

Social media seems to be the meeting place for these “newcomers”……

From Axios:

NewsWhip spokesman Liam Corcoran says general news sites don’t always post about political news, which lowers their average, but when they do, the uptick in engagement is significant. CNN, for example, saw an increase of over 68% in Facebook engagement year over year due to a higher volume of politically-related posts.

Facebook is a good tool for observing the rise of political movements: And its role in activism will only grow bigger. New tools, like call-to-action buttons, fundraising buttons and buttons to contact elected officials, combined with traditional tools, like mass-event invitations, make it easy for political groups to form and spread on Facebook. For example, The Women’s Marches that made national headlines all over the country in January were organized by one woman on Facebook and according to a University of Maryland study cited by CNN, 70% of people who attended the march in Washington heard about the event on Facebook.

It does this old radical’s heart good to see the interests in Left politics…..some further reading on this phenom……

Source: The Millennial Generation Is a Perfect Fit for Socialism | Alternet

Source: More Americans joining socialist groups under Trump | USA | Al Jazeera

Source: Socialism’s Return | The Nation

I feel this is a good thing….because that would give us a truly accurate political system….as it is now we have a one party system with slightly different views on issues…..there is NO opposition other than the silly theatrics of our Congress.

I be finished for the day…..I be weary and must relax and unwind…I shall return tomorrow to begin my weekend and my cleansing of the mind….thanx everyone for all your visits and comments for the past week……I appreciate each and every one of you……chuq

What Happened To Patriotism?

An interesting question these days.  It does not mean what it did when your daddy was spouting the term.  Now it means people that concur with whatever warped thinking the writer has on his/her mind.  All others are enemies of the state, although few word it that way but that is the implication.

Damn I love Teddy!

We no longer have patriots….we have a bunch of nationalistic bullshit hiding under the flag.

When an American does not agree with some prevailing thought then they are labeled and insulted…..I know I am guilty of this also….but at least I try to be fair and honest and do and say what I think is best for this country.  I refuse to put my faith in a person, especially a politician….because I do not see any of them working for the betterment of the country….just making sure profit is not infringed upon……and their own personal legacy.

If 25 years ago you told me that some, many, Americans would be defending actions by Russia I would have called you a liar.  There is no way that they would put these actions above the dignity and security of this country….no way….NO how.  And then if you would have said that the American people would put their confidence in a Russian action over their own country’s institutions….I would once again used the term….LIAR!  And once again I would have been wrong.

I have been mistaken many time but this would be the first time I would have been dead wrong.

If or when this accusation against Russia is proven then those that piled on can NO longer say they champion democracy for this would have been an act to undermine our democracy and they defended the action….

If this were 30 years ago there would be a name for these people…..

With everything written about patriotism the National Review has given its thoughts as well……

John O’Sullivan had a piece on the NRO homepage Thursday commenting on the debate about patriotism and nationalism, and I can’t improve upon what he wrote. But I wanted to add a few points about Jonah’s G-File last weekend. First, I should say, it was rollicking good fun, and Jonah never fails to astonish and impress with how he can combine wildly entertaining writing with deeply serious arguments. But some pushback:

Source: Nationalism & Patriotism Distinction Hard to Explain, Defend | National Review

Personally, I owe my allegiance to the country and its people…..not to a person or a party…this has been my creed for 50 years and I am NOT about to change it because some loud mouths run for president.

I am an American…there is NO hyphen in my title….

Can A “Smoke Screen” Be Effective Policy?

As someone who spends his time analyzing and researching foreign policy I am a bit taken back by the new kid in town, DC that is……

During his run up to his election as president I was in Trump’s corner on some, and I repeat SOME, of his foreign policy statements.  I did not care much for his domestic rhetoric but some of his rhetoric on international situations were spot on…..you will notice that I use the word “were”…..his actions speak nothing to his rhetoric.

But since he has taken the helm of this nation and its foreign policy I have been trying to get a handle on just what it is that he wants to accomplish internationally.

He, Trump, has gutted our diplomatic corps which in my opinion does little to protect Americans worldwide.  How does he hope to formulate a policy when he is missing those people that are “experts” on the many different regions?

At best his foreign policy has been hit and miss loaded with bravado and out right bullshit.  Not much makes sense….most of it sounds like a third grader taunting a playground rival.

Basically, to me his words and his pseudo policies are nothing but a smoke screen for is impotency in the foreign policy arena.

North Korea and Syria are prime examples…….

So far President Trump’s foreign policy has been nearly impossible to predict.  As we saw this past week, some of the President’s choices, particularly the decision to strike the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, have created strange bedfellows among America’s foreign policy watchers.  Traditional foreign policy thinkers on the right and left, the so-called “Establishment,” publicly lauded the strikes, albeit for somewhat different reasons.  Meanwhile, Trump’s core supporters, who rallied around his isolationist campaign promises, have been sharply denouncing the strikes as warmongering.  Everyone in Washington appears to have been caught off-guard by the President’s decision to intervene in the world’s most protracted conflict, while analysts, journalists, and policymakers are scrambling to determine what it all means.  The President’s speech after the strike, as well as statements from the White House, argue this decision was tied to Syrian regime use of chemical weapons late last month.

Source: Strategies, Diversions, and Trump’s Smoke-Screen Policy | RealClearDefense

His staff is not much better although there are a few that could formulate an adequate policy……but Trump seems to want it his way and his thoughts….I am hoping that someone with an adult brain will finally assert themselves and a true foreign policy will emerge.

The big question is…..will it emerge?

The Institute of Defense Studies published a paper asking if Trump’s foreign policy was shaping up?

April has been an eventful month geopolitically so far. President Trump carried out a much-trumpeted-about Tomahawk missile strike at the Syrian regime, held responsible by him for a nerve-agent attack on the village of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib, a province largely held by rebels. Trump has changed his mind on China, which he previously accused as a ‘currency manipulator’. He has also changed his mind on ‘resetting’ relations with Putin and US-Russia relations are at their ‘lowest point’ in years. Trump has issued a harsh warning to North Korea to stop missile and nuclear tests. There are signals that Trump would scale up the US military engagement in Afghanistan. Trump has congratulated, with alacrity, Turkey’s President Erdogan on his referendum victory. Are all these developments related to one another?

Source: Is President Trump’s Foreign Policy Shaping Up? | Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses

All we can do is hope…..before it is too late.

The Strange Case of Tulsi Gabbard

I have voiced my support for Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard in the past…she sticks out because she is about the ONLY true antiwar politician in Congress.  As someone who has been an antiwar activist for most of my adult life I am pleased to see a dedicated person in Congress.

I try my best to introduce her to as wide array of people as I can.  Her message needs to be heard and understood….she is doing all she can to end the endless war cycle that this country has been on for at least 25 years.

Source: Tulsi Gabbard Finds An Ally – In Saner Thought

Source: Tulsi: A Voice In The Wilderness – In Saner Thought

Source: A Woman Of Principle – In Saner Thought

I recently read a piece about her written in Neo Eastern Outlook….the truth is that this has a pro-Russian lean to its stories but in this case they did a fine job introducing Ms Gabbard to their readers.

In 1968, Democratic Senator Robert Kennedy, an anti-war candidate, was the front-runner in the presidential race. The party had revolted against President Johnson, forcing him to drop out of contention, and America got behind an anti-war candidate who surged ahead in the polls. He was quickly murdered.

Americans had gotten used to this solution being used, after all we had lost his brother John and Martin Luther King. The least well-kept secret at the time was that organized crime along with the oil and defense industries ran Washington and would murder anyone that got in their way.

There are more players to consider but little has changed, no, it has actually gotten much worse. There is a modern day “Robert Kennedy” out there, it’s Tulsi Gabbard, under attack by the jackals in Washington, perhaps not a big enough target, not yet anyway, for them to kill. We must wait and see.


Source: The Strange Case of Tulsi Gabbard and other Tales of Terror | New Eastern Outlook

Please if you can help get her message out I know she would appreciate your efforts.

Watch this Lady she will make a difference in the coming elections….she is a rising star.

What About The Korean War?

All the bravado surrounding the Korean incident got me to thinking about a war that many Americans know very little about…….it was the war between the end of World War Two and the mash up to Vietnam…..a war that has been all but forgotten bu many of our citizens.

I watched a documentary on the AHC about this war and it was entitled “America’s First War On Communism”….it was all about the start of the Korean War in 1950…although it is a lie…the first war on communism was in 1920’s….but I will let that go for now.

Anyway I got to thinking about the situation of the peninsula these days and how it relates to 1950……and I cam across this article from a couple of years ago…..

The sixtieth anniversary of the “end” of the Korean war saw President Obama attempt to rescue that classic example of interventionist failure from history’s dustbin. Addressing veterans of that conflict, he declared:

“That war was no tie. Korea was a victory. When 50 million South Koreans live in freedom, a vibrant democracy…a stark contrast to the repression and poverty of the North, that is a victory and that is your legacy.”

This is a fairytale: it wasn’t a victory, or even a tie: the US public was disenchanted with the war long before the armistice, and Truman was under considerable pressure at home to conclude an increasingly unpopular conflict. As for this guff about “democracy”: whatever the US was fighting for, from 1950, when the war broke out, to 1953, when it ground to a halt, democracy hardly described the American cause.

Source: Who Really Started the Korean War? by — Antiwar.com

The US hides behind the guise of “democracy” too often.

Your history lesson has concluded……