alanjjohnstone
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Strange … but i reach the very direct opposite conclusion, BD
Iran is being encircled by the new Israeli Gulf-State alliances, which informally includes Saudi Arabia
China being encircled by Japan, all the Asean nations, plus Australia, upgrading buying new armaments
Russia by an expanding NATO incorporating and reinforcing Poland, the Baltic States…British and American troops are stationed in them these days
It is America’s enemies that are being gradually encircled.
I certainly don’t see the US as militarily weakening even if diplomatically they do suffer the occasional defeat in the UN.
It remains the major global power and exercise that as we see with their policy of sanctions against Venezuela and Iran, ensuring that despite EU etc disagreeing, actual trading businesses abide by them due to the threat of being blacklisted.
Biden will follow Trump’s anti-China policy according to all the think-tanks, support for Israel will continue, even if Netanyahu might not be the favourite prodigal son. Biden’s foreign policy will be to protect America’s imperial interests and as we saw with Obama that means actually going to war or engaging in proxy wars. Trump is the lesser evil when it comes to militarism.
I understand China’s great strides in becoming the Number One economy – but at the base of it is its own enormous domestic market and sales to America which it managed to tap into but which India, another potential powerhouse has not
I think it would be a great error to underestimate the US and its bellicose nature of its peoples. Belief in its Manifest Destiny remains strong (a plug for a future article by me for next week Dissident Voice) All parties Democrat or Republican accept American exceptionalism – it can do whatever it wants wherever it wants.
Joseph Wu, Taiwan’s foreign minister has called for the international community to help defend his country against an intensifying military threat from China, fearing “a real possibility” of war.
Wu’s comments echoed earlier calls by President Tsai Ing-wen for a coalition of countries to take a stand against “authoritarian aggression” as China ramps up military and economic pressure in the region.
Already possessing a military capability that dwarves China’s the US plans to boost its weaponry.
The US plans to expand the US sea fleet to more than 355 ships, from the current 293.
US secretary of defence, Mark Esper, has announced a plan to expand the US Navy with a range of unmanned and autonomous ships, submarines and aircraft to confront the growing maritime challenge from China.
Esper reiterated that China is the top US security threat and that the Indo-Pacific region is the “priority theatre” for the US military.“Not only is this region important because it is a hub of global trade and commerce, it is also the epicentre of great power competition with China,” he said.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/17/us-plans-big-expansion-of-navy-fleet-to-challenge-growing-chinese-sea-powerJohn Lewis, that bastion of co-ownership, has confirmed that staff will not receive a bonus for the first time since 1953.
Even before Covid-19 hit, the chain had warned it might not pay the usual staff bonus as competition ate into profits.
Another killing that has gone under the radar
Floppy XR
We have asked them to stop being floppy”, he added. “It might seem like a silly thing to say, but when we arrest them and pick them up they go all floppy, which is why you see four or five officers carrying them away. It’s a complete waste of officers’ time, and a complete pain in the neck. If they could just behave like sensible adults — you’ve made your point, you wanted to be arrested, you’ve been arrested, get up and walk away with one officer and stop wasting police time. This is a real issue, and they will not do it, and it is a flipping nuisance.”
Sir Steve added: “The problem with them going floppy and four officers carrying them away is that it looks to the general public like the police are overreacting here. We’re not making them go floppy — they’re just being a nuisance.”
Home Secretary Priti Patel calling the group “eco-crusaders turned criminals.” Following the blockade she added: “The very criminals who disrupt our free society must be stopped. And together we must all stand firm against the guerilla tactics of Extinction Rebellion.”
Joseph Dietzgen said it for me
“If a worker wants to take part in the self-emancipation of his class, the basic requirement is that he should cease allowing others to teach him and should set about teaching himself.”
Breaking a 175 year tradition, Scientific American journal endorse Biden for president.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/15/mexico-identifies-first-mayan-slave-ship
The ship had been used to take Mayas captured during and 1847-1901 rebellion known as “The War of the Castes” to work in sugarcane fields in Cuba. Slavery was illegal in Mexico at the time, but operators of similar ships had reportedly deceived Mayas left landless by the conflict to “sign on” as contract workers, often in Cuba, though they were treated like slaves.
America’s Good Wars now on Countercurrent, the Indian based website
https://countercurrents.org/2020/09/americas-good-wars/
I keep saying it but both DV and CC are useful outlets for the socialist case and placing links to attract traffic. They might not be huge websites but it does take our message to some who don’t normally hear us.
Another pro-cooperative article that is entirely ignorant of why Mondragon was set up by the right-wing Catholic Church with the aid and assistance of Franco
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/09/14/resisting-authoritarianism-one-co-op-at-a-time/
More against the industry of the meat trade
Diseased meat is being eaten by consumers in the UK and EU, including pus from abscesses and tuberculosis lesions from pigs’ heads, said the European Working Community for Food Inspection and Consumer Protection (EFWFC)
