Miscellaneous News
- Thread starter bd popeye
- Start date
plawolf
Lieutenant General
This is nothing new. American troops captures hundreds of Uighur terrorists in Al Qaeda training camps when they invaded Afghanistan. Most spent years in Gitmo until the Americans decided they weren’t a threat to America (because they only wanted to do Jihad against China), and went out of its way to bride and arm twist weak and US client nations to take them instead of sending them back to China or allowing them to settle in the US, because who wants terrorists in their country even if they were ‘good’ terrorists?
It’s crazy that America freaks out about Russian election interference, when it interferes in elections and stages covert coups all over the world.
Just recently, a coup ousted a democratically elected government Bolivia In order to secure America’s interests in lithium.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
It’s precisely because they do these covert coups all the time that they are extraordinary sensitive and paranoid about it being done to them.
Of course, this is massively hyped up, and is a dangerous form of partisan brinkmanship, as if you believe there has been material foreign interference in elections, then it’s not much of a stretch to go from there to reject the outcome of said elections.
Democrats are so obsessed with trying to delegitimise Trump’s election and explain away how America managed to elect such a wretch as its leader through revisionism. That they are not realising they are actively helping Republicans who are laying the foundation for Trump to use the same argument if he looses in November. The only difference is that the Democrats use the Russians as their scapegoats while the Republicans are using China as theirs.
Very true. Except anti-China sentiment is now bipartisan. America always needs a boggy-man; if it’s not the Russians, it’s the Iranians. If not the Middle East, then it’s Columbia or Venezuela in South America. And now it’s China. In 30 years, it might be the Indians.
This reminds of the WSJ article from 4 years ago, The US actually conducted studies on Chinese Uighur Terrorist who joined the Islamic State in Syria. They wanted to understand their background, their motivation, and also more importantly their willingness to conduct suicide attacked. The study was conducted by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, affiliated with United States Military Academy at West Point.
Now why do you supposed they would be so interested on the these type of studies. What was telling on this study is the their focus on Chinese fighters.
America's economy just had its worst quarter on record [-32.9% GDP]
The US economy contracted at a 32.9% annual rate from April through June, its worst drop on record, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday.
Business ground to a halt during the pandemic lockdown in the spring of this year, and America plunged into its first recession in 11 years, putting an end to the longest economic expansion in US history and wiping out five years of economic gains in just a few months.
A recession is commonly defined as two consecutive quarters of declining gross domestic product — the broadest measure of the economy. Between January and March, GDP declined by an annualized rate of 5%.
In April, more than 20 million American jobs vanished as businesses closed and most of the country was under stay-at-home orders. It was the biggest drop in jobs since record-keeping began more than 80 years ago. Claims for unemployment benefits skyrocketed and have still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
While the labor market has been rebounding since states began to reopen, bringing millions back to work, the country is still down nearly 15 million jobs since February. Next week's July jobs report is expected to show another 2.3 million jobs added. That would bring the unemployment rate down to 10.3% — still higher than during the worst period of the financial crisis.
Consumer spending, the biggest driver of the US economy, declined at an annual rate of 34.6% — by far the sharpest decline on record.
The pandemic pushed the economy off a cliff. The second-quarter GDP drop was nearly four times worse than during the peak of the financial crisis, when the economy contracted 8.4% in the fourth quarter of 2008.
Quarterly GDP numbers are expressed as an annualized rate. This means that the economy didn't actually contract by one-third from the first quarter to the second. The annualized rate measures how much the economy would grow or shrink if conditions were to persist for 12 months.
Not annualized, GDP declined by 9.5% in between April and June, or by $1.8 trillion. But by either measure, it was still the worst quarter on record.
The US economy contracted at a 32.9% annual rate from April through June, its worst drop on record, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday.
Business ground to a halt during the pandemic lockdown in the spring of this year, and America plunged into its first recession in 11 years, putting an end to the longest economic expansion in US history and wiping out five years of economic gains in just a few months.
A recession is commonly defined as two consecutive quarters of declining gross domestic product — the broadest measure of the economy. Between January and March, GDP declined by an annualized rate of 5%.
In April, more than 20 million American jobs vanished as businesses closed and most of the country was under stay-at-home orders. It was the biggest drop in jobs since record-keeping began more than 80 years ago. Claims for unemployment benefits skyrocketed and have still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
While the labor market has been rebounding since states began to reopen, bringing millions back to work, the country is still down nearly 15 million jobs since February. Next week's July jobs report is expected to show another 2.3 million jobs added. That would bring the unemployment rate down to 10.3% — still higher than during the worst period of the financial crisis.
Consumer spending, the biggest driver of the US economy, declined at an annual rate of 34.6% — by far the sharpest decline on record.
The pandemic pushed the economy off a cliff. The second-quarter GDP drop was nearly four times worse than during the peak of the financial crisis, when the economy contracted 8.4% in the fourth quarter of 2008.
Quarterly GDP numbers are expressed as an annualized rate. This means that the economy didn't actually contract by one-third from the first quarter to the second. The annualized rate measures how much the economy would grow or shrink if conditions were to persist for 12 months.
Not annualized, GDP declined by 9.5% in between April and June, or by $1.8 trillion. But by either measure, it was still the worst quarter on record.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Is Trump actually going for it?!
I know we all joked around about him going full facist, but even I only expected him to maybe try to steal the election at the most. But to try to delay it with such a woolly excuse and no solid resumption date set would be pretty unprecedented, and could easily be extended repeatedly to delay the elections indefinitely.
If you look at the macro, America has certainly been in relative decline whilst for the past 40 years China has been in rapid ascension... if you look at all the important metrics in aggregate these are the facts and no one can really argue against them... the only things up to debate or contention are to what extent or degree these trends will continue in the future; or if now that America is fully focused on China as being the greatest threat to its own hegemony, would these trends someday reverse and America ascend again whilst successfully uniting the world into confronting, containing and isolating China...
Guys like Ray Dalio are money managers and their realm of subject matter expertise are in finance and economics, he is not a military genius by any means. But his own charts show that as an empire peaks and going into decline, things like education are the first to go, but things like military strength are one of the last, if not the last, to peak and wane. This means America will enjoy military superiority even whilst it has peaked and declined by much in every other aspect.
While I agree that historical trends and contexts are important for getting frame of references and datapoints etc, never in the history of mankind during the rise and fall of other historical civilizations had there been the advent of the nuclear bomb and other game changing technologies such as gene editting, Artificial Intelligence, full spectrum automation, etc that may change the picture to the point that historical rise and fall of empires can no longer be meaningful guide or prediction of our current situation... Hypothetically, taking an example to the extreme, the nation that masters AGI (artificial general intelligence) or Time Travel first will be on top and stay on top forever...
And then there is the matter of peak resources (Peak Oil and peak everything else for that matter) the never did beset during previous periods of nations and empires that came and went... and things like climate change and environment disaster, death/extinction of species and the collapse of ecosystems, food chain, etc was never manifested to anywhere near this degree until the last half a century... this also adds a layer of complexity to the calculus when analysis the current trends and winds of macroeconomics/ geopolitics etc...
I see the US government kicking China out of the SWIFT system in the next few weeks, possibly by around September, (the ultimate trade/finance decoupling) and then this portends the coming hot war. (with economic entanglements out of the way, it paves easier path to military conflict) Very likely by October of this year (2020), US will pre-emptively attack China in the South China Sea (SCS) by bombing or even tactical nuking some of those islands and the Chinese troops and military installations on those islands. There will likely be a complete severing of diplomatic ties before then, with both the US side and China side shutting down all consulates/embassies in both nations everywhere. With COVID in the US already putting about 50% of Americans out of a job and the corresponding long term demand destruction it has enacted on the US, this makes a hot war with China that much more sell-able and palatable, (it basically lowers the "cost" of such a war) especially since the Trump admin has repeatedly made it a point to highlight it was the "China Virus" and basically attributed all of America's ills and failings into the CCP and used propaganda to direct the American people's anger and hatred and suffering towards China as the root cause of it all.
Of course, once this all really gets started in earnest, all Chinese Americans in the US will be promptly rounded up into concentration camps, and that is a best case scenario.. it will start with the freezing of all bank accounts, assets of Chinese Americans (including those with US citizenship) during wartime emergency the President (Trump or Biden or any other POTUS) will certainly issue such EOs again, with Korematsu v. the United States position flipping again, (people forget that laws serve hegemony not the other way around!, the supreme court does what is necessary evil for the sake of the US hegemony, like slavery, genocide, concentration camps, etc when it was convenient to US interests etc) and continue with the cutting off of all communications of Chinese Americans in the US, including landlines, cell phones, gmail, online social networking platforms, with the stroke of a pen and literally overnight, all Chinese Americans will wake up the next morning to find their money gone, their means of communication disabled and terminated, and essentially having an Asian face now means you are permanently on a national wanted list... for the sake of national security, all of America, especially White America, will happily go along with this, especially after China sinks a few US aircraft carriers in retaliation to a US lead kinetic strike against China in the SCS/ECS/TW regions.
The US will try to unite the world against China, to get an alliance going where India attacks by land from the West, Phillipines and Vietnam from the South East regions and where it can use Taiwan as a forward operating base, and of course Japan will get heavily involved (also letting US put nukes in Japan such as at Okinawa and elsewhere) with UK and Australia (and possibly other Five Eyes vassals) also sending military support to gain up on China...
Pompeo and the Pentagon's pitch to the rest of the world (other than the usual antiChina rhetoric) would likely be that with China gone and out of the picture, there is more resource pie to share amongst the rest of themselves and that it would enable a US lead hegemony to comfortably continue for the next 30+ years (foreseeable generation or two) or more than as opposed to allowing China to continue to develop/exists economically (even if all sides were to remain peacefully) as that will ultimately serve to hasten the worldwide collapse as resources pies run out that much faster with the rising consumption standards of 1.4 billion Chinese...
But things could just as well play /turn out to be the opposite. US could be facing a complete collapse of the dollar (as world reserve currency) by the end of this year 2020 not to mention a civil war 2.0 that will forever split and balkanize America permanently and irreversibly, an economic depression 2.0 is all but certain at this point, and very likely the COVID situation in the US will flare up once again in Autumn/fall ... its just like as Steve Bannon said years ago, at the end of the day only one system will win and the other will lose, Pompeo also reaffirmed recently the notion that either the US changes China (regime change of the CCP) or China will change the US (bring about indirectly the collapse of America) and there is no middle ground because this is indeed a zero sum game in very sense of the word.