Thursday 12th of December 2024

o, for a safe planet.... time to make some essential deals....

Trump’s stated positions on major international issues, e.g. climate change and the value and importance of multilateral institutions, both political and economic, and on particular issues such as Ukraine, the Middle East and relations with China, give grounds for plenty of concern when compared with Australian interests and policies.

 

Can Trump make the Planet Safe, as well as America Great?     By Geoff Miller

 

Australia is a small country in everything but geography, and dependent—for example in regard to trade—on a working and agreed international system. The US on the other hand is the strongest and richest country in the world, and under Biden, let alone a future Trump, has not been above blocking the WTO’s appeals system from functioning effectively because it was not confident it would get its way. It has reduced the emphasis it has given to other UN bodies for the same reason. Trump’s “MAGA” policies are not much short of an “anti-globalisation” agenda. He doesn’t seem to attach much importance to climate change.

Of course it remains to be seen to what extent his stated policies, for examples tariffs on everything imported into the US, huge tariffs on Chinese goods, are implemented. It has widely been reported that Trump and those around him believe that a mistake of his first Presidency was to appoint to Cabinet and other senior positions people fundamentally out of sympathy with what he was trying to do, and that they (in the person of his son Donald) are determined to appoint “true believers” this time. And they may well, but even so some possible courses of action may lose their appeal when subjected to careful examination. It will certainly be instructive to see who he appoints to major portfolios.

What should Australia do? I think it will be important to establish clearly where our basic positions differ from those of a Trump administration, and be prepared to argue strongly for them, for example in international fora. At the same time we should make our mark with Trump and his new appointees as well as we can, against the day when we might have to defend our interests on a particular issue, as Malcolm Turnbull had to do on refugees and steel tariffs. In regard to that it seems universally conceded that Kevin Rudd has been doing a good job as Ambassador, and also that PM Albanese’s congratulatory phone call with Trump was cordial and went well. That’s all in line with the advice recently given publicly by Joe Hockey, for example: don’t take stated positions too literally, stress our long-standing close relationship, and have confidence in our ability to make our cases if we need to seek specially favourable treatment: “Trump likes Australia”, according to Hockey.

A few words on some particular issues. As a peace-loving country we should be interested in Trump’s stated position that he wants to get the US out of wars, not into them. We may see examples of that being played out in regard to Ukraine—“achieving peace in a day”— possibly the Middle East and even in regard to North Korea, where during the last Trump administration considerable progress was nearly achieved but at the last minute foiled by the malign intervention of Steve Bannon in a Trump-Kim meeting in Hanoi. Of course in the case of Ukraine there are concerns about the extent of Trump’s sympathy with Putin, but at the same time it seems that consensus opinion is that the war is not going well for Ukraine.

On another strategic issue I personally have doubts about the weight that seems to be being placed on AUKUS as a measure of United States reliability as an ally for us. I’m thinking of the recent Congressional report to the effect that the US is far from achieving its stated fleet number of Virginia-class nuclear submarines, and isn’t increasing that number at a rate that would make some surplus to US requirements by the date foreseen in the AUKUS projections. When you consider that, together with the difficulties we are already having in keeping our Collins fleet serviceable, and the inherent improbability of the final phase of the project—the British ship-building industry designing a new nuclear submarine using US technology to be built in Australia to meet strategic needs that have never been explained to the Australian public—what could possibly go wrong?

Finally, climate. As noted above, Trump doesn’t seem to attach much importance to climate change, despite increasing examples of climate change making extreme weather events worse—for example in Spain—and Queensland—just now—and increasingly dire scientific evidence of tipping points being reached and passed. It is said that he plans to take the US out of the Paris agreements to combat climate change and limit the increase in global temperature, and domestically Biden’s major legislation that includes measures to combat change is said to be at risk. This is a very important issue for Australia, thinking not only of what may happen to our own continent but also of what it may mean for all the South Pacific countries. There’s little doubt that climate change is one issue on which we should make a major effort to make an impression on the views of the Trump administration. As well as making America great it should do its part in making the planet safe!

https://johnmenadue.com/can-trump-make-the-planet-safe-as-well-as-america-great/

 

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

“It’s hard to do cartoons without deals…”

         Gus Leonisky

reality check.....

 

BY Rachel Marsden

 

Trump’s win is a victory for the non-brainwashed Americans
US voters have proven they can still judge reality by what it is, despite all of the establishment’s efforts

 

Blowout alert! I guess average Americans don’t like being infantilized. At least Trump trusted them to be able to take a joke, unlike his opponents.

So when’s Liz Cheney’s date with the firing squad already? Are we done yet with the anti-Trump fake news now that the majority of voters see through it? Probably not, huh?

With the exception of those in a handful of states, Americans united to send former US President Donald Trump back to the White House and handed him carte blanche with Republican control of the Senate and likely the House as well. Not bad for a guy the establishment tried to brand as the reincarnation of Hitler. Did Hitler also have giant Israeli flags at his Madison Square Garden rally? Or hang out at the Jewish wall in Israel or with Hebrew-inscribed tablets in a yarmulke? That should have been the Democrats’ first sign that their branding attempt was off. Yet, just like the fitting title of the upcoming Harris biography co-authored by Chelsea Clinton: She Persisted

Maybe next time, instead of persisting with their idiocy, they’ll come up with an actual agenda and a candidate who addresses questions and issues on point rather than punting them in favor of talking points and platitudes that leave voters guessing as to what to even expect if ever elected – beyond the usual establishment status quo, which, of course, sucks. Just ask the overwhelming majority of Americans who say that the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Presumably, the Democrats figured that they could make a whole campaign about abortion rights – against a guy who, frankly, doesn’t actually seem too interested in the topic, which was recently re-opened by the courts. It’s telling that, according to CNN exit polls, Harris won the female vote by five points less than Biden did in 2020 and three points less than even Hillary Clinton did against Trump in 2016, when abortion wasn’t even an issue.

Certain categories of voters really capture the story of this election. The first is white women with college degrees, 11% more of whom voted for Harris than for Biden in 2020. Institutional establishment brainwashing and virtue signaling apparently works more effectively on well-formatted brains, female or otherwise. The message from the party hacks and their celebrity surrogates was that abortion was really all that should matter to women, reducing them to one-dimensional caricatures of actual human beings. But it turns out that many more women than they figured don’t like being talked down to and treated as little more than a walking uterus – even by other women. Which would explain why white women with no degree voted overwhelmingly for Trump by 25 points over Harris, and even voters of color with no degree, generally considered a lock by Democrats, still voted by 14 points less for Harris than for Biden four years ago.

The youngest voters, aged 18-29, who you’d figure would be most directly affected by reproductive rights issues, either as women themselves or their white-knighting male counterparts who were constantly told by Democrats that they had to cast their vote primarily in support of the reproductive rights of the women in their life, actually ended up shifting their vote to Trump by 11 points compared to 2020.

The bottom line is that women living real lives with a multitude of concerns and interests don’t like being paternalized, which is what the Democrats constantly do. Just because it’s a woman and her surrogates who are doing the talking down to them, doesn’t make it any more appealing. It just makes you a useful idiot of the patriarchal establishment – the same one that’s trying to emotionally manipulate women’s electoral choices to maintain the status quo that disadvantages women in every other possible way that actually matters to all of their lives, from cost of living to foreign wars in which their sons are sent to die and other countries’ sons are subjected to the same. All so Uncle Sam can turn a profit. It’s the guy you keep calling a misogynist who wants to take him on.

Speaking of pricey wars, CNN exit polls also show that about two-thirds of voters say the economy is bad even compared with 2020, when the country was grappling with the fallout from the Covid fiasco. That shift benefited Trump. It’s no wonder when he’s the same guy who’s made it clear that he wants to square away foreign wars and focus on the American economy. He’s even suggested that he’d rather just strongarm allies into outright buying American weapons with their own money, threatening to kill off NATO if they don’t rather than ginning up actual war (or persist with the current ones) as a way to justify spending increasingly more of America’s own tax money as the Biden administration has done.

Harris has said nothing to suggest that she’s in any position to challenge the establishment machine that’s been running the country since Biden’s been doing his Weekend at Bernie’s routine and would have remained largely in place with a Harris victory. And while Trump may not have all the answers, at least he’s expressed a clear will. In that sense, he mirrors voters themselves, who mostly don’t know what the answers are – just that they know things must change.

The bottom line is that while Trump was trash talking everyone from neocons like Liz Cheney and her Iraq War architect father, the illustrious Dick, both of whom came out in favor of Harris, he was saying what average people fed up with war were actually thinking. But establishment virtue signalers cynically tried to capitalize on his choice of vivid rhetoric to suggest that he’d go full-blown Benito Mussolini on his opponents if he got back into office. Just like the last time that he was in office for a whole four years, I guess? The only one actually taking any gunshots to the head has been Trump. 

It also turns out that people like a good laugh, still know what a joke is, and aren’t buying into the Democrat and establishment hysteria that takes people for idiots in pretending not to. Democrats and their proxies were convinced that a joke by a professional comedian about Puerto Rico at a late-campaign Trump rally would tank the Latino vote. Instead, Trump ended up winning it among Latino men by ten points. And even Latina women shifted to Trump in this election by 15 points compared with 2020.

America isn’t divided. At least not as much as we’ve been led to believe. Normal, average, non-brainwashed people of all stripes, who can still judge reality by what they see and experience in their daily life rather than what they’re told to think by the establishment’s Hollywood and corporate media minstrels and court jesters, have fully availed themselves of the opportunity to express themselves in the most democratic way possible. And their message is that Trump isn’t the radical – the establishment is.

The silent majority that feels increasingly marginalized, if not outright censored, has found a voice in Trump that resonates with their own. Now it’s the establishment’s turn to spend the next four years figuring out what they can do to actually serve the average voter rather than spending all their time indulging themselves and their attempts to leverage America’s diversity to divide it self-servingly.

 

https://www.rt.com/news/607219-us-election-trump-win/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

“It’s hard to do cartoons without jokes…”

         Gus Leonisky

 

SEE ALSO: 

divided opinions....

masterwork.....

 

Pepe Escobar: Putin Outlines The 'Moment of Truth'

 

BY Pepe Escobar

 

President Putin’s plenary session performance (address + Q&A) at the annual Valdai Club meeting in Sochi felt like a high-speed train on cruise control.

Totally cool, calm, comfortable, in full command of a Himalaya of facts, no political leader anywhere – recent past and present - would even come close to delivering what amounts to an extensive, detailed world view deeply matured over a quarter of a century at the highest geopolitical level.

Putin began his address referring to the October 1917 revolution, drawing a direct parallel with our turbulent times: “The moment of truth is coming”. In a clear tribute to Gramsci, he stated how a “completely new world order” is “being formed before our eyes.”

The subtle reference to the recent BRICS summit in Kazan could not possibly escape critical minds across the Global Majority. Kazan was a living, breathing testimony that “the old order is irrevocably disappearing, one might say, has already disappeared, and a serious, irreconcilable struggle is unfolding for the formation of a new one. Irreconcilable, first of all, because this is not even a fight for power or geopolitical influence, this is a clash of the very principles on which relations between countries and peoples will be built at the next historical stage.”

As concisely as possible, that should be taken as the current Big Picture framework: we are not mired inside a reductionist clash of civilizations or the “end of History” – which Putin defined as “myopic” - but facing a make-or-break systemic clash of fundamental principles. The result will define this century – arguably the Eurasia Century, as “the dialectics of History continues.”

Putin himself quipped that he would drive into “philosophical asides” during his address. In fact that went much further than a mere refutation of unilateral conceptual fallacies, as “the Western elites thought that their monopoly is the final stop for humanity” and “modern neoliberalism degenerated into a totalitarian ideology.”

Referring to AI, he asked rhetorically, “will human remain human?” He praised the building of a new global architecture, moving towards a “polyphonic” and “polycentric” world where “maximum representation” is paramount and the BRICS are “coming up with a coordinated approach” based on “sovereign equality.”

Six Principles For Global Sustainable Development

Sovereignty had to be one of the predominant themes during the Valdai Q&A. Putin was adamant that Russia must “develop our own sovereign AI. As algorithms are biased and give massive power to a few big companies that control the internet, the need is imperative for “sovereign algorithms.”

Answering a question on Eurasian security and the US as the dominant maritime power v. a multipolar Eurasia, he stressed the “consensus and desire in Eurasia for an anti-hegemonic movement”, and not for Eurasia constituted “as a bloc”. That’s the appeal of Eurasia’s “multi-vector foreign policy”, implying “more political independence”. The key example of “harmonizing interests”, Putin stressed, is the Russia-China partnership, and that was also what “made BRICS successful.”

Putin names six key principles for the world's sustainable development

Addressing the Valdai Forum on November 7, Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated six principles of international relations which he first articulated in October 2023.

Openness to interaction is the… pic.twitter.com/JfenYtb6Tp

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) November 7, 2024

Compare it in contrast to “the inability in Europe to establish a system of “indivisibility of security” and to “overcome bloc politics”; Europe instead went for NATO expansion: “After the end of the Cold War there was an opportunity to overcome bloc politics. But the US had fear of losing Europe. The US installed almost a colonial dependence. Honestly I did not expect that.”

Putin introduced a fascinating personal experience tidbit referring to a conversation – in German – with former German chancellor Helmut Kohl in 1993, when Kohl said flat out that “the future of Europe” is linked to Russia.

Yet that ended up leading to “the most important problem on our Eurasian continent, the main problem between Russia and European countries: the trust deficit (…) When they tell us that ‘we signed the Minsk agreements on Ukraine only to give Ukraine an opportunity to rearm, and we had no intention of resolving this conflict peacefully,’ what kind of trust can we talk about? (…) You have directly publicly stated that you have cheated us! Lied to us and deceived us! What kind of trust is that? But we need to get back to that system of mutual trust.”

Putin then added that Europe should consider becoming part and parcel of a Chinese concept straight from Chinese philosophy (“they do not strive for domination”). With panache, he stressed that the Chinese uber-geoeconomic trade/connectivity project should be interpreted as One Belt, One Common Road.

And that extrapolates to Central Asia, with all those nations “very young in their statehood” interested in “stable development”. For Russia-China, there’s “no competition” in the Heartland: “we only have cooperation.”

Putin once again enumerated what he considers the 6 key principles for global sustainable development: openness of interaction (implying no “artificial barriers”); diversity (“a model of one country or a relatively small part of humanity should not be imposed as something universal”); maximum representativeness; security for all without exception; justice for all (erasing “the gap between the ‘golden billion’ and the rest of humanity); and equality.

 

“Make Civilizations, Not War”

On Ukraine, this was the money quote: “If there is no neutrality, then it’s difficult to imagine any kind of good neighborly relations between Russia and Ukraine.” In a nutshell: Moscow is ready for negotiations, but based on facts on the battlefield and what was agreed upon in Istanbul in April 2022.

That may be interpreted as a direct message to President Trump. To whom the door is open: "Russia has not damaged its relations with the US and is open to their restoration, but the ball is in the Americans' court."

Putin on US Presidents (he met quite a few): “All of them are interesting people.” On Trump: “His behavior when there was an attempt on his life, I was impressed. He is a courageous person. He acquitted himself valiantly.” On the open door: “Whatever he does it’s up to him to decide.” Then Putin offered his own congratulations for the re-election – on the record. The dialogue may be on: “We are willing to talk to Trump.”

 

Trump's behavior at the time of the assassination attempt was impressive - Putin

Donald Trump has shown himself in extraordinary circumstances very correctly, courageously, the Russian leader noted. pic.twitter.com/BeNCY2wdsl

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) November 7, 2024

Putin extolled Russia-China relations as part of their strategic partnership as being “at the highest level in modern history.” He also praised his own personal relation with Xi Jinping. That paved the way for the real killer, when it comes to US-Russia-China: “If the US had chosen a trilateral cooperation instead of double constraint – everyone would win.”

An excellent question by Brazilian economist Paulo Nogueira Batista Jr – a former vice-president of the NDB, the BRICS bank – led Putin to clarify his own position on de-dollarization. He stated flatly that “my role is to see ideas shaped that we then propose to our partners”.

The key target is “proposing to create a new investment platform using electronic payments.” That will address the “most promising markets” in the near future – South Asia, Africa, parts of Latin America: “They will need investment, technologies.” And “tools independent from inflation” – with regulation “through Central Banks and the NDB. We agreed to have a working group meeting regularly at government level. We are in no hurry.”

 

 

So that puts to rest any scenario of an immediate BRICS financial bombshell – even as “two-thirds of our trade is being serviced in national currencies” and among BRICS the figures are also high.

 

BRICS Bridge will be tested – soon. As for creating a single currency, that’s “premature. We need to achieve greater integration of economies, increase the quality of economies to a certain – compatible – level.”

Then, the bombshell: “We never wanted to abandon the dollar!” That goes a long way to explain Putin’s own view on de-dollarization: “They are undoing it with their own hand – the power of the dollar.”

All of the above is just a sample of the width and breath of themes addressed by the President during the Valdai Q&A. The forum itself offered precious nuggets all across the spectrum. Some participants – correctly - noted the absence of “the majority of the majority”: youth and women. Africans were impressed with “the sharp mind of Russian bureaucracy.”

A Chinese view noted how “the Chinese don’t swim against the current; they cross the river and reach the other bank.” There was a near consensus that development should be “based in different cultural values of civilizations” – actually Putin’s own view. Also imperative is the “need for aggregate authority” among the Global South.

A Greek insight was particularly powerful when it comes to the civilizational approach to politics: “Civilizations don’t clash. States do.” Thus the new – playful - motto that could guide not only BRICS but the whole Global Majority: “Make Civilizations, Not War.”

 https://sputnikglobe.com/20241108/pepe-escobar-putin-outlines-the-moment-of-truth-1120820957.html

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

“It’s hard to do cartoons without Putin…”

         Gus Leonisky