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What Would A Democratic Presidency Really Change?
Pepe Escobar is as pessimistic about a Harris (Biden) administration as I am. The incoming foreign policy team would be the return of the blob that waged seven wars during the Obama/Biden administration:
Taking a cue from [the Transition Integrity Project], let’s game a Dem return to the White House – with the prospect of a President Kamala taking over sooner rather than later. That means, essentially, The Return of the Blob.
President Trump calls it “the swamp”. Former Obama Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes – a mediocre hack – at least coined the funkier “Blob”, applied to the incestuous Washington, DC foreign policy gang, think tanks, academia, newspapers (from the Washington Post to the New York Times), and that unofficial Bible, Foreign Affairs magazine.
A Dem presidency, right away, will need to confront the implications of two wars: Cold War 2.0 against China, and the interminable, trillion-dollar GWOT (Global War on Terror), renamed OCO (Overseas Contingency Operations) by the Obama-Biden administration.
The Democratic White House team Escobar describes (Clinton, Blinken, Rice, Flournoy) would be an assembly of well known war mongers who all argue for hawkish policies. The main 'enemies', Russia and China, would be the same as under Trump. Syria, Venezuela, Iran and others would stay on the U.S. target list. U.S. foreign policy would thereby hardly change from Trump's version but would probably be handled with more deadly competence.
But Escobar sees two potential positive developments:
In contrast, two near-certain redeeming features would be the return of the US to the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal, which was Obama-Biden’s only foreign policy achievement, and re-starting nuclear disarmament negotiations with Russia. That would imply containment of Russia, not a new all-out Cold War, even as Biden has recently stressed, on the record, that Russia is the “biggest threat” to the US.
I believe that Harris (Biden) will disappoint on both of those issues. The neoconservatives have already infested the Harris (Biden) camp. They will make sure that JCPOA does not come back:
Last night on an official Biden campaign webinar led by “Jewish Americans for Biden”, and moderated by Ann Lewis of Democratic Majority for Israel, two prominent neocon Republicans endorsed Biden, primarily because of Trump’s character posing a danger to democracy. But both neocons emphasized that Biden would be more willing to use force in the Middle East and reassured Jewish viewers that Biden will seek to depoliticize Israel support, won’t necessarily return to the Iran deal and will surround himself with advisers who support Israel and believe in American military intervention.
Eric Edelman, a former diplomat and adviser to Dick Cheney, said Trump’s peace plan has fostered an open political divide in the U.S. over Israel, …
Eliot Cohen, a Bush aide and academic, echoed the fear that Israel is being politicized. …
…
Cohen and Edelman opposed Obama’s Iran deal, and both predicted that Biden will be hawkish on Iran.
…
“There will be voices” in the Biden administration that seek a return to the Iran deal, but the clock has been running for four years, and we’re in a different place, he said. And “it will be hard [for Biden] not to use the leverage that the sanctions provide in part because Iran is not abiding by a lot of the limits of the nuclear agreement… They’re about three, maybe four months away from having enough fissile material to actually develop a nuclear weapon.”
For lifting the sanctions against Iran the Harris (Biden) administration will demand much more than Iran's return to the limits of the JCPOA. Iran will reject all new demands, be they about restricting its missile force or limiting its support for Syria. The conflict will thereby continue to fester.
The other issue is arms control. While a Harris (Biden) administration may take up Putin's offer to unconditionally prolong the New-START agreement for a year it will certainly want more concessions from Russia than that country is willing to give. Currently it is Russia that has the upper hand in strategic weapons with already deployed hypersonic missiles and other new platforms. The U.S. will want to fill the new 'missile gap' and the military-industrial complex stands ready to profit from that. The New-START prolongation will eventually run out and I do not see the U.S. agreeing to new terms while Russia has a technological superiority.
Domestic policies under a democratic president will likewise see no substantial difference. As Krystal Ball remarked, here summarized from a Rolling Stone podcast:
But even with a Biden win, Ball doesn’t think it will mean much for policy.
“My prediction for the Biden era is that very little actually happens,” says Ball. “Democrats are very good at feigning impotence. We saw this in the SCOTUS hearings as well. They’re very good for coming up with reasons why, ‘oh those mean Republicans, like we want to do better healthcare and we want left wages, but oh gosh, Mitch McConnell, he’s so wiley, we can’t get it done.'”
'Change' was an Obama marketing slogan to sell his Republican light policies. A real change never came. The Harris (Biden) administration must be seen in similar light.
I therefore agree with the sentiment with which Escobar closes his piece:
In a nutshell, Biden-Harris would mean The Return of the Blob with a vengeance. Biden-Harris would be Obama-Biden 3.0. Remember those seven wars. Remember the surges. Remember the kill lists. Remember Libya. Remember Syria. Remember “soft coup” Brazil. Remember Maidan. You have all been warned.
Welcome Back In Independence – Why It Was High Time For Glenn Greenwald To Resign From The Intercept
Yesterday Glenn Greenwald resigned from the Intercept.
The editors of the online journal, which Greenwald had co-founded, tried to censor a recent piece he wrote on the corruption of Joe Biden and on the concerted media effort to suppress that story. Greenwald's contract with the Intercept guaranteed him editorial independence. With its censorship efforts the Intercept breached that contract.
The Intercept editors replied to Greenwald with a smear piece that does not refute any of the claims he has made:
We have the greatest respect for the journalist Glenn Greenwald used to be, and we remain proud of much of the work we did with him over the past six years. It is Glenn who has strayed from his original journalistic roots, not The Intercept.
Aheem. No. I have read Glenn Greenwald since, fifteen years ago, he first published at his former blog Unclaimed Territory. He went on to write for Salon and the Guardian. Every Greenwald piece I have read was worth the time. Greenwald's writing has not changed at all. It was the Intercept which soon after it launched already moved away from what it had promised to be and which ended up as useless 'me too' in the librul media landscape.
Others have commented on the resignation:
My first reaction to Greenwald's resignation was a question:
Moon of Alabama @MoonofA – 18:19 UTC · Oct 29, 2020
Why did it take him so long?
Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-intercept
The answer is, as Greenwald himself mentions, the financial security the contract with the Intercept gave to Glenn and his family. But that came with a serious reputational price that is no longer worth paying.
That the Intercept was not the adversarial outlet that it had promised to be at its founding has long been clear. I have written several Moon of Alabama pieces about that.
Cont. reading: Welcome Back In Independence – Why It Was High Time For Glenn Greenwald To Resign From The Intercept
Why Are These Anti-Russian And Anti-Chinese Narratives So Similar?
After more than four years of Russiagate we finally learn (paywalled original) where the Steele dossier allegations about nefarious relations between Trump and Russia came from:
A Wall Street Journal investigation provides an answer: a 40-year-old Russian public-relations executive named Olga Galkina fed notes to a friend and former schoolmate who worked for Mr. Steele. The Journal relied on interviews, law-enforcement records, declassified documents and the identification of Ms. Galkina by a former top U.S. national security official.
In 2016, Ms. Galkina was working in Cyprus at an affiliate of XBT Holding SA, a web-services company best known for its Webzilla internet hosting unit. XBT is owned by Russian internet entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev.
That summer, she received a request from an employee of Mr. Steele to help unearth potentially compromising information on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump ’s links to Russia, according to people familiar with the matter. Ms. Galkina was friends with the employee, Igor Danchenko, since their school days in Perm, a Russian provincial city near the Ural mountains.
Ms. Galkina often came drunk to work and eventually got fired by her company. She took revenge by alleging that the company and its owner Gubarev were involved in the alleged hacking of the Democratic National Committee. A bunch of other false allegations in the dossier were equally based on Ms. Galkina's fantasies.
Mark Ames @MarkAmesExiled – 18:39 UTC · Oct 28, 2020
So the Steele Dossier that kicked off 4 years of Russiagate hysteria among the US ruling class was cooked up by two Russian alcoholics from Perm. “Gogolesque” does not begin to describe the grotesque credulity & stupidity of the American elites.
The tales in the dossier were real disinformation from Russians but not 'Russian disinformation' of the American Newspeak variant.
The FBI, and others involved, knew very early on that the Steele dossier was a bunch of lies. But the issue was kept in the public eyes by continues leaks of additional nonsense. All this was to press Trump to take more and more anti-Russian measures which he did with unprecedented generosity. The accusations about a Trump-Russia connection were the 'Russia bad' narrative that pressed and allowed Trump to continue the anti-Russian policies of the Obama/Biden administration.
A similar string of continuous policies from the Obama/Biden administration's 'Pivot to Asia' and throughout the four years of Trump is the anti-China campaign.
We now hear a lot about Hunter and Joe Biden's corrupt deals with Chinese entities. These accusations come with more evidence and are far more plausible than the stupid Steele dossier claims. Their importance is again twofold. They will be used to press a potential President Joe Biden to act against China but they will primarily be used to intensify a public anti-China narrative that creates public support for such policies.
As Caitlin Johnstone points out:
I don’t know how or at what level, but we are being played. A narrative is being aggressively rammed down our throats about China in exactly the same way it was being aggressively rammed down our throats about Russia four years ago; two unabsorbed nations the US government has long had plans to attack and undermine.
Russiagate was never really about Trump. It was never about his campaign staff meeting with Russians, it was never about a pee tape, it was never about an investigation into any kind of hidden loyalties to the Kremlin. Russiagate was about narrative managing the United States into a new cold war with Russia with the ultimate target being its far more powerful ally China, and ensuring that Trump played along with that agenda.
…
If Biden gets in we can expect the same thing: a president who advances escalations against both Russia and China while being accused of the other party of being soft on China. Both parties will have their foot on the gas toward brinkmanship with a nuclear-armed nation, with no one’s foot anywhere near the brakes.
It is thus assured that the verbal attacks on China, the search for new anti-China allies like the Hindu-fascist India and the dangerous weaponizing of Taiwan will all continue under a Biden administration.
Open Thread 2020-86
Belarus – Opposition Call For ‘Crippling General Strike’ Fails To Reach Workers
On April 30 2019 some Random Guyaidó in Venezuela got snookered into a coup attempt which turned him into a laughingstock when the troops he had expected to support him failed to show up:
The whole coup attempt was run within a 500 x 200 meter corridor with nothing of significance happening outside of it. A dangerous propaganda stunt but so far nothing more than that.
This slight modification of the Guaidó/López picture above seems appropriate. These dudes are mere comic figures, wannabe fantasy heroes.
bigger
One would have thought that such a comical failure would have put an end to similar schemes of 'western' supported regime change attempts.
Unfortunately it didn't.
In June 2020 it became obvious that a U.S. directed color revolution was planned to unseat the President Lukashenko of Belarus. It happened as usual after the election results were put into doubt. But just a few days later it became obvious that the attempt had failed:
While President Alexander Lukashenko claimed to have won 80% of the votes during last Sunday's election, the 'western' candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya claimed that she had won. (While the 80% is certainly too high it is most likely that Lukashenko was the real winner.) Protests and riots ensued. On Tuesday Tikhanovskaya was told in no uncertain terms to leave the country. She ended up in Lithuania.
Lukashenko then proceeded to make a deal with Russia which promised him protection in exchange for progress in the creation of a Russian-Belarus Union State.
Even the NATO lobby-shop Atlantic Council admitted that the coup attempt had failed:
Cont. reading: Belarus – Opposition Call For ‘Crippling General Strike’ Fails To Reach Workers
Erdogan Is Again Under Pressure And Therefore Likely To Escalate
Over the last years the Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has managed to alienate so many of his countries international partners that it is hard to keep count. He at times did so on purpose to distract his voters from a sinking economy and other local calamities. But there are signs that he has now exceeded the patience of the adversaries he has created. He is now finally receiving the rebukes he has seemed to be seeking.
While Russia has emphasized friendly relations with Turkey, it is in conflict with it in Syria, Libya and most recently in the war over Nagorny-Karabakh.
Russia at times has a not-so-subtle way to communicate that its patience has run out. Last Thursday Russian ships in the eastern Mediterranean fired missiles on a oil smuggling center near Jarablus, Syria:
More than 15 militants from the Turkish-controlled Syrian armed opposition were killed and injured in a missile strike by an unknown military aircraft on a smuggling market for oil products in the city of Jerablus, bordering Turkey, in northern Syria, local sources reported.
It is noted that the rockets were also fired at two fuel tankers, which were moving along the highway near the village of Kus in the direction of the market. Eyewitnesses reported that at the time of the strikes, several powerful explosions occurred in the border area.
The oil was smuggled from eastern Syria and was on its way to Turkey.
Today a Russian air attack on a graduation ceremony of Turkish financed 'Syrian rebels' killed or wounded more than 200 of them.
bigger
Cont. reading: Erdogan Is Again Under Pressure And Therefore Likely To Escalate
The MoA Week In Review – Open Thread 2020-85
Last week’s posts at Moon of Alabama:
Michael Tracey @mtracey- 18:34 UTC · Oct 24, 2020
Tried to get into Biden’s “drive-in” event with Bon Jovi this afternoon in Dallas, PA and was told attendance is limited to “party officials and donors.” Registration is not open to the general public. Kinda weird how these campaign rallies have effectively become private affairs
Mark Sedwill said the UK had sought to exploit Moscow’s “vulnerabilities”, including through the deployment of its recently declared offensive cyber-capability.
He said the aim of such actions had been to “impose a price greater than one they might have expected” in response to aggressive Russian behaviour.
—
Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – Open Thread 2020-85
Putin On The Role Of The State In The Economy
Most of the commentators on yesterday's post were right. It was the Russian President Vladimir Putin who said this:
Many of us read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry when we were children and remember what the main character said: “It’s a question of discipline. When you’ve finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend your planet. … It’s very tedious work, but very easy.”
I am sure that we must keep doing this “tedious work” if we want to preserve our common home for future generations. We must tend our planet.
The subject of environmental protection has long become a fixture on the global agenda. But I would address it more broadly to discuss also an important task of abandoning the practice of unrestrained and unlimited consumption – overconsumption – in favour of judicious and reasonable sufficiency, when you do not live just for today but also think about tomorrow.
We often say that nature is extremely vulnerable to human activity. Especially when the use of natural resources is growing to a global dimension. However, humanity is not safe from natural disasters, many of which are the result of anthropogenic interference. By the way, some scientists believe that the recent outbreaks of dangerous diseases are a response to this interference. This is why it is so important to develop harmonious relations between Man and Nature.
It was a part of a talk he gave at this year's Valdai Discussion Club meeting.
I found the excerpt remarkable because it included this, on might say, anti-capitalistic statement:
.. an important task of abandoning the practice of unrestrained and unlimited consumption – overconsumption – in favour of judicious and reasonable sufficiency, when you do not live just for today but also think about tomorrow.
That 'green' statement will rile those people who argue for free markets and a right to sell bullshit in ever more flavors. In their view the fight against such 'communists' thinking must be renewed.
As the full English transcript of Putin's speech and the two and a half hour Q&A is now available I can also quote another interesting passage where Putin talks about capitalism and the role of the state. His standpoint seems very pragmatic to me:
Cont. reading: Putin On The Role Of The State In The Economy
Guess Who Said This
Guess who said this:
Many of us read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry when we were children and remember what the main character said: “It’s a question of discipline. When you’ve finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend your planet. … It’s very tedious work, but very easy.”
I am sure that we must keep doing this “tedious work” if we want to preserve our common home for future generations. We must tend our planet.
The subject of environmental protection has long become a fixture on the global agenda. But I would address it more broadly to discuss also an important task of abandoning the practice of unrestrained and unlimited consumption – overconsumption – in favour of judicious and reasonable sufficiency, when you do not live just for today but also think about tomorrow.
We often say that nature is extremely vulnerable to human activity. Especially when the use of natural resources is growing to a global dimension. However, humanity is not safe from natural disasters, many of which are the result of anthropogenic interference. By the way, some scientists believe that the recent outbreaks of dangerous diseases are a response to this interference. This is why it is so important to develop harmonious relations between Man and Nature.
No cheating please. Guess. Who said the above?
Please let us know your first guess in the comments.
Open Thread 2020-84
Silly Season
Washington Post, November 19, 2017
Justice Department pushing Iran-connected charges in HBO hack, other cases
Last month, national security prosecutors at the Justice Department were told to look at any ongoing investigations involving Iran or Iranian nationals with an eye toward making them public.
The push to announce Iran-related cases has caused internal alarm, these people said, with some law enforcement officials fearing that senior Justice Department officials want to reveal the cases because the Trump administration would like Congress to impose new sanctions on Iran.
Washington Post, October 22, 2020
U.S. government concludes Iran was behind threatening emails sent to Democrats
U.S. officials on Wednesday night accused Iran of targeting American voters with faked but menacing emails and warned that both Iran and Russia had obtained voter data that could be used to endanger the upcoming election.
The disclosure by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe at a hastily called news conference marked the first time this election cycle that a foreign adversary has been accused of targeting specific voters in a bid to undermine democratic confidence — just four years after Russian online operations marred the 2016 presidential vote.
The claim that Iran was behind the email operation, which came into view on Tuesday as Democrats in several states reported receiving emails demanding they vote for President Trump, was leveled without specific evidence.
…
Metadata gathered from dozens of the emails pointed to the use of servers in Saudi Arabia, Estonia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, according to numerous analysts.
Reuters, October 22, 2020
U.S. intelligence agencies say Iran, Russia have tried to interfere in 2020 election
The emails are under investigation, and one intelligence source said it was still unclear who was behind them.
…
… the evidence remains inconclusive.
The claims that Iran is behind this are as stupid as the people who believe them.
I for one trust (not) those 50 former intelligence officials who say that all emails are Russian disinformation. They are intended to 'sow discord' which is something the U.S. has otherwise never ever had throughout its history.
Politico, October 19, 2020
Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say
More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails … “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
…
While the letter’s signatories presented no new evidence, they said their national security experience had made them “deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case” and cited several elements of the story that suggested the Kremlin’s hand at work.
“If we are right,” they added, “this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this.”
No, this doesn't make any sense. It is not supposed to do that.
Nagorno-Karabakh Talks Again Fail – No End Of War In Sight
As we had expected the ceasefire in the war on Nagarno-Karabakh did not hold. Azerbaijani units, supported by Turkish mercenaries from Syria, have gained new ground (yellow, blue) on the lower grounds of the southern front.
via ISW news – bigger
The topographic map shows that Armenian troops have left the hard to defend lower grounds and retreated towards the mountains. For Azerbaijahn to proceed onto higher ground will be much harder than the previous fighting.
via Imago Pyrenaei – bigger
The low ground also offered little protection for the Armenians from the massive aerial attacks by the Turkish and Israeli drones that Azerbaijahn is using. Armenian units had big losses of tanks and other equipment to aerial attacks.
However, during the last 36 hours, Armenia has shot down 8 drones. It seems to have finally found a way to detect and hit them. Canada has stopped the export of gimbal targeting turrets to Turkey. Without these the drones are blind. One recently destroyed Turkish Bayraktar drone had a very recent manufacturing date of September 2020. It is thus not a stock item. That together means that Erdogan's son in law, who produces these drones, will soon have problems to supply more of them.
Another round of talks with Armenian and Azerbaijahni representatives has been held in Moscow today.
After today's talks had ended the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan offered a rather dark outlook for the conflict:
Cont. reading: Nagorno-Karabakh Talks Again Fail – No End Of War In Sight
U.S. Again Moves Goalposts For Nuclear Treaty Extension
The Trump administration wants to abandon all nuclear arms treaties with Russia. It has already left the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty that restricted some classes of shorter range nuclear weapons. It left the Open Sky treaty which allowed for verification flights. It is now letting the New-START treaty with Russia run out.
New-START limits the number of deployed strategic weapons and nuclear warheads that can be used for intercontinental attacks. These include long range bombers, silo based nuclear missiles and the number of submarine launched nuclear missiles. The treaty does not limit the number of short range nuclear weapons or the number of nuclear warheads which are not deployed but held in reserve.
The current treaty will end on February 5 2021 unless Russia and the U.S. agree to extend it for up to 5 year as that the treaty foresees. The Trump administration has said that it wants a new agreement before the upcoming election. There are now only two weeks left to negotiate an extension.
While the Trump administration wants to abandon New-Start it does not want take the blame for doing so. It first tried to include China, which has far fewer weapons than the U.S, and Russia, into the treaty. China did not want to part of the treaty even as the U.S. practiced childish diplomacy theatre to 'shame' China into negotiations.
The talks were going nowhere as the U.S. rejected the five year extension Russia wanted and demanded that other Russian arms, not covered by the current treaty, should also be included. On October 16 Russia's President Putin held a meeting with his national security cabinet. They discussed the treaty negotiations:
President of Russia Vladimir Putin:
Before we get to the main item on today’s agenda, I would like to ask Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov whether there has been any progress in the dialogue with the United States to extend one of the central documents in terms of international security and arms control. I am referring to the New START, the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms.
Where are we in the talks with the Americans?
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov: Mr President,
In keeping with your instructions, we remain quite proactive in our contacts with our American colleagues on strategic stability matters in all their aspects, including by emphasising our initiative to take a decision without delay to extend the New START, set to expire in February 2021, for a new five-year term without any preconditions. This initiative remains on the table.
…
Vladimir Putin: It would be extremely sad, if this Treaty ceased to exist and was not replaced by another fundamental document of this kind. During all the previous years, the New START worked and worked properly, performing its fundamental role as a constraint curtailing the arms race and a tool of arms control. It is clear that we have new weapons systems that the American side lacks, at least for the time being. But we are not refusing to discuss this aspect of the matter as well.
In this regard, I have a proposal, namely, to extend the Treaty now in effect unconditionally for at least a year in order to have a chance to hold substantive talks on all the parameters of problems that are regulated by treaties of this kind, lest we leave our countries and all nations of the world with a vested interest in maintaining strategic stability without such a fundamental document as the Strategic Offensive Arms Limitation Treaty.
Please, formulate our position to the US partners and try to obtain at least some comprehensible reply from them as soon as possible.
Sergei Lavrov: We will do it as soon as we can, Mr President.
Vladimir Putin: Thank you.
The U.S. rejected the offer:
Cont. reading: U.S. Again Moves Goalposts For Nuclear Treaty Extension
Bolivia Has Won. Will Trump Win Too?
It seems that Elon Musk has lost the election in Bolivia:
Even Morales’ nemesis, the rightwing interim president, Jeanine Áñez, conceded the left had come out on top. “We do not yet have the official count, but the data we do have shows that Mr Arce [has] … won the election. I congratulate the winners and ask them to govern thinking of Bolivia and of democracy,” Áñez tweeted.
Congratulation to the Movimiento al Socialismo, its candidate Luis Arce and the people of Bolivia who withstood the onslaught of intimidation and violence from the right and the military. Even as democracy is now restored in Bolivia it would be wrong to let the right and the military get away with what they have done. They will otherwise try to do it again. The coup leaders should be hauled in front of a court. Bolivia should ask Venezuela for advice on how to coup proof its military forces.
As the U.S. regime change operation in Caracas has failed, Washington will now revert to other measures to dispose of the leaders of that country. Sanctions for this or that bullshit reason are just around the corner. Bolivia must integrate itself with other socialist and 'resistance' nations and seek autonomy from imperialist imports.
Now onto the other election that is on peoples' mind.
While most polls show that Joe Biden will win the U.S. election my gut is telling me that Donald Trump will have a second term. The election might well become a repeat of 2016 when Trump won even though most media had predicted that Hillary Clinton would win.
There are two main reasons for this. The local ground game and enthusiasm for the candidates.
The Democrats have neglected the ground game. Their get out the vote efforts seem minimal. Meanwhile the Republicans are going from door to door and have registered large number of voters:
Republican registration has ticked up in key states at the same time Democratic field operations were in hibernation. Democratic turnout is surging in the early vote. But it’s unclear whether it will be enough to overcome an expected rush of ballots that Republicans, leerier of mail voting, will cast in person on Election Day.
There is uncertainty about the accuracy of polling in certain swing states, the efficacy of GOP voter suppression efforts and even the number of mail-in ballots that for one reason or another will be disqualified.
Biden has collected more donations than Trump but money can only buy him advertisement. Trump gets media attention for free due to the constant outrage the Democrats project on him.
The second reason for predicting a Trump win is the enthusiasm of his supporters. Video shows thousands of people standing at the streets to wave at a passing Trump convoy in California. Meanwhile Biden goes out to read from giant teleprompters to empty parking lots.
While Trump will be campaigning all week Biden decided to stay at home to prepare for the next debate. How can he defend himself against the serious corruption accusations that his son's emails seem to support?
The Democrats under Biden have shunned the progressive policies who brought the most enthusiasm to the primaries. Everyone presumes that the center-right Biden is just a stand in who will be removed soon to be replaced by the center-right Kamala Harris. Harris has been Hillary Clinton's choice since at least mid 2017. During the primaries she never polled higher than 2%. Politically she is not an attractive candidate.
The other people behind the Biden/Harris campaigns are just the same warmongers who wreaked havoc all over the world during the Obama administration.
Max Abrahms @MaxAbrahms – 22:14 UTC · Oct 18, 2020
I’m expecting America to get needlessly involved in more conflicts in the name of democracy, freedom, credibility, resolve & leadership. Just listen to folks like Michèle Flournoy, Mayor Pete, Susan Rice. Non-intervention has been branded as a Putin gift. We live in stupid times.
Patrick Porter @PatPorter76 · 5h
I'm skeptical of whether a Biden presidency will significantly draw down US military presence in ME. As well as the general forces that favour inertia, there will always be more pressing things for a new Democrat president to do.
Trump has botched the response to the pandemic. But would a Democratic president have done better against the resistance of many states against harsher control measures? The reasons the U.S. was hit so hard are in my view ingrained in its society. A different president would have prepared somewhat better but the outcome would likely not have been much different.
On most domestic issues Trump is only slightly to the right of a Biden/Harris administration. His foreign policy is less warmongering but more chaotic than a Democratic administration would likely be. That makes him in total more preferable to me.
That does not mean that I would vote for Trump. If I had a vote in the upcoming election it would likely go to where it does the least harm – to some third party candidate who argues for more peaceful and more socialist policies.
The MoA Week In Review – Open Thread 2020-83
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
- October 13 – Professor Chossudovsky Is Wrong – Here Is How PCR Tests Work
Related:
Last week there was an outbreak of Covid-19 in Qingdao, a harbor city of 11 million in south China. Two dock workers had fallen ill. A CT scan room used for the Covid-19 patients was not properly disinfected and another 14 people got the virus. Alarmed about the outbreak the authorities tested all people in Qingdao. Within 5 days 10.8 million RT-PCR tests were taken and processed. Chossudovsky and others claim that these tests often produce 'false positive' results. So how many 'false positives' did they find in Qingdao?
Qingdao finishes city-wide testing, finds no new COVID-19 cases – Global Times
None. Zero. Nada. RT-PCR tests DO NOT produce false positive results.
—
Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – Open Thread 2020-83
More Pressure On Russia Will Have No Effect
Over the last years the U.S. and its EU puppies have ratcheted up their pressure on Russia. They seem to believe that they can compel Russia to follow their diktat. They can't. But the illusion that Russia will finally snap, if only a few more sanctions ar applied or a few more houses in Russia's neighborhood are set on fire, never goes away.
As Gilbert Doctorow describes the situation:
The fires burning at Russia’s borders in the Caucasus are an add-on to the disorder and conflict on its Western border in neighboring Belarus, where fuel is poured on daily by pyromaniacs at the head of the European Union acting surely in concert with Washington.
Yesterday we learned of the decision of the European Council to impose sanctions on President Lukashenko, a nearly unprecedented action when directed against the head of state of a sovereign nation.
…
It is easy enough to see that the real intent of the sanctions is to put pressure on the Kremlin, which is Lukashenko’s guarantor in power, to compound the several other measures being implemented simultaneously in the hope that Putin and his entourage will finally crack and submit to American global hegemony as Europe did long ago.
…
The anti-Russia full tilt ahead policy outlined above is going on against a background of the U.S. presidential electoral campaigns. The Democrats continue to try to depict Donald Trump as “Putin’s puppy,” as if the President has been kindly to his fellow autocrat while in office. Of course, under the dictates of the Democrat-controlled House and with the complicity of the anti-Russian staff in the State Department, in the Pentagon, American policy towards Russia over the entire period of Trump’s presidency has been one of never ending ratcheting up of military, informational, economic and other pressures in the hope that Vladimir Putin or his entourage would crack. Were it not for the nerves of steel of Mr. Putin and his close advisers, the irresponsible pressure policies outlined above could result in aggressive behavior and risk taking by Russia that would make the Cuban missile crisis look like child’s play.
The U.S. arms industry lobby, in form of the Atlantic Council, confirms the 'western' strategy Doctorow describes. It calls for 'ramping up on Russia' with even more sanctions:
Cont. reading: More Pressure On Russia Will Have No Effect
“It’s a hard Brexit’s a-gonna fall”
Today the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that Great Britain is now preparing for a no-deal divorce from the European Union:
The UK has to "get ready" for no trade deal with the EU, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said.
Unless there was a "fundamental" change of direction from the EU, he said the two sides would not be able to agree a post-Brexit economic partnership,
The UK set a deadline of Thursday to decide whether it was worth continuing talks amid continuing disagreements.
Both sides have indicated they want to carry on but the EU has said it is up to the UK to make the next move.
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said a no-deal outcome seemed to be moving closer after Thursday's meeting of EU leaders – which the UK was not present at – failed to "move the dial".
There will be no 'fundamental' change in the EU position. Yesterday's EU leader meeting had put the ball into the British part of the field:
At a summit in Brussels, the EU proposed a further “two to three weeks” of negotiations but Europe’s heads of state and government offered Johnson little succour, demanding that he alone needed to “make the necessary moves to make an agreement possible”.
The intervention was evidently regarded as incendiary in No 10 as Johnson had said he would make a decision on Friday on whether there were grounds to continue the talks. In September, he had said that without agreement by the time of this summit the government would “move on” to focus on no-deal preparations.
The summit communique issued on Thursday afternoon noted the lack of progress but asked the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, to “continue negotiations in the coming weeks”. To the frustration of Downing Street, a call for an “intensification” of talks, included in an earlier draft of the statement, was deleted by the time leaders signed it off.
The EU says Britain still has to move on several points:
Cont. reading: “It’s a hard Brexit’s a-gonna fall”
Open Thread 2020-82
Media Again Falsely Claim That Joe Biden’s Intervention In Ukraine Was Innocent
Yesterday the New York Post posted a bombshell report related to Joe Biden's corrupt interventions in the Ukraine:
Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad
Hunter Biden, Joe's son, was hired as lobbyist by the Ukranian gas company Burisma while his father, then Vice President of the United States, directed U.S. foreign policy with regards to the Ukraine.
Joe Biden famously ordered (vid) the Ukrainian President Poroshenko to fire his General Prosecutor Viktor Shokin. He threatened to otherwise withhold a $1 billion loan to the Ukraine. Biden's pressure to fire Shokin came ten days after Shokin had confiscated several house of Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky. Shokin was eventually fired, the loan to the Ukraine was released and the corruption case against Zlochevsky was buried.
Joe Biden has denied:
- That he had talks with his son about Hunter's lobbying job for Burisma.
- That he had ever any talk with Burisma related people.
- That his insistence on firing Shokin was related to an investigation by Shokin into the owner of Burisma.
The emails the NY Post posted show that one of Burisma's managers thanked Hunter Biden for arranging a meeting with Joe Biden. The source of the emails is allegedly a laptop owned by Hunter Biden which was left at a repair shop.
Some Biden acolytes claim that the emails must have come from an alleged Russian hack of Burisma. But the NY Post also published private photos of Hunter Biden showing him smoking and passed out next to a crack pipe. The photos may well have been, as the Post claims, on a laptop Hunter Biden owned. It is extremely unlikely that they were hacked from Burisma severs.
The Biden campaign offered only a weak refutation of the NY Post claim that he met with the Burisma manager:
Biden’s campaign would not rule out the possibility that the former VP had some kind of informal interaction with Pozharskyi, which wouldn’t appear on Biden’s official schedule. But they said any encounter would have been cursory.
In an unprecedented manipulative act Facebook as well as Twitter censored links to the NY Post story:
Cont. reading: Media Again Falsely Claim That Joe Biden’s Intervention In Ukraine Was Innocent
U.S. Fails To Find Allies For Waging War On China
The U.S. wants to counter China's growing economic and political standing in the world.
The Obama administration had attempted a 'pivot to Asia' by building a low tariff economic zone via the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). It would have excluded China. The Trump administration rejected the TPP and withdrew from it. It launched an economic war against China by increasing tariffs on Chinese products, prohibiting high tech supplies to Chinese manufacturers, and by denying Chinese companies access to its market.
It has also tried to build a military coalition that would help it to threaten China. It revived the 2007-2008 Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and rebranded it as the U.S.-Australia-India-Japan Consultations Quad. The aim was to turn it into an Asian NATO under U.S. command:
The U.S. State Department’s No. 2 diplomat said Monday that Washington was aiming to “formalize” growing strategic ties with India, Japan and Australia in a forum known as “the Quad” — a move experts say is implicitly designed to counter China in the Indo-Pacific region.
“It is a reality that the Indo-Pacific region is actually lacking in strong multilateral structures. They don’t have anything of the fortitude of NATO, or the European Union,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun said in an online seminar on the sidelines of the annual U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum.
“There is certainly an invitation there at some point to formalize a structure like this,” he added.
But it turns out that neither Australia nor Japan nor India have any interest in a hard stand towards China. All look to China as an important trade partner. They know that any conflict with it would cost them dearly.
On October 6 Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flew to Tokyo for a meeting with the other foreign ministers of the Quad. He soon found that no one would join him in his militant talk:
Cont. reading: U.S. Fails To Find Allies For Waging War On China
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