From a Post article today:
“At a time when President Biden is urging international leaders to address global warming quickly, court actions this week make it clear that the U.S. judiciary is shaping the United States’ climate trajectory as much as the White House.”
When you allow judges to MAKE laws rather than INTERPRET them, you have little “representative parliamentary democracy” left!
Courts could make laws only in feudal times, when parliaments did not exist, there were no “elections”, and “courts” were just that - “King’s Counsel” under the direct aegis of the … “royal court”. Things are different today… or maybe not! In the US, judges can sit on the Supreme Court… until the day they die!
Here is a stark illustration of the abuse of the word and concept “technology” when in fact what is meant is (a) marketing and (b) customer data collection (includes of course emails and other means of badgering people who are simply “curious” but later are bombarded with offer of cheap loans and advice and so on).
Again, the “technology” has nothing whatsoever to do with productivity and everything with faster and wider consumption - which only expands production quantity but not quality… and leads inevitably to waste and to transfer of real wealth from those who need it to those who do not… by way of greater indebtedness!
https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/ceos-and-their-winning-strategies-20210820-p58kg7
Here is a stark illustration of the abuse of the word and concept “technology” when in fact what is meant is (a) marketing and (b) customer data collection (includes of course emails and other means of badgering people who are simply “curious” but later are bombarded with offer of cheap loans and advice and so on).
Again, the “technology” has nothing whatsoever to do with productivity and everything with faster and wider consumption - which only expands production quantity but not quality… and leads inevitably to waste and to transfer of real wealth from those who need it to those who do not… by way of greater indebtedness!
https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/ceos-and-their-winning-strategies-20210820-p58kg7
This is a humorous take on the kind of email harassment I’m talking about from “technology” companies:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/16/the-metropolitan-museum-wants-you-to-renew
Well… just after I lined that comment on “judges making law”… this column from Janet Albrechtsen at The Australian came up - right on the same topic!
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/only-thing-scandalising-our-judges-is-the-lack-of-scrutiny/news-story/cc4de763d086ffd05589657f24067176
Compare this juicy bit, for instance:
“The intervention this week by Glenn Martin, president of the judges’ union, responding to a piece I wrote last week, is a better way for judges to defend themselves from public criticism.
Martin said that a “great deal of law governing Australian citizens is made by senior judges. Through explaining what the law is – by developing the common law or very often by filling in the inevitable gaps in legislation.”
No one disputes that. The question is: when is it legitimate for a judge to make law? In small, cautious incremental steps that genuinely fill in a gap? Or in big, grand leaps that are inconsistent with parliament’s laws – like inventing a brand new category of ministerial duty of care?”
It’s yet another instance of the kind of “elephantiasis” or megalomania that is infecting a society without a firm moral compass, now extended even to our judiciary.
Biden’s Afghanistan fiasco: ‘We look like a deer caught in headlights’
The chaotic scenes in Kabul are unlikely to derail his domestic agenda but undermine his promise to restore competence
August 20, 2021 6:18 pm by Edward Luce in Washington
Not since Major General William Elphinstone’s retreating British army was picked off in 1842, has a foreign occupier left Afghanistan under such a cloud. It took three years after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 for its Kabul ally to submit to mujahideen forces. It was two years after the US military’s exit from Vietnam before Saigon fell to the communists in 1975. On Monday Kabul folded to the Taliban almost three weeks before the official day of America’s departure.
“We look like a deer caught in the headlights,” says Mathew Burrows, a former senior CIA officer now at the Atlantic Council. “It is one more chink gone in the American empire.”
The scenes of chaos at the Hamid Karzai International Airport will supply anti-American propagandists with years of footage. America’s failure after two decades of fruitless nation-building has many authors, starting with George W Bush and including Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
But as the president on whose watch the concluding fiasco took place, Joe Biden’s name will be indelibly linked to it. The question is whether he can extract any foreign policy gains in what one analyst described as Biden’s “Ides of August”. Since he was partly elected on a promise to restore competence to the White House, there is also concern that the fall of Kabul will wound Biden’s ability to push through his domestic agenda.
President Joe Biden meets with his National Security team of (L-R) secretary of state Tony Blinken, vice-president Kamala Harris, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, secretary of defence Lloyd Austin and chairman of the joint chiefs General Mark Milley to discuss the situation in Afghanistan in the Situation Room of the White House last week
President Joe Biden meets with his National Security team of (L-R) secretary of state Tony Blinken, vice-president Kamala Harris, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, secretary of defence Lloyd Austin and chair of the joint chiefs General Mark Milley to discuss the situation in Afghanistan in the Situation Room of the White House last week © Adam Schultz/White House/ZUMA/dpa
Much hinges on whether in the coming days the US can evacuate the thousands of remaining American civilians and tens of thousands of Afghan interpreters, fixers and contractors from an airport surrounded by armed Islamists. The fact that it has boiled down to this — a crush of fleeing Afghans trying to get through an airport perimeter controlled by the Taliban — is reputationally damaging.
Washington is awash in finger-pointing at a withdrawal plan that failed to foresee this contingency. The Bagram military base, which lies 35 miles north of Kabul and has two runways, would have been a secure point for an orderly evacuation. But the US military vacated the base on July 4. The White House did not push back on the Pentagon’s plan to extricate Americans with guns first and leave the unarmed civilians until later.
“It will be hard to separate Biden’s strategic decision to leave Afghanistan, which may ultimately prove to be right, with the hasty and sloppy and panicked way in which it has been executed,” says Steve Biegun, former US deputy secretary of state. “This comes as something of a body blow to Biden’s ‘America is back’ message. Everyone thought he was going to be different to Trump.”
A Taliban delegation led by the head of the negotiating team, Anas Haqqani (C-R), meeting with former Afghan government officials, including former president Hamid Karzai (C-L), at an unspecified location in Afghanistan last week
A Taliban delegation led by the head of the negotiating team, Anas Haqqani (C-R), meeting with former Afghan government officials, including former president Hamid Karzai (C-L), at an unspecified location in Afghanistan last week © Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan/AFP
Disputed intelligence
In addition to closing Bagram first, there are three additional questions about Biden’s competence. The first is the volume of US military equipment that has been left behind for the Taliban, including aircraft, hundreds of military Humvees and tens of thousands of rifles, rockets and night vision goggles.
The second is whether Biden ignored intelligence estimates suggesting the Taliban could recapture power on a far more rapid timeline than the six to 18 months the White House was saying. The third is Biden’s failure to consult fully with Nato allies about the speed and logistics of the pull out. On all three, the decision ultimately boils down to the president.
“It defies belief that this withdrawal was imposed by the military,” says a former senior Pentagon official. “The US military was following civilian orders.” The official adds that it was also misleading to blame what has happened on intelligence failure. “The intelligence agencies gave a range of forecasts, including the worst,” he says.
A US Army Chinook helicopter flight engineer sits on the ramp during a training exercise at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan
A US Army Chinook helicopter flight engineer sits on the ramp during a training exercise at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan © US AIr Force/Tech Sgt Gregory Brook/Reuters
Biden has repeatedly insisted that his hands were tied by Trump’s 2019 deal with the Taliban, which provided for US withdrawal in exchange for the Islamist group’s vow to forswear terrorism. But people close to Biden say that he would have pulled out of this “forever war” regardless.
The president’s rationale also sits uneasily with the fact that he has undone, or is seeking to undo, so much else that he inherited from Trump, such as the withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, the pull out from the Iran nuclear deal and quitting the World Health Organization.
“Biden has consistently since at least 2008 believed that the US was throwing good money after bad in Afghanistan,” says Jonah Blank, who was Biden’s South Asia policy adviser when he was chair of the Senate Foreign Relations committee. Blank took then senator Biden to Afghanistan three times, including an infamous visit in January 2009 — just days before he was sworn in as vice-president — in which he disgustedly walked out of a dinner with Hamid Karzai, the then Afghan president.
As vice-president in 2011, Biden visited an Afghan National Army training center in Kabul
As vice-president in 2011, Biden visited an Afghan National Army training centre in Kabul © Shah Marai/AFP/Getty
“If Karzai had shown some gratitude for American help, and indulged in some self-criticism, it might have gone differently,” says Blank. “Biden’s mind was pretty much fixed from then on.”
At home, Biden’s decision is popular, although some polls this week show a sharp negative tilt in public opinion as Americans watched the harrowing scenes from Kabul airport. In spite of having backed Trump’s deal with the Taliban, Republicans are depicting Biden as weak and hinting that he is unable because of his age to carry out his duties responsibly. This week for the first time Biden’s approval rating dropped below 50 per cent.
But there is little sign the fall of Kabul will damage his chances of passing his set piece $3.5tn spending bill which will depend on razor-thin party line votes. It is rare that a foreign policy setback, however embarrassing, derails a US domestic agenda.
US general Kenneth F. McKenzie touring an evacuation control center at Hamid Karzai International Airport last week
US General Kenneth F. McKenzie touring an evacuation control centre at Hamid Karzai International Airport last week © US Marine Corps/AFP/Getty
Outraged allies
The bigger impact on Biden’s role is likely to be felt with America’s allies and adversaries. Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign affairs chief, told the European parliament that the departure was “a catastrophe for the Afghan people, for western values and credibility and for the developing of international relations”. Armin Laschet, Germany’s possible successor to Angela Merkel after September’s general election, described it as “Nato’s biggest debacle since its founding”. Even the reliably Atlanticist British failed to conceal their disappointment with an America that had failed to keep them abreast of the details of its pullout.
The further the distance from Washington DC, which is split along fiercely partisan lines, the greater the blurring between Biden and Trump. “This looks like America First except that its officials can speak French,” says a former US intelligence officer.
History may yet distinguish between the unseemly manner of America’s pullout and the strategic logic behind it. Biden’s thinking is that there is no elegant way to quit a war you have lost.
Moreover, the sooner the US could leave Afghanistan, the more it could focus on America’s biggest strategic challenge of dealing with a rising China. Biden’s foreign policy priorities are the three Cs — China, Covid and Climate. There is concern, however, that Biden will feel so stung by the intense criticism of this week’s disarray that he will feel obliged to show that he is tough on China.
“Where is the strategic gain from this loss?” asks Burrows. “There will be pressure on Biden to show the upside and change the narrative.”
US Marines lead an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, on Wednesday
US Marines lead an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, on Wednesday © US Marine Corps/AFP/Getty
That temptation may be increased by China’s ill-concealed satisfaction with America’s humiliation. Twitter was awash with Chinese “wolf warriors” crowing over the humbling of America. It may be no coincidence that Chinese aircraft breached Taiwanese airspace on Wednesday in a war game exercise it said was prompted by the island’s “provocations”.
Xi Jinping takes aim at the gross inequalities of China’s ‘gilded age’
Reforms designed to ease social tensions and bolster legitimacy of Communist party rule
People look at a billboard advertising beer in Shanghai. Having spent four decades creating one of the most unequal societies on Earth, Beijing is now seized by a mantra of ‘common prosperity’
People look at a billboard in Shanghai. Having spent four decades creating one of the most unequal societies on Earth, Beijing is now seized by a mantra of ‘common prosperity’ © Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
August 20, 2021 2:02 pm by James Kynge
The new wind of egalitarianism sweeping China was never going to work out well for Kweichow Moutai, makers of a fiery liquor. The problem was not just that boozy business banquets were officially branded as “disgusting” or that one case of corruption involved an official who had taken 4,000 bottles of the liquor in bribes.
A deeper issue is that the company finds itself on the wrong side of China’s latest great social endeavour. Having spent four decades creating one of the most unequal societies on Earth, Beijing is now seized by a mantra of “common prosperity” — or redistributing spoils to hundreds of millions of have-nots.
Moutai, which is drunk in shot glasses and can cost thousands of dollars a bottle, has been a pungent symbol of China’s “gilded age”. Toasts of the liquor have helped cement the cosy symbiosis between elite dealmakers and government officials, generating fabulous riches for a charmed few.
So a recent sharp reversal in Kweichow Moutai’s fortunes may signal the size of the social engineering project that President Xi Jinping has in mind. The market capitalisation of the world’s most highly valued drinks company has shrunk by $207bn since a peak in early February — more than the value of Japan’s Suntory and Heineken of the Netherlands combined.
“There is a sea-change in the way the Chinese Communist party sees its legitimacy,” said Yu Jie, a researcher at Chatham House, a London-based think-tank. “Xi is addressing ordinary peoples’ agonies over unequal distribution of income and the lack of equal access to basic social welfare and some services.”
A commission led by Xi issued a call to arms this week. It said China would “regulate excessively high incomes and encourage high-income groups and enterprises to return more to society”. While the party had long allowed some people and regions to “get rich first”, it was now prioritising “common prosperity for all”.
At stake is the CCP’s social contract with China’s people, Yu said. “If the party defends the current status quo that is manifestly unfair in its distribution of wealth and opportunity, trust from ordinary people will collapse.”
But the task before Beijing is huge. The number of Chinese billionaires reached 1,058 last year, exceeding the 696 in the US, according to the Hurun Global Rich List. Yet some 600m Chinese live off a monthly income of about Rmb1,000 ($154).
Details on how and at what pace China plans to address such inequalities are sketchy or non-existent. But it is clear that several of China’s wealthiest private entrepreneurs are in the crosshairs. Tens of billions of dollars have been wiped from the wealth of tycoons such as Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, and Pony Ma, founder of Tencent, as new regulations have depressed their companies’ share prices.
The response of some savvy entrepreneurs has been to swing behind Beijing’s agenda. Wang Xing, founder of the food-delivery group Meituan, donated $2.3bn to a philanthropic fund that supports education and science. Tencent announced a $7.7bn fund dedicated to “common prosperity”, which it defined as boosting the income of low-income groups, healthcare coverage, rural economic development and education for less advantaged students. “As a Chinese tech company blessed by China’s reform and opening up, Tencent has always been thinking how to help social development with its own technologies and digital power,” the company said.
Other potential measures to close China’s wealth gap could include significant changes to the tax code. The lenient tax treatment of technology companies could be fully or partially withdrawn, obliging them to pay closer to the national corporate tax rate of 25 per cent, analysts said. Another measure under consideration is the implementation of a property sales tax.
But whatever detailed measures are adopted, the general policy direction is set firm. This is because of the particular manner in which the party signals and choreographs its rule.
At the 19th CCP Congress in 2017, Xi announced a change in the party’s “principal contradiction” — the philosophy that guides all its endeavours. The previous philosophy, set in 1981, emphasised acceleration of economic growth. Since 2017, the party has put the focus on reducing inequalities that threaten to undermine its legitimacy and improving the quality of people’s lives.
It has taken Xi four years to swing the full force of his administration behind the new policy direction, but he now appears determined, according to Chinese analysts. At the party’s 20th Congress to be held next year, he must show progress towards its newly defined objective.
Overall, though, the clearest way to understand what is happening in China is to compare it to 19th-century US history, said Yuen Yuen Ang, an associate professor at the University of Michigan.
The Gilded Age, which ran from roughly 1870 to 1900, was a time of rapid growth and gross inequality as millions of poor immigrants arrived in the US and wealth became concentrated in the hands of powerful industrialists. That period gave way to the Progressive Era, a time of extensive social and political reform. “Xi Jinping is attempting to summon China’s own progressive era,” said Ang.
On the US Presidency, there is a strong case to be made for getting rid of all the yesmen... Someone at the Post wrote that, at the very least, even in Trump's rotten occupation of the Oval Office, there were still plenty of people who disagreed with him... and were ready to resign for it... THAT has not happened with Biden... Why not?
Most of the people in Democratic presidencies are Harvard and Yale graduates... Something is not right... You don't want people like me making decisions... We're excellent at critiques... Hopeless at deciding...
Greg Sheridan today: "Although Biden is plainly in some cognitive decline, this was his decision, against the wishes of his generals. Whether ultimately the case for withdrawal was stronger than the case for maintaining a small, stabilising garrison, Biden could not have handled the mechanics, and optics, of the withdrawal more catastrophically. He nominated the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington as the effective deadline for US withdrawal. This was a huge symbolic gift to the terrorists.
And PLEASE!! Get rid of the Harris girl! Her father was a fine Keynesian economist. Long ago, I wrote a contemptuous review of his discussion of Joan Robinson's views on equilibrium theory and time in economics. But he was a lovely fellow, no doubt. I would have met him at Berkeley (UBC) if I had taken up Mel Uni's offer to study there. And to be sure, I liked a lot of his other "spunti" on "History versus Equilibrium". The problem with economists is that they are not historians, and the problem with historians is that they are not economists. The problem with both is that they have no notion of social theory or of disciplined systematic theoretical reasoning.
Nowhere in economics, history and social theory can one find the requisite degree of analytical and historical acuity needed to comprehend these highly complex matters. I acknowledge that people like Keynes and Robinson were 'clever'. But cleverness is no substitute for 'depth', for profound learning and reflection, which is what these jejune Bloomsbury and Cantabridgean prima donnas pathogenically and voluminously lacked for so long that they infected throngs of fellow travellers, slavish followers, and pathetic imitators and emulators. The predictable catastrophic epilogue of this obtuse intellectual priggishness is something with which not just the West but the entire world is yet to reckon!
Western economic analysts are large: they can contain many contradictions… so much so, that one is tempted “di prenderli tutti a calci nel sedere”. It is nothing short of mesmerising to see how these outstanding idiots “on the one hand” warn against the deleterious effects on the Chinese economy for Xi to take on the Robber Barons of the 21st century, criminals who, if there truly was a God and if any muse of justice smiled on this planet, would be hanging from the nearest tree - the most charitable treatment they deserve. And then, “on the other hand”, these ephemerate bastards proceed to see a glimmer of wisdom (“he might just, perhaps, maybe, be right”) in what Xi is doing - which is nothing short of the absolutely indispensable to keep China as a redoubtable force in the global “national political economy”, that is to say, a political economy founded not on the traitorous infamy of Western capitalist elites and their dastardly hypocritical “cosmopolitanism”, but rather on the Machtpolitik (power politics) of nations that dare to call themselves such.
So here are the two opposing views, juxtaposed for comparison and contrast, as voiced in today’s Bloomberg newsletter:
The “cosmopolitan” view:
“Xi has put China’s wealthiest citizens on notice, offering an outline for “common prosperity” at an Aug. 17 meeting of the Communist Party’s Central Committee for Financial and Economic Affairs. The plan includes income regulation and redistribution, according to state media reports.
Officials vowed to “strengthen the regulation and adjustment of high income, protect legal income, reasonably adjust excessive income and encourage high-income groups and enterprises to give back to society more.” Economists said the moves suggest Beijing may be moving closer to introducing taxes on property and inheritance.
A property tax has been mulled for years in China, seen as a way to put a cap on runaway prices and speculation while providing a juicy revenue stream for the government. But it’s never been implemented, for fear of derailing a sector that’s central to the economy’s well-being. Any such tax would likely have far greater economic implications than squeezing food delivery firms or slamming the brakes on a fintech IPO.”
Note the following passage: a tax on property has never been implemented… “for fear of derailing a sector that’s central to the economy’s well-being”.
And what, pray, is this central sector?
“Any such tax would squeeze food delivery firms and slam brakes on fin tech IPOs”!
Food delivery and fin tech firms! So these are the firms “central to the economy’s well-being” that Xi ought to be protecting?
I ask: is any physical violence adequate enough to be meted against such abominable idiocy or hypocrisy or both?
And now the other, the “national political economy” view:
“Given the flurry of Beijing missives against Chinese society’s perceived ills—from online gaming to “lay flat” teens to excess boozing—and the speed with which stocks slumped in their wake, it’s understandable that global funds want to stay away, at least for now. Yet if Xi gets his balance right, there may be dividends—though less for holders of tech stocks and more for the broader economy.
Indeed, a more regulated tech sector could see the wealth it creates more evenly spread among employees and allow greater competition. A less leveraged property sector would reduce financial risks for the entire economy, while the right tax mix may help cap soaring prices. And finally less money spent on after-school tutoring can ease financial pressures on middle class parents, maybe encouraging some to have more kids.”
Aaahh! What relief!
This is truly hard to believe. How any “republic” worthy of the name allows private enterprises to permit or even adjudicate over Taliban communications is impossible to countenance…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/08/20/taliban-internet-websites-twitter-facebook/
From The National Review:
“It has not been hard to notice how much Obama has kept his distance from his former veep as Biden does just that. You might prefer partying on Martha’s Vineyard with George Clooney and John Legend, too, if the alternative was making your political legacy a hostage to fortune in the hands of Joe Biden.”
The thing about this piece is that the title seems to invite to discipline, yet the content makes clear that it was all in jest! Aussies don’t or can’t comprehend the extent of the danger… as always, they think that “life is but a joke”. The harsh reality is that quite obviously unless a large proportion of people are vaccinated, Delta can overpower the health system… people who could easily be saved, will have to die… Aussies have to learn the meaning of war… and develop adequate discipline…
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/this-is-blackmail-not-leadership/news-story/f52c57e7e1144c1c8dc84272f5ae7297
Shame on The Australian editors, then, for publishing such an egregious piece, notable for the sheer callous, unconscionable and irresponsible “hebetude” (juvenile stupidity) of the writer…
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