Pentagon to cut stateside cost-of-living stipend for thousands of troops in 2022

The change will lead to approximately 48,000 troops missing out on the stipend

By Jon Brown | Fox News

The Department of Defense (DoD) announced last week that troops in 15 metropolitan areas and 21 non-metropolitan counties in the continental United States will be cut off from a cost-of-living allowance starting Jan. 1.

The change will lead to approximately 48,000 troops missing out on the Continental United States Cost-of-Living Allowance (CONUS COLA), according to Stars and Stripes.

Approximately 6,000 service members will remain recipients of the $8.5 million that the Pentagon allocated for the stipend, which is given to troops who are stationed at excessively expensive locations in the lower 48.



U.S. Army soldiers prepare to go out on patrol from a remote combat outpost on May 25, 2021, in northeastern Syria. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

The 2022 list comprises 20 non-metropolitan counties and six metropolitan areas, which include New York City, Long Island, and Staten Island in New York; Nantucket, Mass.; Boulder, Colo.; and San Francisco, Calif.

The COLA rate is based on information gathered by a contractor, which analyzes cost of transportation, goods and services, federal income taxes, sales taxes, and miscellaneous expenses, according to the DoD.

In this June 3, 2011, file photo, the Pentagon is seen from air from Air Force One. 

(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

A location becomes eligible for COLA when non-housing costs exceed 8% above the national average.

Among the locations that were cut in 2022 is the Washington, D.C., area, where troops had received a 1% supplement in 2021. Stipends for troops in Boston and Worcester, Mass., also got the ax.

Troops located in New York City will receive the highest stipend at 6%, which is down from 7% in 2021.

How much COLA a service member earns depends on geographic duty location, pay grade, years of service, and dependency status. The Pentagon explained that monthly payments for each CONUS COLA percentage point vary from $33 to $59 per month for troops with dependents, and from $22 to $45 per month for those without dependents.

Donald Trump Scottish gold resorts claimed over £3m in UK Government furlough, accounts show

Newly-published accounts show the Donald Trump’s golf and leisure businesses in Scotland claimed more than £3 million through the UK Government’s furlough scheme.

By Hannah Brown
Sunday, 26th December 2021

Accounts with Companies House show that Donald Trump's golf and leisure businesses in Scotland claimed over £3m in UK government furlough (Photo by Jan Kruger/Getty Images).

Golf Recreation Scotland Ltd, which owns the former US president’s Turnberry golf course and resort, received a total of £2.3m in grants under the furlough scheme last year, according to accounts filed with Companies House.

Meanwhile SLC Turnberry Ltd – a subsidiary of the company – made further furlough claims of between £435,000 and £1.1m from January to August 2021, according to government data not included in the published accounts, a BBC report has revealed.

It comes as the accounts also show Covid restrictions caused significant losses at Trump resorts in Ayrshire and Aberdeenshire, resulting in both companies reducing staff.

The accounts claim the average number of employees fell from 84 in 2019 to 63 last year.

Trump Turnberry recorded a loss of more than £3m in 2020 and the other Trump-owned course and resort in Balmedie reported a loss of £1.3m.

The controlling parties of both companies are the trustees of the Donald J Trump Revocable Trust, according to the accounts.

Accounts signed by Eric Trump, son of Donald Trump, state: "Government support was helpful to retain as many jobs as possible. However, uncertainty of the duration of support and the pandemic's sustained impact meant that redundancies were required to prepare the business for the long-term effects to the hospitality industry.

"The UK Government furlough scheme was helpful to retain as many jobs as possible and the majority of employees were reinstated over the course of the year."

Artefacts from MIA on view at National Museum of Asian Art in US

Published: 27 Dec 2021 


The Peninsula

Doha: For the first time in the United States, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art is showcasing an exceptional group of seventeenth-century textiles and full-length oil portraits from Safavid Iran (1501 – 1722) on loan from the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA).

Fashioning an Empire: Safavid Textiles, are on view from December 18, 2021, through May 15, 2022, forms part of the Qatar-USA 2021 Year of Culture, an annual international cultural exchange designed to deepen understanding between nations and their people.

Complemented by some of the finest illustrated manuscript paintings from the National Museum of Asian Art, the exhibition underscores the importance of silk in seventeenth-century Iran’s social, economic, and religious life and its role in positioning the empire at the nexus of a vibrant global exchange.

In addition to fueling economic prosperity, textiles served as powerful intermediaries for new artistic ideas and stimulated a vibrant new Safavid pictorial language.

“It is very meaningful to have this collection on view in Washington, D.C., for audiences outside of Doha to see these precious Safavid textiles and full-length portraits for the first time,” said Dr. Julia Gonnella, Director of the Museum of Islamic Art.

“These exquisite carpets and brocade textiles speak to the importance of Persian silk to the country of Iran as an export to the Ottoman Empire and Europe. And their details delight on their own as well.”

MIA, one of the world’s premier institutions of Islamic art, is currently carrying out a facilities enhancement project to reinstall its permanent collection galleries to provide a more accessible, engaging, and educational experience. The reimagining of the collection galleries will introduce a comprehensive visitor trail, create expanded interpretive materials to help contextualise the masterworks, and provide new mobile and child-friendly resources to make the museum more accessible for families and younger visitors. Many newly acquired and conserved works of art will be on view with a large percentage displayed in MIA’s permanent galleries for the first time, alongside the masterpieces for which MIA is known internationally.

“We are delighted to welcome visitors to this landmark exhibition that tells such a poignant story of global and artistic exchange,” said Chase F. Robinson, the museum’s Dame Jillian Sackler director.

“We are especially proud to highlight for the public the rich artistic traditions of the Safavid empire, which ruled for over 200 years and under which Persia became a great cultural centre. Painting, metalwork, textiles and carpets, as well as architecture, poetry and philosophy reached new levels of excellence under Safavid patronage.”

“While curating the exhibition, I sought to conjure not only the remarkable cosmopolitanism of 17th-century Iran, but also communicate the power of textiles as one of the most successful conduits for transmitting new artistic ideas between the East and the West,” said Massumeh Farhad, chief curator and The Ebrahimi Family Curator of Persian, Arab, and Turkish Art at the National Museum of Asian Art. She is currently serving as the senior associate director for research.

Shah Abbas I (reigned 1589–1629), who ruled Iran from his new capital Isfahan, transformed silk into the empire’s most lucrative export commodity.

Transported by land and by sea to Europe, Russia, and the east, silk brought great wealth and prosperity to Iran. Fabrics were fashioned into clothing and used as indicators of status and wealth; they played an equally important role as furnishing, upholstery, covers, and curtains.

“It has been a great honor to work with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art on Fashioning an Empire: Safavid Textiles from the Museum of Islamic Art,” said Aisha Al Attiya, Director of Cultural Diplomacy, Qatar Museums.

“Over the last year, as a part of the Qatar-USA 2021 Year of Culture, we have had the opportunity to introduce Qatari culture and traditions to the people of the United States. We are happy to share important works from Qatar Museums’ renowned Museum of Islamic Art collection with American audiences and are delighted that this exhibition will open to the public on December 18, Qatar National Day. It is a great way for us to close out our 2021 program.”

The Qatar-USA 2021 Year of Culture saw a wide-ranging mix of exhibitions, festivals, bilateral exchanges, and events in Qatar and the United States throughout the year, including the opening of Jeff Koons: Lost in America at QM Gallery Al Riwaq, Virgil Abloh: Figures of Speech at the Fire Station, and the U.S. edition of JEDARIART, a Qatar Museums public art initiative, which saw Qatari artists making their mark on urban walls in several cities in the U.S. The Qatar-United States 2021 Year of Culture is sponsored by ExxonMobil.

Deng Xiaoping and the Communist Party Don't Deserve Credit for Chinese Economic Power

China's economic reforms were bottom-up, not top-down.

GUSTAV JONSSON | 12.26.2021 7:00 AM


(Photo 61887458 © Waihs | Dreamstime.com)

Apologists for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) never fail to mention that it lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty—conveniently forgetting that a whole lot of that poverty was caused by the CCP's own policies since taking over the country in 1949. The party takes full credit for the country's economic rise, and Deng Xiaoping, its paramount leader between 1978 and 1989, is said to be its "Great Architect."

That claim has augmented the CCP's power. In the 1970s, it looked like the party might become yet another ramshackle regime. Today it is flush with self-confidence, using the country's economic prominence to throw its weight on the international stage.

But the CCP is not in fact the linchpin of modern Chinese economic success. Ordinary people, not Deng, began the reform of China's economy. Real change arose organically from below; it was not, contra CCP myth, the result of Deng's genius. Reconsidering that myth is vital, given that this unearned reputation for turning around the Chinese economy leads many people to misjudge the regime's capacities to this day.

The Chinese party line, alas, has fooled much of the world. For example, in 2017 the BBC effused that Deng created the "state-driven, managed economic system" that is responsible for China's economic growth; to mark the 40th anniversary of Deng becoming the party's paramount leader, The Washington Post gushed that "Deng laid out the foundations for China's success" and instituted policies that "unleashed the creative and entrepreneurial potential of the Chinese people."

Far from embarking on a new correct path, Deng was trying to turn back the clock. He wasn't out to create a new economic system; he sought to restore the planned economy that had existed before the Cultural Revolution. The program he tried to implement after 1978 was based on the "Four Modernisations" Zhou Enlai had introduced in 1963 to revive the countryside after Mao's disastrous Great Leap Forward. During the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976, the party's radical elements encouraged renewed collectivization campaigns. Deng sought to reverse those extreme policies, not the planned economy itself.

Deng embraced reforms conservatively, after events on the ground had already made state restrictions obsolete. Upon taking control of the party, he endorsed private ownership of small plots but forbade dividing up collective land to individual households. It was only in 1982, four years after he took power, that households were officially allowed to contract production rights on collective land. He raised the price of grain that farmers compulsorily sold to the state by 20 percent—a substantial concession, but hardly evincing the kind of vision that the title "Great Architect" implies. Indeed, the year after the "great turning point" in April 1979, Deng and the party leadership ordered those who had left the communes to rejoin them.

The planned economy was undermined and subverted from below well before the communes were officially dissolved in 1983. Decollectivization occurred not because of Deng's vision but because ordinary people, under cover of the Cultural Revolution's chaos, left the communes. Several years before Mao died in 1976, it had become common for people to strike out on their own in search of economic opportunities. The party's leadership lamented that the countryside had "gone capitalist," but it couldn't reverse that trend. By 1980, half of all production teams in Guizhou province and more than half in Gansu were under household contracts. This system gave farmers secure tenures of collective farmland, which significantly increased both their productivity and health. One cadre in Anhui province likened household contracting, as reported by the historian Frank Dikötter in a 2016 article in The China Quarterly, to "an irresistible wave, spontaneously topping the limits we had placed…it could not be suppressed or turned around."

The Ironic Aftermath of Mao's Cultural Revolution

Deng was not changing history; he was swept away by it. As the historian Kate Zhou wrote in her 1996 book How the Farmers Changed China: "When the government lifted restrictions, it did so only in recognition of the fact that the sea of unorganized farmers had already made them irrelevant." Ordinary people, not Deng Xiaoping, resisted and reformed the planned economy.

To understand how the party's control of economic activity slipped, one must look to the history of the Cultural Revolution. Mao's "Great Leap Forward" of 1958–1962 had devolved into a Great Famine, killing tens of millions of people. While they starved, the party ramped up grain exports to fellow socialist countries in order to increase its international prestige.

This forced farmers to circumvent the state's orders—one had to lie, cheat, steal, smuggle, or trade on the black markets to avoid starvation. Apart from the party's loyal hacks, only the lucky or enterprising survived. In the early 1960s, even Mao had to acknowledge that the Great Leap Forward had failed. The Central Committee introduced a few paltry safeguards against extreme collectivization. Villagers were thus allowed to cultivate private plots, but only in their free time.

But Mao soon saw this as backsliding, and he launched the Cultural Revolution to secure his hold on the party. Revolutionary committees took control of China. The People's Liberation Army was ordered onto the streets, and the Soviet-Sino border conflict was used as a pretext to reassert control over the countryside. Private holdings were once more collectivized on a massive scale. But the party tore itself apart in the process; its organization was vitiated by factional infighting.

The Cultural Revolution broke the party's apparatus of control—it lost much of its capacity to coerce people's everyday behavior. During the turmoil, people took back some of their lost freedoms. They expanded private lots, left communes, sold produce for private gain, moved to the cities, and even opened underground factories. It is here that we find the true origins of China's modernization.

Successive waves of terror, starvation, and struggle sessions made many local cadres lose interest in upholding the party line. They instead focused on production; some even parcelled out every part of commune property to the highest bidder. Black markets flourished. Soon private firms ("collectives" only in name) sprouted up; enterprising villagers set up unauthorized brick factories and metalworks. The party leadership lamented that the countryside had gone capitalist, but there was usually little it could do about it outside major cities.

The Chinese People Chose the 'Capitalist Road'

The combined effect of millions of ordinary people engaging in trade and production on their own reshaped the Chinese economy. It took place on the sly, hidden from the party leadership. Had villagers organized in open defiance of party policies, it would've brought the full might of the state on their heads. Instead they outmaneuvered the state furtively. Cadres were helpless before massive non-cooperation; indeed, many authorities soon realized that they could live better if they forgot politics and embraced the profit motive. These bottom-up reforms gathered such momentum that the party leadership couldn't stop them.

Villagers established private firms and factories throughout the country. For example, the rate of industrialization in the countryside of Jiangsu province in the early 1970s far exceeded the rate of industrialization there under Deng. And it was these rural industries that fuelled China's GDP growth. Prosperity came not from the cities or from the state-owned enterprises, but from the countryside. The people who worked in these factories had often left the communes on their own initiative, not on party orders. When Deng became paramount leader in 1978, the silent revolution was already well underway.

Not only were factories established, but markets linked rich and poor provinces. And in the coastal province of Guangdong, traders revived overseas trading links, especially once restrictions were eased in 1972. Deng is said to have begun the process of opening up China, but as early as 1974, the amount of money reaching people in Guangdong from overseas was twice what it had been in 1965. Black markets existed everywhere, and although the state maintained rigid monopolies on several key products, almost everything was sold openly on the markets.

These markets benefited from the state's fixed prices. People were often willing to pay twice the fixed price for commodities, if not more, in order to get any at all. When the state lost its capacity to enforce restrictions on everyday commerce, private markets' higher prices gave producers an incentive to withhold their produce from the state. Thus crumbled major aspects of the planned economy.

In province after province, local leaders divided collective property to individual farmers who lost no time in transitioning from state-mandated monoculture. Although farmers were required to produce grain, many grew crops they could sell on private markets and then bought back their state-mandated grain quota with the profits. Others rented their land to work in industry, sending their earnings back to their families. This occurred regardless of the wishes of the Central Committee.

The party also lost control of people's movements. Villagers moved to the cities in search of opportunity, despite the state's efforts to keep them out. The household registration system was meant to keep track of people, but its agents were routinely outwitted. In Hubei province, the urban population grew by one-third of a million from 1965 to 1970, but by half a million in just the next two years. In Beijing itself, the public security bureau had to employ more than 10,000 officers to keep out unauthorized travelers and residents. Many lived insecure lives, constantly looking over their shoulder in fear of deportation, but they could often bribe their way to a residency permit. Around a fifth of residency permits in Hubei province were acquired by fraudulent means.

During the Cultural Revolution, parts of the party promoted the zealotry that had characterized the Great Leap Forward; in Dazhai village in Shanxi province, they claimed, farmers supposedly worked selflessly around the clock every month of the year. In certain provinces, private plots were collectivized much as they had been in the late 1950s. But other factions of the Central Committee cautioned against such excesses. Policies and counter-policies generated much confusion on the ground. No one could be sure of the "correct" party line.

This confusion gave local cadres considerable freedom to interpret the rules as they sought fit. Far from Beijing's watchful eyes, cadres bothered less and less with politics; more and more, they worked with villagers to establish black markets and decollectivize the countryside. In one village in Shaanxi province, a party report complained that "Not one Party meeting has been called, and not one of the prescribed works of Marx, Lenin and Chairman Mao has been studied." But as historian Dikötter wryly noted in his 2016 book The Cultural Revolution, telephone conferences for some production brigades "were not a realistic prospect, since the lines had been cut down and were used by the villagers to dry sweet potatoes."

Marxism and 'Great Man' History

Marxist theory sees history shaped through the interaction between material forces and social relations of production. But in practice, Marxists have often given themselves over to hysterical personality cults. Instead of rejecting the "Great Man" view of history, Chinese Marxism has succumbed to it. Mao thought that he could reshape the entire economy by inspiring the population into colossal feats of labor by sheer willpower. Deng never committed that blunder, but the fact that he is remembered as the man who almost singlehandedly put China on a new historical path is a testament to how seductive the Great Man thesis remains. And now Xinhua, China's official news agency, declared that "Xi Jinping is undoubtedly the core figure mastering the tide of history."

But neither Xi nor Deng mastered the tide of history. Deng recognized that certain changes were inevitable, but his reforms were little more than legalizations of already occurring practices that he was shrewd enough to claim credit for. Why the party should still be thanked for it is another matter.

When Deng ordered the tanks into Tiananmen Square, his soldiers and generals were ready to commit murder on the proposition that his leadership was in China's best interest. Had he not been forced to introduce reforms, the party's hold on power might have been much looser; indeed, it might even have collapsed. Ironically, the party might owe its survival to the very people it formerly condemned as "capitalist roaders"—the ones whose bottom-up reforms allowed the regime to survive.

The War of Moron Aggression

The three horsemen of the apocalypse. 

Photo credit: DonkeyHotey / WhoWhatWhy (CC BY-SA 2.0)

KLAUS MARRE AND DONKEYHOTEY
12/26/21

With the political rifts of the past having grown into chasms, and one party more or less openly supporting a coup, there is increasing speculation that a second US civil war may break out. That’s complete nonsense, of course… because Civil War II is already underway.

Unlike the original Civil War, there is no telling when this one began. In fact, most people — including many of the combatants — are unaware that it has already started.

That is because it is not being fought on battlegrounds like Gettysburg, Antietam, or Bull Run, but in virtual arenas like Fox News, Facebook, and fringe message boards. The weapons of choice in these battles are not rifles, bayonets, and cannons, but rather lies, misinformation, and demagoguery.

As a result, the modern-day war profiteers are social media companies that are getting rich off this conflict. And, while they are making a killing, their users are doing the dying.

Instead of pitting the North against the South, this civil war is all about tribes (although, in truth, the geographical divisions between the different tribes match those of 1860s America pretty closely).

And, depending on which tribe is winning in a respective state, we might as well be talking about adversarial nations, because their ideologies are that far apart.

In fact, the differences in governance between California and Texas today are probably greater than those between New Hampshire and Tennessee in the 1860s. Back then, the primary disagreement between them was whether it’s OK to buy and sell human beings and hold them like cattle. Granted, that’s a biggie, but, apart from that, the average person in Manchester, NH, probably felt pretty similar about things as the average person in Manchester, TN.

That is no longer the case, in part because there aren’t many “average persons” in Texas or California today. The ideological divide has grown so intense that a conservative in California must feel just as oppressed as a progressive in Texas.

That is not to say that these tribes are equivalent. Just as in the original, one is much, much worse. However, any civil war probably brings out the worst in everybody.

Finally, the “generals” on one side of the sequel (which seems a fair description since race also plays a major role in Civil War II) are armchair warriors like Donald Trump or Tucker Carlson. The other side, which lacks comparable demagogues, is often made up of digital lynch mobs that attack anybody — friend and foe alike — who runs afoul of their respective and incredibly specific doctrines.

When there is open conflict, as on January 6, the combatants are not scared kids in blue and gray uniforms; they are oddly confident morons who dressed up for the occasion.

What we do know with certainty is that Civil War II has been quite deadly — especially over the past couple of years — and that no end is in sight. In fact, it’s probably going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

While it is impossible to say when this conflict started, it has been festering just below the surface of society for some time.

This modern civil war is the reason Americans don’t have the nice things their counterparts in the rest of the developed world enjoy — such as universal health care, affordable college education, ample vacation days, parental leave, and accessible child care.

That’s because the leaders of one of the two tribes have convinced their troops that the above are “socialism.” As a result, untold numbers of Americans have died and suffered… mostly in obscurity. Because writing about somebody who couldn’t afford to pay for their insulin, committed suicide to escape crushing student loans, or simply burned out from too much work with too few breaks just won’t get the same number of clicks and likes as something much more salacious if less consequential.

But, on the bright side, the US has an awesome military… unmatched by any rivals, at least in theory, if not on the actual battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

While the existence of Civil War II was largely hidden from casual observers before, two events have brought it out into the open: the election of Donald Trump and the coronavirus pandemic.

The former because Trump gleefully exploited the existing divisions and super-charged the animosity that Americans are feeling toward each other.

The latter because it showed that at least one tribe is willing to die for their cause — even if that cause is abjectly stupid.

As a result, 800,000 Americans are dead (although the real number is probably much higher, and this doesn’t take into account all of those who died because they couldn’t get the proper care for other conditions during the pandemic).

The numbers don’t lie: The US accounts for 4 percent of the global population but about 15 percent of known COVID-19 deaths. It ranks 20th overall in the pandemic mortality rate and first among its peer nations. Tens of thousands of these deaths could have been avoided if the pandemic response hadn’t become a battlefield of Civil War II.

Again, the numbers don’t lie: People who live in counties won by Trump are three times more likely to die from COVID-19 than those in counties that voted for President Joe Biden. While some of this can be explained by poorer health care in general in rural regions, the vaccination rate in such places is also much lower. And, of course, Republican governors are much less likely to issue mask mandates or take other steps to protect their citizens.

The craziest thing is that many of the gullible idiots who are sacrificing their lives (for essentially nothing, we might add) are perversely proud that they are failing to take the minimal precautions necessary to avoid much of this death and suffering.

But before the other tribe pats itself on the back, let’s not forget that this could also have turned out very differently. If the vaccine had been called MAGAvax or Trumpcure, it’s very likely that the vaccination rates would have been reversed because the left would have been wary of the science behind anything with Trump’s name on it (in addition to not wanting to give him credit for successfully fighting a pandemic in an election year).

So, where does this leave us?

In a pretty bad place. Because, just as it is impossible to specify when Civil War II began, it is equally impossible to imagine it ending well. In fact, it may not end at all.

Americans willing to sacrifice themselves, their communities, and our planet for their political beliefs may just be the new normal.

The cartoon above was created by DonkeyHotey for WhoWhatWhy from these images: Donald Trump caricature (DonkeyHotey / Flickr – CC BY 2.0), Tucker Carlson caricature (DonkeyHotey / Flickr – CC BY-SA 2.0), Ted Cruz caricature (DonkeyHotey / Flickr – CC BY-SA 2.0), and Stone Mountain (Peter Kaminski / Flickr – CC BY 2.0).

Democracy vs. fascism: What do those words mean — and do they describe this moment?
Andrew O'Hehir, Salon
December 26, 2021

Members of the Proud Boys march in Manhattan against vaccine mandates in New York City (AFP)

There's considerable talk about "democracy" and "fascism" these days, as the poles between which our society is supposedly suspended. But what do those words actually mean? If we admit, as I think we must, that in both cases what it says on the box is not exactly what's inside — that those are approximations or generalizations or terms of art — do they really help us understand the reality of this dark and puzzling historical moment, or are they just getting in the way?

Joan Didion would have tried to ask those questions, and to answer them. We should all lament that she will not wage that struggle, in full awareness that we might not have enjoyed the results. Didion understood, above all, that imprecision of language reveals imprecision of thought, and that the failure to "observe the observable" — her famous dictum for journalists — leads reporters and writers away from a genuine effort to tell the truth (however conditional and uncomfortable that may be) and into the self-flattering realms of fantasy, propaganda and myth.

RELATED: Golden State of hypocrisy: An interview with Joan Didion

Which is where we are, I'm afraid, with "democracy" versus "fascism." The democracy that Americans have been taught to venerate, and that many of us now seek to defend, is a limited and specific historical phenomenon, which has been on a downward trajectory of slow decay and creeping paralysis for at least 30 years. One core problem that the Democratic Party and many people in the political and media castes have been unwilling to confront directly is that defending institutions that patently do not work is a position of pathetic weakness, not to mention near-certain defeat.

As for the homegrown authoritarian movement some of us designate as fascism, it is rather like an opportunistic infection. The Trumpist insurgency did not cause the crisis of democratic legitimacy, and could not have taken hold or spread so rapidly in an actually functioning democracy. While it certainly bears some hallmarks of classic 20th-century fascism — hazy notions of racial, tribal or religious purity, and a fantasy of a lost golden age — it lacks many others, and in any case Hitler and Mussolini did not invent those phenomena. This particular populist uprising is both something new in American politics — in that sense a telltale sign of a world power in terminal decline — and something very old, the residue of deeper conflicts that long predate the concepts of democracy and fascism, or for that matter America.

It was Joan Didion who told us — decades ago, in essays so far ahead of their time they were understood as flights of literary fancy — that it was more accurate to say that politics was a subset of show business than the other way around, and that American political conventions had become scripted spectacles of pseudo-democracy, formally and structurally akin to the sham elections held in the Soviet Union. She made those observations while covering the presidential campaign — in 1988.

Didion never wrote anything about Donald Trump and his so-called movement, so I won't presume to know what she thought. Her declining health in recent years was only part of the reason; according to her nephew, the filmmaker Griffin Dunne, who directed the 2017 Netflix documentary "Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold," she simply didn't find Trump all that interesting:
I haven't talked to her in great detail about this, but I think that someone like Trump is just a less interesting figure for her to weigh in on because there's really no subtext. He's so impulsive and everything comes out of his forehead; what she specialized in, when writing about politics, was the message that politicians were trying to send and what the message really was. There's no there, there with Trump, and he's not even consistent.

Every remotely honest journalist, and a great many civilians as well, can relate to that: The absence of subtext, of coded or hidden meanings, is exactly what made the Trump presidency so addictive and/or so infuriating, depending on your perspective, and why he remains the focus of media fascination nearly a year after leaving the White House. (This is hardly a trade secret, but even on Salon stories about Trump tend to attract more readers than stories about Joe Biden, and that's clearly not based on political preferences.)

But seeking to decode the supposed binary (or perhaps the dialectic) of "democracy" versus "fascism," in hopes of uncovering what those terms conceal or what they reveal, is unmistakably a Didion-like project. What we call "democracy," in the context of the Trump movement's efforts to overthrow it, is structured by antiquated representational rules, an ungainly federal system and an entrenched partisan duopoly, which in practice have led to increasingly undemocratic or anti-democratic outcomes.

In the interests of observing the observable, I am compelled to point out that roughly half the American population — overwhelmingly among the poor and the working class — typically does not vote, and most of those people either view the political system with cynical detachment or ignore it altogether.

RELATED: The biggest political party in America you've never heard of

None of the dogmas shared by liberals infuriates me quite as much as the sanctimonious tendency to blame non-voters for Democratic defeats. This is inevitably framed in terms of an imaginary cadre of white middle-class radicals who were too puritanical to vote for Hillary Clinton or Al Gore (or whomever) but ought to have known better. To the extent that group exists, it is inconsequential, whereas the set of lower-income and poor people who never vote — which crosses all possible racial and regional boundaries — is enormous, and to a large extent constitutes the defining characteristic of American "democracy." Hand-wringing liberals are notably reluctant to discuss that latter group: It would be politically unsavory to blame those people for abstaining, but unacceptable to admit that their refusal to participate in a system that does not represent them is not irrational.

To use the Marxist term — something Joan Didion would likely never have done — our system is a "bourgeois democracy," now facing its inevitable moment of crisis. That is a descriptive term, not an insult: A bourgeois democracy is structured around the primacy of property rights, a "free market" and individual freedoms, all concepts that effectively did not exist before the 18th-century Enlightenment. In the classic Marxist analysis, Democrats and Republicans represent the interests of competing factions within the property-owning middle and upper classes. In the larger context of American political history, that's far too simplistic. But in terms of the last half-century or so, and how we got where we are today, it's also not blatantly wrong.

Another, somewhat subtler article of liberal or progressive dogma — and a far more convincing one, until very recently — is that if poor people were to vote in much greater numbers, Democrats would win every election and Republicans would be forced to face radical change or political doom. That dogma may still be correct in a larger sense; it certainly hasn't been systematically tested. But the great surprise of the 2020 election (echoed on a smaller scale in the 2021 off-year elections in Virginia and New Jersey) was that dramatically higher turnout did not produce a Democratic landslide, but rather a far more muddled political landscape. Joe Biden's victory was much tighter than polls suggested; Democrats expected to win seats in the House but wound up losing 13 — and only "won" a 50-50 Senate (I would argue) thanks to Donald Trump's petulant pot-stirring in the Georgia runoff elections.

RELATED: Can the real lessons of Virginia rescue the Democrats in 2022? It's definitely worth trying

Returning once again to the doctrine of observing the observable, this offers us important clues about two different but closely related phenomena: the current state of the Democratic Party, and the class character of the Trump insurgency. There's a great deal of discussion about the former topic, but the latter has become virtually untouchable (at least on the liberal-progressive "left"), for much the same reason that the non-voting population is viewed as an implacable, undiscussable feature of the landscape. Both questions, if examined too closely, threaten not just to undermine the supposed stability of the supposed democratic system, but to reveal that the stories we tell ourselves about how that democracy works, and even about how it could be improved, are not true.

It is true, of course, that an exclusive or primary focus on class in American politics has sometimes been used to demote or defer the importance of racism and white supremacy. The cadre of mainstream journalists who staged anthropological interventions in heartland diners after the 2016 election, and came away with tales of "economic anxiety" among the white working class, were justly derided for both cluelessness and condescension. Race and class have never been independent variables in American history, or at least not since the early 17th century. There is no way to consider one without the other; the friction and interaction between them, to a significant extent, is the story of American history.

RELATED: Democrats and the dark road ahead: There's hope — if we look past 2022 (and maybe 2024 too)

It does not follow that in order to correct for racism we must abandon all considerations of class, although that question has provoked a useless and destructive internal debate within the Democratic Party. It certainly doesn't follow that the role of class conflict in history is irrelevant to understanding the (blatantly racist) MAGA movement, which cannot strictly be defined in terms of its present-tense socioeconomic status or its irrational and alarming beliefs.

In my next article on the vexed relationship between "democracy" and "fascism," I will approach that third-rail issue in American politics, and propose that the class character of the Trump rebellion is baked in more deeply than we can readily perceive. On one hand, we do indeed confront a predominantly white and predominantly rural subset of the working class that has abandoned what we now call "liberalism" (or been abandoned by it). On the other, we confront an entrenched pattern that goes back well beyond the invention of such terms, to the very beginnings of capitalism, when the "peasants" were likely to side with monarchs and aristocrats against the bourgeois revolutionaries who offered them a new vision of "freedom," which they concluded (with some justice) was a trick.

Globalism under US leadership turns into a machine that destroys humanity: Russian scholar

By Global Times

Published: Dec 23, 2021 

A circus in town Illustration: Liu Rui/GTEditor's Note:

As tensions at the Ukrainian border escalate, many in the West continue to play up the crises in Ukraine and the Taiwan Straits, claiming both are under threat of "military attacks" from either Russia or the Chinese mainland. How should Beijing and Moscow respond to a smear campaign from the West? What is the future of the China-Russia partnership? Russian political scientist Vladimir Pavlenko (Pavlenko), who is also a columnist for Russian news agency REGNUM and research fellow at the Moscow-based independent public scientific organization Academy of Geopolitical Problems, discussed these issues with Global Times (GT) reporter Xia Wenxin.

GT: What do you think of the recent "Summit for Democracy" that was clearly against China and Russia? Did the US achieve its goal?

Pavlenko: It is too early to say whether Joe Biden succeeded or not. On one hand, he attempted to artificially divide the international community into those who are loyal to Washington and those who oppose it. This harms the credibility of the United Nations (UN) for not being able to prevent such a division.

On the other hand, the summit contributed to a further rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing which is strengthening our position in the world. Russia and China can attract those who disagree with the attempts by the US to maintain its hegemony at the expense of the UN. There is also the factor of uncertainty in US domestic affairs. Mid-term elections will be held in less than a year and if the Democrats lose the majority in both or in one of the chambers of the US Congress, the whole structure that Biden is building based on the "Summit for Democracy" may stagger.

GT: After the Summit, will the "democracy" card the US has been playing still be effective?

Pavlenko: The weakness of US democracy was clearly manifested in the massive crisis after the 2020 US presidential election. The Capitol riots that happened on January 6, 2021, prove there are very serious contradictions in US society that seem to be more and more like a steam boiler with a closed lid.

Under the erosion of the "world hegemon," Russia and China enjoy one main achievement. They have clearly demonstrated to people all over the world an alternative path of development that is based on equal relations and excludes the dictates from the strong ones. The rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing also strengthens the world's shaken strategic stability. This is very important amid the tremendous changes that are taking place on our planet.

The recent summit showed that the only thing the US can offer to its satellite countries is financial handouts, including Biden's $424.2 million Presidential Initiative for Democratic Renewal. This is how the US encourages participants to show up at the second summit and undermine the UN. Moreover, the US is trying to exclude any issue that cannot be taken under US control from the global agenda. Russia and China need to strengthen their opposition to this policy and have an active discussion. Also, both countries need to show that there is no "universal" interpretation of human rights and it is a tool of US hegemony. Each country is entitled to its own agenda on human rights and does not have to report to Washington about it.

GT: Many Western media outlets have recently claimed that China and Russia are simultaneously launching military operations against the island of Taiwan and Ukraine, and that they pose a threat to the US-led international order. What do you think of this smear campaign from the West against China and Russia?

Pavlenko: Both the island of Taiwan and Ukraine received an invitation from Biden to the "Summit for Democracy." This means that there is a completely different scenario under the guise of demagogy about the alleged "military preparations" of Russia and China against Ukraine and Taiwan island. The US expects to permanently tear Ukraine away from Russia by dragging it into NATO, and refuses the recognition of the one-China principle.

Neither Russia nor China is planning any "military solution" to the issue of Ukraine or the Taiwan question. Biden's speculation on these topics suggests that Washington may well be preparing major political and even military provocations and then put the blame on China and Russia. For the US it is not important at all if Ukraine and Taiwan island suffer in that case. For Washington, they are expendable material. Therefore, despite the slanderous nature of the US propaganda campaign, Moscow and Beijing should not let their guard down in any way.

GT: There is an opinion, especially in the West, that the current relationship between China and Russia is only a temporary alliance of convenience. What is your take on that? In what direction will the China-Russia partnership deepen in the face of constant harassment from the West?

Pavlenko: The Russia-China partnership is the union of the two most powerful states and peoples in Eurasia that prevents our great continent from becoming a bridgehead for US global domination. History shows that the external threat to the Eurasian peoples yields to greater stability and balance when Russia and China act together. The US has learned very serious lessons from our countries' joint international assistance to the heroic Korean people, who were subjected to US intervention in the 1950s. After falling back from the Korean Peninsula, the US made all of its efforts to sever our partnership for its own benefit.

Moscow and Beijing have also learned necessary lessons from the 20th century. The current rapprochement between Russia and China led by our leaders is not situational but strategic and future-oriented. The greater the threat posed by the policy of US hegemony, the more solid forms of economic, political, and military cooperation our two countries will need to repulse external threats. Our countries, peoples, and armed forces are ready for this.

GT: Many people compare the competition between the US and China to the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. How do you evaluate the current China-US competition? How will it end, in your opinion?

Pavlenko: The most important common feature of the Soviet Union-US and China-US confrontation is that rising socialism offers a new, more attractive model of the future to the world than capitalism. The latter has had its day. It is dying out but still clinging to power to rule the world and try to stop the "wheel of history."

In the era of digitalization, capitalism does not need people. A robot is more profitable for capitalists. It does not get sick, need social security or a pension or ask for a pay raise. The meaning of globalism does not lie in beautiful slogans like "one humanity." It is about transforming the present world made up by countries into a world of corporations.

We need to understand that capitalism was once reborn as imperialism and now it is malignantly taking on a new life as "globalism." And the main instrument to counter this is not a game of "universal" values but a clear statement about the content of scientific and technological progress. What are the interests behind this progress? The interests of the privileged minority or the absolute majority? This, in my opinion, is the main question of our time.

Globalism under the leadership of the US has turned into a machine that destroys humanity. And to defeat it, it is necessary to provide the world with a clear alternative program. This also aims to allow everyone see two things. First, the US is calling for a world serving a minority. In other words, it is calling for the division of humanity into the "superior" and the "inferior" through technology innovation. Second, there is the alternative to change these innovations for the common good. I am sure that this is beyond the power of capitalism and only socialism can achieve this.

It would be right for China to lay stress on the new model of development as well as clearly and distinctly explain to the world that a "shared future" is not only about material benefits. It can also lead to other higher, more harmonious spiritual state for mankind. Capitalism kills people's dreams and turns them into complete cynics. The task of socialism is to revive people's dreams. Then, people will be able to move mountains.


OPINION / VIEWPOINT
Democracy Summit is an instrument to maintain US hegemony
By Chen HongPublished: Dec 07, 2021 11:58 AM

US democracy. Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

The so-called Summit for Democracy summoned by Washington is in essence an autocratic attempt, as it haphazardly dictates the definition of democracy in spite of the diversity among the human race. It capriciously imposes an unreasonable regime of criteria according to one lopsided interpretation of democracy and unilaterally divides the world into two camps with iniquitousness. The hidden agenda behind such attempts is never about the wellbeing of the peoples around the world, but for the ulterior motive of retaining and maintaining the unipolar dominance of the US.

Systems of governance have evolved in history, developing and modifying to adapt to changing times and situations. Just as the shoe that fits one person could pinch another, there are different systems that have effectively proved to work for specific countries, but failed to do so for others. Francis Fukuyama was overwhelmed by the West's supposed triumph in the Cold War. He was simply off beam to assert that the Western way of governance was the ultimate consummation of political system for all human societies. The fallacy that history had come to an end is ridiculous, as history is by nature progressive and never stops. How could the whole human race stay stationary in one petrified system with no hope of further development? Fukuyama's premises attempt to serve only one purpose, which is to install a global political culture of Western hegemonic supremacy.

It is therefore entirely erroneous to create and impose a biased standard to measure, assess and judge different human communities under such dictatorial misguidance. People around the world reject such despotic irrational imposition of ways of life and systems of governance on all countries.

China's whole-process democracy has been able to bring about tremendous changes to this most populous country in the world. Around 770 million people have been lifted out of poverty, and a governance system of efficacy has proved to work efficiently at various levels in this country, as could be testified in China's successful fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. What's more, a self-cleansing regimen has been in place, to eradicate corruption, misconducts and poor efficiency among local and national officials and executives.

In spite of the fact that the US itself is fraught with disheartening problems and oftentimes calamitous failures in governance and management, the US has been alleging itself to be "the lighthouse of democracy." It brazenly makes judgments on other countries in accordance with its own political outlook and practices, and has been repeatedly attempting to force such ideology and regimes on other countries.

The Biden administration's Summit for Democracy is therefore bound to flop. The US has been acting increasingly like a wilful delinquent. Flexing its muscles and bluffing with brutal force, it tries to adopt a wolf pack tactic to besiege and suppress China, which it irrationally identifies as its archrival. In fact, even some of its longstanding allies only pay lip service to Washington's strategy, effectively rendering the gathering a farce of no consequence at all.

What the whole world should be vigilant about is an inherent iniquitous motive in this ill-intentioned congregation. Washington has become a divisive force to disrupt and sabotage the unity and stability of the international community. It attempts to deliberately create a demonised Otherness, and enlist and mobilise other countries and regions to isolate and overpower countries refusing to compliantly succumb to its unwarranted imposition and pressures. It malevolently attaches unjustifiable labels to create a political apartheid to coerce and compel countries like China, Russia and others to comply and conform.

Democracy is a sacred tenet for all human beings and should not be politicized and weaponized. It should not be used as an instrument to bully other countries, to bring about regime change, and to maintain the regional and global dominance of the US.

The UN charter proclaims clearly that all countries should be treated with "the principle of sovereign equality." To arbitrarily create divisions among the human race would only cast the world into catastrophic disunity and instability.

The author is a professor and Executive Director of the Asia Pacific Studies Centre, East China Normal University. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

Qin Gang: 95% of U.S. companies in China are profiting
CGTN



Why are U.S. companies facing a tougher time in China these days? Ambassador Qin Gang explained to Americans that it’s because of the rising competition from the fast-growing Chinese firms.

"20 years ago, China was at a double-digit growth and had very few domestic businesses to compete with American firms, which is why American business communities felt they were treated better.” Qin said.

“However, I advise American business people to not just see the pressure, but also the growing opportunities for the future. China will not close its doors but will only open it wider, which is the biggest certainty." Qin added.

"When we get another 800 million Chinese people richer, they will spend a lot more, which is unlimited purchasing power." Qin said. By 2020, China has lifted everyone in the Mainland out of poverty and has created hundreds of millions of middle class.

Qin cited reports by the American institutions, which show that 95% of the over 70,000 American companies in China are profiting and over 80% of USCBC members confirmed they wanted to continue to run business in China.

Qin made these remarks as he took a question from American media about whether China “has lost support from American business community”.

"After I came to the U.S. as ambassador in July, I spoke with many American business leaders, and I could feel their changing mentality. They now have less complaint and more confidence, less pessimism and more optimism." Qin said.

Qin stressed Beijing has always attached great importance to American business community, taking trade relations as the ballast and the propeller of the bilateral ties.

US decries ‘Burma barbarity’

Two aid workers missing after over 30 people die in Myanmar massacre

Smoke and flames billow from vehicles set alight in Hpruso, Kayah state, 

Myanmar on Friday. Photo: KNDF via AP

Tassanee Vejpongsa
December 27 2021

Two workers from Save The Children are missing following a massacre in eastern Myanmar that left more than 30 people including women and children dead, according to the international aid group.

The victims were burned in their vehicles after they were reportedly shot by government troops as they fled attacking forces, prompting US condemnation for the “barbarity”.

Photos of the aftermath of the Christmas Eve killings in Mo So village, just outside Hpruso township in Kayah state, spread on social media in the country, fuelling outrage against the military that took power in February after removing the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Images showed the charred bodies of more than 30 people in three burned-out vehicles. The accounts could not be independently verified.

The US embassy in Myanmar said yesterday it was appalled by the “barbaric attack in Kayah state that killed at least 35 civilians, including women and children”.

“We will continue to press for accountability for the perpetrators of the ongoing campaign of violence against the people of Burma,” it said in a statement.

Save The Children said it was suspending operations in the region following the violence.

A villager who said he went to the scene told reporters the victims had fled the fighting between armed resistance groups and Myanmar’s army near Koi Ngan village, which is just beside Mo So, on Friday.

He said the victims were killed after they were arrested by troops while heading to refugee camps in the western part of the township.

Save The Children said two of its staff who were travelling home for the holidays after conducting humanitarian response work in a nearby community were “caught up in the incident and remain missing”.

“We have confirmation that their private vehicle was attacked and burned out,” the group added in a statement.

“The military reportedly forced people from their cars, arrested some, killed others and burned their bodies.”

The government has not commented on the allegations, but a report in the state-run Myanma Alinn daily newspaper on Saturday said the fighting near Mo So broke out on Friday when members of ethnic guerrilla forces, known as the Karenni National Progressive Party, and those opposed to the military drove in “suspicious” vehicles and attacked security forces after refusing to stop.

The witness added that the remains were burned beyond recognition. “The bodies were tied with ropes before being set on fire,” said the witness, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared for his safety.

He did not see the moment they were killed, but said he believed some of them were Mo So villagers who reportedly were arrested by troops on Friday. He denied those captured were members of militia groups.

“It’s a heinous crime and the worst incident during Christmas. We strongly condemn that massacre as a crime against humanity,” said Banyar Khun Aung, director of the Karenni Human Rights Group.

Earlier this month, government troops were also accused of rounding up villagers, some believed to be children, tying them up and killing them.

Fighting resumed at the weekend at the Thai border, where thousands have fled to seek refuge.

The action of Myanmar’s military has prompted multiple Western governments, including the United States, to issue a joint statement condemning “serious human rights violations committed by the military regime across the country”.

“We call on the regime to immediately cease its indiscriminate attacks in Karen state and throughout the country and to ensure the safety of all civilians in line with international law,” the joint statement said.

Questions about Dr. Oz surface from those wondering if he's just as big of a fraud as the Wizard of Oz
Sarah K. Burris
December 26, 2021

Dr. Oz (Screenshot)

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" exclaimed the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz as he tried to dodge accountability from Dorothy and her friends. Behind the magical floating head and fiery distractions was nothing more than a fraud.

That's the way a New York Times exposé painted Dr. Mehmet Cengiz Öz, the TV doctor running for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania after years of allegations, lawsuits and controversy around his "miracle cures" that he has advertised on his shows.

Now that he's running for the Senate, Oz is saying that he's running as a conservative because the "people in charge" are responsible for taking away "our freedom." It is leaving those on the left and right with questions about where he stands on issues involving science and medicine.

There was a controversy involving the doctor's promotion of hydroxychloroquine. When the results came in and Dr. Oz was clearly proven wrong, he went silent on this issue. He never told his followers or the Fox audiences he spoke to that he was wrong.

The conservative site Townhall wants to know if Dr. Oz intends to take a clear stand on abortion, or even if he's ever performed an abortion.

This week, Breitbart attacked Oz for asking for empathy for transgender people. The GOP hasn't been kind to trans people, who are frequently ignored in activism over LGBTQ issues. Trump barred trans service members from the armed forces. Meanwhile, school boards are refusing to allow trans youth to use the bathroom of their choosing under the false assumption that they'll sexually assault someone while relieving themselves.

The conservative outlet the National Review is asking questions about Oz's connections to the Turkish government, which they said deserves to be examined closer.

Oz lost it when a Pennsylvania publication refused to use the prefix "Dr." when speaking about him. While the paper said that it applies that standard to all candidates in all parties, it brought up questions about whether the doctor should be promoting his career given his past with quack medical claims.

The hydroxychloroquine flub was one of the more recent public mistakes the TV doctor made while claiming to be a man of science. Before a Senate committee in 2014, Oz was chided for peddling bogus "weight-loss pills" and other scams.



Physician peers came out against him, including a group of 10 doctors who called for him to be fired from Columbia University’s medical faculty because he'd "repeatedly shown disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine." It's a private institution and claimed that it didn't regulate factually outside of their classrooms.

There was another incident in 2013 when Oz told women that carrying their cellphones in their bras would cause breast cancer. There was no scientific study to prove it either.

The Times exposé reported that over the years, Oz has claimed that his advice was really just to "empower" the average American to take control of their health.

At a time when U.S. television is overwhelmed with pharmaceutical ads and the obesity epidemic is sending desperate people searching for miracle cures, Dr. Oz told people what they wanted to hear. In fact, he said as much when testifying to the Senate in 2014: "My job on the show, I feel, is to be a cheerleader for the audience." But people don't go to their doctor to hear a cheerleader. They go to the doctor to get the truth and both sides want to hear some from him.