David Goldman writing as 'Spengler' in Asia Times yesterday

In 2022, I argued that a demographic imperative—the declining population of non-Muslim parts of Asia versus the growth of Muslim populations—would push India, Russia and China toward a strategic rapprochement.

The Ukraine war has driven these prospective rivals together. India’s bottomless appetite for discounted Russian oil propelled its imports from Russia to US$67 billion in 2023 from only $8.7 billion in 2022. India, moreover, acts as Russia’s distribution agent, re-selling Russian oil and distillates to third countries.

It is noteworthy that although India and China have an ongoing border dispute, India has never joined the US and its allies in condemning China’s treatment of its Uyghur Muslim population. The United States meanwhile has accused India of human rights abuses against its Muslim minority.

The article is here.

How much misery and destruction American sanctimony causes in the world. 

I admit that this was a charge levelled against England when we went around suppressing slavery and suttee. This time it's true and England is America's most loyal satellite.

I have a feeling Kamala Harris will defeat Donald Trump

I have a feeling Kamala Harris will defeat Donald Trump. 

She knows how to come across on video. She looks like she'd be amusing to have a drink with. She has a wonderful, exuberant laugh and is good looking. She is another generation from Mr Biden and Mr Trump.  

I imagine young women will often love here.

She is not fresh but seems it. 

She gives no signs of being intelligent. She must be more so than President Biden but she lacks his animal cunning.

She was a prosecutor, not a human rights lawyer, which is to her credit.

She comes of bad parents who, having had the good luck to be allowed to immigrate to the USA and be made American citizens, were nevertheless left-wing activists, protesting against the country which admitted them. 

Her father was a Marxist academic, exactly the sot of immigrant who should not have been allowed into the country.

She has been a terrible failure as border czar, has horrible opinions on most things, but after presidents like George W Bush and old man Biden who can say she is not able to do the job?

She is in hock to big business and billionaires, but that is true of almost all US politicians, including J D Vance. (I wonder where the $80 million in donations to the Harris campaign came from - is some of it from foreign governments?)

On the other hand, I might be wrong. It seems Presidents Obama and Biden think she can't debate and can't win. 

(Oh dear. After watching this I see she is indeed an idiot. And has a voice that is unbearable. Still, Reagan was an idiot savant.)

What a strange system the Americans have which throws up such odd presidents. 

In some ways it's very corrupt and undemocratic. America is bought by billionaires and foreign governments. Its media are shameless propaganda. In some ways (good and bad) it's very much more democratic than anywhere in Europe. Someone like Mr Trump, who says what people think, could not have entered politics and within months won power in Europe.

Why is America making economic war on any of these countries?

 From the Washington Post.

American oligarchy

The American presidential election in November will be the first since 1976 not to have a Biden, Bush or Clinton on the ballot. 

It will however have a Kennedy and he'd make a very good President. He'd rid the Democrats of woke. Unfortunately the Democrat establishment sabotaged his attempt to run against Biden and he left the party.

The election will be only the second since 1948 not to have one of five names, Biden, Bush, Clinton, Nixon or Dole, on the ballot. The other one was 1964.

I don't think Joe Biden is a good man

Now suddenly power has ebbed from him and we see the foreign policy disasters of his administration as the result of his senescence. 

Men and women

'Not long ago Harvey Mansfield took a call from a journalist. She wanted a comment on a former colleague. Mansfield, a 73-year-old professor, said: “What impressed all of us about him was his manliness.”

'There was silence at the other end of the line. Finally the female voice said: “Could you think of another word?” It was then that the professor realised that manliness has become a dirty word. And if “displaying qualities considered admirable in a man” (as the dictionary has it) has become unacceptable, then presumably being a man is unacceptable, too. Wondering how this could be, he

America is still neo-con and the biggest danger to world peace

Since the start of the millennium America has been the great danger to world peace, except to some extent when Obama and to a much greater extent Trump were presidents, though the latter started arming Ukraine.

You may have forgotten that General Wesley Clark said in 2003 how he had met a senior military officer in Washington in November 2001 who told him that the Bush administration was planning to attack Iraq ('Why?' 'I don't know') and then Syria, Lebanon (!), Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.

The neo-cons or the impulses that drove them never went away. They led to offering Nato membership to Georgia and Ukraine, to the colour revolutions, to American involvement in the 2014 revolution in Ukraine and to where the American empire is now.

Messrs. Trump and Vance have isolationist instincts in Europe but not when it comes to the Middle East. 

I hope they want peace with Xi as well as Putin.

I hope they want peace with Iran which, as Wesley Clark said in the clip I linked to above, knew she was under grave threat as soon as America conquered Iraq.

The Cold War (as opposed to containment) was unnecessary even when Stalin was alive but it made perfect sense at the time.

The new cold war makes no sense and the only hope of resisting the US defence establishment is if Trump wins.

American support for Israel (which started only with Lyndon Johnson) makes no sense to me either but is a given, whichever party wins the White House. 

But who knows if Donald Trump would be a peace president there too? 

If he is a genuine friend of Israel he will demonstrate, in Bill Clinton's phrase, tough love.

Happy birthday, sir!

Group Captain John Hemingway, DFC, AE, a Dubliner who is thought to be the last of 'the Few', celebrates his 105th birthday today. He was shot down four times during the war.

British news in brief

The Times today: 

The Royal College of Physicians has advised doctors that they are “uniquely positioned” to talk to patients about climate change and to raise the issue with them in consultations.

The Daily Mail today:

Scotland's police officers will be paid to take part in Pride parades despite the force cutting back on fighting crime, the Mail can reveal.

Uniformed officers are being urged to represent the overstretched force at LGBTI marches in exchange for pay or a day off in lieu.

While hundreds will be on active duty policing the marches, senior officers have requested that other staff join the parades to show support for the marchers.

J.D. Vance last week: “What is the first truly Islamist country to get a nuclear weapon? Maybe it’s actually the UK since Labour took over."”

“What is the first truly Islamist country to get a nuclear weapon? And we were like, maybe it’s Iran, maybe Pakistan already kind of counts. And then we finally decided maybe it’s actually the UK since Labour took over.”

Senator J.D Vance, Donald Trump's running mate, at last week’s National Conservatism Conference.

Joe Biden in 1997 said that the only thing that could provoke a "vigorous and hostile" Russian response would be if NATO expanded to the Baltic states

Here is Joe Biden in 1997 saying that "the one thing" that could provoke a "vigorous and hostile" Russian response would be if NATO expanded to the Baltic states. 

How right he was.

Compare how he was 27 years ago when he was in his prime, aged 55, with how he is now.

He was impressive then, though never good enough to be president. That is why he never came better than fourth in a primary until he won South Carolina in 2020, when President Obama and the Democrat grandees intervened to arrange that he beat Bernie Saunders.

After the attempts to kill them, Reagan told John Paul II 'We were saved for something.' The Pope replied 'I know what it is. To free Poland'

Father Jason Charron, a Ukrainian Catholic priest, was asking by Trump to open the rally with prayer which he did by invoking divine protection…..

"The US Came Close To Having TWO Presidential Candidates With No Brain."

"The US Came Close To Having TWO Presidential Candidates With No Brain."
Tom Foley


Brendan Cox whose MP wife Jo was murdered because of her views on immigration and Brexit condemned the attempt on Donald Trump's life but said "Donald Trump also has some culpability in creating an environment where violence is more likely." This is the first person I've seen who blames Trump. He'd hate it if somebody said his late wife's speeches had some culpability for creating an environment where murder is more likely.


"One can judge a man by how he reacts to being shot. In 1835, a house painter attempted to kill President Andrew Jackson, Trump’s hero. Both his pistols miraculously misfired; Jackson, despite being 67 and in ill-health, charged the villain with his cane. In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt – to whom Trump bears closest

Attempt to murder Donald Trump

"We do not believe that the attempt to eliminate and assassinate Trump was organised by the current authorities, but the atmosphere around candidate Trump … provoked what America is confronting today. After numerous attempts to remove candidate Trump from the political arena — using first legal tools, the courts, prosecutors, attempts to politically discredit and compromise the candidate — it was obvious to all outside observers that his life was in danger.” Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesman

"Most importantly, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, Trump is a threat to this nation." Joe Biden yesterday

"The assassination attempt on Donald Trump comes as 10 per cent of American adults said violence was justified to stop him from retaking the White House. Robert Pape, a professor in terrorism threats at the University of Chicago, carried out the survey in June which also found that a third of that number carried guns." The Sunday Telegraph today

Trump is not badly hurt. Soon journalists will start blaming him for the attempted assassination

Donald Trump has been shot.

We could have been reading his obituary this morning.

Instead we listen to Joe Biden deploring violence and observe no indication of dementia this time.

From Ed West's latest newsletter

'Successful late bloomers are all around us. Morgan Freeman had his breakthrough roles in Street Smart and Driving Miss Daisy in his early 50s. Colonel Harland Sanders started Kentucky Fried Chicken in his 60s. Isak

Talking about Joe Biden

'Like the late-stage Brezhnev, Biden is now a president in name only.'
Victor Davis Hanson

'Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f--- things up.' Barak Obama, according to an anonymous Democrat speaking to Politico in 2020

From an article in Responsible Statecraft by Blaise Malley: Declassified Docs: US Knew Russia Felt 'Snookered' By NATO

'In 1995, then-national security adviser Anthony Lake warned President Bill Clinton that Russian leadership would not accept the expansion of the alliance to the East.

'“Russian opposition to NATO enlargement is unlikely to yield in the near or medium term to some kind of grudging endorsement; Russia’s opposition is deep and profound,” Lake wrote. “For the period ahead, the Russian leadership will do its level best to derail our policy, given its conviction that any eastward expansion of NATO is at root antithetical to Russia’s long-term interests.”

'Two years later, as Washington and Moscow were entering negotiations on the future of NATO-Russia cooperation, State Department official Dennis Ross wrote what the Archive calls an “astute and empathetic analysis” of the Russian position on NATO expansion.

'“To begin with, the Russians for all the reasons you know see NATO expansion through a political, psychological, and historical lens,” Ross wrote in a memo to Strobe Talbott, then the Deputy Secretary of State.

'“First they feel they were snookered at the time of German unification. As you noted with me, [former Secretary of State James] Baker's promises on not extending NATO military presence into what was East Germany were part of a perceived commitment not to expand the Alliance

Quotations

“You'll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.” John Maxwell

"I think that Biden debated as well as Abraham Lincoln, if you dug him up right now." Stephen Colbert

"Most reasonable people, because they are reasonable, cannot believe that the goal of the far left is to end America." Elon Musk

"75 years ago, NATO was created as a peace project. On behalf of Hungary, I will argue that we should preserve NATO as it was meant to be: a defence alliance." Viktor Orban

"The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even to excess, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer." Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Biden has Parkinson's

A Parkinson’s disease specialist (who's a Democrat) told NBC that Biden clearly has the disease.







He didn't do as badly as he might have at the Nato press conference last night.


He introduced Zelensky as Putin and referred to Kamala as Vice-president Trump but we expect things like that.


They are the mistakes anyone might make. They don't show he has dementia, but in the context of the debate with Trump they looked very bad.


He was 45 minutes late, of course used a teleprompter for his opening speech, answered or failed to answer softball questions, made a mess of what he wanted to say in places, but all this is normal for him.



President Ford made similar slip ups, but much less often.


Vice-president Dan Quayle too, but he was a halfwit.

The point is that the media has (inevitably) decided that the impending fall of the House of Biden is the story.


Ian Bremmer, who attended the summit, said none of the leaders he encountered "think he [Biden] can serve another four years."


George Stephanopoulos, who interviewed him last week, told a passer-by in the street who asked him that he doesn’t think Joe Biden can serve four more years.


Here is Biden to NATO earlier this week: ‘The allies in this room... Not only share a common language... DON’T share a common language... We do... Not share a common border... But we are neighbours...’


In the 2020 Democratic primary debates, Julián Castro and Cory Booker mocked Biden for his inability to remember things, and pointed out his cognitive decline. That was four years ago. But now the media are shocked, shocked.

Glenn Greenwald says it well:


'It's been incredibly creepy watching every liberal media figure mindlessly recite: "Biden is a good, decent man of high values. But what evidence is there for that? The many wars he cheerlead? The addicts he threw in jail until his son become one? The pathological lying?"'

I agree - he finances what seems a pointless slaughter of tens of thousands of Arab civilians intended to keep Netanyahu out of prison, he provoked Putin to invade Ukraine, he is accused of rape and of unpleasant attentions to his own daughter.

That's before we speak of influence peddling.

And I completely agree with this tweet by Glenn Greenwald three days ago: 'Democrats slowly coming to terms with the fact that Biden is a full-scale narcissist who has shown throughout his adult life that the only thing he cares about is chasing power and titles, and there's no way someone like that would give that up voluntarily.'