China, Russia, Black

It's a bit of a slow day so all I have to offer is a bit of commentary. However, Conrad Black and Tucker Carlson have some quality commentary today, so ...

Conrad Black has a wide ranging article that addresses America's rivalry with China. Here's what I like about it. Too many "conservatives" have fallen into the trap of criticizing Zhou for being soft on Russia--it's a cheap but ultimately stupid approach. Stupid, because it's at odds with Trump's sensible approach to Russia, which was thwarted by the Globalist/Deep State set. Adopting Globalist/Deep State talking points simply isn't the way forward for intelligent conservatives who have our nation's interests at heart. It may be fine for National Review, but not for conservatives. Conrad Black, after noting the moral disarray that is roiling our national life, disposes of this fallacy very quickly:

China’s COVID Coup 

China deserves credit for a remarkable feat of strategic improvisation in translating a public health crisis into a large economical and geopolitical advance at the expense of the West.

Excerpts:

The American indulgence in an entire summer of white-hating, statue-toppling, rioting, and denigration of American history, freedom, and values astonished the world. Moreover, it helped China propagate its message that democracy leads to chaos and waste and that the United States is an unreliable and unstable country.

I hate to say this but ... It just may be true that the United States is an unreliable and unstable country. Two words: Donald Trump. He attempted to restore reliability and stability to our foreign policy, and look what happened to him. If you were a foreign leader, how far out on a limb would you go if asked to do so by an American president? Would you assume that America would have your back? Well? That's where we are.

Russia Stuff And Our Corrupt Rulers

This is all very depressing to see--the utter mendaciousness of our ruling class: elected representatives of the American people, appointees, the military establishment, the intelligence community, and last but far from least, the media. The corruption is so sweeping that you're left almost breathless. And they're utterly feckless, to boot.

Let's start with Gilbert Doctorow--Bombast From Washington: Joe Biden’s Russia Sanctions. Doctorow first explains that nobody who understands the current shape of the world is taking those sanctions seriously. Putin himself is obviously unfazed. The DC armchair imperialists have crossed a red line, and Putin has responded--as Doctorow explains in a Postscript to his original article:

Briefly Noted: World War Three?

Since the very beginning of the Zhou Baiden regime the US military has adopted provocative measures with regard to Russia. As early as the first week of February the deployment of B-1 bombers to Norway's Arctic regions (close to sensitive Russian naval bases) was announced. A ramped up presence in Syria, near Russian forces supporting the Syrian government, has also been underway. Finally, US Navy activity in Russia's strategic backyard of the Black Sea has continued, along with the supply of hundreds of tons of military equipment to Ukraine. All this has been accompanied by a pretty much no holds barred war of words against Russia in general and Vladimir Putin in particular--including US assurances of support to Ukraine against Russia.

Ukraine, of course, is ground zero for George Soros' globalist ambitions. In addition to the military activity, US intelligence agencies, such as the FBI office in Ukraine, have coordinated with Soros operatives. The impression one gets is that Soros is having an enormous influence on US foreign policy once again, now that the restraining influence of President Trump has been removed by the Deep State and replaced by amateurish Clinton/Obama warhawks.

Ukraine has been making belligerent sounds as well, since the Zhou regime took over. Russia has responded by beefing up its own military presence in the Crimea and near the border with Ukraine in the Don basin. Zerohedge explains, via Michael Snyder--As Russian Tanks Move Toward Ukraine, The Globe Braces For World War 3:

Briefly Noted: Legal News--And Russia

I had occasion to point out yesterday (An Independent Judiciary?) that President Trump's (and Mitch McConnell's) strategy of concentrating on confirming appellate level federal judges is paying dividends. Not all is smooth sailing, of course. The 9th Circuit can still be a problem (as recently in a 2A case), but it's still far better than when Trump took office. A couple of cases on this relatively slow news day (so far) illustrate the impact Trump's appellate judges are having.

Since I mentioned the 2A just now, a case from New Jersey is a good place to start. Defense Distributed is a TX company that distributes various 3d print files for firearms and firearm accessories. New Jersey's Attorney General, Gurbir Grewal, sent Defense Distributed letters in TX attempting to restrain Defense Distributed from doing its business in NJ and threatening to prosecute Defense Distributed. The federal district court in TX agreed with Grewal that those letters were insufficient to provide the TX court with jurisdiction in the case. However, the Fifth Circuit disagreed. The SCOTUS has now--by declining Grewal's petition for certiorari--agreed with the Fifth Circuit.

The practical effect of this jurisdictional decision is that NJ will now have to justify its conduct to an unsympathetic federal court in TX. The Truth About Guns points out that the Fifth Circuit

has already made it clear that it believes that governmental efforts to restrict Defense Distributed’s distribution of 3D files have very serious if not fatal First Amendment implications.

This complicates anti-gun matters for crusading officials in anti-2A states. The SCOTUS undoubtedly knew this.

There's more good news from the 6th Circuit (which includes Ohio). You can read a longer account here:

Two Recommended Reads: Russia and Teachers Unions

 Quite disparate. First, Russia Policy:

An Ignorant Media and Defense Establishment Prevents a Sober Russia Policy

We can only hope that America will one day see Russia as a competitor with rational motivations, not as a target for the ever-shifting ideological agendas of the U.S. government.

Second, teacher unions trying to keep schools closed:

LA Teachers’ Union Pushing Racial Division in Fight Over School Closures

Union wants to know race of parents pushing for reopening

MAJOR UPDATE: NYT: Trump "Correct" To Seek "Sounder Relationship With Russia"

No, I didn't get that from The Onion. It really was from the NYT--in fact, it was straight from their editorial board on July 21, 2019: What’s America’s Winning Hand if Russia Plays the China Card? The two adversaries are growing closer, posing a strategic challenge to the United States. Naturally the truth of what's being said is surrounded by a bodyguard of the usual lies about Russian "interference," but the truth remains.

We were reminded of that quote just a few days ago by Gilbert Doctorow, in an interesting article--Rapprochement With Russia?--about the growing consensus that the NYT editorial referred to: that a better relationship with Russia is actually in America's best interest. Duh! And we all know who's been standing in the way of better relations--people who could care less about US national security interests. Who place those interests in a very distant second place--if that--to "getting" President Trump:

Starting in July and running to the present day, there have been repeated calls from mainstream media, from leading statesmen and from diplomats, in the United States and in Europe, for some kind of rapprochement with Russia to be put in place. This is remarkable given the continually escalating informational, economic, military confrontation between Russia and the US-led West over the past five years. That confrontation has emerged in two waves of anti-Russian hysteria: the first, after the daring (or brazen) Russian reunification with (or annexation of) Crimea in March 2014, and the second, with still greater momentum towards war, following the November 2016 election of Donald Trump to the presidency, which was accompanied by allegations of Russian collusion with candidate Trump and other meddling in the U.S. election processes. 

Since the United States initiated the New Cold War, it is only fitting that the first steps towards its resolution are coming from there. And it is not in the least surprising that these steps were taken in the aftermath of the April 2019 release of the Mueller Report, which showed that the allegations of Russiagate were without merit or not actionable. Trump’s political enemies were compelled to move on to other issues of contention that would serve better in the next presidential campaign, which is quickly approaching. 

That is the context in which I place the fairly amazing editorial of The New York Times dated 21 July 2019 entitled “What’s America’s Winning Hand if Russia Plays the China Card?” The NYT, which along with The Washington Post, had been among the most fervent disseminators of Russiagate theories and of poisonous characterizations of the “Putin regime” now was calling for … re-establishing civilized relations with Russia in order to draw the country back from its growing alliance with China. 

... It was also obvious for years that a major factor encouraging the Russian-Chinese embrace was the political, military and economic pressure each was receiving from the United States going back to the administration of George W. Bush and running through the Obama and Trump administrations. ...

Where did this concept come from? Doctorow believes, plausibly enough, that Henry Kissinger is behind it:

UPDATED: The War Party, The Russia Hoax, And The Deep State War On Trump

Trump never ceases to amaze. With the War Party almost openly gloating that Iran (at who's prodding?) had boxed Trump into a foolish war, with his supporters near despair ... Trump proceeds to pull the plug (for now) and schools the post-Christian world on classical Just War Theory, invoking "proportionality." As if to say, Here's for you voters out there who want a balanced, grounded, America First president. This guy is simply deeper than most people will grant.

Look, I can't tell you what's really behind this. Was the tanker attack a false flag, or was Iran responsible? Did Iran down the drone in international airspace in an attempt to box Trump into war with the long term in view? On balance, I suspect that's what it's about. Perhaps just as important is the big picture, extending back many decades. There definitely appears to be a deja vu element to this and, as it happens, I have at hand some materials to offer a bit of perspective on the War Party's total war against Trump--in the overall context of the Russia Hoax.

One feature of the Russia Hoax struggle, drawn out over the past three years or so, has been that prominent liberals have found themselves, seemingly against all odds, defending Trump. Think of the likes of Alan Dershowitz, Stephen Cohen, Jonathan Turley, Mark Penn, and others. I've cited their views on a semi-regular basis, because they happen to be authorities in their fields with informed opinions to offer. In common with one another, these public intellectuals share a commitment to constitutional order and the distressing perception that this commitment--once common to liberals as well as conservatives--has been abandoned by the ascendant "progressive" movement within the Democrat party and its low information followers.

Another common feature is that, while these intellectuals have been associated with liberalism and even leftism, they usually have niche concerns that have been central to their public and academic lives. For example, Dershowitz is known first and foremost as a "civil libertarian". Stephen Cohen, who has for decades been associated with the far left The Nation magazine, is a Russia expert who is particularly known for his lifelong advocacy of detente with Russia. Both men see these core concerns being trampled underfoot by "progressives."

MULTIPLE UPDATES: Is This One Of Unknown's Black Swan Events?

For some time now commenter Unknown has been asserting that "Black Swan" events have been planned by the Deep State to bring down Trump. Could the latest NYT leak--obviously a leak--be such an event? Note that it's headlined as an "escalation" rather than "retaliation," as one might expect from the article--U.S. Escalates Online Attacks on Russia’s Power Grid:

WASHINGTON — The United States is stepping up digital incursions into Russia’s electric power grid in a warning to President Vladimir V. Putin and a demonstration of how the Trump administration is using new authorities to deploy cybertools more aggressively, current and former government officials said. 

In interviews over the past three months, the officials described the previously unreported deployment of American computer code inside Russia’s grid and other targets as a classified companion to more publicly discussed action directed at Moscow’s disinformation and hacking units around the 2018 midterm elections.

It seems clear that any energy sector accident at all in Russia will now be suspected Trumpian sabotage. Suppose another Chernobyl accident should occur? Trump. He's a maniac, bringing us close to nuclear holocaust. He's "literally" Hitler, or worse--he's Trump!

Importantly: