Building up U.S. chip production has been a focus of lawmakers and companies alike amid a global shortage of the crucial components.
Intel has selected Ohio for a new chip manufacturing complex that would cost at least $20 billion, ramping up an effort to increase U.S. production of computer chips as users grapple with a lingering shortage of the vital components.
Intel said Friday that the new site near Columbus would initially have two chip factories and would directly employ 3,000 people, while creating additional jobs in construction and at nearby businesses. …
Patrick Gelsinger, who became Intel’s chief executive last year, has rapidly increased the company’s investments in manufacturing to help reduce U.S. reliance on foreign chip makers while lobbying Congress to pass incentives aimed at increasing domestic chip production. He has said that Intel might invest as much as $100 billion over a decade in its next U.S. manufacturing campus, linking the scope and speed of that expansion to expected federal grants if Congress approves a spending package known as the CHIPS Act.
“We will go bigger and broader if it gets funded,” Mr. Gelsinger, 60, said in a recent interview. “But our recovery plans don’t rely on the CHIPS act.” …
… President Biden will meet with Mr. Gelsinger at the White House on Friday to discuss the project, Intel said. Administration officials have aggressively pushed the CHIPS Act.
Intel’s move has geopolitical implications, as well as significance for supply chains. Chips, which act as the brains of computers and many other devices, are largely manufactured in Taiwan, which China has expressed territorial claims toward. During the pandemic, they have also been in short supply because of overwhelming demand and Covid-related disruptions to manufacturing and labor supply, raising questions about how to ensure a consistent chip pipeline.
The move is Intel’s first to a new state for manufacturing in more than 40 years. The company, based in Silicon Valley, has U.S. factories in Oregon, New Mexico and Arizona. Last March, Mr. Gelsinger chose an existing complex near Phoenix for a $20 billion expansion, which is now underway. …
The Chinese mainland recorded 73 confirmed COVID-19 cases on Thursday, with 23 linked to local transmissions and 50 from overseas, data from the National Health Commission showed on Friday.
A total of 31 new asymptomatic cases were also recorded, and 765 asymptomatic patients remain under medical observation.
Confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland now total 105,484, with the death toll remaining unchanged at 4,636 since January last year.
Nearly 2.96b COVID-19 vaccine doses administered on Chinese mainland
Nearly 2.96 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses had been administered on the Chinese mainland as of Thursday, data from the National Health Commission showed Friday.
[ January 15, 2022
Over 1.22 billion fully vaccinated against COVID-19 on Chinese mainland. ]
” The men always wore masks, Tursunay Ziawudun said, even though there was no pandemic then.
They wore suits, she said, not police uniforms.
Sometime after midnight, they came to the cells to select the women they wanted and took them down the corridor to a “black room”, where there were no surveillance cameras.
Several nights, Ziawudun said, they took her.
Human rights groups say the Chinese government has gradually stripped away the religious and other freedoms of the Uighurs, culminating in an oppressive system of mass surveillance, detention, indoctrination, and even forced sterilisation.
The policy flows from China’s President, Xi Jinping, who visited Xinjiang in 2014 in the wake of a terror attack by Uighur separatists. Shortly after, according to documents leaked to the New York Times, he directed local officials to respond with “absolutely no mercy”. The US government said last month that China’s actions since amounted to a genocide. China says reports of mass detention and forced sterilisation are “lies and absurd allegations”.
First-hand accounts from inside the internment camps are rare, but several former detainees and a guard have told the BBC they experienced or saw evidence of an organised system of mass rape, sexual abuse and torture.
Tursunay Ziawudun, who fled Xinjiang after her release and is now in the US, said women were removed from the cells “every night” and raped by one or more masked Chinese men. She said she was tortured and later gang-raped on three occasions, each time by two or three men.”
An 800 pound guerrilla (USRA*) can liberate Afghanistan
Liberate twenty million Afghan women from house arrest and rescue all Afghan adults and children from the threat of catastrophic starvation …
… possibly without taking a single Allied casualty.
The Taliban military – if you want to call it that – does not possess a single tank, an artillery barrel or an attack helicopter. From the military prowess standpoint the Taliban clocks in as no better than a national crime gang. Their most powerful weapons are automatic personal weapons and shoulder fired rockets.
Taliban non popular support: David Brooks said on PBS News Hour: “ … one of the good things that has happened in the Middle East over the last several years is that people have taken a look at the Taliban, and they hate it. A survey of 11 countries, Muslim countries, only 13 percent of positive views about the Taliban.” I’m guessing back in Afghan home that might come in at more like 5 percent. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/brooks-and-capehart-on-kabul-attack-jan-6-investigation-voting-rights * * * * * *
The thing is this: if our military moved back in there – with the promise to leave their so-called military alone as long as they leave ours alone – the Afghan government couldn’t do much of anything about it. If they picked a fight with any regular army, they’d be smashed. They would have no incentive to militarily oppose our landings – as long as we did not land in downtown Kabul.
If we can move 120,000 refugees out in two weeks, without planning, we can move 100,000 soldiers and aviators back in in a similar time frame. Say we take Bagram airbase back. Their fighters would be free to leave – they may take their weapons with them.
Once, having set up a few bases the Taliban cannot attack without 100% casualties, we could get down to the business of deploying the “second government” – the knows-what-it’s-doing, competent (and well funded) government. First priority, distribute the necessities of life (likely with international NGO and UN org help). What could the would-be Afghan military do but look on in envy?
Next comes popular revolt? – in stages? The women especially – having been introduced to what I call “Zoom World”; and now demanding the same advantages, everyone everywhere else enjoys – were the first out of the box protesting the return of Taliban oppression and will now have their nerve reinforced.
40,000,000 Afghans v. 100,000 very unpopular weirdoes — 80 to 1 modernizing population v. crackpot police state. 100,000 Allied troops just hanging around v. 100, 000 can’t-do-anything-about-us-hanging-around hated screwballs. Sprinkling 50 M-1 tanks around symbolically – no real use – could further depress and frustrate Taliban leadership. Sounds like an untenable social mixture for them – unstable politically to say the least – encouraging upheaval?
Think about this the next time the media finds time to notice the bloated stomachs and prominent rib cages of Afghan children. Where does an 800 pound guerilla sit? Anywhere he wants to.
Fording the Missouri River hardly makes a fitting analog for months of boredom punctuated by moments of extreme terror. Complicit with this semantics fail was that neither Pete Seeger nor Bruce Springsteen ever went into combat. Pete was willing, but the Army was afraid he was subversive and Bruce was 4-F.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Seeger was investigated and ended up entertaining troops in the South Pacific theater of WWII. As subversives go, then I am jealous. Probably I should have been more visible in my subversion and gone to jail a few times.
From 1942 to 1945, Pete Seeger served in the Army, as an Entertainment Specialist.
Rank: Corporal, United States Army Band
Seeger served in the U.S. Army in the Pacific. He was trained as an airplane mechanic, but was reassigned to entertain the American troops with music. …
(Apparently, he served his country as he was called upon.)
All you had to say was I am a John Bircher and they would have tossed you in boot camp or where ever doggies go. The Corps was actively kicking them out.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
The O.D. Green Machine has always been less selective than the Corps. A lot of bad men are fine for the army. OTOH, ending the draft appears to have further opened the door for Birchers in the army.
Even then I was all for the draft, just against our war in Vietnam. At the time then I was not so glad to have served, but in the long run I cannot imagine having had a more interesting life than the life that I have had.
So, now I am glad to have served. After all, wife number one was not all that great and by chance I preserved my career none the worse for wear. I even ended up buying the home in 2004 that I had wanted 35 years earlier.
I could never fully describe to my children what boot camp was like for us in the late sixties and the years following it. It is impossible to depict it all. The movie “Full Metal Jacket” depicts boot camp rather well what an experience it was for 8 weeks. No one ever had live rounds or shot someone in the latrine. The experience for 8 weeks never fades. I learned quickly and was only hit tree times, twice in the solar plexus (my stomach was rock hard).
My wife of 50 years will not allow war movies even though I find them interesting. She says I get too melancholy. Probably do. Hard not to forget the ones you were friends with who did not make it back. One I looked for over the years hoping to find him. My children traced his name off of the Black Wall. I located his stone and sponsored it. The “thank-yous” bother me.
In the late sixties the Corps was taking almost any body. I volunteered.
In the late sixties, the Marines were taking draftees.
The one classmate of mine who I know served was one such, KIA in Vietnam by an IED. (I don’t keep close tabs on my classmates.)
He & I were the only vets I know of, but there must have been a few more. A considerable number of doctors & lawyers though and other sorts of grad student types. (Suburban upstate NY fellows.)
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
I can relate to all of that except that I never talked about my service to the three girls that I raised at all because they were girls, just ordinary girls not wannabe fighter pilots or special forces.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
I was inducted with over one hundred others in Richmond, VA on May 5, 1969. The number going into the Marines was definitely single digit, but too long ago to remember exactly how many. The most devastating Tet offensive began the end of January 1968. In 1969, they were much less successful because US troops were much better prepared. In 1970 (during my tour) Tet passed quietly for the most part. Marines were most often assign to work with RF and PF units (Regional Forces and Popular Forces), which put them out away from the safety of large US base camps and hanging with groups that many of which might have been working side jobs with the Viet Cong. That would have a bad place to be during a Tet offensive.
I was inducted (Regular Army) right after Thanksgiving 1968.
Two of my HS classmates’ names were called that day. Neither was present. One was in the Peace Corps at the time, the other was in Canada & still is. Most others were in grad school, apparently.
The Tet Offensive started about a month later while I was still in boot camp. That was the beginning of the end of the US involvement in the Vietnam War, with only about half the eventual KIA count in.
I never served in combat; I was in the Army for about five years; I may be a veteran but with no benefits – I got those up front.
In 1969 a high school classmate of mine was convicted of auto theft. Judge gave him the choice of jail time or enlisting in the Marines. He took the latter, and his time in Vietnam sent him way over the edge.
I have no right to comment about any of this. But I don’t think the Big Muddy in the song was the Missouri. I could be wrong.
2) although “ugly American” has come to mean just what you say here, it started out to mean just the opposite: plain, ugly, decent Americans who quietly did good and behaved themselves abroad. I blame journalists for getting it backwards.
3) I think Denis has a point…I have no idea how practical it would turn out. But I think Vietnam started out with a similar best-of-intentions…and ended up our shame because humans are like that. Just as Obama got elected while being antiwar and ended up ordering drone attacks where the experts said less than 30 innocent civilians would be killed.
It’s entirely possible that Putin will call our bluff. He offered what sounded to me like a reasonable solution, but we both know that we would both cheat because neither of us can resist “interfering” in Ukraine. Our best hope is that B and P will be as smart at K and K over Cuba.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
The Missouri River is arguably the longest river in North America, traversing an amazing variety of landscapes on its journey to the sea. This mighty river flows more than 2,300 miles from Three Forks, Montana, to St. Louis, where it joins the Mississippi River. These waters continue on for another 1,500 miles to the Gulf of Mexico, making the Missouri/Mississippi River complex the fourth longest river and the third largest drainage basin in the world.
Nicknamed the “Big Muddy,” the Missouri River has long been one of America’s most important natural resources. Every bend in the river is saturated in history. Her waters have offered a spiritual centerpiece for many American Indian tribes and have nurtured an astonishing amount of wildlife. The river served as the path for the Lewis and Clark expedition, later evolving to become the primary pathway for our country’s western expansion. She has witnessed the rise and fall of the steamboat era and given birth to countless communities that settled near her banks.
*
[In Pete Seeger’s day then it was commonplace to not really make a distinction between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers because any such distinction was arguable from there confluence down to the Gulf of Mexico. That is something that many old folk like me can still remember.]
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
The book caused a sensation in diplomatic circles and had major political implications. The Peace Corps was established during the Kennedy administration partly as a result of the book. The bestseller has remained continuously in print and is one of the most influential American political novels.[1] It has been called an “iconic Cold War text.”[2]
*
[There was also a film, but as usual trite when compared with the book.]
I just posted a Wikipedia link and excerpt on the Ugly American book that is awaiting moderation, but Vietnam poses a challenge in that some judgement is required; it is sometimes uncertain who or what to believe; and differences of opinion are required to insulate our national security apparatus from its due criticism. Worse yet is the quagmire of contradictions that surround the notion of US national interests. Just Google “US national interest” and then read on that conflict of ideas, ideals, and ideology until you want to puke.
However, if what you suppose is that the US was engaged in Vietnam (or Afghanistan for that matter) for altruistic motives, then I might have some swamp land that you would be interested in buying. Clearly Afghanistan was primarily retaliation for 9/11 and then prevention of 9/12. Hence, mission accomplished – so far at least. Also, we proved once more that we could not be trusted to endure to the end a war that we started in another country beside another people. The Vietnamese, the Kurds, and the Iraqis should have known. Cannot say what this means for the Ukraine, but take note that proven oil reserves in the Ukraine are negligible. Only for Kuwait was this time really different.
Clearly we were not retaliating against North Vietnam for anything that they did to us, although we were dragged into it at first to pay our respects to the debt owed Lafayette and the French. Then there is the prevailing alibi used to justify our expedition based on preventing the Chinese from playing dominoes across SE Asia. If that alibi were real, then why did we leave and why didn’t the Chinese take over all of SE Asia? If the US thought that either Ky or Diem were more humane that Ho, then maybe we should be considering finding citizenship somewhere else. Please do not take that as defense of Ho, who by then was indistinguishable in (lack of human) character from his own vile enemies.
The only plausible reason which has been put forth by a few retired generals and several subversive writers is that we were making a demonstration of force and sacrifice to convince both China and Russia that we were willing to lose many thousands of lives battling the expansion of communism; IOW, that we were serious. It was all for show.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
… In the 2003 documentary The Fog of War, the former United States Secretary of DefenseRobert S. McNamara admitted that an attack on the USS Maddox happened on August 2, but the August 4 Gulf of Tonkin attack, for which Washington authorized retaliation, never happened.[10}….
[Which is what the subversive writers had been saying for decades.]
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
I also posted a link to the Wiki for Gulf of Tonkin incident with a one sentence excerpt that explained how it was walked back by McNamara in the early 2ooo’s, but the posting dog ate it.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
I can understand your frustration with the situation. Veterans of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam wars all feel your pain. However, wars of counter-insurgency when waged by a foreign power are historically untenable conflicts using any tactics other than cruel barbarism to crush all resistance. US soldiers were just another bunch of foreigners in these wars. Worse yet we are known for our “Ugly American” tendencies, making us even worse than awful. As bad as the Taliban is and despite how many of the Taliban were from outside Afghanistan, the US was unable to differentiate itself from the Taliban incursion in a consistently positive way. We have a vastly different moral code from traditional Muslims (or Vietnamese folk religions for that matter). We are primarily Europeans, which do not have a particularly good track record in their treatment and respect for brown-skinned peoples. Fighting a counter-insurgency is no place to be ignorant of one’s surroundings whether physical or cultural.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
“Ugly American” is a stereotype depicting American citizens as exhibiting loud, arrogant, demeaning, thoughtless, ignorant, and ethnocentric behavior mainly abroad, but also at home.[1][2][3][4][5][6] Although the term is usually associated with or applied to travelers and tourists, it also applies to U.S. corporate businesses in the international arena.[7][8][9][10][11][12]…
Ron, I am not talking about fighting anyone — who doesn’t shoot at us. Any Taliban who tried to drive us out of the country would have to be suicidal. They are not a military force — under normal definitions — the Taliban is the equivalent of a vast Al Capone gang.
I am talking about a psychological mind-fuck.
I am going on the assumption that nobody wants them — very badly don’t want them — badly enough to take encouragement from the presence of a real standing army that is on their side — that takes away the political and social legitimacy of the Taliban just because everybody likes us and not them.
There’s a hundred ways to play with this crazy situation. We are the insurgency — the Taliban will be the counter-insurgency.
We can for instance set up safe sanctuary zones for anti-government forces to retreat to. I’m thinking the Afghans take back control of their own country from the Al Capone gang. I’m thinking more about civilian protests — these days that is the common way of the world.
It’s all about this … [cut-and-paste] Taliban non popular support: David Brooks said on PBS News Hour: “ … one of the good things that has happened in the Middle East over the last several years is that people have taken a look at the Taliban, and they hate it. A survey of 11 countries, Muslim countries, only 13 percent of positive views about the Taliban.” I’m guessing back in Afghan home that might come in at more like 5 percent. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/brooks-and-capehart-on-kabul-attack-jan-6-investigation-voting-rights
… and the watching and waitful 800 pound guerilla.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
War always looks neater on TV than in person, but much the same is true for football. Life and death struggles are always very personal in the now and present as well as entirely unpredictable in terms of human behavior; i.e, ranging from martyrs to cowards, more than trivial individual results may vary, not so much for football players since kill the quarterback is not usually interpreted literally.
I was drafted in May 1969 and spent November 1969 through October 1970 assigned to the 101st Airborne Division first at the division tactical operations center (TOC) and then the division strategic operations center (the admin and supply base in Phu Bai). I was a Spec4 in a simple support capacity, but it was like having a box seat to observe the war. I was not killing people, just listening in on the blow by blow announcing when in the TOC and later counting the soldiers new in-country and those that reached MIA, KIA, DROS, and ETS status on the other end along with maintaining the division TO&E. You can find each of those US Army acronyms defined with Google, but I bet you already know the 1st two.
I could write a book on the war stories that I know, only two of which occurred within ten klicks of my location. My only moment of heroism was getting duct tape from a nearby rotor wing company when we ran out of pine boxes to put our body bags in for shipment home. Final orders had to be attached to route shipping and no one wanted to staple them to the bodies in black plastic bags.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
How to Watch M*A*S*H
Right now you can watch M*A*S*H on Hulu Plus. You are able to stream M*A*S*H by renting or purchasing on Google Play, Amazon Instant Video, and iTunes.
If we can move 120,000 refugees out in two weeks, without planning, we can move
~~Denis Drew~
you just drew us a picture of a worthy cause. let’s do it. before we leave let’s examine the opportunity cost. Let’s consider something perhaps more pressing.
do you realize that American citizens include 1 million Ukrainians, Hutsuls. these Americans of Ukrainian origin could help even more Ukrainians get started in this country if we could get Ukrainians out of the Ukraine, get them to America before they become refugees perhaps wounded refugees, this would help not only Ukrainians who come here but would also help us to fill up our unfilled employment slots which are now at about 10 million.
we need to get these Ukrainians out of the Ukraine before Putin invades their country. we could for example send one of our Navys to the Black Sea to pick them up and bring them back to America. After this we could return to Afghanistan.
during the Голодомо́р our Secretary of Commerce and undersecretary of everything else, Herbert Hover said, “I don’t care if they are communists, they are going to eat”, then sent tons of grain to the USSR, but Stalin would not allow any of it to go to the starving Ukrainians. Now we have a chance to save some of the Ukrainians from Putin’s invasion. Redeem ourselves for what we failed to complete then.
That should work out about as well as going to the aid of Austria pre-Anschluss in 1939 (when Germany absorbed Austria). Perhaps that would have slowed down Hitler considerably. And this time, nukes will be available!
“You people?” I only count 1 and 1/2 confused peeps. The view of war people get from watching movies is as sanitary as the view of war from the inside the safety of the DC Beltway. Good on you that you know better, albeit that knowledge may have come at some cost in your sphere of friends and family.
My question is haven’t they read a newspaper for the last two decades? Beyond obvious that it was a clusterfuck from the start and had no chance of success of any real kind. You don’t have to be a veteran to see stupidity when it shows up.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Have you ever owned a dog? If so, then did beating them get them to behave? Horses are even more sensitive to hostility because they are herbivores. But dogs are omnivores and the similarities between the personalities of the two species is what bound them as companions. Face it cats are better hunters and they do respond well to feeding. But big cats have way too much independent attitude. Dogs vary with a few dominants, a few more intelligent alert individuals and a whole bunch of insecure appeasers and submissives. We consistently over-rate the importance of intelligence just because we have thumbs, but with most individuals it is easier to reach their personalities than it is to reach their intellects since they have far more of the former than the latter.
Look folks, I’m not talking about shooting anyone — as long as they don’t shoot at us — and they, the Taliban, won’t have any incentive to shoot at us as long as we don’t shoot at them. Mexican standoff. And psychological hell for the Taliban. They are running a country where 95% of the population runs from not wanting them to hating them. They are the new Russians. And they don’t have even an dilapidated old Russian tank.
Think opportunity cost — what we are missing right now. We can fly in and take over patches of Afghanistan without a fight (they have no incentive to shoot at us as long as we don’t shoot at them).
All we have to do to end all this suffering (that we are responsible for in so far as we cut off aid they had come to depend on) is show up in force and force the Taliban to lose any sense of their political legitimacy — and let the population take it from there.
Insanity. You need to reeducate yourself, and try to pay some little bit of attention to the last two decades. Seems important to me, and anyone with a IQ above single digits.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
How can you object to the idea of a war where no one was killed? It is a standard sci-fi cliche although it always turns out the computer game kills must be sacrificed by their own side or the game turns out to be real and only appears like a game to calm the spectators.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
you can be quite sure that our pentagon was two steps ahead of us and that they have a plan to revisit Afghanistan. I am guessing that their method will be different from yours, that the plan is not to send in a regiment of Infantry and 2 of armor. I am guessing that their plan is to send in an aircraft carrier with drones, with drones that can pick out the Taliban leader the grand Mufti Mullah then knock him over. it is so simple to just keep knocking out the top dog then his replacement. after a few of these hits the whole thing falls apart because nobody wants to be at the top and the bottom is too miserable to tolerate.
everybody leaves.
the party is
over
!
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Actually that is no where near the nuttiest thing that you have ever written. However, there is a reason that POTUS does not authorize his black ops to go around the world knocking off world leaders. He wants to live.
The White House is emphasizing that inflation is worldwide. Economists say that’s true — but stimulus-spurred consumer buying is also to blame.
The price increases bedeviling consumers, businesses and policymakers worldwide have prompted a heated debate in Washington about how much of today’s rapid inflation is a result of policy choices in the United States and how much stems from global factors tied to the pandemic, like snarled supply chains.
At a moment when stubbornly rapid price gains are weighing on consumer confidence and creating a political liability for President Biden, White House officials have repeatedly blamed international forces for high inflation, including factory shutdowns in Asia and overtaxed shipping routes that are causing shortages and pushing up prices everywhere. …
The officials increasingly cite high inflation in places including the euro area, where prices are climbing at the fastest pace on record, as a sign that the world is experiencing a shared moment of price pain, deflecting the blame away from U.S. policy.
But a chorus of economists point to government policies as a big part of the reason U.S. inflation is at a 40-year high. While they agree that prices are rising as a result of shutdowns and supply chain woes, they say that America’s decision to flood the economy with stimulus money helped to send consumer spending into overdrive, exacerbating those global trends.
The world’s trade machine is producing, shipping and delivering more goods to American consumers than it ever has, as people flush with cash buy couches, cars and home office equipment, but supply chains just haven’t been able to keep up with that supercharged demand. …
The last time annual inflation was running as high as it is now, about four decades ago, Federal Reserve officials took decisive action and brought it back down.
In the process, they also pushed the US economy into a pair of recessions, including a deep onethat lasted more than a year and drove unemployment over 10 percent.
It’s been a reliable pattern since World War II: The central bank hikes interest rates to reverse rapidly rising prices, but the collateral damage is an economic contraction.
Now, with inflation recentlysoaring to its highest level since 1982, the Fed is preparing to return to its conventional inflation-fighting playbook — but this time, there’s hope they can skip the recession part. …
The unique effects of COVID-19 have created the potential that history won’t repeat itself and inflation can be reined in without shrinking the economy, economists said. But that’s possible only if Fed Chair Jerome Powell and the other central bank policymakers proceed cautiously and nimbly amid the evolving pandemic’s unprecedented supply chain and labor force problems.
“The virus is unpredictable. People’s responses to the virus are unpredictable. It’s not a garden variety business cycle by any means,” said Donald Kohn, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank who served as Fed vice chair from 2006-10. “It’s much harder to peer into the future and know how to calibrate your monetary policy.”
Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group, a forecasting firm, was more blunt.
“The Fed has a hellishly difficult task right now,” he said. “There is absolutely no history for the Fed to lean on to deal with this kind of inflation.”
A lot is riding — economically and politically — on whether the Fed can pull it off.
COVID-19′s arrival in early 2020 and the subsequent shutdowns immediately plunged the US into a severe recession. More than 22 million people lost their jobs, sending the unemployment rate soaring to 14.7 percent, the worst since the Great Depression. But the economy quickly bounced back as businesses reopened.
… Nearly two-thirds of respondents in a CBS News/YouGov poll released this month said Biden wasn’t paying enough attention to inflation.
“One thing that has become very clear over the last six months is people hate inflation much more than economists hate inflation,” Kohn said. “Economists see it will go up and go down … but people see inflation and they don’t like it.”
Biden in recent months has acknowledged inflation is a problem and said he’s trying to address it by working to ease supply chain bottlenecks, increase oil supplies, and promote competition in highly concentrated markets like meat processing. …
Keeping prices stable is one-half of the central bank’s dual mandate; the other is promoting maximum employment. But with the unemployment rate down to 3.9 percent in December, the Fed is shifting into inflation-fighting mode — what’s being called the “Powell Pivot” — after boosting the labor market since early 2020 by keeping its benchmark short-term interest rate near zero and buying hundreds of billions of dollars worth of bonds.
“We have to achieve price stability, and I believe we will, and I’m confident we will,” Powell told the Senate Banking committee on Jan. 11 during a hearing on his renomination by Biden for four more years as Fed chair.
The Fed has the most powerful direct tool to reduce inflation — the ability to manipulate interest rates. It now is forecasting it will raise its benchmark rate up to near 1 percent this year while also ending its bond-buying program,which kept money flowing in financial markets and stabilized long-term interest rates. Fed officials believe the combination will slow the economy just enough tolower inflation without causing a recession.
Economists aren’t as confident, but said it’s possible depending on the course of the pandemic. …
Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, told lawmakers on Tuesday that a rapidly healing economy no longer needed as much help from the central bank and that keeping inflation in check — including by raising interest rates — would be critical for enabling a stable expansion that benefited workers.
Mr. Powell, whom President Biden recently nominated for a second term as chair, is confronting a complicated economic moment as he moves toward another four-year stint as head of the world’s most powerful central bank. …
In a highly unusual public statement, backed by US officials, London named the putative head of a potential puppet government but few other details.
The British government said Saturday that the Kremlin was developing plans to install a pro-Russian leader in Ukraine — and had already chosen a potential candidate — as President Vladimir V. Putin weighs whether to order the Russian forces amassed on Ukraine’s border to attack.
The highly unusual public communiqué by the United Kingdom’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, issued late at night in London, comes at a moment of high-stakes diplomacy between the Kremlin and the West. Russia has deployed more than 100,000 Russian troops on Ukraine’s borders that could, according to American officials, attack at any moment.
“The information being released today shines a light on the extent of Russian activity designed to subvert Ukraine, and is an insight into Kremlin thinking,” Liz Truss, Britain’s foreign secretary, said in a statement. “Russia must de-escalate, end its campaigns of aggression and disinformation, and pursue a path of diplomacy.” …
The British announcement was the second time in just over a week that a Western power had publicly accused Russia of meddling in Ukraine’s internal affairs, part of a concerted effort to pressure Mr. Putin to de-escalate. On Jan. 14, the United States accused the Kremlin of sending saboteurs into eastern Ukraine to create a provocation that could serve as a pretext for invasion.
… the communiqué did not say whether such plans were contingent on an invasion by Russian troops. British officials familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the intent was both to head off the activation of such plans and to put Mr. Putin on notice that this plot had been exposed.
In Washington, officials said they believe the British intelligence is correct. Two officials said it had been collected by British intelligence services. Within the informal intelligence alliance known as “Five Eyes,” Britain has primary responsibility for intercepting Russian communications, which is why it played a major role in exposing Russian interference in the 2016 elections. …
But the Russian foreign ministry denied the British accusation.
“The spread of disinformation by the British foreign ministry is one more piece of evidence that NATO countries, led by the Anglo Saxons, are escalating tensions around Ukraine,” it said in a statement. “We call on the British foreign ministry to stop its prevocational activities.” …
… The theatrical timing and cloak-and-dagger nature of the intelligence disclosure (above), which came in the midst of a roiling political scandal at home, raised a more cynical question: whether some in the British government were simply eager to deflect attention from the problems that threaten to topple Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Either way, Britain is moving on multiple fronts. It is preparing legislation that would enable it to impose sanctions if Mr. Putin carries out an invasion. It dispatched senior ministers to other NATO countries menaced by Russia. And it has begun engaging directly with Moscow, with reports that its foreign and defense secretaries plan to meet their Russian counterparts in the coming weeks.
Britain’s hard-edge approach was crystallized in a punchy essay by the defense secretary, Ben Wallace. Writing in The Times of London, Mr. Wallace rejected Mr. Putin’s claims of encirclement by NATO and accused the Russian leader of crude “ethnonationalism,” based on what he called the bogus claim that Russians and Ukrainians are one people. The essay made waves in Washington and in European capitals. …
NYT: some in the British government (are) simply eager to deflect attention from the problems that threaten to topple Prime Minister Boris Johnson. …
(BJ has gone maskless at various staff parties in recent years, despite anti-covid mask-wearing rules, and calls for his resignation have been made by people in his own party.)
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has come under fire over revelations that he and his staff attended parties while the country was in a coronavirus lockdown.
The British police have opened an investigation into parties held at 10 Downing Street and other government offices during the coronavirus lockdown, an ominous development for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is trying to stave off a career-threatening challenge to his leadership over his handling of the scandal. …
The involvement of the police raises the possibility that there were serious violations of lockdown rules. Police officers who guard the Downing Street complex are in a particularly good position to monitor the comings and goings of staff members. Among the more sensational disclosures was that a junior aide was dispatched to a nearby store with an empty suitcase to fill with wine bottles.
The steady drip of reports about social gatherings — most recently news that Mr. Johnson’s wife, Carrie Johnson, and staff members threw him a surprise birthday party in June 2020, when such gatherings were forbidden — has seriously damaged the prime minister’s position with the public and in his own party.
An unknown number of Conservative lawmakers have submitted confidential letters calling for a vote of confidence in the prime minister. If the number of letters exceeds 54, Mr. Johnson would face such a vote, which analysts said would cripple his leadership even if he manages to win a majority of the votes. …
The president is also considering deploying warships and aircraft to NATO allies, in what would be a major shift from its restrained stance on Ukraine.
President Biden is considering deploying several thousand U.S. troops, as well as warships and aircraft, to NATO allies in the Baltics and Eastern Europe, an expansion of American military involvement amid mounting fears of a Russian incursion into Ukraine, according to administration officials. …
The move would signal a major pivot for the Biden administration, which up until recently was taking a restrained stance on Ukraine, out of fear of provoking Russia into invading. But as President Vladimir V. Putin has ramped up his threatening actions toward Ukraine, and talks between American and Russian officials have failed to discourage him, the administration is now moving away from its do-not-provoke strategy.
In a meeting on Saturday at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, senior Pentagon officials presented Mr. Biden with several options that would shift American military assets much closer to Mr. Putin’s doorstep, the administration officials said. The options include sending 1,000 to 5,000 troops to Eastern European countries, with the potential to increase that number tenfold if things deteriorate. …
The alliance is sending more jets and ships to the region. The decision comes as Britain joined the U.S. in withdrawing the families of diplomats in Kyiv, moves that the Ukraine government called premature.
NATO said on Monday that member countries were putting their forces on standby and sending additional ships and fighter jets to Eastern Europe to reassure allies in the region, as Britain joined the United States in ordering families of diplomats out of Ukraine, citing “the growing threat from Russia.”
The moves signaled growing fears of a potential Russian military intervention in Ukraine, as well as increasing concerns about the Kremlin flexing its muscles further afield. Russian troops and equipment are pouring into neighboring Belarus for planned exercises next month that U.S. officials fear are not only directed at Ukraine, but also NATO countries on Belarus’s western border like Poland and the Baltic countries. …
The State Department said on Sunday that it had ordered family members of U.S. Embassy personnel in Kyiv, Ukraine, to leave the country amid increasing concerns about a possible Russian invasion.
The embassy will remain open for now, senior State Department officials said in a briefing with reporters, but some diplomats have been authorized to depart as well. …
… Mr. Putin’s aim is bigger than closing NATO’s “open door” to Ukraine and taking more territory — he wants to evict the United States from Europe. As he might put it: “Goodbye America. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
Mr. Putin’s … actions are purposeful and his choice of this moment to throw down the gauntlet in Ukraine and Europe is very intentional. He has a personal obsession with history and anniversaries. December 2021 marked the 30th anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when Russia lost its dominant position in Europe. Mr. Putin wants to give the United States a taste of the same bitter medicine Russia had to swallow in the 1990s. He believes that the United States is currently in the same predicament as Russia was after the Soviet collapse: grievously weakened at home and in retreat abroad. He also thinks NATO is nothing more than an extension of the United States. Russian officials and commentators routinely deny any agency or independent strategic thought to other NATO members. So, when it comes to the alliance, all Moscow’s moves are directed against Washington. …
President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser expressed optimism that the omicron surge that has pushed Covid-19 infections and hospitalizations to records will soon peak, though that decline won’t be uniform throughout the U.S.
“Things are looking good,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “We don’t want to get overconfident, but they look like they’re going in the right direction right now.”
Infections are “starting to come down rather sharply” in the U.S. Northeast and Midwest, Fauci said, in line with the variant’s trajectory in South Africa and other places. He said he expected that states in the South and West where cases are still rising will soon follow the same downward path, depending in part on vaccination rates. …
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, sounded cautiously optimistic on Sunday that the Omicron wave was peaking nationally in the United States and that the coronavirus cases could fall to manageable levels in the coming months.
“What we would hope,” Dr. Fauci, President Biden’s top medical adviser for Covid-19, said during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” “is that, as we get into the next weeks to month or so, we’ll see throughout the entire country the level of infection get to below what I call that area of control.”
That did not mean eradicating the virus, Dr. Fauci said. Infections will continue. “They’re there but they don’t disrupt society,” he said. “That’s the best case scenario.” …
He advised that remaining ready for the possibility of what he called “the worst-case scenario” would be wise. “I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but we have to be prepared,” he said, describing that situation as “we get yet again another variant that has characteristics that would be problematic, like a high degree of transmissibility or a high degree of virulence.”
But overall, he said, “things are looking good. We don’t want to get overconfident but they look like they’re going in the right direction right now.” …
Fauci sketched out two longer-term scenarios for Covid-19 as the pandemic enters its third year.
The first is that Covid-19 becomes “less virulent” and can be controlled.
“You’re not eradicating it but it gets down to such a low level, that it’s essentially integrated into the general respiratory infections that we have learned to live with,” he said.
The (other) worst-case scenario is the emergence of a still-more dangerous variant, he said. He said this possibility is more reason for people to get vaccinated and receive booster shots, and to make testing and medical treatment more widely available. (Bloomberg)
(If not too little, maybe not too late.)
Intel to Invest at Least $20 Billion in New Chip Factories in Ohio
NY Times – Jan 21
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-01-21/Chinese-mainland-records-73-confirmed-COVID-19-cases-16ZOUh7quRO/index.html
January 21, 2022
Chinese mainland reports 73 new COVID-19 cases
The Chinese mainland recorded 73 confirmed COVID-19 cases on Thursday, with 23 linked to local transmissions and 50 from overseas, data from the National Health Commission showed on Friday.
A total of 31 new asymptomatic cases were also recorded, and 765 asymptomatic patients remain under medical observation.
Confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland now total 105,484, with the death toll remaining unchanged at 4,636 since January last year.
Chinese mainland new locally transmitted cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-01-21/Chinese-mainland-records-73-confirmed-COVID-19-cases-16ZOUh7quRO/img/e4dc6aa1b4c94e0a82d3a1d1b3100770/e4dc6aa1b4c94e0a82d3a1d1b3100770.jpeg
Chinese mainland new imported cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-01-21/Chinese-mainland-records-73-confirmed-COVID-19-cases-16ZOUh7quRO/img/30212099bbd0485caddc490669b3f7d9/30212099bbd0485caddc490669b3f7d9.jpeg
Chinese mainland new asymptomatic cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-01-21/Chinese-mainland-records-73-confirmed-COVID-19-cases-16ZOUh7quRO/img/3706d1649e5d40c988794d0b4015cc85/3706d1649e5d40c988794d0b4015cc85.jpeg
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202201/21/WS61ea6a40a310cdd39bc8285a.html
January 21, 2022
Nearly 2.96b COVID-19 vaccine doses administered on Chinese mainland
Nearly 2.96 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses had been administered on the Chinese mainland as of Thursday, data from the National Health Commission showed Friday.
[ January 15, 2022
Over 1.22 billion fully vaccinated against COVID-19 on Chinese mainland. ]
January 20, 2022
Coronavirus
United States
Cases ( 70,544,862)
Deaths ( 883,903)
Deaths per million ( 2,646)
China
Cases ( 105,411)
Deaths ( 4,636)
Deaths per million ( 3)
” The men always wore masks, Tursunay Ziawudun said, even though there was no pandemic then.
They wore suits, she said, not police uniforms.
Sometime after midnight, they came to the cells to select the women they wanted and took them down the corridor to a “black room”, where there were no surveillance cameras.
Several nights, Ziawudun said, they took her.
Human rights groups say the Chinese government has gradually stripped away the religious and other freedoms of the Uighurs, culminating in an oppressive system of mass surveillance, detention, indoctrination, and even forced sterilisation.
The policy flows from China’s President, Xi Jinping, who visited Xinjiang in 2014 in the wake of a terror attack by Uighur separatists. Shortly after, according to documents leaked to the New York Times, he directed local officials to respond with “absolutely no mercy”. The US government said last month that China’s actions since amounted to a genocide. China says reports of mass detention and forced sterilisation are “lies and absurd allegations”.
First-hand accounts from inside the internment camps are rare, but several former detainees and a guard have told the BBC they experienced or saw evidence of an organised system of mass rape, sexual abuse and torture.
Tursunay Ziawudun, who fled Xinjiang after her release and is now in the US, said women were removed from the cells “every night” and raped by one or more masked Chinese men. She said she was tortured and later gang-raped on three occasions, each time by two or three men.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55794071
EM
I found the Chinese people to be very accommodating. The government not so. This is an article Richard Smith put up; Chinas Drivers and Planetary Ecological Collapse
I have absolutely nothing against the Chinese people. They are victims here also.
ltr
You know, China is “not” the world?
An 800 pound guerrilla (USRA*) can liberate Afghanistan
Liberate twenty million Afghan women from house arrest and rescue all Afghan adults and children from the threat of catastrophic starvation …
… possibly without taking a single Allied casualty.
The Taliban military – if you want to call it that – does not possess a single tank, an artillery barrel or an attack helicopter. From the military prowess standpoint the Taliban clocks in as no better than a national crime gang. Their most powerful weapons are automatic personal weapons and shoulder fired rockets.
Taliban non popular support: David Brooks said on PBS News Hour: “ … one of the good things that has happened in the Middle East over the last several years is that people have taken a look at the Taliban, and they hate it. A survey of 11 countries, Muslim countries, only 13 percent of positive views about the Taliban.” I’m guessing back in Afghan home that might come in at more like 5 percent.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/brooks-and-capehart-on-kabul-attack-jan-6-investigation-voting-rights
* * * * * *
The thing is this: if our military moved back in there – with the promise to leave their so-called military alone as long as they leave ours alone – the Afghan government couldn’t do much of anything about it. If they picked a fight with any regular army, they’d be smashed. They would have no incentive to militarily oppose our landings – as long as we did not land in downtown Kabul.
If we can move 120,000 refugees out in two weeks, without planning, we can move 100,000 soldiers and aviators back in in a similar time frame. Say we take Bagram airbase back. Their fighters would be free to leave – they may take their weapons with them.
Once, having set up a few bases the Taliban cannot attack without 100% casualties, we could get down to the business of deploying the “second government” – the knows-what-it’s-doing, competent (and well funded) government. First priority, distribute the necessities of life (likely with international NGO and UN org help). What could the would-be Afghan military do but look on in envy?
Next comes popular revolt? – in stages? The women especially – having been introduced to what I call “Zoom World”; and now demanding the same advantages, everyone everywhere else enjoys – were the first out of the box protesting the return of Taliban oppression and will now have their nerve reinforced.
40,000,000 Afghans v. 100,000 very unpopular weirdoes — 80 to 1 modernizing population v. crackpot police state. 100,000 Allied troops just hanging around v. 100, 000 can’t-do-anything-about-us-hanging-around hated screwballs. Sprinkling 50 M-1 tanks around symbolically – no real use – could further depress and frustrate Taliban leadership. Sounds like an untenable social mixture for them – unstable politically to say the least – encouraging upheaval?
Think about this the next time the media finds time to notice the bloated stomachs and prominent rib cages of Afghan children. Where does an 800 pound guerilla sit? Anywhere he wants to.
(*United States Regular Army)
We finally escaped the Big Muddy and the big fool wants to go back in. 20 years is not enough evidence? geez
EMike,
Fording the Missouri River hardly makes a fitting analog for months of boredom punctuated by moments of extreme terror. Complicit with this semantics fail was that neither Pete Seeger nor Bruce Springsteen ever went into combat. Pete was willing, but the Army was afraid he was subversive and Bruce was 4-F.
Seeger was investigated and ended up entertaining troops in the South Pacific theater of WWII. As subversives go, then I am jealous. Probably I should have been more visible in my subversion and gone to jail a few times.
Wikipedia:
From 1942 to 1945, Pete Seeger served in the Army, as an Entertainment Specialist.
Rank: Corporal, United States Army Band
Seeger served in the U.S. Army in the Pacific. He was trained as an airplane mechanic, but was reassigned to entertain the American troops with music. …
(Apparently, he served his country as he was called upon.)
Ron
All you had to say was I am a John Bircher and they would have tossed you in boot camp or where ever doggies go. The Corps was actively kicking them out.
Run,
The O.D. Green Machine has always been less selective than the Corps. A lot of bad men are fine for the army. OTOH, ending the draft appears to have further opened the door for Birchers in the army.
Even then I was all for the draft, just against our war in Vietnam. At the time then I was not so glad to have served, but in the long run I cannot imagine having had a more interesting life than the life that I have had.
So, now I am glad to have served. After all, wife number one was not all that great and by chance I preserved my career none the worse for wear. I even ended up buying the home in 2004 that I had wanted 35 years earlier.
Ron:
I could never fully describe to my children what boot camp was like for us in the late sixties and the years following it. It is impossible to depict it all. The movie “Full Metal Jacket” depicts boot camp rather well what an experience it was for 8 weeks. No one ever had live rounds or shot someone in the latrine. The experience for 8 weeks never fades. I learned quickly and was only hit tree times, twice in the solar plexus (my stomach was rock hard).
My wife of 50 years will not allow war movies even though I find them interesting. She says I get too melancholy. Probably do. Hard not to forget the ones you were friends with who did not make it back. One I looked for over the years hoping to find him. My children traced his name off of the Black Wall. I located his stone and sponsored it. The “thank-yous” bother me.
In the late sixties the Corps was taking almost any body. I volunteered.
In the late sixties, the Marines were taking draftees.
The one classmate of mine who I know served was one such, KIA in Vietnam by an IED. (I don’t keep close tabs on my classmates.)
He & I were the only vets I know of, but there must have been a few more. A considerable number of doctors & lawyers though and other sorts of grad student types. (Suburban upstate NY fellows.)
Run,
I can relate to all of that except that I never talked about my service to the three girls that I raised at all because they were girls, just ordinary girls not wannabe fighter pilots or special forces.
Fred,
I was inducted with over one hundred others in Richmond, VA on May 5, 1969. The number going into the Marines was definitely single digit, but too long ago to remember exactly how many. The most devastating Tet offensive began the end of January 1968. In 1969, they were much less successful because US troops were much better prepared. In 1970 (during my tour) Tet passed quietly for the most part. Marines were most often assign to work with RF and PF units (Regional Forces and Popular Forces), which put them out away from the safety of large US base camps and hanging with groups that many of which might have been working side jobs with the Viet Cong. That would have a bad place to be during a Tet offensive.
I was inducted (Regular Army) right after Thanksgiving 1968.
Two of my HS classmates’ names were called that day. Neither was present. One was in the Peace Corps at the time, the other was in Canada & still is. Most others were in grad school, apparently.
The Tet Offensive started about a month later while I was still in boot camp. That was the beginning of the end of the US involvement in the Vietnam War, with only about half the eventual KIA count in.
I never served in combat; I was in the Army for about five years; I may be a veteran but with no benefits – I got those up front.
In 1969 a high school classmate of mine was convicted of auto theft. Judge gave him the choice of jail time or enlisting in the Marines. He took the latter, and his time in Vietnam sent him way over the edge.
Ron
I have no right to comment about any of this. But I don’t think the Big Muddy in the song was the Missouri. I could be wrong.
2) although “ugly American” has come to mean just what you say here, it started out to mean just the opposite: plain, ugly, decent Americans who quietly did good and behaved themselves abroad. I blame journalists for getting it backwards.
3) I think Denis has a point…I have no idea how practical it would turn out. But I think Vietnam started out with a similar best-of-intentions…and ended up our shame because humans are like that. Just as Obama got elected while being antiwar and ended up ordering drone attacks where the experts said less than 30 innocent civilians would be killed.
It’s entirely possible that Putin will call our bluff. He offered what sounded to me like a reasonable solution, but we both know that we would both cheat because neither of us can resist “interfering” in Ukraine. Our best hope is that B and P will be as smart at K and K over Cuba.
Coberly,
I believe that you are wrong about 1, 2, and 3, but B&P are in the future, so that I can only hope that you will be correct on that.
[1. The Big Muddy River]
https://missouririverwatertrail.org/river-history/big-muddy-americas-longest-river
The Big Muddy-America’s Longest River
The Missouri River is arguably the longest river in North America, traversing an amazing variety of landscapes on its journey to the sea. This mighty river flows more than 2,300 miles from Three Forks, Montana, to St. Louis, where it joins the Mississippi River. These waters continue on for another 1,500 miles to the Gulf of Mexico, making the Missouri/Mississippi River complex the fourth longest river and the third largest drainage basin in the world.
Nicknamed the “Big Muddy,” the Missouri River has long been one of America’s most important natural resources. Every bend in the river is saturated in history. Her waters have offered a spiritual centerpiece for many American Indian tribes and have nurtured an astonishing amount of wildlife. The river served as the path for the Lewis and Clark expedition, later evolving to become the primary pathway for our country’s western expansion. She has witnessed the rise and fall of the steamboat era and given birth to countless communities that settled near her banks.
*
[In Pete Seeger’s day then it was commonplace to not really make a distinction between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers because any such distinction was arguable from there confluence down to the Gulf of Mexico. That is something that many old folk like me can still remember.]
[2. the Ugly American]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_American
The Ugly American is a 1958 political novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer that depicts the failures of the U.S. diplomatic corps in Southeast Asia.
The book caused a sensation in diplomatic circles and had major political implications. The Peace Corps was established during the Kennedy administration partly as a result of the book. The bestseller has remained continuously in print and is one of the most influential American political novels.[1] It has been called an “iconic Cold War text.”[2]
*
[There was also a film, but as usual trite when compared with the book.]
It is a good read
3. Vietnam
I just posted a Wikipedia link and excerpt on the Ugly American book that is awaiting moderation, but Vietnam poses a challenge in that some judgement is required; it is sometimes uncertain who or what to believe; and differences of opinion are required to insulate our national security apparatus from its due criticism. Worse yet is the quagmire of contradictions that surround the notion of US national interests. Just Google “US national interest” and then read on that conflict of ideas, ideals, and ideology until you want to puke.
However, if what you suppose is that the US was engaged in Vietnam (or Afghanistan for that matter) for altruistic motives, then I might have some swamp land that you would be interested in buying. Clearly Afghanistan was primarily retaliation for 9/11 and then prevention of 9/12. Hence, mission accomplished – so far at least. Also, we proved once more that we could not be trusted to endure to the end a war that we started in another country beside another people. The Vietnamese, the Kurds, and the Iraqis should have known. Cannot say what this means for the Ukraine, but take note that proven oil reserves in the Ukraine are negligible. Only for Kuwait was this time really different.
Clearly we were not retaliating against North Vietnam for anything that they did to us, although we were dragged into it at first to pay our respects to the debt owed Lafayette and the French. Then there is the prevailing alibi used to justify our expedition based on preventing the Chinese from playing dominoes across SE Asia. If that alibi were real, then why did we leave and why didn’t the Chinese take over all of SE Asia? If the US thought that either Ky or Diem were more humane that Ho, then maybe we should be considering finding citizenship somewhere else. Please do not take that as defense of Ho, who by then was indistinguishable in (lack of human) character from his own vile enemies.
The only plausible reason which has been put forth by a few retired generals and several subversive writers is that we were making a demonstration of force and sacrifice to convince both China and Russia that we were willing to lose many thousands of lives battling the expansion of communism; IOW, that we were serious. It was all for show.
[Coberly,
Footnote on Vietnam War.]
*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident
… In the 2003 documentary The Fog of War, the former United States Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara admitted that an attack on the USS Maddox happened on August 2, but the August 4 Gulf of Tonkin attack, for which Washington authorized retaliation, never happened.[10}….
[Which is what the subversive writers had been saying for decades.]
Coberly,
I also posted a link to the Wiki for Gulf of Tonkin incident with a one sentence excerpt that explained how it was walked back by McNamara in the early 2ooo’s, but the posting dog ate it.
Dennis,
I can understand your frustration with the situation. Veterans of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam wars all feel your pain. However, wars of counter-insurgency when waged by a foreign power are historically untenable conflicts using any tactics other than cruel barbarism to crush all resistance. US soldiers were just another bunch of foreigners in these wars. Worse yet we are known for our “Ugly American” tendencies, making us even worse than awful. As bad as the Taliban is and despite how many of the Taliban were from outside Afghanistan, the US was unable to differentiate itself from the Taliban incursion in a consistently positive way. We have a vastly different moral code from traditional Muslims (or Vietnamese folk religions for that matter). We are primarily Europeans, which do not have a particularly good track record in their treatment and respect for brown-skinned peoples. Fighting a counter-insurgency is no place to be ignorant of one’s surroundings whether physical or cultural.
[Just for the record thesaurus entry – ]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugly_American_(pejorative)
“Ugly American” is a stereotype depicting American citizens as exhibiting loud, arrogant, demeaning, thoughtless, ignorant, and ethnocentric behavior mainly abroad, but also at home.[1][2][3][4][5][6] Although the term is usually associated with or applied to travelers and tourists, it also applies to U.S. corporate businesses in the international arena.[7][8][9][10][11][12]…
10 years for the Soviets. 20 years from us. And no lesson learned. geez
Ron, I am not talking about fighting anyone — who doesn’t shoot at us. Any Taliban who tried to drive us out of the country would have to be suicidal. They are not a military force — under normal definitions — the Taliban is the equivalent of a vast Al Capone gang.
I am talking about a psychological mind-fuck.
I am going on the assumption that nobody wants them — very badly don’t want them — badly enough to take encouragement from the presence of a real standing army that is on their side — that takes away the political and social legitimacy of the Taliban just because everybody likes us and not them.
There’s a hundred ways to play with this crazy situation. We are the insurgency — the Taliban will be the counter-insurgency.
We can for instance set up safe sanctuary zones for anti-government forces to retreat to. I’m thinking the Afghans take back control of their own country from the Al Capone gang. I’m thinking more about civilian protests — these days that is the common way of the world.
It’s all about this … [cut-and-paste] Taliban non popular support: David Brooks said on PBS News Hour: “ … one of the good things that has happened in the Middle East over the last several years is that people have taken a look at the Taliban, and they hate it. A survey of 11 countries, Muslim countries, only 13 percent of positive views about the Taliban.” I’m guessing back in Afghan home that might come in at more like 5 percent.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/brooks-and-capehart-on-kabul-attack-jan-6-investigation-voting-rights
… and the watching and waitful 800 pound guerilla.
Dennis,
Where did you serve in the military?
None
Dennis,
War always looks neater on TV than in person, but much the same is true for football. Life and death struggles are always very personal in the now and present as well as entirely unpredictable in terms of human behavior; i.e, ranging from martyrs to cowards, more than trivial individual results may vary, not so much for football players since kill the quarterback is not usually interpreted literally.
I was drafted in May 1969 and spent November 1969 through October 1970 assigned to the 101st Airborne Division first at the division tactical operations center (TOC) and then the division strategic operations center (the admin and supply base in Phu Bai). I was a Spec4 in a simple support capacity, but it was like having a box seat to observe the war. I was not killing people, just listening in on the blow by blow announcing when in the TOC and later counting the soldiers new in-country and those that reached MIA, KIA, DROS, and ETS status on the other end along with maintaining the division TO&E. You can find each of those US Army acronyms defined with Google, but I bet you already know the 1st two.
I could write a book on the war stories that I know, only two of which occurred within ten klicks of my location. My only moment of heroism was getting duct tape from a nearby rotor wing company when we ran out of pine boxes to put our body bags in for shipment home. Final orders had to be attached to route shipping and no one wanted to staple them to the bodies in black plastic bags.
[For extra credit or higher education I recommend MASH episodes.]
https://www.tvguide.com/tvshows/mash/1030263143/
How to Watch M*A*S*H
Right now you can watch M*A*S*H on Hulu Plus. You are able to stream M*A*S*H by renting or purchasing on Google Play, Amazon Instant Video, and iTunes.
If we can move 120,000 refugees out in two weeks, without planning, we can move
~~Denis Drew~
you just drew us a picture of a worthy cause. let’s do it. before we leave let’s examine the opportunity cost. Let’s consider something perhaps more pressing.
do you realize that American citizens include 1 million Ukrainians, Hutsuls. these Americans of Ukrainian origin could help even more Ukrainians get started in this country if we could get Ukrainians out of the Ukraine, get them to America before they become refugees perhaps wounded refugees, this would help not only Ukrainians who come here but would also help us to fill up our unfilled employment slots which are now at about 10 million.
we need to get these Ukrainians out of the Ukraine before Putin invades their country. we could for example send one of our Navys to the Black Sea to pick them up and bring them back to America. After this we could return to Afghanistan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainians#/media/File:Famine_Kharkov_girl_and_goat_1933.jpg
Justin
If I had a way of uprooting you, I would do so. The cost is minimal. The logistics not so great.
during the Голодомо́р our Secretary of Commerce and undersecretary of everything else, Herbert Hover said, “I don’t care if they are communists, they are going to eat”, then sent tons of grain to the USSR, but Stalin would not allow any of it to go to the starving Ukrainians. Now we have a chance to save some of the Ukrainians from Putin’s invasion. Redeem ourselves for what we failed to complete then.
Let’s go for
it
!
That should work out about as well as going to the aid of Austria pre-Anschluss in 1939 (when Germany absorbed Austria). Perhaps that would have slowed down Hitler considerably. And this time, nukes will be available!
Geopolitical reality is a bitch!
What part of unwinnable war confuses you people? You are totally insane, and more than a little bit stupid.
EMike,
“You people?” I only count 1 and 1/2 confused peeps. The view of war people get from watching movies is as sanitary as the view of war from the inside the safety of the DC Beltway. Good on you that you know better, albeit that knowledge may have come at some cost in your sphere of friends and family.
My question is haven’t they read a newspaper for the last two decades? Beyond obvious that it was a clusterfuck from the start and had no chance of success of any real kind. You don’t have to be a veteran to see stupidity when it shows up.
EMike,
Have you ever owned a dog? If so, then did beating them get them to behave? Horses are even more sensitive to hostility because they are herbivores. But dogs are omnivores and the similarities between the personalities of the two species is what bound them as companions. Face it cats are better hunters and they do respond well to feeding. But big cats have way too much independent attitude. Dogs vary with a few dominants, a few more intelligent alert individuals and a whole bunch of insecure appeasers and submissives. We consistently over-rate the importance of intelligence just because we have thumbs, but with most individuals it is easier to reach their personalities than it is to reach their intellects since they have far more of the former than the latter.
Look folks, I’m not talking about shooting anyone — as long as they don’t shoot at us — and they, the Taliban, won’t have any incentive to shoot at us as long as we don’t shoot at them. Mexican standoff. And psychological hell for the Taliban. They are running a country where 95% of the population runs from not wanting them to hating them. They are the new Russians. And they don’t have even an dilapidated old Russian tank.
Think opportunity cost — what we are missing right now. We can fly in and take over patches of Afghanistan without a fight (they have no incentive to shoot at us as long as we don’t shoot at them).
https://www.itv.com/news/2022-01-18/amid-scenes-of-starvation-is-opinion-on-aid-to-taliban-led-afghanistan-changing
All we have to do to end all this suffering (that we are responsible for in so far as we cut off aid they had come to depend on) is show up in force and force the Taliban to lose any sense of their political legitimacy — and let the population take it from there.
Insanity. You need to reeducate yourself, and try to pay some little bit of attention to the last two decades. Seems important to me, and anyone with a IQ above single digits.
EMike,
How can you object to the idea of a war where no one was killed? It is a standard sci-fi cliche although it always turns out the computer game kills must be sacrificed by their own side or the game turns out to be real and only appears like a game to calm the spectators.
What the world needs now is a nice neat sanitary war.
you can be quite sure that our pentagon was two steps ahead of us and that they have a plan to revisit Afghanistan. I am guessing that their method will be different from yours, that the plan is not to send in a regiment of Infantry and 2 of armor. I am guessing that their plan is to send in an aircraft carrier with drones, with drones that can pick out the Taliban leader the grand Mufti Mullah then knock him over. it is so simple to just keep knocking out the top dog then his replacement. after a few of these hits the whole thing falls apart because nobody wants to be at the top and the bottom is too miserable to tolerate.
everybody leaves.
the party is
over
!
JC,
Actually that is no where near the nuttiest thing that you have ever written. However, there is a reason that POTUS does not authorize his black ops to go around the world knocking off world leaders. He wants to live.
Rapid Inflation Fuels Debate Over What’s to Blame: Pandemic or Policy
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Britain Says Moscow Is Plotting to Install a Pro-Russian Leader in Ukraine
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But wait… There’s more!
UK Pursues More Muscular Role in Standoff With Russia Over Ukraine
NY Times – Jan 23
… The theatrical timing and cloak-and-dagger nature of the intelligence disclosure (above), which came in the midst of a roiling political scandal at home, raised a more cynical question: whether some in the British government were simply eager to deflect attention from the problems that threaten to topple Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Either way, Britain is moving on multiple fronts. It is preparing legislation that would enable it to impose sanctions if Mr. Putin carries out an invasion. It dispatched senior ministers to other NATO countries menaced by Russia. And it has begun engaging directly with Moscow, with reports that its foreign and defense secretaries plan to meet their Russian counterparts in the coming weeks.
Britain’s hard-edge approach was crystallized in a punchy essay by the defense secretary, Ben Wallace. Writing in The Times of London, Mr. Wallace rejected Mr. Putin’s claims of encirclement by NATO and accused the Russian leader of crude “ethnonationalism,” based on what he called the bogus claim that Russians and Ukrainians are one people. The essay made waves in Washington and in European capitals. …
NYT: some in the British government (are) simply eager to deflect attention from the problems that threaten to topple Prime Minister Boris Johnson. …
(BJ has gone maskless at various staff parties in recent years, despite anti-covid mask-wearing rules, and calls for his resignation have been made by people in his own party.)
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(Here’s a Neo-Con POV, if yer interested.)
Putin Has US Right Where He Wants It
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