China has begun its crackdown on its own wanna-be corpo-statees such as have emerged in the US primarily, but in other nation-states as well, mostly in Europe. These corpo-states are the new big biz giants of current year, Big Tech, especially Social Media and eCommerce Sites. But while the big tech companies outside of China celebrate the taking down of some of theri competitors, they should pay attention to how China is treating their own companies to consider maybe potentially giving up on attempting to dance with the CCP for the promise of gaining access to that massive market.
Big U.S. tech companies must be watching with glee as China cracks down on its homegrown technology companies. They are thrilled not only because they are seeing potential global competitors in e-commerce, music licensing, ride sharing, food delivery and more weakened, but because they now have a powerful card to play at home.
It started last October when Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba and its affiliate Ant Financial, complained at the Shanghai Bund Summit that regulators were too cautious: “There is no innovation in this world without risk.” He also said Chinese banks have a pawnshop mentality, requiring collateral before they lend, unlike Ant, which was about to go public, which uses algorithms to assess creditworthiness. Mr. Ma’s criticisms were correct, but he angered the powers that be. Even though shares for Ant Financial’s initial public offering were 870 times oversubscribed, the Shanghai Stock Exchange effectively canceled the IPO in early November….
As the Taliban enter the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul, it marks the end of a 20 year war, what history most likely will look back at as a singular failure and waste of resources for the United Statesn of America. Perhapss history might also observe how the war served to mostly perpetuate the boogeyman, or scapegoat back home, the Islamo-Fascist (a very real threat to any and all, but not so all-powerful and pervasive as we were sold they were back in the early years after 9/11). Perhaps history might also note how it served as a proving ground for the laatest lethal tech, with Afghanis serving as shooting pidgeons. Perhaps.
From www.csmonitor.com
2021-08-15 17:24:28
Ahmad Seir, Rahim Faiz, Taheem Akhgar, and Jon Gambrell Excerpt:
The Taliban fanned out across the capital, and a group of fighters entered the presidential palace in Kabul. Suhail Shaheen, a Taliban spokesman and negotiator, told The Associated Press that the militants would hold talks in the coming days aimed at forming an “open, inclusive Islamic government.”
A Taliban official earlier said the group would announce the creation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan from the palace, but those plans appeared to be on hold. That was the name of the country under Taliban rule before the militants were ousted by U.S.-led forces after the 9/11 attacks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.
Calls for the US to consider rescuing those who risked their lives to dare to dream of the Afghanistan Americans promised them have only been rising, and they are coming from elements of the left and the right, though the calls themselves are still not a prevailing voice, either on the left or the right. The question is one to consider in light of our role in creating, essentially, bullseyes on significant portions of Afghanis, perhaps at least 1 million. Can we as a nation take in 1 million Afghan refugees that are now in danger of being harmed, enslaved, and killed? Or, perhaps the better question might be, should we feel morally obliged to?
20 years of US war in Afghanistan has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Afghan deaths and the displacement of 5.9 million people.
The US government and US citizens have a responsibility to repair the damage caused by our war.
The US must resettle at least one million Afghan refugees in the US over the next decade and provide additional humanitarian assistance to Afghans.
David Vine is professor of anthropology at American University in Washington, DC. Vine is co-author of the Costs of War Project’s report “Creating Refugees: Displacement Caused by the United States’ Post-9/11 Wars.”
This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
A move anounced by Fannie Mae to consider Rent Payments as a factor in assessing credit score could be an opportunity for renters to build good credit, or just another way people who are struggling are further burdened in their effort to escape their lower state. The mortgage giant announced plans to factor in rent payment history starting September 18th, 2021.
It has been under discussion for
what seems like forever, but Fannie Mae will begin to recognize non-reported types
of credit performance in qualifying a loan. On September 18, it will launch a
new feature in its automated underwriting system that will incorporate
consumers’ rent payments in credit evaluations.
The process, which will require
borrower consent, will enable single-family lenders to automatically identify
recurring rent payments on an applicant’s bank statements. The company says its
new Desktop Underwriting (DU) enhancement creates new opportunities for
homeownership for qualified renters with limited credit history but a strong
rent payment history while still promoting safe and sound lending,
Only consistent rent payments will
be considered. Any records of missed or inconsistent rent payments identified
in the bank statements will not negatively affect the applicant’s ability to
qualify for a loan sold to Fannie Mae. Rent payments that appear in the…
After joining Democrats to pass the first draft of the bloated, heavily ideological and cronyist “infrastructure bill”, the Republicans have succeeded in passing a series of meaningless amendments that will be promptly dropped in the “budget reconciliation process.” This process allows anything framed as a spending measure, including mandating that all new cars be built with an interlock device and tracking technology, to be passed without a single Republican vote.
The Republicans put out a memo in which they claimed to have put the Democrats in a difficult position over their amendments. These amendments included things like preventing federal funding of abortion and preventing the restriction of fracking, and a prohibition on Critical Race Theory.” The Republicans could have prevented this by not voting for the first version of the bill, the one tailored to pass with fewer poison pills but which is also radically ideological and filled with crony handouts and vote-buying schemes. But the GOP leadership voted for the Bill, demonstrating the fighting spirit of the Afghan National Army.
The jumped-up claims that they are truly putting Democrats in a difficult position are an attempt to fool their base into believing that voting GOP matters in an election. But in reality the GOP at the national level is a faux opposition party, soundbiting one way, and yet acting as supine collaboration to the Democratic Party’s totalitarian ambitions.
The entire Republican Party is a hollowed-out wreck without a soul, substance, or fight and is either off acting like crazed angry bloggers with nothing more than red-meat reactionary rage or as moderate voices whose chief pleasure is getting the Partisan Press to say a few nice things about them.
The infrastructure bill is a radical, partisan, and authoritarian intolerable act that any thinking and intelligent population would positively rebel against and any elected politician would be run out of office for supporting. Thinking and intelligence can hardly be considered traits of an electorate “educated” by partisan-run public schools entirely focused on ideological, irreligious, anti-family indoctrination and almost incidentally focused on science, math, reading, and the like. Democrats control the education establishment almost as a youth wing of their Party and most teachers are more partisan revolutionary hack than actually teacher.
The GOP leadership, instead of condemning and resisting with vigor, has played collaborator to, despite its symbolic but not substantive “amendments” which will most definitely be dropped from the reconciliation package. This may stem from decades of public school indoctrination and mental health abuse within a partisan-run education system that is itself all symbolism over substance.
Basically, the Senate Republicans aren’t capable of understanding that they are collaborators, that their opposition is symbolic and meaningless, and that if the Democrats ever gain the monopoly power they crave, these useless idiots in the opposition will have won no favor for their collaborative efforts. While it is virtually impossible for Democrats to achieve this aim without literally becoming a totalitarian junta or something like that, and while this is also impossible given the US political structure, if this ever happened the collaboration party would be tossed aside like waste.
In the end, the Democrats won’t vote on these amendments, they simply won’t write them into the reconciliation version of the bill. On that ground, they won’t have meant anything, but the fact the Republican leadership in the Senate voted for the first part of this monstrosity is all the substance one needs to observe in order to accuse the GOP leadership of collaboration with the radicals who run the Democratic Party.
Finding gaps for freedom in this emerging authoritarian environment where the opposition is a collaborationist party will become increasingly difficult for freedom seekers and the skilled freedom builder who can organize people locally to defy this trend will become extremely valuable. If this bill passes, the freedom builders will have much work to do in order to help people organize at a sufficient local scale to build their own gaps for freedom which allow them to avoid these intolerable acts and their edicts as much as possible, without becoming outlaws.
The collaboration party, the GOP, will continue to offer insubstantial opposition that is merely words and the individual who is not either very rich or connected to a local network of freedom seekers led by freedom builders, will find their own horizon of possibilities shrinking and their basic human rights, human dignity, and human flourishing undermined.
What the Senate Republicans have done is give Democrats one more step closer to monopoly power and a government and mega corporation controlled economy, culture, and civil society all exploited to benefit the few at the expense of the many. There are many reasons the Democrats will fail, but Republicans aren’t one of those reasons.
As the DNC and the Corpowoketarianz become more and more dependent on one another for power, they will inceasingly walk lock step with each other in terms of the types of human action governnce they are willing to attempt to affect using coercive action, be it the direct action of the state, or the soft-power extension of the state (the part the DNC controls), the Corpowoketarianz, the American international corporations that all decided to go all-in with the Corpowoketarianz agenda and surrender any semblance of Bill-of-Rights-Based Americanism in how they treat their employees and their customers.
The Corpowoketarianz are most likely at the zenith of their power, and I have little doubt the government-powered faction of this unholy alliance will eventually move to strike down the power the corpowoketarianz currently poesses, but, for now, the state and the corporation are one, and will be for the near-foreseeable future. Texas is becoming a battleground of sorts, a proving ground, really for corowoketarianz power. If the corpowoketarianz, through the use of their considerably market monopoly power, a power protected directly by state guns, can flip Texas blue, then the end is near for all political parties outside the DNC-Corpowoketarianz one.
Once that power consolidation is complete, the infighting between the very wealthy families of tech and the very wealthy families of legacy (government and legacy business) will begin. I am betting the old guard will eventually purge and claim the toys of the new guard (the wealthy new corpowoketarianz feudal lords and ladies) for themselves. But let’s hope we never have to ask theat question, as it is on that will never be answered if they faill to consolidate political party power.
In Texas, the GOP is against mandates in general regarding Covid. The official DNC policy is mandate and control and capitalize on this ’emergency’ to continue to sieze wealth from the many that is given to their billionaire allies while also developing habits of police-state submission and expectation from the masses. And our American corporations, the corpowoketarianz, have signed on, for the sake of their government ally, their brother in seditious arms, the DNC.
This is not to suggest that I know exactly how to handle our Covid reality, or that mandates, be it vaccines or masks, might or might not be justified, this is to suggest that the usefulness to we the poors, the powerless, is the least of the concerns or motivations for the DNC and the Corpowoketarinz that do its soft power bidding.
Business and politics are colliding in Texas, where Republican Governor Greg Abbott is facing backlash over a conservative social agenda that companies say will make it harder for them to attract and retain the best talent.
The latest flare-up came Wednesday, when Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, a Democrat, issued an executive order that requires masks be worn inside businesses and schools, defying Abbott’s ban on such mandates. Issues like voting rights and the treatment of transgender children have also recently divided the governor and corporations operating in the state. Dell Technologies Inc., Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. have publicly criticized priorities of the Republican-dominated state government.
It’s an awkward position for a politician who has painted himself as a champion of economic development, ready to tout successes in luring Oracle Corp., Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and Tesla Inc. to the Lone Star State and helping oversee the nation’s biggest jobs increase from 2010 to 2020. But facing re-election next year along with declining popularity and ultra-conservative challengers in the Republican primary vote, Abbott has pushed for legislation that plays well with his base even if it’s increasingly at odds with major corporations.
“Since the time George W. Bush was governor, we have seen that economic development as a cornerstone for growth for the Republican party in Texas,” said Jim Riddlesperger, a political science professor at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. “What he is doing here is playing to the audience for the Republican primary and not to the general public.”
There’s a risk to that strategy come general election time, amid an influx of newcomers from companies relocating to the state as well as pandemic-era transplants lured by warm weather and zero income taxes. Many of those new residents have a more liberal disposition than life-long Texans, threatening the Republican party’s dominance of the state, which boasts the world’s ninth-largest economy.
PGC – There are a lot of people out there that call themselves ‘leftists’ who also claim to support consensual exchange, while at the same time continue to support the DNC version of leftism that uses moral supremacist tactics to create police state powers for corporations and governments alike.
Though warned long ago that their tactic of ‘punching Nazis’ would lead to what we see today, Corpowoketarianizm, where their very core ideals have been commodified and altered to fit the agenda of the same billionaires these leftists claim to want to stop, these consensual-seeking leftists continued to stand behind the DNC as corpowoketarianizm spread throughout the land, starting in our colleges and universities, spreading like the plague in social media, then extending to our financial institutions which emboldened the rest of the corporate world to join in with full zeal, seeing the opportunity to elimiate competition among the poors by perepatuating divisions amongst the powerless.
Now we see in Belarus, a dictatorship in the truest sense of the term, the tactic of stigmatiizng people based on the label extremist being used to shut down news outlets that don’t advance the party line. It’s the government itself that’s doing this, though, to be sure, if government had an industry in its back pocket, it too would be happy to use that soft power over direct state power. They must envy the position of the DNC compared to themselves.
They had to actually pass anti-extremist laws, which was easy enough to do in a disarmed country with no Bill of Rights sown into the fabric of the narratives of a people, such as we still have in America today. They passed the laws and had no legal roadblocks to impede them such as the government would face in America, even now.
They are well within the ethical standards of the corpowoketarianz that currently occupy our lands. They are using the label extremist to cancel the extremists, just as the corporations are using that label to cancel opposition to the one-party–to-be-DNC. Eventually, it is hoped by the DNC, they will be able to declare people extremists too and use the full power of the state to cancel them as well.
Stockholm, August 16, 2021 – Belarus authorities should refrain from contesting the appeal of news website Zerkalo.io against its designation as “extremist,” and cease using the country’s anti-extremism laws to stifle independent reporting, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
On May 18, authorities raided the offices of the independent news website Tut.by, interrogated about 130 members of its staff, blocked the outlet’s website, and detained at least a dozen employees for suspected tax evasion, according to CPJ reporting from the time and Anna Kaltygina, former news desk manager at Tut.by, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview.
Several of the outlet’s employees fled Belarus, and on July 8 launched Zerkalo.io as a temporary replacement for Tut.by, according to Kaltygina, who now works as the acting editor-in-chief of Zerkalo.io. Belarus authorities blocked access to the website within the country immediately after its launch,…
From WION out of India, the collapse of the US-backed government in Kabul is invoking images of the fall of Saigon as panicked locals realize the retreat of the US means the new masters of their country will seek their vengeance. The sheer terror and chaos are a culmination of 20 years of bad policy that cannot solely be laid at the feet of either Trump or Biden, of Democrats or Republicans. It has been a massive bipartisan failure at the gross expense of tens of thousands people, including American troops whose lives were forever changed by their deployment there.
Let’s look past the partisan spin and blame game DC is so famous for and debunk some common partisan narratives.
Biden Isn’t The Author Of This Disaster
President Biden certainly didn’t do anything to mitigate the debacle that has been the “war on terror” during his 8 years as Vice President. But the genesis of the collapse of the US-backed government in Kabul begins in 2001. The knee-jerk response to the Al Qaeda attack, which saw the US focus on “nation-building” and embrace the myth “better to fight the bad guys overseas than at home.”
We didn’t fight the bad guys, we engaged in nation-building. When US and Northern Alliance troops were closing in Al Qaeda, the US suddenly STOPPED the attack and Bin Laden got away. Ideally, had this attack been pushed to its conclusion, the bad guys are gone, the war is over. Sure, the US could back the Northern Alliance as it did the Mujahideen, but we went for an invasion to save people who weren’t trying to save themselves.
Instead of snuffing the real bad guys out, the US let them go, perhaps due to incompetence, perhaps for other geopolitical reasons. The nation-building idea was always bad and once the US entered the land and began its han-fisted approach to Afghani politics, the stage was set for what happened, albeit after much loss of mostly civilian lives.
Donald Trump’s Withdrawal Agreement Was Bad
Donald Trump wanted out and he was willing to make nice with the Taliban, on the grounds they promised, on paper, to foreswear the use of terrorism or hosting terrorism. It was not expected this would be observed, but if it wasn’t, well, we have plenty of bombs for that. Whatever one thinks of Trump, he knew when to hold and when to fold, and it was time to fold. But his plan involved militarily supporting a withdrawal and leaving in May, not August. His plan wasn’t followed the US arbitrarily reneged on the deal.
It’s true it may seem Trump was naive about the Taliban and that they weren’t going to follow the deal. But Trump’s calculus was to stop the bleeding and cut losses but to make sure the withdrawal of US personnel and collaborative Afghanis was orderly and on time.
A better deal wasn’t to be had and none of the critics have proposed better alternatives that would have worked.
The US Is On Retreat and Only Taliban Backers Like China and Pakistan Benefit
One alternative view is that the seemingly precipitous withdrawal is an abject defeat. But the geopolitical calculus is possible mote subtle. The US is aligning against China and its position on Afghanistan leaves it vulnerable to Russia, Pakistan, and the “Stans” and constrains their hand against China. In essence, China, allied to Pakistan, and Russia, patron of the Stans, could hold US forces hostage.
China may indeed be falling for a clever trap in which they become embroiled in the morasse of Afghani trial politics. The Taliban may be making nice with Beijing now but it’s ability to keep its word is nil. The love betweem Islamists and Communists is notoriously low, which is the nicest thing one may say about the Communists.
Biden Blew It By Changing The Date of Withdrawal
It is true Biden abandoned the original agreement and plan, thus making the blaming of Trump laughable as the plan executed was not Trump’s plan. The negotiations with the Taliban were nixed and so was the withdrawal date, which did in fact violate the agreement.
While this was used as a pretext by the Taliban to present this change as an affront to Afghanistan itself, it is flimsy logic to say this alone ruined the plan. Biden needed, or wanted, more time to effect withdrawal and vastly over-estimated the potential of Afghan forces. The major deviation was dismissing the Taliban, but one can hardly argue against viewings these people as brutal savages as opposed to making nice with them.
The Taliban don’t keep agreements. Biden knew this and ditched the idiotic pretext, but it may have led to a miscalculation of many things, such as the strength of the enemy and of allies. Merely changing the date of withdrawal may have fed Taliban propaganda, but that’s about it.
What’s The Conclusion?
The collapse of the US-backed government in Afghanistan was essentially ensured when US and Allied forces tried to defend people who didn’t want to fight for themselves and tried nation-building in a land that basically rejected the values upon which that effort was based.
Backed by China and Pakistan, the Taliban are poised to take Kabul and end the 20 year exmpiremnt in nation-building with a staggering defeat. The Taliban were estimated by the US “intelligence community” to be incapable of matching the larger and better equipped Afghan national army, which either switched sides or evaporated. Billions in US weapons seized make the Talbin a creditable force in the region.
The Afghan people seem to be of three types: cowards who flee the first signs of battle, people who don’t want freedom and are willing to accept tyranny, people who may want freedom but only as a handout at others’ expense. Exceptions to this can be found, a brave Afghani willing to stand for freedom is rare and would not be able to realistically hold their ground on the midst of such a moribund and corrupt population.
The Epoch Times covered the stunning evacuation of US embassy in Kabul in scenes reminiscent of the fall of Saigon.
Meanwhile, the President and Vice President have left Kabul after the President spoke of a peaceful transition of power but the Vice President vowed to fight the Taliban to the death and never, ever sit under the same roof as them.
The main change in protocol for this Biden withdrawal over the Trump withdrawal was that Biden cut off all talks with the Taliban and seems to have bought the false narrative that Afghan army, strong on paper, with limited US air support, could hold the line. What happened was that the army turned, fled, or was bought off and in many cases, after surrendering and believing they would be spared, they write slaughtered. Trump thought he could engage the Taliban, mostly to keep them from supporting terror groups like Al Qaeda, in the future in a power-sharing arrangement.
Both approaches would likely have ended in the same space.
Efforts to rescue the 20,000 or more Afghanis who would face execution for collaboration with the Americans are under way. There are no plans for the women and children whose menfolk so thoroughly let them down. There are also no plans to punish China and Pakistan, without whose help this would not have been possible.
US forces are being airlifted back into Afghanistan in a desperate bid to save US citizens and Afghani collaborators from the Taliban advance.
As the Taliban marches into the remaining “free” areas of Afghanistan, a feat nobody who was watching matters is surprised about, the temptation to “save” Afghanistan from itself may be great. The amount of money made by the defense industry is staggering, but the gain of this policy is negligible. In the end, despite massive aid and training, the people of Afghanistan don’t want freedom, they want a throwback to the most archaic and barbaric religious ideology known to modern humanity.
The US is now sending in troops to rescue US citizens and Afghani collaborators with the US in scenes that will potentially be more dramatic than the fall of Saigon. The Taliban, backed by China and Pakistan and freshly armed with captured US war booty, are about to turn the country back into a terrorist safe haven and 7th century hellscape in which Christians are martyred and women become chattel.
The blame lies with every US President since Bush II, the neocon “genius” who promised that everyone wants “democracy” if only US forces fought for their freedom, even though the actual people being “liberated” never have. But the consequences are to the American people, both in terms of lost lives, changed lives through injury and psychological damage, and trillions of dollars, most of which lined corporate pockets.
The drumbeat of war will begin as soon as, once again, Afghanistan hosts the next terrorist act against the US. Outraged people will want revenge and will forget that this story keeps repeating with no successful end in sight. The propensity of the ruling class to foment conflicts which they profit from has never been greater.
But from the perspective of the average Afghani, most of whom lack the courage and conviction needed to resist the ideology of the Taliban, life will become a horror freak show. The ruthlessness and arbitrary brutality of the Taliban falls on people even if they desperately try to comply with the overwhelming edicts of this throwback religious sect. Nobody, not even a faithful Taliban member, is safe from the possibility of being brutalized and murdered for reasons they cannot even fathom.
Every Afghani who aided the Americans, and there are hundreds of thousands, is going to face dire consequences, and so is their family. The precipitous withdrawal of the US from Afghanistan, brokered by Trump and then carried out months later than planned by Biden, means that almost none of these people will be safe. Simply importing all of them to the US is not a practical solution. Moreover, they didn’t collaborate with the US to have to leave their homeland, many just wanted to make money or, in some cases, they wanted to move their country into the 21st century.
Sending in US troops to Kabul to effect an emergency evacuation while the President practically begs and then cajoles the Taliban, who have no fear of the US, may morph into saving the army of collaborators who have, mostly, turned tail and fled from the enemy. Plaintiff cries to save the Afghani collaborators have already begun and this pressure is coming from the right and left.
But the pressure to just put this behind us, cut our losses, including human losses, and move on is greater. Any “engagement” is likely to be covert and concealed, possibly carried out by mercenaries (contractors), and possibly by buying off more Afghanis to trade money for propping up a corrupt puppet regime. There is no popular support or willingness to sacrifice or fight to save Afghanistan from the China and Pakistan backed Taliban.
Afghanistan and Iraq have been a gross debacle, they have caused massive losses to the US and they have only made things worse in those lands. This is a bipartisan debacle no US President since Bush II has had the moral courage and tenacity to stop. Biden is the last unfortunate President who must oversee the final collapse which was inevitable way back in 2001 when the plan became “nation building” for a population that wouldn’t fight for its own freedom.
US re-engagement in Afghanistan would only serve the defense industry and, while it is unlikely, one can never underestimate the corruption and foolishness of America’s real political shot-callers.
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