No doubt this article's title seems to be an odd me'lange, but I promise to connect the dots. My primary focus will be its last three subjects, but since certain issues affecting 2020 also have implications for the second and third subjects, I can't ignore 2020.
2020
2020 is winding down engulfed in uncertainty over the near future in the face of a new incoming U.S. President (for simplicity's sake, I will assume Biden emerges the victor), and the origin and course of the pandemic that is getting a second wind.
The U.S. Presidency
I have claimed for years that the two dominant political parties are two sides of the same corrupted coin. After all, both parties are at the beck and call of corporate America. Yet there are always some shades of difference, most notably in the extent of widespread misery, destruction, and death experienced under different administrations. If you agree as I do with Einstein that war is an act of murder, then all U.S. presidents from the outset, save two in office only a month or so, have been surrogate murderers. They obviously vary in how much surrogate murdering they have done and less obviously in their feelings about it. I doubt if any president's feelings can match those President Obama reportedly expressed to his inner sanctum of drone plotters; namely, "I am really good at killing people." [1] Maybe it was his troubled conscience speaking assuming he has one.
Some differences between the Obama and the Trump administrations are already on the record. Except for the one incident that resulted in the drone killing of the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, a reputed threat to the U.S., Trump hasn't given the drone hawks the green light. [2] Additionally Obama's vice-president, Biden, reportedly "championed drone strikes and Special Forces operations as an alternative to the heavy deployment of ground troops,' and bragged that "we didn't lose a single life" and that the war "served as a prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward." [3] A prescription, no less from a diehard war hawk! A most ominous forewarning of what might be ahead with his administration that could be a replica or worse of the Obama administration.
Two Powder Kegs
China and the U.S. are currently embroiled in two disputes that amount to powder kegs possibly presaging Armageddon.
One involves the Covid-19 pandemic. Speculation about its true origin and purpose have been circulating for months. There has been, for instance, a lawsuit filed with the International Criminal Court alleging that the virus was being developed as a biological weapon at the Wuhan laboratory in China. [4] A member of the British Parliament has made the same allegation. [5] Giving the two more credence is the report by a highly qualified Chinese virologist working in Hong Kong, Dr Li-Meng, who has fled to the U.S. for fear of retaliation by the Chinese government after "she claimed that she discovered a cover-up operation during her investigation and said that the Chinese government knew about the spread of the virus before publicly acknowledging it. She further asserted that the virus is an artificial one created by the China Military Institute. [6] She seems confident of her discovery and intends to publish her scientific findings. [7]
If it turns out that the virus was indeed being developed as a biological weapon, the pressing question becomes what will be the response of the new administration in the U.S.?
The other powder keg involves the continuing dispute between the two nations over the sovereignty of Taiwan. The U.S. had imperialistically and legally over-reached a few years ago and is committed to go to war should China unequivocally claim as its own the disputed territory. While Biden's position on the matter is murky, the legal obligation would seem to force his hand if China provokes it. [8] The most sensible and harmonious resolution, which has never been a strength of America's foreign policy, would be to repeal the binding law, or more characteristically, simply ignore it.
The U.S. Democracy Corps
My String of Failed Reforms
I have utterly failed numerous times to mobilize and organize Americans peacefully and legally to end the malevolent rule by the power elite that have been ruling and ruining America from its outset and through endless imperialistic and militaristic interventions are risking the very future of humanity predictably sometime later this century. Not at all surprisingly, the power elite are the only ones in America profiting from Covid-19. [9]
My first version of a U.S. Democracy Corps (USDC) a few years ago was a dismal failure and for two reasons. [10] I should have sought to coalesce existing organizations and groups rather than target individuals. And I had no financial backers.
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