When was the Democratic Party anti-war?

Once in a while, I listen to “establishment controlled” Democracy Now. Today, I decided to listen to their episode with Bernie Sanders’ former foreign policy adviser, Matt Duss. They talked about how the Democratic Party has become “The Party of War” as if it’s something that’s recently happened. Left out of this conversation was if the Democratic Party was ever anti-war? I don’t recall a time in my life in which the Democrats were.

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Listening to Soldiers Of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire

Opening quote.

Soldiers Of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire

Related:

The Rand Corporation: The Think Tank That Controls America (archived)

By the 1960s, America’s rivals were paying attention. The Soviet newspaper Pravda nicknamed RAND “the academy of science and death and destruction.” American outfits preferred to call them the “wizards of Armageddon.”

What’s Really Going On In the South China Sea Between the Philippines and China

What’s Really Going On In the South China Sea Between the Philippines and China

by Tina Antonis

Maritime clashes between the Philippines and China had been mostly over the Philippines’ military outpost, BRP (BRP—Barko ng Republika ng Pilipinas, which translates to “Ship of the Republic of the Philippines”—the ship prefix for the Philippines) Sierra Madre, in the Spratly Islands, which is disputed by Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan (a province of China, as recognized by the United Nations’ Resolution No. 2758), and Vietnam. The BRP Sierra Madre was intentionally run aground on a reef near the Second Thomas Shoal in the disputed Spratly Islands, in 1997, so that the Philippines could stake their territorial claim.

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US Foreign Policy vs. China Continues Under Trump

The incoming Trump administration is poised to pick up where the Biden administration has left off on the decades-spanning centerpiece of US foreign policy ‒ the encirclement and containment of China.

US Foreign Policy vs. China Continues Under Trump (archived)

Related:

AFPI: America First Policy Institute

Por la Pesca:

The Walton Family Foundation, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and a coalition of fishermen’s associations and environmental institutions join forces to promote responsible fishing practices.

Front Organizations

China’s A2/AD (ACE Concept/Joint All-Domain Operations)

Trump 2.0: Prepare for the further dumbing down of America

No, it’s not Communism! It’s the privatization of education. “School choice” takes away from government spending for public schools!

Source

Trump Chooses Longtime Ally Linda McMahon to Run Education Dept.

President-elect Donald J. Trump on Tuesday tapped Linda McMahon, a former professional wrestling executive who ran the Small Business Administration for much of his first term, to lead the Education Department, an agency he has routinely singled out for elimination in his upcoming term.

In part because of her recent policy role and her experience as the small business administrator, Ms. McMahon had been discussed as a possible pick to lead the Commerce Department until the role was officially offered to Howard Lutnick, a Wall Street executive and a chairman of the Trump transition team, earlier in the day.

Ms. McMahon will be in charge of overseeing what is widely expected to be a thorough and determined dismantling of the department’s core functions, as Mr. Trump and many of those in his orbit have questioned the agency’s purpose and disparaged its work as overregulating schools on political and ideological terms.

Other than a brief appointment in 2009 to the Connecticut State Board of Education, where she served for just over a year, Ms. McMahon has no experience in overseeing education policy. She would assume the role at a time when school districts across the country are facing budget shortfalls, many students are not making up ground lost during the pandemic in reading and math, and many colleges and universities are shrinking and closing amid a larger loss of faith in the value of higher education.

While Mr. Trump has repeatedly called for an outright dissolution of the agency, any effort to shutter it would require congressional action and support from some Republican lawmakers whose districts depend on federal aid for public education.

But the America First Policy Institute has set out a more immediate list of changes it says could be achieved through vastly changing the department’s priorities. Those include stopping schools from “promoting inaccurate and unpatriotic concepts” about American history surrounding institutionalized racism, and expanding “school choice” programs that direct more public funds to parents to spend on home-schooling, online classes or at private and religious schools.

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Purge at the Pentagon! 

Purge at the Pentagon!

Purge at the Pentagon! Reuters reports that the incoming Trump administration is drawing up a list of generals to be fired. These are generals associated with former Chairman of the JCS Mark Milley and anyone else branded with a scarlet “W” for woke. The current Chairman, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, may also be fired, as some within the Trump camp suspect he may have been a DEI hire.

As Army officer Paul Yingling famously wrote (“A Failure in Generalship”), a private is severely punished for losing a rifle but generals get promoted for losing wars. I doubt this is going to change. Instead, under Trump it appears the firing of generals is another leg of his vengeance tour, a purge of those who are perceived as disloyal.

H/T: Der Friedensstifter