Tag: ukraine

Is America Worth All That Hassle and Unpleasantness?

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

In the series “Pine Gap” which we are currently watching the relationship between the USA and Australia is strained. In real life the AUKUS pact and the sale of US nuclear submarines by the arch deal breaker, in under review. {What is in it for us?} Time and again deals are broken and pulled out of. In the series Australia is considering a deal of neutrality with China.

In real life America continues to behave like a teenage bully in the locker-hallways of a high school, gesticulating, boasting and making threats. There are insults and defamations thrown at so-called allies.

America is very hard work as a so-called “friend”. There is so much hassle. It is such a drag and is not a mutually uplifting relationship. Do you really need friends like that, who are such a downer, a whinger, a pain in the ass? Who are so unpleasant?

USA continues to fund the obliteration of Gaza; the American ordnance has killed tens of thousands. It pretends to be a peace maker when it provides petrol for the fire which inflames, maims and destroys. It has thrown tens of billions of dollars at the defence of Ukraine.

If Ukraine has taught anything, it is that Russian conventional forces need not be feared. Yet the propaganda suggests that it is Putin who is the bogeyman, Vlad the Impaler. Iraq and Afghanistan are swept under the carpet. Butter from genetically modified cows fed on pesticide rich feed does not melt in our mouths. We are the land of the Free, the home of the Brave. Here we, armed to the teeth, kick the living shit out of anyone who dares to disagree. We are so brave with our reaper drones and F35s. A level playing field is not for us heroes.

I can understand why popularity need not concern the powerful but endless coercion does never strengthen alliances. Belittling allies does not make them strong or willing. I can understand why Western Europe is the past. I can see that technology rich South Korea and Japan are refusing to procreate enough. This is good news for China. I can see that a few bombs on TSMC in Taiwan could severely disrupt the semiconductor and AI band wagons. The new  FABS in the USA won’t come on line anytime soon. I can see Huawei competing effectively around the world. The embargo has stimulated home-grown creativity. I can see the Maoist cultural revolution against the Intellectuals and Free Press in the USA now in full swing.

If America loses its technological advantage post purge, what then? Will the hordes of the unvaccinated survive?

There are a few more years to go of the Trump presidency. What I have no sight of is what a post Trumpian USA might look like, this especially if he changes the constitution to allow himself  another term. It might be a USA unrecognisable.

Is it really worth all that hassle to deal with and partially rely on the USA. How reliable are the whim prone? Patience has to be wearing thin.

Magical Thinking and Arrogance

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I am already bored with the endless TV footage of Trump with his droning on, bragging and put downs of anyone who is not him. His magical thinking in which his actions and words are free of real world consequences is crass. It was so nice to have had a few years without him soap boxing on a daily basis into the media. Oh well we have a few more years of this. If he imagines endorsing Tesla is going to promote sales globally, he may be mistaken. The MAGA sheep may buy but a Trump endorsement is not a good sales pitch worldwide. He may have a “Bud Lite” effect.

Maybe I should contact Dignitas soon.

Not surprisingly the conflict in Ukraine has not been solved in a day. Without the EU further sanctions are unlikely to upset Putin. Trump is the new poster boy for BRICS. He does not perhaps, get this.

Magical thinking, I the Don will get Vlad the Impaler to stop war in Ukraine, “Ta-dah!”

With friends like Trump who needs enemies?

A lot of people have some kind of magical thinking which arises out of their arrogance.

People can be so damned cock-sure without basis that they are blind, myopic and practising auto-proctology, looking with pride at their own sphincters. They are caught up in their own bubble-world. They imagine that the world loves them, that it will flock to them, kowtow, and share of the radiant brilliance of their self-diagnosed omniscience. It may not occur that they are wreaking havoc into the web of life because of their self-centred egotistical obsessions. They would not give a shit in any case.

Trump is a mirror for many, a mirror into which they fear to look with honesty. Humanity has called forth the likes of him. He is a sign of the times.

“Me first, ME, ME, ME. Everyone else is nasty and mean, only I am the hero. They, the plebs, do not understand. The world is against me, conspiring, poor me. It is not fair mummy.! They don’t appreciate me and see just how lucky they are to have me!!”

There is a problem that when some do not get their own way emotional drama results. I have never heard a US president slag off his predecessors with such glee. It is not statesman like nor edifying. It is petty.

Marcus Aurelius he is most certainly not.

This soap opera cannot be cancelled by network. It looks like running for few years yet, even if the ratings drop.

I wonder exactly how much damage can be done in four years?

That remains to be seen and perhaps endured.

The Un-statesman Like Hallway Bully

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I have never before seen an American president behave in such an un-statesman like manner. My opinion of the USA has gone downhill. It might be argued that this does not matter because they have the power. A president who has lost his own battle with power is likely to be ever more punitive to people he sees as enemies, adversaries and ever more willing to listen to sycophants. He will not hold back his vengeance. He will listen only to those whose opinion he wants to hear.

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In the course of few short weeks, he has sided with Russia against Ukraine and to an extent NATO and Europe. He is paranoid that everyone is out to screw him. He sees his own twisted image in the mirror.

This is what he does will alliances and agreements signed by the prior law abiding heads of state. I am not sure of the constitutional vagaries. A deal with him is not worth the paper it is written on.

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So, we awake to a new reality.

Article 5

In 1949, the primary aim of the North Atlantic Treaty – NATO’s founding treaty – was to create a pact of mutual assistance to counter the risk that the Soviet Union would seek to extend its control of Eastern Europe to other parts of the continent.

Every participating country agreed that this form of solidarity was at the heart of the Treaty, effectively making Article 5 on collective defence a key component of the Alliance.

Article 5 provides that if a NATO Ally is the victim of an armed attack, each and every other member of the Alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the Ally attacked.

Article 5

“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.”

This corner stone, this foundation stone, has been called into question by the “stable genius”. I don’t know how many shares in Gazprom might result.

It is pretty clear that much of what is wrong with the world, as it currently stands, has some causal origination in the USA. Well, they now have the president they deserve and we all have to live with the knock on consequences.

This morning, I had the idea that maybe the Chinese should invade Taiwan. The US economy is way more dependent on the semiconductor chips made there than anyone else. TSMC makes most of these. USA would then be fighting a country of similar size and power rather than a small state of ~ 30 million {now} people who are getting the shit kicked out of them by a powerful aggressor. But no, the USA wants to put its boot in too!! Take that you bastard Ukrainians!!

Thanks to one man’s gargantuan but fragile ego.

Trump may have the cards but Taiwan has the chips.

Bullies rarely pick on people their own size.

I am far from optimistic as to where things go from here. Viewed from one angle if there has to be a mass dis-incarnation in order to save the planet, then maybe that is what is needed. Nuclear winter could solve anthropogenic climate heating.

Isolationist, elitist, we know best thinking, can often preclude a massive downfall. It takes a while.

With “friends” like Trump who needs enemies?

I am struggling to believe what my own eyes have seen and the question is, “is this simply the starter for ten” so to speak. How much further down the shitter will humanity be dragged in this massive psycho-drama?

I have been told that this is my very last incarnation here…