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Posted by admin in Uncategorized on April 30th, 2025
April 30, 2025
Photograph Source: Frank Schwichtenberg – CC BY-SA 4.0
Once the darling of the left for championing electric vehicles, even with a hefty $44,000-plus sticker price on a range of best-selling “S3XY” models, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was regularly pilloried by the right for his presumed eco-friendly stance and generous government loans. Back then, the Chinese carmaker BYD was barely a twinkle in Warren Buffet’s investment eye, but now tops Tesla at over $100 billion in annual sales thanks to lower prices, faster charging times, and Musk’s far-right political conversion. As consumers scramble to keep pace in a fast-changing and uncertain world, the fight for motor supremacy ramps up – more than the increased market share of 100 million cars sold each year is at stake.
Tesla Motors began in 2003 in California, becoming Tesla Inc. in 2010 with the largest-ever initial public offering in auto-making history and in 2017 the highest-valued American carmaker at $50 billion, despite building only 76,000 cars the previous year (compared to GM’s 7.5 million and Ford’s 6.4 million). The brave new electric world belonged to its brash young CEO Musk, who boasted, “When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars, people said, ‘Nah, what’s wrong with the horse?’ That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.” Musk promised a new world for a new millennium, propelled via electricity and magnetic induction rather than burnt gasoline and reciprocating pistons, planning to finance a clean green future for the masses via high-end sales, or so he claimed in his 2006 Master Plan. Today, 20% of new car sales are electric and increasing, not least because of Tesla’s pioneering push.
There is no comparison between an electric vehicle (EV) and a gasmobile. As calculated by Martin Eberhard, Tesla’s first CEO and one of five co-founders, an all-electric car can travel 110 miles using the equivalent energy in one gallon of gas. A no-brainer, without including the reduced fuel costs of electricity, minimal maintenance for a leaner, meaner electric engine, or the environmental benefit of no burnt hydrocarbons (e.g., octane).
Taking on the car industry is another story. Back when Ford took on the horse-drawn carriage, manure was the main bugaboo, piling up everywhere on our overcrowded streets. Smelly to be sure but minimal compared to today’s carbon-induced anthropomorphic global warming. In effect, one must take on the oil industry and all of Western civilization. “Drill, baby drill” means “Vroom, baby vroom” and the United States isn’t planning on braking.
EVs can slow the warming, but as the naysayers are keen to point out, if the electric grid runs on fossil fuels EVs will still warm the world and pollute the air, albeit in someone else’s backyard. The dirty grid argument is losing its lustre, however, as renewable energy sources continue to grow – 40% and counting. Likely crossing the 2 ºC (3.6 ºF) thresholdwithin two decades – in what the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states “would pose large and escalating risks to human life as we know it” – global warming is still increasing, but at least one can buy an EV now for more than the eco-vibes if the price is right.
True, the same naysayers don’t believe in global warming, seemingly a MAGA win-win – clean streets and more domestic coal, oil, and gas – piped, trucked, and shipped to all corners of the globe from the number-one petroleum-producing nation ever. Oil not democracy made America great the moment it gushed from a Titusville, Pennsylvania, well in 1859, the original “liberation day.” Global warming may be an existential threat, but the United States has even more to lose from diminished market share and waning influence. Bottom lines matter more to American transactionalists than any downstream damage.
One would think today’s individualist would welcome the independence of making one’s own energy and keeping nature clean – solar power has doubled every three years over the last 12 years to 7%. No longer beholden to outside control, the everyday consumer can easily go it alone thanks to rooftop solar (e.g., 8 kW or 20 400-W panels), meeting all one’s energy needs with photovoltaic (PV) cells and a storage battery, while charging one’s car for free. But after more than a century of oil – safeguarded by the American military – 100 million barrels/day is under threat as demand suffers from growing electrification. No more easy oil profits or taxable revenue. EVs are leading the way to a cleaner future and the end of the US as we know it – on the road was never so liberating. No wonder the Trump administration rolled back EV support and tariffed solar up to 3,500% in a full-throttled fight against change.
There are always jitters as the old gives way to the new until one winner emerges – the heliocentric solar system, steam-powered looms, transistor switching. We are in the midst of even more radical change as gasmobiles lose out to EVs and oil to renewables, despite Trump’s vain attempts to turn back the clock to a presumed former glory via restrictive tariffs.* Seemingly onside with Trump’s great-making revisionism, Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni tried to broaden the MAGA scope to “Make the West Great Again,” but as European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen noted, “The West as we knew it no longer exists.” What will emerge is still being worked out as the United States and China duke it out in a thoroughly modern economic spat for new-world supremacy.
For those who measure greatness in GDP, the US is tops at $28 trillion (26%), ahead of the EU $19 trillion (18%), and China $18 trillion (17%) according to the World Bank. But China is in the ascendancy, growing faster and boasting a trillion-dollar positive trade balance compared to the US at minus $1 trillion, the supposed impetus to realign a world economy and $33 trillion in annual trade. Importantly, China holds 90% of rare earths and critical minerals – essential for electronics, satellites, renewables, and AI militaries – now subject to export controls. The US is losing out to a new empire with almost one-sixth of the global population. With feet in both waters, Musk expects the Chinese market to double by 2050.
The EV revolution is safe despite resistance from the usual suspects as the US goes all-in on fossil fuels, cancelling renewable energy projects and even trying to resurrect a long-dead dirty coal industry, now more expensive than all energy sources other than nuclear power. Tesla sales are in free-fall, however, after Musk’s “special government employee” DOGE stint, a.k.a. slasher-flick cameo complete with chainsaw prop. Formerly the world’s top-valued carmaker – having passed Volkswagen in 2019 despite selling one-tenth the number of cars – Tesla’s shares continue to slide, down 50% from a peak value of $1.5 trillion.
The once-vaunted eco-brand may never recover, even as overall global EV sales rise, especially in Europe where both VW and BMW passed the once-dominant Tesla. Tesla’s Q1 sales dropped 13% and profits 71%, showing the depth of displeasure in Musk’s politicking and weak demand for a tired and expensive line-up. At the same time, Volkswagen’s EV sales doubled, GM’s increased 94% (Cadillac 21%), and Ford’s 12%. The car industry is under pressure from the Trump tariffs – jacking up car prices and costing jobs – but Tesla has fared worst, while a growing “Tesla Takedown” includes protests, vandalism, and “I bought this car before Musk went crazy” bumper stickers. Passionate about consumer choices, Germans were particularly outraged by Musk’s support for the far-right and anti-EU Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the most recent federal elections.
The main beneficiary of Musk’s madness is BYD (“Build Your Dreams”), the Chinese carmaker that started out supplying phone batteries for Motorola, Nokia, and Samsung. Co-founded in 1995 by chemist and engineer Wang Chuanfu, BYD benefited from an early infusion of cash from a subsidiary of Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, which bought 10% of BYD in 2008 for $230 million, since reduced to 4.4% and now worth $2.4 billion (Yahoo). BYD was soon selling everywhere, including an envious line of electric buses in Shenzhen, the Special Economic Zone created in 1980 to aid a rapidly modernizing China.
All 16,400 buses in Shenzhen are electric BYDs with a range of 380 km. With 99% of the world’s electric buses, China is adding thousands of zero-emission transporters per week, and at the current rate will be 100% electric by 2035, displacing more than 1 million barrels of diesel per day. As part of its quest for a “zero-emissions world,” the former battery maker is helping to rid China of its ghastly urban pollution.
In 2009, China passed the US as the world’s top car market, while in the first quarter of 2025 BYD (430,000) surpassed Tesla (337,000) in global sales. Expanding on its success, BYD built its first foreign manufacturing plant in Lancaster, California, in 2013, where it specializes in electric school buses (ESBs). As of 2024, there were almost 5,000 ESBs operating and 7,000 ordered in the US. BYD’s first European plant is under construction in Hungary and will make 300,000 EVs per year. In Brazil, the world’s sixth-largest car market, BYD is building an EV plant on the site of an abandoned Ford factory – 70% of EVs in Brazil are now BYD and is the top seller in the capital Brasilia for all cars, electric or gas.
Initially slow to the game, legacy car companies have all rolled out their own e-versions, such as Nissan (Leaf), BMW (iX), and Ford (Mach-E). BYD is head of the pack, announcing a five-minute charging time, half that of Tesla’s with a new and improved chemical storage process – essentially liquid-fuel filling time. No need to fill up any more on coffee and donuts while you wait for a roadside e-fill. BYD also offers a free autonomous-driving add-on “God’s Eye” that outperforms Tesla’s vaunted autonomous driving option. With a proven range of lower-priced EVs such as the $10,000 Dolphin Surf, today’s car wars are no longer internal combustion versus electric induction, but EV versus EV, while the decreasing demand for oil adds pressure to a world run on petroleum and American dominance.
The electric revolution is roaring, nowhere more than in China that accounts for 90% of BYD’s sales. The inflection point between the old and new is fast approaching as EVs reach price parity with all gasmobiles. For some, the tipping point has come and gone – a $20,000 EV with a 200-mile range. As BYD breaks into more markets, Western carmaking supremacy will suffer and hasten the change to renewables and from West to East.
Enter the new dragon – the Trump tariffs on imported cars and car parts, supposedly intended to return manufacturing jobs to a high-wage US market. It’s hard to make sense of a coherent American strategy amid the contradictory messaging, regular reality-show taunts, and constant flip-flopping – sold as the oddest of negotiating tools that alienates more than rallies others to the MAGA cause – but despite losing more than 600,000 jobs under NAFTA the tariffs are a ruse designed in part to slow the change from brown to green. Tariffs will not raise revenue, return supply chains to the United States, or “reshore” American manufacturing jobs hollowed out of rusted industrial regions. Billion-dollar factories require planning, investment, and tax breaks over at least a decade, not anarchic policies, market uncertainty, and the loss of investor and consumer confidence.
Targeted tax cuts and subsidies are needed to incentive investment, such as the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that made $369 billion available in green spending and was already creating American jobs in renewable energy, battery manufacturing, and critical mineral processing. But with most Trump antics, the goal is to divide and conquer, inciting chaos to advance an authoritarian agenda that increases corporate control at the expense of consumer protection.
American infrastructure is for sale to the highest bidder, including an eventual state-run TikTok sell-off to Trump’s tax-slashing billionaire tech pals as well as Space-X contracts for First Buddy Musk, whose Starlink company owns 60% of 10,000 earth-orbiting satellites. No surprise that space-launch support was spared the chainsaw in Musk’s DOGE clear-out. Next up, a “free trade zone” designation for his expanding empire in Bastrop, Texas, and relaxed regulation on autonomous driving for Tesla’s long-promised fleet of robotaxis. Insider trading is part of the quid pro quo, as in a “Good time to buy!!! DJT” social-media post hours before Trump announced a 90-day tariff pause using the NASDAQ ticker symbol for his company.
After four decades of outsourcing manufacturing to cheap-labour foreign markets (especially Mexico), Tesla also benefits from the tariffs on non-American-sourced cars, because 60% of the youngest American carmaker’s content is domestically produced. As Bernstein auto analyst Daniel Roeska noted, “Tesla is the clear structural winner” from the Trump tariffs, while Detroit’s Big Three, Japan, Korea, and Germany will suffer more because of larger foreign supply chains. It helps to have the ear and mouth of a salesman president using the White House as a backdrop for a new kind of showroom as Trump’s million-dollar donor is rewarded at the expense of American carmakers and workers.
Stellantis has already announced 900 lost jobs at five US factories, while Volvo plans to axe 800 jobs at three US facilities. At the same time, BYD is not subject to the vagaries of the Trump tariffs because it does not export EVs to the United States, choosing instead to concentrate on foreign markets. As June Yoon of The Financial Times noted, “Because BYD does not sell passenger EVs in the US, it is now insulated from the chaos unleashed by Trump’s latest tariff push.” As for other goods, restrictive barriers to Chinese imports (e.g., 145% tariffs) mostly hurt low-income consumers who buy at Walmart, Home Depot, Target, and other cut-price outlets.
Is it all just ignorance, based on a 40-year obsession with tariffs? We already knew Trump couldn’t count after claiming that he won the 2020 election because he received more votes than any previous president – not hard to do when the population keeps growing – albeit fewer votes than his opponent. Or is it another MAGA ruse to distract from a failed economic policy that purports to rejig the global supply chain in favor of a rusted rural America via blanket tariffs? – what Peterson Institute economist Mary Lovely called “re-industrialization in the most inefficient way possible.” If Trump was serious about workers, he would offer incentives to build domestically and impose penalties on corporations that don’t relocate.
After decades of neoliberal neglect, Trump claims that taxing nations more for goods will return manufacturing to the US, called “nostalgic fantasy” by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. In The Post-American World, Zakaria also likened Western decline to professional tennis, once dominated by American players, though now “everyone is playing the game.” Same for the decline in IPOs, scientific papers, and manufacturing. As noted by the IMF, the US will suffer most as growth slows because of the “supply shock” as other countries divert their trade to cover the depressed demand from the US, which imports 25% of its goods.
No one expects the United States to start making the world’s jeans, shirts, and running shoes nor believes Trump’s obvious lies that “tariffs are making us rich.” In fact, the US has even more to lose as others shun American goods and realign trading relations because of his “unilateral bullying.” Treating China as a “hostile trading partner” in a US-designed trading world pushes China towards a new economic model that excludes American markets and expands ties with Southeast Asia, India, and Europe. A new Silk Road is being established that already exports more to Europe ($570 billion) than to the US. The rules-based order begun after World War II is no longer being directed from Washington.
Rather than resurrecting American manufacturing, the Trump game is to roil the competition, such as the European Union reacting piecemeal. The EU proposed a “zero for zero” deal on industrial goods prior to his April 2 tariff, rejected by Trump as “not good enough.” Musk also called for no tariffs between North America and Europe, even though Tesla benefits from the protectionist American market. European worries about German cars, Spanish olive oil, French and Italian wines, and Irish pharmaceuticals have held, but EU unity could falter with individual tariffs. Another prize is to stop investigations into Google, Meta, X, and Apple under the EU Digital Services Act – Meta and Apple were both fined as unfair “gatekeepers.”
Instead of halting China’s rise by “decoupling” the American economy from China’s vast export market – 15% of goods to the US – decoupling has begun from America as Trump pretends to be “actively negotiating” with others to calm the markets. Started in Canada, an “Anything but America” movement is expanding worldwide as consumers stop buying American-made goods, symbolically turning products upside down on supermarket shelves. The EU, China, and others will benefit from Trump’s protectionist policy, disengagement, and provocation as countries trade more freely in a post-American world – an American own goal as 40% of the world’s 50 largest companies are American and 36% of the world’s largest 100 (based on sales, profits, assets, and market value, Forbes). Trump’s Medicine Show is killing the patient as trade reorganizes without the US.
Trump’s callous advice to “hang tough” is okay for millionaires, but not average consumers as prices rise and jobs are shed (a 25% tariff on a $100,000 car won’t deter a millionaire). The Trump tariffs are expected to hike annual US consumer spending by $5,000, car prices by $5,000, and new house prices by $11,000. Similarly, farmers lose out as China turns to Brazil for soya beans (half supplied by the US), American hotels suffer as Canadians and other foreign travellers vacation elsewhere (US visits already down 40%), and low-income families pay extra for everything. Even Christmas will cost more as Chinese toys are marked up beyond Santa’s meagre means. Same for Apple’s iPhone, Sony’s PlayStation 5, and Dell computers, while China cancelled the sale of 50 Boeing jets at $55 million each.
The Trump tariffs have at least exposed the inherent flaws in unregulated capitalism and executive fiat. Retaliate or Negotiate? – sounds like a fawning reality show. Trump may win more Fox viewers but is losing everyone else in a shameless rebranding of the US as a low-end chop shop. The me-first preacher is at war with the world to advance his own greedy Amexit agenda, one more interested in work than workers, reduced governance, and a tax-slashing oligarchy. The reality-show banter may continue to dazzle those who think Trump’s sub-literate and low-IQ thinking is a solution to what ails the world, including his Republican supporters, who should all know by now that Trump is an elitist libertarian to the bone, Republican in name only, the dreaded RINO moniker he uses to mock GOP critics.
Rather than reform a broken America, the goal is to break more to create a free management hand with limited governance and reduced regulations. It is not America First, but a limited monied class first that exploits others and offers no protection to workers, the environment, or community standards. Trump is chief RINO, pretending to support worker ideals.
Given his friendship with Elon Musk, one might also ask if the US president is an oil and gas man or an EV man? Can Trump’s “Drill, baby drill” coexist with Musk’s “Gasmobiles are so yesterday?” Will the new right-wing Muskies take up the slack of the damaged Tesla and USA brands? No more 50% annual growth in sales as Musk predicted. No more American dominance or petroleum power. At least, demand is dampening.
In the face of increased pollution and global warming, slowing down and decreasing demand for oil is good for the earth. That wasn’t Trump’s intention – just the opposite – but slower growth is good. At his January inauguration, Trump also promised that Americans would “be able to buy the car of your choice.” The choice is becoming easier by the day. California already has more EV chargers than gas pumps. With 1.4 billion people, China’s domestic car market will benefit most from increased control over new technology that will ultimately help foreign consumers purchase cheaper EVs.
When the dust finally settles on the ongoing Trump Follies, we may have Elon Musk to thank for upending the basic tenets of capitalism. Beginning with Tesla and followed by BYD, a new future beckons. Electric bicycles, motorcycles, and scooters are all replacing gasoline vehicles in Asian markets, plagued by pollution and expensive gasoline. As Japan conquered the electronics market in the twentieth century, China is conquering the auto industry in this century. Tesla has lost the race for the low-end vehicle and the US is losing the race to lead the world.
Trump is paving the way to the end of the fossil-fuel industry, long supported by unfair regulations, oversized subsidies, and minimal taxation, while getting a free ride on pollution and global warming. EV to gasmobiles is approaching 50-50 with lower prices and improved charging infrastructure. The batteries are stronger, better, and more efficient. Most charging is still overnight at home, but for those on the go, one doesn’t need to worry any more. When the bi-directional grid is finished and batteries are in every home, we will say goodbye to oil, a win-win for citizens and their pocket books.
Rather than dismantling government with excessive downsizing and shrinking a global economy with counterproductive tariffs, American dominance is being diminished everywhere – more divisive than inclusive, more elitist than egalitarian, more Benedictine than Franciscan. Pretending to protect the world from governmental overreach, Trump’s policies are a libertarian free-for-all, a sell-out and sell-off to enrich the already wealthy. Rather than making anything great, Trump will be remembered as The Man Who Tried to Sell the World (and failed miserably).
Tomorrow’s consumerism will not be shaped by American chaos and uncertainty, but by China’s dominance and the transition to renewables. The next US electoral fair may restore some dignity and consistency to a rogue America, but the United States is already in decline. Happily, tomorrow’s world will be cleaner, greener, and quieter.
* Currently 10% on all imports, 25% on aluminum, cars, and car parts, and 145% on China excluding computers and phones (for now) and oil products. Country-specific “reciprocal” tariffs were paused for 90 days (early July), calculated with a simplistic “trade deficit divided by imported goods divided by 2” formula.
John K. White, a former lecturer in physics and education at University College Dublin and the University of Oviedo. He is the editor of the energy news service E21NS and author of The Truth About Energy: Our Fossil-Fuel Addiction and the Transition to Renewables (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and Do The Math!: On Growth, Greed, and Strategic Thinking (Sage, 2013). He can be reached at: johnkingstonwhite@gmail.com
https://www.counterpunch.org/?givewp-route=donation-form-view&form-id=360936&locale=en_US
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on January 27th, 2025
Politics is always a game of pretension. Politicians remind us of inherent lies, deception, embedded greed, and mastery of persuasive propaganda to voters to do good for fellow citizens if chosen for leadership. They possess an irresistible impulse of political power to grab as their property to set the agenda of actions – the fate and future of millions and millions of innocent human beings to rule as democracy at work. The US professes to be a nation of peace, equality, justice, and freedom. Is it so? After the Joe Biden presidential election, Donald Trump raised a scheme of uproars, confusion, and an attack on the nation’s capital alleging ‘election fraud’ and that he was the real winner. He alluded to several criminal cases as politically motivated, but some of the judicial hearings charged him with criminal acts. Now re-elected, Donald Trump gets ‘unconditionally discharged’ in the NY court hush money case; the other cases are gone with the wind too as he assumes the presidency on January 20th. Could a common citizen of the US be entitled to such favorable treatment?
Concerned global thinkers and informed citizens wonder if it was a joke to prosecute Donald Trump (the former president at the time), or was it a true medium of the travesty of justice to make America “Great” again in despotic reasoning? America risks losing its sustainable democratic future if one recalls the attack on Capital Hill on January 6, 2020. “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” proclaimed George Orwell. It was the failure of the institutional system and people to have allowed Trump to orchestrate such an upheaval. The US Republican Congress supporting Trump should see the mirror and set the course of history straight for future generations. The world needs America for future-making but if its leaders are a sell-out to single-track extreme thinking of Netanyahu, the US could end -up losing its history of national freedom, human rights, and equal justice. Those who get into political power via unreasonable cliches become intoxicated in power not by reason but by political force and wealth as a tool to dominate the masses with wrong thinking and reasoning. Ironically, President Biden will transfer the power peacefully to Trump on January 20th which Trump denied to Biden in January 2020 and alleged a ‘fraudulent election’ outcome. Would he be a Marc Antony or Brutus ( William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar), to deliver the sermon and adore Biden for his courage and leadership or twist the logic of history? Recall, Marc Antony’s funeral oration over Julius Caesar:
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man
Those who elected Trump must be enjoying the creative momentum of American humour irrespective of the criminal record, violent force, horrors, and killings implied against the American people at a climax of great upheaval called ‘domestic terrorism’. Reason unfolds mischievous futuristic catastrophes by men who are feared and questioned for moral and intellectual integrity to change America into a wonderland of experimental democracy claiming liberty, justice, and equality before the law. Truth cannot be made more true by fake statements. Often one wonders, how President-elect Trump would see the occasion of a peaceful transfer of presidential power come January 20th, 2025. Would he reiterate the old cliches of abusive power and come to reason the unreason to which he subjugated America in 2020?
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
Netanyahu felt a terrible sense of helplessness during the unpredictable American presidential election but rejoiced at the re-election of Trump as he had renamed ‘Golan Heights’ as ‘Trump Heights’ – the occupied territory belonging to Syria. The contradictions covered up by the adroit, Trump wants the Panama Canal back, and would it be renamed as “Trump Canal”, and claims to occupy Greenland to be of security necessity, and could it be renamed as “ Trump Greenland”, and not to mention of Canada as a 51st state, ridiculed by the outgoing Canadian PM Trudeau who had a little embarrassing encounter with Trump in Florida. Would Canada be renamed after Trump declares forceful victory? People who make phoney jokes could sometimes become a joke in the annals of history.
The history of force is always trivial and endangers the present and sustainable future. “Hell will break” warns President-elect Trump to the Arab leaders and Hamas if Israeli hostages are not freed before he takes office. They “should not have been taken in the first place” reiterates Trump, not understanding how Israel occupied Palestine and continuously bombed the people of Gaza for decades. If time and truth carry any meaning, America desperately needs a new awakening of consciousness and moral soul. Paranoid and politically charged with failure, Netanyahu could re-emerge as a kind of refurbished leader to claim some relevance as Trump blames “Hezbollah” for the January 2020 attack on the US Capital. The fictitious blame not only compliments Netanyahu’s psyche but shocks the spirits of dead leaders of Hezbollah targeted by Israel. Was Brutus intelligent or was Antony right to deliver a rational speech on the body of Julius Caesar? Do the masses in America or the Western democracy live in a reality that is not their own except for pernicious consequences wanting a navigational change, reasoned morality, and equal justice for all?
Cynicism about politicians is always endemic and part of the seamless democratic cultures that are constantly progressive and often rebuked by social and political entertainment as an after-dinner joke. The masses have a passion for happiness and progress. Still, they never imagine or do not wish to think that politics is a game of pretence – stage acting best portrayed and fashioned by hired media consultants and advisors to win the political elections and deceive the masses that the “Emperor has clothes.” Evil and good exist in every society but evil will not diagnose political tyranny, falsehood, and resentment. The cure to evil is honesty, equal justice, freedom of expression, moral values, and righteousness to lead and serve the people. The prospects of global peace, equal justice, and conflict resolution are disappearing after what has been witnessed in Gaza, Ukraine, and other parts of the world. The systems of global responsible governance are broken and the US supporting Israeli war made it dysfunctional and are alleged by the ICC and ICJ to have committed crimes against humanity and genocide in Gaz
If Trump has a vision for change and peace for America, he should know his strengths and weaknesses and be cautious not to foresee the world through the eyes of Netanyahu but come out of the perplexities with clarity of his mind to co-exist with the larger global community. If he believes in making America great again, it would be through peace and not intransigence against Panama, Palestine, Canada, or Greenland. He would have to rebuild his credibility as a leader who can lead despite perpetuated ignorance and rejection of learning from history. It could be a hollow humour coming out of hell to imagine if America or some West European nations had any sense of human rights, to protect the civilians in warlike Gaza or Ukraine and to support the conscientious global community standing for peace, justice, and the end of bogus wars against innocent people.
Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and is the author of several publications including the latest: One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution. Germany, 12/2019.
Posted by admin in THE MAD DUDE, Trump, USA, World Affairs & US on December 16th, 2020
We have let the government’s evil-doing, its abuses, power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, immorality, greed, corruption, debauchery and tyranny go on for too long. We are approaching a reckoning. This is the point, as the poet W. B. Yeats warned, when things fall apart and anarchy is loosed upon the world.” John W. Whitehead “Monsters with Human Faces: The Tyranny of the Police State Disguised as Law-and-Order.” Information Clearing House: 7/25/2019 (Quoted by Mahboob A. Khawaja, “Democracy of Inhumanity and We, the People of Global Consciousness”. Information Clearing House: 1/01/2020).
Trump’s Absolutism and the Clash of Democracy
President Trump embarked on deceitful triumphalism after a fair and free outcome of the 2020 Presidential election. While denying the facts and enlarging the scope of hype, false rhetoric and wickedness to claim a political win utterly divorced from the prevalent facts on America’s – We, the People landscape. Enticing questionable stance on the results of the election and constantly blaming the Democrat Party and Joe Bidden –President-Elect as the unlawful and fraudulent winner of the election. President Trump’s domestic spoilers are few and those 106 GOP House Republican supporting the Texas Lawsuit to nullify the results of four US states elections brought a slap to their expectations being rejected today by the Supreme Court. President Trump failed miserably to understand the vitality of an effective leader to console the masses in situations of unusual crises, to know his own strengths and weaknesses and to analyze the wisdom of people around him conducting the governing circle. Intelligent and conscientious leaders unite masses in crisis but Trump is focused on dividing and driving the American people to violence and unpredictable political chaos. The insane egoism that brought downfall of so many leaders in human history. This author recently observed (“American Presidential Election and Democracy Look for Change, Moral and Intellectual Leadership.” 11/2020: https://www.uncommonthought.
https://www.pravdareport.com/
Wickedness and piety cannot be combined in one human character. Trump inflicted disharmony and racial discrimination amongst the black and indigenous and colored population…….There is always inconsistency in a delusional mind and so is Trump paranoid and vengeful who has incapacitated the in-born faculties of American lifelines to be a morally and intellectually crippled and more of a besieged nation in its conduct of basic tenets of the American liberty, justice and democracy. This was not accidental but a planned scheme of things although unknown in its short-long terms consequences over its ability to cope with the change phenomenon for a sustainable future. America under Trump became an insane – a victim of its own obsession with power and fearful of its future.
To glance ahead, America and its claim to a working democracy will haunt future generations with suspicion and extended discard. Trump and his coercive puppies could not think of America as part of global community except their own fantasies, phobias, prejudice, policies, practices and preferences to Israel and Netanyahu and nothing else for the pandemic entrenched people of America. History will tell a time that Trump plagued the body of politics with faulty misinterpretation of the election and outrageous futuristic hypotheses leading to nowhere in a civilized society. The sudden and inexplicable democratic plunge into self-geared wickedness must be catastrophic for the future generations. What happens in America, affects the global culture of human thoughts, freedom and justice. President Trump lacking the capacity of wisdom cannot control his feelings of being a misfit to hold that office. American masses are caught in a storm of ugly confrontational democracy as they appear unenlightened and unprepared to cope with its aftermath. Time is critical for American short- and long terms political culpability to sort out a sustainable political future. The logic of reason shall call for a smooth transfer of power to Joe Bidden-President Elect on January 20, 2021. But American self-geared pride and prejudice could change many events into defying assertions of working democracy.
In Search of Vaccine and Cure for the COVID-19 Pandemic
The US media highlights the COVID-19 Pandemic surge – more than 16 million cases of infection, and more that 300K deaths and 3K daily pandemic carnage which could have been averted or partly cured if there was a responsible federal administration thoughtful of – We, the People. Could there be a revulsion against the capitalist democracy in-waiting to take its shape and form once Trump and his supporters submit to the will of the people? Apparently, the vaccine against Covid-19 is ready to be distributed but one must be cautious not to imagine a magic cure in days or weeks or if the vaccine will do the job as it is claimed to be by the manufacturers both in American and Germany.
Covid-19 is a global pandemic and its remedial approach should have organized global sharing and pooling of knowledge-based scientific resources all across the world. We are One Humanity – natural disasters and fatalities know not any borders, flags and nationalities but surge like wildfire as being witnessed in the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. Not so, American and the EU still buried in the past would not consider Russian Covid-19 vaccine already prepared and administered or Chinese vaccine because they are manufactured by the politically opposing entities. Again political absolutism heightens animosity and hatred rather than human understanding and cooperation for a precious cause of saving the lives on Earth. To save the life of one human being is to safeguard the whole of humanity. We are all born equal One Humanity:- the Divine Message of Al-Qur’an states it clearly:
“Proclaim in the name of thy Lord and Cherisher, Who created,
Created man (human being) out of a (mere) clot of congealed blood,
Proclaim! And thy Lord is Most Bountiful, He Who taught (the use of) the Pen,
Taught man (human being) that which he knew not.”
It is sheer ignorance and a human tragedy to highlight the political differences when mankind is in urgent need of a viable cure for the Covid-19 pandemic. Politicians are not the medical experts to authoritatively speak for scientific reasoning. Most often medical practitioners prescribe medication on experimental basis, often not certain about the ultimate impact. The masses across the globe are fearful and losing faith on political leaders leading medical propagation of various vaccines for human consumption. It seems illogical to expect sober, judicious and reasonable undertaking when politicians are indulged in abusing truth and honesty in their behavior. If human life can be deceived and cheapened in America and across the globe, one wonders how to evaluate the importance of human rights, freedom and justice in any viable context. Joe Bidden and some of his colleagues appear to be rational, enlightened and self-disciplined folks to assume the next governance of world’s powerful Government. He promised to vaccinate 100M Americans during the first 100 days of his presidency – a planned and rational optimism for change and to restore normalcy for the future. Destiny and future-making are always timeless and constantly moving phenomenon as we look beyond the obvious critical horizon of human anxiety and sufferings to come.
Could America under Joe Bidden Presidency Rejoin the Global Community as an Equal Partner for Peace and Harmony?
World affairs are a complex discipline and often require serious and impartial mindset to see the issues objectively, rationally and dispassionately. America is in desperate need of a navigational change. Past is not dead, but living to transform events and developments into new shape and form for the good of the people. Past is a living force to carve out a formidable and sustainable future. America needs a new message of democratic principles, racial equality and justice, and values which are observed and honored across the board. “We, the People” – the voice of Reason and People enshrined in the American Constitution suggest the following Agenda to Joe Bidden – President Elect for Action:
Posted by admin in Decline of Empires, THE MAD DUDE, Trump, Trump-The Global Nightmare, US FOREIGN POLICY & INTERNATIONAL LAW, USA, World Affairs & US on November 13th, 2020
| Question Everything! |
The 2020 Election Bamboozle:
We Are All Victims of the Deep State’s Con Game
By John W. Whitehead
“We’re run by the Pentagon, we’re run by Madison Avenue, we’re run by television, and as long as we accept those things and don’t revolt we’ll have to go along with the stream to the eventual avalanche…. As long as we go out and buy stuff, we’re at their mercy… We all live in a little Village. Your Village may be different from other people’s Villages, but we are all prisoners.” – Patrick McGoohan
In this carefully choreographed scheme to strip the American citizenry of our power and our rights, “we the people” are nothing more than marks, suckers, stooges, mugs, rubes, or gulls.
We are victims of the Deep State’s confidence game.
Every confidence game has six essential stages: 1) the foundation to lay the groundwork for the illusion; 2) the approach whereby the victim is contacted; 3) the build-up to make the victim feel like they’ve got a vested interest in the outcome; 4) the corroboration (aided by third-party conspirators) to legitimize that the scammers are, in fact, on the up-and-up; 5) the pay-off, in which the victim gets to experience some small early “wins”; and 6) the “hurrah”— a sudden manufactured crisis or change of events that creates a sense of urgency.
In this particular con game, every candidate dangled before us as some form of political savior—including Donald Trump and Joe Biden—is part of a long-running, elaborate scam intended to persuade us that, despite all appearances to the contrary, we live in a constitutional republic.
In this way, the voters are the dupes, the candidates are the shills, and as usual, it’s the Deep State rigging the outcome.
Terrorist attacks, pandemics, civil unrest: these are all manipulated crises that add to the sense of urgency and help us feel invested in the outcome of the various elections, but it doesn’t change much in the long term.
No matter who wins this election, we’ll all still be prisoners of the Deep State.
We just haven’t learned to recognize our prison walls as such.
It’s like that old British television series The Prisoner, which takes place in a mysterious, self-contained, cosmopolitan, seemingly idyllic retirement community known only as The Village.
First broadcast in Great Britain 50-some years ago, The Prisoner dystopian television series —described as “James Bond meets George Orwell filtered through Franz Kafka”—confronted societal themes that are still relevant today: the rise of a police state, the loss of freedom, round-the-clock surveillance, the corruption of government, totalitarianism, weaponization, group think, mass marketing, and the tendency of human beings to meekly accept their lot in life as prisoners in a prison of their own making.
The series’ protagonist, played by Patrick McGoohan is Number Six.
Number Two, the Village administrator, acts as an agent for the unseen and all-powerful Number One, whose identity is not revealed until the final episode.
“I am not a number. I am a free man,” was the mantra chanted on each episode of The Prisoner, which was largely written and directed by Patrick McGoohan, who also played the title role.
In the opening episode (“The Arrival”), Number Six meets Number Two, who explains to him that he is in The Village because information stored “inside” his head has made him too valuable to be allowed to roam free “outside.”
Throughout the series, Number Six is subjected to interrogation tactics, torture, hallucinogenic drugs, identity theft, mind control, dream manipulation, and various forms of social indoctrination and physical coercion in order to “persuade” him to comply, give up, give in and subjugate himself to the will of the powers-that-be.
Number Six refuses to comply.
In every episode, Number Six resists the Village’s indoctrination methods, struggles to maintain his own identity, and attempts to escape his captors. “I will not make any deals with you,” he pointedly remarks to Number Two. “I’ve resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.”
Yet no matter how far Number Six manages to get in his efforts to escape, it’s never far enough.
Watched by surveillance cameras and other devices, Number Six’s attempts to escape are continuously thwarted by ominous white balloon-like spheres known as “rovers.” Still, he refuses to give up. “Unlike me,” he says to his fellow prisoners, “many of you have accepted the situation of your imprisonment, and will die here like rotten cabbages.”
Number Six’s escapes become a surreal exercise in futility, each episode an unfunny, unsettling Groundhog’s Day that builds to the same frustrating denouement: there is no escape.
As journalist Scott Thill concludes for Wired, “Rebellion always comes at a price. During the acclaimed run of The Prisoner, Number Six is tortured, battered and even body-snatched: In the episode ‘Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling,’ his mind is transplanted to another man’s body. Number Six repeatedly escapes The Village only to be returned to it in the end, trapped like an animal, overcome by a restless energy he cannot expend, and betrayed by nearly everyone around him.”
The series is a chilling lesson about how difficult it is to gain one’s freedom in a society in which prison walls are disguised within the seemingly benevolent trappings of technological and scientific progress, national security and the need to guard against terrorists, pandemics, civil unrest, etc.
As Thill noted, “The Prisoner was an allegory of the individual, aiming to find peace and freedom in a dystopia masquerading as a utopia.”
The Prisoner’s Village is also an apt allegory for the American Police State: it gives the illusion of freedom while functioning all the while like a prison: controlled, watchful, inflexible, punitive, deadly and inescapable.
The American Police State, much like The Prisoner’s Village, is a metaphorical panopticon, a circular prison in which the inmates are monitored by a single watchman situated in a central tower. Because the inmates cannot see the watchman, they are unable to tell whether or not they are being watched at any given time and must proceed under the assumption that they are always being watched.
Eighteenth century social theorist Jeremy Bentham envisioned the panopticon prison to be a cheaper and more effective means of “obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.”
Bentham’s panopticon, in which the prisoners are used as a source of cheap, menial labor, has become a model for the modern surveillance state in which the populace is constantly being watched, controlled and managed by the powers-that-be while funding its existence.
Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide: this is the new mantra of the architects of the Deep State and their corporate collaborators (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Instagram, etc.).
Government eyes are watching you.
They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.
Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to amass a profile of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.
When the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.
Apart from the obvious dangers posed by a government that feels justified and empowered to spy on its people and use its ever-expanding arsenal of weapons and technology to monitor and control them, we’re approaching a time in which we will be forced to choose between obeying the dictates of the government—i.e., the law, or whatever a government official deems the law to be—and maintaining our individuality, integrity and independence.
When people talk about privacy, they mistakenly assume it protects only that which is hidden behind a wall or under one’s clothing. The courts have fostered this misunderstanding with their constantly shifting delineation of what constitutes an “expectation of privacy.” And technology has furthered muddied the waters.
However, privacy is so much more than what you do or say behind locked doors. It is a way of living one’s life firm in the belief that you are the master of your life, and barring any immediate danger to another person (which is far different from the carefully crafted threats to national security the government uses to justify its actions), it’s no one’s business what you read, what you say, where you go, whom you spend your time with, and how you spend your money.
Unfortunately, George Orwell’s 1984—where “you had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized”—has now become our reality.
We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed, corralled and controlled by technologies that answer to government and corporate rulers.
Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears.
A byproduct of this new age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior.
This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.
Stingray devices mounted on police cars to warrantlessly track cell phones, Doppler radar devices that can detect human breathing and movement within in a home, license plate readers that can record up to 1800 license plates per minute, sidewalk and “public space” cameras coupled with facial recognition and behavior-sensing technology that lay the groundwork for police “pre-crime” programs, police body cameras that turn police officers into roving surveillance cameras, the internet of things: all of these technologies (and more) add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence—especially not when the government can listen in on your phone calls, read your emails, monitor your driving habits, track your movements, scrutinize your purchases and peer through the walls of your home.
As French philosopher Michel Foucault concluded in his 1975 book Discipline and Punish, “Visibility is a trap.”
This is the electronic concentration camp—the panopticon prison—the Village—in which we are now caged.
It is a prison from which there will be no escape. Certainly not if the government and its corporate allies have anything to say about it.
As Glenn Greenwald notes:
“The way things are supposed to work is that we’re supposed to know virtually everything about what [government officials] do: that’s why they’re called public servants. They’re supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that’s why we’re called private individuals. This dynamic – the hallmark of a healthy and free society – has been radically reversed. Now, they know everything about what we do, and are constantly building systems to know more. Meanwhile, we know less and less about what they do, as they build walls of secrecy behind which they function. That’s the imbalance that needs to come to an end. No democracy can be healthy and functional if the most consequential acts of those who wield political power are completely unknown to those to whom they are supposed to be accountable.”
None of this will change, no matter who wins this upcoming presidential election.
And that’s the hustle, you see: because despite all of the work being done to help us buy into the fantasy that things will change if we just elect the right candidate, the day after a new president is sworn in, we’ll still find ourselves prisoners of the Village.
This should come as no surprise to those who haven’t been taking the escapist blue pill, who haven’t fallen for the Deep State’s phony rhetoric, who haven’t been lured in by the promise of a political savior: we never stopped being prisoners.
So how do you escape? For starters, resist the urge to conform to a group mind and the tyranny of mob-think as controlled by the Deep State.
Think for yourself. Be an individual. As McGoohan commented in 1968, “At this moment individuals are being drained of their personalities and being brainwashed into slaves… As long as people feel something, that’s the great thing. It’s when they are walking around not thinking and not feeling, that’s tough. When you get a mob like that, you can turn them into the sort of gang that Hitler had.”
You want to be free? Remove the blindfold that blinds you to the Deep State’s con game, stop doping yourself with government propaganda, and break free of the political chokehold that has got you marching in lockstep with tyrants and dictators.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, until you come to terms with the fact that the government is the problem (no matter which party dominates), you’ll never be free.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.
Posted by admin in IMRAN KHAN, Imran Khan-Pakistan Prime Minister, IMRAN KHAN-PAKISTAN'S HERO & DREAMER on July 30th, 2019
It was a Sunday night and Washington’s large Capital One Arena was packed. But it wasn’t packed for basketball or a music concert, it was 20,000 people who came to listen to Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. It was at this moment when on a cultural level, decades of mistrust and bad blood between Pakistan and the United States evaporated. Prior to the formation of Imran Khan’s government, Pakistani Prime Ministers were the kinds of people who could only fill large public squares at home by mobilising a network of bribery and patronage. Such politicians could not attract any great attention abroad in places where the system of feudal political patronage does not exist.
But the people who came to listen to Imran Khan were not paid or coaxed, many in fact came from all over the United States at their own cost in order to see Imran Khan in the flesh. When Imran Khan took to the stage flanked by both a Pakistani and American flag, it was as though a new era was born – one which carried with it the spirit of the 1980s which was the last time that Pakistan and the US cooperated on an equal footing against a clearly defined and easily recognizable common enemy.
What’s more is that when speaking of a desire to create opportunities for Pakistanis to advance their worldly condition on a level playing field, he was speaking the language of political optimism that once defined American politics. But whilst American politics grows ever more cynical, Imran Khan assured his audience of 20,000 that a forward-looking Naya Pakistan is being built for them and for their children.
Although most of the audience were Pakistani-Americans, there were surely a good number of Americans in the arena with no connection to Pakistan. This of course includes those working at the large facility. They too would have seen and heard Irman Khan and they would have realised that the man before them was speaking American insofar as celebrity is a major element of the broader American culture.
More importantly, Donald Trump who shortly awaits his meeting with Imran Khan would have seen the footage. Above all else, Trump likes someone who looks and acts like a success. As someone who himself packs arenas for frequent political rallies, Trump will likewise recognise in Imran Khan someone who is a formidable figure with a global appeal.
This contrasts sharply with the parochial, pretty and lowly style of politician that since the 1990s Pakistan has produced. Such people simply do not turn heads outside of their own circles within parts of Pakistan and this has helped the international enemies of Pakistan to inflict damage on Pakistan’s reputation. Without a leader whose reach is global, few listened to Pakistan over the last twenty-five years and in many respects, Pakistan’s leaders hadn’t even tried to get their point across outside of Pakistan’s borders.
With Imran Khan his has changed. He is a superstar and whilst his government’s sometimes lax security policies against certain seditious and foreign threats are clearly fit for criticism, there are signs of improvement which should be not only applauded by encouraged.
Although Imran Khan’s meeting with Donald Trump will be about more than symbolism, in politics as in life, symbolism is highly important. For Donald Trump, in particular, the personal and the political are deeply intertwined and as such, Imran Khan’s mass rally in Washington will certainly be a pleasant conversation starter between the two leaders.
Even before Iman Khan and Donald Trump speak about key issues regarding a re-start of proper bilateral ties, Imran Khan has won America. In a country that since 2001 was programmed by its fake news media to hate Pakistan, in a country where Islamic societies are often misunderstood and in a country whose arenas are usually filled with sporting or music events rather than anything remotely political, Imran Khan stole the show. Even if his rally is played for 20 seconds on America’s notorious television news programmes, this is a victory for Pakistan because all it would take is 20 seconds of footage from Imran Khan’s rally to change perceptions of Pakistan from one that is wholly negative to one that is self-evidently optimistic and indeed one that is inspirational.
While the petty figures of Islamabad’s old elite continue to bark like dogs, Imran Khan has done something that even many European celebrities find hard to do. He conquered America’s heart and he did it with dignity, charm and sincerity. This simply cannot be denied.
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