China’s soft power strategy

Commenter Dunc made the astute observation in response to an earlier post about North Korea that we tend to overlook the importance of commercial shipping routes when discussing geopolitical strategy. He says that the only reason the US cares about either Korea is because of the nearby shipping routes and he linked to a map (below) that describes the core and secondary maritime routes and the primary and secondary choke points. He says that much of the maneuvering of nations can be understood by seeing its relationship to shipping.
[Read more…]

Satanist to give city council invocation

Following the US Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling in the case Greece v. Galloway that ceremonial opening prayers were permissible at meetings of local government bodies provided that there was no consistent pattern of discrimination in favor of or against one sect, a Satanist will be giving the invocation at tomorrow’s meeting of the Grand Junction City Council meeting in Colorado.
[Read more…]

How long will Kelly last?

The political establishment is swooning over the choice of Department of Homeland secretary John Kelly to be chief of staff to Donald Trump as a sign that finally, finally, there might be an adult near the top to whip things into shape. Trump, like many in the establishment media and political class, seems to be in awe of high-level military officers, a telling indicator of his own weakness and insecurity, and they think that thus Kelly will be able to stand up to Trump and bring order to the chaos in the administration.
[Read more…]

Book Review: Priest of Nature: The Religious Worlds of Isaac Newton (2017)

Isaac Newton (1642-1727) is one of the great enigmatic characters in scientific history, an extremely reclusive and private man with a fascinating array of foibles and personality quirks. I just finished the newly released book by Rob Iliffe, professor of history at Oxford University, that looks closely at the religious studies of this famous physicist and mathematician, based on a detailed examination of his vast collection of private notes, papers, and correspondence. The book deals largely with the first fifty years of Newton’s life, stopping around the year 1696 when Newton left Cambridge University and took up a government position as Warden of the Mint where he vigorously pursued and prosecuted counterfeiters.
[Read more…]

The rapid rise and even faster fall of the Mooch

So Anthony (‘the Mooch’) Scaramucci has been fired after just ten days on the job as White House communications director, apparently before he had even been sworn in. While he has revealed himself to be a connoisseur of colorful sexual imagery, he has also shown himself to be somewhat less than a tactical genius. Consider the facts. He comes in and then immediately sets about getting the firing of the chief of staff Reince Priebus who officially should have more power than him but in reality has less. He succeeds. But Priebus is replaced by someone who actually has more clout than the Mooch, and that person promptly gets him fired because his boss Donald Trump does not show loyalty to anyone. If the Mooch had let a weak Priebus keep his job, he could have kept his own job plus have more influnce. Bad-mouthing Trump’s close confidante Steve Bannon was also not a smart move since it left him without any powerful allies.
[Read more…]

How and why reporters self-censor when it comes to Israel

We have seen how the Israel lobby dominates the US government. The lobby is aided in this by the way that it can also intimidate journalists. Philip Weiss writes about how reporters from the major western press admit that they self-censor reports from Israel so as not to be ‘savagely targeted’ by both the Israeli government and the Israel lobby that exists not just in the US but in other countries like the UK and Australia a well.
[Read more…]

You need the best mud for a mud festival

Local officials in Rotorua, a popular tourist destination in New Zealand for geothermal activity and geysers and mud pools that I have actually visited, are under fire for spending about $70,000 in public funds to import five tons of mud from Boryeong, South Korea for a mud and music festival known as Mudtopia. What’s wrong with their own mud, which attracts people to that region?
[Read more…]

What North Korea learned from Libya and Iraq

North Korea has fired off yet another missile, triggering another round of belligerent rhetoric from the US and more joint military exercises with South Korea with Donald Trump also castigating China for doing nothing. Why is North Korea doing this? It is because they have learned the lesson that has been painfully clear as even US intelligence chiefs recognize – that giving up your nuclear capability is an invitation for the US and its allies to invade you.
[Read more…]