US Politics

OpinionUS politicsThe US must avoid war with China over Taiwan at all costsLt Col Daniel L Davis (ret)The prevailing mood among Washington insiders is to fight if China attempts to conquer Taiwan. That would be a mistake Tue 5 Oct 2021 06.18 EDTLast modified on Tue 5 Oct 2021 09.55 EDTSince last Friday, the People’s Republic of China has launched a total of 155 warplanes – the most ever over four consecutive days – into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone; Ned Price said the state department was “very concerned”. There have been more than 500 such flights through nine months this year, as opposed to 300 all of last year.Before war comes to the Indo-Pacific and Washington faces pressure to fight a potentially existential war, American policymakers must face the cold, hard reality that fighting China over Taiwan risks an almost-certain military defeat – and gambles we won’t stumble into a nuclear war.Bluntly put, America should refuse to be drawn into a no-win war with Beijing. It needs to be said up front: there would be no palatable choice for Washington if China finally makes good on its decades-long threat to take Taiwan by force. Either choose a bad, bitter-tasting outcome or a self-destructive one in which our existence is put at risk.The prevailing mood in Washington among officials and opinion leaders is to fight if China attempts to conquer Taiwan by force. In a speech at the Center for Strategic Studies last Friday, the deputy secretary of defense, Kathleen Hicks, said that if Beijing invades Taiwan, “we have a significant amount of capability forward in the region to tamp down any such potential”.Either Hicks is unaware of how little wartime capacity we actually have forward deployed in the Indo-Pacific or she’s unaware of how significant China’s capacity is off its shores, but whichever the case, we are in no way guaranteed to “tamp down” a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.Earlier this year, Senator Rick Scott and Representative Guy Reschenthaler introduced the Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act which, Representative Reschenthaler said, would authorize “the president to use military force to defend Taiwan against a direct attack”. In the event of an actual attack, there would be enormous pressure to fast-track such a bill to authorize Biden to act. We must resist this temptation.As I have previously detailed, there is no rational scenario in which the United States could end up in a better, more secure place after a war with China. The best that could be hoped for would be a pyrrhic victory in which we are saddled with becoming the permanent defense force for Taiwan (costing us hundreds of billions a year and the equally permanent requirement to be ready for the inevitable Chinese counter-attack).The most likely outcome would be a conventional defeat of our forces in which China ultimately succeeds, despite our intervention – at the cost of large numbers of our jets being shot down, ships being sunk, and thousands of our service personnel killed. But the worst case is a conventional war spirals out of control and escalates into a nuclear exchange.That leaves as the best option something most Americans find unsatisfying: refuse to engage in direct combat against China on behalf of Taiwan. Doing so will allow the United States to emerge on the other side of a China/Taiwan war with our global military and economic power intact.That’s not to suggest we stand passively aside and let China run over Taiwan with impunity. The most effective course of action for Washington would be to condemn China in the strongest possible terms, lead a global movement that will enact crippling sanctions against Beijing, and make them an international pariah. China’s pain wouldn’t be limited to economics, however.It would take Beijing decades to overcome the losses incurred from a war to take Taiwan, even if Beijing triumphs. The United States and our western allies, on the other hand, would remain at full military power, dominate the international business markets, and have the moral high ground to keep China hemmed in like nothing that presently exists. Xi would be seen as an unquestioned aggressor, even by other Asian regimes, and the fallout against China could knock them back decades. Our security would be vastly improved from what it is today – and incalculably higher than if we foolishly tried to fight a war with China.Publicly, Washington should continue to embrace strategic ambiguity but privately convey to Taiwanese leaders that we will not fight a war with China. That would greatly incentivize Taipei to make whatever political moves and engage in any negotiation necessary to ensure the perpetuation of the status quo. The blunt, hard reality is that a Taiwan maintaining the status quo is far better than a smoldering wreck of an island conquered by Beijing.The only way the US could have our security harmed would be to allow ourselves to be drawn into a war we’re likely to lose over an issue peripheral to US security. In the event China takes Taiwan by force, Washington should stay out of the fray and lead a global effort to ostracize China, helping ensure our security will be strengthened for a generation to come.
Daniel L Davis is a senior fellow for defense priorities and a former lieutenant colonel in the US army who deployed into combat zones four times. He is the author of The Eleventh Hour in 2020 America
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GeorgiaCriminal inquiry into Trump’s Georgia election interference gathers steamThe disgraced former president faces a range of possible charges – including conspiracy and election fraud Peter Stone in WashingtonTue 5 Oct 2021 05.00 EDTLast modified on Tue 5 Oct 2021 05.28 EDTDonald Trump is facing increasing legal scrutiny in the crucial battleground state of Georgia over his attempt to sway the 2020 election there, and that heat is now overlapping with investigations in Congress looking at the former president’s efforts to subvert American democracy.A criminal investigation into Trump’s 2 January call prodding Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “just find” him 11,780 votes to block Joe Biden’s win in the state is making headway. The Georgia district attorney running the inquiry is now also sharing information with the House committee investigating the 6 January attack on the Capitol in Washington DC.Meanwhile, a justice department taskforce investigating threats to election officials nationwide has launched inquiries in Georgia, where election officers and workers received death threats or warnings of violence, including some after Trump singled out one official publicly for not backing his baseless fraud claims.Despite these investigations, Trump is still pushing bogus fraud claims in Georgia. Trump wrote to Raffensperger in September asking him to decertify the election results, which is impossible, and with an eye on the 2022 elections is trying to oust Raffensperger, as well as the state’s governor, Brian Kemp, and other top Republicans who defied his demands to block Biden’s win.Former justice department officials and voting rights advocates say Trump’s conspiratorial attacks on Georgia’s election results, and the threats to public officials, need to be investigated diligently, and prosecuted if warranted by law enforcement, to protect election integrity and public officials.Experts add that Trump’s alarming refusal to accept the Georgia election outcome and seek revenge on Republican officials who ignored his baseless fraud charges may affect a few pivotal 2022 races. His efforts may also encourage extremism and restrictions on minority and other voting rights similar to ones the Georgia legislature enacted this year.Veteran DoJ officials and prosecutors say the criminal inquiry launched by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, into Trump’s call to Raffensperger and other efforts Trump made to overturn the Georgia results, seems well grounded, with ample public evidence. But they said it will probably take some time before Willis decides whether to bring charges.Willis has said prosecutors are scrutinizing “potential violations of Georgia law prohibiting the solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the election’s administration”.The Georgia investigation’s merits were bolstered in late September by the release of a well-documented 107-page study from the Brookings Institution detailing Trump’s high-pressure drive to block Biden’s win in the state. The report concluded that Trump faced “substantial risk of possible state charges predicated on multiple crimes”.Boasting extensive documentation from the public record, the report notes that Trump’s broad effort to nullify the outcome in Georgia included personal contacts with the governor, the state attorney general and the secretary of state’s chief investigator.“Trump engaged in a pattern of repeated personal communications aimed at altering the vote count and making himself the winner in Georgia,” Donald Ayer, one of several authors of the Brookings report and a former deputy attorney general in the George HW Bush administration, said in an interview.“He did so in the absence of any even arguable evidence of voting or counting irregularities. Unless there are other presently unknown facts that would explain it, this conduct appears to satisfy the requirements of a number of Georgia criminal statutes.”To further the Georgia inquiry, Willis reportedly has in recent weeks turned to the House select committee looking into the 6 January attack on the Capitol to share documents and information that could assist her work.Willis’s outreach to the congressional committee doesn’t surprise some expert observers.“Her resources to address local crime are already taxed and any investigative steps taken on Capitol Hill means her likely marathon of a case against the former president may be a little closer to the finish line,” Michael J Moore, a former Georgia prosecutor and Democrat, said in an interview.The district attorney’s progress was underscored by Raffensperger telling the Daily Beast in August that Fulton county investigators had “asked us for documents, they’ve talked to some of our folks, and we’ll cooperate fully”.According to the news outlet, at least four people in Raffensperger’s office have been interviewed, including attorney Ryan Germany and the chief operating officer, Gabriel Sterling.On another legal front, the FBI has begun interviews in recent weeks with several Georgia election officials about death threats and other dangerous warnings they received in the months after the election from Trump backers suggesting falsely that Georgia officials were involved in election rigging.For instance, Richard Barron, who heads the Fulton county board of elections, told the Guardian he was interviewed by two FBI agents in early September and informed them about two death threats he received, including one in the summer “full of white supremacist language” which warned he would be “served lead”.“I hope the FBI makes some arrests,” Barron added. “People need to be held accountable for making threats against public officials.” Barron noted that threats against him and his majority Black staff rocketed after the election, when Democrats also won two Senate seats in the historically red-leaning state. Threats against Barron escalated further after Trump singled him out by name at a rally, he said.Former justice department prosecutors say that the taskforce looking into these threats has to be aggressive. “Absent rigorous law enforcement, responsible citizens will shy away from seeking these types of important public jobs, especially if they feel their families will be under threat,” said Paul Pelletier, a former acting chief of the fraud section at DoJ.But even with these inquiries heating up, Trump has continued to spread his false claims about the election results, as he did at a campaign-style rally in Perry, Georgia, on 25 September, where a few of his favored Georgia candidates spoke –including Representative Jody Hice, who is hoping to defeat Raffensperger in a primary contest.Trump’s drive to retaliate against Republican politicians who defied his efforts to overturn Biden’s Georgia win has dismayed some veteran party operatives who see them as counterproductive.“I think the Trump presence in Georgia has not been good for the GOP’s politics the last two years,” said Republican lobbyist Ed Rogers, who hails from Alabama. “Politics is about addition, and vengeance is not consistent with addition.”TopicsGeorgiaDonald TrumpUS elections 2020US politicsnewsReuse this content More

Women in politicsNew head of Emily’s List says this is the moment to build ‘women’s political power’Laphonza Butler wants to recruit more women of color to run and engage young people, immigrants and working mothers Lauren Gambino in Washington DC@ More

FacebookFacebook whistleblower to take her story before the US SenateFrances Haugen, who came forward accusing the company of putting profit over safety, will testify in Washington on Tuesday Dan Milmo and Kari PaulMon 4 Oct 2021 23.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 4 Oct 2021 23.23 EDTA former Facebook employee who has accused the company of putting profit over safety will take her damning accusations to Washington on Tuesday when she testifies to US senators.Frances Haugen, 37, came forward on Sunday as the whistleblower behind a series of damaging reports in the Wall Street Journal that have heaped further political pressure on the tech giant. Haugen told the news program 60 Minutes that Facebook’s priority was making money over doing what was good for the public.“The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimise for its own interests, like making more money,” she said.How losing a friend to misinformation drove Facebook whistleblower Read moreHaugen is expected to tell lawmakers that Facebook faces little oversight, and will urge Congress to take action. “As long as Facebook is operating in the dark, it is accountable to no one. And it will continue to make choices that go against the common good,” she wrote in her written testimony.Haugen was called to testify before the US Senate’s commerce subcommittee on the risks the company’s products pose to children. Lawmakers called the hearing in response to a Wall Street Journal story based on Haugen’s documents that showed Facebook was aware of the damage its Instagram app was causing to teen mental health and wellbeing. One survey in the leaked research estimated that 30% of teenage girls felt Instagram made dissatisfaction with their body worse.She is expected to compare Facebook to big big tobacco, which resisted telling the public that smoking damaged consumers’ health. “When we realized tobacco companies were hiding the harms it caused, the government took action. When we figured out cars were safer with seatbelts, the government took action,” Haugen wrote. “I implore you to do the same here.”Haugen will argue that Facebook’s closed design means it has no oversight, even from its own oversight board, a regulatory group that was formed in 2020 to make decisions independent of Facebook’s corporate leadership.“This inability to see into the actual systems of Facebook and confirm that Facebook’s systems work like they say is like the Department of Transportation regulating cars by watching them drive down the highway,” she wrote in her testimony. “Imagine if no regulator could ride in a car, pump up its wheels, crash test a car, or even know that seatbelts could exist.”Senator Richard Blumenthal, the Democrat whose committee is holding Tuesday’s hearing, told the Washington Post’s Technology 2020 newsletter that lawmakers will also ask Haugen about her remarks on the 2020 presidential election.Haugen alleged on 60 Minutes that following Joe Biden’s win in the election, Facebook prematurely reinstated old algorithms that valued engagement over all else, a move that she said contributed to the 6 January attack on the Capitol.“As soon as the election was over, they turned them back off or they changed the settings back to what they were before, to prioritize growth over safety. And that really feels like a betrayal of democracy to me,” she said.Following the election, Facebook also disbanded its civic team integrity team, a group that worked on issues related to political elections worldwide and which Haugen worked on. Facebook has said the team’s functions were distributed across the company.Haugen joined Facebook in 2019 as a product manager on the civic integrity team after spending more than a decade working in the tech industry, including at Pinterest and Google.Tuesday’s hearing is the second in mere weeks to focus on Facebook’s impact on children. Last week, lawmakers grilled Antigone Davis, Facebook’s global head of safety, and accused the company of “routinely” putting growth above children’s safety.Facebook has aggressively contested the accusations.On Friday, the company’s vice-president of policy and public affairs, Nick Clegg, wrote to Facebook employees ahead of Haugen’s public appearance. “Social media has had a big impact on society in recent years, and Facebook is often a place where much of this debate plays out,” he said. “But what evidence there is simply does not support the idea that Facebook, or social media more generally, is the primary cause of polarization.”On Monday, Facebook asked a federal judge throw out a revised anitrust lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that seeks to force the company giant to sell Instagram and WhatsApp.TopicsFacebookSocial mediaUS SenateUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

In his address today on the need to raise the debt limit on Monday, US President Joe Biden lambasted the Republicans and their use of the filibuster to stymie the Democrats.
‘So let’s be clear — not only are Republicans refusing to do their job, they’re threatening to use their power to prevent us from doing our job: saving the economy from a catastrophic event,’ Biden said. ‘I think, quite frankly, it’s hypocritical, dangerous and disgraceful’

Biden says debt limit must be raised because of ‘reckless’ policies under Trump – live More

Joe BidenBiden warns ‘meteor headed to crash’ into US economy amid debt strugglePresident condemns ‘reckless’ Republicans for pushing government towards historic debt default

US politics – live coverage
01:56David Smith in Washington@ More

Pass notesCommunismWhy Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto is having a momentThe Canadian musician Grimes tweeted an image of herself with the 1848 document last week – just after her reported split from the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. She isn’t the only one reading it right now Mon 4 Oct 2021 13.24 EDTLast modified on Mon 4 Oct 2021 14.45 EDTName: The Communist Manifesto.Age: 173 years.Remind me what it is again. A pamphlet first published by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848. I thought Marxism was dead … at least it seemed that way at the Labour party conference last week. Not so! It’s never been hotter!Really? Yes! Even Grimes has been spotted reading a copy.The Canadian musician? Real name Claire Boucher? The one who had a baby with Elon Musk? The very same. In her first public appearance since her reported split with Musk – the richest man in the world, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX – she was photographed wearing a fantasy-themed outfit on a street corner in that hotbed of communism, Los Angeles.Is she a Marxist? No. The whole thing was staged; she tweeted that she had done the stunt to spark ridiculous headlines.Even more ridiculous headlines than calling your child X Æ A-Xii? One assumes so, yes.Is it a case of her hilariously trolling her definitely-not-a-communist ex? Perhaps, although she did write on Instagram: “I’m still living with E and I am not a communist (although there are some very smart ideas in this book …)”.Remind me, what are those smart ideas? That human history was based on class struggles between the oppressors and the oppressed. And – to put it very simply – this was not good.Sounds a lot like my life in 2021. Quite, which is why it is having a bit of a moment. It is still one of the most influential political documents ever written, and its ideas do have a habit of popping up in times of economic and social crisis.Because it shows us how many of the problems in the world can be attributed to capitalist production, greed and property? Exactly. Check out the Pandora papers if you need more evidence. Or people hogging petrol.What does it say is the answer to all this then? Revolution, of course. And the elimination of social classes as well as the means to appropriate private property. Is this why young people keep saying: “Eat the rich”? Well, yes, huge numbers of young people are turning their backs on capitalism. Well, that’s because they can’t afford to get a toe on the property ladder. Whatever the reason, the Communist Manifesto is strangely popular right now. Last year, it was translated into Somali for the first time and there’s even a site where you can teach your parrot to recite it. Do say: “Workers of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains.”Don’t say: “My Tesla shares are doing well.”TopicsCommunismPass notesGrimesUS politicsKarl MarxfeaturesReuse this content More