Tag Archives: foreign policy

Growing Irrelevance of the World Economic Forum

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The rising income gap and growing rifts in Western societies that led to the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit vote are the main global risks, according to a report by the World Economic Forum ahead of its annual forum in Davos next week.

Climate change and technological disruption were also listed as important risks in a survey of 750 law makers, business leaders and academics carried out by the WEF….

No, the rising income gap isn’t why President-Elect Donald Trump was elected, nor was it why Great Britain voted to go out from the European Union.  Quite the contrary: it was because those on the bottom and in the middle were being held down by the policies of the Know Betters and by the latter’s desperation for votes—votes bought and paid for by handouts that trap folks in the Know Betters’ welfare cages.  That that contributed to a rising income gap is only a side effect.  The bottom and middle class folks simply wanted their opportunity to get rich, too.

Climate change isn’t a risk at all; it’s a certainty.  The Earth is illuminated and warmed by the sun, the sun has been heating up for its entire four billion year existence, and it’ll continue to heat up for the next several billion years.  Global warming—which is what climatistas mean when they changed the name to and talk about “climate change”—is a pseudo-science whose sole industrial function is to transfer government funds to the “industry.”

Technological disruption is a good; it’s how progress and prosperity happen in a free market—and without a free market there is neither progress and prosperity nor any technological change at all.  It’s a risk, too, but it’s one that’s well understood by everyone who’s had a high school economics class.

And there’s this nonsense from Cecilia Reyes, Chief Risk Officer at Zurich Insurance Group, speaking at the gathering:

The momentous political changes in 2016 raised worries about the health of liberal democracy that has underpinned global prosperity[.]

No, the health of liberal democracy took a dramatic turn for the better, exemplified by the repudiation of the policies of eight years of the Obama administration and the Progressive-Democratic Party’s control over the Congress as a whole and then of the Senate.  That repudiation was broader than just a rejection of those policies, though: the real turn for the better was the repudiation of the increasingly authoritarian behavior of the Progressive-Democratic Party and of the Left in general.

No, the WEF is just getting a bit too far out of touch with the world.

Is It 20 January Yet?

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It’s always someone else’s fault with these Democrats.

At a final press conference in Washington, DC Thursday….

Kerry disagreed with the narrative that Obama failed to enforce the red line, however, saying the president did intend to act—but was steered off course after the British Parliament narrowly voted against bombing Syria in August 2013.

The motorboat skipper said this:

The president of the United States of America, Barack Obama, did decide to use force. And he announced his decision publicly and said we’re going to act, we’re going to do what we need to do to respond to this blatant violation of international law and of warnings and of the red line he had chosen[.]

Now, we were marching towards that time when, lo and behold…before the Friday decision, Prime Minister David Cameron went to Parliament…and he sought a vote of approval for him to join in the action that we were going to engage in. And guess what? The Parliament voted no. They shot him down.

They shot him down.  !?  It’s the Brits’ fault?  No, not a bit of it.  President-On-The-Way-Out Barack Obama (D) and his motorboat pilot were too timid to act on their own.  Obama and Kerry were so used to popping off that they never thought they’d actually be expected to honor their commitment, and so when al Assad called their bluff, they cut and ran for their desk bottoms.  (Would it have helped if James Taylor had sung, in the Rose Garden, about having a friend?)

Say, though, arguendo, that the Parliament vote was somehow legitimately influential in getting Obama to walk away from his proudly announced red line.  The outcome remains: Obama failed to enforce the red line.  Full stop.

Nile Gardiner, Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom Director, had this:

[Kerry’s remarks are] a reflection of a broader disdain for Britain that runs through the Obama presidency[.]

No, it’s much worse and much broader than that.  How despicable can one administration be?

A Bogus Beef

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President-Elect Donald Trump sent notice last Friday that all US ambassadors must leave their posts—stop being ambassadors—by Inauguration Day.  Naturally some folks have their panties in a twist over this, it being unpresidential, and all.  For instance,

An individual with knowledge of the foreign service told FoxNews.com that Trump’s “unwillingness to consider individual cases or exigencies” appears to represent a break with protocol.

And as FoxNews put it,

past administrations have offered a grace period in certain cases.

Leave aside the fact that past presidents have, in fact, ordered US ambassadors to absent themselves by Inauguration Day: newly elected President-Elect Barack Obama (D), for instance, terminated President Bush the Younger’s ambassadors as of that future Inauguration Day.

Trump—and Obama—both gave a grace period, and they did it for all cases.  In Trump’s case, that grace period runs some 14 days—the standard two weeks’ notice.

Some folks are just born to bellyache.

Obama’s Asia Pivot

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On top of President-On-The-Way-Out Barack Obama’s (D) acquiescence to the People’s Republic of China’s seizure of the South China Sea and his timid response to the PRC’s aggression against Japan in the East China Sea—hallmarks of his “pivot to Asia,” we get the following pivot outcomes.

A Chinese attack submarine made an unprecedented stopover in Malaysia this week in a rare public display of China’s expanding undersea force and a further sign of power realignment in Southeast Asia.

And

The visit came as two Russian warships docked in the Philippines—a US treaty ally—and Moscow offered to sell Manila advanced weaponry in another challenge to longstanding U.S. military relations in the region.

Wonderful job on the pivot by our On-The-Way-Out Commander in Chief.

Sort of makes one wonder which way he was pivoting in Asia.

A Thought on Edward Snowden

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This one is prompted by a Letter to the Editor published in last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal.  The relevant part of the letter is this:

If we start at the beginning, it was the US government, including the National Security Agency, that stole information that belonged to me—my phone and internet metadata. Edward Snowden revealed the existence of the government’s thieving. Now Mr Snowden is considered the thief.

Now Mr Snowden is considered the thief.  He is, and worse. That the NSA screwed up/stole private data/abused its role/what-have-you doesn’t alter that simple fact.

Were Snowden a whistleblower, he wouldn’t have run to the PRC’s Hong Kong and then proceeded to Russia where he’s continuing to give up American secrets.

Were Snowden engaged in civil disobedience, he would have returned long before now—indeed, would never have left—stood trial, making his case before the American people and a jury of his peers, and with his arrest and trial, emphasized the absurdity of the law that facilitated the NSA’s behavior.

But he did the one and didn’t do the other.