U.S. News
No, the Chinese Won’t Invade America If Secessionists Succeed
As we shall see, the claim that decentralization of the US regime through secession would leave it a sitting duck for foreign power is not very convincing.
When political secession starts to become more of a realistic policy goal—and less of a theoretical ideal for the future—that is precisely when we can expect opposition to become the most dismayed and panicky. For now, critics are careful to make it appear that they regard the idea with mere dismissive contempt. The angry threats and predictions of doom from critics of secession will come later.
In that case, opponents will present many different reasons why secession must never be contemplated. Advocates of separation will be called traitors and unpatriotic. They’ll be told that secession will bring poverty. Indeed, we heard some of this in the controversy over Scottish secession in recent years.
But much of the debate will also focus on foreign policy. In Scotland, for instance, some foreign policy hawks sternly warned that Scottish independence would lead to nuclear disarmament of the UK. The implication, of course, is that the UK would then be unable to defend itself from foreign enemies.
We’d hear much the same thing in the US in the face of a growing secession movement. We’d hear repeatedly about how any weakening of the American regime through secession would be, as Andrew Longman put it at the conservative magazine American Thinker: “a gift to the [Chinese] communists” and would soon lead to the conquest of North America by China. Longman’s article is borderline hysterical, but he’s really just ahead of the curve. We’ll hear something very similar from the regime and its allies on a regular basis as secession becomes more mainstream.
But how plausible is this?
To address the issue, we can look at it in two ways. First, we can examine the likely defensive capabilities of the new American states were the current USA to fracture along blue-red lines. Moreover, given that any successor states to the US will share a common language and similar foreign policy needs, we’ll need to look at how nations of similar backgrounds interact with each other.
As we shall see, the claim that decentralization of the US regime through secession would leave it a sitting duck for foreign power is not very convincing.
What If the Red States and Blue States Split Up?
China certainly isn’t the only country that matters as far as American international relations are concerned. But it is likely to be held up as the great bogeyman and the reason for why secessionists must never be allowed to succeed.
So let’s compare China with the status quo USA.
As a single unit, the US economy can support an enormous military machine. All combined (according to the World Bank), the USA produces a national gross domestic product of approximately $21.4 trillion. This is compared to China’s $23.4 trillion GDP. In both cases, that’s an enormous amount of production. But perhaps more telling is the GDP per capita in each country. China’s per capita GDP is only $16,800, while the United States’s is nearly quadruple that: $63,000.1 But here’s the rub for China: The US produces its gargantuan GDP with only 328 million people. China, meanwhile, requires more than 1.3 billion people to produce a similar output.
This means, on a per person basis, the American economy is far more productive than China’s.
As shown by political scientist Michael Beckley, this wealth advantage gives the United States an enormous advantage in terms of available military resources. Yes, a billion people can produce a very large GDP, but those billion people have to be fed and housed using a sizable portion of that GDP. In the United States, on the other hand, most of the population lives so far above subsistence, and produces so much more than is necessary to meet basic needs, that military defensive capability far outstrips that of much larger countries. This reality is partly reflected in per capita GDP.
It is important to not ignore the military benefits of surplus wealth, as opposed to sheer aggregate size. Political scientists and historians have developed a number of ways to measure “military effectiveness.” But many of these methods tend to overestimate the military prowess of large—yet relatively poor—states. These methods that favor size often cannot explain why smaller states like Britain have so often defeated larger states like China, as occurred repeatedly during the nineteenth century.
A more realistic view of the importance of economic wealth can be found with an index developed by Beckley and Paul Bairoch. This method combines both GDP and GDP per capita, and it prevents us from exaggerating the power of highly populous—but relatively undeveloped—nations.2
Once the benefits of per capita GDP are considered, we find that even with China’s enormous GDP, the US’s military capability is considerably larger.
Now, how would things look if, say, the United States broke up into smaller pieces?
We could play out many different scenarios, of course, but just as one of many potential thought experiments, let’s assume the United States devolves into only two new countries: the Blue States of America (BSA) and the Red States of America (RSA).
These two new countries are composed of the following states:
Red (27 states): Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Blue (23 states, plus DC): California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin.
As American leftists are often happy to point out, blue America—at least in the aggregate—is richer than red America. This is largely due to the presence of a large number of big, productive cities in the blue states. As a result, the BSA contains most of the USA’s current $21 trillion GDP: $12.3 trillion. The BSA contains 170 million residents, for an overall per capita GDP of $73,000.
In the RSA, these numbers are smaller. In the 27 states, total GDP is $8.9 trillion, spread out over a population of 158 million. The GDP per capita is $56,000.
In terms of economic power, both of these new countries remain near the top of the heap. The BSA, of course, has a per capita GDPs among the highest in the world, right behind Ireland, and ahead of Switzerland. The total GDP for the BSA is behind only the EU and China, and larger than those of India, Japan, and Germany.
In the RSA, the per capita GDP puts it well within the company of wealthy nations. At $56,000, it’s right between Austria and the Netherlands. Total GDP, although behind that of BSA, is about equal to India’s, and remains larger than those of Japan, Germany, and all the rest.
Using the Beckley-Bairoch approach, we find that the relative military power in both the BSA and the RSA is still larger than that of the Chinese regime. Naturally, neither has the total military resources of the United States as a whole, but great wealth goes a long way in either case.
This is just a very basic calculation, but it’s easy to see how successor states to the US would retain advantages over China even if the US broke up into smaller pieces. China would still have all the usual troubles in its own backyard. No matter how many new pieces the United States might devolve into, the fact remains that North America is insulated from Asia and Europe by two oceans. In China, meanwhile, the regime
does not devote all, and perhaps not even a majority, of its military resources to contingencies involving the United States. China shares sea or land borders with nineteen countries, five of which fought wars against China within the last century; its northern and western borders are porous and populated by disaffected minority groups; and its government faces a constant threat of domestic rebellion. As a result, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) devotes substantial resources to internal security and requires 300,000 troops just to police China’s borders….In a separate study, I found that developing countries systematically fail at warfare, regardless of the size of their defense budgets, because they lack the economic capacity to maintain, modernize, and integrate individual technologies into cohesive military systems.
Sovereign States, but Allies Too
We’ve been assuming so far, however, that these postsecession states in North America would have to each face China independently in case of a clash. This, however, is not a good assumption. It is not at all a given that these independent states would shun the idea of mutual defense. In fact, experience suggests the opposite. This is apparent even to those who are not exactly entrenched advocates for secession. As noted by Eric Sammons at the conservative Crisis Magazine:
Foreign policy presents another challenge for an American secession movement. Secession opponents fear weakening American hegemony across the world. Would a divided America result in greater global influence for China or Russia? Would it lead to a possible invasion by those countries?
It’s impossible to say for sure, but there is no reason that a divided America could not remain a confederation of allies when it comes to military defense. An attack on any one new American nation-state could be considered an attack on all nation-states.
This observation that a NATO-like institution for North America could easily arise should be obvious to anyone who’s noticed that countries with similar backgrounds—think Canada, the USA, Australia, and the UK—have been generally united on foreign policy for well over a century now.
In spite of this, it’s not uncommon to hear claims that neighboring states are all poised to go to war with each other at any given moment. This, we are told, would be the natural outcome if the United States allows any portion of the nation to become independent. These antisecessionists often point to examples like the Yugoslav wars and claim ethnic cleansing is on the horizon. But North America isn’t southeastern Europe. In the case of North America, we’d be dealing with countries that share a common language, a high standard of living—and thus much to lose from an internecine war—and have deep and extensive trade relations.
Moreover, if one is going to claim that two nations with such similar backgrounds are bound to go to war, one will need to explain why Canada has been at peace with the United States for 205 years. Conceivably, one might claim this is only because Canada was too small to challenge the US. But this ignores the fact that Canadian foreign policy was set by Britain—a world power and peer of the US—until 1931. Yet, in all those years after the War of 1812, during which the British state shared both extensive land and maritime borders with the US through British Canadian domains, London was apparently uninterested in war with the US.
However, we’re expected to believe that if the United States were to break into smaller independent states, the “Blue States of America” will welcome a Chinese invasion of Tampa Bay just to stick it to the red states. This may seem plausible to more paranoid anti-China Cold Warriors who seem to believe every left-of-center American is an agent of Beijing. But the Tampa Bay scenario is about as likely as Canada asking the People’s Liberation Army to invade Boston.
U.S. News
New York facing streets without cops because of COVID vaccine mandate
“Today’s ruling sets the city up for a real crisis …”
A New York judge has rejected a union request to suspended the city’s announced COVID-19 vaccination mandate for police officers, meaning within just days there could be crimes to which officers simply cannot respond.
CBS reported the judge rejected the request from the Police Benevolent Association, representing some 24,000 police officers, to hold off on the requirement.
The union had wanted the temporary restraining order because the city has not made clear potential exceptions for medical or religious exemptions, and is refusing to give unvaccinated officers time to apply.
The vaccination rate among officers is about 73% so far, and the union has stated its position that getting the shots of the experimental COVID treatments is a personal medical decision.
“Today’s ruling sets the city up for a real crisis. The haphazard rollout of this mandate has created chaos in the NYPD,” PBA President Patrick J. Lynch said in a statement to CBS. “City hall has given no reason that a vaccine mandate with a weekly testing option is no longer enough to protect police officers and the public, especially while the number of COVID-19 cases continues to fall.”
It was the first such legal action launched against Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plans to control city employee medical decisions, and an immediate appeal was being submitted.
The city’s demand had been that police officers, firefighters and others get at least their first does by Friday – or be left without pay.
The New York Daily News estimated that the deadline could leave a quarter of the city’s police officers at home without pay.
The publication noted widespread opposition to the mayor’s controlling dictate led to a huge protest in lower Manhattan earlier this week.
De Blasio said he believes in vaccine mandates – and suggests every mayor or governor should require workers to get the shots.
Despite whatever protection the shots provide, they also have been blamed for thousands of fatal side effects.
The New York Post noted that the issue was threatening not only police units, and that the New York Fire Department was preparing to shut down as many as 20% of its fire companies, “and take an equal portion of its ambulances off the streets.”
“The Department must manage the unfortunate fact that a portion of our workforce has refused to comply with a vaccine mandate for all city employees,” Commissioner Daniel Nigro charged.
“We will use all means at our disposal, including mandatory overtime, mutual aid from other EMS providers and significant changes to the schedules of our members. We will ensure the continuity of operations and safety of all those we have sworn oaths to serve.”
Reuters noted the chief of the firefighters’ union told his members to report for duty regardless of de Blasio’s order to get the COVID-19 shots.
Andrew Ansbro, of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, said his members were “insulted” by de Blasio.
“I have told my members that if they choose to remain unvaccinated, they must still report for duty,” Ansbro said. “If they are told they cannot work, it will be the department and city of New York that sends them home. And it will be the department and the city of New York that has failed to protect the citizens of New York.”
De Blasio’s mandate affects some 50,000 workers in New York, who have a deadline late Friday to prove they are vaccinated.
AP said the judge was Lizette Colon, and her ruling said the mandate can take effect as scheduled. But she also ordered city officials to be in court Nov. 12 to defend their demands.
Estimates are that about three quarters of the affected police department employees have taken the shots, while the figure is about 68% for fire department workers.
U.S. News
The Establishment Is Hiding Mass Resistance To Vaccine Mandates With The “Striketober” Farce
The establishment is well aware that these actions are destabilizing the labor market …
It is perhaps a sign of the waning influence of the mainstream media that even though they have been incessantly pumping the concept of “Striketober” for the past month, the majority of Americans rarely mention it. What we do deal with on a regular basis, though, are the constant labor shortages across multiple sectors of the economy as well as the growing supply chain disruptions and stagflationary retail price hikes. The media notion of “labor regaining its power” is a background narrative that they are still struggling to plant in the public subconscious while the majority of people try to adapt to more serious concerns.
That said, the establishment doesn’t really care if the propaganda takes hold, only that they have a useful cover for the very real collapse of the US economy. It’s a kind of vicious perversion of the “fake it until you make it” strategy.
Striketober, like BLM, Antifa, and numerous other Marxist or Cultural Marxist movements has been created from thin air by a combination of news hype and globalist foundation funding. It’s important to first recognize that none of these leftist organizations would have ever been formed had it not been for the ample support of institutions like the Ford Foundation and George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. BLM, for example, was founded by openly Marxist leaders and got its start using millions of dollars in funding from the Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundation.
Many of the “workers unions” involved in various elements of Striktober also enjoy direct or indirect funding from globalist foundations. The Food Chain Workers Alliance, for example, receives funding from the Ford Foundation, and the National Domestic Workers Foundation gets ample money from the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation.
As I have said many times in the past, all the evil people are on the side of the political left. All the billionaire elites and corporations they claim to hate are feeding them endless cash. Leftist labor strikes only exist because globalists want them to exist.
Of course, leftist strikes are actually a minimal problem. In fact, I suspect they are a deliberately fabricated theater meant to obscure the very REAL labor strikes among conservatives over the covid vaccine mandates. Let me explain…
We are all familiar with sensationalist worker walkouts like the Netflix protest over Dave Chappelle’s special “The Closer” which dares to make jokes about trans activists, a highly protected minority of people at the top of the leftist oppression totem pole. Most people have also heard about the workers strike among McDonalds employees over #metoo claims even though there is little to no evidence to support the accusations.
What we don’t hear much about is that the Netflix walkout was actually only a handful of real employees mixed with a mob of career activists that were bused in from elsewhere. We also don’t hear about the fact that the #metoo claims made against McDonalds are actually from back in 2018, and they are now being conveniently dredged up again as the country faces a labor shortage crisis.
These high profile strikes and walkouts are starting to eclipse media coverage of the true culprits behind the labor crisis – Namely the Biden Administration and blue state governments enacting global mandates, vaccine controls and covid stimulus.
The source of worker shortages, supply chain bottlenecks and a lot of our stagflationary issues can be traced directly back to the government’s covid restrictions and the covid welfare programs. Get rid of the restrictions, the mandates and the covid checks and over time the crisis will disappear. It really is that simple. However, the establishment does not want you to see it that way.
Marxist/Socialist groups are working feverishly to make hay with the covid protests and employee strikes in an attempt to attribute them to “worker discontent” over low wages and “mistreatment” rather than the covid mandates. This is nonsense.
First and foremost, wages have been rising exponentially in the past year for what I would call “zero skill workers” in the retail and service industries. When a potential employee with no valuable skills can walk into almost any chain restaurant or retail outlet and get $15 or more an hour on top of a signing bonus of hundreds of dollars just for showing up on the first day, there is no unfair disparity for the working class.
When the average minimum wage across the states is around $9 and most service workers are making nearly double that, there is no legitimate problem for Marxists to complain about. So, they have to make things up. To be sure, $15 an hour is not enough to buy a home or start a family on a single income, but people aren’t automatically entitled to home ownership and no intelligent person expects to launch a career in food service or retail. That’s why decades ago these jobs were filled by teenagers, not people in their 20s or older. Doubling the minimum wage only accomplished one thing int he long run: Much higher prices for everyone.
Workers might feel like they are being abused, but it’s not their paychecks under attack or their managers making sexual advances. These are petty concerns compared to the bigger issue at hand – Their individual civil liberties.
As noted, there are two major factors in worker shortages: The Biden vaccine mandates and state and federal covid stimulus programs which pay people more to stay at home than they would make on the job. THESE are the reasons for worker shortages and anyone that claims otherwise is ignorant or has an agenda.
Federal covid checks are not done yet. Contrary to popular belief the cash is still flowing through various programs including child credit programs. Also, most states continue to pump out covid financial aid on top of existing unemployment benefits. This is essentially Universal Basic Income and it’s not over by a long shot. Businesses cannot find enough labor because the government has bribed millions of workers to stay home. The socialists don’t like to address this problem because it conflicts with their Striketober fantasy, so they deny it exists.
The establishment is well aware that these actions are destabilizing the labor market and I believe the goal is to destroy the small business sector specifically. Small businesses cannot compete with corporations backed by trillions in central bank stimulus. They don’t have the resources to double wage rates for zero-skill workers or to offer large signing bonuses. They also don’t have the resources to police their own employees and customers to ensure these people are complying with vaccine passports and booster shots. Within a year the solid small business foundation of the US will be a hollow shell.
With the death of small businesses, all that will remain are international conglomerates that WILL enforce the mandates and threaten people with poverty and starvation if they refuse the vax. All other legal alternatives will be removed and that is exactly what the elites want. Without defiant small businesses there’s nowhere left for you to work or shop without the vax passport. Corporate monopolies are the tool governments are using to circumvent constitutional protections for individuals.
But as this process plays out the resistance grows. And, as they say, the resistance will not be televised.
The entire premise of Striketober and the rise of the “oppressed proletariat” is a farce, but there is a different kind of revolution brewing. The latest narrative does at least represent something new in the agenda to derail the US economy. For the most part we have been dealing with astroturf protests from Cultural Marxists in the form of crazed social justice warriors funded by globalist foundations. The focus is usually on exploiting cultural taboos or non-existent racism or sexism. The Striketober development is a much more classic rendition of old school Marxist sabotage, and it appears that it was slapped together haphazardly by establishment elites in order to diminish the VERY REAL conservative worker walkouts.
That is to say, from now on expect that if you walk out of a job or get fired from a job for non-compliance on the experimental covid vax you might be lumped in with a fake leftist movement and no one will mention the real reasons for your sacrifice. But what is the point of this psy-op? Don’t the globalists want to identify and demonize the millions of conservatives refusing the vax?
I am reminded of a story I read when I was a child about a conversation between an ancient Roman General and a Roman Senator. The senator tells the general that something needed to be done about separating and delineating the slave class from the free Roman citizens because often they all looked alike and were sometimes dressed alike. The senator suggested that the slaves be forced to wear black arm bands so they could be easily identified. The general disagreed, pointing out that if the slaves were given the arm bands they would finally see how many of them there were, and realizing the sheer size of their population the slaves might then be encouraged to revolt against the empire.
Now, I don’t know if this tale is historically accurate but I treat it as a parable. In the case of the vaccine mandates and the massive worker strikes among airlines, hospitals, police and emergency services, etc., the more the establishment tries to squeeze the US population with forced vaccination efforts the more liberty minded people slip through their fingers and fight back. If mass walkouts and strikes are attributed to conservatives and patriots standing against the mandates, then all the other “slaves” might realize they are actually legion. This would be bad for the globalists and their Reset agenda.
So, they are attempting to co-opt the vaccine walkouts and rewrite history in real time by creating a fake workers movement through Striketober. And no, it will not end in October, the media will be promoting this idea from now on. That way the resistance becomes convoluted and confused and the mainstream media can say the great number of striking workers are actually on the side of the political left battling the “capitalist machine”, not conservatives and patriots on the side of truth and freedom.
We are not supposed to know our numbers. By instituting a two tier society through vax mandates the establishment has made an error. They obviously assumed there would be far less rebellion against the passports. They obviously assumed that there would be a vast majority of support and the 10% or less of the population refusing to comply would be overwhelmed and surrounded by the covid cult. They figured we would be compelled by peer pressure and the fear of standing out, and that we would naturally fall in line. Instead, 30% to 50% of the population depending on the state or city or industry is in revolt and we are starting to see how many of us there really are across the country.
There are three things the covid authoritarians are predominantly afraid of – Liberty groups recognizing their true numbers. Those same groups organizing at the local and state level across the country. And, losing the mainstream narrative that they are the “good guys” and that we are the “evil insurrectionists”.
Striketober is just another desperate attempt by the power elites to manage optics in the face of unexpected opposition. Their efforts to terrorize people that refuse to become guinea pigs for a barely tested mRNA cocktail is backfiring. Eventually, worker strikes due to forced vaccination will culminate in greater acts of rebellion against the system. And, with each escalation of resistance the establishment will strain their weak think-tank brains trying to create new narratives to obscure what is really happening.
U.S. News
NYC Firefighters Union Head Warns Vaccine Mandate Will “Get Residents KILLED”
“When this city goes into utter chaos on Nov. 1, be ready to pick up the pieces that the mayor causes.”
The head of the firefighter’s union in New York City has warned that Mayor Bill De Blasio’s vaccine mandate, which comes into effect next week is going to lead to “utter chaos,” with massive numbers of unvaccinated first responders prevented from doing their jobs and residents losing their lives. as a result.
In an appearance on Fox News Radio, FDNY Firefighter Association President Andrew Ansbro urged that “The response times are going to go through the roof. We’re just not going to be able to get to the emergencies in time.”
“Fires are going to burn longer. Heart attack victims are going to be laying on the floor longer,” Ansbro declared, adding “People in stuck elevators are going to be stuck there for hours if not days.”
Ansbro made the prediction that 30 to 40 percent of firehouses in New York City will be closed down if the mandate remains, with up to 45 percent of the workforce remaining unvaccinated.
“On Friday, when they’re tallying the numbers of who complied and who didn’t, they’re going to be faced with a stark reality that they’re going to have to close firehouses down,” Ansbro explained.
“The mayor is going to be faced with either sending us home or sticking to his guns,” Ansbro continued, adding “And his guns are going to get New York City residents killed.”
“When this city goes into utter chaos on Nov. 1, be ready to pick up the pieces that the mayor causes,” the fire chief further warned.
During a press conference Wednesday, Ansbro also said “I have told my members that if they choose to remain unvaccinated, they must still report for duty.”
He also stated that firefighters in the city feel “insulted” by the mandate and the probability that they will be prevented from working.
“If they are told they cannot work, it will be the department and city of New York that sends them home. And it will be the department and the city of New York that has failed to protect the citizens of New York,” Ansbro said.
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New York facing streets without cops because of COVID vaccine mandate
The Establishment Is Hiding Mass Resistance To Vaccine Mandates With The “Striketober” Farce
