Some political observers in the U.S. believe that Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has essentially adopted a negative, oppositional attitude toward Taiwan in recent months. “Trump…

CARACAS, Venezuela —  President Nicolás Maduro said he has ordered a 10-day block on access to X in Venezuela, accusing the owner Elon Musk of using the social network to promote hatred after…

Culture Walz of Sound What should we make of the Democratic vice presidential candidate’s now-controversial stereo setup? Credit: lev radin via Shutterstock In his short story, “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone,” Arthur Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes trick two criminals into believing that he is playing the Barcarolle from Offenbach’s opera fantastique, The Tales of Hoffmann, on his violin in his chambers at 221B Baker Street. “Pray make yourself quite at home in my absence,” he instructs them. “Holmes,” we are told, “withdrew, picking up his violin from the corner as he passed. A few moments later the long-drawn, wailing notes of that most haunting of tunes came faintly through the closed door of the bedroom.” As they listen to the haunting strains of the solo, the thieves discuss their plans for a stolen gem, only to be astounded as the great detective himself rushes into the room and divulges that he was actually listening to their scheming. “These modern gramophones,” Holmes notes, “are a remarkable invention.” Indeed they are. It seems unlikely that Tim Walz was trying to ferret out reprobates when he set up a stereo, complete with an Audio-Technica LP60X-GM turntable and Denon receiver, for his daughter Hope, but his old tweet about it from December 6, 2020 is suddenly garnering a good deal of controversy. “Teaching Hope about old school stereo set ups,” Walz wrote. “We’re sharing the joy of classic vinyl and Bob Seger.” An accompanying photo shows him trimming the end of speaker wire so that he can attach it to the binding posts of a loudspeaker. He concluded his tweet by admonishing, “Quality speaker wire matters people!!!” A harmless tweet from a proud Papa introducing his daughter to the pleasures of analog sound? Not a bit of it. Now that Walz has been tapped by vice president Kamala Harris to become her running mate, his avidity for vinyl, not to mention his favorite stars (he signed a “Taylor Swift bill” earlier this year), is coming under forensic scrutiny. Is he a true exponent of timeless truths exemplified in his old school love for LPs? Or is he a feckless liberal do-gooder who should mind his own damn business?   To try and address the furor surrounding this question, it may be helpful to assess the nature of the criticisms being directed at Walz. One prominent source of concern has been the fact that Walz made bold to situate the audio gear on top of a radiator, which could lead to the warping of the precious vinyl. Another centers on his endorsement of Bob Seger. But the greatest ruckus appears to hover over Walz’s animadversions about loudspeaker cable. Two schools of thought quickly emerged. The first was discountenanced by what it saw as the prohibitive cost of the wire. “Let me guess,” wrote one respondent, “you’re one of those people that buys $300 speaker wire from Best Buy? Figures you would lie to us about wires like you lie to us about everything else, you tool.”  The very opposite concern, however, was sounded, as it were, by The American Conservative contributing editor Matthew Walther. Walther alleged that Walz was something of an audio imposter: “He’s using a piece of crap Denon receiver from Best Buy (he has it set to the DVD channel) and a $150 turntable with a built-in phono preamp arranged on top of a radiator. This is like Kamala talking about listening to Snoop Dogg in ‘college’ or Kerry wearing hunter orange.” The problem with Walz, then, isn’t that he’s a big-spending liberal. It’s that he’s a tightwad. Instead of buying the best, he went to Best Buy. Who has it right? Certainly Walz is to be commended for introducing his daughter to what amounts to a provisional step into the high-end stereo waters. The fact is that LPs are now outselling CDs, which are headed for the dust-bin of history, especially as digital streaming comes on strong. Written off when digital was first introduced in the late 1980s, vinyl is the comeback kid of the audio industry—some 43 million LPs were sold last year. The result has been to kick-start the turntable industry as well. You can buy a turntable for anywhere from under $149 to around $600,000. Some of the top high-end ‘tables include the Air Force Zero from Japan, the Oswald Mills K3 from Pennsylvania, and a new GMT One from Wilson-Benesch, which is located in Great Britain. This is why Walther has it right when he observes that Walz is a mere piker when it comes to the high-end. But it doesn’t exempt Walther from the charge of snobbery about lower-priced equipment—high fidelity, after all, is in the ear of the auditor.Maybe the most compelling argument on behalf of Walz, though, is one that should appeal to the former president Donald J. Trump. When I asked Michael Fremer, a turntable expert and a writer for the Absolute Sound, about the Walz audio brouhaha, he observed, “American-made hi-fi positively impacts our trade balance. Kudos to the Governor for encouraging domestic consumption of what the rest of the world recognizes among our most important cultural exports.” Indeed, two leading audio companies hail from Minnesota—the Magnepan corporation, which manufactures planar loudspeakers, and Audio Research Corporation, which builds tubed equipment.  If he and Harris waltz to victory in November, then they might ponder initiating a new Buy American campaign with gear from the Twin Cities for the White House sound system. The post Walz of Sound appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs Bangladesh’s Affirmative Action Revolution The Western press has been conspicuously silent on why the southeast Asian country’s government was ousted. Credit: via Shutterstock Bangladesh is a country of 170 million that Americans rarely think about and, to the degree that they do, mostly associate with the manufacturer’s tags in t-shirts and blouses. This past week was the exception, when the longtime prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, was chased out of the country by mobs that went on to loot the ministerial palace. As of this writing, the president and the chief of the army are working out what a provisional government is going to look like. The underlying cause of the riots hardly made it into the Western news, which preferred to focus on Hasina’s not-altogether-democratic style of rule and the botched repression of student protestors, which resulted in several deaths and heightened the crisis. This account fits neatly atop Western hobbyhorses about “authoritarianism,” but cuts out the more complicated, possibly (by liberal lights) embarrassing root problem: The demonstrators were protesting against affirmative action. Despite its off-and-on political instability, Bangladesh has grown steadily economically since gaining its independence from Pakistan in 1971. Under Hasina’s administration, the poverty rate has plummeted from 70 percent to under 45 percent. The growing middle class has done what middle classes everywhere have done—sent its children to school in hopes that they will take their places in the leading ranks of Bangladeshi society, which includes in large part the civil service. The problem: Historically, only between 20 percent and 50 percent of civil service jobs are allocated based solely on merit. The lion’s share is reserved for the descendants of veterans and war crime victims in Bangladesh’s war of independence, with a smaller portion also set aside for various favored minority groups. The quota system has persisted through the exertions of the executive despite various rulings modifying it in the Bangladeshi judiciary. The protestors’ initial slate of demands focused on reforming the quota system to allow more applicants from non-protected groups into the state service. Only after the police killed some of their number—an action for which the cops are now nervously asking immunity in whatever the post-Hasina settlement looks like—did the demonstrations reorient toward a single demand, the end of the Hasina government.  To the degree that the Western press has treated this at all, it has been to point out that the quota system allowed Hasina to reward her political cronies (because of certain historical accidents of the Bangladeshi party system that we need not get into here). That is true, as far as it goes. But the protestors weren’t pushing for an abolition of the quota system, but a reform—that is to say, their problem wasn’t that some of Hasina’s cronies were being hired in, but that the protestors’ own class were being disproportionately kept out. Completely absent, so far, has been any kind of self-reflection about all this, so here is a hot-wash examination. Almost all revolutions, in the final analysis, are bourgeois revolutions. A large class with significant capital that feels itself unduly excluded from the levers of power will make itself felt, peacefully or not. In our own history, the civil rights movement, so far from being the spontaneous uprising of the downtrodden that it is now fashionable to portray, was a highly organized operation spearheaded by lawyers, church leaders, and academics—the people with the wherewithal to pursue a legal and political playbook, and, perhaps more importantly, the people who were of a class to rankle at exclusion from elite institutions.  One of the core elements of the civil rights–era settlement was, ironically enough in 2024, race-based affirmative action, enacted by university administrators with liberal sensibilities and a fear of instability a la the Black Panthers’ 1970 occupation of Yale’s campus. This corrective measure has now grown unpopular; the use of race as a consideration in college admissions is opposed by a simple majority of Americans. A small but disproportionately capital-heavy segment of the population, Asian Americans, are disproportionately affected by the deemphasis on academic merit. Yet establishment interests in the state and the academy have a vested interest in perpetuating the affirmative-action regime as a way to invest their constituents with institutional and economic power. Recent court cases have attempted to address the perceived distortions of the affirmative-action regime, but the establishment has employed various dodges to make sure it continues all the same. We won’t belabor the point. The particular genius of liberal systems is allowing social mobility without violence; when this mobility is compromised, distorted, or curbed, the systems acquire the brittleness associated historically with aristocracies and oligarchies. The next thing you know, you are getting chased out of your living room and making for the nearest plane to New Delhi while the well-heeled children of shopkeepers and insurance agents howl for your blood. Bangladesh furnishes an extreme case study of what an unpopular quota system can set off. Will we learn the lesson? The post Bangladesh’s Affirmative Action Revolution appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs What Would a Trump II Taiwan Policy Look Like? Critics of the former president’s “abandonment” of the Republic of China fundamentally misunderstand his foreign policy. Credit: via Shutterstock Some political observers in the U.S. believe that Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has essentially adopted a negative, oppositional attitude toward Taiwan in recent months. “Trump Is Giving Taiwan the Ukraine Treatment” ran the headline in Foreign Policy in late July after Trump gave an interview in which he charged that Taiwan “doesn’t give us anything” and has taken “about 100 percent of our chip business.” He said that Taiwan “should pay us for [its] defense” and refused to voice an unequivocal commitment that America would defend Taiwan if the island were attacked or invaded by mainland China. Coming in the wake of the Republican policy platform adopted in mid-July, which did not include a specific statement regarding the fate of Taiwan, critics of Trump (and even some supporters and loyalists) voiced worry that his commitment to Taiwan may have weakened in recent months. The party platform’s silence on Taiwan represented a notable departure from previous platforms, which explicitly announced that a Trump administration would come to the aid of Taiwan if anything threatened to change in its present status. Why the change? Even if Taiwan is not going to receive “the Ukraine treatment,” is a Trump presidency going to give the island “the Hong Kong treatment,” leaving it to the mercy of Beijing? In late April, just weeks before Trump’s statements on Taiwan, Nikkei Asia reported that Asia experts predict that a mainland invasion or violation of Taiwan territorial space will occur no later than 2027—that is, during the term of the next American president. Such reports have heightened fears about Trump’s interview remarks.  It warrants emphasis, however, that even though Trump’s critics have been proclaiming that he is set to abandon Taiwan and turn the island over to the Chinese Communist Party, other explanations are equally or more plausible.  First, Trump has always taken what is described as a “transactional” approach to foreign policy. Trump is above all a businessman who casts himself explicitly as a dealmaker. That view is the essential foundation of his “America First” foreign policy. From this vantage point, he is not “abandoning” Taiwan, but rather recalibrating the relationship. He wants Taiwan to pay more for American help as well as to loosen its hold on its microchip monopoly.  Trump’s transactional approach to Taiwan is at odds with the convictions of the China hawks who had counseled him during his first administration, such as National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The middle ranks were also dominated by hawkish advisors (and strong advocates for Taiwan), such as Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger; Randall Schriver, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, and Peter Navarro, head of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy. Here is the second reason why it is premature to jump to conclusions that Trump is “abandoning” Taiwan. In the last four years, Trump has increasingly insisted on “being his own man” on foreign policy and surrounding himself with advisors who fully support his “America First” outlook. The policy statements on Taiwan in the first two Republican Party platforms were shaped by his advisors, particularly China hawks. His present position seems much closer to the “strategic ambiguity” position historically favored by many, if not most, American policymakers. Trump acknowledged as much when he was asked what he would specifically do in the event of a hostile move by mainland China toward Taiwan.  “I wouldn’t want to give away any negotiating abilities by giving information like that to any reporter,” he replied. Third, any comparisons between Trump’s attitude toward Ukraine and Taiwan are misconceived. The U.S. has not poured hundreds of billions of dollars into Taiwan, nor is the U.S. propping up a war for which the U.S. pays with comparatively support financially from Europe. Likewise, Ukraine has not traditionally been an important U.S. ally, nor has it held for many decades a critical strategic interest geopolitically for the U.S. Trump, therefore, is not “giving Taiwan the Ukraine treatment,” but rather insisting that he will no longer turn a blind eye toward what he considers a long-standing “Taiwan First” policy in which—as he sees it—the U.S. has supported Taiwan without sufficient consideration for American economic interests. Indeed, if anything, Trump’s position on Ukraine would suggest that he strongly supports Taiwan. “We need to bring this [war] to a rapid close,” he has said about the Ukraine-Russia conflict, “so America can focus on the real issue, which is China.” Supporters of Trump’s “recalibration” on Taiwan note that, from the beginning to the end of his presidential administration, he demonstrated both symbolically and by concrete action how he will likely behave if he regains power. For instance, just as he was about to take office, president-elect Trump made an unprecedented, widely reported phone call in December 2016 to the newly elected president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, the first time in 37 years that an American president (or president-elect) had spoken with the Taiwanese president. Trump cultivated close relations with Taiwan throughout his administration, and at the end of his presidency, in October 2020, he arranged a large arms sale of $1.8 billion to Taiwan, including high-technology missile and launcher systems. That same week, China retaliated by imposing severe sanctions on U.S. arms manufacturers, such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, in order to pressure Trump to reverse course and cancel the proposed weapons sale to Taiwan. Not only did he refuse to do so, he went even further in the weeks that followed, canceling all restrictions on direct communication with Taiwan. The people of Taiwan have long been strong supporters of Donald Trump—and vice versa, as his phone call to President Tsai before taking office evinced, along with his decision four years later to lift all barriers on official communication with Taiwan (which have since been reinstated by the Biden administration). Having lived in Taiwan, lectured at the National Academy of the Humanities in Taipei, and taught foreign languages in one of the leading universities there—in Tunghai, the third largest city of Taiwan—I have long been struck by the overwhelming enthusiasm of most citizens of the island for Trump. This occurs even at the universities and among other elites. In the U.S., you will not find a department in the liberal arts at any major university that is not intensely hostile to Trump, giving him no more than 5 or 10 percent support. In Taiwan, it is exactly the opposite: A majority of the citizenry voices support for Trump. Obviously, this has to do with his frank and frequent criticism of mainland China—but also his willingness to take daring risks, as both the phone call to President Tsai and the large weapons package in 2020 demonstrated.  That solid relationship between Trump and Taiwan has not dissolved in the wake of a mere interview in which Trump voiced a few critical comments about U.S.-Taiwanese relations. In fact, his selection of Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio as his vice presidential running mate—who is another vocal critic of China and a sympathetic supporter of Taiwan—only serves to reinforce that relationship. Moreover, Trump’s advisors were quick to point out that Trump, when he made these casual comments during the July interview, was probably not fully informed about the fact that Taiwan is presently paying for most of its weapons imports from U.S. companies. Furthermore, they note, it was overlooked by his critics that Trump voiced strong admiration for the citizens of Taiwan in the interview. “I know the people [of Taiwan] very well, respect them greatly.” That was the context, he made clear, for his observations that Taiwan had taken “about 100 percent of our chip business”—he admired the enterprise of the Taiwan people. Still, he said, it was time to balance the relationship away from what I am calling America’s willingness to grant a “Taiwan First” policy.  My own view is that the best indicator of Trump’s actions regarding Taiwan in a second presidential term is Trump’s record in his first term of office. Although his thinking is no longer dominated by a group of outspoken China critics, he remains a vociferous critic of mainland China and an admirer of Taiwan and its people. The post What Would a Trump II Taiwan Policy Look Like? appeared first on The American Conservative.

The following article, Oh HELL No! Tyrannical UK Prosecutors Threaten To Police Speech Globally, Extradite Anyone On The Planet Who Criticizes Mass Migration, was first published on Conservative Firing Line. (Natural News) Prosecutors in the United Kingdom (UK) are looking to hunt down anyone who criticizes their mass migration policies that have resulted in increased violence across Great Britain. This totalitarian effort to suppress speech on a global level includes threats of extradition against individuals who speak out about the wave of criminality coming from migrants. Right … Continue reading Oh HELL No! Tyrannical UK Prosecutors Threaten To Police Speech Globally, Extradite Anyone On The Planet Who Criticizes Mass Migration ...

‘….organised crime, secret services, corporate power, the deep state….they’re investing massive amounts of money in manipulating us…’ This week Neil talks power & corruption with the brilliant and forensically detailed investigative journalist Whitney Webb. To help support this podcast & get extra, exclusive content every week sign up to Neil Oliver on Patreon.com https://www.patreon.com/neiloliver Neil Oliver Website: https://www.neiloliver.com Whitney Webb, Neil’s guest, Whitney Webb has been a professional writer, researcher and journalist since 2016. She has written for several websites and, from 2017 to 2020, was a staff writer and senior investigative reporter for Mint Press News. She is contributing editor of Unlimited Hangout and the author of the book One Nation Under Blackmail. You can find Whitney's work at https://unlimitedhangout.com and support her at https://unlimitedhangout.com/join. Neil Oliver Shop - check out my t-shirts, mugs & other channel merchandise: https://neil-oliver.creator-spring.com Neil Oliver Instagram - NeilOliverLoveLetter: https://www.instagram.com/neiloliverloveletter Neil Oliver Podcasts: Season 1: Neil Oliver's Love Letter To The British Isles Season 2: Neil Oliver's Love Letter To The World Available on all the usual providers https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/neil-olivers-love-letter-to-the-british-isles #NeilOliver #WhitneyWebb #OrganisedCrime #Italianmafia #JewishMob #America #US #Corporatism #CIA #FBI #Trump #KierStamer #history #neiloliverGBNews #travel #culture #ancient #historyfact #explore

On August 8, 2024, R A W S A L E R T S @rawsalerts writes: "#BREAKING: Brandon New body camera footage shows police confronting Trump gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks before he opened fire from a rooftop. Watch as brand new bodycam footage has been released, showing a police officer being lifted to the roof of the AGR building, where a man, later identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, shot at former President Donald Trump during his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The footage captures the moment when an officer from the Butler Township Police Department attempted to reach the roof, where the suspected gunman was located. Another officer assisted in lifting him after rally attendees alerted the police to an individual on the roof near the rally site where Trump was scheduled to speak. Officers described Crooks as having glasses, long hair, a backpack, and an AR-15 rifle. After Crooks was taken out by a Secret Service Countersniper team, there was confusion on why the roof where Crooks was perched was unmanned. Source: https://x.com/rawsalerts/status/1821644337274343746 ................... Police Release New Bodycam Footage From Trump Shooting, Showing Rooftop Incident The new bodycamera footage was released by the Butler County Police Department shows the officer who confronted the shooter. By Jack Phillips The Epoch Times August 8, 2024 https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/pennsylvania-police-release-new-bodycam-footage-from-trump-assassination-attempt-5702212 Bodycam footage from a local Pennsylvania officer who tried to get on the roof where a man shot at former President Donald Trump last month was released on Thursday. The footage shows the moment an officer with the Butler Township Police Department tried to get on the roof of a building where suspected gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks was perched. Another officer helped lift the responding officer to the roof after rally attendees alerted police that there was an individual on the roof near the rally where Trump was set to speak. In the clip, an officer is seen moving toward a building before another officer tries to hoist him onto the roof. The officer is then seen trying to climb onto the building before he drops down. Only officers' hands are seen as he tries to get onto the roof in the video, which does not show Crooks. Butler Township Police Department Lt. Matthew Pearson last month told a local Pennsylvania news outlet that the officer was not able to draw his firearm because he was holding onto the building. And Butler County Sheriff Michael Slupe told the New York Post last month that the officers who interrupted Crooks may have distracted the shooter before he shot at the former president, hitting him in the ear. "If I'm interrupted, and I move my gun, you are going to have to reassess that whole situation at this point, so yes, you can make a case that those two officers saved the president's life," Slupe told the paper.

"I've got him!" The post Nadine Shah on working with John Cale: “I was so excited but also terrified” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.