May you all have a healthy, prosperous and lucky New Year. Eat well. Hug your loved ones.
It is time overdue that the planet gets a peaceful year. Especially for the children of Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar, Syria and Yemen.
May KJu and the Dotard send each other good wishes.
May there be no school shootings, or mass shootings anywhere by whackos with mil grade weapons.
May the guns of the Basiji attacking students in Tehran and
Kermanshah turn into kebabs and their truncheons turn into halva
pudding.
May the USA reverse course and re-enlist into the Paris Climate Agreement.
May we all hope for happier and more tolerant times.
ReplyDeleteMerry New Year to all.
We all could use some good news for a change. Hope all here enjoy a better 2018
ReplyDeleteLittle will change for the better, little will change for the worse - but a few countries will become a (worse) mess.
ReplyDeletePoland, Hungary, Turkey, Ukraine, Philippines, U.S., Spain, 'Kurdistan' have practically announced that they'll take a nosedive in 2018.
Others may turn sour any moment, including Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Iran, Czech Republic, Greece, Portugal, Nigeria, South Sudan and the entire Sahel zone.
Some countries may improve - including UK, France, India, Zimbabwe. Less likely candidates for improvement are Venezuela and Mexico.
Germany will likely stagnate and do little save for having the usual decent economic growth. There's still no parliament majority without the CDU in sight, and that's the 'no reform' party - literal conservatives, good only for making political careers and slowing change down.
Sven, how could the UK and France improve? I don't see anything more than stagnation for France and the UK seems to be planning to take a nosedive as the EU separation draws nearer.
ReplyDeleteCorbyn's Labour Party is on the rise in the UK. Brexit could break the conservatives and lead to a Labour-led government which might lead to a reverse of 35 years of neoliberalism. Much of the Brexit dmaage has already been anticipated/happened.
DeleteFrance has shaken off the oligarchy of the ENA politicians. Macron may make a mess, but at least he's seriously trying to reform the country.
FDC -
ReplyDeleteKJu is making nice with South Korea. So perhaps that is the good news you mention. Or does he have ulterior motives?
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/01/north-korea-kim-jong-open-dialogue-south-180101085743276.html
KJu: "This year is a year of significance both for the north and the south of Korea as our people will celebrate the 70th birthday of the DPRK as a great auspicious event and there will be the Winter Olympic Games in the south. In order to host the great events of the nation with splendor and demonstrate the dignity and stamina of the nation, we should melt the frozen north-south relations, thus adorning this meaningful year as a year to be specially recorded in the history of the nation.”
DeleteMy guess is that Kim is doing what Kims do; giving the outside world (or the ROK specifically) a taste of the carrot before applying the next dose of stick. It's from the juche playbook going all the way back to Grampy Kim. I wouldn't count too much on this to mean a bright promise of reason and sense for the DPRK.
DeletePerhaps. But some suspect Putin here, trumping Trump.
DeleteActually, rather than Pooty-Poot-Poot, the guy driving the bus on this sudden Nork niceness may be Moon Jae-in, the President of the ROK. Here's Bob Bateman (http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a14538087/north-korea-south-korea/)on how the ROK has, very carefully and deliberately, started to slap the gas-pump nozzle out of Young Kim's tank: "...they have started truly enforcing the sanctions—not by going after the North Koreans directly, but by making it tough for other nations to flout them. Perhaps using their own intel, or using American intel, or using the cover of "American intel" to conceal their own, the South Koreans are for the first time putting a significant economic bite into North Korea.
DeleteMaybe this is why his Porkulency has decided to make nicey with his Korean rivals?
Good a theory as any, IMO...
Whatever the reason, it now looks as though the two Koreas will meet for the first time in a couple of years. Doesn't sound like a huge summit, but jaw-jaw is usually better than war-war, so that's good.
DeleteWhat IS sad is that His Fraudulency immediately took credit for the development...after the US and ROK agreed to postpone the winter military exercises until after the Olympics in February, which is more-or-less a direct sop to the Norks, who always freak out about those. What a maroon.
Sven -
ReplyDeleteI understood that both Macron and his Prime Minister Edouard Phillipe studied at ENA.
AFAIK much of the cabinet (which ranges from far left to centre right) isn't.
DeleteWatching the Rose Parade yesterday, my bride commented on the foreign entries from Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Panama.
ReplyDeleteSo why doesn't California's Governor indulge in a bit of international diplomacy? He could twist some arms in Pasadena to invite entries from the countries of Trump's travel ban, or Bush's so-called axis of evil, or ???
How about a troupe of North Korean ladies in their traditional Choseon-Ot dresses waving pompoms like they do on the birthday of KJu's grandfather? Led perhaps by the beautiful Ri Sol-ju, first lady of North Korea.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/elaborate-north-korea-military-parade-marks-armistice-anniversary-1.1386338
Or an equestrian troupe of trick riders from a Don Cossack regiment?
https://amazonasdelrodeo.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/cossacks-hipodrome.jpg
And if you cannot get around Trump's travel ban on Iran, then at least import a few million petals of the Persian al-Mohammadi rose. Or the rose water they make from it. The rose is Iran's flower.
http://www.iranreview.org/content/Documents/Festival_of_Rose_and_Rose_Water.htm
OMG, someone get that child out of the White House and take away his bigger & better button! ASAP!
ReplyDeleteThe alzheimerous Toddler-in-Chief strikes again. He makes Cheney appear sane.
DeleteI am hoping DoD has a dead-man-safety-switch buried somewhere in the authentication channel. But the much bigger issue is the country's loss of prestige and dignity internationally. But we probably deserve it for putting such a moron in office.
"probably"? That's the very least you deserve!
DeleteRemember what happened to Germany when we tolerated a man-child as head of state. We had more two million dead, were blamed for a world war, lost territories and were strangled with reparations. And my fore-forefathers didn't even elect that psychologically defective man-child!
NEVER EVER give dangerous idiots above-average power, period!
I was just thinking that the nickname his counselors had for the last GroBer Feldherr was "William the Sudden", and he shared with the Tangerine Toddler not just the same sort of childish impulsiveness but the stubborn insistence on his own "judgement" and impatience with being advised.
DeleteUgh. We truly fucked ourselves in November 2016.
FDC, You put down GroBer, if you see a funny looking B, "großer" it signifies two S's, making the word grosser, which means greater, as in greater Feldherr. Mommy Dearest was German, so I speak a bit.
ReplyDeleteI don't have the keystroke shortcut for the symbol used in German for that double-s and when I'm commenting from my phone I can't insert a symbol, either. So the capital B is my lazy way of faking that symbol.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, IIRC the term translates as "Supreme Warlord" (or "Supreme Commander", if you're being less dramatic) which was the title of the German emperor in his role as CinC. Deep in his tiny heart I'm betting that the Tangerine Toddler would purely love it if his Congress would award him such a grandiose title. But, then, he is at heart an American in the worst tradition of America, the one that prances and preens about its "exceptionalism" while denying the worst of its failings.