China’s Belt and Road Initiative is aimed at buttressing an underdeveloped Chinese interior, securing raw materials, dominating export markets, and creating an alternative to the US order; if China is to be restrained, the United States and the West must act decisively and soon.
While Congress argues over the border wall, President Trump and Kim Jong-Un are beginning to forge a stronger bond in order to denuclearize the Korean peninsula. Despite the gridlock at home Trump proclaims that “This is more than has ever been accomplished with North Korea!”… Is this a new round of false promises or has the President made real headway with the Korean Regime?
Society is currently undergoing a paradigm shift involving technology. Within the last decade, corporations and individuals have begun utilizing the vast technological achievements of the 20th century to connect previously isolated populations and further blur the line between the physical and digital worlds – propelling humanity into the 4th Industrial Revolution. And while this period of rapid expansion and globalization is occuring, the world is seemingly shrinking to within the confines of a 5 inch screen.
United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) is on strike for the first time since 1989 over demands for increased pay and the hiring of additional teachers; their wide-ranging demands include a 6.5% pay increase for teachers retroactive to July 2016, the hiring of more teachers and service staff, and greater regulation of charter schools in Los Angeles.
Nationalist, though often abused by those who usurp its rightful name for the sake of bigotry, ought not to be a slur but a badge of honor for those who choose to value national identity over division and selfish vendetta.
If Democrats are to emerge victoirous in 2020, they need a candidate who is not created by or defined by opposition to President Trump but holds nuanced, left of center populist positions is clearly the most likely to take the White House.
Today we see it fit to discharge our elders into what we call “retirement homes,” little more than waiting rooms for Death’s final embrace, abandoning those who brought us into existence and built the nation and society we so are so blessed to behold. By throwing away our duty to the past, throwing away the experiences of lifetimes, we leave ourselves stranded, with no land in sight, sailing to a desperate future with no grounding in the American spirit and in the practices and values that have brought America from a speck on the Atlantic coast to the world’s sole superpower. Whatever happened to the notion of caring for one’s own instead of giving up and allowing some distant entity to take society’s place? Whatever happened to pride in our shared national heritage? It’s time for us to get back in touch with our roots and bring our elderly home.
Americans are overly bullish in that the general successes of the recent and ongoing economic recovery from the 2008 financial crisis will continue uninterrupted into the future, thereby disregarding risk and making ill-advised decisions. This illusion is called short-termism, and is also known as the hot hand fallacy—In basketball, it is the idea that after a player has made many consecutive free-throws the next one is almost a guarantee. This misconception has infiltrated American financial and government systems and has caused many to believe during long runs of economic growth that there is only one way to go: up.
On September 7, the citizens of Basra, Iraq, poured into the streets chanting “Iran, out!” while targeting the Iranian consulate with several rockets. These protests have, in fact, been stirring for several months, with this most recent eruption of violence in Basra serving as a microcosm of the issues Iraq, if not the rest of the Middle East, faces as the result of Iranian militarism.
On August 28, California governor Jerry Brown, signed SB-10 , a law that made California the first state in the U.S. to put an end to the cash bail system. The law, which goes into effect in October 2019, was sponsored by Senator Robert Hertzberg (D-CA) of California’s 18th Senate District, and aims to put an end to cash bail, which many on the left believe is highly discriminatory against those who are lower income and/or members of ethnic minorities. However, some believe that the new law has the potential to spawn a bail system that is more biased than ever before.
