Tag Archives: China

Thinking Out Loud, by James Howard Kunstler

Posted on June 21, 2021 | Leave a comment

The government is corrupt, the economy’s headed towards disaster, and the Covid-19 vaccines may well end up doing far more harm than the disease they’re supposed to prevent. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:

Events are tending toward an unfortunate convergence that may leave the USA in a very reduced condition before the end of this year, while the “Joe Biden” government cripples all our institutions, especially the military, with race-and-gender mind-fuckery as a distraction from its own coming and untoward collapse. The “president” is back from his toilsome travels through Europe, which included a summit meeting to butter-up Vladimir Putin, hoping to possibly use Russia as a buffer against an increasingly hostile China.

In a kind of comic reversal of George W. Bush’s first meeting with Vlad Putin — “I was able to get a sense of the man’s soul,” W said — this time, Vlad looked into “Ol’ Joe’s” eyes and probably saw the ghost of Konstantin Chernenko. You may recall Ol’ Konstantin led the foundering Soviet Union for about a year, his final months from Moscow’s Central Clinical Hospital, where emphysema, congestive heart failure, and cirrhosis of the liver laid him low. “Joe Biden” did not start smoking cigarettes at age nine, as Chernenko had, but when Vlad P looked into his eyes, he probably saw a 15-watt bulb flickering within, and played him accordingly. After the summit, Vlad sized-up the “POTUS” as “professional” for the press — a witty snark, if ever there was one.

You can see a procession of events now marshaling up toward an epic storm of bad karma for this exceptional nation of ours turning the corner into summer and then the fall. Of course, the friendly news media is not fully reporting the latest institutional failure, that is, the perfidious behavior of US chief health official, Dr. Tony Fauci, who, with either stupefying naïveté or by some other motive, assisted China in the development of a bio-weapon, which China then loosed upon the USA (and everybody else). Net result: millions dead around the world, and an awful lot of people here now extremely suspicious of the vaccines being aggressively touted by the government. Meanwhile, the roughly half of the US population who took the vaxes now have to worry about what the active ingredient, a toxic spike protein, is doing to their hearts, blood vessels, brains, and other organs, and whether something worse awaits down-the-road. Has a trap been set? (We’ll get to that below.)

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Business, Civil Liberties, Collapse, Economy, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, Morality, Politics, Propaganda

Tagged , ,

China: The Elephant in that Room in Cornwall, by Amir Taheri

Posted on June 20, 2021 | Leave a comment

China is coming up fast on the outside track, but it is in essence pursuing the policies that made the US and European nations economic hit men—commercial imperialism backed up by military power. We’ll see if it turns out any better for the Chinese than it has for the US and Europe. From Amir Taheri at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • While Obama looked the other way, China militarized a string of atolls in seas around it as part of a long-term plan to forge an aggressive profile against its neighbor and the United States.
  • The Chinese challenge can and must be met both in the global arena and inside the People’s Republic itself. Any move in that direction would require a realistic assessment of the People’s Republic in terms of hard and soft power.
  • China’s pursuit of global power and influence is modelled on the Western empire-buildings of the 19th century, which consisted of importing raw material, exporting manufactured goods, and weaving networks of trade with the help of a seemingly endless flow of settlers, gunboats and colonial outposts across the globe. China cannot fully adopt that model for a number of reasons. Its model is based on the assumption that capitalism can forever do without democracy, something that the experience of the Western imperial powers of the past proved to be fallacious.
China’s President Xi Jinping’s pretension for global leadership is more a sign of doubts about a model of capitalism without democracy. He hopes to replace the deadwood of Communism with the rotten timber of pseudo-nationalism. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

At the G7 summit in Cornwall last weekend, US President Joe Biden warned his fellow-summiteers that unless something was done “China would eat our lunch.” Did Biden overegg the pudding with his colorful language or is the world ignoring the invisible chopsticks at work?

In a sense China, as the biggest trading partner of almost all the G7 members, is already eating part of their lunch while it is clear that without Western investment, technology and, of course, markets, China might have remained hungry and stuck between the madness of Maoism and the inertia of Ah-Quism.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Business, Debt, Economics, Economy, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Technology, Trade

Tagged , ,

China and Russia, by Peter Schweizer

Posted on June 20, 2021 | Leave a comment

The US may never be good buddies with China or Russia, but it’s helpful to analyze the threats presented by both and to decide which poses the most danger. From Peter Schweizer at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • The actions of the Beijing government since the earliest days of concern about the disease have shown in stark relief how a closed, authoritarian society tries to deny and shift blame for its misdeeds. How it seeks to co-opt international health agencies. How it tries to bribe foreigners to do its bidding. How it has infected more than not just American bodies, but American society and its institutions at many levels.
  • Almost no one in American politics, on the Left or Right, has been hailing the Chinese communist government for its efforts to stem the fourth deadly pathogen to come from its shores and devastate the rest of the world. The Chinese government concealed all information about how the virus originated, encouraging speculation they did so intentionally. According to Gordon Chang, they may even be preparing to do so again, only worse…. By comparison, Russia’s crimes against the West, real and imagined, amount to a relative nuisance.
  • Foreign policy, however, is made towards nations, not individual leaders. In geo-political terms it asks: What is another country’s ability to help you, or harm you?
  • In the 1980s no one would have suggested that Idi Amin, Fidel Castro, or Muamar Qaddafi was America’s greatest enemy. They were obnoxious sideshows, annoying tinpot dictators with a flair for the microphone, but not existential threats on the order of the Soviet Union.
  • What this poll suggests is that threat assessment has somehow become a partisan issue, based on political grudges and perceptions that have little to do with a particular nation’s real capacity to damage American interests. The divide among Republicans and Democrats between China and Russia as our largest threat fails to account for a modern analysis of China’s power, influence, aggressiveness in action, and willingness to corrupt American political and cultural leaders. It should not be a partisan issue, no matter how obnoxious one nation’s current leader may be.
  • Putin loves to tweak America; Xi prefers quieter, more damaging forms of aggression.
  • It is vital for American voters to understand that bribery is a key part of doing business for both China and Russia.
  • No matter how much he might like to, Vladimir Putin cannot threaten the balance sheets of huge American companies such as Apple and Microsoft; China could do it tomorrow.
Russian President Vladimir Putin loves to tweak America; Chinese President Xi Jinping prefers quieter, more damaging forms of aggression. (Photo by Kenzaburo Fukuhara – Pool/Getty Images)

Imagine yourself sitting at a poker table with one opponent who fingers his dwindling stack of chips while glowering at you and daring you to bump the pot. Meanwhile, your other opponent with more chips sits quietly behind his cards while his paid spies behind your chair signal him the contents of your hand.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History

Tagged , , ,

Escobar: The Real B3W-NATO Agenda, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on June 18, 2021 | Leave a comment

The attempt by the G-7 to counter China and Russia’s growing influence in what’s called the Global South is comical and has almost zero chance of achieving the desired results. From Pepe Escobar at The Asia Times via zerohedge.com:

Build Back Better World aims to derail the Belt and Road Initiative, flex NATO’s muscles and harass China 24/7…

The West is the best
The West is the best
Get here and we’ll do the rest

– Jim Morrison, The End

For those spared the ordeal of sifting through the NATO summit communique, here’s the concise low down: Russia is an “acute threat” and China is a “systemic challenge”.

NATO, of course, are just a bunch of innocent kids building castles in a sandbox.

Those were the days when Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay, NATO’s first secretary-general, coined the trans-Atlantic purpose: to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”

The Raging Twenties remix reads like “keep the Americans in, the EU down and Russia-China contained”.

So the North Atlantic (italics mine) organization has now relocated all across Eurasia, fighting what it describes as “threats from the East”. Well, that’s a step beyond Afghanistan – the intersection of Central and South Asia – where NATO was unceremoniously humiliated by a bunch of Pashtuns with Kalashnikovs.

Russia remains the top threat – mentioned 63 times in the communiqué. Current top NATO chihuahua Jens Stoltenberg says NATO won’t simply “mirror” Russia: it will de facto outspend it and surround it with multiple battle formations, as “we now have implemented the biggest reinforcements of our collective defense since the end of the Cold War”.

The communiqué is adamant: the only way for military spending is up. Context: the total “defense” budget of the 30 NATO members will grow by 4.1% in 2021, reaching a staggering $1.049 trillion ($726 billion from the US, $323 billion from assorted allies).

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Eurasian Axis, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Imperialism, Politics, Propaganda

Tagged , , , ,

Escobar: Empire Of Clowns Versus Yellow Peril

Posted on June 17, 2021 | Leave a comment

The US alliance’s effort to hastily construct something to rival China and Russia’s well-thought out and well-executed Belt and Road Initiative is nothing more than a pathetic, me too farce and will pull no one from the Eurasian axis. From Pepe Escobar at The Asia Times via zerohedge.com:

Global South will be unimpressed by new B3W infrastructure scheme funded by private Western interests out for short-term profit…

It requires major suspension of disbelief to consider the G7, the self-described democracy’s most exclusive club, as relevant to the Raging Twenties. Real life dictates that even accounting for the inbuilt structural inequality of the current world system the G7’s economic output barely registers as 30% of the global total.

Cornwall was at best an embarrassing spectacle – complete with a mediocrity troupe impersonating “leaders” posing for masked elbow bump photo ops while on a private party with the 95-year-old Queen of England, everyone was maskless and merrily mingling about in an apotheosis of “shared values” and “human rights”.

Quarantine on arrival, masks enforced 24/7 and social distancing of course is only for the plebs.

The G7 final communique is the proverbial ocean littered with platitudes and promises. But it does contain a few nuggets. Starting with ‘Build Back Better’ – or B3 – showing up in the title.

B3 is now official code for both The Great Reset and the New Green Deal.

Then there’s the Yellow Peril remixed, with the “our values” shock troops “calling on China to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms” with a special emphasis on Xinjiang and Hong Kong.

The story behind it was confirmed to me by a EU diplomatic source, a realist (yes, there are some in Brussels).

All hell broke loose inside the – exclusive – G7 room when the Anglo-American axis, backed by spineless Canada, tried to ramrod the EU-3 plus Japan into an explicit condemnation of China in the final communiqué over the absolute bogus concentration camp “evidence” in Xinjiang. In contrast to politicized accusations of “crimes against humanity”, the best analysis of what’s really going on in Xinjiang has been published by the Qiao collective.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Banking, Business, Eurasian Axis, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Politics

Tagged , , , ,

Cease Confrontation With China. Concentrate on Trade and Global Development, by Brian Cloughley

Posted on June 15, 2021 | Leave a comment

The US getting along with China will yield far more benefits for both countries than a new Cold War. From Brian Cloughley at strategic-culture.org:

It would be better for the United States and for the world if the Biden administration realised that engagement is preferable to estrangement.

On 6 June three U.S. Senators arrived in Taiwan to “meet with senior Taiwan leaders to discuss U.S.-Taiwan relations, regional security, and other significant issues of mutual interest.” It was stated they were also there to announce donation of 750,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses, but their main purpose, their over-riding objective, was simply to be there to annoy the Beijing government which, the BBC notes, regards Taiwan — formerly Formosa, and the refuge of a few hundred thousand fleeing mainlanders in 1949 when civil war resulted in defeat of the Kuomintang political party — as remaining an integral part of China, which it had been since the 17th century.

Two of the senators are members of the Armed Forces Committee, and one of them, Dan Sullivan, is even more rabidly anti-Chinese than his colleagues and in March this year declared in an interview that “I spent one of my first deployments as a U.S. Marine in the Taiwan Strait defending America’s interest, but also defending the interests of an ally. That island is free and democratic because of the sacrifice of American citizens, of American military, of American taxpayer money.” We all know where we stand, as regards the U.S. Congress and China, because confrontation is one of the very few things about which a majority of the Senate can agree, as when on June 8 they voted 68-32 to “to approve a sweeping package of legislation intended to boost the country’s ability to compete with Chinese technology.” The bill will also promote the Taiwan “independence” status by allowing “diplomats and Taiwanese military to display their flag and wear their uniforms while in the United States on official businesses.” Never at a loss to display the utmost pettiness it also bans U.S. officials from attending the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, while Senator Todd Young announced that “Today we declare our intention to win this century, and those that follow it as well.”

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Politics

Tagged ,

The US-Russia Summit, by Patrick Lawrence

Posted on June 15, 2021 | Leave a comment

The only way the summit is going to work is if the US rejects its own notions of unipolarity, a tall order. From Patrick Lawrence at consortiumnews.com:

Two recent moves on Moscow’s side suggest that the encounter in Geneva will mark the start of a long and welcome process.  

Curious it was to read that the Russian judiciary ruled last Wednesday that Alexei Navalny’s political network is an extremist movement. Its members should be grateful that the courts recognized it as a movement, given Navalny’s nationwide support has never exceeded 3 percent or so, but on paper they are now liable to arrest and prosecution and, if convicted of one or another charge, could be fined or imprisoned.

There have been no arrests, so far as has been reported. But think of all those chances Western intel agencies and their clerks in the press may now have to lionize a new cohort of oppositionists as Navalny’s heroic followers. Let us not forget, a kooky poseur journalist named Oleg Kashin had the nerve to call Navalny “Russia’s true leader” in a recent New York Times opinion piece.

There is no limit to the silliness in all matters Russian, it seems. At least not at the Times.

I say “curious” because, in the ordinary conduct of statecraft as we have had it for the past seven decades, the Moscow’s court’s ruling, exactly a week prior to President Joe Biden’s first summit with President Vladimir Putin, would have to be counted obtuse. Wouldn’t minding one’s manners — especially given that the Navalny network’s significance resides solely in the minds and news pages of Western propagandists — be the wise course?

I don’t think so. I have no clue as to the independence or otherwise of the Russian judiciary, but it is unthinkable the Russian leader did not know in advance of what the courts were about to determine. I think Russia was indeed minding its manners — a different and altogether more honorable set of manners than American pols and diplomats have exhibited lo these many decades.

Leave a comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Imperialism, Politics

Tagged , , ,

G7: Desperately Seeking Relevancy, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on June 11, 2021 | Leave a comment

Is the rest of the world leaving the G7 behind? From Pepe Escobar at lewrockwell.com:

The upcoming G7 in Cornwall at first might be seen as the quirky encounter of “America is Back” with “Global Britain”.

The Big Picture though is way more sensitive. Three Summits in a Row – G7, NATO and US-EU – will be paving the way for a much expected cliffhanger: the Putin-Biden summit in Geneva – which certainly won’t be a reset.

The controlling interests behind the hologram that goes by the name of “Joe Biden” have a clear overarching agenda: to regiment industrialized democracies – especially those in Europe – and keep them in lockstep to combat those “authoritarian” threats to US national security, “malignant” Russia and China.

It’s like a throwback to those oh so stable 1970s Cold War days, complete with James Bond fighting foreign devils and Deep Purple subverting communism. Well, the times they are-a-changin’. China is very much aware that now the Global South “accounts for almost two-thirds of the global economy compared to one-third by the West: in the 1970s, it was exactly the opposite.”

For the Global South – that is, the overwhelming majority of the planet – the G7 is largely irrelevant. What matters is the G20.

China, the rising economic superpower, hails from the Global South, and is a leader in the G20. For all their internal troubles, EU players in the G7 – Germany, France and Italy – cannot afford to antagonize Beijing in economic, trade and investment terms.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Business, Eurasian Axis, Financial markets, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Politics

Tagged , , ,

China’s White Collar Workers Face Invasive Surveillance By ‘Big Tech’ Overlords, by Tyler Durden

Posted on June 10, 2021 | Leave a comment

This is a preview of coming attractions in the US, China’s the beta test. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

For a Communist nation, the People’s Republic has notoriously weak labor protections. While gig economy workers face tremendous pressure to put in long hours with few breaks, as it turns out, their white-collar cousins are facing similar pressures to put in long hours as well.

Nikkei’s story starts out with testimony from Andy Wang, an IT professional in Hong Kong, whose company has been ratcheting up efforts to monitor its workforce. They call it DiSanZhiYan, or “Third Eye.” The software, installed on the laptop of every employee, monitors all their communications and movements, as well as their browsing activity and software and app usage.

The invasive software would automatically file complaints and every once in a while an employee would be fired. Finally, things like 20-hours work days began to seem impossibly daunting.

Working from their floor in a downtown high-rise, the startup’s hundreds of employees were constantly, uncomfortably aware of being under Third Eye’s intent gaze.

The software would also automatically flag “suspicious behavior” such as visiting job-search sites or video streaming platforms. “Efficiency” reports would be generated weekly, summarizing their time spent by website and application.

“Bosses would check the reports regularly,” Wang said. Farther down the line, that could skew workers’ prospects for promotions and pay rises. They could also be used as evidence when the company looked to fire certain people, he added.

Even Wang himself was not exempt. High-definition surveillance cameras were installed around the floor, including in his office, and a receptionist would check the footage every day to monitor how long each employee spent on their lunch break, he said.

Nikkei’s latest story about these types of abuses at Chinese white collar firms just so happens to follow increased scrutiny of China’s human rights record in the wake of the Biden Administration’s condemnation of Beijing’s “genocidal” treatment of the Uyghers.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Government, Labor, Law, Surveillance

Tagged , ,

Tom Cotton Explains Why Warmongers Love The Wuhan Lab Leak Theory, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on June 8, 2021 | Leave a comment

Warmongers love anything that get the war drums pounding. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

At a recent appearance on Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton took a break from masturbating to drone bombing footage to explain what it is he and his fellow psychopathic warmongers love so much about the hypothesis that Covid-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory.

“I think the American people deserve to know what caused the worst pandemic in a century,” Cotton told the show’s space alien host. “Look, China should be made to pay for their negligence and their deceitfulness at the outset of this pandemic: covering up its origins, not being open about what was happening in that lab in Wuhan.”

“There’s lots of things we could do to impose accountability on China,” Cotton gushed. “We could for instance work their allies to ensure they’re no longer getting sweetheart deals from international financial institutions like the World Bank. We could repeal the permanent most-favored nation status we foolishly gave China 20 years ago. We could cut off visas to Chinese Communist Party officials and their princeling kids who like to come to America to go to school.”

“But if it turns out that the Chinese Communist Party and their labs were responsible for a lab leak that caused this pandemic, just imagine what the American people would demand in terms of accountability; what I said would just scratch the surface,” the senator said. “And the American people would be right to demand that kind of accountability.”

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Financial markets, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Politics, Propaganda

Tagged ,