China Asserts the Power of Work

As a person who sees the struggle with Russia and China as being about the nationalization of resources, which means the sharing of wealth with the workforce, versus ownership of resources by capitalists who oppress, terrorize, or enslave labor, I find the following articles important this week.

Alistair Crooke describes the fact that China is asserting its economic strength by increasing the standard of living of the Chinese workforce, as opposed to increasing its military strength. I include two web pages that reinforce that notion from a different perspective: Exxon describing its work with Russia's state-owned facilities and contributing to the well being of the Russian people; and Halliburtion's praise of the Russian workforce, who accomplish so much in harsh geographic conditions.

Rick Rozoff's articles on Ukraine, Georgia, and the Black Sea region are important to read because we need to know how awful our leadership is, especially because of Biden's past involvement in both countries. But I also include an article by POGO, the Project on Government Oversight, about the gigantic scandal over the F-35, which if it weren't for the fact that we're on a knife edge of nuclear war would be putting the industry of war out of business.

Our military industrial leadership behaves as if there's no tomorrow, and maybe that's because, for them, there is no tomorrow unless they blow us up or enslave us.

China and Russia Launch a ‘Global Resistance Economy’ — Strategic Culture

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/04/05/china-russia-launch-gl...

Alastair Crooke - April 5, 2021

… So here is the essence to ‘a clever combatant moving to impose his will’ – there is no need for China or Russia or Iran to go to war to do this; they just implement ‘it’. They can do ‘it’ – quite simply. They don’t need a revolution to do it, because they have no vested interest in fighting America.

What is ‘it’? It is not just a trade and investment pact with Tehran; neither is it simply allies helping each other. The ‘resistance’ lies precisely with the way they’re trying to help each other. It is a mode of economic development. It represents the notion that any rent-yielding resource – banking, land, natural resources and natural infrastructure monopolies – should be in the public domain to provide basic needs to everybody – freely.

The alternative way simply is to privatise these ‘public goods’ (as in the West), where they are provided at a financialized maximum cost – including interest rates, dividends, management fees, and corporate manipulations for financial gain...

ExxonMobil in Russia

https://www.exxonmobil.ru/en-RU/Company/Who-we-are/ExxonMobil-in-Russia#...

https://jobs.halliburton.com/content/eurasia/?locale=en_US

EurasiaAzerbaijanCaspianKazakhstanRussiaSakhalin

Halliburton Eurasia comprises Russia, Ukraine, Caspian West and Caspian East. This large area presents challenges that are quite diverse, including shallow water, environmentally sensitive North Caspian with deep, high pressure, H2S/CO2 oil wells; mature oil fields in Kazakhstan and Siberia; high flowrate gas fields in Northern Siberia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan; and extreme weather conditions in the large part of the Eurasia region.

While this region represents a tremendous variety of technical, logistical, and supply chain challenges, Halliburton's organization in this region, coupled with a strong national workforce, is well established to provide creative and innovative solutions. The potential of the resources and the diversity of the plays demand a great variety of new technologies.

Rick ROZOFF April 5, 2021

Biden, Pentagon, NATO Signal Readiness to Go to War Against Russia Over Ukraine — Strategic Culture

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/04/05/biden-pentagon-nato-si...

Rick Rozoff

Ukraine, Georgia Offer Control of the Black Sea in Exchange for NATO Membership - News From Antiwar.com

https://news.antiwar.com/2021/04/06/ukraine-georgia-offer-control-of-the...

F-35 Program Delays and Stumbles Continue

https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2021/02/is-the-f-35-program-at-a-crossroads/

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My view as well.

Iran and China signed a deal that lasts for 25 years. Iranian oil for Chinese $$$ tech weapons. Pretty much removes the sting of USA's sanctions.

Russia and its pipelines and agreements with Turkey, ports in Syria, etc. do similar things.

USA Bully bristling? Who cares?

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NYCVG

@NYCVG ,

for your response. I truly hope the actions and statements by China will make a difference, not only for Iran but for all involved.

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@NYCVG @NYCVG

of resources doesn't always lead to a happy socialism like Norway's. Mexico has one of the world's largest oil fields, and I think it is nationalized, but obviously the people of Mexico aren't sharing in the wealth to the degree that the people of Norway do. Saudi Arabia's resource is nationalized, and it's a police state in which only the elite benefit.

But I think what our powers that be hate about Putin and China's leadership is that they are choosing to stay with the plan to increase the power and wealth of working people, stage by stage, compromise by compromise, but steadily in that direction. They have increased the standard of living and are understandably supported by their people.

Compared to Yeltsin, and compared to the capitalists who expected China to stay as a kind of slave state, Putin and the current Chinese planners are pro-labor, which frustrates the heck out of our leadership.

Are they corrupt? Sure. How can they not be when dealing with our industrialists, whose investment and technology they've needed? But they work with the knowledge that our plunderers need Russia's resources and China's labor, and so they are working from what they believe to be a position of strength.

In a sane world things would work out well, and I think the Exxon and Halliburton websites express a willingness to go in that direction. But unfortunately, our political leadership is insane. They are essentially saying if they cannot plunder, they will end life on earth.

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@Linda Wood You're making Exxon and Halliburton sound like GOOD (or at least "better/lessbad") GUYS.

WTF is going on? If they're not the wellspring of psychopathy, WHO IS?!?

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

@The Liberal Moonbat

I have been taking part in discussions here at C99, I have tried to make the point on several occasions that the Standard Oil companies are the wellspring of Fascism and that the two most vital sources to read on this subject are Charles Higham's Trading With the Enemy and Antony Sutton's Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development. It is my belief, based on Averell Harriman's memoir, that these and other U.S. corporations built Hitler for the purpose of replacing the Soviet system with slave labor because the Soviet workforce believed they owned the means of production, as Harriman put it, because they had been to Bolshevik schools.

That's why I find these web pages by Exxon and Halliburton so hopeful. It's not just that they are willing to work with Putin. These companies have been in Russia for a century. It's that they make the point of acknowledging the contribution of the Russian workforce, which I take as an agreement with the Putin regime that slavery, which was happening under Yeltsin as oligarchic and foreign industrialists were often NOT PAYING WAGES, is not acceptable under Putin. I may be mis-reading this message, but I think they are willing to work with that reality.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Linda Wood

I hadn’t heard anything about it before now. Thanks for mentioning that. I did know that Hitler might not have become so powerful if our rich creeps didn’t help him. Seems like we are our worst enemy when it comes to war. Unless its only purpose is for making a select few rich. The cheap quality of items being pushed is just so defense CEOs can make lots of it off suffering and death. Smedley told us about what happened during his time as a soldier for empire. If I was a teacher my class would read it for as long as I got away with it.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Pluto's Republic's picture

@snoopydawg

I did know that Hitler might not have become so powerful if our rich creeps didn’t help him.

.

By 1946, the US had gradually shape-shifted into the current Fourth Reich.

In a single continuum, Hitler studied and became the embodiment of American slavery and racial genocide. He was a living creature who was incubated by the American Horror State — and was later reabsorbed by the psychopathic bloodline that controls the American Empire today.

Linda assumes correctly that this cabal intend to destroy this planet completely if that's what it takes to annihilate the communist devils who haunt their diseased brains.

While they are alive and occupying the power nodes of the Federal government — our lives hang in the balance. They are untouchable.

There is no other reality.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
ggersh's picture

@Linda Wood

It's that they make the point of acknowledging the contribution of the Russian workforce, which I take as an agreement with the Putin regime that slavery, which was happening under Yeltsin as oligarchic and foreign industrialists were often NOT PAYING WAGES, is not acceptable under Putin. I may be mis-reading this message, but I think they are willing to work with that reality

I wouldn't trust any american company in regards to oil or any natural resource my country might have

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

to a whole lot of Chinese, methinks, to find out that their society is based on

the notion that any rent-yielding resource – banking, land, natural resources and natural infrastructure monopolies – should be in the public domain to provide basic needs to everybody – freely.

given how many have been forced off their farmland and homes so that corrupt officials could profit (but who became corrupt because of the bad example of Western capitalist exploiters?). Are the spoiled daughters and sons of the Chinese elite going to be giving up their Lamborghinis, Rolexes and Vancouver, B.C. mansions to improve the lot of migrant laborers in Beijing? I don't think so.

By the way, those laborers, or anyone living somewhere where they do not have official permission to live, are relegated to second-class status and, among other difficulties, not have access to basic social services:

Migrants also face a formidable set of institutional barriers in their attempts at success in the city. Chinese society is organized in a system of household registration known as hukou. If you are born in a rural area, it is usually impossible to change to an urban hukou regardless of how long you work in the city, a system that bars migrants from certain jobs and prevents access to health care and education for their children. It dates from pre-Communist China, but in the second half of the 20th century, it became so decisive in determining life opportunities that it has been compared to the caste system. A 2018 study in Baoding found that migrant workers who, in some cases, had lived in the city for decades had little emotional attachment to it, and their lack of security and happiness was central to this feeling. Researchers found that limitations on their hukou rights had determined much of their outlook on their lives.

As China’s first wave of urban migrants approach retirement age, many find themselves locked out of urban pensions. Their hukou remains in their hometown, which means their only option might be to return to meager countryside pensions in a place where they have not lived for years. If they do return, they are likely to find that their villages are nothing like how they left them, and not in a good way. From 2000 to 2015, nearly three-quarters of all rural primary schools—more than 300,000 in all—were permanently closed. Many of those who stayed behind lost their jobs as agriculture became more and more automated.

source: Atlantic, 2019

China has been razing villages by the thousands and forcibly relocating millions - perhaps as many as 100 million people in the last five years, with the goal of doing more than double that. This is about greed and total control of the populace.

Even NPR couldn't manage to put a favorable spin on this:

A farmer from Shandong province along China's east coast, Liu recalls how during Chinese Lunar New Year in January, he went out for a walk and came home to discover local officials preparing to demolish his home.

When he called the police on the demolishers, they arrested him instead, saying that the police would "assist the work of the local government."

"To demolish my home, about 100 security officers surrounded and subdued me, and detained me," Liu said on a recent visit to his village, Liushuanglou, near the city of Heze. He was released from detention the next day.

Like most of the more than three dozen Shandong residents NPR interviewed, Liu requested only his family name be used because he fears being physically threatened again by the authorities.

After building some of the world's largest cities, erecting entire districts of gleaming high rises in the span of a few years, China is now kicking plans into high gear to overhaul tens of thousands of its rural villages.

But Liu and other residents allege that the authorities are coercing them into signing away their older, much larger farm homes, demolishing them by force if necessary and not adequately compensating residents for their homes. The residents say the new, smaller houses or high-rise apartments they are being moved into are either too far from their fields, too expensive or ill-suited for their needs as farmers.

"Our leaders have been distanced from us regular people at the bottom. They do not know our basic needs. They are completely cut off from us," Liu said.

Thousands of villagers in Shandong, meanwhile, have already been rendered effectively homeless since local governments began forcibly clearing away houses last year.

If that's anyone's idea of socialist paradise you are welcome to it. Start a Gofundme campaign and I'll scrape together a few yen towards a one-way ticket.

Yes, the Chinese leadership is playing a smart and long-term game, and the US with its militaristic bluster has been undermining itself. Russia and Iran are in no sense natural allies of China, they have moved closer to China having been pushed by disastrously wrong US policies. We should have been trying to make nice with them long since.

But you don't have to like or support stupid US policies to realize that China is a highly authoritarian oligarchy with every intention of expanding its power globally and asserting total control over its population. Neither do you have to have a problem with Chinese people in general to recognize the CCP as a corrupt, totalitarian, dangerous entity that would be happy to have the very idea of "government of, by and for the people" perish from the earth...

How life in China turned a leftie-liberal Californian into a Trump voter:

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CB's picture

@Blue Republic
two of which are full on propaganda mouthpieces tied directly to the CIA - NPR

Will NPR Now Officially Change Its Name to National Propaganda Radio?
by Edward Curtin Posted on September 10, 2019

and Falun Gong's Epoch Times' mouth piece China in Focus:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfoRGG_j5x4&t=763s]
Here's updated information on the "hukou" system

100 million have settled in urban areas as part of China's hukou system reform
08-Oct-2020

China has helped at least 100 million rural population to settle down in towns and cities, elevating the nation's urbanization rate of registered households from 35.9 percent in 2013 to 44.4 percent in 2019, according to the Ministry of Public Security.

Meanwhile, the dual "hukou" system, which has lasted for over half a century and divided the people into rural and non-rural population was abolished. It was a very important move in the country's goal of hukou reform from 2016 to 2020, marked as the 13th "Five-Year Plan" in China's development.
...
According to the latest data of the Ministry of Public Security, under the reform, by the end of 2019, rural students moving to towns and cities could bring subsidies with them, which benefited over 14 million migrant workers and their children. Starting from 2014, at least 100 million migrant workers have received professional training in cities and towns.

As for insurance systems, the old-age insurance system was unified as well across the country, and by the end of last year, over 63 million migrant workers have joined the insurance system, and more than 86 million got employment insurances and 49.6 million got unemployment insurances.

As China Lifts Migration Rules, Growth Will Follow

For decades, the hukou system has impeded upward mobility. It may finally be on the way out.
By Adam Minter
June 30, 2020

List of countries by home ownership rate - 2019
China 89.68
Russia 87.3
Canada 66.3
United States 65.3

Innovations in Poverty Eradication in China
...
In 2014, China’s government implemented a strategy of Targeted Poverty Alleviation, which allows the government and local officials to address the needs of individuals and households rather than entire villages. Local officials use data from a local registration system containing information from more than 128,000 villages to identify and provide support to poverty-stricken areas. According to China’s President Xi Jinping, Targeted Poverty Alleviation follows an approach based on policies in five areas:

Industrial development
Social Security
Education
Eco-compensation
Relocation
...

There are now two times the number of Chinese in the middle class (PPP) than the entire population of the US. This is one of the prime reasons that 90% of the Chinese people approve and support their government. Worldwide approval rate for the governments of both China and Russia is higher than it is for the US. The US is sinking deeper and deeper into a morass of it's own making.

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

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@CB

You are quoting articles from 3 biased sources two of which are full on propaganda mouthpieces tied directly to the CIA - NPR

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the sources are biased. So what? I'm more concerned about whether, in any particular instance, they are accurate. I tend to read Epoch Times more for it's American coverage, but have found it to be more credible than most of the MSM.

Tell me, are there any approved sources from China - including the one you quote from that are *not* 'full on propaganda mouthpieces' tied to the CCP? Short answer is "no", correct?

I'm aware that the Atlantic is very Deep State - connected, but don't see any factual problems with the article I linked to (although, as you point out, the situation has evolved somewhat) and I don't see you pointing out anything factually wrong with anything I referred to.

And while (thanks for the update) there do appear to have been some positive reforms to the Hutou system, they still do not extend to the Eastern Seaboard megalopolises or to Beijing. Even in those areas where access to residence status and benefits are now permitted to be granted, one of the factors considered in whether they *are* granted is the applicant's Social Credit Score - it's not a matter of right.

Also, it is not at all clear that the 100 million people the regime has 'helped' move from rural to urban areas wanted or desired such help - in many cases they have been forcibly removed from rural villages - thousands of which are being razed - and moved into urban housing projects/council housing/banlieu-type destroying community ties and identity, often leaving people under or unemployed and alienated. If not so yet, these are slums waiting to happen.

BTW - What does an apparent high rate of home ownership mean if the state can summarily order you out of it and raze your entire town? The US has some dark history of its own in this regard(see urban renewal in the 50's and 60's, Dodger Stadium..) but nothing approaching the scale and in your face authoritarian way the Chines government has been implementing these rural-urban transfers.

There are now two times the number of Chinese in the middle class (PPP) than the entire population of the US. This is one of the prime reasons that 90% of the Chinese people approve and support their government. Worldwide approval rate for the governments of both China and Russia is higher than it is for the US. The US is sinking deeper and deeper into a morass of it's own making.

"PPP"?

90% support? Well, it *could* be - but given the dire consequences for expressing anything otherwise why should we give any that number any credence? Figures for worldwide approval may be more credible - Heck, I'd rate the Russian government way ahead of the US' in quite a few respects but these days that's kind of a low bar. At least the Russians have mostly gotten out of the gulag business whereas China seems to regard that as an area for expansion - great possibilities for synergistically leveraging it with the organ harvesting biz there...

Can't argue with your last sentence except to say that we are probably getting more than a little help in subtle and not so subtle ways from the CCP.

“A marsh pheasant has to walk ten paces for a bite to eat and a hundred for a sip of water. But still it wouldn't want to be tamed and put into a cage. Even treated like a king, it could never be happy and content.”
― Chuang Tzu

“Only he who has no use for the empire is fit to be entrusted with it.”
― Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu

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CB's picture

@Blue Republic

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@CB

Looks like we may need to agree to disagree on this one, though.

Cheers,

BR

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@Blue Republic

unlike us. And I won't resist the temptation to respond to the NPR reporting on farmers being forced off their land and having their houses demolished to say I've read exactly the same description of a Palestinian farmer and his son being forced to show up at an Israeli office, only to return the same day to find their house demolished and their farm destroyed and confiscated by the Israeli government. The only difference is that the Palestinian family weren't provided with an apartment in a faraway city to cool their anger in, which may cynically be Alastair Crooke's point that resources, "should be in the public domain to provide basic needs to everybody – freely." I know that's a pointlessly rude and cheap shot, but I want you to know that I don't believe China is now or ever was a socialist paradise.

I watched the whole video of Kevin on China, and I found him to be very appealing, reasonable and believable, in that I believe he believes what he's saying. He seemed to lack depth, to put it as carefully as I can. He discovered China is a dictatorship, having moved there in 2017 from California, and then discovered the Chinese people have an addiction to money and consumerism, and that there are harsh and disturbing realities of a dictatorship. There's no reference to the history. There's no acknowledgement of past events, war, starvation, over-population, oppression, and poverty leading up to this time. It's like a Disneyland that didn't turn out to be what he expected.

Your statement, on the other hand, was much more challenging and important.

Yes, the Chinese leadership is playing a smart and long-term game, and the US with its militaristic bluster has been undermining itself… But you don't have to like or support stupid US policies to realize that China is a highly authoritarian oligarchy with every intention of expanding its power globally and asserting total control over its population. Neither do you have to have a problem with Chinese people in general to recognize the CCP as a corrupt, totalitarian, dangerous entity that would be happy to have the very idea of "government of, by and for the people" perish from the earth...

I can't disagree with what you're saying in general, but where I struggle with you and Kevin is in the assertion that China is a "threat." Threat to what? This is exactly the point of Crooke's article, I think, that China is competing by building shipping ports, here, there, and everywhere, RATHER THAN the Saudi/U.S./NATO tactic of sending in head-choppers, thermobaric weapons and cluster bombs.

And the one truly wrong notion by Kevin is that China has stolen our manufacturing and technological base. Please, with all respect, give that up. We fukking gave China our manufacturing base and all the technology that goes with it. Is it that you think China wants to replace our system with theirs? What exactly is the threat? Are we not close to that situation on our own? And are we not addicted to drowning in their products to the point of having nowhere to ship them as garbage? Why would they want to change us?

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@Linda Wood

I apologize if my response sounds harsh, and I thank you for your strong and reasoned comment. I'm truly rattled by Biden's personal promise to go to war with Putin on behalf of the Nazi military in Ukraine and his threats against China because they're not a democracy, never mind we're in bed with Saudi Arabia. We're on a precipice of nuclear war, and it makes me frantic.

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@Linda Wood

I don't know if frantic helps, but there are definitely things going on in the world that are worthy of people getting upset about - reality doesn't seem to have much regard for safe spaces. Boy, are a lot of people going to be shocked when it jumps up and bites them in the ass.

You're right to be concerned about how dangerous the Ukraine-Russia situation is, but how many people in a thousand or ten thousand are even aware of it, much less of US complicity in pushing the conflict? Or could find Ukraine on a map for that matter...

A lot of people are put off by Alex Jones manner, but there are situations when a healthy expression of outrage seems appropriate.

For your vicarious enjoyment - amazing this has remained up on Youtube for a couple days:

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studentofearth's picture

@Blue Republic to experience the changes in the last few years. He mentions growing up in San Francisco into a latte sipping, liberal, at the time of the video living in Beijing area for 4 years considers himself a centrist.

His primary objections to China gaining global leadership were:

1) Unable to criticize the government - local, regional and national

2) Show trial of corrupt official. Used as red meat for population.

3) Chinese individuals on-line celebrating violent gun related episodes in USA. Repeats more than once he has never personally experienced anti-Americanism in China.

4) Media controlled by government and platforms controlled government which censor information published. If published will be removed quickly.

5) Long commute to work, long work hours, unaffordability of housing and increasing pay gap between workers and business owners.

6) Example of inward propaganda, a billboard for the military - "we are ready to fight the war". Did not say join for the adventure.

7) China want to shift away from Western technology. They steal intellectual property.

My first visit to China in late 1989 I was thankful to return to the USA and no longer:
1) be suspicious of water coming from the faucet in travels around the USA,
2) have my luggage inspected every time when boarding an airplane,
3)not having easy access to public restrooms, and when available often filthy unless in a hospitality business.

My second visit a few weeks after 9/11 none of those problems were experienced in China, but did experience each of those issues during the travel within USA for the trip.

Keven recommended reading Perfect Dictatorship and 100 year Marathon to better understand China.
I would recommend reading The Soong Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave and The China Mirage by James Bradely to better understand the longterm relationship between China and the USA.

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

@studentofearth

I would recommend reading The Soong Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave and The China Mirage by James Bradely to better understand the longterm relationship between China and the USA.

Found a couple Song Dynasty coins metal detecting here in Japan - but haven't read either of those - will try and check them out.

Do have - and can recommend other work by the same authors: The Yamato Dynasty and Gold Warriors by Seagraves and The Imperial Cruise by Bradley.

Cheers,

BR

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studentofearth's picture

@Blue Republic personal history and research. Will add the Seagrave books to my reading list. Both authors write in a fictional novel style, with extensive footnotes and are good story tellers. It is easy to get caught up in the excitement and then suddenly realize your life has been shaped by multiple longterm negative impacts of the story.

I was personally handed The Imperial Cruise by Bradley by a neighbor 80 year plus Marine. He and I had several conversations over the years on the real intent of a war is not often the excuse used to excite our nation's population to sacrifice lives. After reading the book he counseled his Grandson not to become the fourth generation to serve in the Marines.

The Soong Dynasty is a multigenerational saga beginning in 1875 with a Chinese boy who spent his youth in America and returned to China as a young adult. Ending in a few years after the American supported Chiang Kai-shek government escaped to the island of Formosa creating a Government in Exile. The patterns of corruptions can be overlayed onto modern events are experiencing today and some of the string pulling becomes visible.

Exciting to find such old coins with a metal detector.

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

snoopydawg's picture

Wars always start with propaganda campaigns — you have to make your populace hate the other side and want to fight

And not question whether you too are being primed to see Russia as your enemy or not. This is why democrats wouldn’t let go of Russia Gate. They were manufacturing consent for war with it. They got it. Too bad they banned all the people who could give another perspective.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

snoopydawg's picture

@snoopydawg

This thing not only takes you down the rabbit hole, but it must be Alice's white rabbit's hole because you gotta be tripping to follow it. I couldn’t, but the gist is that both Russia and China are ganging up on us. Russia is going to invade Ukraine and China will invade Taiwan. It’s not like Blinken’s hand isn’t up the leader's backsides directing the show. Nah.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

I want you to know that I don't believe China is now or ever was a socialist paradise.

OK - fair enough.

I can't disagree with what you're saying in general, but where I struggle with you and Kevin is in the assertion that China is a "threat." Threat to what? This is exactly the point of Crooke's article, I think, that China is competing by building shipping ports, here, there, and everywhere, RATHER THAN the Saudi/U.S./NATO tactic of sending in head-choppers, thermobaric weapons and cluster bombs.

My take on Crooke's article is that he is effectively saying that China is at war with the US - but conducting it by unconventional, mostly (so far) by means that are not overtly violent. (Trump was vilified, of course, for saying much the same thing). This is in keeping with Sun Tzu's general line of strategic thinking that it is unwise to confront an enemy directly when or where he is strongest - better to create the conditions for his defeat by other means so that if it does come to open conflict victory is already assured.

If your enemy will be so helpful as to destroy himself (as America has been working up to) so much the better. If that can be helped along with honeypots (Swallwell, Hunter Biden), blackmail, bribes, industrial espionage, Confucius Institutes, buying up Hollywood and such, well...

As for "threat to what?", I guess I'd put freedom pretty high on the list. Do you doubt at all that there are .1%/Deep State types that would be just fine with internal passports, even more pervasive surveillance, Social Credit Scores and stifling of dissent than we already have? Just as long as they were confident that they would be the ones running the show?

China's rulers cannot afford even the concept of individual liberty or government deriving its legitimacy from the consent of the governed to circulate - they correctly regard such things as an existential threat to their power. This is why Taiwan represents a threat to them. It's just as prosperous, if not more so, while being probably freer and more democratic than the US is these days. It's a threat to the CCP by merely existing.

Power elites here, too are actively disinterested in having Americans start to take that 'of by and for the people' stuff seriously again. Trump's election caught them complacent - and they are pretty determined not to to let anything of the kind happen again. But with tens of millions of Americans pretty determined to get their country back - things are likely to stay interesting.

Is it that you think China wants to replace our system with theirs? What exactly is the threat? Are we not close to that situation on our own? And are we not addicted to drowning in their products to the point of having nowhere to ship them as garbage? Why would they want to change us?

We can debate to what extent it's being manipulated/facilitated by China and to what extent we're doing it to ourselves, but yes, China does want to see our system changed to one that similar to theirs - constitutional republic out - oligarchic authoritarian system in.

As long as we continue on a trajectory toward just that China doesn't need to change a thing.

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@Blue Republic .

I think The Evening Blues at C99 is the best compilation of news anywhere on the Internet and that the writers at C99 are the most humane, intelligent and insightful group I have found anywhere, and I've looked hard. But sometimes I wish we would disagree more often because it might move us in new directions. I say this in order to let you know how much I value the chance to argue with you.

A discussion we had here a year ago about Prescott Bush Jr., the Rainmaker of China, chronicled some of the key moves by the Bush family and their corporate oligarchical comrades to open up China to FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY (laughter.) CB's comments in that thread are of course pertinent to where we are today, and I hope you'll read them.

While staying with my belief that U.S. corporations brought what they call capitalist opportunities to China, I respect your point that at the time of their revolutions Russia and China began as dictatorships, not democracies, openly, the Russian's describing theirs as a dictatorship of the proletariat. And this concept is tough for us. Why, we seem to wonder, couldn't the Russian people or the Chinese people just create a bill of rights, be democratic, and go from there?

Like we did, you mean? (strained laughter.) Well, from a course I took many years ago, in which I was required to read State Dept. microfilmed correspondence and the U.S. ambassador's memoir and Trotsky's version of the months in Russia of 1917, my sense is that circumstances dictated the outcome. The biggest factor I think for both China and Russia was not just war, poverty, oligarchy, and oppression, but more crucially, famine.

My sense from reading the personal and corporate correspondence was that the Bolsheviki saw the rapacious capitalist agents who flocked to Russia, when parts of the country were reduced to cannibalism, not as tasty morsels, but as tools, tools that were necessary in order to avert famine. The only power the people of Russia had was their recognition that their country was alive with resources and that they were the labor force necessary to extract them. But they stood together as an unmovable force, one big union, declaring that the people of Russia owned the means of production, as well as the resources, and that they were going to negotiate every act of development on those terms. Otherwise they would have been reduced to slavery, and they knew it, from experience.

To this day, I believe this is what they, and we, are fighting over.

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4 users have voted.

@Linda Wood

Hi, Linda.

I too appreciated (usually) the interactions here and at least attempt to have my assumptions challenged or factual mistakes corrected.

The PTB are all to happy to have people ghettoized into echo chambers - and would like to be able to mediate and monitor all human interaction. Profoundly dangerous if we allow them to get away with it and so places like C99 and engaging in good faith with people we don't necessarily agree with is important, maybe even crucial.

Let's save the Bolsheviks for another day.

Cheers,

BR

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CB's picture

It has started to remind me of the war mongering that went on in DKos. Libya, Syria, Russia, now China. I was correct about the first three and I will be correct about China.

Same old, same old... I'm tired.

Anti-Chinese Propaganda Reaches All-Time High

If I were China, I’d abandon Earth for a friendlier planet in another corner of the galaxy. Have you read the news from Google lately? The rulers of the internet just don’t have anything good to say about the Chinese. And I mean nothing at all. Isn’t it strange to anyone else? I mean, how can anyone in the west hope to have cordial political relations with a country so implausibly hated?
...
Finally, even when the good news about China or Russia does appear in the western press (3 pages into Google News), there’s always the sub-plot, the insinuation that these countries are not as good as western nations.
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Just to be different, I think it’s important that I report here that China is now Europe’s leading trading partner supplanting the United States. China’s Generation Z is emerging as the most economically advantaged and empowered generation in Asia, and most of the world. And China’s Tianwen-1 Mars mission is already sending back fantastic images and data from the red planet. I’ll bet not one of my colleagues in America bothered to search down 14 pages in Google News to find this good China story. But you read it here on NEO. Yes, China can fly to Mars. No, the Chinese are not some banana republic. And yes, our media is brainwashing Americans to keep us scared, angry, and pretty stupid.

Hey, maybe the Chinese are planning to leave Earth for friendlier pastures!

Anti-Asian Racism Never Stopped Being an Outgrowth of U.S. Imperialism
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The New Cold War on China is first and foremost a military campaign comprised of four hundred U.S. military bases, hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, and over sixty percent of all U.S. naval assets stationed in the Asia Pacific. But the U.S. strategy to contain China includes political and economic sabotage. Sanctions have been placed on Chinese officials and tech corporations and the U.S. has waged an endless campaign of interference in China’s internal affairs relating to Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and the city of Hong Kong. Both corporate and so-called progressive media such as Democracy Now have obsessively focused on the reproduction of negative stories that mirror the U.S. Department of State’s official posture toward China. The endless stream of anti-China propaganda has been effective; eighty percent of all Americans currently view China unfavorably, according to recent polls.

“The U.S. strategy to contain China includes political and economic sabotage.”
...

What We’re Really Seeing With All These Anti-China Narratives
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“We are being bombarded with anti-China hate for a reason and it has nothing to do with human rights,” journalist Rania Khalek commented while sharing Goodrum’s thread. “This is just a tiny fraction of it. At the same time anyone who questions the state department narrative is being accused of loving tyrants and defending genocide. Sound familiar?”
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The repetition of these negative stories has more of an effect than the contents of the stories themselves because of something called the illusory truth effect, an odd glitch in human cognition which leads our minds to mistake info we’ve heard repeatedly for fact. Just by repeating something over and over again, our minds can be tricked into believing that what we have heard is a verified fact and not a completely unconfirmed assertion.
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Because hot conflict is taken off the table in cold war confrontations between nuclear powers, planetary-scale propaganda campaigns take on a much more prominent role to pave the way for each new escalation. That’s what we’re seeing in all this recent promotion of anti-China hysteria.

You can understand the establishment China narratives by grasping just two points:

1) We are in a slow-motion third world war between the US and its allies and the nations which have resisted absorption into this alliance.

2) Propaganda is used to move this slow-motion war along.

Understand these two points and you can understand the entirety of why the western political/media class is behaving in the way that it is when it comes to international news. With China, and with all nations which have resisted absorption into the imperial blob.

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7 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@CB

the increased propaganda on both China and Russia and have been calling it out so I am not sure what warmongering you are seeing. Linda's essay was not pro war either, so I am not sure what you are seeing here. Hate to see you go when your opinion here has always been valued.

ETA

If you want to see warmongering of old like over there then check out the link I posted. That will tickle your fancy for seeing warmongering. I am reading the new comments and my neck is sore.

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3 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@CB

don't go. Your knowledge and clarity are treasured here. I think maybe those of us who agree with you and appreciate your research haven't said so when you comment. I'm saying it now: I don't know where I'd be right now if you weren't making the points you are making. Our Fascist CIA has us on the brink of ending all life, all music, all baseball, all laughter.

The plain truth is that your voice is needed. Please stay. I'm about to link to your comments from a year ago to another writer. We need you.

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mimi's picture

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@mimi were you replying to, mimi. I am confused.
Thanks.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

mimi's picture

@on the cusp

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