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Dec 25, 2019 | independent.co.uk
The desire by people to see themselves as a national community – even if many of the bonds binding them together are fictional – is one of the most powerful forces in the world
Patrick Cockburn | @indyworld |
Nationalism in different shapes and forms is powerfully transforming the politics of the British Isles, a development that gathered pace over the last five years and culminated in the general election this month.
National identities and the relationship between England, Scotland and Ireland are changing more radically than at any time over the last century. It is worth looking at the British archipelago as a whole on this issue because of the closely-meshed political relationship of its constituent nations. Some of these developments are highly visible such as the rise of the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) to permanent political dominance in Scotland in the three general elections since the independence referendum in 2014.
Other changes are important but little commented on, such as the enhanced national independence and political influence of the Republic of Ireland over the British Isles as a continuing member of the EU as the UK leaves. Dublin's greater leverage when backed by the other 26 EU states was repeatedly demonstrated, often to the surprise and dismay of London, in the course of the negotiations in Brussels over the terms of the British withdrawal.
Northern Ireland saw more nationalist than unionist MPs elected in the general election for the first time since 1921. This is important because it is a further sign of the political impact of demographic change whereby Catholics/nationalists become the new majority and the Protestants/unionists the minority. The contemptuous ease with which Boris Johnson abandoned his ultra-unionist pledges to the DUP and accepted a customs border in the Irish Sea separating Northern Ireland from the rest of Britain shows how little loyalty the Conservatives feel towards the northern unionists and their distinct and abrasive brand of British nationalism.
These developments affecting four of the main national communities inhabiting the British Isles – Irish, nationalists and unionists in Northern Ireland, Scots – are easy to track. Welsh nationalism is a lesser force. Much more difficult to trace and explain is the rise of English nationalism because it is much more inchoate than these other types of nationalism, has no programme, and is directly represented by no political party – though the Conservative Party has moved in that direction.
The driving force behind Brexit was always a certain type of English nationalism which did not lose its power to persuade despite being incoherent and little understood by its critics and supporters alike. In some respects, it deployed the rhetoric of any national community seeking self-determination. The famous Brexiteer slogan "take back control" is not that different in its implications from Sinn Fein – "Ourselves Alone" – though neither movement would relish the analogy.
The great power of the pro-Brexit movement, never really taken on board by its opponents, was to blame the very real sense of disempowerment and social grievances felt by a large part of the English population on Brussels and the EU. This may have been scapegoating on a grandiose scale, but nationalist movements the world over have targeted some foreign body abroad or national minority at home as the source of their ills. I asked one former Leave councillor – one of the few people I met who changed their mind on the issue after the referendum in 2016 – why people living in her deprived ward held the EU responsible for their poverty. Her reply cut through many more sophisticated explanations: "I suppose that it is always easier to blame Johnny Foreigner."
Applying life lessons to the pursuit of national happiness The Tories won't get far once progressives join forces 22,000 EU nationals have left NHS since Brexit vote, figures show This crude summary of the motives of many Leave voters has truth in it, but it is a mistake to caricature English nationalism as simply a toxic blend of xenophobia, racism, imperial nostalgia and overheated war memories. In the three years since the referendum the very act of voting for Brexit became part of many people's national identity, a desire to break free, kicking back against an overmighty bureaucracy and repelling attempts by the beneficiaries of globalisation to reverse a democratic vote.
The political left in most countries is bad at dealing with nationalism and the pursuit of self-determination. It sees these as a diversion from identifying and attacking the real perpetrators of social and economic injustice. It views nationalists as mistakenly or malignly aiming at the wrong target – usually foreigners – and letting the domestic ones off the hook.
The desire by people to see themselves as a national community – even if many of the bonds binding them together are fictional – is one of the most powerful forces in the world. It can only be ignored at great political cost, as the Labour Party has just found out to its cost for the fifth time (two referendums and three elections). What Labour should have done was early on take over the slogan "take back control" and seek to show that they were better able to deliver this than the Conservatives or the Brexit Party. There is no compelling reason why achieving such national demands should be a monopoly of the right. But in 2016, 2017 and 2019 Labour made the same mistake of trying to wriggle around Brexit as the prime issue facing the English nation without taking a firm position, an evasion that discredited it with both Remainers and Leavers.
Curiously, the political establishment made much the same mistake as Labour in underestimating and misunderstanding the nature of English nationalism. Up to the financial crisis of 2008 globalisation had been sold as a beneficial and inevitable historic process. Nationalism was old hat and national loyalties were supposedly on the wane. To the British political class, the EU obviously enhanced the political and economic strength of its national members. As beneficiaries of the status quo, they were blind to the fact that much of the country had failed to gain from these good things and felt marginalised and forgotten.
The advocates of supra-national organisations since the mediaeval papacy have been making such arguments and have usually been perplexed why they fail to stick. They fail to understand the strength of nationalism or religion in providing a sense of communal solidarity, even if it is based on dreams and illusions, that provides a vehicle for deeply felt needs and grievances. Arguments based on simple profit and loss usually lose out against such rivals.
Minervo , 1 day ago
Bigger by far are two forces which really do have control over our country -- the international NATO warmongers but even more so, the international banksters of the finance industry.
Why no 'leftist' campaign to Take Back Control of our money? Gordon Brown baled out the banks when they should have gone bankrupt and been nationalised.
Blair is forever tainted with his ill-fated Attack on Iraq. Surely New Liberals or Democrats or Socialists would want to lock down on that fiasco?
The Nationalism of taking back control could be a leftist project too.
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Dec 29, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
vk , Dec 28 2019 18:51 utc | 18
One more to the "First World problems" topic:The latest monthly indicators of economic activity in Japan, the Eurozone and Britain do not make pleasant reading.Japan's December manufacturing sector PMI, as it is called, fell to 48.8 from 48.9 in November. Anything below 50 indicates a contraction. The services sector, however, picked up slightly to 50.6 from 50.3. So the overall 'composite' PMI was unchanged at 49.8. That means Japan is in recession (just).
The Eurozone manufacturing PMI slipped to 45.9, the lowest since October 2012 and employment also fell at the fastest pace for more than seven years. New orders declined for a fifteenth successive month, while input prices continued to fall sharply. The sector was driven down mainly by Germany, where the manufacturing PMI hit 43.4, falling for the 12th straight month.
However, as in Japan, there was a slight pick-up in the services sector, where Eurozone PMI reached 52.4 from 51.9 in November. So the overall 'composite' PMI stood unchanged at 50.6. In effect, the Eurozone economy is standing still.
In the UK, the manufacturing sector took another dive to 47.4 (a sharp contraction). Output fell the most since July 2012. The services sector was also down to 49.0, making the overall composite PMI in negative territory at 48.5 - the deepest contraction since July 2016. The UK is in recession - but maybe the Conservative government election victory and the ending of uncertainty over Brexit (the UK will now definitely leave the EU in 2020) may encourage a recovery.
In sum, as we end 2019, Japan, the Eurozone and the UK are in recession or stagnation.
Long story short: the EU is only not in outright recession because the "services sector" (gig economy) is compensating for the collapse of its manufacturing sector - for now.
And no, the UK won't become "Singapore upon the Thames".
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Dec 25, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Despite the latest Sino-American phase one deal to ease tensions over trade, one former top US official is now calling for a decoupling between both economies, reported the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Former US ambassador to India Ashley Tellis explains in a new book titled Strategic Asia 2020: US-China Competition for Global Influence -- that the world's two largest economies have entered a new period of sustained competition.
Tellis said Washington had developed a view that "China is today and will be for the foreseeable future the principal challenger to the US."
"The US quest for a partnership with China was fated to fail once China's growth in economic capabilities was gradually matched by its rising military power," he said.
Tellis said Washington must resume its ability to support the liberal international order established by the US more than a half-century ago, and "provide the global public goods that bestow legitimacy upon its primacy and strengthen its power-projection capabilities to protect its allies and friends."
He said this approach would require more strategic cooperation with allies such as Australia, Japan, and South Korea.
"The US should use coordinated action with allies to confront China's trade malpractices should pursue targeted decoupling of the US and Chinese economies, mainly in order to protect its defense capabilities rather than seeking a comprehensive rupture."
The latest phase one deal between both countries is a temporary trade truce -- likely to be broken as a strategic rivalry encompasses trade, technology, investment, currency, and geopolitical concerns will continue to strain relations in the early 2020s.
A much greater decoupling could be dead ahead and likely to intensify over time, as it's already occurring in the technology sector.
Tellis said President Trump labeling China as a strategic competitor was one of "the most important changes in US-China relations."
The decoupling has already started as Washington races to safeguard the country's cutting-edge technologies, including 5G, automation, artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicle, hypersonics, and robotics, from getting into the hands of Chinese firms.
A perfect example of this is blacklisting Huawei and other Chinese technology firms from buying US semiconductor components.
Liu Weidong, a US affairs specialist from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told SCMP that increased protectionism among Washington lawmakers suggests the decoupling trend between both countries is far from over.
The broader shift at play is that decoupling will result in de-globalization , economic and financial fragmentation, and disruption of complex supply chains.
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Dec 24, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Carey , December 23, 2019 at 12:15 pm
'Open Borders are a Trillion-Dollar Mistake':
Editor's Note: Last month, Foreign Policy ran an article, "Open Borders Are a Trillion-Dollar Idea," which advocated for Open Borders. So for all those who say, "Oh, no one supports Open Borders," here it is in writing! Every point made by author Bryan Caplan, an economics professor, is refutable, and, while the piece is long, we believe it's important "for the record" to counter all of his points.
As I first read Bryan Caplan's "Open Borders Are a Trillion-Dollar Idea" in Foreign Policy, besides disbelief, my thoughts were that this person must not get out much or must not read much. A quote from writer Upton Sinclair came to mind as well: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
https://progressivesforimmigrationreform.org/open-borders-trillion-dollar-mistake/And some BBC coverage of the bombings in Sweden (now apparently spreading to Denmark): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50339977
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Dec 24, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Carolinian , December 23, 2019 at 10:29 am
Re Bill Mitchell–his theme is that the Labour disaster is all due to the failure of the party to follow their working class base–if that is their base–and support Brexit. I believe that was Clive's theme as well. This is definitely not my topic but any Remainers care to rebut?
It is interesting how the situation in Britain seems to mirror the political situation here and the dilemma of the Dems–aka our Blairites. People like Hillary denounce the deplorables and Obama calls them bitter clingers but these verbal targets were once the backbone of a party that stood in opposition to the party of the bankers and finance.
The problen for the DemoRats is that their new, hoped for diversity base isn't large enough to replace the former great unwashed base. Perhaps that's Labour's problem too. We have a party of the people whose leaders are (in secret when not in public) batting for the other team.
PlutoniumKun , December 23, 2019 at 10:41 am
All polls indicated that around 40% of Labour supporters were Brexiters, 60% Remainers (of course the intensity of support might be different). Those were mostly the older working class 'old Labour' types along with some ideological left wingers. Doing what Mitchell suggested would certainly have shored up Labours working class bases. It would also have lost Labour its base in the major metropolitan areas and most voters under 40. In short, it would have been politically suicidal.
Joe Well , December 23, 2019 at 10:56 am
In the months after the referndum, people like Owen Jones tried to convince the Remainer Labourites that they had to accept the result of the referendum and fight for the "softest" Brexit possible (I remember because he was bringing that up in his post-mortems after the election). And of course, most Remainers were having none of it. They came up with "The People's Vote" and eventually Jones and the rest of the Labour bigwigs got on board.
But objectively, Brexit will be, and can only be, a disaster for Britain and most pro-Brexit voters are badly misinformed, so what were Labour leaders supposed to do? It looks undemocratic to stop people from shooting themselves (and you too!) in the foot, but are you supposed to just let them pull the trigger?
Anonymous 2 , December 23, 2019 at 11:11 am
The constituency where I canvassed, the divide was very clearly generational – the old were Tory, the young were Labour or Libdem. It was very stark. I have not seen any national data on this – has anyone else?
Joe Well , December 23, 2019 at 12:05 pm
>>I canvassed
Thank you for your service.
>>the old were Tory, the young were Labour or Libdem. It was very stark.
That would seem to match up with survey data.
>>I have not seen any national data on this
Anonymous 2 , December 23, 2019 at 1:11 pm
Thank you. A very interesting read.
Foy , December 23, 2019 at 4:56 pm
Yep, chechout the 3rd chart on this post. Very generational split moving from Labour to Tories with age. 18-24 yos voted 19% Tory, 67% Labour, and it virtually reversed when looking at 65yo+ which voted 62% Tory, 18% Labour, with an almost linear movement inbetween. I think someone linked to this a few days ago
Lambert Strether Post author , December 23, 2019 at 1:36 pm
> Doing what Mitchell suggested would certainly have shored up Labours working class bases. It would also have lost Labour its base in the major metropolitan areas and most voters under 40. In short, it would have been politically suicidal.
I would say that what Labour ended up doing was suicidal, quite evidently. Labour (and Corybn's) problem was existential, the fractured base (not merely by age, but geographically and by class) bequeathed to them by Blair. I would say that Mitchell's proposal is not like suicide, but like an animal caught in a trap chewing off a leg to escape -- the leg, in this case, being PLP. Of course, if Labour wants to be the party of London professionals, that's fine, but rebranding from "Labour" might be in order.
Anonymous 2 , December 23, 2019 at 3:59 pm
Rebranding from Labour –
Richard North has been running some interesting material recently, including today, raising the question to what extent the traditional working class still exists in England in the sense it was once understood. I have no real insights into what is clearly a very large topic but I found todays piece especially interesting.
I am doubtful Labour wants to be the party only of London professionals – there are far too few of them to win elections. At present it is clearly the party of the young. Any strategy for its future needs to take this into account. Although I am old myself I know a fair number of the young in the UK through my children and their friends. They are having a very hard time of it as their jobs are very insecure and their prospects of owning their own homes/better quality housing are far poorer than those enjoyed by the boomers. They also face a high risk of being made redundant at 40.
Rather than a class-based analysis of UK politics I wonder if a generational analysis – boomers v the rest – would not be more fruitful at present. Though of course you can see this as a rich/old versus young/poor struggle.
Joe Well , December 23, 2019 at 4:32 pm
>>rebranding from "Labour" might be in order
Labour lost biggest among the pensioners, who by definition, are not labouring. The reason they lost all those Northern towns was that they had so many pensioners.
Doing deliveries on a bicycle, teaching children, and keeping the elderly alive, meanwhile, are all labour, even if they don't take place in a factory or a mine. Certainly not "professional" in the traditional sense.
Labour's error was failing to build a legacy media operation (print, TV, radio) to reach the pensioners, and not turning out the younger vote.
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Dec 21, 2019 | off-guardian.org
Capricornia Man ,
lundiel (and Seamus) have it right.
The Blairites foisted the U-turn on Brexit onto the party when most of the seats it held in the old parliament, and most of the seats it needed to win, voted leave. Now the Blairites are hypocritically blaming Corbyn for the result of their own policy. The election loss was exactly what they wanted: Corbyn out of the way and Britain 'safe' for neo-liberalism.
BigB ,
31 mn people voted to extend the consensual mandate of the neoliberal capitalist state to globally expand, extract and expropriate planetary wealth for themselves. Unconsciously: without any consideration of the consequences. Now, nearly 11 mn of them want to pretend they were duped into this because two films did not get released? Can there be a more deluded abdication of self-responsibility? Without any inherent maturity at all: it's hard to see where UK politic goes from here? What is the deepest spot a mile below the nadir? The 'People's Government' of Boris Johnson we co-constituted the reality of last week?
The election was for a successor capitalist imperialist state: the capitalist imperialist state was duly elected. No one – no one – can then abdicate responsibility to say it was the "wrong capitalist state". If people do not like this process – and it is the most debilitating, dehumanising, and destructive of all processes – then it is their social responsibility to at least explore the possibility of finding another process. In the co-creation of superior/inferior status and co-determination of the master/slave dialectic – we volunteer to choose position of the inferior and the enslaved. Then spend the consensual contract term complaining about the subordinant class politics we voted for. Projecting blame scattergun everywhere but where the blame is due: with the voters and endorsers of globalised neoliberal capitalism.
Is no one else getting bored of this? Not just the embarassment of excuses we can find for our own self-inferiorisation and voluntary infantalisation: but the fact that no one will make a positive assessment of how to break this vortex cycle of self-defeatism and performative powerlessness so we never have to go through the same charade again? Which, no doubt we will in five years time. Unless we take it on the chin: and fess up to what we have created as a social reality the Trump/Johnson axis of world power.
If this below and beyond the low point cannot act as a bifurcation point – whereby we totally reject the state electoral inferiorisation process – I do not know what can. It is unlikely there will be much left to reclaim in five years: much less so in ten. If we cannot claim humanity and ecology back from neoliberal globalisation in the next few years well, it ain't going to be pretty.
A good starting point would be to admit the corruption of the entire state electoral process of inferiorisation: and take co-responsibility for our part in the election of Johnson. Then the avowal never to do it again and take the legislative and judicial power we abdicated back. Which is the socially responsible alternative to the drawnout emetic debrief that seems to be favoured.
GEOFF ,
Great point BigB I think you're wasting your time they don't care what happens here so long as they're out of the EU that is all that matters to them. I'm so happy I don't have any grandchildren, although I fear for those that have, so sad all done in the name of getting our country back, I wonder how they will feel if farage gets some kind of peerage, you know the one that has been fighting the elites, and celebrating his birthday at the Ritz owned by those two socially aware brothers barclay , ha ha ha ha .smelly ,
We have the very few, the few, and the serfs. The politics of the world is driven by the Economics of the very few. The very few have created for themselves a feudal system, its informal, its hidden, but its highly functional and it accounts in large measure for the global atrocities.The chiefs (a very few) distribute to the feudal lords(the few) in a variety of ways.
1. direct government contracts
2. privatize the assets and government services that remain after regime change or infra structure destruction of economic value from regime sex corrupted, blackmailed, regime changed or defeated nation states and or from sweetheart deals in corporate takeovers.
3. appointment to and assignment to intelligence, or high level diplomatic positions in defeated entities.
4. promotion to USA congress or the USA presidency or to a high level corporate job.
5. control of access of the goy to education, entry level jobs leading to the knowledge to be promoted, to bank loans, to houses in neighborhoods, to medical care, and to a massive variety of other things. They are all in on it together.
6. many othersThe tools of the trade are coercion by any means available to include sex, blackmail, spy technology, war machinery, military, intelligence, private armies, dark money and money laundering operations to name but a few.
Dependency : it is
This is no longer a problem bounded by one nation, it has become a problem important to the liberties and freedoms and the station of status of person in the society, membership in clubs, obtaining credentials to be eligible for licenses (law, medicine, home building, contracting, service provider, and everything else). License is a huge gate used to keep the GoyaWhat Bexit has shown is that there is not a bit of difference between those governed by any of the nation governments of any kind(they are controlled by the same few), we are just the Goy or as Hilary Clinton puts it: the deplorables. No longer should we look at ourselves as citizens of Britain, or Citizens of the United States, or citizens of France, or citizens of Saudi Arabia, or citizens of Israel, or citizens of Libya, or whatever, we must recognize that it is the many vs the few . from here on out. We must not identify and expose all of the ways nation state leaders use or allows others to use information to control our behaviors and to dictate our rights.
We must help each other no matter or sex, language, religion or nationality because they have made us all one, but trying to control our lives from birth to death and by trying to use us, at our expense, for their purposes.
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
Professor Emeritus Vilfredo Pareto outlined the empirical skew of wealth transfer for 'the few' as a function of culture whereby all have the same or similar wealth distribution. Post-Lehman evidenced the wholesale destruction that empirical skew manifested on the Western Banking System & concomitant ruling oiligopoly.Empirically, the Western Fractional Reserve Banking System has crashed outright to reveal
even greater skew after all the M&A post-Lehman debacle. In terms of wealth distribution we are now in what Professor Emeritus Minsky characterized as Late Stage Ponzi Capitalism. Amazon & Bezos are transnational, leveraged like a Hedge Fund, and a monopoly that was legislated against during the 30s in the USA.Today, in contemporary totalitarian society we are fed a daily diet of pseudoscience & half-baked so-called 'truths' that serve to mask the lies & falsehood.
What is evidently true today is that the empirical skew of wealth has become a matter of superstructural fault where the tectonic plates of sovereign nations are bound to give us all degrees of continental shift in contradistinction to the empirical skew of wealth transfer which is by no means immoveable.
Like gravity, what goes up must come down. Wealth hoarding sub-groups of elite will have nowhere to hide when the avalanche cascades on top of them without notice before hand.
Six Sigma extinction level events exist for all empirical distributions given the right conditions.
MOU
BigB ,
The other problem with 'the Few' analysis I have been trying to highlight is that we are in it the Few that is. In terms of per capita mass aggregate consumption/pollution rates – 93% of us in the UK are in 'the Few'. Which holds for a rough Pareto Principle (80/20): we are among the top 20% of consumers responsible for 70% of the lifestyle consumption emissions [Anderson; LabourGND; Oxfam]. Which amounts to 28,000 tonnes per capita of aggregate material flows: against a global average of 7,000 tonnes [Hickel]. In global consumption/pollution terms: we are among the "wealth hoarding sub-groups of [the] elite" of the mass material consumption bourgeoisie.There are unfair distributions: and inequitable distributions between the haute bourgeoisie and we in the bourgeoisie. But the greatest inequitable maldistribution is North to South: where the poorest 50% of the global population are limited – by being resource cursed and having to subsidise us – to 10% of lifestyle consumption emissions. If you can call it a lifestyle; a consumer lifestyle; or a profligate pollution problem which is doubtful? And it current rates of wealth redistribution: it will be 200-900 years before they are out of poverty.
As for 'wealth hoarding sub-groups': we in the UK voted to extend the amount of mass material material aggregate demand. Which is complex: because UK rates have been falling but only because of the service economy. Rates of industrialisation and resource extractivism are effectively exported. Global demand rises: and so must global supply. Our consumption fetishism is driving global capitalism. Not solely: the whole of the developed world is.
It is this material economy that acts as a baseline – of sorts – for the overfinancialised derivative, arbitrage, and highly leveraged stocks, bonds, and equities and any other exotic financial instruments that can be gambled on. A market that is roughly 75 times the size of the material 'real' productive economy. The market that is likely being subsidised by the repo- and other 'not QE' hypertrophic liquidity supplements. The market that is going to collapse when the anabolic steroid effect fails to maintain exponential growth. Professor Minsky will have his moment!
Whereupon the UK will quickly realise that it is a pissling little island in a sea of globalisation. With an 80% tertiarised service economy. Servicing an extinct financial market economy. With failing services and no food coming in from abroad. Or medicines. Or water purification products. And possibly no energy. But we will have 60,000 military and paramilitary police to uphold the private property rights of the haute bourgeoisie.
Maybe then we will see and feel what it is like for the rest of the world? Who we have only ever viewed as subsidisers of our wealth? Just as we subsidise the wealth of those we choose to be subordinate to. It's a shitty, shitty, system which the UK has done not too badly out of. Well, enough for us to never look from the outside in through the eyes of a Frantz Fannon: and try to change the system for a globally more equitable system free from our white privileged ethnosupremacist racism.
We got the government we deserved – and voted for. And we await the fate of collapse we deserve – and voted for. As John Michael Greer said: the UK is rushing to collapse early to avoid the disappointment in the rush. We live in a complete fantasy bubble of a post-Empire state of mind. As if other – dehumanised foreign – people and the holistic integrity of the biosphere did not exist. Well, thanks to our lifestyle choices, they may not for much longer. But the only thing that has perturbed our reserved compassion and indifferent inhumanity is our election of a Johnson government. Well, that is an indignity! But not even a fraction of an indignity that we are quite happy to violently impose on the rest of the world. But let us pretend and console ourselves it would have been a utopia if they had not held back those films.
Dungroanin ,
"We don't have to join too many dots to see why a discussion about Wikileaks, war crimes in Iraq, and OPCW crimes in Syria was something the Tories didn't need,"They also didn't need the Intelligence report of 'Russian' influence in their party and government; the direct threat made by Pompeo to stop Labour, the deal which they have been negotiating with the US which confirms the NHS is part of it amongst many other things – as was confirmed by their Ambassador Woody (Of Johnson&Johnson fame who stand to benefit hughy) ;the dangerous levels of capacity in the NHS; etc etc etc.
Anyway the Graun is claiming to run a ask us a question about the election now on their blog – I've asked mine but am not holding my breath for an answer.
tonyopmoc ,
David Macilwain usually writes far better than this. In fact 90% of this, is the same sort of nonsense, he has apparently been brainwashed with, by reading the Guardian et al.He displays his own ignorance and arrogance, by yet again telling over 50% of The British voting public that we didn't know what we were voting for re Brexit.
"not least because only 30% of that public actually voted for Brexit, and did so in complete ignorance of what it might mean and because of their own long-standing prejudices."
He analysed Skripal very well. This is total crap.
Tony
JudyJ ,
As soon as UK based Russian oligarchs are mentioned the presumption of many – encouraged by Western media – is that they must be 'friends' of Putin or have 'close connections' to him. In fact, in respect of most of them, it is exactly the opposite. They are based in London precisely because the UK establishment doesn't clamp down on tax dodging and corrupt business dealings as Putin has done since the beginning of his Presidential tenures. Corrupt business owners donations to parties in power? Hmm, I wonder why it is that they are given every encouragement and incentive to settle in London undisturbed?https://consortiumnews.com/2018/02/06/understanding-russia-un-demonizing-putin/
Tallis Marsh ,
This article is wrong to imply/assume that Brexiters/Lexiters didn't know what they were voting for. Wrong to suggest/assume we did/do not have a strategy to try to help leave the EU. Wrong to assume we are racist and/or stupid. Of course there are a few exceptions but on the whole people know the score and we love the individual, distinct European countries; we just despise the imperial, uber-technocratic, ultimately anti-democratic superstate that is the EU.See UK Column & similar websites, and the archive of Tony Benn/Barbara Castle/Peter Shore/Bob Crow (on the reasons for disliking the EEC/EU/Maastrict & Lisbon Treaties etc) for why so many people voted to leave the EU. I reckon when the options on who to vote for were purposely limited by the LP (in the last few months after JC was forced to go along with the PLP) and TBP (after Farage made a deal with Trump/Boris) many Brexiters (and a few Lexiters?) were forced to vote for the Tories to give a message to the establishment? I am guessing they thought the election would result in a hung parliament with the tories having to ally with the DUP again.
Imo – I have a strong suspicion that the real result was a very close result (hung parliament) and that the establishment using the secret services helped in some way to engineer this landslide result (probably through postal ballot rigging). On the day of the election many people observed and commented on the huge queues in the poll stations and seeing so many young people voting like never before (including many photos on social media). The result does not seem plausible and the status quo has/had so much to lose.
Incidentally, and this is obviously anecdotal but in my household (and as far as I know) all my friends voted Labour or stayed at home (we are mostly Lexiters, don't-knows, and a couple Brexiters) and only know quite well of two openlyTory voters (at my partners' workplace). On the other hand, I do know my local area (which has been impoverished since the Thatcher years) is a heavy leave-voting area and I reckon most people here lend their vote to Tories for strategic reasons (I know a neighbour who wants the Tories to 'own' Brexit knowing full well they will renege on all their promises and not just the Brexit promise – they think Boris is a fake and wants to BRINO or, ultimately, even to remain).
I can only state what I observe and hear around me, and what I saw on social media during the election, but I do know people are so much more informed than the establishment/media would like to admit.
Francis Lee ,
I was shocked, yes shocked, to see the type sentiments espoused below."No-one could seriously believe that Brexit is something the ruling elite has pursued because it respects the so-called democratic will of the British public – not least because only 30% of that public actually voted for Brexit, and did so in complete ignorance of what it might mean and because of their own long-standing prejudices.
That could have come from the mouth Jo Swinson, the Economist, the Guardian or any other ultra-remainer rag.
It gets better, or worse depending on your point of view.
"Had the Government not had an interest in restructuring its relationship with the US and NATO, and seen political and economic gains – well illustrated by the jump in the value of Sterling following the result – then the idea of Brexit would just have quietly died away."
Yep, it's those damn proles who voted for Brexit again and "did so in complete ignorance of what that might mean and because of their own long-standing predudices." But of course! Time to rethink the idea of universal suffrage perhaps. Actually those sort of sentiments (see above) are precisely why Labour lost the election so heavily.
The point seems to be missed that euroland is an occupied zone and has been zone since 1945 – it is a neoliberal juggernaut and junior partner in the geopolitical global order. In addition it is the civilian wing of NATO, another American construction. It is based upon a core-periphery economic structure and upon a currency which locks its members into a neoliberal straight-jacket, and since they cannot devalue the core runs up trade surpluses whilst to periphery runs up permanent trade deficits. The euro currency is designed to do precisely this. Moreover the Stability and growth pact robs states of their ability to have an independent foreign and economic policy. The eastern and southern peripheries are little more than colonies. Printing their own currencies – God forbid – is strictly verboten, so that they cannot and will not recover. Taking Italy 137% of debt-to-gdp ratio and Greece with a staggering 181% of debt-to-gdp you will get a pretty good picture of what is happening in Euroland.
It really don't know why I have to explain all of this, particularly in light of the fact that Corbyn himself has always been a eurosceptic, along with other notables such as Benn (Sr.) Bryan Gould, Peter Shore and Barbara Castle, that was a unlike the present time when Labour was Labour.
I think the Labour party has now gone to far to reverse course; it has become an anachronism, and a neo-Blairite – ultra-remainer – is party now taking shape.
GEOFF ,
I've no idea why you keep going on about the EU , you got your way, we're leaving forget it, lets see how good it's going to be in this shithole without some protection from the EU , why do none of you address that, the slob has already started with his refusal to include workers rights, the fat slob says we can have better employment protection once we leave ha ha ha ha ha ha whats been stopping him from doing it for the last 40 years ? nothing. everyone is entitled to their view obviously and I respect it, but you just shut us out as if your opinion is all that matters, I would suggest 80% of those that voted leave know absolutely nothing about the EU, I arrive at that by talking incessantly to people, who think they're clued up and when you start pointing faults with their argument, you get the usual ' hey mate I've only come in for a pint'Francis Lee ,
"Share On Twitter" target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=But+we+haven%26%238217%3Bt+left+it.+And+there+is+g...+&url=https%3A%2F%2Foff-guardian.org%2F2019%2F12%2F20%2Fofficial-secrets-lies-and-the-five-eyes%2F%23comment-107077">
But we haven't left it. And there is good reason to suppose that we never will. A BRINO is being cooked up by a coalition of the usual suspects whose object is to end the existence of the UK as an independent nation state and turn it into a province of a European super-state. We will be voting – if at all – in the equivalent of local government or council elections with decisions, with economic and geopolitical issues being decided by non-elected technicians and bureaucrats.Democracy is only meaningful at the national level. Democracy and Empire (the EU) or should I say the EUSA, do not mix. Even Thucydides knew this.
GEOFF ,
But that happens here without the EU there are two pricks zac goldsmith and morgan, both been rejected by the electorate , both been given a place in the H.O.L £305 a day , totally unelcted but there to make our laws and you still won't see i twill youCassandra2 ,
Very much agree, I don't trust Boris to effect a clean break.I generally trust my instincts like most normal plebs, but since the Lisbon Treaty Europe has consolidate Federalisation, far removed from the original concept and principles of a Common Market and my instincts prompted a closer look.
Delving deeper, an easy process given internet access, one discovers a cesspit of deception. European Union is in reality the successor to the (totalitarian) Third Reich. Refer to Christopher Story's YouTube 3 part lecture on the subject. EU was planned in 1942 by a German social elite hierarchy in the likely event of Hitlers defeat. Key members of this hierarchy were transferred (operation paperclip) to USA at the end of the war and were integrated into a form of 5th column governing elite (power behind Deep State) who have since 1946 systematically hollowed the out the USA by undermining it's production base (excluding military hardware production) and displacing economic investment through reckless speculation/manipulation and perpetual global warfare.
Other than filling the Elites multi-trillion banking chest USA's resources and manpower (Military & Intelligence) have been utilised to construct a global platform for imposing a 'New World Order'. Europe's homogenization simply forms an essential part of this ambition.
Given a cursory (pleb) assessment of Europe's widespread corruption, undemocratic structure and it's true strategic purpose I cannot help but feel that those who voted 'remain' have had their critical faculties effectively lobotomized by Elite owned State MASS INDOCTRINATION i.e. BBC et al.
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
Goldman Sachs engineered the entire EU finance by first fudging the books on Greece. The whole edifice was built upon a shifting substrate of sand.Castles made of sand float into the sea, eventually. Jimi Hendrix Axis Bold as Love
MOU
Francis Lee ,
"NOBODY voted for a HARD brexit onto WTO rules and the country should have been asked very specifically if that is what the mythical 17 Million wanted."'Nobody voted for a hard -Brexit.' Really!
How come you are privy to this "information?" It would be amusing to see you trying to substantiate this statement.
And as for the 'mythical 17 million' (17.2 million actually) 'well, yes that must have been a mirage; it didn't happen.
Strange times in which we live when conjecture is treated as if it were fact. Yep, that is one of the hallmarks of the totalitarian mindset. In his marvellous essay, 'Notes on Nationalism' Orwell captures this frame of mind perfectly. He writes:
"By 'nationalism' I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people' (Leave voters by any chance?) "can be labelled 'good' or 'bad' But secondly (and this is much more important) I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a particular nation, political party, religious group or even football team, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests" (Remainers perhaps?)
Moreover, "although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat or revenge, the nationalist is somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world. What he wants is to feel that his own unit is getting the better of some other unit, and he can more easily do this off an adversary than by examining the facts to see whether or not they support his views Arguments with his adversaries are always inconclusive since each of the contestants believe themselves always right and always winning the victory (in the sight of God anyway).
Some of the true believers are not far from clinical schizophrenia, living quite happily amid dreams of power and conquest which have no connexion with the physical world."
Sadly true.
Dungroanin ,
WE will NOT let YOU forget the VoteLEAVE bs. Paul & co.
Here is Vote Leave NOT saying we are going onto WTO rules:'The day after nothing changes legally. There is no legal obligation on the British Government to take Britain out of the EU immediately. There will be three stages of creating a new UK-EU deal – informal negotiations, formal negotiations, and implementation including both a new Treaty and domestic legal changes. There is no need to rush. We must take our time and get it right.
WHAT'S THE OVERALL FRAMEWORK WE NEED?
Overall, the negotiations will create a new European institutional architecture that enables all countries, whether in or out of the EU or euro, to trade freely and cooperate in a friendly way. In particular, we will negotiate a UK-EU Treaty that enables us 1) to continue cooperating in many areas just as now (e.g. maritime surveillance), 2) to deepen cooperation in some areas (e.g. scientific collaborations and counter-terrorism), and 3) to continue free trade with minimal bureaucracy. The details will have to await a serious negotiation but there are many agreements between the EU and other countries that already solve these problems so we will be able to take a lot 'off the shelf'.'
Etc.
http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_newdeal.htmlAND HERE IS FACT CHECK
'As far as we've seen, Leave campaigners hardly mentioned the customs union in explicit terms at all, so there was generally little clarity about what leaving might mean in that regard.'
&
'There are also examples of leave campaigners claiming the UK could adopt a position similar to Norway -- which is still part of the single market while not being an EU member.Arron Banks, a founder of the Leave.EU campaign tweeted in November 2015 "Increasingly the Norway option looks the best for the UK".'
And so on – NO FULL HARD BREXIT
https://fullfact.org/europe/what-was-promised-about-customs-union-referendum/Now Paul& co show us where the HARD brexit was part of the Leave campaign.
Well observed David, thank you. I have already lobbied my new Tory MP with relevant articles and have a meeting scheduled with him early in the New Year to push for Julian's release and freedom. I am appalled at how our supposed freedom-loving society has been corrupted beyond measure by manipulative 'deep state' actors. http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2019/december/12/edward-snowden-speaks-out-for-julian-assange-and-chelsea-manning/Furthermore, I remain confused about what the globalists actually want apart from their final goal of New World Order global government, global currency (probably now being crypto) and removing the use of cash entirely.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/who-are-globalists-and-what-do-they-wantThis article has clarified the main targets for the globalists but where do you think Brexit stands in their agenda, do they want out of the EU or not? I am confused which side is in favour of freedom and liberty and which one wants global centralised command and control.
Long ago John Perkins exposed the elites' nefarious agendas with 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman': https://johnperkins.org/ and the book is well worth reading:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Confessions-Economic-Hit-Man/dp/1785033859/ref=sr_1_1?adgrpid=57307986950&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI34Dt8tzD5gIVC7DtCh3pXgnREAAYASAAEgJ7cvD_BwE&hvadid=259102724630&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1007152&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t1&hvqmt=e&hvrand=9838918690422858993&hvtargid=kwd-295426377502&hydadcr=24461_1816157&keywords=confessions+of+an+economic+hitman&qid=1576827695&sr=8-1And my own book: 'The Financial Jigsaw' (due to publish in Q1 2020) exposes the globalists' financial agenda extant today.
A free PDF of my manuscript is available on request to: [email protected]
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Dec 21, 2019 | www.xinhuanet.com
BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The phase-one economic and trade deal between China and the United States benefits both sides and the whole world, Chinese President Xi Jinping said Friday.In a phone conversation with his U.S. counterpart, Donald Trump, Xi noted that the two countries have reached the phase-one agreement on the basis of the principle of equality and mutual respect.
Against the backdrop of an extremely complicated international environment, the agreement benefits China, the United States, as well as peace and prosperity of the whole world, Xi said.
For his part, Trump said that the phase-one economic and trade agreement reached between China and the United States is good for the two countries and the whole world.
Noting that both countries' markets and the world have responded very positively to the agreement, Trump said that the United States is willing to maintain close communication with China and strive for the signing and implementation of the agreement at an early date.
Xi stressed that the economic and trade cooperation between China and the United States has made significant contributions to the stability and development of China-U.S. relations and the advancement of the world economy.
Modern economy and modern technologies have integrated the world as a whole, thus making the interests of China and the United States more intertwined with each other, Xi said, adding that the two sides will experience some differences in cooperation.
As long as both sides keep holding the mainstream of China-U.S. economic and trade cooperation featuring mutual benefits and win-win outcomes, and always respect each other's national dignity, sovereignty and core interests, they will overcome difficulties on the way of progress, and push forward their economic and trade relations under the new historical conditions, so as to benefit the two countries and peoples, Xi said.
China expresses serious concerns over the U.S. side's recent negative words and actions on issues related to China's Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet, Xi said.
He noted that the U.S. behaviors have interfered in China's internal affairs and harmed China's interests, which is detrimental to the mutual trust and bilateral cooperation.
China hopes that the United States will seriously implement the important consensuses reached by the two leaders over various meetings and phone conversations, pay high attention and attach great importance to China's concerns, and prevent bilateral relations and important agendas from being disturbed, Xi said.
Trump said he is looking forward to maintaining regular communication with Xi by various means, adding he is confident that both countries can properly handle differences, and U.S.-China relations can maintain smooth development.
Xi said he is willing to maintain contacts with Trump by various means, exchange views over bilateral relations and international affairs, and jointly promote China-U.S. relations on the basis of coordination, cooperation and stability.
The two heads of state also exchanged views on the situation of the Korean Peninsula. Xi stressed that it is imperative to stick to the general direction of a political settlement, saying all parties should meet each other halfway, and maintain dialogue and momentum for the mitigation of the situation, which is in the common interests of all.
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Dec 17, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Submitted by Michael Every of Rabobank
A US-China trade deal was announced to chaotic fanfare late Friday Asian time – and we are sceptical. First, we still don't have details other than that December tariffs were postponed by both sides, the 15% US tariffs imposed on 1 September are to be reduced to 7.5% as a sign of goodwill, and the 25% tariffs on USD250bn stay in place . Second, we aren't going to get a signing ceremony between the US and Chinese leaders, which does not send an encouraging signal. And third, what we see is close to the terms we previously criticized for being unrealistic in reports such as 'A Great Deal of Nonsense" and "LOL-A-PLAZA".
The US Trade Representative (USTR) says the final text of the phase one agreement is still being finalised, and he will sign it early next year for a likely incept date of end-January 2020. The areas covered include: Intellectual Property (IP); Technology Transfer; Agriculture; Financial Services; Currency; Expanding Trade; and Dispute Resolution. Each of these promises much and yet potentially delivers little.
China has pledged to address issues of geographical indications, trademarks, and enforcement against pirated and counterfeit goods. That's just after a Chinese court ruled that Japanese retailer Muji doesn't own its own name in China and a local rival started years afterwards does. Enforcement matters, not promises: more on that in a moment.
China has agreed to end forcing or pressuring foreign companies to transfer their tech as a condition for obtaining market access or administrative approvals. Again, enforcement is all that matters here. China also " commits to refrain from directing or supporting outbound investments aimed at acquiring foreign technology pursuant to industrial plans that create distortion. " That is China's reason for outbound investment! For example, Sweden's Defence Research Agency just released a detailed survey of Chinese corporate acquisitions in their country showing at least half are correlated with the "Made in China 20205" plan.
China will " support a dramatic expansion of US food, agriculture and seafood product exports " , with the USTR stating the target is to jump to USD40bn in 2020, a USD16bn increase over the pre-trade war level of USD24bn, and to aim for USD50bn. Part of that reflects China's decimated pork herd, so is hardly a concession. Yet it is hard to conceive of how the total figure can be achieved without China using the US to displace agri imports from other nations, e.g., Argentinean and Brazilian soy, and perhaps Aussie and Kiwi farm goods. That also increases China's economic exposure to the US at a time of rising geopolitical tensions between the two (see news of the US' secret expulsion of two Chinese diplomats), and US' farmers exposure to China in kind. For its part, the Chinese press are not mentioning these US hard targets, and are talking about WTO trading terms, which bodes poorly.
The financial services chapter pledges China to an opening up already underway as it searches for new sources of USD inflows, so again is not a concession. Interestingly, it also says US ratings agencies will get access – which will be fun given the evident credit stresses emerging in China just as US banks will be trying to sell China as an investment destination. .
On currency the US is requiring "high-standard commitments" to refrain from competitive devaluations and targeting of exchange rates. Everyone knows the CNY is not freely-traded – but also that China is doing its best to prop it up, not to try to push it lower. The key message is CNY is not going to be allowed to do what it ought to be doing, i.e., weakening, as China is pledging new fiscal stimulus in 2020 that will decrease its external surplus. That runs counter to market forces, and smacks of a kind of Plaza Accord. Of course, as long as this US-China agreement holds that might be sustainable due to the promised higher capital inflows...
Eexcept the expanding trade chapter implies the opposite. The USTR says China is pledging to boost its 2020 imports of US goods and services by USD100bn over the level in 2017, and by USD100bn again in 2021, for a total increase of USD200bn . Given 2017 was pre-trade war and US exports to China dropped off a cliff in 2019, this means around a 110% y/y increase in purchases in 2020 – and agri is only a portion of that. The problems should be obvious. How can a slowing Chinese economy (imports are down y/y from most sources), see this kind of increase without substituting US for world exports or local goods? How can a China with a USD liquidity shortage serious enough to be driving said lowered import bill, and '1USD-in/1USD-out' de facto capital controls, cope with the net reduction on the trade side? As of November, the 12-month rolling Chinese global trade surplus with the US it was USD330bn and globally was USD440bn. We are talking about reducing that US figure by 2/3 and the global total by 1/2!
Which brings us to the last chapter: Dispute Resolution. Getting China to comply is far harder than getting it to sign. The USTR notes the agreement " establishes strong procedures for addressing disputes related to the agreement and allows each party to take proportionate responsive actions that it deems appropriate ." In other words, each side can unilaterally do what they want when they want! So much for the unilateral US control of the process.
So how to see this in summary? The reduction in tariffs from 15% to 7.5% is a positive, albeit far less than the Wall Street Journal had promised. (NB, the USTR took the extraordinary step of publicly chastising the WSJ journalists who wrote that story – regular readers may recall I have also called them out more than once in the past.) Indeed, if China really has agreed to all that is stated here then further incremental tariff rollbacks can be seen – though the USTR has said the 25% tariffs will stay as collateral for a phase two deal that nobody really expects to happen. Yet the terms of this phase one still seem to be A Great Deal of Nonsense. How can China stop buying foreign tech? How can it buy as much US stuff as pledged? How can it do so and not undermine the WTO? How can it do so and not weaken CNY? And how can it do so with a strong CNY without increasing its USD debts, its strategic reliance on the USD, and to US goods? In short, if China does as the USTR claims, the US is a huge winner here (and there are lots of losers); if China does not comply with what look an impossible import targets, then the US can frame China as the bad guy and the tariffs can go back up again. Arguably, the question is not if that will happen, but when.
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Dec 15, 2019 | www.truthdig.com
Calgacus hk909 • 11 hours agoThey will gingerly exchange the regulated EU economy for the freewheeling American economy - and hasn't that economy worked so well for American workers.
If so, that's a good thing, for the regulated EU economy has treated Britons and Europeans even worse. The EU regulations, treaties and policies are overall highly destructive to workers, massive welfare for the rich. What remains of European Social Democracy and welfare states obscure the fact that US workers are actually treated better by their nation's fundamental economic policies and structures. Europe as a whole is MORE unequal, more of a class society than the USA, not less.
Brexit is a good thing, a leftist, progressive policy. It's jumping completely off the hot stove, not into the fire. The British, who preferred Labour's other policies, felt that the merits of Brexit outweighed all the other negatives of the Tories. They might be right.
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Dec 15, 2019 | crookedtimber.org
likbez 12.15.19 at 1:33 am 9
Your comment is awaiting moderation.Brexit is an eruption of English nationalism, and the Tories are now, under that shambling parody of a drunk racist English aristo, Johnson, an English nationalist party.
IMHO this is highly questionable statement. Brexit is a form of protest against neoliberal globalization. The fact that is colored with nationalism is the secondary effect/factor: rejection of neoliberalism is almost always colored in either nationalist rhetoric, or Marxist rhetoric.
Here are some quotes from paleoconservative analysis of the elections taken from two recent articles:
- Marked as [AS] Boris Johnson Is Showing Western Politicians How to Win b y Andrew Sullivan nymag.com, Dec 13, 2019
- Marked as [RD] Why Boris Won -- And How The GOP Might by Rod Dreher The American Conservative , Dec 13, 2019
While I do not share their enthusiasm about "Red Tories" rule in the UK, and the bright future for "Trumpism without Trump" movement in the USA, they IMHO provide some interesting insights into paleoconservatives view on the British elections results and elements of social protest that led to them:
[AS] It is clearer and clearer to me that the wholesale adoption of critical race, gender, and queer theory on the left makes normal people wonder what on earth they're talking about and which dictionary they are using. The white working classes are privileged? A woman can have a penis? In the end, the dogma is so crazy, and the language so bizarre, these natural left voters decided to listen to someone who does actually speak their language , even if in an absurdly plummy accent.
[AS] But just as important, he moved the party sharply left on austerity, spending on public services, tax cuts for the working poor, and a higher minimum wage. He outflanked the far right on Brexit and shamelessly echoed the left on economic policy . ... This is Trumpism without Trump. A conservative future without an ineffective and polarizing nutjob at the heart of it. Unlike Trump, he will stop E.U. mass migration, and pass a new immigration system, based on the Australian model. Unlike Trump, he will focus tax cuts on the working poor, not the decadent rich. Unlike Trump, he will stop E.U. mass migration, and pass a new immigration system, based on the Australian model. Unlike Trump, he will focus tax cuts on the working poor, not the decadent rich. It's very much the same movement of left-behind people expressing their views on the same issues, who, tragically, put their trust in Trump. What we've seen is how tenacious a voting bloc that now is, which is why Trumpism is here to stay. If we could only get rid of the human cancer at the heart of it.
[AS] Trump has bollixed it up, of course. He ran on Johnson's platform but gave almost all his tax cuts to the extremely wealthy, while Johnson will cut taxes on the poor. Trump talks a big game on immigration but has been unable to get any real change in the system out of Congress. Johnson now has a big majority to pass a new immigration bill, with Parliament in his control, which makes the task much easier. Trump is flamingly incompetent and unable to understand his constitutional role. Boris will assemble a competent team, with Michael Gove as his CEO, and Dom Cummings as strategist.
[AS] If Johnson succeeds, he'll have unveiled a new formula for the Western right: Make no apologies for your own country and culture; toughen immigration laws; increase public spending on the poor and on those who are "just about managing"; increase taxes on the very rich and redistribute to the poor; focus on manufacturing and new housing; ignore the woke; and fight climate change as the Tories are (or risk losing a generation of support).
[RD] I have no idea why the Republicans are so damned silent on wokeness, including the transgender madness. No doubt about it, the American people have accepted gay marriage and gay rights, broadly. But the Left will not accept this victory in the culture war. They cannot help bouncing the rubble, and driving people farther than they are willing to go, or that they should have to go. It's the elites -- and not just academic elites. Every week I get at least two e-mails from readers sending me examples of transgender wokeness taking over their professions -- especially big business. People hate this pronoun crap, but nobody dares to speak out against it, because they are afraid of being doxxed, cancelled, or at least marginalized in the workplace.
[RD] My friend said (I paraphrase):
"Can you blame people for not answering pollsters' questions? Everybody is told all the time that the things they believe, and the things they worry about, are backwards and bigoted. They have learned to keep it to themselves. It's the same thing here. I hate Donald Trump, but I'm probably going to end up voting for him, because at least he doesn't hate my sons. I want a good future for every child -- black, Latino, white, all of them -- but the Left thinks my sons are what's wrong with the world
[RD] Boris (and Sully) style Toryism is better than nothing, isn't it? As a general rule, in this emerging post-Christian social and political order, we conservative Christians had better not let the unachievable perfect be the enemy of the common-sense good enough.
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Dec 14, 2019 | crookedtimber.org
James R McKinney 12.13.19 at 6:54 pm ( 1 )
Well, so much for all that. It's time to stop pretending we're still in the postwar period (the question is, are we in a pre-war one).From now on, only the rich will have the luxury of any sense of historical continuity.
likbez 12.14.19 at 1:13 am 2
It’s time to stop pretending we’re still in the postwar period (the question is, are we in a pre-war one).
True. As “Full Spectrum Dominance” inevitably lead to “threat inflation” it is logically drives the USA into the major war.
I think the current period can be called the “collapse of neoliberalism” period. In any case the neoliberal elite who was in power (Blairists, Clintonists) lost the trust of people. This is true both for the US and labour in the UK. In this sense the anti-Semitic smear against Corbin is equivalent to neo-McCarthyism hysteria in the USA. Both reflect the same level of desperation and clinging to power of “soft neoliberals.”
Unfortunately Corbin proved to be too weak to withstand the pressure and suppress Blairists. But Blairists in labour might still be up to a great disappointment. The history train left the station and they are still standing on the neoliberal platform, so to speak.
That’s why Brexit, as a form of protest against neoliberal globalization, has legs. It is a misguided, but still a protest movement.
From now on, only the rich will have the luxury of any sense of historical continuity.
The rich are not uniform. Financial oligarchy wants to stay, while manufacturers probably would prefer Brexit.
At the same time the grip on neocons in both countries are such that there is no hope that they will be deposed in foreseeable future. See comments to The Afghanistan war is more than a $1 trillion mistake. It’s a travesty
yemrajesh 10 Dec 2019 16:54
Why did so many people – from government contractors and high-ranking military officers, to state department and National Security Council officials – feel the need to lie about how the war in Afghanistan was going?
This is because it’s easy cash cow for the old boys club by sending working class kids to be killed in a far off land. The pentagon with the full cooperation of MSM will sell it as we are defending our ways of life by fighting a country 10,000 kms away.
This show the poor literacy, poor analytical thinking of US population constantly brain washed by MSM, holy men, clergy, other neo con organisations like National rifle club etc.
and
manoftheworld -> Redswordfish 10 Dec 2019 15:47
Perhaps the only thing Trump has got right .. and ever will get right.. is his dislike for war. He is right about Afghanistan. The terrible US press and political reaction to his peace talks with the Taliban showed that the deep state still doesn’t get it…
Mattis, Graham et al are insane liars… and so is Hilary Clinton and Petraeus… none of them has ever had the guts to tell the truth…
the average American is way more indoctrinated than the average pupil at a madrasa. …we should boot these lying American generals out of NATO.. they’re a threat to world peace…
In any case Brexit is a litmus test of what is the next stage for neoliberalism and neoliberal globalization.
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Dec 14, 2019 | www.unz.com
Corvinus says: December 11, 2019 at 3:05 am GMT 400 Words
@Peripatetic Commenter "He has built more wall than the last three presidents and is on track to have one fully built by November next year. He has also reduced the amount of illegal immigration into the US."
To date (August 2019), the administration has replaced about 60 miles of dilapidated barriers with new fencing. And a major component of Trump's pledge -- that Mexico would pay for the wall -- hasn't been part of the equation. U.S. taxpayers have paid the cost.
"So right now, 78 miles have been built, have been built where there was an existing form of barrier," [Acting CBP Commissioner Mark] Morgan said, effectively admitting that none of the wall that has been constructed has been in new areas.
For the record, I have no problem with rebuilding and/or replacing our border wall. But Trump has failed to deliver on his campaign promise.
https://www.newsweek.com/cbp-no-new-border-wall-1472077
"If you want to bring money back into the country where it can do some good, you have to reduce taxes."
So what has been its level of effectiveness accomplishing that task?
https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-tax-cut-effects-20190529-story.html
Perhaps if Trump, like past presidents, would offer up his tax returns, we can see how much money he personally has "brought back" to our nation.
Of course, it would help that we stop outsourcing jobs. How has Trump fared here, besides having had his own merchandise made overseas?
... ... ..
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Dec 14, 2019 | nymag.com
The most important thing about the "phase one" trade agreement announced Friday by U.S. and Chinese officials is what won't happen: The two countries won't impose additional tariffs on Sunday that would have further escalated the trade war.
There will also be a bit of de-escalation. In September, Trump imposed 15 percent tariffs on $110 billion worth of Chinese consumer goods, such as clothing; those tariffs will be cut in half, to 7.5 percent. But the largest piece of Trump's China tariffs -- a 25 percent tariff on $250 billion in goods mostly sold to businesses rather than consumers -- will stay unchanged, for now.
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Dec 14, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
karlof1 , Dec 13 2019 18:50 utc | 85
Awaited confirmation by China about the Trade Deal before writing about it. This article is what I waited to be published: "Phase one trade deal a step forward, a new beginning," yes, an optimistic tone, although tempered in the text:"Rome was not built in a day. Trade protectionism has expanded in some places of the world, affecting some people's thinking. It is not easy for China and the US to agree on the text of the deal. But how to define this deal and whether it can keep its positive effects on the global market and even accumulate more positive energy will depend on further efforts from China and the US , as the global market has been disturbed by the trade war.
" We must see that the first phase of the trade agreement is a win-win outcome which will deliver tangible benefits to the world . The response from investors around the world is most real because they would not use their own money just to make a grand gesture. However, some people in both China and the US may hype that their own country suffers loss from this deal. This is a natural counter-stream of public opinion, but does not represent the mainstream attitude on either side." [My Emphasis]
Gee, "benefits for the whole world," not just China and Outlaw US Empire? What forced the Empire to compromise:
"The US-China trade war happens at a time when the US' strategic thinking on China has changed. This requires Washington to find a strategic impetus to end the trade war. So what would be such a strategic impetus?
"We believe as long as the US side is realistic, it is possible that such a strategic impetus can be formed and gradually expanded. The trade war is not an effective way to resolve the strategic competition between China and the US. It can neither scare China nor effectively weaken China, but will cause a gradual rise in the cost of the US economy" . [My Emphasis]
IMO, China's assessment's correct. The financialized economy of the Evil Outlaw US Empire has drained it of the resilience it once enjoyed and that China's economy has obtained. Plus, as I wrote several months ago, China's employing geoeconomic levers which the Empire can no longer deploy and is thus stuck with using the only remaining tool it has--its waning geopolitical levers.
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Dec 14, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
karlof1 , Dec 13 2019 18:50 utc | 85
Awaited confirmation by China about the Trade Deal before writing about it. This article is what I waited to be published: "Phase one trade deal a step forward, a new beginning," yes, an optimistic tone, although tempered in the text:"Rome was not built in a day. Trade protectionism has expanded in some places of the world, affecting some people's thinking. It is not easy for China and the US to agree on the text of the deal. But how to define this deal and whether it can keep its positive effects on the global market and even accumulate more positive energy will depend on further efforts from China and the US , as the global market has been disturbed by the trade war.
" We must see that the first phase of the trade agreement is a win-win outcome which will deliver tangible benefits to the world . The response from investors around the world is most real because they would not use their own money just to make a grand gesture. However, some people in both China and the US may hype that their own country suffers loss from this deal. This is a natural counter-stream of public opinion, but does not represent the mainstream attitude on either side." [My Emphasis]
Gee, "benefits for the whole world," not just China and Outlaw US Empire? What forced the Empire to compromise:
"The US-China trade war happens at a time when the US' strategic thinking on China has changed. This requires Washington to find a strategic impetus to end the trade war. So what would be such a strategic impetus?
"We believe as long as the US side is realistic, it is possible that such a strategic impetus can be formed and gradually expanded. The trade war is not an effective way to resolve the strategic competition between China and the US. It can neither scare China nor effectively weaken China, but will cause a gradual rise in the cost of the US economy" . [My Emphasis]
IMO, China's assessment's correct. The financialized economy of the Evil Outlaw US Empire has drained it of the resilience it once enjoyed and that China's economy has obtained. Plus, as I wrote several months ago, China's employing geoeconomic levers which the Empire can no longer deploy and is thus stuck with using the only remaining tool it has--its waning geopolitical levers.
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Dec 14, 2019 | angrybearblog.com
This year's winner is Branko Milanovic's Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World . (This is the second Globie for Milanovic, who won it in 2016 for Global Inequality .) The book is based on the premise that capitalism has become the universal form of economic organization. This type of system is characterized by "production organized for profit using legally free wage labor and mostly privately owned capital, with decentralized coordination." However, there exist two different types of capitalism: the liberal meritocratic form that developed in the West, and state-led political capitalism, which exists primarily in Asia but also parts of Europe and Africa.
The two models are competitors, in part because of their adoption in different parts of the world and also because they arose in different circumstances. The liberal meritocratic system arose from the class capitalism of the late 19th century, which in turn evolved out of feudalism. Communism, Milanovic writes, took the place of bourgeoise development. Communist parties in countries such as China and Vietnam overthrew the domestic landlord class as well as foreign domination. These countries now seek to re-establish their place in the global distribution of economic power.
Milanovic highlights one characteristic that the two forms of capitalism share: inequality. Inequality in today's liberal meritocratic capitalism differs from that of classical capitalism in several features. Capital-rich individuals are also labor-rich, which reinforces the inequality. Assortative mating leads to more marriages within income classes. The upper classes use their money to control the political process to maintain their position of privilege.
Because of limited data on income distribution in many of the countries with political capitalism, Milanovic focuses on inequality in China. He attributes its rise to the gap between growth in the urban areas versus the rural, as well the difference in growth between the maritime provinces and those in the western portion of the country. There is also a rising share of income from capital , as well as a high concentration of capital income. In addition, corruption has become systemic, as it was before the communist revolution.
The mobility of labor and capital allows capitalism to operate on a global basis. Migrants from developing economies benefit when they move to advanced economies. But residents in those countries often fear migration because of its potentially disruptive effect on cultural norms, despite the positive spillover effects on the domestic economy. Milanovic proposes granting migrants limited rights, such as a finite term of stay, in order to facilitate their acceptance. He points out, however, the potential downside of the creation of an underclass.
Multinational firms have organized global supply chains that give the parent units in their home countries the ability to coordinate production in different subsidiary units and their suppliers in their host nations. Consequently, the governments of home countries seek to limit the transfer of technology to the periphery nations to avoid losing innovation rents. The host countries, on the other hand, hope to use technology to jump ahead in the development process.
The Trump administration clearly shares these concerns about the impact of globalization. President Trump has urged multinational firms to relocate production facilities within the U.S. Government officials are planning to limit the export of certain technologies while carefully scrutinizing foreign acquisitions of domestic firms in tech-related areas. New restrictions on legal immigration have been enacted that would give priority to a merit-based system. Moreover, the concerns over migration are not unique to the U.S.
Milanovic ends with some provocative thoughts about the future of capitalism. One path would be to a "people's capitalism," in which everyone has an approximately equal share of both capital and labor income. This would require tax advantages for the middle class combined with increased taxes on the rich, improvements in the quality of public education, and public funding of political campaigns. But it is also feasible that there will be a move of liberal capitalism toward a form of political capitalism based on the rise of the new elite, who wish to retain their position within society.
Milanovic's book offers a wide-ranging review of many of the features of contemporary capitalism. He is particularly insightful about the role of corruption in both liberal and political capitalism. Whether or not it is feasible to reform capitalism in order to serve a wider range of interests is one of the most important issues of our time.
2018 Adam Tooze, Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World
2017 Stephen D. King, Grave New World: The End of Globalization, the Return of History
2016 Branko Milanovic, Global Inequality
2015 Benjamin J. Cohen. Currency Power: Understanding Monetary Rivalry
likbez , December 14, 2019 3:35 am
==quote==
The Trump administration clearly shares these concerns about the impact of globalization. President Trump has urged multinational firms to relocate production facilities within the U.S. Government officials are planning to limit the export of certain technologies while carefully scrutinizing foreign acquisitions of domestic firms in tech-related areas. New restrictions on legal immigration have been enacted that would give priority to a merit-based system. Moreover, the concerns over migration are not unique to the U.S.
== end ==
In plain language that means the collapse of neoliberal globalization.
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Dec 14, 2019 | caucus99percent.com
ban nock on Fri, 12/13/2019 - 6:18am and the analogies with Sanders and the US only go so far.
Politics in the US, Britain, and Europe in general are being upended, I'd caution against pigeon holing things into the old left/right, Dem/Repub, Tory/Labor, scenario.
Britain's Labor similar to America's Democratic Party has lost lots of it's legitimacy with working people. Globalisation has decimated cities like Liverpool and Manchester. Labor didn't support Brexit, the biggest issue in politics in Britain. Being a part of the EU allowed workers from Eastern Europe to enter England and directly compete for low skilled jobs.
Labor in England also included upper middle class woke culture, which is very pro EU and anti Brexit. It's impossible to imagine a pro Brexit leader in Labor just as much as it is impossible to imagine working class people in England supporting the loss of their jobs via Remain. People voted for their economic self interests, can you blame them? As in the US there are more working class voters than there are upper middle class intellectuals.
Boris Johnson promised increased funding for the National Health Service, not tearing it down as many seem to suggest. Whether he does so is yet to be seen, but I wouldn't read his win as a rejection of the social safety net. Socialism is for many some kind of intellectual game, the working class is much less interested in ideas, and much more interested in health care, higher wages, and better conditions overall.
Ever since I watched Bernie Sanders' rise in the primaries in 16 I've felt he would be a much stronger general election candidate than he is in the primaries. As contrary as Trump might seem to hard core political junkies, Trump did steal many of Sander's memes and use them in the general election. Most wage earners actually do feel powerless in the face of the corporate overclass, they feel things getting worse not better.
To have even a snowball's chance in the pre primaries, the endless positioning and twitter wars that have occurred for months prior to even our first primary, Sanders is now committed to many of the same positions as the woke side of the Democratic Party. There might well be a big enough drop off of Hispanics, African Americans, and Working Class Dems of all hues to lose this thing again, even if Sanders wins the primary. The Democratic Party has lost working people even as it has gained Country Club Republicans from the suburbs.
Last night as the results were obvious I watched the old DK, the NYT, and other web sites. Stunned Silence. It's as if they didn't realize 2016 happened and were surprised all over again.
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Dec 14, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
Russ , Dec 13 2019 7:09 utc | 33
A big part of why Labor and Corbyn lost so badly is the complete abdication of "the Left" on Brexit. The left were supposed to be anti-globalists, in which case their task was to join battle offering an egalitarian, left-populist version of Brexit which would have benefited the people.Instead, faced with a real decision and a real opportunity they punted and ran home to globalist mama. This removed one of the main reasons to bother supporting them.
MFB , Dec 13 2019 8:19 utc | 36
Thing is, this destroys the left in Britain. The right in Labour had been in control since the early 1980s, and Corbyn's leadership victory was an accident which will not be given a second chance. Now what will replace Corbyn will not be Blairism, it will be something well to the right of Blairism, something much more like the DNC in the United States.Tsar Nicholas , Dec 13 2019 8:29 utc | 37In other words, this is not a defeat of a party, it is a catastrophe for anyone seeking to struggle against the triumph of neoliberal barbarism. Oh, and it makes the probability of the end of the world through environmental catastrophe or nuclear war much higher. So apart from the ideological catastrophe it's also a human calamity.
Corbyn destroyed hismelf. He performed quite well, unexpectedly so, in 2017 because he said that he would honour the result of the 2016 referendum. Yesterday the electors punished him for reneging on that and telling 17.4 million voters that they were wrong.Bemildred , Dec 13 2019 9:41 utc | 39It was the less well off who voted to Leave, and it was the less well off who yesterday deserted Labour in droves. They have had enough of being told that they are in the wrong by a middle class elite who would be repelled if they ever actually met someone from the working class.
I find it interesting that so much effort was expended to defeat Corbyn, over such a long period, when apparently it was so little needed.Norwegian , Dec 13 2019 9:59 utc | 40I am no expert on UK politics, but it does look like Brexit was the issue that Boris won on. Everybody is sick of it and wants if over with.
Posted by: Bemildred | Dec 13 2019 9:41 utc | 39vk , Dec 13 2019 11:38 utc | 46I am no expert on UK politics, but it does look like Brexit was the issue that Boris won on. Everybody is sick of it and wants if over with.I am no expert on UK politics either, but from my point of view in Norway the main issue to be resolved is dismantling the EU, and it looks like the Brexit vote and this election confirms that many in the UK see it the same way. Whether it will happen is another question.
I voted NO in the 1994 Norwegian referendum on the question of becoming member of "European Community". One of the arguments in the debate at that time was that the "European Community" was aiming to become a union and a superstate. Those who argued that way were called lots of things, including conspiracy theorists. Today we are not members of the EU, but all the "regulations" are forced upon us anyway. The EU is a non-democratic nightmare that must be demolished.
I don't expect much good from the Tories, I don't exclude another betrayal of the Brexit cause, but we shall see. Corbyn lost on his betrayal of Brexit, that is for sure. I sympathize with Corbyn, but betraying the Brexit referendum is a no-no.
What the UK needs is real progressives that see the EU as the globalist project it is. It also means that the "climate crisis" must be recognised as a political tool created by the same forces. Corbyn failed on both accounts and therefore he lost.
Now that the official results are out, I'll comment on the British elections.If Corbyn had won and taken us out of the EU we would have gone all Venezuela. If he'd won and kept us in the EU we'd have gone all Greece. The result is the best of the bad options available.- Valiant_Thor, 26m agoThis comment on The Guardian encapsulates the average Conservative voter for these 2019 elections.
The UK is really at a crossroads: it is too tiny and poor in natural resources to implement socialism, but it is declining as a capitalist power.
I don't think the average British really thinks Venezuela is socialist or that Corbyn's policies would make them very poor, but I think they are afraid of the sanctions and embargoes they would suffer from the USA if they dared to try to go back to social-democracy.
This defeat may also be historic: this could go to History as the end of social-democracy. Social-democracy was already dead as an effective political force after the oil crisis of 1974-5, but at least it was able to polarize with neoliberalism in the ideological field and had some prestige that far outlived itself (to the point it was the main propaganda weapon that ultimately convinced Gorbachev to destroy the USSR, and to the point it was able to convince historians like Hobsbawn that it had actually "won the war" after 2008). Now it isn't considered even credible by half of the population of one of the few countries it was able to govern and fully influence in the post-war period.
In Rosa Luxemburg's last article (a few days before she was executed), she finally admitted defeat to the Bolsheviks. "We must separate the essential from the non-essential", she wrote. And the essential, she completed, was the fact that the Bolsheviks were right and the German Social-Democrats were wrong. It happened again, almost 100 years later.
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Dec 14, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
Formerly T-Bear , Dec 12 2019 22:30 utc | 13
@ Michael Droy | Dec 12 2019 20:57 utc | 5(Brexit anger is about wage inequality - like US Trump support. 35 years, GDP doubled, median earnings up 10% in UK, 0% in US. If the media wrote about basic economics everyone would know this. Instead the bottom 75% have plain unfocussed anger with Trump/Brexit being lightening rods to direct it).
It might be wise to be careful here about assumptions used. First off, cognisance of population changes will not automatically translate into employed working sector changes, many factors intervene preventing a direct relationship. Secondly, having a accurate GDP measure from beginning to end of the period observed is crucial (to avoid apples vs. oranges comparisons) so that changes in productive sources (and their employed numbers) are accounted for (law offices rarely employ as many as heavy industrial firms). The history of price/wage inflation or loss of exchange value of currency will affect reported GDP statistics as well. Thirdly is measuring the general education and skill level of those employed, as those decrease so do earnings/salaries/wages. Fourthly, look at the change in social protections provided to the population in question, these protections have a cost that must be met, their absence has an even greater cost to income obtained but rarely appearing on the economic balance sheets. Regulatory capture by monopoly, sovereign & trust-fund management removes business restrictions and passes those costs to those employed. Try putting this on a bumper-sticker for your car.
In the U.S. the population had increased in double digits from the census of 1950 (150.9 millions) to 2010 (308.7 millions). Working income had not significantly increased from 1970's, Purchasing Power Parity of 1970 dollar and 2019 dollar is unobtainable information. GDP statistics are of the nature of apples vs. oranges, measuring unrelated economic production; it can be done but isn't (for reasons political) [an income of US$400,000 in 1915 would translate into a 1980's income of about US$ 8.5 millions; the economies were still roughly speaking nearly the same still and comparable, as wealth distributions were becoming again].
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Dec 09, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
psychohistorian , Dec 9 2019 6:11 utc | 70
Below is a link from ZH about the tech front in the civilization war between the empire West/US and ChinaThe take away quotes
"
...... the FT reports that Beijing has ordered all government offices and public institutions to remove foreign computer equipment and software within three years.
..........
The take home message here is that US PC and software giants are about to lose billions in sale to Chinese customers, a move that will infuriate Trump who will, correctly, see such attempts to isolate the Chinese PC market from US vendors.
"This is going to be difficult for China but they have a domestic OS, the Kylin OS, that is Unix/Linux based, so much Open Source software is available to replace the Microsoft/Apple software they currently use until they develop their own.
This speaks to Trump saying he can wait for a trade deal until after the (s)election but it seems obvious that his negotiating position is going to get weaker by the day.
-------------------------------
Another aspect of the tech war that is financial also is that I am reading the China is on the cusp of releasing a digital fiat RMD currency. This will have serious disintermediation effects on the BIS, City of London Corp and others doing currency exchange if any can do such on their phones. I am reading about digital currencies needing a blockchain underpinning but if the US dollar can exist without one currently then what are the show stoppers except the private finance dead weight in the middle?
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Dec 06, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Yes, I know, pilgrims, the Haredim have a right to live however they please, just as Mormon schismatics, cloistered monks and the Amish/Mennonites do, but it is nevertheless interesting that this woman and those like her emerge into the "light" of the 21st Century as though they had just come from the womb.
As many of you know I was the chief intelligence liaison from DIA to the IDF General Staff intelligence service for seven years. Because of that I spent a lot of time in Israel wandering around when not working and talking to IDF people about the Haredim among other things.
I don't think I ever ran into an IDF officer who had other than disdain for the Haredim. A lot of the IDF were kibbutzniks, products of structured life on a collective farm in a socialist secular setting. They thought the Haredim were ignorant freeloaders who used their cultist beliefs to hide out from the draft while collecting comfortable stipends from the government as "religious scholars."
In some Haredi groups the women shave their whole bodies and when out in public accompanied by a male relative wear funny looking curly synthetic hair wigs. This was interesting.
Chacun a son gout the old maid said as she kissed the cow. pl
Serge , 05 December 2019 at 12:29 PM
There are many of these groups in Quebec, I think the most radical of them congregate there because of laws protecting them from sending their children to normal schools or integrating them in any way into normal life, most prominently and infamously the Lev Tahor group. There is a particularly radical community of 3000 of them right outside of Montreal, formed in the 60s. I always found the wig thing interesting, as a connection to the Islamic practice of hijab. Very semitic. Ever heard of the "Haredi Burqa Sect"?Chris S , 05 December 2019 at 07:14 PMThey had a village outside of Monroe NY, where I grew up for a while. The women did indeed wear weird synthetic wigs, I used to see them at the grocery store. I remember they refused to pay taxes for public services. They weren't particularly well liked but then they weren't a part of the community, just adjacent. The Hasid community itself looked like a bombed out wasteland the few times I passed through it. They didn't care for outsiders. That whole area of NY is weird, so they fit in a way.
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Dec 04, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Consider America's position. President Trump surely has incentives to push for what I would call a strategic pause in his quest to contain a rising China through tough trade moves. At the moment, staring down a possible vote on articles of impeachment and a Senate trial, rising trade tensions, which could reignite fears of a recession, are the last thing the president needs. When you factor in reelection worries, Trump needs to find a mutually agreeable solution to at least pause the trade war. Such a move will surely revive economic growth hurt by sanctions and ensure the smoothest possible path toward a second term. People vote with their wallets, and Trump gets that.
Chinese president Xi Jinping, meanwhile, has similar concerns. China's 6 percent economic growth, something Washington can only dream of, is likely a number that exists only on paper, for Beijing is known to cook their books. With growth more than likely just barely in positive territory, thanks in large part to U.S. trade tariffs, and the challenges in Hong Kong not looking as if they will subside anytime soon, Xi needs to deliver what he can claim is a victory that also revives economic growth, at least for the time being. This will help stabilize China domestically, plus give Xi time to allow Hong Kong's protests to burn out while not having to worry about economic troubles at the same time.
Nothing could be worse for Xi than the markets concluding that China is in a recession with one of its prime economic centers now in open revolt. Just as quickly as China was dubbed the next rising superpower, her economic and political obituary could be written.
Here is where a so-called Phase One trade deal could help patch up the relationship and give both sides the short-term domestic boost their leaderships are looking for. A potential deal could involve China rolling back tariffs on all U.S. goods, agreeing to a large purchase of American agricultural goods, and providing basic protections on all U.S. intellectual property involving high-technology goods (think 5G, computers, and robotics). In turn, America would roll back all tariffs -- something China wants very badly -- including, and most importantly, agreeing not to launch the scheduled new round of massive tariffs on December 15, which are viewed as potentially the most damaging to date. While such an interim deal is far from perfect -- China hawks will surely go ballistic, calling the deal nothing more than appeasement or select your other favorite neocon smear -- Xi and Trump are pragmatic enough to see that a deal is in both sides' interests.
But there are reasons to worry. A recent report in Axios claims that China is quite angry over Trump's decision to sign the Hong Kong bill, and as a result talks between the two nations have "stalled." Still, both sides have ample reasons to get a trade deal done. However, if Trump does indeed get reelected and China feels stable domestically once again, the pull of history -- specifically, which nation will dominate geopolitics in the 21st century -- may be too strong to resist.
Harry J. Kazianis is a senior director at the Center for the National Interest and the executive editor of The National Interest magazine.
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Dec 04, 2019 | dailycaller.com
By offering Hong Kong official tools of support, President Trump has broadened the trade dispute...
Throughout negotiations, the Chinese have been reluctant to get a deal over the line, walking away from agreed upon terms several times. By supporting Hong Kong, President Trump is showing the Chinese Communist Party that he will not sit idly by while they jerk trade negotiations around.
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Dec 03, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,
China was once very dependent on US chips for its phones. The latest Chinese phones have no US parts.
The Wall Street Journal reports Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips .
Yet Another Trump Trade WinAmerican tech companies are getting the go-ahead to resume business with Chinese smartphone giant Huawei Technologies Co., but it may be too late: It is now building smartphones without U.S. chips.
Huawei's latest phone, which it unveiled in September -- the Mate 30 with a curved display and wide-angle cameras that competes with Apple Inc.'s iPhone 11 -- contained no U.S. parts, according to an analysis by UBS and Fomalhaut Techno Solutions, a Japanese technology lab that took the device apart to inspect its insides.
In May, the Trump administration banned U.S. shipments to Huawei as trade tensions with Beijing escalated. That move stopped companies like Qualcomm Inc. and Intel Corp. from exporting chips to the company, though some shipments of parts resumed over the summer after companies determined they weren't affected by the ban.
Meanwhile, Huawei has made significant strides in shedding its dependence on parts from U.S. companies. (At issue are chips from U.S.-based companies, not those necessarily made in America; many U.S. chip companies make their semiconductors abroad.)
Huawei long relied on suppliers like Qorvo Inc., the North Carolina maker of chips that are used to connect smartphones with cell towers, and Skyworks Solutions Inc., a Woburn, Mass.-based company that makes similar chips. It also used parts from Broadcom Inc., the San Jose-based maker of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi chips, and Cirrus Logic Inc., an Austin, Texas-based company that makes chips for producing sound.
- Trump cut off supplies so China looked elsewhere.
- Trump changed his mind.
- This is what constitutes a win.
"When Huawei came out with this high-end phone -- and this is its flagship -- with no U.S. content, that made a pretty big statement," said Christopher Rolland, a semiconductor analyst at Susquehanna International Group.
Huawei executives told Rolland that the company was moving away from American parts, but it was still surprising how quickly it happened.
This was likely going to happen anyway, but Trump escalated the speed at which it happened.
Trade Deal?Standard Assumption for 17 Months
- Reuters reports U.S.-China Trade Deal 'Stalled Because of Hong Kong Legislation'
- MarketWatch reports China 'Insists' on Tariff Rollbacks as Part of 'Phase One' Trade Deal
Assuming there is a deal, the standard assumption for 17 months, Trump will announce two key elements.
Greatest Deal in History
- China will resume buying the same amount of soybeans as before.
- China will resume buying the same amount of chips as before.
The longer this takes the more wins there will be.
With that in mind, please recall Another Trump Tariff Success Story: Vietnam .
And despite the fact that Trump's China Tariffs Made Matters Made the Global Manufacturing Recession Worse and has killed US farmers, It's important to remember, Trump is collecting "huge tariffs".
So please brush aside this recession warning: Freight Volumes Negative YoY for 11th Straight Month .
myne , 1 minute ago link
greatdisconformity , 1 minute ago linkThe trade war is the first act in the much larger game of hegemony.
Both sides are disentangling.
Apple finished their Indian plant.
Huawei went ex-US (but almost certainly not US IP)
Europe is already muttering about human rights in Hong Kong and Xiangjang.
We're nearly ready for act 2. That's when Europe joins in on squeezing trade, and the rest of the democratic world and a few others is bullied and bribed to follow.
Noob678 , 14 minutes ago linkThat was the game from day one.
Soon there will be no US parts in anything made in China.
Because there are no industries left here who can make them.
They have all died, or been bought and relocated.
Take away software and vapid entertainment programming, and the US has *** for consumer technology.
***.
Omega_Man , 12 minutes ago linkDo you know why Russia still sells rocket engines to US after being hit US sanctions? Don't tell me they need US dollar.
Do you know that China is facing US embargo under the pretext of national security from 1949 until now and things allowed to export to China mostly agriculture produce, gas and oil? This is the reason they develop their own technologies which the media told me stolen from the US even that the US doesn't have like 5G, quantum satellite, hypersonic weapons just to name a few.
Do you know where soybeans in US came from?
schroedingersrat , 11 minutes ago linkrussia needs to stop selling those engines to merica and cut them out of space... what a dumb move... russia always trying to be friends with evil merica
victorher , 16 minutes ago linkIts because not everyone is as psychopathic as the US
davelis , 1 hour ago linkPlainly, China will never buy the same amount of soybeans or chips than before as Russia will never accumulate US dollars in its Reserve. They have discovered than US is not a reliable partner.
L00K0UTB3L0W , 55 minutes ago linkThose that think that China is only about ripping off US technology are going to be surprised. Sure that was once China's main method as it was for the early USA to rip off British textile secrets. Trump trying to take down China's biggest technology company has been a real wake up call for them. Now, they will own all of the content and will dominate in Asian markets, the middle east, etc. They already did it in solar panels and much else. They have a plan. They build infrastructure, we let it ours decay. They invest in education, we leave out students in debt up to their eyeballs and then give them Starbucks jobs. They have high speed trains everywhere, we have Amtrak. They are looking outward, we are looking inward. America first, rah rah. This will end badly - for the USA.
The Palmetto Cynic , 52 minutes ago linkonly bc ppl in the usa are pushing it that way
no average american benefits from international trade unless the product is unattainable state side. if we can grow it, we should. if we can make it, we should. excess can be sold outside the nation but since everything has been weaponized, we are the ones caught in the middle who suffer.
tariffs are good and we should use them to protect our industries. the problem is that our industry was destroyed before implementing tarrifs.. that part doesn't make sense and all of our major corporations have sold out anyways, further screwing john q public because lets be real, companies are out for profit and shareholder return, not protecting employees and consumers. so they could care less where its being made / sold as long as they see their bottom line increase, no worries.
L00K0UTB3L0W , 34 minutes ago linkAnd if the US doing all of that internally was a good idea, someone would be building the manufacturing capacity as I type this....but they ain't.
L00K0UTB3L0W , 41 minutes ago linkproblem is big business doesn't want to pay it. it has always been that way. when the money system was put in place, business owners didn't like the idea of increased competition (less slaves and more company owners) and therefore they were given the ability to claim you for tax purposes, hence why anytime you take a job they want your SS#. investment in the past happened because of things that were to come in the future. the future in america from her current vantage is trans/post humanism with the idea of automation, human/machine integration and that leaves little room or interest in building $100m slave factories for working class people to grind away in
I am Groot , 1 hour ago linkchips have been made consistently in Malaysia, Taiwan and Korea for the better part of almost 25 years, not real sure how any of what you said is relative to current events. just syncrhonicity and morons like you saying dumb ****.
beemasters , 1 hour ago linkWow, the article is really insulting to the Chinese. Like building a smart phone for them was like landing on the moon or something. They steal everything from everyone anyways, so who cares what they build.......
fezline , 1 hour ago linkNow the only NSA backdoor to Huawei is completely shut.
porco rosso , 1 hour ago linkThis is why they are trying to ban Chinese hardware... not because they fear they are spying on us but because their govt mandated backdoors aren't installed on Chinese hardware. The US govt wants to ban their use because they can't spy on them... That is the real reason.
Asoka_The_Great , 1 hour ago linkUS is losing the technology race against China. In the first phase China copied the tech, now it is on par, and in five to ten years the murican chip manufacturers are out of business.
The point is this: the muricans are lazy bastards, most of the brain power is imported. They lived too long off the dollar reserve currency status, soon enough nobody will interested in that toilet paper anymore.
Anonymous IX , 1 hour ago linkTwo years ago, Donald *** Trumptard on behalf of his handler, the US War State/Dark State/Deep State , launched a world wide war against the Chinky company, Huawei, in order, to kill it.
But that failed spectacularly. Not only is Huawei not dead, but its revenue actually grown 24% in 2019.
Now, its smart phones, and 5G cell tower equipments are totally free of US components.
WHY IS THE US DARK STATE SO TERRIFIED OF HUAWEI'S 5G WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY?
The US Dark State/War State/Deep State, that is the NSA/CIA/Pentagon/MIC/MSM . . . etc has forced every western tech companies to install backdoors and malwares on their equipments, except Huawei. They have tried to force Huawei to install those NSA backdoors and malwares, in 2014, but the company categorically refused.
"The real issue is that nothing has changed since a 2014 report from The Register that Huawei categorically refuses to install NSA backdoors into their hardware to allow unfettered intelligence access to the data that crosses their networks.
All our emails, text messages, phone calls, internet searches, web browsing, library records, . . . etc, are recorded and stored by NSA/CIA's vast servers farms.
Now, Huawei is not only the leading 5G wireless provider, but it is the only one, so far. The other companies like Nokia and Ericsson are far behind.
5G is going to completely replace 4G and 3G. It is about 200 times faster than 4GLTE, in download speed.
What this means is that if the world adopts the Huawei equipments and standards, it will threaten to UNDO the US Dark State's vast global surveillance network.
This is what terrifies the US Dark State. Their vast Global Surveillance Network is the basis of its power, and tools to enslave mankind.
There is a very good reason, why the American Founding Fathers , enacted every measures, to protect our rights and privacy, so that we will not be controlled and enslaved by the tyranny of totalitarian government, which is already upon us, in the form of US Dark State/War State .
The US Dark State/Deep State/War State does not represent America. It is Un-American. It is not the American Republic founded by our Founding Fathers, and enshrined in the US Constitution.
Asoka_The_Great , 50 minutes ago linkMaybe so, Asoka. I think the Rothschild Clan plays both sides. They are in China. Some purport the family carrying that lineage is named Li.
The U.S. is slowly but surely being isolated for The Great Fall...when we lose world currency status. The Banking Cartel will evidently make huge money and gain enormous power once the U.S. collapses. China already has the massive surveillance state, lack of privacy, institutionalized social scoring, and workers' living cubes located on factory premises...so the Rothshilds are in love. Sigh. So much control!! So much degradation!!! They're in love!!!
"I think the Rothschild Clan plays both sides. They are in China. Some purport the family carrying that lineage is named Li."
They are trying hard to infiltrate China. But the Chinese banks and financial service firms are State Owned . They are hard penetrate. That is why they are using Donald *** Trump to launch the Mother of All Great Trade War , to force the Chinese to open up their financial sector for infiltration and plundering.
Plus, Chinese and westerner looks distinctively different. And so, they are trying the inter-marriage trick with the rich and powerful Chinese families.
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Dec 02, 2019 | crookedtimber.org
The theory behind this is one of strength reinforcing strength – the strengths of ubiquitous data gathering and analysis reinforcing the strengths of authoritarian repression to create an unstoppable juggernaut of nearly perfectly efficient oppression. Yet there is another story to be told – of weakness reinforcing weakness. Authoritarian states were always particularly prone to the deficiencies identified in James Scott's Seeing Like a State – the desire to make citizens and their doings legible to the state, by standardizing and categorizing them, and reorganizing collective life in simplified ways, for example by remaking cities so that they were not organic structures that emerged from the doings of their citizens, but instead grand chessboards with ordered squares and boulevards, reducing all complexities to a square of planed wood . The grand state bureaucracies that were built to carry out these operations were responsible for multitudes of horrors, but also for the crumbling of the Stalinist state into a Brezhnevian desuetude, where everyone pretended to be carrying on as normal because everyone else was carrying on too. The deficiencies of state action, and its need to reduce the world into something simpler that it could comprehend and act upon created a kind of feedback loop, in which imperfections of vision and action repeatedly reinforced each other.
So what might a similar analysis say about the marriage of authoritarianism and machine learning? Something like the following, I think. There are two notable problems with machine learning. One – that while it can do many extraordinary things, it is not nearly as universally effective as the mythology suggests. The other is that it can serve as a magnifier for already existing biases in the data. The patterns that it identifies may be the product of the problematic data that goes in, which is (to the extent that it is accurate) often the product of biased social processes. When this data is then used to make decisions that may plausibly reinforce those processes (by singling e.g. particular groups that are regarded as problematic out for particular police attention, leading them to be more liable to be arrested and so on), the bias may feed upon itself.
This is a substantial problem in democratic societies, but it is a problem where there are at least some counteracting tendencies. The great advantage of democracy is its openness to contrary opinions and divergent perspectives . This opens up democracy to a specific set of destabilizing attacks but it also means that there are countervailing tendencies to self-reinforcing biases. When there are groups that are victimized by such biases, they may mobilize against it (although they will find it harder to mobilize against algorithms than overt discrimination). When there are obvious inefficiencies or social, political or economic problems that result from biases, then there will be ways for people to point out these inefficiencies or problems.
These correction tendencies will be weaker in authoritarian societies; in extreme versions of authoritarianism, they may barely even exist. Groups that are discriminated against will have no obvious recourse. Major mistakes may go uncorrected: they may be nearly invisible to a state whose data is polluted both by the means employed to observe and classify it, and the policies implemented on the basis of this data. A plausible feedback loop would see bias leading to error leading to further bias, and no ready ways to correct it. This of course, will be likely to be reinforced by the ordinary politics of authoritarianism, and the typical reluctance to correct leaders, even when their policies are leading to disaster. The flawed ideology of the leader (We must all study Comrade Xi thought to discover the truth!) and of the algorithm (machine learning is magic!) may reinforce each other in highly unfortunate ways.
In short, there is a very plausible set of mechanisms under which machine learning and related techniques may turn out to be a disaster for authoritarianism, reinforcing its weaknesses rather than its strengths, by increasing its tendency to bad decision making, and reducing further the possibility of negative feedback that could help correct against errors. This disaster would unfold in two ways. The first will involve enormous human costs: self-reinforcing bias will likely increase discrimination against out-groups, of the sort that we are seeing against the Uighur today. The second will involve more ordinary self-ramifying errors, that may lead to widespread planning disasters, which will differ from those described in Scott's account of High Modernism in that they are not as immediately visible, but that may also be more pernicious, and more damaging to the political health and viability of the regime for just that reason.
So in short, this conjecture would suggest that the conjunction of AI and authoritarianism (has someone coined the term 'aithoritarianism' yet? I'd really prefer not to take the blame), will have more or less the opposite effects of what people expect. It will not be Singapore writ large, and perhaps more brutal. Instead, it will be both more radically monstrous and more radically unstable.
Like all monotheoretic accounts, you should treat this post with some skepticism – political reality is always more complex and muddier than any abstraction. There are surely other effects (another, particularly interesting one for big countries such as China, is to relax the assumption that the state is a monolith, and to think about the intersection between machine learning and warring bureaucratic factions within the center, and between the center and periphery).Yet I think that it is plausible that it at least maps one significant set of causal relationships, that may push (in combination with, or against, other structural forces) towards very different outcomes than the conventional wisdom imagines. Comments, elaborations, qualifications and disagreements welcome.
Ben 11.25.19 at 6:32 pm (no link)
This seems to equivocate between two meanings of bias. Bias might mean a flaw that leads to empirically incorrect judgements and so to bad decisions, and it's true that that type of bias could destabilize an authoritarian state. But what we usually worry about with machine learning is that the system will find very real, but deeply unjust, patterns in the data, and reinforce those pattern. If there's a particular ethnic group that really does produce a disproportionate number of dissidents, and an algorithm leads to even-more-excessive repression of that group -- I'm not sure why an authoritarian state would see a stability threat in that tendency.faustusnotes 11.26.19 at 1:00 am (no link)More generally, I think AI gets far too much of the billing in authoritarian apocalypse forecasts. Cheap, ubiquitous cameras, microphones, and location trackers are the real issue. If the state can track everyone's movements and conversations, then it can build a better Stasi even with crude, simple ai.
I'd just like to point out (re: the tweet in the original post) that the "Uighur face-matching AI" idea is bullshit invented by scaremongers, with no basis in fact and traceable to a shoddy reddit thread. The Chinese government is not using facial recognition to identify Uighur, and the facial recognition fears about the Chinese government are vastly overstated.Nathanael 11.26.19 at 6:10 am (no link)Australia's border control facial recognition software is far more advanced than China's, as is the UK's, and facial recognition is actually pretty common in democracies. See e.g. the iPhone.
The main areas in which China uses facial recognition are in verifying ID for some high cost functions (like buying high speed rail tickets), and it's quite easy to avoid these functions by joining a queue and paying a human. The real intrusiveness of the Chinese security state is in its constant bag searches and very human-centric abuses of power in everyday life in connection with "security". Whether you get stopped and searched depends a lot on very arbitrary and error prone judgments by bored security staff at railway stations, in public squares, and on buses, not some evil intrusive state technology.
Conversely, the UK is a world leader in installing and using CCTV cameras, and has been for a long time. Furthermore, these CCTV cameras are a huge boon to law-abiding citizens, since they act as both excellent forms of crime prevention (I have had this experience myself) and for finding serious criminals. The people responsible for the death of those 39 Vietnamese labourers in the ice truck were caught because of CCTV; so was the guy who murdered that woman on the street in Melbourne a few years ago.
Finally to address another point that's already been raised (sadly): China no longer harvests organs, and the 2019 report that says it does is a sham. The social credit system is also largely a myth, and nobody from China even seems to know wtf it is.
If you're going to talk about how state's work, and the relative merits of autocratic vs. democratic states and their interaction with technology, it's a really good idea to get the basic facts right first.
I'll add that John Quiggin's point that Xi has already lost control of the provinces is correct -- but it DOES threaten his position as dictator. Once the provincial governors know they can act with impunity, it is absolutely standard for the next step to be getting rid of that annoying guy who is pretending to be dictator. It may take a few years but Xi now has dozens of powerful insiders who know that he's a weakling. They'll bide their time but when he crosses too many of them they'll take him out. And if China doesn't shut down coal, he's going to look like a weakling internationally too, in a couple of years. This will create a new group of ambitious insiders with a different reason to take him out.Hidari 11.26.19 at 9:08 am (no link)Xi broke the "technocratic consensus" which was present after Deng, of central committee members who strove for competence and fact-based decision-making. That was a surprisingly effective type of junta government which led to lots of thinkpieces about whether authoritarian China would beat the democratic west. But it succumbed to the succession problem, like all authoritarian systems; Xi made himself Premier-for-life and the country is now exhibiting all the usual failures of authoritarian countries.
@11 Yes it's strange that allegations of Chinese use of facial recognition software is gaining so much traction at a time when the Trump regime is deliberately ratcheting up tensions with China to pursue nakedly imperial goals, when the objective facts of Israeli use of similar software, which the Israelis boast about ( https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/why-did-microsoft-fund-israeli-firm-surveils-west-bank-palestinians-n1072116 ) doesn't cause so much interest, at a time when the Trump regime has simple decreed that the Israeli invasion/colonisation of Palestine is 'legal under international law'.One of life's little mysteries I guess.
If we must talk about China could we at least bring it back to areas where we are responsible and where, therefore, we can do something about it?
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Nov 27, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Less than an hour after Trump once again paraded with yet another all-time high in the S&P...
... and on day 510 of the trade war, it appears the president was confident enough that a collapse in trade talks won't drag stocks too far lower, and moments after futures reopened at 6pm, the White House said that Trump had signed the Hong Kong bill backing pro-democracy protesters, defying China and making sure that every trader's Thanksgiving holiday was just ruined.
In a late Wednesday statement from the White House, Trump said that:
I signed these bills out of respect for President Xi, China, and the people of Hong Kong. They are being enacted in the hope that Leaders and Representatives of China and Hong Kong will be able to amicably settle their differences leading to long term peace and prosperity for all.
Needless to say, no differences will be "settled amicably" and now China will have no choice but to retaliate, aggressively straining relations with the US, and further complicating Trump's effort to wind down his nearly two-year old trade war with Beijing.
Trump's signing of the bill comes during a period of unprecedented unrest in Hong Kong, where anti-government protests sparked by a now-shelved extradition bill proposal have ballooned into broader calls for democratic reform and police accountability.
"The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act reaffirms and amends the United States-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992, specifies United States policy towards Hong Kong and directs assessment of the political developments in Hong Kong," the White House said in a statement. "Certain provisions of the act would interfere with the exercise of the president's constitutional authority to state the foreign policy of the United States."
The legislation, S. 1838, which was passed virtually unanimously in both chambers, requires annual reviews of Hong Kong's special trade status under American law and will allow Washington to suspend said status in case the city does not retain a sufficient degree of autonomy under the "one country, two systems" framework. The bill also sanctions any officials deemed responsible for human rights abuses or undermining the city's autonomy.
The House cleared the bill 417-1 on Nov. 20 after the Senate passed it without opposition, veto-proof majorities that left Trump with little choice but to acquiesce, or else suffer bruising fallout from his own party. the GOP.
Trump also signed into law the PROTECT Hong Kong act, which will prohibit the sale of US-made munitions such as tear gas and rubber bullets to the city's authorities.
While many members of Congress in both parties have voiced strong support for protesters demanding more autonomy for the city, Trump had stayed largely silent, even as the demonstrations have been met by rising police violence.
Until now.
The bill's author, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, said that with the legislation's enactment, the US now had "new and meaningful tools to deter further influence and interference from Beijing into Hong Kong's internal affairs."
In accordance with the law, the Commerce Department will have 180 days to produce a report examining whether the Chinese government has tried use Hong Kong's special trading status to import advanced "dual use" technologies in violation of US export control laws. Dual use technologies are those that can have commercial and military applications.
One other less discussed but notable provision of the Hong Kong Human Rights Act targets media outlets affiliated with China's government. The new law directs the US secretary of state to "clearly inform the government of the People's Republic of China that the use of media outlets to spread disinformation or to intimidate and threaten its perceived enemies in Hong Kong or in other countries is unacceptable."
The state department should take any such activity "into consideration when granting visas for travel and work in the United States to journalists from the People's Republic of China who are affiliated with any such media organizations", the law says.
* * *
In the days leading up to Trump's signature, China's foreign ministry had urged Trump to prevent the legislation from becoming law, warning the Americans not to underestimate China's determination to defend its "sovereignty, security and development interests."
"If the U.S. insists on going down this wrong path, China will take strong countermeasures, " said China's foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang at a briefing Thursday in Beijing. On Monday, China's Vice Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang summoned the U.S. ambassador, Terry Branstad to express "strong opposition" to what the country's government considers American interference in the protests, including the legislation, according to statement. The new U.S. law comes just as Washington and Beijing showed signs of working toward "phase-one" of deal to ease the trade war. Trump would like the agreement finished in order to ease economic uncertainty for his re-election campaign in 2020, and has floated the possibility of signing the deal in a farm state as an acknowledgment of the constituency that's borne the brunt of retaliatory Chinese tariffs.
Last week China's Vice Premier and chief trade negotiator Liu He said before a speech at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Beijing, that he was "cautiously optimistic" about reaching the phase one accord. He will now have no choice but to amend his statement.
In anticipation of a stern Chinese rebuke, US equity futures tumbled, wiping out most of the previous day's gains... Still, the generally modest pullback - the S&P was around 2,940 when Trump announced the Phase 1 deal on Oct 11 - suggests that despite Trump's signature, markets expect a Chinese deal to still come through. That may be an aggressive and overly "hopeful" assumption, especially now that China now longer has a carte blanche to do whatever it wants in Hong Kong, especially in the aftermath of this weekend's landslide victory for the pro-Democracy camp which won in 17 of the city's 18 districts.
"Following last weekend's historic elections in Hong Kong that included record turnout, this new law could not be more timely in showing strong US support for Hongkongers' long-cherished freedoms," said Rubio
The Palmetto Cynic , 1 hour ago link
Gonzogal , 32 minutes ago linkTrade wars are good and easy to win. LOL.
Fascal Rascal upended , 27 minutes ago linkThis is another attempt by the US to stop BRICS. They care NOTHING about HK, only its usefulness in the US war on Chinas growing importance in world trade.
sentido kumon , 41 minutes ago link**** trading with communists.
lift foot, aim, pull trigger.
but no no no... trading with communists brings jobs to sell cheap crap. oh what was I thinking.... cheap crap, jobs, and the richest of the rich get richer... my bad.
it ain’t like the commies are going to use the money to build up their military..silly me.
Gonzogal , 51 minutes ago linkOf course the obvious solution is to just let people choose whatever or whomever they want to associate with and be respected and left alone for their choice.
But no. We all have to live and abide by the wishes of other people bcuz of "unity" and ****.
This non sense is really getting tiresome.
Helg Saracen , 1 hour ago linkThis criticism from a country that just this week renewed the "Patriot Act" that has taken away Americans rights and increased spying on US citizens.
The US should get its OWN house in order BEFORE moves against countries that do the SAME THING THE US DOES!
The world is sick of this hypocracy!
He–Mene Mox Mox , 1 hour ago linkEh guys, you still do not understand that all this (not only China and Hong Kong) is a very big "elite" performance for ordinary people to keep you (the rest of the boobies) in subjection. It's like in boxing - contractual fights. Do you think world "elites" benefit from peace and order? You are mistaken - these guys have the world as death (the death of their Power and their Control). An example from the history of Europe - in the 18-19 and early 20th century, Europe only did what it fought. But the funny thing is that the monarchs (the real owners of Europe) were relatives among themselves. The First World War was popularly called “The War of Three Cousins” (English monarch, German Kaiser and Russian emperor). But the Europeans paid for the dismantling of relatives. Now the "monarchs" are bankers and your position has not changed, you changed only the owners after 1918.
Dzerzhhinsky , 1 hour ago linkProblem with Hong Kong is, it is dependent on China to survive. That is not only true for the most basic neccessities, but also as a port for international trade. However, in the last 25 years, Shenzhen and Guangzhou have built up their own trade hubs, which has pulled trade away from being concentrated in Hong Kong, and consequently more dependent on China. Our ideas of Hong Kong remaining an independent island nation isn't going to work for three reasons:
1. Without being a doorway to China, there is no other reason for its existence.
2. Hong Kong is indeed Chinese sovereign territory, that was taken away from it to be made into a trade colony by the British in 1841, under the Treaty of Nanking. The British gave up Hong Kong in 1997, under the 1984 signed Sino-British Joint Declaration, in which Britain agreed to return not only the New Territories but also Kowloon and Hong Kong itself. China promised to implement a "One Country, Two Systems" regime, under which for fifty years Hong Kong citizens could continue to practice capitalism and political freedoms forbidden on the mainland. So, when the year 2047 comes around, Hong Kong will be fully absorbed and integrated in a One Country, One system Chinese regime. In otherwords, Hong Kong's fate was already sealed in 1984, and there is nothing America can legally do about it.
3. Hong Kong still needs the basic neccessities from China to survive. Don't count on either the British or the Americans to provide it.
Yes I think getting the western financial institutions out of HK is the plan. I'm sure they appreciate the US doing this for them, but of course they could never admit that.
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Nov 25, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
psychohistorian , Nov 23 2019 6:37 utc | 58
Xi Jinping tells that bullshit little story about China's 5,000 year History, but the truth is really much more pragmatic: China doesn't aim to be an empire for the simple reason it learned from America's mistakes.
The CCP already knows that being the sole superpower is unsustainable and, in the medium term, goes even against its main objective, which is to establish a "moderately prosperous society" in China until 2030 (they consider the 2000s Belgium as the standard for "moderately prosperous").
Socialist China has shown, so far, an incredible capacity of learning from other nations' mistakes:
1) It correctly read the historical conjuncture of the late 1960s, by concluding that the historical cycle of socialist revolutions was over, and moved on to try to break the Cold War embargo in order to initiate a cycle of wealth production. They achieved that in 1972. This was when Mao Zedong was still alive and commanding China with absolute authority, so it's a myth China "freed itself" only when and because Mao died (1976);
2) It learned from the failed experiment of the Brazilian liberal dictatorship, by doing exactly the opposite of the Zona Franca de Manaus . The result was the creation of the Special Economic Zones, which allowed capitalist investment from abroad to come to China but in quarentene, and with technological transfer.
3) It learned from the trap the USSR fell, and used a peaceful geopolitical strategy. It avoided an arms race and was able to expand its allied nations portfolio and slowly tightened its grip over the American economy.
4) It learned from the the failure of Soviet socialism in producing very good quality consumer goods. It solved this problem by "opening up" for capitalist exploitation the sectors which produced and distributed consumer goods, without affecting the strategic sectors (defense, finance, natural resources, etc.).
5) It learned from the failure of the American empire of maintaining its status as the world's "lonely superpower" by not adopting a war culture in China and by being more tolerant with its neighbors. But that didn't mean they didn't consolidated position: military spending continues to go up and the Armed Forces continues to be modernized and under firm CCP control. The South China Sea is a "corridor of life" for the Chinese, so the CCP quickly, but in a peaceful manner, took control of it, very aware that it would probably cost the Vietnamese friendship. But that was the exception that proves the rule, an exceptional situation where the benefits were greater than the costs.
vk , Nov 23 2019 13:58 utc | 79
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Nov 25, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
karlof1 , Nov 22 2019 21:16 utc | 20
This isn't the only article I've read over the past several days suggesting China won't agree to a trade deal anytime soon. The following are amongst the reasons why:uncle tungsten , Nov 23 2019 8:09 utc | 68"China's trade has gradually steadied as the nation moves to explore third markets. 'A substantial decline in trade and a drastic fall in economic growth which some international observers were worried about didn't occur, pointing to the potential and resilience of the Chinese economy,' he went on to say.
"The US, for its part, has seen its current account deficit as a percentage of GDP shoot up from 2.9 percent to 3.2 percent. This suggests the trade war is failing to address the issue of the US' current account deficit, stressed Zhu, who is currently the Chairman of the National Institute of Financial Research at Tsinghua University. He added that, more worryingly, tariffs mean additional costs are put on US companies and consumers."
Evil Outlaw US Empire planners in their hubristic zeal to decouple from China's economy erred massively in thinking China would be the one harmed and come begging for a trade deal. Instead, China's geoeconomic strategy is clearly working and is more potent than what the Empire can bring to the table--Oops! China can now play Trump.
Peter AU1 #64Peter AU1 , Nov 23 2019 8:20 utc | 69psychohistorian 63
I see Trump's envoy Kissinger is standing next to Xi. Seems like Trump is trying to cook something up with Kissinger regularly on the scene when it comes to Russia and China.Interesting that Kissinger is there . Steve Pieczenik takes the very strong view that Pompeo is a dead man walking. Worth every second of his five minute discourse . What I like about Steve and his various takes on people of note is that he assassinates them immediately and intensely with a quick turn of phrase.
uncle tungstenKissinger was also Nixon's envoy. He engineered the split between China and the Soviet Union amongst other things. China and Russia's current leadership though may be above Kissinger's pay grade.
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Nov 15, 2019 | www.asiatimes.com
Numbers show joke is on the US, not Huawei US ban lit a fire under Huawei, seen taking lead in smartphones and awash in cash as bonds trade at a premium
By Umesh Desai
Unlisted Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies was made an international pariah by US regulators earlier this year after a ban on buying key parts and on access to crucial markets.
You think that sounded the death knell for the company? Think again.
This week, Huawei announced a US$286 million bonuses bonanza to its employees . Its bonds continue to trade above par, and its cash balances are massive. Hardly the signs of a company struggling under sanctions.
The company has repeatedly denied US allegations that it is a front for the Chinese government – the justification Washington cited for banning US companies from using Huawei-manufactured gear.
Huawei is the world's biggest telecom equipment maker and it's the second biggest smartphone maker.
According to data from International Data Corporation, smartphone shipments in the July-September quarter rose 18.6% to 66.6 million, just behind global leader Samsung's 78.2 million.
"Huawei has been gaining market share in China and overseas despite US trade war frictions and may become the leading smartphone maker in the next two quarters," said Nitin Soni, director of corporate ratings at Fitch Ratings.
He said telcos across emerging markets, which are facing capital expenditure pressures and limited 5G business viability in the short term, may be willing to buy Huawei's 5G equipment given it is cheaper and has better technology than European counterparts.
It's not just Soni. Industry leaders also acknowledge Huawei's quality standards .
Indian telco Bharti Enterprises' chairman Sunil Mittal said recently, for example, "I can safely say their products in 3G and 4G that we have experienced are significantly superior to Ericsson and Nokia. I use all three of them. "
Indeed, the bond-market performance of the unrated, unlisted company confirms Huawei's strength. Its dollar-denominated bonds traded in global markets are changing hands at above par, indicating bond investors are confident about the company's cash position and liquidity situation.
Its bonds due 2025, which pay a coupon of 4.125%, are trading at a price of $104 while the holder would only get $100 at maturity. The premium would be compensated by the annual coupon, which would reduce the yield. The bonds are currently yielding 3.4% compared with the 4.25% yield at the time of the issuance. In price terms the bonds have rallied from $99 in 2015 to $104. Prices move inversely to yields.
The financial highlights also betray no signs of weakness. The company has a cash hoard of $39 billion and generates $10 billion from operations each year.
So, in fact, the US ban on Huawei may be helping the company.
"A ban on US companies such as Google to supply software to Huawei may lead to faster innovation by Huawei to develop its own operating system and chips," said Soni.
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Sep 28, 2019 | www.unz.com
The men of Qi presented the government of Lu with a troupe of singing girls. Ji Huanzi accepted them and for three days failed to appear at court. Confucius left the state . Analects
Everywhere, since ancient times, peole have feared government corruption for, unlike war or fraud, corrupt policies cripple nations for centuries. No society has suffered more grievously fromnor waged more protracted war againstofficial corruption than the Chinese. Today however, though the story not over, it is nearing a goal that could make them the envy of the world and, like most Chinese stories, theirs is a long one.
Corruptionnepotistic, pecuniary, blatant, discreet, major and minorhas been subverting governments since governments were invented. Roman politicians were scandalously corrupt, Christianity failed to improve them, and their legacy of official impunity, bribery, influence peddling, patronage, nepotism and cronyism, electoral fraud, embezzlement, kickbacks, unholy alliances, and involvement with organized crime afflicts us today and we have become numb to it.
China, by contrast, has often enjoyed honest governments and upright officials have been dear to Chinese hearts for millennia. On May 5, 278 BC, after the King of Chu ignored his warnings about official corruption, State Minister Qu Yuan [1] Qu Yuan, 340-278 BC, was a Chu kingdom official and government minister who wrote some of the greatest poetry in Chinese history. drowned himself in the Miluo River in protest. On that day ever since, Dragon Boats renew their search for his body. Great Confucians like the The Hongwu Emperor [2] From Huáng-Míng Zǔxůn (Instructions of the Ancestor of the August Ming), admonitions left to his descendants by the Hongwu Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, founder of the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644). fought corruption tirelessly:
Had I thoroughly eradicated corrupt officials in addition to those already imprisoned I would have been dealing with two thousand men from just two prefectures, men with no useful occupation who used my prestige to oppress people. No-one outside government knew how wicked they were, so everyone said my punishments were harsh, for they saw only the severity of the law and didn't know that these villains had used the government's good name to engage in evil practices. In the morning I punished a few and, by evening, others had committed the same crimes. I punished those in the evening and next morning there were more violations! Although the corpses of the first had not been removed others were already lined up to follow in their path, day and night! The harsher the punishment, the more violations. I didn't know what to do, but I couldn't rest. If I was lenient the law became ineffectual, order deteriorated, people thought me weak and engaged in still more evil practices. If I punished them, others regarded me as a tyrant. How could anyone lead a peaceful life in such circumstances? Really, my situation was dreadful.
Confucians fought corruption more effectively than the Romans, partly because of public participation. The people retained the right to withdraw the Mandate of Heavenand, according to the constitution, still doand many governments met grisly ends when they failed to honor the Four Principlespropriety, justice, honesty, and honoror their officials lacked the Eight Virtuesloyalty, filial piety, benevolence, love, integrity, righteousness, harmony and peace.
From the earliest days, officials transferred to provinces were forbidden to bring their parents lest their needs conflict with the Emperor's. They were rotated every three years and, after each rotation, their successors were encouraged to report discrepancies for fear that they be blamed for them. Palace officials were regularly moved between departments and the seriously corrupt were strangled and their families sold into slavery.
Every Chinese, from humble farmers to eminent politicians, knows this history and understands that promoting honest men to leadership is the way to prevent corruption. Many still living saw how a century of chaos devastated public morality, as Mao observed during a 1950 anti-corruption drive, "Today, you can buy a branch secretary for a few packs of cigarettes, not to mention marrying a daughter to him." Mao's slogan, "The masses have sharp eyes," encouraged people to report wrongdoing and corruption fell dramatically. His insistence on merely shaming corrupt officials worked because, says Sydney Rittenberg [3] An old friend of the party assesses China's new leaders. Rob Schmitz. Marketplace. November 19, 2012 . "Nobody locked their doors. The banksthere was a local bank branch on many, many cornersthe door was wide open, the currency was stacked up on the table in plain sight of the door, there were no guards and they never had a bank robbery, ever."
As its accomplishments demonstrate, postwar China was free of corruption at the policy-making level but, especially during the forty year Reform and Opening, lower level corruption flourished. Anticipating this in 1980, planners redesigned officials' incentives so that bribers would effectively be rewarding them for expediting the plan, says Yukon Huang [4] Yukon Huang was the World Bank's Director for China. The Diplomat , "The system countered the growth‐inhibiting aspects of corruption by setting investment and production targets that gave local officials incentives to promote expansion. It fostered a unity of purpose so that, even when corruption flourished, the collaborators still made growth the guiding principle of their actions. This was reinforced by competition between localities to meet targets and support productivity‐enhancing economic reforms. The competitive element helped curb waste and ensured a modicum of efficiency despite the high degree of state intervention in commercial activities." Sometimes though, as throughout Chinese history, things got out of hand.
Acting on a tipoff about smuggling, Beijing secretly sent detectives to Xiamen Port in 1999 but the smugglers, tipped off, set fire to the investigators' hotel and killed them as they slept. On national television the next day, Premier Zhu Rongji declared war and ordered a hundred coffins, "Ninety-nine for the crooks and one for me." Detectives from across the country converged on the city and what they found staggered them: four million tons of imported diesel fuel had bypassed customs in just two years. They tracked hundreds of suspects, locked escapees in a local hotel with armed guards on each floor, and spent three years unravelling a case so complex that the customs files alone would be higher than a ten-story building. The gang had bribed the vice-minister of Public Security, Li Jizhou, through his wife and daughter, and Li and thirteen others were sentenced to death, his wife to thirty months in prison and three hundred officials were tried for aiding or abetting the criminals. The ringleader, farmer-turned-smuggler Lai Changxing, fled to Canada, was extradited, and jailed for life in 2009.
After ten years of economic free rein the economy was booming but critics complained of endemic corruption, forgetting that the cycle of alternating liberal and conservative policies is as old and predictable as the moon. Rapid growth had solved many problems but a new cycle was presaged by a nepotism scandal, a form of corruption to which family centric China is uniquely vulnerable. Emperor Wu of Han curbed nepotism by examination in the second century BC and sixteen centuries later, of two-hundred seventy-nine senior officials whose family histories we know [5] China's Meritocratic Examinations and the Ideal of Virtuous Talents. Xiao, H., & Li, C. (2013). In D. Bell & C. Li (Eds.), The East Asian Challenge for Democracy: Political Meritocracy in Comparative Perspective: Cambridge University Press. , fewer than half had forebears in government (by 2018, it was one-sixth).
In 1985 Bo Xilai, son of a Revolutionary Immortal and Xi Jinping's schoolmate, had ignored his father's pleas to stay out of politics, "You know nothing of the sufferings of ordinary people and just want to capitalize on my name." Xilai cultivated a charismatic image, was named one of Time's Most Influential People, rose rapidly to provincial governor and publicly campaigned for a cabinet position. But, as conservative scholar Cheng Li said at the time, "Nobody really trusts him. A lot of people are scared of him, including several princelings who are supposed to be his power base." Michael Wines wrote that, though he possessed prodigious charisma and deep intelligence, "He possessed a studied indifference to the wrecked lives that littered his path to power Mr. Bo's ruthlessness stood out." With the help of Justice Minister Zhou Yongkang, Bo had even wiretapped President Hu.
Despite considerable internal resistance, Vice Premier Wu Yi, the nation's highest woman official, demanded an open investigation and a 2012 trial revealed that Bo owned expensive properties around the world and that his wife had murdered a British agent. They were jailed for life and joined a long line of disgraced elites like the grandson of China's Head of State and founder of the Red Army, Zhu De, who was executed for rape, and Yan Jianhong, wife of Guizhou's powerful Party Secretary, who was executed for corruption.
With prosperity assured, and elite corruption confronted, Congress anointed Xi Jinping, the most honest, competent official of his generation, to succeed President Hu. In its first year, Xi's anti-corruption campaign saw ten thousand officials passed over for promotion for concealing information and one-hundred thirty-thousand demoted or disciplined for making false declarations. By 2016, prosecutors had charged sixty-three senior officials and ministers with corruption, released confessions from fifty-seven thousand Party members who made restitution and accepted demotions and seen Yunnan's corrupt Party Secretary, Bai Enpei, sentenced to death. By 2018, anti-corruption squads had investigated 1.3 million bureaucrats, filed a million court cases, issued one hundred thousand indictments, captured thousands of overseas fugitives and jailed or executed one-hundred twenty high-ranking officialsincluding five national leaders, twelve generals, a dozen CEOs and Sun Zhengcai, former Chongqing Party chief, who was sentenced to life in prison for taking huge bribes. After a 2019 industrial explosion in Tianjin killed one-hundred sixty-five people, the magistrate found that petty bribery had led to weak code enforcement, sentenced the responsible official to death, and jailed forty-nine of his colleagues.
Graft investigators unannounced inspections now resemble elite athletes' doping tests. An Anhui inspection team telephoned an official four times between 7:31-7:35 one evening about his poverty alleviation efforts. He was showering and, when he failed to answer, they reported him for obstruction and moved to dismiss him. Happily, through social media, the public came to his defense and he was exonerated.
Knowing that that ten percent of their statements will be audited, even deputy county officials now report their marital status, overseas travel, criminal record, wages, other earnings, family properties, stocks, funds, insurance and investments. If they refuse to answer questions, or collude with, or protect accomplices, they are detained immediately.
Bureaucratsespecially those with leadership ambitionsendure increasing scrutiny as they advance, says Zhao Bing Bing [6] Daniel Bell and Zhao Bing Bing, The China Model. , "The selection criteria are: a person must have 'both ability and moral integrity and the latter should be prioritized [7] The same wording as the Chief Censor used in the Tang Dynasty. .'" Midlevel officials must report their own assets and those of their parents, wives, children, children's spouses and cousins, children from previous marriages, children born out of wedlock and foster children. They must report their income, savings, real estate, stock portfolios, insurance policies, unit trusts, bonds, assets in overseas accounts and, "Income shall include salary and various bonuses, allowances, subsidies, and payment you receive from lectures, writing, consultation, reviewing, painting and calligraphy." Says a scion of a prominent family:
I am a Party Member in China and all my family are Party members. What I think of Xi is that the life is really changing after he came to power. A relative of mine works for the government as a vital governor in my city Chengdu (which is a big city like BeiJing or ShangHai), then all my family people are like in the hierarchy of privilege. We pay nothing when go out for dinner, the Party pays. We pay nothing for filling in oil, the Party pays. It seems like we don't need to pay for anything with our salaries, cause either the Party pays, or someone will pay for us (who wants to flatter us). I smoke the best, I drink the best, sometimes I even drive without license when drunk, because I fear no one.
In past times, yes we did have privilege everywhere, I felt so arrogant to be superior to others that's also true. But the problem is, there is a tradeoff. We drank quite a lot of alcohol to show respect to others, we had to accept bribes even we know it's risky, cause we have to consider about our clan (like the interest of my boss). We had to do some many things we don't want to do, that's the rule of living in Party, care about the interest of Clan more than your own. That's how we united. We have to fear a lot of threats from ordinary people, colleagues, and bosses. We cannot keep our own passports, Party keeps it in case of we flee.
But life changed after Xi came to power, he did real things on anti-corruption. No one dare to present gifts to governors and the abuse of public funds is strictly monitored. The Party took back the public cars from my family and even we have to pay for the parking fee now! But..my family and I are actually happy with this, we are thankful to President Xi. Cause he seems like dragging China to a healthier future. My relatives don't need to go out for dinner with other governors as social intercourse daily, they don't need to drink so much on the table. And they start to learn to pay for the bill by turns, cause the Party will no longer do this for them. They start to learn how to take bus or metro. That's good, actually. People start to think about what kind of lifestyle is called 'healthy,' they are more like human now, no longer some conceited stupid with expanding power. That's how our life changed after Xi came.
Senior ministers' lives have become excruciatingly transparent. Their private activities are scrutinized and their children must adopt assumed names to avoid influence-seekers. Their meetings must have third-party observers as one-on-one appointments are taken as evidence of impropriety. A record of excessive, or poor quality, government debts is treated as prima facie evidence of corruption and automatically investigated. Senior officials are audited annually after retirement, remain responsible for the consequences of all their decisions until the day they die and, even then, clawback provisions apply.
Xi invited amateur corruption fighters to join the campaign and Beijing publishes a monthly scoresheet. Citizens text tips and complaints to the Rules and Discipline Committee (founded in the Tang Dynasty) at #12388 and often post accusations and photographs of evidence on social media and request additional witnesses. Social media have made the masses' eyes sharper. Netizens scrutinizing a news photograph noticed the work safety boss of Shaanxi province grinning broadly as he assessed the twisted wreckage of a bus and a methanol tanker following an accident that left 36 people dead. They spotted his expensive timepiece and their tipoff and subsequent investigation sent Yang Dacai, Brother Watch, to jail for fourteen years for taking a million dollars in bribes.
Today visitors burn incense at the shrines of great corruption fighters, the battle with official corruption still accounts for half of all Chinese dramas, and millions watch TV dramas about 'Justice Bao' Zheng, the incorruptible Prefect of the Capital in 1000 AD. A popular TV series, 'In the Name of People,' depicts current-day intra-Party power struggles in the fictional city of Jingzhou. There a prosecutor and a handful of honest local officials help laid-off workers protest a corrupt land deal, foil corrupt bureaucrats sabotaging an arrest warrant, and stop fake police bulldozing honest citizens' homes. The show's writers say they have no shortage of material.
The anti-corruption campaign has been immensely popular and, by any measure, successful. In 2018, eighty-three percent of Chinese said the government runs the country for everyone's benefit and ninety-three percent said they trust itfigures rivaling Switzerland's and Finland's. But it was just a prelude to what will probably be Xi's most memorable contribution to Chinese history, the creation of the National Supervision Commission [8] The National Supervision Commission was formed at the first session of the 13th National People's Congress in 2018 and absorbed the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China. .
Until 2018, anti-corruption work was shared by the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention, which recommended anti-corruption policies and handled international anti-corruption coordination. The Supreme People's Procuratorate investigated various kinds of malfeasance. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection enforced party loyalty, anti-graft, ethical and Party lifestyle requirements among civil servants and leading officials who are Party members, but turned criminal evidence over to the state for prosecution. The Ministry of Supervision, MOS, supervised civil servants who were non-Party members, investigated graft, misappropriation of public funds and other duty-related violations.
The Commission subsumes their functions into an independent, fourth arm of government that ranks with the Supreme Court and the Department of Justice. As the most powerful such agency on earth, it employs legislation, digital technology (including face recognition and AI), the sharp eyes of the people, and great investigative powers. With the goal of making corruption impossible, it centralizes all anti-corruption processes and exercises authority over all civil servants within and outside the Party, the government, the People's Congresses, the local supervisory commissions, the people's courts and procuracy, the People's Congresses, the eight democratic parties, federations of industry and commerce, and everyone who works in, or consults for, organizations managing public affairs. With extensive powers to interrogate, search, wiretap, detain suspects and freeze their assets, its writ extends to managers of state owned enterprises, state educational, scientific, research, cultural, health care, sports, and similar agencies, think tanks, village and urban residents committees, and 'all other personnel who perform public duties' and oversees provincial, city, and county level anti-corruption agencies.
Congress appoints the Commission's senior staff and Yang Xiaodu, its first director was, like Xi, a sent-down youth who performed manual labour in Anhui province during the Cultural Revolution. Staff need not be Party members but they can never work in another arm of government for the rest of their lives. The Commission is a political, not administrative body, and is exempt from the extensive procedural and substantive constraints on administrative organs like the police. Though the law requires staff to pay compensation 'in accordance with law' for infringing people's lawful rights and interests, it does not provide a right of further recourse through the courts, but does permit targets to appeal to higher-level organs for re-examination of the Commission's decisions and to challenge unlawful conduct like prolonged detention.
If the Commission comes even close to its goal of making corruption impossible, grateful citizens will credit Confucius and the First Emperor for limiting political power to a single lifetime and confining it to those who demonstrate both honesty and intelligence. They will credit the present dynasty for testing officials in the wilderness and imposing extraordinary transparency, themselves for their unwillingness to tolerate corruption, and Xi Jinping for creating the most powerful corruption-fighting agency in history. Looking back only ten years, it is difficult to believe that corruption in China is on track to rival Singapore's by 2021.
* Corruption in Eighteenth-Century China. Nancy E. Park. The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 56, no. 4, 1997.
Notes
[1] Qu Yuan, 340-278 BC, was a Chu kingdom official and government minister who wrote some of the greatest poetry in Chinese history.
[2] From Huáng-Míng Zǔxůn (Instructions of the Ancestor of the August Ming), admonitions left to his descendants by the Hongwu Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, founder of the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644).
[3] An old friend of the party assesses China's new leaders. Rob Schmitz. Marketplace. November 19, 2012
[4] Yukon Huang was the World Bank's Director for China. The Diplomat
[5] China's Meritocratic Examinations and the Ideal of Virtuous Talents. Xiao, H., & Li, C. (2013). In D. Bell & C. Li (Eds.), The East Asian Challenge for Democracy: Political Meritocracy in Comparative Perspective: Cambridge University Press.
[6] Daniel Bell and Zhao Bing Bing, The China Model.
[7] The same wording as the Chief Censor used in the Tang Dynasty.
[8] The National Supervision Commission was formed at the first session of the 13th National People's Congress in 2018 and absorbed the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China.
FatPanda , says: September 26, 2019 at 7:28 pm GMT
Great article.d dan , says: September 26, 2019 at 8:04 pm GMTIs that "law breaking" chart from Jeff Browns "China Rising" book? The name has changed?
One salient difference between the Chinese and the Western concept of corruption is the role of laws. For people in the west, the definition of corruption is strongly tied to, and in fact mostly defined through laws. To put it very crudely: anything legal is not corruption, and vice versa (i.e. all corruption is illegal).Muggles , says: September 26, 2019 at 9:40 pm GMTIn China, there is an additional emphasis of the moral aspect and it is less constrained by laws. An immoral action, even if it is legal, may still be considered a corruption by the Chinese society. For example, if a relative of Xi would to give a speech, and then received an exorbitant fee, it probably would be considered a corruption in China. However, in US, this is perfectly legal (and a reason many ex-politicians and ex-government employees become very rich) and it won't be considered a corruption.
There is really no right or wrong in either approaches. Both contains their pros and cons. The Western way has the advantage of transparency that make it easier to follow. But it favors the rich and powerful people who can find loopholes and workarounds to the laws. It also has the disadvantage of difficulty in keeping abreast with advances and changes of society and technologies . The Chinese way has the advantage of flexibility to meeting the moral standard and demands from the people, but may become confusing and uncertain for many people like businessmen or foreigners.
In case you hadn't noticed from prior postings, "Godfree Roberts" is a fake name for a CCP propaganda writer who scours the Internet for things to promote official views for, such as this absurd piece.SteveK9 , says: September 26, 2019 at 9:41 pm GMTThe stilted prose and logic is evident. His stuff is full of charts and graphs which magically appear on his computer, unlike yours or mine. Much of that might be "true" in the sense of basic historical writings, but selectively edited. Current Chinese leader Xi here is extolled as chasing "corruption" away. Ha!
The CCP knows corruption/graft, etc. is poison to their authoritarian one party state dictatorship. It is endemic in all such states. So periodically there are huge purges, trials, executions, etc. and a new set of stooges are risen up. Some get the message, most just bow humbly and wait for the storm to pass. It is as old as China. Of course government corruption is hardly unique to China. But in places where party leaders can be voted out (not merely a few shot for effect) it can be cleaned out periodically. Chinese are wisely quiet and cynical about this.
Meanwhile Mr. "Roberts" probably earns a very nice salary doing this work. Maybe even teaches English and propaganda messaging part time. Billions are spent censoring the Internet there and creating rosy statistics. Some gullible foreigners buy into that. Fair enough. Every State has its hired liars and propaganda artists. But China has really set the mark for its effort.
Just avoid going there and saying anything negative. Their prisons are not like ours.
What mechanisms are in place to keep this from going too far? That is, accusing someone for personal reasons, for example, to further one's own career.Anonymous [419] Disclaimer , says: September 26, 2019 at 9:53 pm GMTI thought Bo Xilai was a maoist and so was Zhou Yongkang, both also had countryside experiences similar to Xi Jinping, and Bo Xilai as mayor of Chongqing was very much aligned with Maoists and worked on rehabilitating the memory of the cultural revolution.Tusk , says: September 26, 2019 at 11:18 pm GMTI have viewed Xi Jinping with more suspicion because his family has a lot of wealth and he sent his daughter to Harvard. He also did not agitate for rehabilitating the cultural revolution when it would have been more politically risky for him to have done so, like Bo Xilai did.
Xi Jinping isn't anywhere near the leftist Bo Xilai was.
Godfree did you communicate with Chinese who lived in Chongqing under Bo Xilai's mayorship, what did they say then? I recall the corrupt wealthy hating him and the poor loving him. let's not forget Bo Xilai also had anti-corruption anti-gang campaigns.
Svevlad , says: September 26, 2019 at 11:37 pm GMTI am a Party Member in China and all my family are Party members. What I think of Xi is that the life is really changing after he came to power
I wonder if the Government would have something to say if he spoke out against the party and against Xi? Considering that people have received jail sentences (of years) for calling Xi a steamed bun, and that Winnie the Pooh is banned because poor Xi can't handle light hearted criticism I think we all know the answers here.
This is the ultimate corruption that a society faces the inability to communicate freely and to criticise those accountable. Every Chinese citizen is under the CCP Yoke regardless of how this CCP shill wants to spin it.
Corruption exists everywhere. It's just that it depends on what level it occurs. Heck, in the West, it's legal! Lobbying, they call it You can't bribe a cop to forgive a ticket, but goddamn you can bribe a politician to drive the country into the ground.peterAUS , says: September 27, 2019 at 2:05 am GMT@Muggles Pretty much.FatPanda , says: September 27, 2019 at 7:06 am GMT@Muggles I am a US expat, and happen to live in the China Mainland, and my impression is that most Chinese believe Xi Jinping is doing a great job. What do you care really? Do you have any dogs in this race?Godfree Roberts , says: September 27, 2019 at 9:47 am GMTTalk about propaganda. Tell me then whom are the following:
Falun Gong
Shen Yun
Epoch Times
New Tang Dynasty
China UncensoredThere is no doubt in my mind China is a threat to the hegemony of the West. I definitely prefer Western civilization. But if forced to choose between Chung Kuo and Babel 2.0, I'll take the former every time.
@FatPanda I think we both got it from the same source.Godfree Roberts , says: September 27, 2019 at 10:11 am GMT@Muggles It's not often someone gets so many things wrong in such a tight space. Congratulations.Godfree Roberts , says: September 27, 2019 at 10:21 am GMTI've published at least six books, none about China, my bio is all over the place, and I run a business in under my own name.
If you want accurate information about China, stilted prose is inevitable. Real writers, professionals, are paid to lie about China. Anyone who tries to tell the truth is shunned, not only by our mainstream media, but by the PRC, which prefers to let its accomplishments speak for themselves.
I estimate that, since 1950, we taxpayers have spent $100 billion creating and disseminating lies about China$1.5 billion annually. Money well spent, if you're in the top 1%, because it convinces the masses that, in Margaret Thatcher's words, there is no alternative to our failing system.
CIA Director William Casey[1] confirmed this when he told President Reagan in 1981, "We'll know our disinformation campaign has worked when everything the American public believes is false." Carl Bernstein[2], of Watergate fame, revealed that four hundred journalists had 'secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency.' All major US media outlets cooperated, he said, including ABC, NBC, AP, UPI, Reuters, Newsweek, Hearst, the Miami Herald, and the New York Herald‑Tribune.
Udo Ulfkotte[3], Editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, says that no significant European journalist, including himself, was free of CIA influence. Singapore's Lee Kwan Yew[4] outlined the consequences:
The Philippines press enjoys all the freedoms of the US system but fails the people: a wildly partisan press helped Philippines politicians flood the marketplace of ideas with junk and confuse and befuddle the people so that they could not see what their vital interests were in a developing country. And, because vital issues like economic growth and equitable distribution were seldom discussed, they were never tackled and the democratic system malfunctioned. Look at Taiwan and South Korea: their free press runs rampant and corruption runs riot. The critic itself is corrupt yet the theory is, if you have a free press, corruption disappears. Now I'm telling you, that's not true. Freedom of the press, freedom of news critics, must be subordinated to the overriding needs of the integrity of Singapore and to the primacy of purpose of an elected government.
Says Ann Lee[5], "
A reporter and friend of Michael Massing[6] who worked at the Beijing office of The Wall Street Journal told him that the editors in Washington regularly changed material information and opinions in his articles. Given the twelve-hour time difference, by the time his stories went to press in the West, the editors had replaced all the Chinese interviews with statements from American talking heads who work at think tanks promoting anti-China perspectives."
The weird result of this enormous, expensive effort is that, while we were busy lying to ourselves about China, the Chinese were busy eating our lunch, and now it's too late. By 2021 every Chinese will have a home, a job, plenty of food, education, safe streets, health- and old age care. 300,000,000 urban Chinese will have more net worth and disposable income than the average American, their mothers and infants will be less likely to die in childbirth, their children will graduate from high school three years ahead of American kids and live longer, healthier lives and there will be more drug addicts, suicides and executions, more homeless, poor, hungry and imprisoned people in America than in China.
What's more, they'll be ahead of us in science and technologythey're already ahead in math, chemistry, engineering and computer sciencebecause they have 10x more geniuses and spend 3x more on R&D than we do.
They pulled it off because rubes like you believed the bs you read in our media and insulted anyone who tried to tell you the truth. Congratulations.
____________________________________________________________
[1] A direct quote, provided and authenticated by Barbara Honegger, White House Policy Analyst and Special Assistant to the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy in the first Reagan Administration, 198183, who was present at the briefing and confirmed it with other witnesses.
[2] "The CIA and the Media: How America's Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up." Carl Bernstein. Rolling Stone, 1977.
[3] Gekaufte Journalisten (Bought Journalists), Udo Ulfkotte. Kopp Verlag. 2014. The English language edition, Journalists For Hire: How The CIA Buys The News, has been suppressed.
[4] A Third World Perspective on the Press. RH Lee Kwan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore. C-SPAN, APRIL 14, 1988
[5] What the U.S. Can Learn from China: An Open-Minded Guide to Treating Our Greatest Competitor as Our Greatest Teacher, by Ann Lee, 2012
[6] Editor of The Columbia Journalism Review.@SteveK9 There are several mechanisms.Godfree Roberts , says: September 27, 2019 at 11:13 am GMTThe first is to do what Confucian states are always supposed to do: recruit your brightest sparks, promote the most honest, competent of them until the topmost are the very best you've got. As its track record demonstrates, the current dynasty has earned everyone's trust by doing that consistently.
The next step is making the process transparent: publish the rules, put an accountable person in charge of the processsomeone with a great deal to lose if they're perceived as being unfair or dishonest (interestingly, Rome's Chief Censor was also such a person) and China's current censor is one of the most admired people in the country.
Then, have a transparent appeals process so that everyone can watch issues being thrashed out.
It's a human and therefore, imperfect, process but people don't expect perfection of their leaders, just best effortsand that's what the PRC delivers.
@Anonymous Bo was very popular in Chongqing and people still point to the trees he planted and to the rapid progress they made under his administration.Godfree Roberts , says: September 27, 2019 at 11:18 am GMTBut that is a sine qua non in Chinese government. Even someone as high born as Bo can only hope for advancement if they show dramatic, tangible progress in their area of responsibility.
I suspect from his profile that Bo was a high functioning sociopath whose birth allowed him to bypass many of the filters in the system.
He is often spoken of as a 'rival' of Xi Jinping, but that is simply a Western projection. China's elite knew about Bo's liabilities for decades and one of the reasons Xi got the nod was that he ranked as high as Bo socially. Do you remember how Xi 'disappeared' for ten days following his promotion to the Peacock Throne? He was meeting with his and Bo's peerstheir age cohortto get their blessing on the cleanup he had planned.
@Tusk Nobody has suffered from calling Xi a steamed bun.Tusk , says: September 27, 2019 at 12:48 pm GMTHowever, Chinese don't call their leaders names because their relationship to officials is entirely different from our (Roman) relationship. Martin Jacques explains it well:
The Chinese state enjoys much greater legitimacy than any Western state. The Chinese treat the state with a reverence and respect that is more or less unknown in the West; and the reason clearly has nothing to do with democracy. In other words, a state's legitimacy cannot be reduced to the existence or otherwise of democracy: on the contrary, democracy is not necessarily the most important factor in a state's legitimacy and may, as in the case of China, be relatively unimportant. The underlying reason for the legitimacy of the Chinese state is that, as discussed earlier, it is seen by the people as the embodiment and guardian of Chinese civilization, enjoying, as a consequence, something akin to a spiritual significance. It follows that what would undermine the legitimacy of a government, the present one included, is a threat to the country's unity. The attitude of the Chinese towards the state, thus, is very different to that of Westerners. For the latter, the state is an outsider, a stranger, even an interloper, whose presence should, as far as possible, be limited and confined. This is most obviously the case in the United States, with those who identify with the Tea Party, for example, regarding the state as an alien body, but even in Europe it is viewed with varying degrees of suspicion. In China, in contrast, the state and society are seen as on the same side and part of the same endeavour: the state enjoys the status of an intimate and is treated like a member of the family, not just any member but the head of the family the patriarch himself. We can only understand the immense authority of the Chinese state in these terms, an authority which has been reinforced by the fact that, unlike in the West, it has had no serious rivals for over a millennium.
@Godfree Roberts https://international.thenewslens.com/article/65955klcTan , says: September 27, 2019 at 1:22 pm GMT
Huh@Mugglesd dan , says: September 27, 2019 at 4:12 pm GMTJeff J Brown has spoken to Godfree and the video is on youtube. I have seen the video myself.
Godfree stays in ChiangMai, Thailand.
@Godfree RobertsGodfree Roberts , says: September 27, 2019 at 10:57 pm GMT"The weird result of this enormous, expensive effort is that, while we were busy lying to ourselves about China "
At this stage, any one who still believes in the western propaganda about China is simply too brain-washed and not too smart for any cure. Excuse me, I should say "too dumb for any cure".
For example, Nathan Rich's recent video shows how media biased reporting of Hong Kong compare with Ukraine riots. The contrast can't be anymore stark:
@Tusk "Radio Free Asia reports .". RFA is a US Government propaganda outlet. 100% WMD, 24×7.Ber , says: September 28, 2019 at 2:19 am GMT@Godfree Roberts Here is a good analysis of how the main stream media (MSM) gang up to give propaganda, and how I wish they have objective comments about China or any country they do not like.Erebus , says: September 28, 2019 at 4:05 am GMTAll these so-called anti communist slant against countries, I suspect, have its origins in the Vatican. People seem to forget that they should bear false witness
@peterAUSTusk , says: September 28, 2019 at 4:20 am GMTAre you sharing the 10′ of 1″ pipe through which you view the world with Muggles? Are you aware that Muggles did nothing but add a few more feet to it?
People view the world through narratives, and the value of a narrative lies only in how closely it follows and "explains" the widest possible array of empirical facts. Muggles' ignores the vast majority perhaps even all of the facts.
Ergo, it renders neither yourself nor your readers any value to champion it. Why make the effort to propagate such an obvious failure? Have you never wondered why you lack the dignity and common sense to desist from promoting something whereof you would more usefully remain silent? Are you even aware of the shortfall?
@Godfree Roberts And anything the Chinese government puts out is 100% propaganda as well.Anon [279] Disclaimer , says: September 28, 2019 at 4:48 am GMTCorrupt Chinese have practically taken over the US West Coast and Northeast. There isn't anywhere you could go in LA, Bay Area or Seattle without encountering mandarin speaking people. 99.9% Chinese nationals in the US are corrupt. With a nominal per capita GDP of $8,600, the only people who could afford to emigrate or send their children abroad for education are the rich, and China is so corrupt, no one can get rich without being corrupt, either by taking bribes or giving them. These are the corrupt factory owners who leave behind polluted rivers and air for their countrymen to die from while they escape to greener pastures with their family, and the government officials they bribed to pollute at will.Ruckus , says: September 28, 2019 at 4:54 am GMTThe New York Times exposed some of them a few years back, it's only gotten worse since:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/16/world/asia/china-hunts-fugitives-accused-of-corruption-many-in-us.html
They are taking full advantage of the lack of extradition treaty btwn US and China.They are bribing the US congress to end the per country cap on EB5 visas, where 80% of applicants are corrupt Chinese. The House passed the HR 1044 bill a few months ago scrapping the H1b cap for India and EB5 cap for China. Now Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) is trying to get the same bill passed in the Senate. Chuck Grassley and Diane Feinstein tried to kill off the EB5 a few times, but Trump and SIL wouldn't let them. The Kushner family relies on EB5 money for their real estate development.
EB5 is the #1 get out of jail on the cheap card for corrupt Chinese. Many are now buying homes in the US and letting their high school and college age children live in those houses, sometimes 16 year olds who could barely speak English living in million dollar homes by themselves, attending our local high schools for free.
I know of a woman from China in my area who works for JP Morgan, who handles all rich clients from China. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the FBI shows up at her house one day and walks her out in handcuffs, for helping rich Chinese launder their money in the US. The US needs to deport every single last one of these disgusting corrupt pigs to let them go back to China and face trial.
Curious to see the author responding 6 times now (in only 20 posts) to commentors. Aren't the new site rules against this? It's a little off-putting to see an article author respond at all, not to mention that it buttresses Muggles's assertions.Anon [279] Disclaimer , says: September 28, 2019 at 4:55 am GMTinb4 Godfree's reply, lolz
China is now detaining family members of corrupt officials who return to China with US passports to lure the corrupt husband/father back to China:renfro , says: September 28, 2019 at 4:57 am GMT
https://www.facebook.com/ZeroHedge/posts/china-kidnaps-fugitives-american-wife-holds-hostage-in-secret-black-jail-httpsww/1929804460430049/Good for them. They need to work out a treaty with all countries to return their fugitives.
I have no reason to doubt Roberts.Anon [257] Disclaimer , says: September 28, 2019 at 5:04 am GMT
Years ago I read a news report on the execution of a Chinese manufacturing official who was bribed into buying some cheaper ingredient, I think it was, that turned out to sicken or poison people.
Maybe Roberts remembers that.Some executions or long prison terms for the corrupt in the US would be a good thing.
@klcTan Isn't Chaing Mai the headquarters of the Asian opinion heroin trade?aandrews , says: September 28, 2019 at 5:19 am GMTWow, the scale of the corruption kinda explains all the bizarrely rich ChiComs that took a powder to Vancouver, BC.Anon [279] Disclaimer , says: September 28, 2019 at 5:21 am GMT@d dan You are right the US is also very corrupt. The book Tailspin The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty Year Fall by Steven Brill is a great read. America is destroyed by its effed up laws, mostly crafted by Jewish lawyers, who basically built corruption into laws sanctioned by the Supreme Court through cases like Citizens United and Super PAC.peterAUS , says: September 28, 2019 at 5:40 am GMTThis country is destroyed by (((lawyers))). As Niall Ferguson said, we no longer have the rule of law, we have the rule of (((lawyers))).
Germany and the Scandinavian countries would consider our campaign financing and lobbying industry as corruption on a mass scale. Hitler lost the battle of WWII but won the war for Germany by ridding them of the Jews, until Merkel the idiot came along but that's another story.
@peterAUS Author's "remuneration" coming from the same/similar fund?!anonymous [159] Disclaimer , says: September 28, 2019 at 9:42 am GMT
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/23/opinions/gladys-liu-china-australia-opinion-intl-hnk/index.htmlUnited Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist Party, that is.
As
.The United Front, which is supported by considerable resources and a vast bureaucratic operation, was called one of his "magical weapons" by Chinese President Xi Jinping in September 2014. One of the objectives is to co-opt ethnic Chinese individuals and organizations in foreign countries
and
.Xi has delivered multiple speeches and made it formal policy to demand loyalty and commitment from diasporas who the Party refers to as the "sons and daughters" of China. The United Front is the apparatus of choice.
and
.In Australia, the majority of Chinese-language press are owned by entities with at least partial links to Beijing.
Now, that line of thought could go even further in this pub . but, let's skip that, for the moment.
Anyway, a good gig for sure.
I had a roommate in college who was from China. He pretty much said that if you know people in the government or have money you could get away with a lot. One of his parents was a customs official, and so he would talk about different things he planned on smuggling to China when he returned with no worries. This was in the late 90's, though.Realist , says: September 28, 2019 at 10:42 am GMT@d danRealist , says: September 28, 2019 at 10:50 am GMTAt this stage, any one who still believes in the western propaganda about China is simply too brain-washed and not too smart for any cure. Excuse me, I should say "too dumb for any cure".
Exactly right.
And speaking of media bias, Gordon Chang is one of the worst US anti-China propagandist there is he is never right.
No country can hold a candle to the US for corruption lying, greed, hypocrisy or hegemony.onebornfree , says: Website September 28, 2019 at 11:06 am GMTThe naivete displayed in this article concerning the unavoidable, true, core, fundamental nature of all governments everywhere,[past present, or future], is, sadly, very, very common in both East, West and all points between.nsa , says: September 28, 2019 at 11:17 am GMTReality fact: All governments are 100% corrupt, all the time.
Its impossible for them to be anything else, given the sources of their entirely unearned income.[see first quote below].
To make an exception in the case of modern China succeeds only in highlighting the extreme naivete and gullibility of the articles author. Either that [naivete/gullibility], or the author is just another communist party hack who has no idea [or doesn't care] about the extreme danger to all humanity that the communist "ideology" represents, and in particular, has zero idea about how centralized, top down economic systems all inevitably must "work", and what inevitably must/will happen to majority of the population in a country that enforces the idiotic, anti- free market, top-down economic policies of any of the various brands of collectivism, be those policies be labelled "communism", "fascism" ,"nationalism", "democratic socialism", or whatever. Hint: it's called "extreme poverty and enslavement".
Even the historical record of the 20th century vis a vis all forms of collectivism, [including that of Chinas' "great leap forward", is consistently ignored/ covered up.[ "That was then, this is now"!]
In "defense" of this author, I'll just remind myself that the very same false assumptions concerning the true nature of all governments are at the core of almost every Unz.com article I've read here in the last 6 months since I started reading this site. Indeed, the exact same false assumptions concerning the true nature of all governments are consistently evident in the articles by the sites owner, Ron Unz. Recently, I even experienced the pleasure of being banned by one author here [A. Karlin], for pointing out that his own revered "nationalism" was just another brand of socialism.
And so it goes .. :
"Because they are all ultimately funded via both direct and indirect theft [taxes], and counterfeiting [via central bank monopolies], all governments are essentially, at their very cores, 100% corrupt criminal scams which cannot be "reformed","improved", nor "limited" in scope, simply because of their innate criminal nature." onebornfree
"Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class." Albert J. Nock
"Why should any self-respecting citizen endorse an institution grounded on thievery? For that is what one does when one votes. If it be argued that we must let bygones be bygones, see what can be done toward cleaning up the institution of the State so that it might be useful in the maintenance of orderly existence, the answer is that it cannot be done; you cannot clean up a brothel and yet leave the business intact. We have been voting for one "good government" after another, and what have we got?" Frank Chodorov, Out of Step (1962)"Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure." Robert LeFevre
Regards, onebornfree
@d dan " ..media biased Hong Kong reporting ."Kal , says: September 28, 2019 at 11:25 am GMT
How would American cops react to punks tossing Molotov Cocktails at them? Arson is a felony but there would be no need for a trial just a coroner.@Godfree Robertson, What do you think the Chinese diaspora especially in Canada, U.S., and Australia do? The ones that hold foreign passports I mean. And my experience with Chinese people is they largely dislike the government, but have an extreme aggressive nationalism for their country which only manifests when a 外国人 says something. Because as far as I can tell Chinese rush to get out of China and you yourself don't seem to live there either. I personally don't doubt your claims that China will be better off than America, but why is there still a lot of emigration? Another question are you aware of any attempts or plans to fix the massive pollution problem? look forward from hearing back from you.melpol , says: September 28, 2019 at 12:15 pm GMTMy former employer had no use for corruption, even a paperclip was accounted for due to the office spy. We had only 20 employees and nobody dared badmouth the boss. My job was terminated when the office spy reported me taking home paper cups from the water fountain. My boss received his jobs from the local government by bribing a few politicians. But he demanded honesty from his staff.Anonymous [683] Disclaimer , says: September 28, 2019 at 12:38 pm GMT@onebornfree Reality fact: All you (((LoLbertarians))) are 100% pedo, all the time.Godfree Roberts , says: September 28, 2019 at 12:40 pm GMT"In short, we must face the fact that the purely free society will have a flourishing free market in children ." -Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) was the dean of the Austrian School of economics, a founder of lolbertarianism
@Tusk If propaganda is information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view , then the PRC doesn't put much out. 80% of Chinese trust it, compared to the 30% of us who trust our media.MikeatMikedotMike , says: September 28, 2019 at 12:44 pm GMTAnd remember, the Chinese are smarter, better educated and more widely traveled than us.
@FatPanda "What do you care really? Do you have any dogs in this race?"MikeatMikedotMike , says: September 28, 2019 at 12:49 pm GMTHe is offering thoughts on an article posted on an American website. Perhaps as an expat living in China you've become too accustomed to only viewing "approved" opinions.
I do find watching a presumably white guy, who's shtick is a weekly shilling for a foreign country, whining about treason particularly amusing.Anon [421] Disclaimer , says: September 28, 2019 at 12:52 pm GMTAnother drawn out piece from the guy who could not get rich in the capitalist usa and lives the good life in bang-cock thailand on social. But, whatever, china is for the Chinese and not for the anglo saxons; he is not allowed in but worships from afar.My 77 years as a participant observer tell me that corruption and criminality are endemic to any large human society so, therefore, utopianism is a pipe dream.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-china-miracle-is-over_3097301.html
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Nov 09, 2019 | www.asiatimes.com
America's misguided war on Chinese technology
By Jeffrey D Sachs November 8, 2019
The worst foreign-policy decision by the United States of the last generation – and perhaps longer – was the "war of choice" that it launched in Iraq in 2003 for the stated purpose of eliminating weapons of mass destruction that did not, in fact, exist. Understanding the illogic behind that disastrous decision has never been more relevant, because it is being used to justify a similarly misguided US policy today.
The decision to invade Iraq followed the illogic of then-US vice-president Richard Cheney, who declared that even if the risk of WMD falling into terrorist hands was tiny – say, 1% – we should act as if that scenario would certainly occur.
Such reasoning is guaranteed to lead to wrong decisions more often than not. Yet the US and some of its allies are now using the Cheney Doctrine to attack Chinese technology. The US government argues that because we can't know with certainty that Chinese technologies are safe, we should act as if they are certainly dangerous and bar them.
Proper decision-making applies probability estimates to alternative actions. A generation ago, US policymakers should have considered not only the (alleged) 1% risk of WMD falling into terrorist hands, but also the 99% risk of a war based on flawed premises. By focusing only on the 1% risk, Cheney (and many others) distracted the public's attention from the much greater likelihood that the Iraq war lacked justification and that it would gravely destabilize the Middle East and global politics.
The problem with the Cheney Doctrine is not only that it dictates taking actions predicated on small risks without considering the potentially very high costs. Politicians are tempted to whip up fears for ulterior purposes.
That is what US leaders are doing again: creating a panic over Chinese technology companies by raising, and exaggerating, tiny risks. The most pertinent case (but not the only one) is the US government attack on the wireless broadband company Huawei. The US is closing its markets to the company and trying hard to shut down its business around the world. As with Iraq, the US could end up creating a geopolitical disaster for no reason.
I have followed Huawei's technological advances and work in developing countries, as I believe that fifth-generation (5G) and other digital technologies offer a huge boost to ending poverty and other Sustainable Development Goals. I have similarly interacted with other telecom companies and encouraged the industry to step up actions for the United Nations' SDGs. When I wrote a short foreword (without compensation) for a Huawei report on the topic, and was criticized by foes of China, I asked top industry and government officials for evidence of wayward activities by Huawei. I heard repeatedly that Huawei behaves no differently than trusted industry leaders.
The US government nonetheless argues that Huawei's 5G equipment could undermine global security. A "back door" in Huawei's software or hardware, US officials claim, could enable the Chinese government to engage in surveillance around the world. After all, US officials note, China's laws require Chinese companies to cooperate with the government for purposes of national security.
Given the technology's importance for their sustainable development, low-income economies around the world would be foolhardy to reject an early 5G rollout. Yet despite providing no evidence of back doors, the US is telling the world to stay away from Huawei
Now, the facts are these. Huawei's 5G equipment is low-cost and high-quality, currently ahead of many competitors, and already rolling out. Its high performance results from years of substantial spending on research and development, scale economies, and learning by doing in the Chinese digital marketplace. Given the technology's importance for their sustainable development, low-income economies around the world would be foolhardy to reject an early 5G rollout.
Yet despite providing no evidence of back doors, the US is telling the world to stay away from Huawei. The US claims are generic. As a US Federal Communications Commissioner put it , "The country that owns 5G will own innovations and set the standards for the rest of the world, and that country is currently not likely to be the United States." Other countries, most notably the United Kingdom, have found no back doors in Huawei's hardware and software. Even if back doors were discovered later, they could almost surely be closed at that point.
The debate over Huawei rages in Germany, where the US government threatens to curtail intelligence cooperation unless the authorities exclude Huawei's 5G technology. Perhaps as a result of the US pressure, Germany's spy chief recently made a claim tantamount to the Cheney Doctrine: "Infrastructure is not a suitable area for a group that cannot be trusted fully." He offered no evidence of specific misdeeds. Chancellor Angela Merkel, by contrast, is fighting behind the scenes to leave the market open for Huawei.
Ironically, though predictably, the US complaints partly reflect America's own surveillance activities at home and abroad. Chinese equipment might make secret surveillance by the US government more difficult. But unwarranted surveillance by any government should be ended. Independent UN monitoring to curtail such activities should become part of the global telecommunications system. In short, we should choose diplomacy and institutional safeguards, not a technology war.
The threat of US demands to blockade Huawei concerns more than the early rollout of the 5G network. The risks to the rules-based trading system are profound. Now that the US is no longer the world's undisputed technology leader, President Donald Trump and his advisers don't want to compete according to a rules-based system. Their goal is to contain China's technological rise. Their simultaneous attempt to neutralize the World Trade Organization by disabling its dispute settlement system shows the same disdain for global rules.
If the Trump administration "succeeds" in dividing the world into separate technology camps, the risks of future conflicts will multiply. The US championed open trade after World War II not only to boost global efficiency and expand markets for American technology, but also to reverse the collapse of international trade in the 1930s. That collapse stemmed in part from protectionist tariffs imposed by the US under the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Act , which amplified the Great Depression, in turn contributing to the rise of Adolf Hitler and, ultimately, the outbreak of World War II.
In international affairs, no less than in other domains, stoking fears and acting on them, rather than on the evidence, is the path to ruin. Let's stick to rationality, evidence and rules as the safest course of action. And let us create independent monitors to curtail the threat of any country using global networks for surveillance of or cyberwarfare on others. That way, the world can get on with the urgent task of harnessing breakthrough digital technologies for the global good.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2019.
www.project-syndicate.org
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Nov 06, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Freudenschade said in reply to The Twisted Genius ... , 02 February 2017 at 10:26 PM
TTG,AEL , 02 February 2017 at 10:01 PMmy grandfather's property in West Berlin was maybe 700 yards from the wall. With binoculars, I could get a good view from my second floor bedroom. Of course the Berlin Wall was a much more modest border than the inner German one.
Arguably, after upgrades were started in the late 60's, the inner German border became a very effective barrier. One thing that made it effective (and mind you, it was a border keeping people in more than a border keeping people out) was the exclusion zone extending 5km from the border. Only people with special permits could live and work there.
In order to make the border more practical, entire villages were razed and parts of th physical border were located back from the actual border to avoid difficult terrain. Throw in the land mines, booby traps and 50,000 or so troops guarding about 870 miles of the inner German border, and it came to an effective barrier.
So I don't want to say we can't "seal" the Mexican border. But I think the expense in land seizures, manpower, and land mines is likely a lot higher for the 2000 miles of our southern border than the 15-20 billion estimated for its construction.
Bismarck says that politics is the art of the possible. Given the huge demand, stamping out drug running is impossible. For an adequate price, there will always be people willing to meet the demand. At best, you drive up the price and make successful runners incredibly rich.turcopolier , 02 February 2017 at 10:11 PMOh wait..
AELturcopolier , 02 February 2017 at 10:26 PM
Bismarck also said that genius lies in knowing when to stop. A near certainty of death would cause a lot of cartel leaders to think about it. pldilber Dogbertdilbert dogbert -> turcopolier ... , 02 February 2017 at 10:31 PMLike what? Sending an army of illegals? Declaring war? Nuclear attack? Smuggling drugs into the US? pl
Dean Baker bruited this idea: http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/a-trade-war-everyone-can-winThe Twisted Genius -> Freudenschade... , 03 February 2017 at 12:17 AM
"The alternative is simple: Mexico could announce that it would no longer enforce U.S. patents and copyrights on its soil. This would be a yuuge deal, as Trump would say."Freudenschade,Farooq said in reply to The Twisted Genius ... , 03 February 2017 at 08:56 PMI agree sealing the border would be exorbitantly expensive. This would include not just a big,beautiful wall and the manpower to watch over that wall, but a massive surveillance and security presence along the Gulf, Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The expense would be similar to the cost imposed on the home front during WWII. It will require widespread sacrifice, probably a progressive tax structure similar to what we had during WWII. Maybe even rationing. Would that make America great and please the great deplorable mass?
Colonel Lang's idea of killing all the drug cartel leadership wherever we find them for an extended period of time would definitely be a cheaper proposition. I would call it the Rodrigo Duterte plan. I think making sure a lot of bankers end up sitting in their big leather chairs with bullet holes in their heads would do much to hasten the success of this plan.
TTG,The Twisted Genius -> Farooq... , 04 February 2017 at 11:53 AMHave you read this? I am interested in your comments.
Thanks
Farooq,The point of the article is that a strategy of leadership decapitation of an organization, whether it be a drug cartel or a jihadist group, does not lead to the destruction of the organization. The original decapitation strategy was based on the premise that the targeted organization was strictly hierarchical and could not function without an intact hierarchy. In fact, most of these target organizations evolved into more distributed organizations. We weren't quick to see this because we are also wedded to the need for a robust hierarchy in our organization. This is where the article ends, but the story continued.
Our strategy also evolved in Iraq and Afghanistan. JSOC strike missions became more than checking faces off a static organizational chart as a hit list. Each strike became an information gathering mission. That information was quickly analyzed into "actionable intelligence" resulting in ensuing JSOC strikes and more information gathering. This evolved into a rapid cycle with often several strikes in a night. This strategy struct at the enemy's growing resiliency and distributed organization. This is the present state of the art in JSOC operations.
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Nov 06, 2019 | www.amazon.com
Globalism sounds like such a nice thing for many, it even has a nice ring to it! At least to the naïve, whom actually believe that if the world could just get together and work out its problems under one big umbrella, all would be great. I think most people would agree that true free trade, coupled with safeguards to protect American jobs would be fine. The corrupted globalism that this world has become nearly immersed in is a mechanism that, in reality, is intent on creating a one world corporate owned planet operated under a top-down, locked-down, political and economic management system backed up by coercion. Whew! That is a mouthful I agree! It will be run by a partnership of the top .001% of wealthiest elites and administered by the United Nations. International rules and laws for every single decision will nearly all come under the auspices the United Nations. This plan has been laid out in various United Nations publications and official policy.
President Trump has vowed to, and succeeded in some ways, to buck these one world globalists, not to say he hasn't treated them to overly generous tax breaks since he has been in charge! Not withstanding the prior, these one world globalists include even some of the most prominent lawmakers in Washington D.C. far too often. The entrenched snake sales people over at the White House lawmaking division are far too often part of the plan to decimate America whether they believe it or not. We can only hope that a large part of them are do not realize what the end-game is of this globalist cabal. Perhaps this is of course why we so often shake our heads in disbelief when they utter ideas and beliefs that sound so foreign to ears, anti-American and even scary!
So far, Pres. Trump seems to have accomplished about as much as any one president ever could accomplish when walking into a room of entrenched den of thieves! Washington is not going to be a part of solving the problems of globalism, for they and the globalists are in bed together. Part of the problem remains that the establishment agenda is overrun by statists who walk in lock-step with their leaders and party platforms even if corrupted. It is just too profitable for them to ignore. Yet, the truth is that statism has no sense of proportion. These sometimes well-meaning politicians, once they are put into power, knowingly or unknowingly become slaves to their corporate owners. This is corporatocracy, and it is unsustainable. The one world corporate pirates, comprising a collection of the largest 100 or so family dynasties, do in fact control approximately 90 percent of the wealth of the world, hidden inside a dark web of very complex multi-structured organizations and corporate nameplates. Such makes it very difficult, but not impossible to truly figure out who the real owners are behind the maze. This is perhaps the reason why I contend that President Trump, an outsider with a new direction for America, may be our last chance. Most of these types hate Trump because he is hitting them where it hurts on most fronts and is slowing down the globalist agenda!
Corporate socialism IS globalism. It is a growing and controlled oligarchy. As such, it affords both the supranational capitalists, world's governments and non-elected quasi governmental agencies to profit together as a baseball team would. Yes, working together with one unified grand vision for the profit and powers of both. Globalism is the name. We already see how nearly everything around us is becoming part of the so-called global order. These, creating quid-pro-quo systems of control over the entire world economies, whom create wars for profit, create inflation to inadvertently benefit themselves and enact so-called "free-trade partnerships" that portend to help creates jobs here at home, only succeed occasionally of creating low wage service jobs in large part in the parts of the world that the globalists venture with their self-serving con-game. Limiting competition, being on the inside, having power over others, this is what the global government and one world monopolistic corporations are all about. The free trade agreements offer all of its members to petition, (and usually get) allowances to get around many of the safeguards and traditional legal rules that used to be sacrosanct in world trade. Especially as to food processing. The move toward monopolization is perhaps the biggest motivator these have for supporting globalist (un)free trade agreements.
What the true elite globalists (who reside in both political parties in Washington and world power centers in particular) want is unbridled control over nearly everything in order to unite us into a global world of subservient slaves unto them. So, what's the answer?
It is easy to witness that the far leftists often do not divulge they are socialists at all. In recent years, this is changing, now that millions of young voters have been convinced by their colleges and mass media outlets that socialism IS the answer. In the past, no candidate would utter the word socialism for fear of many lost votes. Today, a surprisingly large percentage of politicians in government are onboard. We can easily spot them if we compare their voting records. Then compare them to the promises made when running for election! So, before you get too comfortable with politicians who come off as infectiously kind and compassionate while often using the words 'fairness', "world community", "social equality", "open borders", "free trade", "globalism", "social justice" and other such pleasantly attractive bleeding heart politicians using such catch-phrases, be careful. Although Democrats will more often than not fall into this category of unsung globalists, many on both sides of the isle fit the bill as well. Some more than others knowingly use these kind sounding platforms in order to garner votes from the gullible young in particular. History shows over and over again how gullible citizens can be duped into voting for someone they thought was a caring politician, then come to discover they voted for a hidden socialist or communist in fact. Although we can all agree on the responsibilities of our government as spelled out in the Constitution, our founding fathers warned the new country that we must beware of politicians who promise more than that great document promises.
Government / corporate partnerships, whether formal or consensual, create insanely profitable fortunes for their owners while too often screwing over not only Americans but the worlds taxpaying citizens and their industrialized countries as well. Who do you think the prime contractors are who build and supply trillions of dollars of military weapons to the huge, high testosterone American military machine? These war factories are largely owned by billion-dollar super elites whose huge goliath corporations very often operate under a duplicity of names that largely hides the true identities of the owners behind them. These true owners often use layers of sub-corporations operating under various, differing names and locations providing legal and illegal tax havens around the world. Apple pays zero US taxes for example using such a scheme. This is just one case amongst thousands. Often the tax havens are claimed are justified by the existence of a foreign post office box. Seldom are these caught or fined by our U.S. authorities. When they do occasionally get caught, the fines are typically just a miniscule part of the total savings they have accumulated over the past years.
With a little research we can find many of the same board members appearing again and again on the rosters of the quietly interconnected mega corporations. This creates the long-time problem of immoral collusions that often allow shifting of profits to other tax havens, allowing American profits to go untaxed and shifting the responsibility fully onto the American worker. Does it not make sense that a corporation that makes ridiculous record profits such as Apple and others do, that they should pay their share? This globalist mindset of the elites creates record profits at the expense of American workers and their spending powers.
Within our public "screwling system" as I call it, students are increasingly taught that "globalism" is a new religion of sorts, a "cure-all" for world discourse perhaps! Those with enough power to create massive changes in culture are behind the politically correct culture, the green movement and most other leftist power grabs. These are often the very same supra-national corporations and political kingpins who wish to undermine the America we remember, its legal system while creating a monopolistic economic and totalitarian one world state. It is wise to remember the confirmed beliefs and admissions o f the godfathers of the one world order. Of course I am speaking of the Rockefellers, J.P. Morgan and dozens more of the wealthiest families of the world whom have for centuries verifiably acted upon and talked of such plans. Their heirs, as well as the new titans such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos (Amazon fame), Elon Musk (Tesla) and other such billionaire or trillionaire types are nearly all on board vocally with a one world order system of governance. I will cover this much more further on.
For over 100 years, much of American education has been stealthily entrenched in anti-Western "cultural Marxism" propaganda and other damaging indoctrinations (as I document later). Public schools have long promoted the globalism lie, teaching such as the yellow brick road towards acceptance of a one world order that delivers utopia. It is hard indeed to find a young person today in America who still believes strongly in traditional values and ideas of self-responsibility, detest government interference in their lives, loves the Constitution, what it stands for and protects. They have been indoctrinated by our schools to the point that common sense no longer matters, for honest discourse in discussions are heavily discouraged in many a classroom. I prove further along that most of the liberal ideology being increasingly touted by the left is borne out of a long dreamt of socialist utopia carried out by a partnership between the corporate globalists, the U.N. and those elites who desire power over the world. And I can guarantee to you that these are getting impatient. These, their cohorts/devotees are those whom desire to make the choices as to everything you buy, eat, drive, live, your job destiny, how much or how little you make, etc. etc. Most of this agenda is not so hidden, contained already within the prime vehicle to bring about the one world order with the United Nations Agenda 21 policies taking place around the world.
Considering that at least 50% of the world's wealth is verifiably controlled by the top 1% consisting of only 67 of the world's wealthiest individuals (and shrinking), this is pretty good evidence that we are essentially being controlled by a very small corporate global elite club designed and run for the few. These stats are verified later. The pace of their destruction is staggering.
Today, the top 200 corporations are bigger than the combined economies of 182 countries and have twice the economic influence than 80 per cent of all humanity as I prove!
Globalism has come very far in rendering world with greatly reduced amounts of anything amounting to a capitalistic system that comes with practical safeguards against abuses that place too much harm to the hard working stiffs. Increasingly, we witness wage inequalities worse than in the Great Depression. Truly, the top 10 percent earners have left everyone else in the dust increasingly over the last 50 years. The top 1 percenters incomes during this time has gone to the moon at the expense of the masses.
Globalism is the vehicle to achieve the elite globalist goals of a one world order, separate, nationalistic and independent nations with their own borders must be eliminated, which shouldn't be too much of a problem to accomplish in much of the world, especially in the current socialist run countries in and around the European continent and America who largely embrace socialism. What is ironic is that socialist Briton's have turn their backs on Brexit, meant to centralize nearly all power to the elite globalists. Little did they realize that you can't have both, at least in the long run.
The League of Nations was the precursor of the United Nations. From their beginnings, the primary long-term reason for both of them had always been to be the primary central agency of the world, an assemblage of the top global power brokers created to steer and carry out the new world order which has been dreamt of for millennium. Its creation has not been, as it touts, "to create a harmonious and peaceful world". No, the U.N.'s overarching goal has been to create a one world government using the ploy of globalism. There are ample records dating back before its very creation, direct from the U.N.'s own publications and top officers and founders to support this statement which I document quite fully in order to prove that point. This UN has with much ambition endorsed and sanctioned one world inspired leaders, corporations, groups, agencies, NGO's and billionaires from countries all around the globe in a long term unified vision of this new world order in order to further the one world agenda. The help that the UN has supplied in the creation of most planned wars, coups and disruptions across the world is well known by those who have done their homework on that subject. It is this cabal and others that are the enemies of true freedoms, borders, sovereignty across the globe yet are completely onboard with creating a one world government. Americanism or any other type of governance besides their one world order. These are the a major part of the world's Deep State apparatus who are in fact often hidden forces behind the worlds corporate powered global power structure.
The global multinational corporatist leaders have pushed their un-free trade treaties, long creating a horrid record of killing millions of good paying jobs across America and nearly everywhere they venture. These stealing of good jobs have swelled the bank accounts and powers of these globalist multinational corporations while boosting their wealth into the top 1% largely at the expense of the masses who now work for far less. lowered wages.
The globalists new world order plan requires a complete breakdown of the required systems that have historically allowed nation to prosper on its own merits. Sold by both parties is the false belief that big government can fix everything. This long-running sales job actually promotes self-interest above all, using deceptive techniques as I cover. Such a sales job requires a break away from traditions that bind us with our neighbors and family. It requires a growth in narcissism, self above God so much so that we can now even witiness the horrid reality of pedophilia becoming more mainstream! Since President Trump's reign, thousands of pedophilia people and groups have been arrested as never before! Thousand of killer gang members have been arrested as never before, especially those inside of the MS-13 ruthless group. This is just one of many actions by this President that leads to my belief that our new President is holding up his end of the agreement. Like him or not, he at least is holding up his promises.
History is replete with all the immense damages that the globalist movement has brought upon the world. These have sold the lie that globalism is the answer to the inequalities between the haves and the have nots. While the opposite is the real truth! The truth is now evident when one looks at the condition of the world they have pushed upon all of us over the last many years.
The elite new world order operatives have infiltrated all the major nations governmental agencies, top positions of power. Led by the lure of power, connectedness, money, these are often not aware that they are actually perpetuating a plan that is deadly for much of the world if the globalist elites they serve should get their way. Unfortunately for these self serving minions only are concerned with self promotion often. Yet the fact remains that political expediency and promotions come with compliance. The heads of nearly every major country are working together with this huge one world apparatus machine that is enclosed within the UN, World Bank, IMF, European Union, Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, the Royal Family, the corporation called America, and hundreds of other governmental and non-governmental centers of power. Many of these hide behind nice sounding, humanitarian nameplates. Nearly all the crises we see play out are ones they actually create, (of which American hegemony around the world is a large player). For these, the ends always justify the means.
Continual non-stop conflicts around the world, of which America is often at the forefront of are exponentially increasing. I will explain why and how America's endless war policies has been implemented over the last many years, but I cannot divulge my take on who and what is behind much of the openly visible powers working behind much of the news we hear.
Explained will be real, actual reasons why America has spent over 15 years in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya with nothing to show besides disasters and deaths, while earning a bad reputation around the world as a bully. Be assured that the elites and banking system have made trillions of dollars from these three examples. And lives mean little. Psychopaths don't care about anything beyond their own desires and powers, and many of these are psychopaths indeed. They use false justifications as a passport to sell many of their warring's and destructions. This is globalism.
I predict that the CIA, (a globalist arm of the U.S. Government and deep state), armed with an unlimited budget and trillions of dollars derived from their years of secret under the radar dirty operations, are likely to be an agency to be reviewed, revamped or remodeled within the not so distant future. The truths behind this clandestine, above the law and corrupted agency may finally be surfacing as well. Ever since the Trump Russian collusion witch hunt also with an unlimited budget as well both of these conducted, likely during Pres. Trump's time as president, we should expect to witness a firestorm of controversy and change more momentous than anything in American history, hopefully.
President Donald Trump has his work cut out, but his years in office have shown he is no typical deep state establishment fixture of either political party! What we are now witnessing is perhaps the most important and fateful elections in America's entire history. The results will either allow the Republican Party to prove itself to be the party of the people, or become impotent, simply becoming water boys for the Democrat Party, thereafter having little real power for decades perhaps. The results of the coming elections leading into 2020, (general and mid-terms), will in fact be the determining factor for whether America and the world reject conservativism or falls into the clutches of a highly touted, yet untruthful liberalism that doesn't even resemble the old party of the people that dems used to own in the far past. So, we must ask ourselves, how did this all come to such a historic moment as we are living in?
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Nov 03, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
The world's worst negotiating strategy is to give the other side everything they want in exchange for worthless empty promises, yet this is exactly what Trump and his trade team are doing. All the Chinese trade team has to do to get rid of tariffs and other U.S. bargaining chips is mutter some empty phrase about "agreeing in principle" and the U.S. surrenders all its bargaining chips.
If the other side are such naive chumps that they give you everything you want without actually committing to anything remotely consequential, why bother with a formal agreement? Just play the other side for the chumps they are: if they threaten to reinstate tariffs, just issue another worthless press release about "progress has been made."
The other guaranteed losing strategy in negotiation is advertise your own fatal weakness, which in Trump's case is his obsession with pushing the U.S. stock market to new highs. There is no greater gift he could hand the Chinese trade team than this monumental weakness, for all they have to do is talk tough and the U.S. stock market promptly tanks, sending the Trump Team into a panic of appeasement and empty claims of "progress."
The Chinese team has gotten their way for a year by playing Trump's team as chumps and patsies, so why stop now? The Chinese know they can get way without giving anything away by continuing to play the American patsies and using the president's obsession with keeping U.S. stocks lofting higher to their advantage: declare the talks stalled, U.S. stocks crater, the American team panics and rushes to remove anything that might have enforcement teeth, reducing any "trade deal" to nothing but empty promises.
Given their success at playing America's team, why do a deal at all? Just play the chumps for another year, and maybe Trump will be gone and a new set of even more naive patsies enter the White House.
If we put ourselves in the shoes of the Chinese negotiators, we realize there's no need to sign a deal at all: the Trump team has gone out of its way to make it needless for China to agree to anything remotely enforceable. All the Chinese have to do is issue some stern talk that crushes U.S. stocks and the Trump Team scurries back, desperate to appease so another rumor of a "trade deal" can be issued to send U.S. stocks higher.
It would be pathetic if it wasn't so foolish and consequential.
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Nov 02, 2019 | crookedtimber.org
nastywoman 11.01.19 at 11:11 am 8
BUT – getting back to the real topic of this thread and –"Meanwhile, the United States, which had been the primary promoter of the worldwide rules-based WTO model, shifted its focus to one-on-one agreements unencumbered by rules, such as the Australia-US FTA, where it could take advantage of its superior bargaining power".
and
"We're entering a world with few rules "
and
"To prepare for this likely outcome, the EU has set up structures that would allow it to retaliate against the US on a far larger scale than WTO rules would allow".
... ... ...
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Nov 01, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
psychohistorian , Oct 31 2019 15:18 utc | 4
Below is a Reuters posting about Mike Pompeo presenting the public/private finance "dog whistle" at a Hudson Institute think tank gala dinner....the pot calling the kettle black.
"
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday stepped up recent U.S. rhetoric targeting China's ruling Communist Party, saying Beijing was focused on international domination and needed to be confronted.Pompeo made the remarks even as the Trump administration said it still expected to sign the first phase of deal to end a damaging trade war with China next month, despite Chile's withdrawal on Wednesday as the host of an APEC summit where U.S. officials had hoped this would happen.
Pompeo said the United States had long cherished its friendship with the Chinese people, adding the Communist government was not the same thing as the people of China.
"They are reaching for and using methods that have created challenges for the United States and for the world and we collectively, all of us, need to confront these challenges ... head on," Pompeo said in an address to a gala dinner in New York of the conservative Hudson Institute think tank.
"It is no longer realistic to ignore the fundamental differences between our two systems, and the impact that the differences in those systems have on American national security."
"I posted the above about 6 hours ago on the Weekly Open thread and now get up to read that the financial markets are down and Trump is tweeting that it is the Fed's fault for not lowering rates even further even though there are a couple of ZH postings that refer to China's response to Pompeo's remarks as offensive and maybe a trade deal won't get signed...
We are in a civilization war about the global social contract and whether sovereign public finance gets a chance to be compared against the Western centuries old private finance controlled world.
goldhoarder | Oct 31 2019 16:35 utc | 16
4 @psychohistorian
Haha. The fight is an old one. Who is to be master and who is to be slave. China was supposed to happily be the world's cheap manufacturer and not get too big for its britches. The USA has been successful at bribing foreign leaders, taking them under their wing, and getting them to accept their place in the world order. They think they can do this with anybody.
They think every leader is a budding Lenin Moreno or that they can arrange a coup and force into office another Lenin Moreno. Russia, China, and India will not allow it.
All have at one time or another (Russia quite recently) been under the heel of Western empire. All have old and proud civilizations.
The US never really counts on foreign leaders taking their peoples interests at heart and standing up to the hegemon. As far as Pompeo goes this is classic projection. It is a sign they are losing and are worried about it.
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Oct 31, 2019 | www.redstate.com
A few years ago, in response to the notion of a resolution naming English as the country's official language, a prominent Democratic politician said it wasn't necessary -- it's already obvious.
Is it set to remain so?
As noted by ConservativeReview.com, a report by the Center for Immigration Studies indicates there's a whole lotta people speaking somethin' else, at least at home.
Conservative Review submits an interesting proposal:
Imagine if the American people were told in 1980 that the non-English-speaking population in America would triple and rise to a level that is greater than the population of France.
That statement comes in response to CIS's implication of 67.3 million people speaking a foreign language at home in America.
As per numbers from the 2018 American Community Survey, that's roughly 21.9% of U.S. residents.
CR observes a powerful surge:
It's not just the sheer number of foreign language speakers that is shocking; it's the trend. The number has tripled since 1980 and doubled since 1990. The foreign-born population has grown seven times as fast as the native-born population since 1980. But even since 2010, when the foreign population had already ballooned, it has still grown twice as fast as the native-born population over the past eight years.
If you're curious about the distribution of ESL (or English as No Language) residents, in nine states, the digits top 25%:
California 45%
Texas 36%
New Mexico 34%
New Jersey 32%
New York 31%
Nevada 31%
Florida 30%
Arizona 28%
Hawaii 28%How do things fare in the five largest cities? The buncha peeps eschewing the ways of America's motherland at home breaks down like this obtener una carga de LA Sorry -- I mean, get a load of LA:
Los Angeles 59%
Houston 50%
New York City 49%
Phoenix 38%
Chicago 36%Among foreign-language use, in terms of popularity, Spanish dominates like the Dream Team at the 1992 Olympics: Español's grown 12% since 2010, and it hits the boards with approx. 62%.
In fact, there are more Spanish-speakers in the U.S. than in any Latin American country -- short of Mexico, Argentina, and Columbia.
Chinese snags 2nd place, with 3.5 million moving mouths.
The fastest growing languages: those from India and Islamic countries.
Arabic speakers have grown 46% in only eight years.
Since 2000, they've doubled.
If all this signals a mere skyrocketing of bilingualism, then good for America: It's becoming more sophisticated.
On the other hand, if it points to a cave-in of inglés , that's quite a different trajectory.
And with 2020 Democrats wanting to do away with that quaint notion of protected borders, we're not sure to have millions more mastering the King's any time soon.
It seems to me that language is one thing we need to share -- it's the way we connect, in order to be One Nation Under God.
Presently, we're on our way to One Nation Under Dios/bog/Déu/xudo/Deus/Bondye/Ilaah/Tanrı/ღმერთი/परमेश्वर/하나님/พระเจ้า/الله.And while all those words are, of course, beautiful to know and use, that's gonna be one big-a** dollar bill.
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Oct 30, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Chinese Patriotism: Huawei Smartphone Sales Jump 66% In China As Apple iPhone Sales Slump by Tyler Durden Wed, 10/30/2019 - 13:50 0 SHARES We're starting to get first-hand knowledge of what we're coining as the " blowback period " in the trade war. This is a point in time when Chinese consumers, downright furious of President Trump's protectionist policies that targeted Chinese companies over the summer, have collectively stood up to an aggressor (the US), and have secretly fired back, targeting US firms by abandoning their products for domestic ones, all in the name of patriotism.
Honestly, over time, the trade war, if solved next month or next year, or who knows at this point when it'll be solved, will have devastating consequences for corporate America as their market share in China will erode as patriotism forces consumers to gravitate towards domestic brands.
A new report from Canalys , an independent research firm focused on technology, has linked patriotism in China for the jump in Huawei smartphone sales in the third quarter.
Huawei's 3Q19 smartphone sales soared by 66% YoY in China , compared with a 31% increase in 2Q19.
Between 2Q-3Q, President Trump escalated the trade war to near full-blown, and also attacked individual companies with economic sanctions and banned certain ones from doing business in the US. Chinese consumers responded by ditching American products, like Apple iPhones , as this is some of the first evidence we've seen of the blowback period, likely to worsen in 4Q19 through 1Q20.
As shown in the chart below, the July-September period of 2019 was a devastating quarter for Huawei's top rivals, including Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi (other Chinese brands), along with depressing sales from Apple.
Smartphone shipments overall were 97.8 million, down 3% from 100.6 million for the same period last year.
Apple's YoY slump gained momentum from -14% in 2Q to -28% for 3Q .
Chinese patriotism allowed Huawei's market share in the country to expand from 24.9% to 42.4% over the past year.
Canalys analyst Mo Jia said, "The U.S.-China trade war is also creating new opportunities," adding that, " Huawei's retail partners are rolling out advertisements to link Huawei with being the patriotic choice, to appeal to a growing demographic of Chinese consumers willing to take political factors into account when making a purchase decision. "
The blowback period has begun, and corporate America should be terrified that their market share in China is about to evaporate.
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Oct 28, 2019 | jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com
Sleepwalking Into the Abyss
"As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I've done before!) "Donald J. Trump
"China uses a host of monopolizing strategies to extend its geopolitical and commercial power, everything from below cost pricing to grab market share, patent trolling, espionage, mergers, and financial manipulation. In fact, the CCP is best understood as a giant monopoly that also controls a nation of 1.4 billion people and a large military apparatus...
China's biggest asset in gaining power was how most people in the West just didn't realize that the CCP aimed to use it. Now China's cover is blown. The raw exercise of power to censor a random Houston Rockets basketball executive has made millions of people take notice. Everyone knows, the Chinese government isn't content to control its own nation, it must have all bow down to its power and authority.
Matt Stoller, How Joe Biden Empowered China's Censorship of the NBA
Matt overstates the headline I think. The empowerment of China may have gone into higher gear with Bill Clinton perhaps, but has been fully supported by every President, both parties, and especially the moneyed interests in the US, who place their short term greed first and foremost.Follow the money. China is certainly not alone among organizations, and even nations, in playing on the personal greed, divided loyalties, and lust for power of our political and financial class.
This in itself is nothing new. But the extent of it, and the fashionable acceptance of it amongst our society's elites, the industrialization of political corruption and big money in politics, has been breathtaking.
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Oct 25, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Andre Vltcheck via Off-Guardian.org,
It is very popular these days to talk and write about the "trade war" between the United States and China. But is there really one raging? Or is it, what we are witnessing, simply a clash of political and ideological systems : one being extremely successful and optimistic, the other depressing, full of dark cynicism and nihilism?
In the past, West used to produce almost everything. While colonizing the entire planet (one should just look at the map of the globe, between the two world wars), Europe and later the United States, Canada and Australia, kept plundering all the continents of natural resources, holding hundreds of millions of human beings in what could be easily described as 'forced labor', often bordering on slavery.
Under such conditions, it was very easy to be 'number one', to reign without competition, and to toss around huge amounts of cash, for the sole purpose of indoctrinating local and overseas 'subjects' on topics such as the 'glory' of capitalism, colonialism (open and hidden), and Western-style 'democracy'.
It is essential to point out that in the recent past, the global Western dictatorship (and that included the 'economic system) used to have absolutely no competition. Systems that were created to challenge it, were smashed with the most brutal, sadistic methods. One only needs recall invasions from the West to the young Soviet Union, with the consequent genocide and famines. Or other genocides in Indochina, which was fighting its wars for independence, first against France, later against the United States.
*
Times changed. But Western tactics haven't.
There are now many new systems, in numerous corners of the world. These systems, some Communist, others socialist or even populist, are ready to defend their citizens, and to use the natural resources to feed the people, and to educate, house and cure them.
No matter how popular these systems are at home, the West finds ways to demonize them, using its well-established propaganda machinery. First, to smear them and then, if they resist, to directly liquidate them.
As before, during the colonial era, no competition has been permitted. Disobedience is punishable by death.
Naturally, the Western system has not been built on excellence, hard work and creativity, only. It was constructed on fear, oppression and brutal force. For centuries, it has clearly been a monopoly.
*
Only the toughest countries, like Russia, China, Iran, North Korea or Cuba, have managed to survive, defending they own cultures, and advancing their philosophies.
To the West, China has proved to be an extremely tough adversary.
With its political, economic, and social system, it has managed to construct a forward-looking, optimistic and extraordinarily productive society. Its scientific research is now second to none. Its culture is thriving. Together with its closest ally, Russia, China excels in many essential fields.
That is precisely what irks, even horrifies the West.
For decades and centuries, Europe and the United States have not been ready to tolerate any major country, which would set up its own set of rules and goals.
China refuses to accept the diktat from abroad. It now appears to be self-sufficient, ideologically, politically, economically and intellectually. Where it is not fully self-sufficient, it can rely on its friends and allies. Those allies are, increasingly, located outside the Western sphere.
*
Is China really competing with the West? Yes and no. And often not consciously.
It is a giant; still the most populous nation on earth. It is building, determinedly, its socialist motherland (applying "socialism with the Chinese characteristics" model). It is trying to construct a global system which has roots in the thousands of years of its history (BRI – Belt and Road Initiative, often nicknamed the "New Silk Road").
Its highly talented and hardworking, as well as increasingly educated population, is producing, at a higher pace and often at higher quality than the countries in Europe, or the United States. As it produces, it also, naturally, trades.
This is where the 'problem' arises. The West, particularly the United States, is not used to a country that creates things for the sake and benefit of its people. For centuries, Asian, African and Latin American people were ordered what and how to produce, where and for how much to sell the produce. Or else!
Of course, the West has never consulted anyone. It has been producing what it (and its corporations) desired. It was forcing countries all over the world, to buy its products. If they refused, they got invaded, or their fragile governments (often semi-colonies, anyway) overthrown.
The most 'terrible' thing that China is doing is: it is producing what is good for China, and for its citizens.
That is, in the eyes of the West, unforgiveable!
*
In the process, China 'competes'. But fairly: it produces a lot, cheaply, and increasingly well. The same can be said about Russia.
These two countries are not competing maliciously. If they were to decide to, they could sink the US economy, or perhaps the economy of the entire West, within a week.
But they don't even think about it.
However, as said above, to just work hard, invent new and better products, advance scientific research, and use the gains to improve the lives of ordinary people (they will be no extreme poverty in China by the end of 2020) is seen as the arch-crime in London and Washington.
Why? Because the Chinese and Russian systems appear to be much better, or at least, simply better, than those which are reigning in the West and its colonies. And because they are working for the people, not for corporations or for the colonial powers.
And the demagogues in the West – in its mass media outlets and academia – are horrified that perhaps, soon, the world will wake up and see the reality. Which is actually already happening: slowly but surely.
*
To portray China as an evil country, is essential for the hegemony of the West. There is nothing so terrifying to London and Washington as the combination of these words: "Socialism/ Communism, Asian, success". The West invents new and newer 'opposition movements', it then supports them and finances them, just in order to then point fingers and bark: "China is fighting back, and it is violating human rights", when it defends itself and its citizens. This tactic is clear, right now, in both the northwest of the country, and in Honk Kong.
Not everything that China builds is excellent. Europe is still producing better cars, shoes and fragrances, and the United States, better airplanes. But the progress that China has registered during the last two decades, is remarkable. Were it to be football, it is China 2: West 1.
Most likely, unless there is real war, that in ten years, China will catch up in many fields; catch up, and surpass the West. Side by side with Russia.
It could have been excellent news for the entire world. China is sharing its achievements, even with the poorest of the poor countries in Africa, or with Laos in Asia.
The only problem is, that the West feels that it has to rule. It is unrepentant, observing the world from a clearly fundamentalist view. It cannot help it: it is absolutely, religiously convinced that it has to give orders to every man and woman, in every corner of the globe.
It is a tick, fanatical. Lately, anyone who travels to Europe or the United States will testify: what is taking place there is not good, even for the ordinary citizens. Western governments and corporations are now robbing even their own citizens. The standard of living is nose-diving.
China, with just a fraction of the wealth, is building a much more egalitarian society, although you would never guess so, if you exclusively relied on Western statistics.
*
So, "trade war" slogans are an attempt to convince the local and global public that "China is unfair", that it is "taking advantage" of the West. President Trump is "defending" the United States against the Chinese 'Commies'. But the more he "defends them", the poorer they get. Strange, isn't it?
While the Chinese people, Russian people, even Laotian people, are, 'miraculously', getting richer and richer. They are getting more and more optimistic.
For decades, the West used to preach 'free trade', and competition. That is, when it was in charge, or let's say, 'the only kid on the block'.
In the name of competition and free trade, dozens of governments got overthrown, and millions of people killed.
And now?
What is China suppose to do? Frankly, what?
Should it curb its production, or perhaps close scientific labs? Should it consult the US President or perhaps British Prime Minister, before it makes any essential economic decision? Should it control the exchange rate of RMB, in accordance with the wishes of the economic tsars in Washington? That would be thoroughly ridiculous, considering that (socialist/Communist) China will soon become the biggest economy in the world, or maybe it already is.
There is all that abstract talk, but nothing concrete suggested. Or is it like that on purpose?
Could it be that the West does not want to improve relations with Beijing?
On September 7, 2019, AP reported:
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow compared trade talks with China on Friday to the U.S. standoff with Russia during the Cold War
"The stakes are so high, we have to get it right, and if that takes a decade, so be it," he said.
Kudlow emphasized that it took the United States decades to get the results it wanted with Russia. He noted that he worked in the Reagan administration: "I remember President Reagan waging a similar fight against the Soviet Union."
Precisely! The war against the Soviet Union was hardly a war for economic survival of the United States. It was an ideological battle, which the United States, unfortunately won, because it utilized both propaganda and economic terror (the arms race and other means).
Now, China is next on the list, and the White House is not even trying to hide it. But China is savvy. It is beginning to understand the game. And it is ready, by all means, to defend the system which has pulled almost all its citizens out of misery, and which could, one day soon, do the same for the rest of the world.
JBL , 1 minute ago link
BT , 12 minutes ago linkhm....a crumbling neoliberal empire that sits idly by when its own children (your future) are chemically castrated as young as 5
versus a nation that blocks jewish regulatory capture of the commanding heights of their economy
lemme get more popcorn
Spiritual Anunnaki , 50 minutes ago linkUS is hemorrhaging around $1.7 trillion dollars(according to the bond king) a year with the “greatest economy ever” and near zero interest rate. Clearly, this is not sustainable and can’t last much longer. When the jig is up, whoever has the most guns(not gold) will prevail. .
JLee2027 , 55 minutes ago linkChina has more problems than the United States. Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong, persecuting Uyghurs in Xinjiang, Indonesia and Malaysia because of Islam, Inner Mongolia separatists, Kashmir and India, USA trade pressure, Japan and South Korea are competitors.
China has some bright spots with Pakistan, North Korea and a very open hand negotiated with the African Union to colonize that continent etc. Russia is neutral but if it is to fall it will probably be towards Europe not the East.
Vietnam is falling away leaving Myanmar and Cambodia. Thailand might already be a Western proxy.
ChaoKrungThep , 26 minutes ago linkLet me break it down for you...when you have a buyer (USA) and a seller (China), the buyer is always in control when they can go somewhere else.
ALWAYS.
Aussiekiwi , 1 hour ago linkYou've broken down nothing. China can sell somewhere else, since it makes all the stuff. The US makes very little and will pay far more Chinese equivalent goods. Further, China's GDP is now 80% domestically generated; of the remaining 20% export income, the US accounts for only 30% of it, ie 6%. China can stand a loss of 6% easily. While the Americans, led the Ape-in-Chief have been thumping their chests, the nimble Chinese have taken markets everywhere, diversified their manufacturing bases and transportation systems. The US is shouting at the Moon. Enjoy the tan...
ChaoKrungThep , 24 minutes ago link'The war against the Soviet Union was hardly a war for economic survival of the United States. It was an ideological battle, which the United States, unfortunately won,'
Really !!! have a read of Gulag Archipelago before you come out with anything this stupid.
PGR88 , 1 hour ago linkRead some American history. Their "gulags" are your "justice system", currently incarcerating the world's largest prison population.
He–Mene Mox Mox , 1 hour ago linkCrap article full of leftist slogans, and highly ideological Neo-marxist analysis of the West, while completely ignoring reality in China.
Cheap Chinese Crap , 1 hour ago linkThe author apparently has never been to China to know what their perspective is. Instead, he is superimposing what western ideologs think it is. To Americans, it is political and ideological struggle. To the Chinese, it's basic economics and the welfare of its people. The Chinese know better than anyone else, what it was like being down in the gutter for almost 200 years, about the time the British showed up with their opium trade in the 1830's. The Chinese have made great strides in the last 45 years to get their people out of poverty, modernize, and build an industrialized economy that rivals any other economy in the world. The truth is, it's a feat that Americans are tacitly envious of, and will do whatever it takes to cut the Chinese down.
The problem is, America is not the shining example of success and exceptionalism it thinks it is. It has fallen behind the power curve and isn't competitive any longer. Free trade is far and away better in China than what you will find in America. Don't believe it? Go there and see for yourself. Then ask yourself, why did the greater chunk of American manufacturing left and went to China in the first place, (besides chasing cheap labor), If it wasn't for free trade?
Many other countries don't share the same ideology or values with Americans either, particularly when America can't provide for the welfare of its own people, so why would they want to copy that model of decay?
zeratul108 , 24 minutes ago linkYet still they buy their safe haven bolt holes in Seattle rather than Shenzhen.
The old American term for this is : Voting with their feet.
Guess that model of decay is pretty attractive to a lot of rich, connected people in the mysterious orient.
BT , 35 minutes ago linkattractive properties in shenzhen or any tier 1 chinese cities are in the millions or tens of millions of dollars. not likely to jump higher anytime soon but whole lot of downside potential. Vancouver is full up. why not seattle, DC or somewhere with "cheap" prices?
ChaoKrungThep , 8 minutes ago linkChina and the rest of the world will continue to be held hostage until they have an alternative to SWIFT and Reinsurance.
artistant , 1 hour ago linkThey have two alternatives to SWIFT - CIPS & NSPK. Further, both Russia and China are using their own and local currencies in trade, bypassing not only SWIFT fees and delays, but the USD exchange rate rip-off.
Frankly ZH readers are about 10 yrs behind the latest developments, hence the rednecks ranting about their already lost cause. Do some research.
Arising , 1 hour ago linkSo far, Trump...
1. Failed with Iran, Syria, Turkey, and the Middle East Peace Process
2. Failed with Russia
3. Failed with Venezuela
4. Failed with trade war
5. Failed with immigration
6. Kidnapped a Huawei executive
7. Set Hong Kong on fire
8. Stole an Iranian tanker
9. Stole a Venezuelan ship full of foods
10. Stole Jerusalem and the Golan Heights for the FAKE HEBREWS
11. Kept all wars in the Middle East going for APARTHEID Israhell
12. Faked Epstein’s death who’s now living comfortably in Apartheid Israhell
13. Faked it with N Korea
14. Does nothing but plays golf, tweets, and insults
15. Destroyed American farmers, coal miners, truckers, and manufacturers
16. Failed to hire competent staff
17. Failed to abolish the Fed
18. Failed to drain the Swamp
19. Failed to dismantle the Deep State
20. Failed the US economy
#TimeForTrumpToGo He's done enough damage.
Especially as Preparation for WAR WITH IRAN is underway .
Theremustbeanotherway , 1 hour ago linkI don't really know what to say- there may be truths in this article but that big fat commie elephant in the room keeps getting in the way.
east of eden , 1 hour ago link"So far, China has exercised restraint." ...because they don't want the world to see what a truly monstrous regime runs that country...much like Israhell tries to silence and stifle criticism of its monstrous racist and supremacist regime.
Meanwhile the West is on meds as it willingly takes the dagger someone is handing it to enable it to commit suicide..
I wonder who is pulling strings in the background?
This is quite interesting...
contrast with
https://www.persecution.org/2019/04/29/christianity-grows-china-despite-persecution/
Could the two be linked in any way?
Just asking....
MaxThrust , 2 hours ago linkCanada and australia most certainly did NOT plunder the world, at anytime. We have all the resources we will ever need,and we have never sought an empire. Don't try to drag us down into your pit for company. It is your pit, along with Britain. Let the British keep you company.
China "is ready to defend the system which has pulled almost all its citizens out of misery"
China is very late to the game of "printing debt" It has taken the USA 100 years to bankrupt itself. China with it's 350% of GDP has managed it in 30 years.
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Oct 26, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Our Response to the Next Crisis Must Tackle Consumerism Posted on October 26, 2019 by Yves Smith Yves here. While one can applaud the sentiments in this post, status competition is a strong feature of most societies. Admittedly, some have revered accomplishment or sacrifice or exemplary behavior over having a lot of toys. But so much of our behavior revolves around consumerism that it affects how we tackle problems. For instance, one strong theme in Green New Deal programs is to build new energy efficient housing. Yet the energy cost of a new house is roughly 10 years of operating a not terribly energy efficient existing house of similar square footage.
Admittedly, this article focuses more on consumerism in terms of more mundane purchases like clothing and devices, but "household formation" and moving almost always involve a buying stuff. Even if your old goods work well in new digs, there's still always something to buy curtains, a new lamp .while in the old days, people would inherit houses, furnished, and not change them much (or if they did, gradually), or lived in rooming houses with very little.
By Rob Macquarie, a writer and researcher focusing on the financial system and its links to inequality, democracy, and sustainability. He tweets @RJMacquarie. Originally published at openDemocracy
This article is part of ourEconomy's ' Preparing for the next crisis' series.
If there is one way the next economic crisis won't be the same as the last, it will have to do with the state of our planet. In 2008, the Copenhagen Accord hadn't been signed, let alone the Paris Agreement – or millions of schoolchildren missing Friday lessons to protest the terrifying future they will inherit.
Now, economic transformation is widely viewed as a prerequisite for halting ecological breakdown. Because of this, the next crisis is often presented by those who long for change as a golden opportunity, envisaged with massive investment in energy systems, transport, and clean industrial technology.
To be sure, these changes cannot come quickly enough. Yet they are not the only piece of the economic, nor ecological, puzzle. The ruling elites of wealthy countries have a poor record in undertaking ambitious public spending. Instead, they look to ordinary citizens – recast over decades as 'consumers' – to carry the load.
Household consumption on aggregate represents the largest chunk of economic activity in most countries. Though often characterised as 'motor' or 'engine' of growth, as things stand a liferaft would be a better metaphor . During recessions, household spending can remain relatively flat compared to investment and therefore GDP more broadly. In the US, consumption, though battered by the storm of the 2008 crisis, supported employment in the face of declining business prospects.
Our economic dependency on consumerism is linked to changes afoot at the global level, both secular and cyclical. On the one hand, the gradual march of (privatised) digital technology and financialisation have undermined and disrupted investment in the real economy as a source of stable prosperity. Listlesss productivity in some G7 nations and a massive reduction in state spending under austerity regimes have placed much of the burden on households.
In Britain, this sterling effort from the 'good old British consumer' comes at a cost. Households have been taking on net debt – in other words, running down their wealth – since 2016. Financial pundits present debt-led increases in household spending as a natural source of GDP growth despite only having assumed such a prominent role following the 1980s' neoliberal turn.
On the other hand, present conditions have also sharpened our reliance on the household consumer. This is by no means limited to the relatively financialised Anglophone economies. Germany's mighty manufacturing sector, beset by difficulties from Brexit to global trade disputes, is behind recent gloom in the economic figures . Major infrastructure projects, if badly conceived, can lock in an unhealthy incentive to keep the population spending – see the hapless development of Berlin's Brandenburg airport , dependent on retail for up to half of its profits. Meanwhile, the UK's sickly retail sector , pressed on one side by trade uncertainty, strains under ever-larger piles of corporate debt.
All of this has disastrous ecological consequences. In 2009, in the wake of the global recession, Friends of the Earth Europe reported people in rich countries consume up to 10 times more natural resources than those in the poorest countries. As development raises standards of living for vast numbers of people living in the Global South, especially in China and India, keeping material consumption and carbon emissions from spiralling upwards will require a change of gear in resource efficiency and, simply put, more frugal behaviour by Western consumers.
Last year an important paper in Nature found that 'physical needs (that is, nutrition, sanitation, access to energy and elimination of poverty below the US$1.90 line) could likely be met for 7 billion people at a level of resource use that does not significantly transgress planetary boundaries'. Meeting 'more qualitative goals (that is, life satisfaction, healthy life expectancy, secondary education, democratic quality, social support and equality)' for people in all countries will require major changes in 'provisioning systems' – that is, an overhaul of economic institutions. In other words, unnecessary material goods valued by Western shoppers put at risk the attainment of even more fundamental social and human rights for the majority of the world's population.
So the policy response to a fresh crisis must be viewed through an ecological lens. With interest rates still at rock-bottom and quantitative easing alive and kicking , the flow of easy money creates a powerful incentive to urge an anxious public to 'keep calm and carry on spending'. The planet cannot afford such timidity, nor complacency over a spontaneous rise in so-called conscious consumerism.
Instead, as well as supply-side measures clustered under a Green New Deal or Green Industrial Revolution, the crisis toolkit must consider consumer demand. Policy can make a consumption surge conditional on sustainability with policies like fiscal incentives for retail companies to apply rigorous, sustainable standards. Electric vehicles already enjoy support from governments in many countries – notwithstanding some rowbacks . These schemes can be designed to contribute to the fiscal 'automatic stabilisers' that push back against a recession: for instance, by channeling money from penalties for emissions-intensive vehicles into subsidies for EVs.
Alongside a shake-up of the energy mix, governments must promote the circular economy. Investment can target projects aimed at reducing household and supply chain waste. Right-to-repair schemes being pioneered by civil society deserve tax incentives or other market-shaping assistance from the state. And across all industries, we must move away from early obsolescence of consumer goods. A report prepared for the European Commission in 2012 recommended a host of policies to target these issues, such as grants for industry to initiatives to improve product lifetime or reduced VAT for more efficient and durable products.
Thinkers pioneering a new economics are joining the dots between the demands of sound economic management during a downturn, social justice, and the ecological crisis. Vocal criticism of a decade of austerity laid the groundwork. Now progressives, eager to raise living standards, must watch their messaging to promote sustainable consumption. Those sounding the alarm about resource use are right that rich nations must not continue to overspend their ecological budget.
When the next crisis arrives, parties arguing for a green transformation will have to prove they understand that.
notabanktoadie , October 26, 2019 at 6:51 am
Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a "mess of pottage" (Genesis 25:27-34).
It's no exaggeration that the birthrights of many, many people are gone.
Were those birthrights sold for a mess of pottage (consumerism) or were they legally stolen by a unjust economic system with consumerism as pitiful compensation?
Off The Street , October 26, 2019 at 10:53 am
Mash up with Facebook and such where people and their data, now improved with the 23 new DNA features , are the product to see how birthrights get sold, seemingly voluntarily. Dark patterns are noticed popping up everywhere once they are pointed out. Neo-liberalism needs a new modern name and a better publicist.
Susan the Other , October 26, 2019 at 11:08 am
I've always suspected "Consumerism" to have been invented and used as a weapon against unions. We must supply the consumer with inexpensive products, etc. IIRC consumerism didn't start to enter the dialog until the 80s in any significant way. And then it was everywhere all at once. Spontaneous realities like that are confusing. Just where did it come from? It happened in Germany about the same time. They didn't crush their labor/unions like we did. We were absolutely ruthless. And it was all justified by claiming we had to make sure the consumer was well supplied. What a bunch of nonsense.
Ignacio , October 26, 2019 at 7:01 am
I not only applaud the sentiments but the ideas, many of them otherwise played in many posts here such as the rigth to repair and a real turn to circular economies. Yet, i still miss something that being politically very difficult, it is IMO a must: puting legally binding limits to fossil fuel consumption.
Regarding status competition: I personally have cut my consumption by much in the last decades although I was never a big spender. I don't think my personal living standard has declined, on the contrary, I think my life is richer in many aspects. I don't try to sound exemplary, I am not in many instances. I admit that a big reason for this Is that I have lost income but lately It has been more a voluntary thing. I am a disastrous manager of smartphones that too often are lost (I am famously lost-in-thougth in my environment), or take them to swim with me, or fall and break when I am in a hurry because I forgot something somewhere. For this reason I cannot afford too expensive smartphones though I don't feel the need to have the latest. With more people like me, the rigth to repair and recycling of smartphones is a must. I still consume too much meat, partly cos I like it, and partly because members of my family with chronic iron defficiency ask for meat. Most importantly, I have no longer empathy for those that feel the status competition and the impulse to own the largest house, the fastest car, the latest tech thingy or having dinner in the most expensive restaurant. I don't feel alone in my environment and a lot of people I know are on the same page on this. Status competition can die and good riddance should I say.
Susan the Other , October 26, 2019 at 10:46 am
about iron deficiency Ignacio, I read long ago and it proved true for me that if you take a good B-complex every day (no problem bec. B is water soluble) it solves iron deficiency.
Ignacio , October 26, 2019 at 11:28 am
Will check it. Thank you
urblintz , October 26, 2019 at 12:25 pm
a note of caution on vitamin B6, the only B vitamin that can be toxic in large doses.
"Although B6 supplements are useful for treating many conditions, taking excessive amounts can put you at risk for vitamin B toxicity."
https://www.livestrong.com/article/415393-are-high-doses-of-vitamin-b6-really-dangerous/
marieann , October 26, 2019 at 2:21 pm
Another note about B12. It is not well absorbed by those over 50 and so levels need to be checked periodically. One of the symptoms of a deficiency is confusion.
Mel , October 26, 2019 at 11:07 am
I wonder how we could manage to implement potlatch -- where a person's wealth is judged by what they can give away, rather than the amount that can't be pried away from them by any possible means.
jrs , October 26, 2019 at 11:33 am
It may not be potlatch, but ANTI-status competition seems already to be catching on in places like Sweden, with flight shaming, shaming over owning more than one of the same thing, shaming over buying new stuff etc..
oaf , October 26, 2019 at 7:14 am
" governments must promote the circular economy"
as opposed to the pyramidal economy
upstater , October 26, 2019 at 7:55 am
Subsidies for electric vehicles are unicorn farming. The materials required for a transition to EVs simply don't exist, the grid can't support it and automobiles facilitate sprawl, which is at the heart of western consumerism.
Oh , October 26, 2019 at 9:49 am
Unless you charge your EV with power from your solar cell, EV's are just transference; from gasoline to fossil fueled power from the power plant.
In lieu of charging your EV with your own solar cell, the CO2 from the power plant needs to be reduced by emission control to achieve an overall reduction in CO2 to the atmosphere. I wonder if this will ever happen.
Susan the Other , October 26, 2019 at 10:55 am
The only advantage for EVs environmentally would be that although it is still a fossil fuel derivative, its emissions (at the power plant) could be captured and either reprocessed or sequestered. Also EVs are lighter cars and so require less heavy manufacturing. One solution no one ever mentions is logistical. Delivery trucks could deliver everything a neighborhood needed/ordered and leave it at a neighborhood depot. In the walk-to spirit of the old corner store. And everyone could walk or bike to pick up their orders.
polecat , October 26, 2019 at 12:47 pm
Oh right .. I'm gonna lug that 200lb+ Ikea shelf (could be any large, unweldy item or items) package on my back !! 2-4 blocks from the 'depot' to my house ?? Even using a bike would be problematic .. even with the use of an E-bike .. on anything other than level terrain .. and that is assuming your purchases aren't 'lifted' before you arrive to claim them !
All this talk of walking or biking to achieve X doesn't take into consideration the multitude of circumstances .. due to health or logistics, just to name a few .. among various individuals that preclude such easy and flippant response !
If people were to resort to using draft animals, then perhaps that would work, but not without adding in other 'externalities' into the mix.steven , October 26, 2019 at 11:12 am
Even when the power is generated using fossil fuels, electric vehicles usually, compared to gasoline vehicles, show significant reductions in overall well-wheel global carbon emissions due to the highly carbon-intensive production in mining, pumping, refining, transportation and the efficiencies obtained with gasoline. This means that even if part of the energy used to run an electric car comes from fossil fuels, electric cars will still contribute to reduce CO
2 emissions, which is important since most countries' electricity is generated, at least in part, by burning fossil fuels.[Environmental aspects of the electric car That said, Yves has posted several articles suggesting it is physically impossible to convert the world's fleet of POVs to EVs. If we are going to continue to pack the planet with people, electrified mass transit is the obvious choice. My question is what role do EVs play during the transition?
jrs , October 26, 2019 at 11:43 am
Electric vehicles are actually more efficient in their use of energy and so it's NOT just transferring energy use from one place to another.
"EVs convert about 59%–62% of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels. Conventional gasoline vehicles only convert about 17%–21% of the energy stored in gasoline to power at the wheels"
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/evtech.shtml
Don't take this is an argument that electric vehicles don't have any problems, and these aren't total lifecycle calculations, but thinking the energy use is merely transferred just seems to be a misconception of how electric vehicles work.
inode_buddha , October 26, 2019 at 12:14 pm
When you charge an EV, where are you getting that electricity from? I think that is what is being argued. If you are getting that energy from a coal plant, you aren't saving anything, and plastic requires oil to manufacture. For that matter, what about all the heat energy used to smelt the copper, etc?
Oh , October 26, 2019 at 6:59 pm
The overall eficiency of a fossil fueled power plant using steam turbines to extract energy is about 33% on the average. Even if EV's convert 60% of the electrical energy to power at the wheels, 70% of the enegy is already lost at the power plant.
inode_buddha , October 26, 2019 at 8:44 am
I think maybe insecurity and jealousy/narcissism are at the heart of consumerism. Fix that, and consumerism goes away.
I do believe there is enough for all of us in the USA at least, but TPTB will never allow redistribution a'la Lech Walesa and the Polish land reform.
For myself, the rules are simple, I buy everything used, and if it doesn't get used at least once a year I don't have it.
Amfortas the hippie , October 26, 2019 at 9:27 am
aye. status symbols mean nothing to me which is a big source of the "weird" label i so proudly wear.
I'm usually rather filthy dirt and paint stains, holes from barbed wire -- i counter that it means i work for a living, dammit haven't cut my hair in 15 years(except for the occasional knot(whip out a pair of wire cutters at a wedding, and remove a knot,lol I'm almost legendary) and don't even want, let alone need, a new used truck every other year(again, at a wedding, I come through the dancing people with old milk jugs to get water for the steaming radiator others are mortified, for some reason because we're all supposed to pretend that we ain't po folks)
I'm locally notorious for coming out of the landfill complex with more than i go in with,lol and my shamelessness is actually contributing to open discussion about such things.
i do not hide my contempt for all that pretentious posturing especially if it's people who should know better .down nose looks at my clutter, when i've been to their house,lol, and know!
emulating the rich is a cancer on our civilisation ."they're food, people!".however, i think that globe encircling supply lines and built-to-be-replaced (foreign) manufacturing are the bigger, if easily related, problem.
doesn't fit easily on a bumpersticker, but the local veggie grower can't compete head to head with slave labor far away .and shouldn't be expected to global markets are not akin to gravity or a thunderstorm: they are the products of human minds and human choices(just not often our choices i don't decide how much plastic is in whatever necessary product i buy)
at the root of all this consumerism is media including the web.
since i took a copywriting class(as in ad copy) in college, i've been immunised against advertising it just doesn't effect me.
but it sure does effect everyone else.(i also realise that i am anomalous and unreplicatable in a lot of this i've always been a weirdo outcast, and so never developed the clique-behaviour of my peers i don't have anything to prove, because i learned early on not to care what the people around me thought since they were, apparently, shallow and ignorant, overly concerned with what other mean and shallow people thought. this might be a possible upside to being bullied/excluded -- given the right circumstances, it builds independence of mind and a hard, spiny carapace. (this in no way implies a fondness for bullying and exclusion.))
Dan , October 26, 2019 at 10:59 am
"I'm usually rather filthy dirt and paint stains, holes from barbed wire"
Actually Amfortas, you are right in fashion.
Saw a pair of distressed bluejeans with fake paint spatters on them for sale in a boutique. ONLY $120–and, that was in a size for an infant!
In an emergency, you might be able to sell your pants for at least $900!
inode_buddha , October 26, 2019 at 12:19 pm
very similar here. I think the problem is simple greed as a form of addiction. The people at the top want more. Therefore, sell more. They know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Older I get the more and more of my stuff is built in USA prior to 1950. The only people who know the value of a buck is the ones thats had to work for it.
I got rid of all the crap over the years -- and thats another thing, ever notice how much plastic crap there is? The car costs the same but its all plastic now and you can't fix it. Thats another way they rip you off with crapification. Thats why I pulled out of that rat race. I'm keeping my 30-yr old jeep on buckboard wagon springs.
Oh , October 26, 2019 at 9:50 am
I agree. I try not to buy things and if I need something badly, I buy used stuff.
Susan C , October 26, 2019 at 8:52 am
When I think back to how life was lived in the 1950s to today, the first thing that comes to mind is how much we as a society have moved away from real household goods of good materials and quality to a more cheapish plastic throwaway lifestyle via furnishings, appliances, clothing and plastic bags and bottles everywhere. Every time I see a Wayfair commercial chills go through me for all the plastic garbage crap that is out there. Isn't this the crux of the problem, always believing new stuff no matter the quality as long as it is cheap is the way to life live in America? Get it and then throw it away. This is where the reversal should happen, getting consumers to buy well made household goods and pay for it so they can keep it for years and years. Buy quality. Believe in quality. A real wood table or a real marble one. People have wanted to buy cheap garbagey stuff for too long already, items no one wants so they get thrown away. I visit estate sales in the past couple years and some of the furniture the oldsters among us lived with is exquisite, extremely well made. Now compare to what is out there now. Or clothing, another category. If you buy real fabric like wool or cotton or silk, your items will last forever. Beverages should be sold in glass bottles again. Stop living a disposable lifestyle, How to drill that into people who don't know any better is the trick. But this will be a way for people to stop some of their nonsensical consumerism. Also an option is to buy used things. In New York many of us found furniture on the street other people threw out to be great for furnishings. Recycling on a larger scale.
Phacops , October 26, 2019 at 9:45 am
One issue I have with this is that some elements of structures have improved significantly. Case in point are windows. Energy efficient windows and glazing are a vast improvement over that available in the 50s. That said, obtaining efficiency with retrofitting older structures takes the input of a lot of energy and cost.
Amfortas the hippie , October 26, 2019 at 11:26 am
re: windows now better than windows 60 years ago.
when we moved back out here, we learned that wife's familia intended to demolish the 1950's era house we were living in in town(it being an insulationless POS that drunk uncle had let go to hell was a major factor in building our current house).
so i spent that winter removing all the old windows(and as much of the wood clapboard siding and cedar interior one by's as i could) and storing them.
single pane and fragile as hell.
just look at them wrong and they break(better once installed).
i used those for the greenhouse attached to the house(passive heating!) but the difference between those ancient aluminum framed things and the new "e-rated" windows in most of the house is astounding. on a cold day, place a hand on them and the difference is apparent. those old ones are sufficient for the greenhouse, though.(i also used a bunch of even more ancient windows in parts of the house, that my family had saved some from the teens. the glass is more robust and thicker than the 50's plate,and the wood framing insulates a bit better than the aluminum but i still went to the trouble to put shutters on them(some shutters still in progress))
anon y'mouse , October 26, 2019 at 2:26 pm
i read a study just recently that said that older windows, repaired properly, are not less efficient than modern windows. they passed the variety of blower tests.
now, as for e-coatings, triple panes and argon fillings i don't know. but it did say that this was good news, because people can stop tossing out their historic windows in favor of the new just for energy savings. it goes without saying that if you live in a place of energy extremes, your windows shouldn't be huge anyway. the r-value is, even in the most expensive window, only 1/3 that of the wall or less.
the article i saw was in a trades' journal, but here is a similar write-up.
http://www.oldhouseauthority.com/archive/old_windows.phpThe Rev Kev , October 26, 2019 at 10:11 am
Some solid points here about buying goods based on quality and stuff to last. Why eat off plastic plates when you can eat off plates made of porcelain? I still have plates given to me by a girl when she was moving house back in the late 1970s that I constantly use. You cannot say the same for a plastic plate. If we were forced to move back to a 1950s lifestyle but with high-tech bolt-ons I do not think that people would mind in the long run. Smaller homes versus McMansions? Yeah, I could buy into that.
The second half of the equation is that manufactures will have to be forced to make goods that are built to last at a reasonable price and that are easily maintained & repaired. We have an antiques furniture store near hear and it can be highly interesting wandering around and looking at the common place items of past generations. The furniture is built well and is made of beautiful wood but that does suggest something. When you look at the crap furniture that is made these days, I seriously doubt that much of it will be found in antique stores by the next generation as it simply will not last.
And that is the point. making things that last. As an example – light globes. They do not last that long and they dim but what would it be like if they were manufactured to last decades? There are currently light globes that were manufacture in the 1890s that are still burning today with Livermore's Centennial Light Bulb being one example. Imagine if nearly everything was built to last for years if not a few decades. What is that? Corporations could not survive with that business model? You wonder then how they managed to make it work a century ago then.Susan the Other , October 26, 2019 at 11:33 am
Planned obsolescence should have been our first clue. It had nothing to do with competition, or the latest fashion – those were just advertising ploys. Planned obsolescence was a necessity to keep capitalism going. Because, ironically, capitalism is a very good supplier. Until demand runs out. Then capitalism has no where to go. Except to dive deep into consumerism and denial. Which is one reason I keep hoping for an ingenious idea that puts capitalism to work repairing the environment. I don't know why we can't have reverse capitalism. It could be a great economic engine for centuries to come.
marieann , October 26, 2019 at 2:35 pm
"Planned obsolescence should have been our first clue"
Many of the people shopping today do not know that a kettle should last 20 years or blender should last 30. I have a 50 year old electric frypan for goodness sake and it still works fine.
I know I clued in early and stopped buying from the stores, I look for old stuff at the thrift stores and if I can't find it there I do without
I don't know if their are any companies around anymore who make quality .products at any priceAmfortas the hippie , October 26, 2019 at 11:42 am
we still use by grandma's art deco blender, from the 50's(waring–replacement parts are still available for pretty cheap, too)
heavy glass jar, steel housing. i replaced the cord(i have a pile of those,lol)
.and being a frequent landfill scavenger, it's crazy what people throw away even with the recent local wall to wall about permitting a new landfill. lumber to cinder blocks to actual bricks, boxes of natgeo and scifi mags going back to the 30's and of course, all the structural steel and slightly bent metal roofing and gutters galore.
what's depressing like mentioned here, is the furniture and appliances not even worth trying to repair or repurpose. particle board and staples for the former -- melts in the rain and the cheapest plastic and pseudometal for the latter -- will never decompose.
like with the plastic packaging(which i think is a plot to make us nuts need tools to get into the damned things), a lot of the "choice" is somewhere upstream of us, but still.
I'd never spend money on the "furniture" i see at the dump.a different chris , October 26, 2019 at 1:04 pm
Enjoy your rant so (of course) I have to nitpick one thing:
>I still have plates given to me by a girl when she was moving house back in the late 1970s that I constantly use. You cannot say the same for a plastic plate.
Actually, you can. Plastic wouldn't have been so much of a problem if we had stuck to making things like plates out of it. If you don't believe me, give me your china for a bit (no DON'T seriously!) and see how long it takes my family to break it. The plastic stuff can be dropped infinite times.
The Rev Kev , October 26, 2019 at 6:37 pm
I used that example of the plates because last night I had to throw out a plastic plate as its surface was 'bubbling'. By the same token, not all those china plates have lasted the past forty years but more so than if they had been plastic.
eg , October 26, 2019 at 7:37 pm
I still use a couple of Melmac plates from the 60s
anon y'mouse , October 26, 2019 at 2:19 pm
thank you for making this point.
we could be satisfied with our material goods a bit more than we are, if those goods were made and designed properly.
case in point: clothing. there is no actual way to make clothing that is not environmentally challenging. even back in the days when we did it for purely natural fibers, dyeworks and processing plants were noxious.
but try to buy anything that isn't some kind of odd blend of plastics and barely-there fiber now. try to buy something like a good linen shirt. for some of us, these things have been priced beyond our reach. and a good linen shirt would probably last 5 years or more.
replicate that for every item of clothing you have (barring socks, underwear and shoes which have to be replaced more often). i don't remember the last time i had something that i wore regularly which lasted 5 years, but believe it was sometime during the 90s. sometimes it doesn't last beyond the first wash without snags and oddities appearing. and i am not that hard on anything, unlike a genuine "working man" who has a ton of muck that has to be washed out of the clothing every week.
repeat for many household goods. in whose interests is it that we buy, and rebuy the same crap every single year?
The Rev Kev , October 26, 2019 at 6:52 pm
We had a neighbour from the mill-towns of England that brought out a lot of material from where she worked. The stuff lasted for decades. Clothing was like that once and I have a copy of an 1805 will in which it mentions what would happen to the clothing as it was rugged enough that you could pass it along and so was worth mentioning in a will. I read too that in medieval time a air of shoes would be passed down a family and would last about a century. The manufacture of clothing that lasts a season is only a commercial decision which we are all paying for.
Jeremy Grimm , October 26, 2019 at 2:24 pm
One big difference between the way life was lived in the 1950s and today is that in 1950 people could stay in one place and work at the same job and retire. Nowdays, at least in my line of work, it is difficult to find a job you can count on for more than a few years. People used to stay married and could remain in the same house for most or all of their life. I moved all over the country chasing work. I adopted a throwaway lifestyle for my furniture because if I couldn't throw it away or take it apart somehow I couldn't move it by myself. If I didn't move myself -- if I paid movers -- it cost more to move most of my stuff than it cost to toss it -- even 'quality' furnature -- and replace it with more cheap junk I pick up from the curb or buy at Goodwill Stores, good enough to last until my next move. As for "buy quality" -- I value the quality of well made furniture efficiently constructed using materials light in weight, comfortable, stable, and strong; furnature I can easily take apart and reassemble, and move myself. What I have isn't exactly throwaway, nor is it the kind of quality you value.
[Even friends have become throwaway in the same sense as my furniture. I write, and call, and sometimes drive long distances to visit but invariably my friends and I grow apart and they stop answering. The family I grew up with is scattered from coast-to-coast and much of it grown as remote as old friends. The family I started has broken up and it too has scattered in search of work and opportunity.]
Returning to "buy quality" -- where is that stuff sold? I can buy quality names at high price but the old slogan "quality goes in before the name goes on" is just empty words.
anon y'mouse , October 26, 2019 at 2:37 pm
you wouldn't have had to buy and replace or move furniture if we had high quality built-in, nearly fully furnished apartments.
same goes for the much vaunted "smaller houses". the reason, at least i believe, people started to go larger is because a smaller space has to be much more carefully designed and thought out in advance, and furnished with versatile pieces in order to suit the variety of living functions that the space will be used for. which is easier? getting a nearly-custom-designed home capable of being used for everything, or adding another/more room to the plan and putting in more furniture and appliances to suit the activity? most people have no means to afford architects or interior designers, so simply go with the extra rooms.
this most readily shows up in the often-repeated fact that you can buy a smaller home, but finishing it to a decent level will cost you the same or more than a larger one. a lot can be hidden in big rooms and extra rooms. faulty design, for one.
Janie , October 26, 2019 at 5:52 pm
Jeremy, your comment is very matter-of-fact and very touching, especially the next to last paragraph. That's where so many of us are. Inode Buddha and Diphtherio stress community. It's hard to find and hard to make.
inode_buddha , October 26, 2019 at 6:05 pm
"Returning to "buy quality" -- where is that stuff sold? I can buy quality names at high price but the old slogan "quality goes in before the name goes on" is just empty words."
Unfortunately, the Peoples Republik of NY does not allow trash picking from dumps, so I resort to Craiglist and eBay. Or simply thrift shops, family, and friends. Yard sales and estate sales are often gold mines. I *wish* we had boot sales in the USA.
Clothing is all natural BTW: leather, cotton, wool.
Susan C , October 26, 2019 at 6:52 pm
I hear you, having moved more than a few times across the country for jobs and opportunities, something employers used to pay for but no longer. I learned how to streamline my stuff which means I spend hours before a move to get rid of the nonsense. What does come to mind though is how much better the furniture and appliances were made back then compared to now, in other words the quality and workmanship is much higher. Used to buy from Ethan Allan where actual American people would sign the pieces they made. Sigh. There is something to be said about buying furniture from the actual person who makes the pieces. Natural materials and high quality. Just one example.
As you indicated, lives are different now, without the security of family and life long friends and neighbors. And steady employment. As a way to defeat consumerism it may be worthwhile to really pay attention to what is being bought and to buy it with quality in mind so it will endure. Again I have noticed a lot of furniture and art pieces and decorations that are very high quality at estate sales where these types of items would never be made and sold anywhere now. Unique pieces, very well made. The way things used to be. We lost that sensitivity and now buy senselessly. Just to buy, just to fill a void. People don't really need that many things.Joun , October 26, 2019 at 8:52 am
I do not trust the current regime to manage this kind of change.
We keep our jets, you eat your bugs (in a barren house) won't do it for me.
Summer , October 26, 2019 at 11:20 am
And without trust, all grand plans are subject to being perceived as totalitarianism and fought against as such.
Phacops , October 26, 2019 at 9:30 am
I keep on thinking that economic incentives for refraining from having children would be nice in order to emphasize how destructive our population has become in creating anthropogenic global warming. However, it seems to me that it is hard to link social responsibility to positive economic benefits and far easier to impose financial burdens.
Either way, though, population needs to be addresses or a "circular" economy will be impossible.
TheCatSaid , October 26, 2019 at 9:33 am
Banning advertising would help.
Stop the brainwashing.marieann , October 26, 2019 at 2:27 pm
Just what I was going to say
Consumerism goes hand in hand with the brainwashing that goes on.The reason we shop so much is because it feels bad when we don't, I have actually had people ask me how I manage to not shop or not watch TV I am now the "strange" old lady.Rod , October 26, 2019 at 10:21 am
In my personal experience, I have seen how Poverty reframes and affects all personal consumption choices.
Lots of compromises between what you would like to buy and what you can afford with the money you have.And of course there are strategies to offset that for the informed.
Not an excuse and we all could do better driving our demand to a better outcome–but not to be ignored or underestimated–imo
John Wright , October 26, 2019 at 11:27 am
Light globes = bulbs, could last very long if they were run with the tungsten filaments at a lower voltage (cooler).
The trade off is that running the filament cooler causes the light output to drop, so the electric bill is higher for the same light.
The new LED lamps, assuming they have quality and well-rated electronic components should be able to last a long time and provide good light at a lower cost.
Jeremy Grimm , October 26, 2019 at 2:34 pm
LED light bulbs should last a very long time. I saved a few of the LED light bulbs after they failed and tore one apart. Inside there is tiny power supply board to convert the 120 V alternating current to a level to drive the LEDs on a puck connected to the power supply. I have a hunch that the LEDs are still working fine. I even wonder how many of the little power supplies are still working just fine after taking a look at the wire connection between the power supply and the base of the light bulb assembly. [I haven't tested out my hunch yet -- it's one of many projects part-way along that clutter the folding tables that furnish my living room.]
Synoia , October 26, 2019 at 3:37 pm
Ok, so we cannot manage our way out of the current "Consumerism" mess.
Then we will get increasing failures leading to collapse, accompanies with at least 3 of the 4 horsemen.
Famine, Pestilence and Death.
DHG , October 26, 2019 at 5:34 pm
Consumerism will be destroyed at the same time all nation/states are destroyed at Armageddon. Until then Satans system runs the way it is. Greed will not allow humans to get rid of it.
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Oct 25, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Andre Vltcheck via Off-Guardian.org,
It is very popular these days to talk and write about the "trade war" between the United States and China. But is there really one raging? Or is it, what we are witnessing, simply a clash of political and ideological systems : one being extremely successful and optimistic, the other depressing, full of dark cynicism and nihilism?
In the past, West used to produce almost everything. While colonizing the entire planet (one should just look at the map of the globe, between the two world wars), Europe and later the United States, Canada and Australia, kept plundering all the continents of natural resources, holding hundreds of millions of human beings in what could be easily described as 'forced labor', often bordering on slavery.
Under such conditions, it was very easy to be 'number one', to reign without competition, and to toss around huge amounts of cash, for the sole purpose of indoctrinating local and overseas 'subjects' on topics such as the 'glory' of capitalism, colonialism (open and hidden), and Western-style 'democracy'.
It is essential to point out that in the recent past, the global Western dictatorship (and that included the 'economic system) used to have absolutely no competition. Systems that were created to challenge it, were smashed with the most brutal, sadistic methods. One only needs recall invasions from the West to the young Soviet Union, with the consequent genocide and famines. Or other genocides in Indochina, which was fighting its wars for independence, first against France, later against the United States.
*
Times changed. But Western tactics haven't.
There are now many new systems, in numerous corners of the world. These systems, some Communist, others socialist or even populist, are ready to defend their citizens, and to use the natural resources to feed the people, and to educate, house and cure them.
No matter how popular these systems are at home, the West finds ways to demonize them, using its well-established propaganda machinery. First, to smear them and then, if they resist, to directly liquidate them.
As before, during the colonial era, no competition has been permitted. Disobedience is punishable by death.
Naturally, the Western system has not been built on excellence, hard work and creativity, only. It was constructed on fear, oppression and brutal force. For centuries, it has clearly been a monopoly.
*
Only the toughest countries, like Russia, China, Iran, North Korea or Cuba, have managed to survive, defending they own cultures, and advancing their philosophies.
To the West, China has proved to be an extremely tough adversary.
With its political, economic, and social system, it has managed to construct a forward-looking, optimistic and extraordinarily productive society. Its scientific research is now second to none. Its culture is thriving. Together with its closest ally, Russia, China excels in many essential fields.
That is precisely what irks, even horrifies the West.
For decades and centuries, Europe and the United States have not been ready to tolerate any major country, which would set up its own set of rules and goals.
China refuses to accept the diktat from abroad. It now appears to be self-sufficient, ideologically, politically, economically and intellectually. Where it is not fully self-sufficient, it can rely on its friends and allies. Those allies are, increasingly, located outside the Western sphere.
*
Is China really competing with the West? Yes and no. And often not consciously.
It is a giant; still the most populous nation on earth. It is building, determinedly, its socialist motherland (applying "socialism with the Chinese characteristics" model). It is trying to construct a global system which has roots in the thousands of years of its history (BRI – Belt and Road Initiative, often nicknamed the "New Silk Road").
Its highly talented and hardworking, as well as increasingly educated population, is producing, at a higher pace and often at higher quality than the countries in Europe, or the United States. As it produces, it also, naturally, trades.
This is where the 'problem' arises. The West, particularly the United States, is not used to a country that creates things for the sake and benefit of its people. For centuries, Asian, African and Latin American people were ordered what and how to produce, where and for how much to sell the produce. Or else!
Of course, the West has never consulted anyone. It has been producing what it (and its corporations) desired. It was forcing countries all over the world, to buy its products. If they refused, they got invaded, or their fragile governments (often semi-colonies, anyway) overthrown.
The most 'terrible' thing that China is doing is: it is producing what is good for China, and for its citizens.
That is, in the eyes of the West, unforgiveable!
*
In the process, China 'competes'. But fairly: it produces a lot, cheaply, and increasingly well. The same can be said about Russia.
These two countries are not competing maliciously. If they were to decide to, they could sink the US economy, or perhaps the economy of the entire West, within a week.
But they don't even think about it.
However, as said above, to just work hard, invent new and better products, advance scientific research, and use the gains to improve the lives of ordinary people (they will be no extreme poverty in China by the end of 2020) is seen as the arch-crime in London and Washington.
Why? Because the Chinese and Russian systems appear to be much better, or at least, simply better, than those which are reigning in the West and its colonies. And because they are working for the people, not for corporations or for the colonial powers.
And the demagogues in the West – in its mass media outlets and academia – are horrified that perhaps, soon, the world will wake up and see the reality. Which is actually already happening: slowly but surely.
*
To portray China as an evil country, is essential for the hegemony of the West. There is nothing so terrifying to London and Washington as the combination of these words: "Socialism/ Communism, Asian, success". The West invents new and newer 'opposition movements', it then supports them and finances them, just in order to then point fingers and bark: "China is fighting back, and it is violating human rights", when it defends itself and its citizens. This tactic is clear, right now, in both the northwest of the country, and in Honk Kong.
Not everything that China builds is excellent. Europe is still producing better cars, shoes and fragrances, and the United States, better airplanes. But the progress that China has registered during the last two decades, is remarkable. Were it to be football, it is China 2: West 1.
Most likely, unless there is real war, that in ten years, China will catch up in many fields; catch up, and surpass the West. Side by side with Russia.
It could have been excellent news for the entire world. China is sharing its achievements, even with the poorest of the poor countries in Africa, or with Laos in Asia.
The only problem is, that the West feels that it has to rule. It is unrepentant, observing the world from a clearly fundamentalist view. It cannot help it: it is absolutely, religiously convinced that it has to give orders to every man and woman, in every corner of the globe.
It is a tick, fanatical. Lately, anyone who travels to Europe or the United States will testify: what is taking place there is not good, even for the ordinary citizens. Western governments and corporations are now robbing even their own citizens. The standard of living is nose-diving.
China, with just a fraction of the wealth, is building a much more egalitarian society, although you would never guess so, if you exclusively relied on Western statistics.
*
So, "trade war" slogans are an attempt to convince the local and global public that "China is unfair", that it is "taking advantage" of the West. President Trump is "defending" the United States against the Chinese 'Commies'. But the more he "defends them", the poorer they get. Strange, isn't it?
While the Chinese people, Russian people, even Laotian people, are, 'miraculously', getting richer and richer. They are getting more and more optimistic.
For decades, the West used to preach 'free trade', and competition. That is, when it was in charge, or let's say, 'the only kid on the block'.
In the name of competition and free trade, dozens of governments got overthrown, and millions of people killed.
And now?
What is China suppose to do? Frankly, what?
Should it curb its production, or perhaps close scientific labs? Should it consult the US President or perhaps British Prime Minister, before it makes any essential economic decision? Should it control the exchange rate of RMB, in accordance with the wishes of the economic tsars in Washington? That would be thoroughly ridiculous, considering that (socialist/Communist) China will soon become the biggest economy in the world, or maybe it already is.
There is all that abstract talk, but nothing concrete suggested. Or is it like that on purpose?
Could it be that the West does not want to improve relations with Beijing?
On September 7, 2019, AP reported:
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow compared trade talks with China on Friday to the U.S. standoff with Russia during the Cold War
"The stakes are so high, we have to get it right, and if that takes a decade, so be it," he said.
Kudlow emphasized that it took the United States decades to get the results it wanted with Russia. He noted that he worked in the Reagan administration: "I remember President Reagan waging a similar fight against the Soviet Union."
Precisely! The war against the Soviet Union was hardly a war for economic survival of the United States. It was an ideological battle, which the United States, unfortunately won, because it utilized both propaganda and economic terror (the arms race and other means).
Now, China is next on the list, and the White House is not even trying to hide it. But China is savvy. It is beginning to understand the game. And it is ready, by all means, to defend the system which has pulled almost all its citizens out of misery, and which could, one day soon, do the same for the rest of the world.
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Oct 24, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
... ... ...
The leader of the Spanish Vox party, Santiago Abascal, argued that immigration is a political euphemism for the trafficking of cheap labor into Europe so that multinational companies and financial interests can increase their profits: "The establishment argues that our system must be maintained in the face of an aging population, but mass immigration renders work increasingly precarious." According to Abascal, the 2015 refugee crisis was used as a pretext to further the economic ambitions of Brussels bureaucrats at the expense of Europe's working population, especially its youth.
Baudet also argues that establishment politicians push for immigration because they favor a globalized worldview under which national identities will disappear: "They genuinely believe we should move beyond religious and national identities to become global citizens." Baudet, however, thinks such policies would be disastrous, not only because they risk plunging Europe into "tremendous conflict," but also because they risk creating a "brain drain" from Africa and the Middle East.
The solution to this problem, many of these conservative leaders say, is to provide motivation and assistance to Europe's young people so they have their own children. Abascal uses Hungary as a model, where , under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, families that have three or more children are given government grants to buy houses and no longer have to pay income tax. The state finances free nurseries, allowing women to re-enter the workforce without having to worry about childcare costs. In addition, Hungary has inscribed Christianity in its constitution to create a strong religious identity, providing its youth with a sense of direction and meaning.
The problem of low birthrates ultimately lies internally, within Europe's culture and social life. A young generation that doesn't aspire to have families and that's increasingly alienated from any sense of community has driven much of the crisis. Whether Europe can be salvaged and revived is yet to be seen.
Alessandra Bocchi is a freelance journalist focusing on foreign policy in North Africa, Europe, and the U.S. She has been covering the protests in Hong Kong. Follow her on Twitter @AlessaBocchi .
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Oct 20, 2019 | www.unz.com
Daniel Rich , says: October 17, 2019 at 5:16 am GMT
@Rurik O.Teah , says: October 17, 2019 at 7:05 am GMTI read somewhere James Gandolfini [The Sopranos], actively did a lot of stuff for [military] veterans.
@eahCounterinsurgency , says: October 17, 2019 at 9:00 am GMT@J. O. Step 1 in ending hunger in America:
Stop importing hungry foreigners who can't earn a living here.
Do that and somebody might take you seriously. As it is, you're morally despicable.Counterinsurgency
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Oct 17, 2019 | www.unz.com
"If minorities prefer Sharia Law, then we advise them to go to those places where that's the state law.
Russia does not need minorities. Minorities need Russia, and we will not grant them special privileges, or try to change our laws to fit their desires, no matter how loud they yell "discrimination"
-Vladimir Putin
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Oct 19, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
That said, as Bloomberg noted, Liu didn't address specifics about the trade talks in his speech. Instead, the vice premier said China would expand investments in core technologies to ensure the economic restructuring of the economy was stable, adding that economic activity in the year ahead is "very bright."
"We're not worried about short-term economic volatility. We have every confidence in our ability to meet macroeconomic targets for the year," he said.
As reported on Friday, ahead of the latest round of talks, President Trump's top economic advisors and industry experts warned him of an economic downturn if a further escalation in the trade war is seen by 2020. As such, it is likely that a lite trade deal could be on the table next month.
But as our readers have recently learned, the trade war didn't start the synchronized global downturn, which has been almost entirely a function of China's clogged up credit impulse...
... so any deal - lite or otherwise - won't result in an immediate acceleration of global growth; indeed, as some speculate, failure to observe a substantial economic rebound following a "deal" could well mark the point when central banks and governments finally throw in the towel, as they finally usher in the final lap in the global race to
debasedestroy fiat currencies and hyperinflate away the debt: MMT and Helicopter Money.
CashMcCall , 27 minutes ago link
CashMcCall , 13 minutes ago linkTrump's pathetic Trade war accomplished nothing. US exports down 18% globally. Farmer destroyed. US markets for all goods harmed. The world is offloading any and all dependence on US products. Impulsive stupid jerk. 45% of the world population on US Sanctions, rising black markets, US supply chain disruptions, US manufacturing in a recession.
Tariffs are tax deductible so they do not accumulate any tax benefit to the US Treasury. They are virtually all rolled over into the national debt. So while the consumer may not notice a rising CPI, they are getting drown in Trump Debt, the largest spending deficits in US history, largest debt to GDP of over 110% and rising. Trump has the fastest acceleration of US debt of any white house occupancy nearly 4 trillion in 2.7 years. It is obvious Trump is clueless in virtually everything. Has no capacity to comprehend a thing.
Look at this scatterbrained Turkey Kurds fiasco. Impulsive, thoughtless and accomplished nothing. US troops now guarding Syrian oil. Astonishing. Everything this guy touches turned into a burning crap filled dumpster fire.
'I will be so good at the military, your head will spin'
"When those 'gunds' start shooting they tend to do things"
Then there are no deals from the self-proclaimed "art of the Deal"... nothing. Look at Iran. He has made negative progress across the board. Thank to the orange stupid nations across the globe are circumventing US Dollar Reserve. Each day the US importance and more importantly reliability is diminished.
Look at Trump in high tech... Merck has developed an Ebola vaccine in EUROPE not the USA. The USA hasn't even approved it yet. What is Trump doing... ATTACKING BIG PHARMA. Trumptards love seeing that. Yet it is the Trumptards that keep screaming to buy Murica products but if they have to pay more for them, then suddenly they demonize the US companies. Big Pharma will be the next sector to joint Semiconductor to leave the USA.
Trump blacklist Big tech. Why? Tech products have a very short shelf life. If the US doesn't sell tech product what do they have that others want? COAL? Soy Beans? From smart to stupid. Look at Intel and Microsoft. Trump band Intel Chip sales to China and threatens Microsoft operating software. In one year China now has RISC V chips from Alibaba, all open source and the Chinese Military has switched to Linux and UNIX GNU. So who loses here? The US tech businesses. Look at Micron dying on the vine, tossed from China.
Meanwhile China has 5G and has replaced all US components in its boards with the help of Hitachi and Panasonic who are doing the same with all their electronics to avoid Trump Blacklist compliance. Trump is low tech and dumb as dirt. The US Tech sector is being carpet bombed under Trump... and without tech, what products does the US have to sell that world markets want? Not a god damn thing.
Let's remember that Trump didn't want a partial deal... Now he will take anything to get him out of his self-made wreckage. Meanwhile impeachment is coming... Mista no deals is going down in flames.
AllSoRight , 10 minutes ago linkBrazil and Argentina
Last year 300,000 us farmers grew soy and had 110 mmt. This year there are 100,000 us Soy farmers left and they grew 34 mmt... not enough to export.
... Arbitrary and capricious meddling by US politicians in commodity contracts renders all contracts voidable under force majeure. I would have thought with your handle you would have known this. Those markets will never come back.
They will forever be marginalized and smaller. Trump's damage to US trade is permanent.
runningman18 , 48 minutes ago linkIn other words, consolidation among large corp farmers, decimation of the smaller family farmers? I am truly asking, but seems to remind me of the trend since the 1980s.
Trump and China claimed "substantial progress" this past spring, and it all fell apart within a couple months. The same thing will happen on this "deal"....
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Oct 15, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com
Fred C. Dobbs , October 11, 2019 at 09:14 PM
Former World Leaders: The Trade War Threatens
the World's Economy https://nyti.ms/2MAFOTC
NYT - Kevin Rudd, Helen Clark and Carl Bildt - October 11Despite an interim deal, global peace and prosperity
remain at risk if the United States and China do not
fully resolve their conflict.(The authors are former prime ministers
of Australia, New Zealand and Sweden.)This piece has been updated to reflect news developments.
The 18-month trade war between the United States and China represents the single greatest threat to global economic growth.
President Trump announced on Friday a preliminary trade détente with China, saying that the two countries have a verbal agreement for an initial phase of a deal. The agreement reportedly includes concessions from China to protect American intellectual property, to accept guidelines on managing its currency and to buy tens of billions worth of American agricultural products. Washington, for its part, will not go through next month with placing more tariffs on Chinese products.
This is an encouraging sign, but a verbal agreement is just a first step. A failure to bring the trade war to a final conclusion significantly increases the risk of recession next year in the United States, Europe, Japan and other developed and emerging economies. It would also seriously undermine China's near-term growth prospects.
That's why, as representatives of a group of 10 former prime ministers and presidents from center-left and center-right governments that have enjoyed close relations with both the United States and China, we are writing to urge Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping to reach a substantive trade agreement by year's end. It's time to bring this source of global economic uncertainty to a close.
America's and China's prosperity have been built on global free trade. America has profited immensely from access to global markets since its birth. China, since opening up 40 years ago, has lifted millions of its people out of poverty largely through global trade. Indeed, much of the prosperity enjoyed by people across the world is anchored in our ability to sell goods and services freely across national boundaries.
Now, however, we see global growth in trade lagging behind general economic growth for the first time in decades. In part, this is the product of the expanding trade war between America and China, the world's two largest economies. In part, it is because of a more general outbreak of protectionism around the world. Both these factors threaten continued global prosperity.
We recognize, as former leaders of countries with longstanding economic relationships with China, the real difficulties regarding a number of Beijing's trade and economic practices. We understand, for example, the challenges that arise from Chinese policies on intellectual property and technology transfer, its restrictions on access to its markets, and its subsidization of private and public companies that are active in the global marketplace. We believe that these practices need to change in whichever countries may use them. But it is particularly important in China, because it is the world's second-largest economy.
At the same time, as countries long committed to the principles of free trade, we do not see the ever-widening tariff war, started by the United States, as an effective way to resolve trade and economic disputes. Tariffs, by definition, are the enemy of free trade. Their cumulative impact, particularly combined with the current resurgence of protectionism worldwide, only depresses economic growth, employment and living standards. Tariffs raise the cost of living for working families as consumer prices are driven up.
Stock markets rose on Friday with the news of the preliminary deal. The tariff war has been creating economic uncertainty, depressing international investor confidence, compounding downward pressure on growth and increasing the risk of recession. The disruption of global supply chains is already profound, and it may continue until a final deal is reached.
We believe that the World Trade Organization, despite its limitations, is best positioned to address China's trade practices. We also believe that the W.T.O. is the most appropriate forum in which to resolve trade disputes. So we urge the United States and China to work with other member states to strengthen the W.T.O.'s institutional capacity.
Our group of former prime ministers and presidents includes François Fillon of France, Joe Clark of Canada, Enrico Letta of Italy, Jan Peter Balkenende of the Netherlands, Felipe Calderón and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico, and Han Seung-soo of South Korea. Given our collective experience, we are not naïve about the inherent complexities in negotiating trade agreements. Many of us have negotiated free-trade pacts with both the United States and China. We are deeply familiar with the concerns of each country, including the domestic political constituencies that argue for continued protection.
Many of those domestic concerns have focused on the long-term enforcement of any agreement. On this point, we argue that it is in China's own long-term economic interest to ensure the effective implementation of any new trade deal -- whether involving intellectual property, technology transfer, state subsidies or market access. Such policies would also need to apply to all of China's trading partners, just as they would need to apply to its relationship with the United States.
On the question of enforcement, China must be acutely aware that if it fails to comply with the terms of the agreement, an already damaging trade war is likely to resume. A new trade agreement should include strong enforcement provisions, along with strengthened W.T.O. dispute-resolution mechanisms, to give greater confidence to both parties.
For these reasons, and given the gravity of the global economic outlook for 2020, we urge both countries to exercise every effort to reach a substantive agreement this year. We also urge the United States to withdraw the punitive tariffs it has imposed -- and that China do the same with the reciprocal tariffs it has enacted.
Beyond trade, we are anxious about the wider strategic impact of any further decoupling of the Chinese and the American economies, particularly in technology and finance. Such a decoupling would present a long-term threat to global peace and security.
It would also effectively constitute the first step in the declaration of a new Cold War. As with the last Cold War, many nations would be forced to choose between the two powers. And that is a choice none of us wants to make.
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Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... , October 12, 2019 at 02:41 AM
The Unwinnable Trade War
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/2019-10-08/unwinnable-trade-war
Foreign Affairs - Weijian Shan - November/December 2019Everyone Loses in the US-Chinese Clash
-- but Especially Americans... Economists reckon the dead-weight loss arising from the existing tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports to be $620 per household, or about $80 billion, annually. This represents about 0.4 percent of U.S. GDP. If the United States continues to expand its tariff regime as scheduled, that loss will more than double.
Meanwhile, Chinese consumers aren't paying higher prices for U.S. imports. A study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics shows that since the beginning of 2018, China has raised the average tariff rate on U.S. imports from 8.0 percent to 21.8 percent and has lowered the average tariff rate on all its other trading partners from 8.0 percent to 6.7 percent. China imposed tariffs only on U.S. commodities that can be replaced with imports from other countries at similar prices. It actually lowered duties for those U.S. products that can't be bought elsewhere more cheaply, such as semiconductors and pharmaceuticals. Consequently, China's import prices for the same products have dropped overall, in spite of higher tariffs on U.S. imports.
Beijing's nimble calculations are well illustrated by the example of lobsters. China imposed a 25 percent tariff on U.S. lobsters in July 2018, precipitating a 70 percent drop in U.S. lobster exports. At the same time, Beijing cut tariffs on Canadian lobsters by three percent, and as a result, Canadian lobster exports to China doubled. Chinese consumers now pay less for lobsters imported from essentially the same waters.
THE INESCAPABLE DEFICIT
Beijing has proved much more capable than Washington of minimizing the pain to its consumers and economy. But the trade war would be more palatable for Washington if its confrontation with China were accomplishing Trump's goals. The president thinks that China is "ripping off" the United States. He wants to reduce the United States' overall trade deficit by changing China's trade practices. But levying tariffs on Chinese imports has had the paradoxical effect of inflating the United States' overall trade deficit, which, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, rose by $28 billion in the first seven months of this year compared with the same period last year.
The uncomfortable truth for Trump is that U.S. trade deficits don't spring from the practices of U.S. trading partners; they come from the United States' own spending habits.
The United States has run a persistent trade deficit since 1975, both overall and with most of its trading partners. Over the past 20 years, U.S. domestic expenditures have always exceeded GDP, resulting in negative net exports, or a trade deficit. The shortfall has shifted over time but has remained between three and six percent of GDP.
Trump wants to boost U.S. exports to trim the deficit, but trade wars inevitably invite retaliation that leads to significant reductions in exports. Moreover, increasing the volume of exports does not necessarily reduce trade deficits unless it is accompanied by a reduction in the country's spending in terms of consumption and investment. The right way to reduce a trade deficit is to grow the economy faster than concurrent domestic expenditures, which can be accomplished only by encouraging innovation and increasing productivity. A trade war does the opposite, damaging the economy, impeding growth, and hindering innovation.
Even a total Chinese capitulation in the trade war wouldn't make a dent in the overall U.S. trade deficit. If China buys more from the United States, it will purchase less from other countries, which will then sell the difference either to the United States or to its competitors.
For example, look at aircraft sales by the U.S. firm Boeing and its European rival, Airbus. At the moment, both companies are operating at full capacity. If China buys 1,000 more aircraft from Boeing and 1,000 fewer from Airbus, the European plane-maker will still sell those 1,000 aircraft, just to the United States or to other countries that might have bought instead from Boeing.
China understands this, which is one reason it hasn't put higher tariffs on U.S.-made aircraft. Whatever the outcome of the trade war, the deficit won't be greatly changed.
A RESILIENT CHINA
The trade war has not really damaged China so far, largely because Beijing has managed to keep import prices from rising and because its exports to the United States have been less affected than anticipated.
This pattern will change as U.S. importers begin to switch from buying from China to buying from third countries to avoid paying the high tariffs. But assuming China's GDP continues to grow at around five to six percent every year, the effect of that change will be quite modest.
Some pundits doubt the accuracy of Chinese figures for economic growth, but multilateral agencies and independent research institutions set Chinese GDP growth within a range of five to six percent.
Skeptics also miss the bigger picture that China's economy is slowing down as it shifts to a consumption-driven model. Some manufacturing will leave China if the high tariffs become permanent, but the significance of such a development should not be overstated. Independent of the anxiety bred by Trump's tariffs, China is gradually weaning itself off its dependence on export-led growth. Exports to the United States as a proportion of China's GDP steadily declined from a peak of 11 percent in 2005 to less than four percent by 2018. In 2006, total exports made up 36 percent of China's GDP; by 2018, that figure had been cut by half, to 18 percent, which is much lower than the average of 29 percent for the industrialized countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Chinese leaders have long sought to steer their economy away from export-driven manufacturing to a consumer-driven model.
To be sure, the trade war has exacted a severe psychological toll on the Chinese economy. In 2018, when the tariffs were first announced, they caused a near panic in China's market at a time when growth was slowing thanks to a round of credit tightening. The stock market took a beating, plummeting some 25 percent. The government initially felt pressured to find a way out of the trade war quickly. But as the smoke cleared to reveal little real damage, confidence in the market rebounded: stock indexes had risen by 23 percent and 34 percent on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges, respectively, by September 12, 2019. The resilience of the Chinese economy in the face of the trade war helps explain why Beijing has stiffened its negotiating position in spite of Trump's escalation.
China hasn't had a recession in the past 40 years and won't have one in the foreseeable future, because its economy is still at an early stage of development, with per capita GDP only one-sixth of that of the United States. Due to declining rates of saving and rising wages, the engine of China's economy is shifting from investments and exports to private consumption. As a result, the country's growth rate is expected to slow. The International Monetary Fund projects that China's real GDP growth will fall from 6.6 percent in 2018 to 5.5 percent in 2024; other estimates put the growth rate at an even lower number.
Although the rate of Chinese growth may dip, there is little risk that the Chinese economy will contract in the foreseeable future. Private consumption, which has been increasing, representing 35 percent of GDP in 2010 and 39 percent last year, is expected to continue to rise and to drive economic growth, especially now that China has expanded its social safety net and welfare provisions, freeing up private savings for consumption.
The U.S. economy, on the other hand, has had the longest expansion in history, and the inevitable down cycle is already on the horizon: second-quarter GDP growth this year dropped to 2.0 percent from the first quarter's 3.1 percent. The trade war, without taking into account the escalations from September, will shave off at least half a percentage point of U.S. GDP, and that much of a drag on the economy may tip it into the anticipated downturn. (According to a September Washington Post poll, 60 percent of Americans expect a recession in 2020.) The prospect of a recession could provide Trump with the impetus to call off the trade war. Here, then, is one plausible way the trade war will come to an end. Americans aren't uniformly feeling the pain of the tariffs yet. But a turning point is likely to come when the economy starts to lose steam.
If the trade war continues, it will compromise the international trading system, which relies on a global division of labor based on each country's comparative advantage. Once that system becomes less dependable -- when disrupted, for instance, by the boycotts and hostility of trade wars -- countries will start decoupling from one another.
China and the United States are joined at the hip economically, each being the other's biggest trading partner. Any attempt to decouple the two economies will bring catastrophic consequences for both, and for the world at large. Consumer prices will rise, world economic growth will slow, supply chains will be disrupted and laboriously duplicated on a global scale, and a digital divide -- in technology, the Internet, and telecommunications -- will vastly hamper innovation by limiting the horizons and ambitions of technology firms. ...
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anne , October 10, 2019 at 12:30 PM
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-10-10/Huawei-is-going-to-beat-Trump-with-human-resources-KFEpAxznJ6/index.htmlOctober 10, 2019
Huawei is going to beat Trump with human resources
By Jeff TowsonPresident Trump's placement of Huawei on the U.S. entity list was a body blow. The magnitude of the hit should not be understated. Being cut off from U.S. technology so suddenly staggered the multinational. But, to their credit, Huawei didn't go down. They took the hit and stayed on their feet.
I'm not really sure what the U.S. government thought it would achieve with the ban. To stop Huawei's growth in international markets? To shift 5G market share to Ericsson and Nokia? To cripple the company? Just an assertion of principle?
I think they really just don't understand Huawei.
Yes, the U.S. government can hurt Huawei in the short term by limiting their access to technology (and to certain foreign markets). But, absent a viable competitor, this won't have much impact in the long term. Because Huawei is fundamentally not a technology company. Huawei is a human resources company. And is kind of obsessed with survival.
Huawei's core strategy has always been about survival.
If you read Ren Zhengfei's talks and papers going back to the early 1990's, what jumps out at you is how different Huawei is. The goal of the company has never really been about money. Nor about becoming a tech giant. Nor about innovation. And it has definitely not been about going public and getting a big payday. Huawei's fundamental purpose has always been about survival.
"Being big and strong temporarily is not what we want. What we want is the ability and resilience to survive sustainably," said Ren in 2001.
Actually he has been talking for literally decades about how Huawei can survive long-term – and about the common causes of corporate decline. My simplistic take is that Ren came up with a fairly logical plan for long-term survival: Serve your customers no matter what. Then get big and slowly grind your competitors down with lower costs and greater R&D spending. And within this, the only resource you really have are your people and their cumulative brainpower.
Huawei's main resource is its people.
Huawei, like most engineering-based enterprises, has only one real resource, which is the cumulative brainpower of its people. This is the resource that creates the products and sells them to their customers. And as technology changes quickly, they must continually create and recreate the products – and therefore the value of the enterprise. Huawei's main strength is the system they have developed for the creation, assessment and distribution of value by over 190,000 people. It's about HR strategy.
Unlike the companies in the U.S. and Europe, where the shareholders are the stakeholders with ultimate say or multiple stakeholders, such as employees, owners and the community, at Huawei, the only stakeholders you ever really hear about are the current employees. It's all about the top contributing, current employees. Shareholders, providers of capital, retired employees and even the founders are all a distant second in importance.
Note how different this is to other large engineering-focused companies (say GM and Bosch), where much of the value goes into guaranteed salaries (regardless of contribution) and into post-retirement benefits (i.e., not current employees). Huawei is not only focused primarily on this one group, they are also operating much more as a meritocracy with regards to labor.
Huawei to me looks a lot like what 3G capital has been doing in consumer-facing companies like Budweiser and Burger King. They have instituted "meritocracy and partnership" on a massive scale in a knowledge business. There is a lot of ownership. And you rise and fall based on your performance.
Huawei is awesome at inspiring dedication in their top contributing, current employees. And that is pretty logical. If brainpower is Huawei's main resource, this is the group that creates that value. So recruiting and motivating this group is the biggest priority. And they don't just want them motivated. They want them "all in."
In practice, this is actually pretty complicated. It's a big company. Employees are at different stages of their lives and careers. How do you get current staff, senior staff and incoming staff to go "all in" in creating value for customers – and therefore the enterprise?
My outsider's take is that Huawei is mostly focused on motivating teams and team managers. High-performance teams with aggressive and dedicated managers are the engine of Huawei. And these are mostly in sales and marketing and R&D. They make the largest contributions to the customers and therefore the enterprise. You motivate at the team level and within the departments that matter most. And then you scale it up.
But how do you assess contributed value?
Staff are rated every 6-12 months across metrics such as sales performance (usually team-based), talent, dedication, and the potential for advancement. The phrases I keep coming across in my reading are "dedicated employees" and "high-performance teams." In fact, the book on their HR book is titled Dedication.
Once assessed, how do you reward performance?
High-performing contributors are given higher bonuses, of course. But they are also identified and given more opportunities (and responsibilities). They are given more training and the option to participate in the employee share ownership program (very important). Low performers, in contrast, are demoted or exited. Meritocracy works in both directions.
And this brings us back to the main point of this article: How does the U.S. tech ban impact any of this? How does it impact an HR system for motivating the more than 190,000 employees that continually recreate the company and ensure its survival?
In the long term, it doesn't.
Yes, the company took a big hit in the short term in terms of its access to tech (especially in semiconductors and in the consumer business) and to a few markets. But the core of the company is still churning along like it has for 30 years. And I think it is very likely Huawei will overcome these supply chain problems. And, ironically, the current crisis is probably resulting in increased motivation and dedication across the company.
Jeff Towson is a Peking University professor.
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Oct 15, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com
Fred C. Dobbs , October 13, 2019 at 06:28 AM
(It's Niall.)Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... , October 13, 2019 at 06:41 AMChina's three-body problem
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2019/10/07/china-three-body-problem/p5xK2i5zBWdkkor0JRyjwM/story.html?event=event25 via @BostonGlobeNiall Ferguson - October 7
The 70th anniversary of the People's Republic of China was not a birthday I felt like celebrating. As Dutch historian Frank Dikötter has shown in his searing three-volume history of the Mao Zedong era, the Communist regime claimed the lives of tens of millions of people: 2 million in the revolution between 1949 and 1951, another 3 million by the end of the 1950s, up to 45 million in the man-made famine known as the "Great Leap Forward," and yet more in the mayhem of the Cultural Revolution, Mao's campaign against the intelligentsia, which escalated into a civil war.
Hitler's Third Reich was obliterated by massive military force in 1945. It lasted just 12 years. Stalin's Soviet Union bore the brunt of beating Hitler, but later succumbed to economic sclerosis. It fell apart in 1991, after 68 years. The mystery of the People's Republic of China is that it is still with us.
Now, I could give you a rather boring explanation of why I think China's bid to "catch up and surpass" (ganchao) the United States will fail. But maybe a more interesting answer can be found in Liu Cixin's astonishing 2008 novel, "The Three-Body Problem," which I read for the first time last week.
The problem of the title is introduced to the reader -- and to the nanotechnology scientist Wang Miao, one of the central characters -- as a virtual reality game, set in a strange, distant world with three suns rather than the familiar one. The mutually perturbing gravitational attractions of the three suns prevent this planet from ever settling into a predictable orbit with regular days, nights, and seasons. It has occasional "stable eras," during which civilization can advance, but with minimal warning, these give way to "chaotic eras" of intense heat or cold that render the planet uninhabitable The central conceit of Liu's novel is that China's history has the same pattern as the three-body problem: periods of stability always end with periods of chaos -- what the Chinese call dong luan. The other key character in the book is Ye Wenjie, who sees her father, a professor at Tsinghua University, beaten to death by a gang of teenage Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution.
Banished from Beijing to a labor camp in benighted rural backwater, Ye is rescued when she is given a lowly job in a mysterious observatory known as Red Coast. But nothing can undo the emotional damage of witnessing her father's murder. Nor can she escape the chaos of Communism. She watches in horror as the entire area around the observatory is deforested. Everything -- even astrophysics -- is subordinated to Mao's warped ideology.
Disillusioned completely by the madness of mankind -- a sentiment reinforced by a chance meeting with an American environmentalist -- Ye stumbles on a way of beaming a message from Earth deep into space by bouncing it off the sun. When, after years of empty noise, a clear message is received in reply, she does not hesitate. Even though the message is a warning not to communicate with Trisolaris -- the name of a real planet with three suns -- Ye sends another message, ensuring that the Trisolarians can locate Earth, and initiate their long-planned relocation.
Rehabilitated in the political thaw that follows Mao's death, Ye Wenjie returns to Beijing, following in her father's footsteps as a physics professor. But she leads a double life, for she also becomes the Commander of the Earth-Trisolaris Movement, a radically misanthropic organization dedicated to helping the Trisolarians conquer earth. Acute readers will notice that this group's ideology is a subtle parody of Maoism.
"Start a global rebellion!" they shout. "Long live the spirit of Trisolaris! We shall persevere like the stubborn grass that resprouts after every wildfire! ... Eliminate human tyranny!"
Little do they know that the Trisolarians are even worse than humans. As one of the aliens points out to their leader, because of their world's utter unpredictability, "Everything is devoted to survival. To permit the survival of the civilization as a whole, there is almost no respect for the individual. Someone who can no longer work is put to death. Trisolarian society exists under a state of extreme authoritarianism." Life for the individual consists of "monotony and desiccation." That sounds a lot like Mao's China.
There is one scene in "The Three-Body Problem" that sticks in the mind. An adult and a child stand looking at the grave of a Red Guard killed during the factional battles that raged during the Cultural Revolution. "Are they heroes?" asks the child. The adult says no. "Are they enemies?" The adult again says no. "Then who are they?" The adult replies: "History."
True, the hero of the story is the foul-mouthed, chain-smoking Beijing cop Shi Qiang. Chinese readers doubtless relish the scene when he lectures a pompous American general about how best to save the world.
But the deeper meaning of the book is surely that Trisolaris is China. The three bodies in contention are not suns but classes: rulers, intellectuals, masses. Right now, China is in one of its stable phases. But, as the contending forces shift, chaos will sooner or later return. Perhaps it already has, in Hong Kong.
If it spreads, I -- and history -- will win that bet.
The Three-Body Problem is a hard science fiction novel by the Chinese writer Liu Cixin. It is the first novel of the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, but Chinese readers generally refer to the whole series by the title of this first novel. The second and third novels in the trilogy are titled The Dark Forest and Death's End. The title of the first novel refers to the three-body problem in orbital mechanics. ...The English translation by Ken Liu was published by Tor Books in 2014. It was the first Asian novel ever to win a Hugo Award for Best Novel, in 2015 and was nominated for the 2014 Nebula Award for Best Novel.
(An amazing trilogy. Inspired by Arthur Clarke (*). Looks like Niall has read the first book.)
* 'The Songs of Distant Earth' is a 1986 science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, based upon his 1958 short story of the same title. He stated that it was his favourite of all his novels. ... The novel tells of a utopian human colony in the far future that is visited by travellers from a doomed Earth, as the Sun has gone nova. The Songs of Distant Earth explores apocalyptic, atheistic, and utopian ideas, as well as the effects of long-term interstellar travel and extra-terrestrial life. (Wikipedia)
('Songs' is optimistic; 'Remembrance of
Earth's Past is not.)
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Fred C. Dobbs , October 11, 2019 at 09:32 PM
(There's 'that word' again.)Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... , October 12, 2019 at 02:47 AMJudge says Trump's immigrant wealth
test is 'repugnant,' blocks its enforcement
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2019/10/11/judge-says-trump-immigrant-wealth-test-repugnant/pecnue4UQPJ5jcZcp7t5IO/story.html?event=event25 via @BostonGlobe
Chris Dolmetsch and Edvard Pettersson - Bloomberg News - October 11A new Homeland Security rule to screen out immigrants who are at risk of becoming dependent on government benefits was put on hold by a federal judge until there's a final decision whether the so-called green card wealth test is legal.
US District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan said Friday that the rule, which was set to go into effect Oct. 15, can't be implemented nationwide.
The rule, announced in August, replaces a current policy that says immigrants shouldn't receive more than half their income from cash benefits, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or Supplemental Security Income from Social Security.
Under the new more expansive definition, immigrants aren't supposed to use public benefits like Medicaid, public housing assistance, or food stamps for more than 12 months over a 36-month period. Immigration officials will consider an immigrant's age, health, education, and wealth to see if they are at risk of becoming a "public charge."
Immigrant rights' advocacy groups and several states have argued that the new rule conflicts with existing immigration laws and would drive up the cost of providing health care and other services to immigrants.
Daniels blocked the rule following a. August lawsuit filed by the states of New York, Connecticut and Vermont and the city of New York, which alleged that the policy specifically targets immigrants of color. He ruled that the Department of Homeland Security went beyond its authority under federal immigration law.
"Defendants do not articulate why they are changing the public charge definition, why this new definition is needed now, or why the definition set forth in the rule -- which has absolutely no support in the histroy of U.S. Immigration law -- is reasonable," Daniels said, calling the rule "repugnant to the American Dream of the opportunity for prosperity and success through hard work and upward mobility." ...
(Previously...)Reuters - October 7
Judge's order releasing Trump's tax returns and blasting 'repugnant' immunity claim put on hold https://reut.rs/30XyBSO
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Sep 29, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com
anne , September 28, 2019 at 09:13 AM
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/27/us/politics/trump-china-stock-exchange.htmlSeptember 27, 2019
White House Weighs Blocking Chinese Companies From U.S. Exchanges
By Alan Rappeport and Ana SwansonWASHINGTON -- The Trump administration is discussing whether to block Chinese companies from listing shares on American stock exchanges, the latest push to try to sever economic ties between the United States and China, according to people familiar with the deliberations.
The internal discussions are in their early stages and no decision is imminent, these people cautioned.
The talks come as senior officials from both countries are scheduled to resume trade negotiations in Washington early next month. President Trump, who has continued to give mixed signals about the prospect of a trade deal with China, said earlier this week that an agreement could come "sooner than you think." His decision to delay an increase in tariffs until mid-October and China's recent purchases of American agricultural products has fueled optimism that the talks could produce an agreement.
But the prospect of further limiting American investment in China underscores the challenge that the two sides will continue to face even as they try to de-escalate a trade war that has shaken the global economy. The administration has already increased scrutiny of foreign investment with a particular eye toward China, including expanding the types of investments that can be subject to a national security review.
Last week, the Treasury Department unveiled new regulations detailing how a 2018 law, the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act, will work to prevent foreign firms from using investments like minority stakes to capture sensitive American information. And the United States has already blacklisted some Chinese companies, including Huawei, effectively barring them from doing business with American companies.
Stocks dropped on Friday after a report on the deliberations was published by Bloomberg News. The market continued to slide through most of the day. At close, the S&P 500 was down 0.5 percent and the Nasdaq composite index was down 1.1 percent.
Losses were particularly steep in the technology sector, and among semiconductor stocks, two parts of the market that have been sensitive to the latest updates on the economic tensions between China and the United States.
Details of how the United States would restrict Chinese companies from American stock markets were still being worked out and the idea remained in its early stages, the people familiar with the deliberations said.
China hawks within the administration have discussed the possibility of tighter restrictions on listed Chinese companies for many months. Supporters say the efforts would close longstanding loopholes that have allowed Chinese companies with links to its government to take advantage of America's financial rules and solicit funds from American investors without proper disclosure.
Skeptics caution that the move could be deeply disruptive to markets and the economy and risk turning American investors and pension funds into another casualty of the trade war.
The effect of limiting Chinese firms from raising capital inside the United States could be significant. As of the beginning of this year, 156 Chinese companies were listed on American exchanges and had a total market capitalization of $1.2 trillion, according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
"The underlying concerns have merit, but how to deal with them without creating a lot of collateral damage is tricky," Patrick Chovanec, managing director at Silvercrest Asset Management, wrote in a post on Twitter. "Abruptly delisting Chinese firms en masse would clearly send shock waves through markets."
The idea gained traction on Capitol Hill this summer when Republicans and Democrats in the Senate and the House introduced legislation that would delist firms that were out of compliance with American regulators for three years. The lawmakers argued that Chinese companies have been benefiting from American capital markets while playing by a different set of rules.
American complaints center on a lack of transparency into the ownership and finances of Chinese firms. The business community has long criticized China for classifying some auditor reports on company finances as state secrets and outlawing cross-border transfers of auditors' documentation.
In 2015, the Chinese affiliates of the Big Four accounting firms -- Deloitte Touch Tohmatsu, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young -- paid $500,000 each to settle a dispute about their refusal to provide documentation on Chinese companies to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which an American judge had ruled was a violation of United States law.
The White House has grown more interested in blocking Chinese firms in recent weeks, with some in the administration describing it as a top priority. Officials say the topic is not yet an issue in bilateral negotiations with the Chinese and inserting it into the talks could lead negotiations to fall apart again.
"This would be another step in ratcheting up the pressure," said Michael Pillsbury, a China scholar at the Hudson Institute who said he raised the concept of investment restrictions with the White House after negotiations with China broke down in the spring.
The White House declined to comment.
The concept has divided Mr. Trump's advisers along their usual fault lines, with Peter Navarro, Mr. Trump's trade adviser, advocating action and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin urging caution....
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Sep 27, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com
ken melvin -> anne... , September 25, 2019 at 04:35 PM
im1dc -> ken melvin... , September 25, 2019 at 04:43 PM
Amendment ICongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
It was meant protect the right to exercise one's religion of choice, and to protect the nation from becoming a theocracy. States like Alabama are more a theocracy than a democracy. The evangelicals so important to Trumps election would impose an evangelical theocracy on the nation.
Good point about religion in USA poliitics today, Melvin.RC (Ron) Weakley said in reply to im1dc... , September 26, 2019 at 05:00 AMI suggest, again, that anne and everyone here watch "The Family" on NETFLIX to see how religion has secretly infiltrated our politics and that of other nations, especially developing nations.
Agreed except I am not sure about the "secretly" part. It depends upon how you mean it. More precisely though reactionary social conservatives have wore religious pretense as an effective stalking horse to elevate their agenda in US politics. This has never been about religion per se, but rather just a tool to fool the tools.RC (Ron) Weakley said in reply to RC (Ron) Weakley... , September 26, 2019 at 05:08 AMReligion was the earliest cloaking device ever employed by the ship of state to conceal its own agenda going all the back to tribal Shamans even before the Divine Right of Kings. The 1st Amendment to the US Constitution only ever provided very weak defense from the state's misuse of religion, but more so protected individual's freedom of religion. In God We Trust, so to speak.RC (Ron) Weakley said in reply to RC (Ron) Weakley... , September 26, 2019 at 05:34 AMIt was religious influence in the US political sphere that was the primary vehicle for promulgating the political views that lead to the abolition of slavery (e.g., Quakers), the social welfare movement (e.g., Robert Hunter's 1912 book "Poverty"), women's suffrage (see link below, but not so much in the South), and alcohol temperance (obviously enough). OK, three out of four is good.Mr. Bill , September 26, 2019 at 10:04 PMhttps://religionnews.com/2019/06/04/the-complex-role-of-faith-in-the-womens-suffrage-movement/
The complex role of faith in the women's suffrage movement
June 4, 20197 Min Read...
America has forgotten it's roots, the trouble that religion created. Ignorance.Mr. Bill -> Mr. Bill... , September 26, 2019 at 10:14 PMThis country was created in opposition to religion.
Look what we have done. Killed xxx million people in the name of GW's sins.
Hell has no fury like a rehabilitated whore.Mr. Bill -> Mr. Bill... , September 26, 2019 at 10:16 PMEspecially a whore that wraps themselves in the make believe cloak of religion.Mr. Bill -> Mr. Bill... , September 26, 2019 at 10:18 PMKind of like Romer ?
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Sep 26, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
snake , Sep 25 2019 18:50 utc | 12
A house bill bans using Huawei and ZTE phones; also adds 1 billion in taxpayer paid for equipment to be donated to to USA companies so the USA companies can trash the China made equipment and exchange if for 1 billion in USA and Israel made equipment.I wonder does this mean the USA and Israel cannot compete with the Chinese?
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Sep 20, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com
EMichael , September 20, 2019 at 06:14 AM
Another demonstration of the potential authoritarian state being built by the Gop and trump. H/T to Kurt.likbez -> EMichael... , September 20, 2019 at 07:16 AM"The Trump administration has threatened to withdraw federal funding for a Middle East Studies course jointly taught by Duke University and the University of North Carolina because it believes it is too positive in its depiction of Islam in comparison to its portrayal of Judaism and Christianity.
The Department of Education said the consortium had failed to offer a "balance of perspectives" on the religions and ordered the universities to remake the course to provide a more "positive" portrayal of Judaism and Christianity or lose its federal funding. The consortium received $235,000 in federal grant money last year.
There is "a considerable emphasis placed on the understanding the positive aspects of Islam, while there is an absolute absence of any similar focus on the positive aspects of Christianity, Judaism or any other religion or belief system in the Middle East," the Department of Education said in its letter to the schools."
"The Trump administration has threatened to withdraw federal funding for a Middle East Studies course jointly taught by Duke University and the University of North Carolina because it believes it is too positive in its depiction of Islam in comparison to its portrayal of Judaism and Christianity."kurt -> likbez... , September 20, 2019 at 11:43 AMThat's funny as this is coming from Slate. Since when Slate depends on Gulf monarchies dollars. I thought it was bankrupt long ago.
Why should federal funding support religious studies? Does not this violate the key principle of separation of the church and the state?
Why such studies can't be supported by Catholic church, rich Jewish donors, or Gulf monarchies? Say, 33.3% each ;-)
Looks like a clear waste of taxpayers dollars for me. So Trump administration is right in withholding the funds, IMHO.
"Why should federal funding support religious studies? Does not this violate the key principle of separation of the church and the state?"likbez -> kurt... , September 25, 2019 at 07:59 AMNo - it would only do that if it was a theology class or specifically supported one religion over another. Most uni religious studies classes are secular classes that discuss and compare various religious sects from a dispassionate, sociological point of view. In fact, I think that a comparative religious studies should be a core curriculum. It would greatly reduce the religious bigotry that has infected parts of our nation. This is coming from someone who hasn't believed in God since I went to a religious university.
OK, I am wrong here.and I agree with your suggestion:
In fact, I think that a comparative religious studies should be a core curriculum. It would greatly reduce the religious bigotry that has infected parts of our nation. This is coming from someone who hasn't believed in God since I went to a religious university.
But then it should be done in Sociological department as an additional obligatory sociology course:
Religious studies originated in the 19th century, when scholarly and historical analysis of the Bible had flourished, and Hindu and Buddhist texts were first being translated into European languages.
Early influential scholars included Friedrich Max Müller in England and Cornelius P. Tiele in the Netherlands. Today religious studies is practiced by scholars worldwide.[1]
In its early years, it was known as "comparative religion" or the science of religion and, in the USA, there are those who today also know the field as the History of religion (associated with methodological traditions traced to the University of Chicago in general, and in particular Mircea Eliade, from the late 1950s through to the late 1980s).
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Sep 23, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com
anne , September 21, 2019 at 06:30 AM
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-09-21/Huawei-s-pivotal-moment-KabssDHWdq/index.htmlSeptember 21, 2019
Huawei's pivotal moment
By Tom FowdyHuawei launched its Mate 30 series on Friday, the first new device produced by the Shenzhen telecommunications firm since it has been blacklisted by the United States government and excluded from American technology markets.
The subsequent result of the listing had led Google to sever ties with the company and prohibit new devices from using its Play Store services and operating system, something which ultimately impacts the Mate 30 Series, which is using an open-source version of Android.
The impact of it all has led Western commentators to ask questions about Huawei's future in Western smartphone markets, particularly what applications can it access.
However, not all is bleak, and what may start off as a hindrance for the company is set to transform into an opportunity. The United States' assault on the company has forced Huawei to innovate.
With the inaugural "Huawei AppGallery" emerging with the Mate 30, the company has now positioned itself on an investment trajectory to create a new "Huawei core" to compete with the world of Google-led Android systems outright.
In this case, what seems like a detriment is part of a broader pivotal moment for Huawei. The company's portfolio is about to change forever.
Beyond Apple and the iPhone, the Android operating system dominates in the global smartphone market. Describing it as an "operating system" is barely fitting; it might otherwise be described as "an ecosystem" with a wide range of Google orientated services within it.
They include the popular browser Chrome, the YouTube video service, Google mail and, most critically, the "Google Playstore," which, owing to its popularity, attracts more developers and investors than any other unofficial App stores. This "ecosystem" creates a "web of comfort" which effectively entrenches the consumer in the Android orbit.
U p until May 2019, Huawei was a part of this orbit. Its subsequent estrangement from Android owing to the American government's decision has forced some difficult choices. It has made markets keen to observe how the Mate 30 will perform given its lack of Google applications and the need for users to obtain some apps through third-party stores.
So, the question is: How are they now adapting and making that transition? Bengt Nordstrom of North Stream research in Sweden notes that "they have a strategy to become completely independent from U.S. technology. And in many areas, they have become independent."
First of all, we are well aware that Huawei is developing its own Harmony Operating System as a contingency measure, although it has not chosen to apply it to the Mate 30 as an olive branch to Google.
Second, and most excitingly is Huawei's announced bid to invest over 1 billion U.S. dollars in developing its own application "core" or ecosystem. This, in essence, is an effort to get developers to establish applications for the new "Huawei App store" and thus establish a self-reliant, independent path from the world of Android.
To achieve this, the company has pledged a competitive revenue sharing scheme of 15 percent to developers, half of that what Apple and Google demand for participation in their own app-stores.
This effort is combined with a wider scope in research and development from the company, which is also designed to forfeit dependence upon American technology chains in terms of critical components and other parts.
We have already seen massive investment pledges from Huawei to build new research and development centers in the United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy and Brazil. They are not empty promises, but a serious and strategic effort.
In this case, what was intended to be a political effort to destroy and contain Huawei is likely to prove a pivotal turning point in the company's history with huge repercussions for global smartphone and technology markets.
Instead of having once been reliant on and thus beneficial to American technology markets, the outcome is that Huawei will re-emerge independent of and competing against it.
Armed with a pending new operating system, a new application development drive and a broader research effort, what seemed otherwise a detriment is likely to bring a massive opportunity. Thus, it is very important to examine the long-term prospects for the company's fortunes ahead of short-term challenges.
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Sep 23, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com
anne -> anne... , September 20, 2019 at 04:51 PM
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-09-06/Smartest-and-fastest-Huawei-reveals-new-smartphone-chip-Kirin-990-5G-JLGH1KVKeI/index.htmlanne -> anne... , September 20, 2019 at 05:01 PMSeptember 6, 2019
Smartest and fastest: Huawei reveals new smartphone chip Kirin 990 5G
By Gong ZheChinese smartphone giant Huawei, which has been under heavy attack from the U.S. government during the last few months, just revealed its next-generation smartphone system-on-a-chip (SoC) product "Kirin 990 5G," signaling the company's business is not stalled by foreign strangling.
The launch event was held simultaneously at IFA electronic show in Berlin, Germany, and in Beijing on Friday.
In his keynote speech, Huawei's head of gadgets Richard Yu told the press that the chip is more advanced than other flagship smartphone SoCs, because it has a built-in 5G modem.
Current rivals of the chip, like Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855, have no 5G modem and have to rely on an extra chip to support 5G.
"The Kirin 990 is not only an SoC and a 5G modem glued together. We put a lot of effort in integrating the two chips. So the new chip uses less power and generates less heat while getting the job done," said Huawei fellow Ai Wei before the launch event.
The whole Kirin 990 5G chip is so dense that it contains 10.3 billion semiconductors, the first and largest of its kind.
Flexible AI power
The chip also features three AI cores, two larger than the other smaller. This design, first in smartphones, saves battery power by only using the small core to process simple AI tasks, while resorting to the larger cores for more complex jobs.
The company named the cores "Ascend Lite" and "Ascend Tiny" to relate the cores to Huawei's new, self-proclaimed "fastest AI training chip in the world," the Ascend 910.
Huawei built a showcase at the Beijing launch event to demonstrate the chip's AI power. They showed a FaceID-like face recognition feature in a Kirin 990-powered developer board that can work when the person is four meters away from the phone, times further than Apple's current product.
Another example is AI-based video quality improvements, which takes in a low quality video and render a better one. Objects in the rendered video have much sharper edges. Huawei technicians refused to explain how they made it, but the underlying tech seems to be object recognition, content-based pixel generation and noise reduction, since these are the tricks AI does well.
Even better photos
Huawei's P30 Pro smartphone, together with the Kirin 980 chip, has taken "smartphone zoom to the next level," according to third-party review site DxOMark. The phone was on top of all smartphones when it comes to photography in DxOMark's ranking. The Kirin 990 is packed with more graphic features to continue Huawei's dominance.
A Kirin 990-powered smartphone can shoot 4K videos (3840 x 2160 pixels) at 60 frames per second, on par with market flagship phones.
The chip can also run DSLR-level noise-reduction algorithm – namely "Block Match 3D" – to bring professional tech to consumer devices.
"Porting an algorithm from DSLR to smartphone may be easy. But getting the program to run fast enough can be hard for any phone maker," Ai told CGTN Digital.
Non-U.S. tech
The design of Kirin 990 is still based on technology Huawei bought from British tech company ARM, used by several mainstream brands.
After the U.S. began imposing restrictions on Huawei, ARM cut ties with the Chinese phone maker. Despite this, Huawei has been able to use and modify AMRv8 technology thanks to its permanent ARM license. Hence why chips like Kirin 990 can still be legally built and sold.
In addition to ARM, there are other major smartphone tech companies cutting ties with Huawei, forcing the Chinese company to create its own alternatives. After Google announced to bar Huawei phones from installing their apps, Huawei started porting its IoT system "Harmony" to smartphones.
But Huawei still wishes to use technologies from all over the world. As Ai Wei explained at the launch event, "Huawei will not deliberately remove all U.S. tech from its smartphones. But when the supply from U.S. was cut, Huawei has to find a way to survive."
"That's why Huawei chose to create its own technology," Ai added....
The point in article after article is that China is emphasizing technical advance in building the economy from rural to urban applications and the emphasis will not be lessened. The rural applications I am reading about are especially exciting.point -> anne... , September 21, 2019 at 07:36 AMhttps://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/scheer-intelligence/america-keeps-getting-china-all-wronganne -> point... , September 21, 2019 at 08:39 AMTerrific discussion on how the West perceives China et al and vice versa. Much new to me.
I appreciate the interview, but Clayton Dube as director of the University of Southern California's U.S.-China Institute knows remarkably little about China or American relations with China. Possibly Dube is being especially cautious, but still:point -> anne... , September 21, 2019 at 09:16 AM"The air in Los Angeles," the academic explains by way of an example, "is influenced by the air coming out of northern China. But of course, that bad air in China is produced by factories often producing for the American market. And so we have not only outsourced production, we've outsourced pollution."
This is absurdly wrong. China has been working on cleaning the environment for years now and the effects as monitored have been dramatic.
The idea that China thinks of 1849 to 1949 as a colonial period that took them 100 years to get free from, for instance, immediately helps me understand some of where they are coming from.anne -> point... , September 21, 2019 at 09:45 AMThe idea that China thinks of 1849 to 1949 as a colonial period that took them 100 years to get free from, for instance, immediately helps me understand some of where they are coming from.anne -> point... , September 21, 2019 at 08:40 AM[ Surely so, this very day is "International Day of Peace in Nanjing" in memory of the victims of the terrible Japanese occupation:
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-09/21/c_138410902.htm ]
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/12/upshot/china-pollution-environment-longer-lives.htmlanne -> point... , September 21, 2019 at 08:46 AMMarch 12, 2018
Four Years After Declaring War on Pollution, China Is Winning
Research gives estimates on the longer lives that are now possible in the country.
By Michael GreenstoneOn March 4, 2014, the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, told almost 3,000 delegates at the National People's Congress and many more watching live on state television, "We will resolutely declare war against pollution as we declared war against poverty."
...
China, for instance, has over 420,000 electric busses. The United States has 300:im1dc -> anne... , September 21, 2019 at 09:16 AMChina has had the benefit of skipping over other advanced nation's Legacy infrastructure.anne -> anne... , September 21, 2019 at 09:26 AMLeapfrogging ahead in some areas of development is smart and saves money for China as well, but that doesn't make China superior to other advanced nations.
China, for instance, has over 420,000 electric busses. The United States has 300:anne -> anne... , September 21, 2019 at 09:27 AMMay 15, 2019
The U.S. Has a Fleet of 300 Electric Buses. China Has 421,000
The rest of the world will struggle for years to match China's rapid embrace of electric transit.
By Brian Eckhouse - Bloomberghttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/business/chinese-train-national-security.htmlanne -> anne... , September 21, 2019 at 09:38 AMSeptember 14, 2019
Fearing 'Spy Trains,' Congress May Ban a Chinese Maker of Subway Cars
By Ana SwansonCHICAGO -- America's next fight with China is unfolding at a glistening new factory in Chicago, which stands empty except for the shells of two subway cars and space for future business that is unlikely to come.
A Chinese state-owned company called CRRC Corporation, the world's largest train maker, completed the $100 million facility this year in the hopes of winning contracts to build subway cars and other passenger trains for American cities like Chicago and Washington.
But growing fears about China's economic ambitions and its potential to track and spy on Americans are about to quash those plans. Congress is soon expected to approve legislation that would effectively bar the company from competing for new contracts in the United States, citing national security and economic concerns. The White House has expressed its support for the effort....
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-09-18/Chinese-make-300-mln-daily-trips-through-green-transport-K5xRBUQiZO/index.htmlanne -> point... , September 21, 2019 at 09:20 AMSeptember 18, 2019
Chinese make 300 mln daily trips through green transport
[ China has 65% of the world total mileage of high-speed rail service, but what do the Chinese know about trains anyway? ]
Terrific discussion on how the West perceives China...[ Actually a discussion that shows a remarkable misperception of China even by an American China academic-specialist. As such the discussion is important though discouraging. ]
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Sep 21, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
By Marshall Auerback, a market analyst and commentator. Produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute
"Chimerica" is a term originally coined by the historian Niall Ferguson and economist Moritz Schularick to describe the growing economic relationship between the U.S. and China since the latter's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. In the words of Ferguson : "The Chinese did the saving, the Americans the spending. The Chinese did the exporting, the Americans the importing. The Chinese did the lending, the Americans the borrowing." Much of the pre-crisis boom in global trade was driven by this economic symbiosis, which is why successive American presidents tolerated this marriage of convenience despite the increasing costs to the U.S. economy . The net benefits calculation, however, began to change after 2008, and the conflict has intensified further after the 2016 presidential election result. Today, the cumulative stress of Donald Trump's escalating trade war is leading to if not an irreparable breach between the two countries, then certainly a significant fraying. The imminent resumption of trade talks notwithstanding, the rising cost of the tariffs is already inducing some U.S. manufacturers to exit China. But in most instances, they are not returning to home shores.
It may have taken Trump to point out the pitfalls of the Chimerica link, but coming up with a coherent strategy to replace it is clearly beyond the president's abilities. America is likely to remain a relative manufacturing wasteland, as barren as Trump's own ill-conceived ideas on trade. At the same time, it's not going to be an unmitigated victory for China either, as Beijing is increasingly suffering from a large confluence of internal and external pressures.
Chimerica helped to launch China as a global trade power. To the extent that this marriage helped the U.S. economy, it skewed toward the largely blue state coastal regions. Wall Street banks located on the East Coast happily collected lucrative commissions and investment banking fees, as China's export proceeds were recycled into U.S. treasuries, stocks, and high-end real estate while the capital markets boomed; on the West Coast, "new economy" companies thrived, their growth and profitability unhindered by the onslaught of Chinese manufactured exports. By contrast, facilitated by technological advances that permitted large-scale outsourcing by U.S. manufacturers, Chimerica laid waste to much of what was left of America's Rust Belt, and the politics of many of the displaced workers mutated to the extent that Donald Trump became an appealing alternative to the establishment in 2016.
The major legacy of Chimerica, then, is that too many American workers have been semi-permanently replaced by low-cost offshored labor. Prior to great advances in technology, along with globalization, displacement of the current labor force could only have occurred through immigration of workers into the country. Historically, displacement by immigrants generally began at the menial level of the labor force, and became more restrictive as when it became correlated with significant unemployment. Given the rise of globalization and the corresponding liberalization of immigration in the past few decades, however, policy no longer arrests the displacement of American workers. The policy backlash has consequently manifested itself more via trade protectionism. Trump has sought to consolidate his Rust Belt base of supporters by launching a trade war, especially versus Beijing, the ultimate effects of which he hoped would be to re-domicile supply chains that had earlier migrated to China.
Early on in his presidency, there was some hope that Trump's protectionism was at best a bluff or, at worst, an aberration, and that the return of a Democrat to the White House in 2020 would eventually reestablish the status quo ante. But the president still can't get a wall, and his protectionism has become more pronounced almost as if to compensate. The problem today is that even if Trump is voted out of office in 2020, corporate America is becoming less inclined to wait out the end of his presidency to return to the pre-Trump status quo of parking the bulk of their manufacturing in China. There is too much risk in putting all of one's eggs in the China basket, especially given growing national security concerns . Hence, U.S. companies are taking action. In spite of decades of investment in these China-domiciled supply chains, a number of American companies are pulling out: toy manufacturer Hasbro , Illinois-based phone accessories manufacturer Xentris Wireless, and lifestyle clothing company PacSun are a few of the operators who are exiting the country.
But they are not coming back to the U.S., relocating instead to places like Vietnam, Bangladesh, Mexico, the Philippines and Taiwan. The chief financial officer of Xentris, Ben Buttolph, says that the company will never return to China: "We are trying to have multiple locations certified for all of our products, so that if all of a sudden there's an issue with one of the locations, we just flip the switch." Likewise, the CEO of Hasbro, Brian Goldner, recently spoke of "great opportunities in Vietnam, India and other territories like Mexico."
All is not lost for the U.S., however, as Goldner did celebrate the success of Hasbro's facility in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts, which has resumed production of Play-Doh in the U.S. for the first time since 2004 . It is doubtful, however, that this represents the recapturing of the high value-added supply chains that Trump envisaged when he first launched his trade assault on Beijing.
In general, as Julius Krein, editor of American Affairs , writes: "United States industry is losing ground to foreign competitors on price, quality and technology. In many areas, our manufacturing capacity cannot compete with what exists in Asia."
These are not isolated examples. Defense One also notes the following development:
It came without a breaking news alert or presidential tweet, but the technological competition with China entered a new phase last month. Several developments quietly heralded this shift: Cross-border investments between the United States and China plunged to their lowest levels since 2014, with the tech sector suffering the most precipitous drop. U.S. chip giants Intel and AMD abruptly ended or declined to extend important partnerships with Chinese entities. The Department of Commerce halved the number of licenses that let U.S. companies assign Chinese nationals to sensitive technology and engineering projects.
This development consequently makes it hard to proclaim Beijing a winner in this dispute either. The country still needs access to U.S. high tech. The government announced yet another fiscal stimulus to the economy earlier this month in response to a cluster of weakening economic data, much of which is related to the trade shock. It is also the case that China is being buffeted politically, both externally and internally: externally, in addition to the escalating trade war, China's own efforts to counter the effects of rising protectionism by creating a " reverse Marshall Plan " via the Belt and Road Initiative is floundering . China's "iron brother," Pakistan, is increasingly being victimized by India's aggressive Hindu-centric nationalism . It is hard to imagine the Modi government opportunistically taking the step of annexing Kashmir and undermining Pakistan, had it not sensed Beijing's increasing vulnerability.
Internally, Beijing is finding it increasingly challenging as it seeks to enforce its "One China" policy in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The withdrawal of the controversial extradition law that first precipitated widespread demonstrations in Hong Kong has not alleviated the political pressures in the territory, but simply allowed an even bigger protest culture to take root and strengthen an independent political mindset. Similarly, Taiwan has also openly supported the Hong Kong protesters, pledging help to those seeking asylum . Both regions now constitute both a huge humiliation and challenge to the primacy of China's ruling Communist Party. And now on top of that, foreign manufacturers are leaving the country, weakening a totally leveraged manufacturing complex.
The implications of this divorce go well beyond the U.S. and China. They constitute another step toward regionalization, another step away from a quaint ideological "post-history" construct that saw Washington, D.C., as the head office and the rest of the world as a bunch of branch plants for "America, Inc." It's hardly comforting to contemplate that the last time we reached this historic juncture was the early 1900s, when a similarly globalized economy broke down, followed by the Great War. As Niall Ferguson points out , "a high level of economic integration does not necessarily prevent the growth of strategic rivalry and, ultimately, conflict." There's no doubt that both Washington and Beijing will likely making soothing noises to the markets in order to create favorable conditions for the trade talks in October, but their actions suggest that they are both digging in for a longer struggle . Today's trade wars, therefore, are likely to morph into something more destructive, which is a lose-lose in an era where human advancement depends on greater integration between economic powers.
somecallmetim , September 21, 2019 at 2:43 am
So ultimately trade peace or symbiosis is chimerical?
John , September 21, 2019 at 4:09 am
I always thought globalization was about the opportunity for a handful of businesses and corporations to control major industries around the world.
Who knew that there were people in any country that benefit?
The first country that would address affordable housing, healthcare and education so that people don't need more jobs will win.
The Rev Kev , September 21, 2019 at 4:30 am
There may be another aspect to this development and that is of geopolitics. You can see that in Marshall's article when the CFO of Xentris said: "We are trying to have multiple locations certified for all of our products, so that if all of a sudden there's an issue with one of the locations, we just flip the switch." There is an anti-China hawks faction based in the Republican party that has made its present felt. People like Robert Lighthizer, Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon. I have seen this sentiment spill over into Australian politics but they have not reached the stage where they are asking: "Are you now, or have you ever been, born Chinese?".
So we have seen a long string of sanctions and tariffs at play so that China will change its laws and institutions to suit American interests. Yeah, I can't see that happening anytime soon but hey, America First, Baby. We have also seen hawk factions against Russia, Iran and not long ago Venezuela. The ones for Russia and Iran have been long going but the ones against China and Venezuela were sudden and new. It may be that tomorrow that Trump will do the same against Cuba and threaten any country that does trade with them. Who knows what other country may fall within his sights?
That being the case if you were running an international country, you can no longer just have your manufacturing base or service operations just in one country. If Xentris is an example, US companies may have to split manufacturing into several countries in case one fine day that Trump will sanction yet another country that your company depends on.
I would imagine that it would not be so efficient but it seems business people in the government are being pushed aside by hawkish factions who do not care what effect it has on the economy or the country. Great!
Leroy , September 21, 2019 at 11:51 am
Those are the same "hawks" that are busy destroying the rest of America as well. Another four years of this will, effectively, dismantle what democracy is left. The world trade won't be the big issue. The departure of millions of Americans will.
drumlin woodchuckles , September 22, 2019 at 4:42 pm
If that happens, be sure to thank the Catfood Democrats for it. Because they are the people who will do their very best and hardest to throw the next election to Trump, one way or another.
jeremyharrison , September 21, 2019 at 5:23 am
It seems like diversification of supply chains can only be a good thing. As it is now, China literally has the US by the jewels, and if a serious conflict ever arose, could squeeze them hard. Just their dominance in manufacturing a large percentage of the pharmaceuticals consumed by US patients alone creates a serious vulnerability.
I really don't think it matters if manufacturing jobs are repatriated to the US, or just set up and spread around elsewhere for now – since they'll be obsolete jobs in the near future anyway, as robotics and AI get increasingly efficient at doing the work that human workers currently do.
rd , September 21, 2019 at 5:25 pm
Situating the manufacturing in countries that are part of the Chinese sphere of influence won't help much in a conflict. China would probably be able to sweep through much of Southeast Asia quickly or interdict shipments if there was war.
Dan , September 21, 2019 at 6:28 am
So the status quo was preferable? The tone of the article seems to suggest that America should accept it place as a third-world manufacturer, as if these Asian nations have some magical sauce that can't be replicated. Gawd.
The US does have a lot of magic. Like one third of FDI related to tax evasion. Pulling Mac Book manufacturing out of Austin for the lack of one 'screw', etc. So is the premise of going after China on trade and IP policies good. I would agree. Maybe not in strategy, but at least someone has opened the box.
John Wright , September 21, 2019 at 3:26 pm
I agree with your comment, the article suggests the status quo was preferable. Of note, Trump has shown his supporters that something CAN be done other than follow the "resistance is futile" path of the Bill Clinton/Bush Jr./Obama administrations.
I also suggest that the world wide presence/threat of the USA military and diplomatic corps allows globalization to be less risky for USA businesses, so, in effect, the patriotic "spreading of democracy" around the world via military actions is a factor in USA job loss. This is yet another cost of the bloated military to the general USA population.
I worked in the electronics industry for 30+ years and watched high margin manufacturing move to Asia. Now the lower level component manufacturers (PCBs, passives) are firmly established in Asia as the USA companies have helped train worthy competitors overseas. It took 25+ years to move much of USA manufacturing overseas, indicating to me that it will take a long time to bring it back significantly, well outside the Trump time frame.
But I suspect Trump voters will appreciate Trump's headline efforts. If the Democrats push for more Free Trade as good for the USA, it will hurt them at the ballot box.
GramSci , September 21, 2019 at 6:51 am
The second time as farce. How tragicomic that Trump has succeeded in little more than repatriating the manufacture of Play-Doh. On the other hand, the shipping cost of unbaked brick seems a rational factor in Hasbro's decision. A GND that shortens supply lines would be more effective in repatriating heavy industry, but then printed circuit boards aren't all that heavy .
a different chris , September 21, 2019 at 8:42 am
The thing is Trump, as usual, got his strings pulled by the Deep State when he went for actual implementation of a campaign promise. The DS doesn't care about working Americans, they are simply against China.
So he goes and puts tariffs on a country, not a product. And surprise, said product doesn't come back on-shore. Comical (and yeah, cosmically a bit just) that Vietnam is getting so much of that manufacturing. Wasn't what he was elected for.
Glen , September 21, 2019 at 9:44 am
In general, as Julius Krein, editor of American Affairs, writes: "United States industry is losing ground to foreign competitors on price, quality and technology. In many areas, our manufacturing capacity cannot compete with what exists in Asia."
As a engineer up to my elbows in manufacturing for forty years, this was awfully easy to predict way back then (I gave up complaining about it about 2000), and then watch happen – real time. And to once again state the obvious, China did not TAKE American jobs, American CEOs GAVE them our jobs. We will not fix this problem until we identify and fix the root cause.
Now the only way to fix it is (once again obviously) massive government investment such as mandated by the GND. We need the GND, it is not only required to save the world, it will save our country.
Leroy , September 21, 2019 at 11:57 am
Fully agree Glen. How can we say China stole our "technology" when we placed it on their doorstep and asked them to make some of these for us please ?
Watt4Bob , September 21, 2019 at 3:19 pm
Agree, it was predictable, and it was predicted. What we've been talking about is the "Giant sucking sound" Ross Perot foretold would happen prior to the passing of NAFTA. It wasn't hard back then to see that he was right, but it took a few decades for the public to feel the impact, boiling frogs and all that.
Back in the early 80s I saw a massive warehouse full of machine tools, Bridgeport mills, and such lined up, it seemed forever, the guy there said they were going to China. I asked my Dad about it, and he told me we were selling them to the Chinese for the price of scrap. The whole thing is mindless and pathetic, but the really maddening thing is the slippery way our 'leaders' can keep dodging the blame by simply pointing a finger in whatever direction, and everybody's eyes move in unison.
rd , September 21, 2019 at 5:39 pm
NAFTA and China are two completely separate things. I have actually supported NAFTA in principle because we should encourage trade to be focused on our immediate neighbors. A wealthier and safer Mexico and Central America would create markets for us and virtually eliminate illegal immigrants as the southern border.
China is on the other side of the world and is not part of NAFTA. While we should have cordial relations with it, if we are looking for inexpensive labor, south of the border is the better place to focus on that. So Trump's tariffs on China are not the wrong thing to do per se. The problem is that they are being done in a vacuum of general trade policy where he is looking at everything as transaction bilateral relations with every country on the planet, which requires an immense amount of detailed thought and negotiation, neither of which appear to be a focus of this administration.
The countries that the companies are talking about moving their operations to are generally part of the new TPP which the US is not part of. So, we have removed ourselves from having trade relations with countries US CEOs are setting up operations in, but those countries are now starting to work together to counter both China (original TPP purpose) and the US (now that the US has bailed on it). Sounds like a recipe for a replay of China's giant sucking sound.
Watt4Bob , September 21, 2019 at 6:48 pm
The argument/discussion is not about how and where to outsource our jobs, it's about how stupid it was to do it in the first place. Anyone smart enough to breath knows that Mexico is next door, and China is on the other side of the world, but they are both part of the same giant sucking sound. The fact that you support both NAFTA ,think it was unwise to back out of the TPP, and think the issue is the present administration's lack of " detailed thought and negotiation " indicate a truly unbelievable level of denial.
drumlin woodchuckles , September 22, 2019 at 4:47 pm
NAFTA and MFN for China were two different actions towards the same goal . . . the use of Free Trade to dismantle thingmaking in America and re-mantle thingmaking in foreign export-aggression platforms to use against America.
Free Trade is the new Slavery. Militant Belligerent Protectionism is the new Abolition.
John Wright , September 21, 2019 at 5:41 pm
I remember when a Midwest Democrat (Stabenow?) tried to get a law passed that would prohibit a US corporation from deducting, from their federal taxes, the cost of moving factories overseas. A very minor disincentive, but a disincentive nonetheless. The Repubs beat it down as "anti-business". Concern about American workers is something to express in political speeches around election time but not in legislation.
eg , September 21, 2019 at 7:31 pm
This. As so ably described in Judith Stein's "Pivotal Decade" https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300171501/pivotal-decade
And the consequences of which forewarned in James Goldsmith's "The Trap" https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2091182.The_Trap
Ignacio , September 21, 2019 at 10:41 am
Hidden within this narrative is the fact that some countries, and not only China, have for long been playing beggar-thy-neighbor policies by restraining internal consumption and redirecting savings to the rest of the world that in turn finance their exporting machines. IMO, the biggest mistake made by China has been not to force fast enough a transition from a saving economy to a consumer economy with more balanced external relationships.
These kind of policies are confrontational. As confrontational as tariffs or even as economic sanctions in my view. Yet, the prevailing economic narrative is that saving and exporting is the right economic thing to do. In this sense I think it matters a lot to which countries are being re directed investments of american companies leaving China. My intuition is that, for instance, Vietnam migth be willing to play this game while Mexico not. Investing in countries that save too much migth be counterproductive.
I very much regret this aggressive narrative that has become common place in which countries are identified simply as competitors, if not enemies, in a global chess game. Political moves are confrontational and or humiliating. These Game of Thrones dynamics are played precisely when some international consensus in more important things like figthing climate change would be more than desirable. We are headed to truly bad times.
laodan , September 21, 2019 at 11:33 am
Here is an article by Steve Dickinson from the layers office Harris Bricken McVay Sliwoski that is based on his Co's China practice. Steve's conclusion goes as follows:
The Chinese system put in place from 1992 to 2005 was a unique system and not likely to be replaced in S.E./South Asia or in any other region of the world. So for manufacturers, moving to a new region means doing the analysis from the ground up. Simply taking what they do in China and moving it to a new location is not likely to be a workable solution.
Also the Chinese internal market continues to attract MNC's and this attraction will continue to grow far into the future. China's middle class is already larger than the total population of the US and it continues to grow rapidly. While down presently the Chinese internal consumption continues to grow at an annual rate of some 8.5%.
Personal savings deposited in bank accounts reach the equivalent of some $US 30 Trillion ! Compare that to consumer debt at some $US 6.5 Trillion. In other words China is growing into the largest consumer market on earth and the biggest advantage that its internal market procures is its 'economies of scale' that make Chinese productions hyper-competitive. In other words China is gaining the kind of advantage that the US had along the 20th century. The advantage of a super large market size that dwarfs other national markets.
Trump's approach to trade is isolating the US, blocking its Co's from the Chinese market, and incentivizing the Chinese to offer better conditions to Co's of the rest of the world. How can that help the US ?
The biggest problem of the West and particularly the US is its ideological approach to economics. The Chinese adopted a pragmatic approach and it has served them well. Time to relearn the meaning of political economics (économie politique).
JTMcPhee , September 21, 2019 at 3:42 pm
I read Dickinson's PR piece linked by laodan. I used to work for a big law firm that had an international practice group focusing on moving US businesses to China ( I was not involved in that practice area, did environmental law and litigation.) The firm's PR department tasked lawyers with certain expertise to generate these kinds of come-ons as part of the compensation weighting scheme -- publish, and bring in business, or lose out in the annual "whining for dollars" partnership division of spoils. Eat what you kill.
Dickinson is talking his book, of course. I have no idea if his read of the history and the current state of affairs in China and the "Asian Tigers" (does anyone use that term any more?) is accurate and complete, but what he describes is his firm's readiness to help supranational (emphasize SUPRAnational) and post-national corporate entities get a leg up in the race to the bottom. He'll help you find the places where the ruling class will give away the biggest share of the "national birthright" so the corporate entity can maximize profit by streamlining production and consumption, and of course growth. All the stuff that is killing the planet. But his time frame, his personal time frame, presumably, as well as the framing of the corporate shark entities which he is a remora to, cares nothing for the bigger economic and ecological effects of more stuff, more shipping, more energy use, and of course more combustion and consumption.
And I'd note that he carefully omits all the baksheesh and greasing of palms that i read is such an important part of "doing business" at any kind of scale, to varying degrees everywhere in the world. I wonder if his custom analyses of the relative merits of, say, Vietnam vs. China vs. Cambodia vs. Taiwan includes sketching out the bribes that have to be paid to close on the sale of national birthrights on the way to the bottom that the globalist business model drives everything toward?
I'm sure he would be happy to have the ear and hourly billings of all the great decision makers of all the various kinds of businesses, high to low tech, wanting to take full advantage of the "opportunities" that may be on offer, on how to ride the asymptotically downward curve of the race to the bottom, for fun and profit
Looks like China has had a pretty effective industrial policy, unlike the US where corporate vampire capital dominion and corruption have bled the mopery white (not a racial reference, of course ) Do economists and policy wonks in the US even dare to use the phrase "industrial policy" any more? Or is it just presumed that "shareholder value" trumps all else? Especially as the author puts it, again quoting Ferguson, where we are "in an era where human advancement depends on greater integration between economic powers."
Right.
Susan the other` , September 21, 2019 at 3:06 pm
The relentless neoliberal race to the bottom, outsourcing, and austerity that marked the death blow to American Labor is over. In that light it makes little difference whether our corporations pull out of China, go to Vietnam, or come home. The exploitation of the poorest is coming to an end. And none too soon.
mtnwoman , September 21, 2019 at 7:22 pm
For national security reasons at minimum, I hope some candidates discuss the imperative to have the US start making it's own medications again. Makes more sense to subsidize our production of medication than to give billions in subsidies to very profitable oil companies.
Merf56 , September 22, 2019 at 9:04 am
I agree. I could not believe the government has allowed the entire supply chain of building blocks of ALL our antibiotics to be sourced almost solely from China. To me THAT'S the national security issue we need to deal with immediately. As well as other vital drugs..
Anecdotally, I have started making this my number one political conversation issue – replete with references ( because of course not a soul believes it at first).. I have yet to find a single person Repub or Demo who isn't horrified and against it . Any nation with this much power over our drug supply they could kill millions of us in short order
RBHoughton , September 21, 2019 at 10:06 pm
Even getting manufacturing out of China will not bankrupt that country as intended. If USA is intent on pursuing a nationalistic basis to sanctions, I think its bound to fail. Trade always finds a way as we can well remember from our own commercial / industrial development.
Chinese manufacturers have the wealth and experience to teach production line workers and make things anywhere. Western companies manufacturing in China have belatedly looked for facilities in neighboring countries and found the Chinese are already there. What's still available is land far from roads and rivers with little power supply.
Another thing is preserving wealth. US Industrialists will keep their money offshore and remit only as much as they need in the homeland. A major problem imo is a mental restraint in USA thinking. Life is all about competition and winning. The actual activity, whatever it is, provides no joy unless you win. That fearful tag "No-one remembers who came second" is banded about. Thats not a philosophy for happiness. It forces the population into displacement activities few of which are wholesome. Here endeth the lesson.
TG , September 21, 2019 at 10:48 pm
It's not a bug, it's a feature! Trump doesn't give a damn about getting manufacturing jobs back into the United States! (Or at least his advisors don't).
The trick is to move them out of nationalistic China, which is setting itself up as a competitor for power, and move the jobs into nice docile low-wage colonies, like Mexico and Indonesia and Bangladesh.
The only catch: China has all the integrated supply lines and is stable. Moving your manufacturing into a dozen different uncoordinated unstable third-world banana republics has its own down side.
Sound of the Suburbs , September 22, 2019 at 3:10 am
The UK repealed the Corn Laws to embark on free trade. This reduced the price of bread, and lowered the cost of living, so UK employers could pay internationally competitive wages. Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
Employees get their money from wages and the employer pays through wages, so the employer is paying for that bread through wages. Expensive bread leads to higher wages making UK employers unable to compete in a free trade world. "The interest of the landlords is always opposed to the interest of every other class in the community" Ricardo 1815 / Classical Economist
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living) Employees get their money from wages and the employer pays via wages. Employees get less disposable income after the landlords rent has gone. Employers have to cover the landlord's rents in wages reducing profit. Ricardo is just talking about housing costs, employees all rented in those days. The appalling conditions UK workers lived in during the 19th century were well documented.
Low housing costs, lead to lower wages so UK employers were able to compete in a free trade world. William White (BIS, OECD) talks about how economics really changed over one hundred years ago as classical economics was replaced by neoclassical economics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6iXBQ33pBo&t=2485s
He thinks we have been on the wrong path for one hundred years. Free trade requires a low cost of living and what was known in the 19th century had disappeared by the 20th. The West's high cost of living means high wages and an inability to compete in a free trade world.
Never mind our companies can off-shore to where employers can pay lower wages for higher profits. Look at the US cost of living Donald; this is why those jobs ain't coming back. It's hard to make a good profit in the US, when employers have to cover the US cost of living in wages, reducing profit. The cost of living = housing costs + healthcare costs + student loan costs + other debt repayments + food + other costs of living
Sound of the Suburbs , September 22, 2019 at 3:15 am
A multi-polar world became a uni-polar world with the fall of the Berlin Wall and Francis Fukuyama said it was the end of history.
It was all going so well, until the neoliberals got to work.The US created an open, globalised world with the Washington Consensus.
China went from almost nothing to become a global super power.
That wasn't supposed to happen, let's get the rocket scientists onto it.Maximising profit is all about reducing costs.
China had coal fired power stations to provide cheap energy.
China had lax regulations reducing environmental and health and safety costs.
China had a low cost of living so employers could pay low wages.
China had low taxes and a minimal welfare state.
China had all the advantages in an open globalised world.It did have, but now China has become too expensive and developed Eastern economies are off-shoring to places like Vietnam, Bangladesh and the Philippines.
An open, globalised world is a race to the bottom on costs.
"The Washington Consensus was always going to work better for China than the US" the rocket scientists.
The West never really stood a chance.
drumlin woodchuckles , September 22, 2019 at 5:00 pm
Several years ago Naked Capitalism ran an article about how a young George Ball was one of the New Immoralists for International Corporate Globalonial Plantationism. And that was before neoliberalism.
Phillip Allen , September 22, 2019 at 8:06 am
"[A]n era where human advancement depends on greater integration between economic powers."
Oh, by all the gods, no. And what, pray, defines 'human advancement'? What the hell is Mr Auerback talking about?
Further integration only propels the speed at which resources are extracted and the planet dies incrementally more. The future will not be one fully integrated planet guided by whatever-the-hell oligarchs and their 'meritocratic' servitors deign the best options. The future will of necessity be vastly more local, vastly more hand-made, vastly less energy- and resource-intensive, and there will be vastly less intercontinental and intra-continental trade. World-spanning – even continent-spanning political-economic arrangements have no long term viability whatsoever. Trying to maintain such is a foolish waste of effort and resources that could be more usefully be directed at de-growth and de-industrialization.
And with that, The Lord Curmudgeon shook his cane one last time at the kids on his lawn and returned to the troll's cave from which he came.
Merf56 , September 22, 2019 at 9:11 am
I hope you have read James Howard Kunstler's World Made By Hand novelettes. They outline such a future. Interesting and quick reads if you haven't
Sound of the Suburbs , September 22, 2019 at 5:02 pm
The last engine of global growth, China, has now reached the end of the line as they have seen their Minsky Moment coming. China was the latest victim of neoclassical economics. The biggest danger to capitalism is neoclassical economics; it brought capitalism to its knees in the 1930s and is having another go now.
1929 and 2008 look so similar because they are; it's the same economics and thinking. Richard Vague has analysed the data for 1929 and 2008 and they were even more similar than they initially appear. Real estate lending was actually the biggest problem in 1929. Margin lending was another factor in 2008.
This has happened globally. At 25.30 mins you can see the super imposed private debt-to-GDP ratios.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAStZJCKmbU&list=PLmtuEaMvhDZZQLxg24CAiFgZYldtoCR-R&index=6The 1920s US mistake is now global. Japan, the UK, the US, Euro-zone and now China. The last engine of global growth, China, has now reached the end of the line as they have seen their Minsky Moment coming. The debt fuelled growth model not only runs out of steam, all the debt in the economy then acts like a drag anchor holding the economy back. Japan has been like this for thirty years.
Richard Koo explains the processes at work in the Japanese economy since the 1990s, which are at now at work throughout the global economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YTyJzmiHGk
The repayment of debt to banks destroys money and this is the problem.
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Sep 07, 2019 | caucus99percent.com
gjohnsit on Fri, 09/06/2019 - 12:07pm A little over a year ago I wrote this .
Politically the Tories have no plan at all, and when the clock stops on Brexit they will completely implode. The Tories are so deadlocked on Brexit that they can't even talk to themselves....This is a political and economic disaster, not just waiting to happen, but firmly scheduled...unless Labour's neoliberal Blairites save them, the Tory government is headed for an epic collapse.
It's rare that my predictions are 100% accurate, but this time I totally nailed it. To give you an idea of how badly the Tories have bungled things, look at these two headlines.
You know the conservative party is full of incompetent wankers when the business community prefers a radical socialist over them.
But while Corbyn may be less popular than no deal among the public, The Daily Telegraph says "the scourge of bankers and avowed opponent of capitalism, is winning support from unexpected new quarters" with two of the biggest global banks operating in the City of London "warming to the Labour leader".According to the paper, he is now seen as the lesser of two evils by analysts at Citibank and Deutsche Bank, two titans of the financial system.
Christian Schulz at Citi says "perhaps" Corbyn is no longer as bad an option as no deal, while Deutsche's Oliver Harvey says fears about the Labour leader "may be overstated".
"It is not that the financiers favour the opposition leader's plans for 'higher taxes, tighter labour laws, spending increases and the nationalisation of network industries', but that this may cause less harm than leaving the EU without a deal" says the Telegraph.
To put this sentiment in hard numbers , a coalition led by his party would spur the pound more than 5%.
As for those overstated fears about the Labour leader, that's because of a highly coordinated three year smear campaign by the very same business community.
Just a few days ago the headline was: U.K.'s Super-Rich Prepare to Flee From Corbyn Rule, Not Brexit Now they want Corbyn to save them. Without the business community undermining him at every turn, Corbyn has easily managed to hold the opposition together. At the same time Corbyn has outmaneuvered the Tories and left them helpless.
Then, his efforts to secure a snap general election -- with the goal of replacing the sacked lawmakers with a new slate of candidates more aligned with his hard-Brexit views -- were scuppered when opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn refused to play along.Now, he is effectively trapped in Downing Street, with Corbyn holding the keys. The government plans to propose new elections again on Monday, but the opposition leader says his party will only support the move when its efforts to prevent a no-deal Brexit are locked down.
"Certainly his biggest tactical mistake so far was not to realize that it was Corbyn, as leader of the opposition, who effectively had veto power over when a general election could be held," said Professor Tony Travers, director of the Institute of Public Affairs at the London School of Economics.
This allows time for Corbyn to appear like a professional leader, so that when he finally allows a general election the memory of his steady hand will be fresh in the public's mind.
thanatokephaloides on Fri, 09/06/2019 - 6:20pm
catch-a-Toryedg on Fri, 09/06/2019 - 3:58pmLike all other Tories worldwide, Boris "Tiny" Johnson is a charlatan. Hopefully, the British People will wake up and end their decades-long nightmare by placing him [Corbyn] in power.
As we need to do, ourselves.
edit: Added Corbyn's name to clarify that last sentence. And we, too, need to remove all Tories from power.
Enemiesgjohnsit on Fri, 09/06/2019 - 4:19pmThe value of an idea is often assessible by the number and strength of the enemies arrayed against it. Since so many entrenched interests and Powers-That-Be and elitists/globalists are against Brexit, I'm beginning to think that deal or no deal, Brexit must in the best interests of the 99%. Otherwise, the 1% wouldn't fight against it so hard.
I think you are partly correctludwig ii on Fri, 09/06/2019 - 4:06pm@edg
I think Brexit is like tariffs. Tariffs are a good idea for the working class because it puts a cost on off-shoring jobs. BUT the way Trump is doing it is stupid and doesn't help anyone. Same thing with Brexit. It probably helps the 99%, but not the way the Tories are going about it.
The value of an idea is often assessible by the number and strength of the enemies arrayed against it. Since so many entrenched interests and Powers-That-Be and elitists/globalists are against Brexit, I'm beginning to think that deal or no deal, Brexit must in the best interests of the 99%. Otherwise, the 1% wouldn't fight against it so hard.
What's the problem with no-deal?UntimelyRippd on Fri, 09/06/2019 - 8:41pmThe fact that Blair, the City of London, and neoliberals the world over hate Brexit and especially no-deal Brexit makes me think it's probably a good thing. Anything that chips away at the hegemony of global finance seems positive.
for starters, it really screws up the Irish situation.
The fact that Blair, the City of London, and neoliberals the world over hate Brexit and especially no-deal Brexit makes me think it's probably a good thing. Anything that chips away at the hegemony of global finance seems positive.
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Oct 26, 2018 | www.gatestoneinstitute.org
Authored by Denis MacEoin via The Gatestone Institute,Not all Muslims remained silent about the grooming gang problem. We have already seen how the new Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, a Muslim of Pakistani origin, took rapid action to open an enquiry into the crimes. A number of Muslim organizations and individuals have spoken out against the gangs, and condemned them for bringing their faith into disrepute. The integrative Islamic Society of Britain (ISB), for one, has spoken out strongly about grooming culture.
In May 2013, Julie Siddiqi, chief executive of the ISB, coordinated a Muslim-led coalition to campaign against offenders, known as The Community Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, which, in turn, was launched in Bradford with the backing of the Bradford Council of Mosques. The following month, a Muslim group called Together Against Grooming (TAG) declared that a Friday prayer sermon ( khutba ) would be read out in around 500 mosques across the country to draw attention to the grooming issue.
The sermon was written by Alyas Karmani , an imam who has a background in psychology and serves at several mosques around Bradford. Karmani specializes in sexual counselling from a non-fundamentalist perspective and has worked on a PhD entitled, "The Crises of Masculinity and Urban Male Violence". His detailed understanding of the grooming gangs and their various motivations are perhaps the most sophisticated yet advanced by a Muslim expert and should be taken into account by any present or future investigation.
Some other Muslim organizations such as the progressive Islamic Society of Britain have sent out sermons on the same issue. There can be no question that there is an important and growing range of Muslim reaction to the shame brought on the communities by the grooming gangs and the reluctance in many places even to talk about sexual matters. This reformist activity in the migrant community needs to be encouraged and backed by government resources.
There are, however, other, sometimes deeper aspects to the problem that still remain to be explored. Not all mosques agreed to read Karmani's sermon, and some claimed -- quite incorrectly, as it happened -- that the grooming issue was a thing of the past.
Many of those deeper aspects are directly related to the persistence of religious fundamentalism and a wide refusal among many to integrate within British society. Despite the efforts of moderate Muslims, mosques and institutions to stop young men and women travelling abroad to take part in jihad or bring back wives from abroad, many have done so. Sermonizing, even with good intentions, may not address the underlying reasons for seemingly anti-social behaviour.
Also in 2013, Taj Hargey, imam of the Oxford Islamic Congregation, and a controversial reformist, spoke out following the trial and conviction of six members of a child sex ring from Oxford. He contended that some imams were indirectly inspiring the grooming gangs through their contempt for non-Muslim women:
On one level, most imams in the UK are simply using their puritanical sermons to promote the wearing of the hijab and even the burka among their female adherents. But the dire result can be the brutish misogyny we see in the Oxford sex ring.
He wrote at length about the ways in which fundamentalist attitudes influenced some men:
True Islam preaches respect for women but in mosques across the country a different doctrine is preached - "one that denigrates all women, but treats whites with particular contempt"....
The men are taught that women are "second-class citizens, little more than chattels or possessions over whom they have absolute authority"...
The view of some Islamic preachers towards white women can be appalling. They encourage their followers to believe that these women are habitually promiscuous, decadent, and sleazy -- sins which are made all the worse by the fact that they are kaffurs [sic for kuffar , pl. of kafir ] or non-believers.
Their dress code, from miniskirts to sleeveless tops, is deemed to reflect their impure and immoral outlook. According to this mentality, these white women deserve to be punished for their behaviour by being exploited and degraded.
The largest and most influential of all UK mosques are those of the Deobandis, a highly conservative majority denomination in Pakistani Islam that also dominates the seminaries within the UK and in which future imams are trained.
According to the author and Investigations editor at BBCNewsnight, Innes Bowen:
What most Deobandi scholars have in common is a conservative interpretation of Islamic law: television and music for the purposes of entertainment, for example, are frowned upon if not banned; attitudes towards women are deeply conservative, with, for example, some scholars advising Muslim women that their religion does not permit them to travel any distance unless accompanied by a close male relative. That this description of such an austere brand of Islam sounds similar to that propagated by the Taliban in Afghanistan should not be surprising – the Taliban movement grew out of the Deobandi madrasas of Pakistan.
Many Deobandi and other fundamentalist preachers and online fatwa sites promulgate the doctrine of al-Wala' wa'l-Bara' , which may be roughly translated as "loyalty [to Islam] and avoidance [of unbelievers]". This belief reinforces the need to stay away from, and even to have enmity towards, the inferior non-Muslim world. It is not far-fetched to see how, through this doctrine, a sense of total difference from, and contempt for, non-Muslims in general -- and non-Muslim girls and women in particular -- may have given many of the grooming gangs a debased level of justification, even self-righteousness in the members of the grooming gangs.
Hargey's link between the grooming gangs and hard-line religious leaders is borne out by an article published in 2018 by the serious liberal newspaper, The Independent . The author is Ella Hill, one of the girls abused in Rotherham and now part of the largest child sexual abuse investigation. She begins:
As a teenager, I was taken to various houses and flats above takeaways in the north of England, to be beaten, tortured and raped over 100 times. I was called a "white slag" and "white c***" as they beat me.
They made it clear that because I was a non-Muslim, and not a virgin, and because I didn't dress "modestly", that they believed I deserved to be "punished". They said I had to "obey" or be beaten.
Later, she refers to a Swedish government meeting in 2017, when it was stated that:
Sexual and gender-based violence is used as a tactic of terrorism by a range of today's violent extremist groups. This makes it essential to address violence against women and girls as an integrated part in countering and preventing violent extremism.
She then argues that:
Religious indoctrination is a big part of the process of getting young men involved in grooming gang crime. Religious ideas about purity, virginity, modesty and obedience are taken to the extreme until horrific abuse becomes the norm. It was taught to me as a concept of "othering".
"Muslim girls are good and pure because they dress modestly, covering down to their ankles and wrists, and covering their crotch area. They stay virgins until marriage. They are our girls."
[Author's note: Italicized in the original, but should probably have been in quotation marks. The passage is evidently meant to be words spoken by gang members who used her.]
She also emphasizes this religious background to her treatment, stating that "My main perpetrator quoted scriptures from the Quran to me as he beat me." Nevertheless, she goes on to say that "Most grooming gang survivors I know absolutely condemn anti-Islamic hate, and we're uncomfortable with English Defence League protests. We certainly don't want random attacks on 'all Muslims'. You can't cure harm with more harm."
The connection between fundamentalist religiosity, terrorism and gender crime is not as fanciful as it might have seemed at first. There are decent Muslims everywhere who work hard to counter all the anti-social and criminal activities in which so many of their co-religionists engage and the theological positions through which they try to justify what they do. But terrorist attacks, anti-Semitic hate speech, and sexual harassment of young white women are real crimes committed by a different kind of Muslim and must be addressed as such.
In a report published on December 12, 2017, the important Muslim counter-extremism think tank, the Quilliam Foundation, addressed at length the problem of the grooming gangs. Written by Quilliam's CEO, Haras Rafiq with media strategist and researcher Muna Adil, the report , "Group Based Child Sexual Exploitation: Dissecting Grooming Gangs", consists of a comprehensive data analysis of grooming gang cases identified in the UK since 2005. Ten case studies from 2010-2017 are also analysed in depth to help determine any similarities and identify any patterns that exist across the cases.
At the root of the problem seems to lie the fact that many Muslim men have failed to integrate into British society. According to Muna Adil :
There are elements from within the British Pakistani community that still subscribe to outdated and sexist views of women embedded within their jaded interpretations of Islam. These backward views are passed down from generation to generation until the lines between faith and culture dissolve, making it increasingly difficult to criticise one without being seen as a critic of the other.
Quilliam's findings echo a number of earlier reviews and surveys of the British Muslim community as a whole. In her 2016 government-commissioned review into integration and opportunity in isolated and deprived communities, Dame Louise Casey found evidence that the hardest group to integrate was the Muslim community. In her Executive Summary , she notes (paragraph 30) that:
People of Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnicity tend to live in more residentially segregated communities than other ethnic minority groups. South Asian communities (people of Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi ethnicity) live in higher concentrations at ward level than any other ethnic minority group. These concentrations at ward level are growing in many areas.
She adds that that, "Compared to other minority faith groups, Muslims tend to live in higher residential concentrations at ward level". She continues:
[Paragraph] 32. The school age population is even more segregated when compared to residential patterns of living. A Demos study found that, in 2013, more than 50% of ethnic minority students were in schools where ethnic minorities were the majority, and that school segregation was highest among students from Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic backgrounds relative to other ethnic groups.
Again:
[Paragraph] 44. Polling in 2015 also showed that more than 55% of the general public agreed that there was a fundamental clash between Islam and the values of British society, while 46% of British Muslims felt that being a Muslim in Britain was difficult due to prejudice against Islam. We found a growing sense of grievance among sections of the Muslim population, and a stronger sense of identification with the plight of the 'Ummah', or global Muslim community.
She also highlights problems with the national language:
[Paragraph] 52. English language is a common denominator and a strong enabler of integration. But Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic groups have the lowest levels of English language proficiency of any Black or Minority Ethnic group and women in those communities are twice as likely as men to have poor English.
Finally, we should note her statement on gender equality, which is clearly linked to the Muslim communities:
[Paragraph] 57. ... in many areas of Britain the drive towards equality and opportunity across gender might never have taken place. Women in some communities are facing a double onslaught of gender inequality, combined with religious, cultural and social barriers preventing them from accessing even their basic rights as British residents. And violence against women remains all too prevalent in domestic abuse but also in other criminal practices such as female genital mutilation, forced marriage and so-called "honour" based crime.
Casey was not the first to draw attention to most of these issues. In 2007, the British think tank Policy Exchange, published a detailed report titled "Living apart together: British Muslims and the paradox of multiculturalism", written by three young Asian researchers. Their most striking finding, drawn from a survey, was that the youngest generation (16-24 year olds) were more radical in their beliefs than their grandparents (55+ year olds). Thus, 37% of the youngest would prefer to live under shari'a law than British law, compared to only 17% of their elders ; 36% of the youngest believe that if a Muslim converts to another religion they must be punished by death, compared to only 19% of the oldest; a high 74% of 16-24 year olds prefer Muslim women to wear the veil, compared to a mere 28% of 55+ year olds -- an astonishing reversal. Most immigrant communities -- notably Jews, Italians, Irish, Poles and others in the United States' "melting pot" -- come to identify with their host country within the second and third generation, and that has been largely true of the United Kingdom.
One particular feature that distinguishes Muslims from the rest of the increasingly secular UK population is the extent to which religion plays a major role in people's lives. Figure 2 of the report shows that 66% agree strongly and another 20% of Muslims tend to agree that "My religion is the most important thing in my life". In Figure 1, 49% say they pray the full 5 times a day, and 22% 1-3 times a day, with a tiny 5% replying "never". It is important to read the report in full. for it has many supportive things to say about British Muslims:
However, there is also considerable diversity amongst Muslims, with many adopting a more secular approach to their religion. The majority of Muslims feel they have as much, if not more, in common with non-Muslims in Britain as with Muslims abroad. There is clearly a conflict within British Islam between a moderate majority that accepts the norms of Western democracy and a growing minority that does not. For these reasons, we should be wary of treating the entire Muslim population as a monolith with special needs that are different to the rest of the population.
An extensive poll of Muslim opinion conducted in 2016 by ICM showed that things were much the same or worse than in 2007. It was reported on by Trevor Phillips, a son of Caribbean immigrants and former chairman of Britain's Equality and Human Rights Commission. In an article for the Sunday Times , he expressed his deep frustration with the Muslim failure to integrate:
...for a long time, I too thought that Europe's Muslims would become like previous waves of migrants, gradually abandoning their ancestral ways, wearing their religious and cultural baggage lightly, and gradually blending into Britain's diverse identity landscape. I should have known better.
Another 2016 survey , carried out by a Czech think tank, European Values, found that some 44% of Muslims held views corresponding to radical Islamic fundamentalism.
"The survey discovered 57 percent of Muslims reject homosexuals as friends, 45 percent said they don't trust the Jews and 54 percent think of the West as an enemy of Islam . Among fundamentalist Muslims, 72 percent of respondents said they would use violence to defend Islam. Among regular Muslims, that number amounted to 35 percent.
"An incredibly large number of Muslims want Islamic Sharia law to dominate over local laws. For instance, 72 percent of Muslims in France want to see Sharia as the main or only source of law in the country. That figure remains astonishingly high in the United Kingdom at 69 percent."
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Sep 18, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Trade
"The Trade War Spurs China's Technology Innovators Into Overdrive" [ Industry Week ]. "In Shenzhen's glitzy financial district, a five-year-old outfit creates a 360-degree sports camera that goes on to win awards and draw comparisons to GoPro Inc. Elsewhere in the Pearl River Delta, a niche design house is competing with the world's best headphone makers. And in the capital Beijing, a little-known startup becomes one of the biggest purveyors of smartwatches on the planet. Insta360, SIVGA and Huami join drone maker DJI Technology Co. among a wave of startups that are dismantling the decades-old image of China as a clone factory -- and adding to Washington's concerns about its fast-ascending international rival.
Within the world's No. 2 economy, Trump's campaign to contain China's rise is in fact spurring its burgeoning tech sector to accelerate design and invention. The threat they pose is one of unmatchable geography: by bringing design expertise and innovation to the place where devices are manufactured, these companies are able to develop products faster and more cheaply ." •
Gee, didn't we have this advantage once? Thanks, neoliberals!
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Sep 16, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Part of the Trump administration's latest round of 15 percent tariffs on Chinese imports went into effect Sunday, with the rest to follow on December 15. These increases will impact the prices of many consumer goods that Americans rely on, including clothing, appliances, televisions, smartwatches, textbooks, diapers, coffee, and even whiskey. And given their timing, they'll likely have an effect on holiday shopping. This makes all the more welcome President Trump's recent statement during the G7 summit that China is looking to end the trade war and that he too is open to making a deal.
Trump is right to negotiate with Chinese President Xi Jinping, as finding an off-ramp from the trade war should be Washington's priority. America's interest is in out-competing Beijing, not hurting our own economy in an attempt to damage theirs. The United States has a better hand here, but we must play it to our advantage.
America's great strength is in our freedom, our market economy, and our democratic system. The United States has attained a level of prosperity unseen in human history, and that economic engine is what fuels our military power. Without a strong economy, we cannot have a strong military. Thus an endless trade war endangers American security in the long term: as both sides pile on retaliatory tariffs, the risk of recession increases. American consumers will feel each new trade barrier as it hits their pocketbooks.
Washington must not pursue policies that hurt those it governs. And the suffering inflicted by a trade war wouldn't just be limited to the pricing of consumer goods. It would also make us weaker for no good reason. And it would lower tax revenues, requiring America to go further into debt to maintain our present level of security.
AdvertisementMoreover, long-term trade attacks on China are unnecessary, because China already has more problems than America. Beijing suffers from high national debt, a lack of clear economic reform, and a rapidly aging population. It has few, if any, good or timely solutions to these pressing issues.
According to the Institute of International Finance, China's total national, corporate, and household debt is now over 300 percent of its GDP. What makes this especially bad for Beijing is that the debt was taken on very quickly after the 2008 global recession, without the power of a global reserve currency to make borrowing easier, as the United States has. Moreover, this debt is largely corporate and China's state-capitalist system makes it harder for Chinese companies survive market pressures. Beijing has used cheap credit to fuel its exports and its economic rise through fully and partially state-controlled national companies.
The Chinese economic system has undergone some reforms in recent years but still remains too top-down and too focused on exports over consumption as compared to more developed economies. In other words, China needs to transition to a full market economy like Taiwan and South Korea did on their paths to prosperity, but it hasn't done so yet.
Furthermore, because of the horrific legacy of the one-child policy, China faces a rapidly aging population that will strain resources and reduce the number of working-age people . By 2050, it is estimated that the average Chinese will be 56 years of age. In contrast, the average American will be 44. No amount of spending or legal reform will prevent Beijing's coming demographic crisis.
China Has Already Lost the Trade War Tariffs Are Economic Patriotism, Putting Americans FirstThis comparative weakness is why it makes sense to find a trade war off-ramp sooner rather than later. China needs one badly and will eventually want a deal -- if it doesn't already. As for the United States, recession may be inevitable, but it would be better if it were not self-inflicted.
Already the trade war has cost American billions in higher prices for imported products. American farmers have been hit hard by China's retaliatory tariffs and, according to a report by IHS Markit, U.S. manufacturing has shrunk for the first since 2009. Economists polled by Reuters believe the trade war has increased the risk of a recession, with a median of those surveyed giving a 45 percent chance of a downturn over the next two years. Additionally, major banks have expressed concerns , as the stock market takes hits with every new tariff increase and angry statement between Washington and Beijing.
I couldnt disagree more. I want more tariffs against China and Europe. I want closed borders and zero migration. China has infiltrated our government, our defense agencies, our nuclear agencies, our major research centers, our college campuses, our media and bribed our politicians. China is an imminent threat to Hong Kong, Taiwan and its militarization of the islands in the South China Sea are a threat to all of South Asia. China has been stealing US, Canadian and European technology for decades to leapfrog the US into technological dominance globally. China's plan is to force the US our of the Asia Pacific. China has infiltrated Canada and Australia to a similar degree (if not more) than the US. If you pander to these free trade globalists then you will be paving the way for a military conflict between Chinese and American Hegemony in Asia and elsewhere around the world. I dont know about you but I will take a tariff and trade war over a military war any day. Ramp up those tariffs and shift those supply chains out of China toward more benevolent allies and the world be be all the safer for it.Mr. B • 9 hours agoChina has been waging a one sided trade war against us for over 30 years, it's about time we resisted. Becoming more economically intertwined with our dangerous and genocidal rival doesn't sound like the right answer to me, especially when China will continue protectionist policies and currency manipulation regardless of what we do. America has allowed its industrial base to hemorrhage since the 70s, and bending over for our enemy to keep cheap trash flowing and American factories closed is not the right answer.tz1 • 8 hours agoIs this a white box article the Chamber of Commerce is using to astroturf?ThaomasH • 8 hours agoChina is a Monstrous regime that is killing and enslaving its citizens. It will simply kill everyone over 65, then 60 if it becomes convenient like they did with their one child policy. Problem solved.
You wish to keep trading with criminals, polluters, and pirates so you can get cheap junk at WalMart?
You have a job. I wish you would lose yours and that dozens of blue collar had working but laid off Americans can find one. It isn't how much something costs in dollars (or how much of your soul it costs), it is how much it costs in your virtuous labor. I'd rather pay double for stuff but get triple wages rather than pay half but be all but permanently unemployed.
Well said. Calling off the trade would be good for US consumers and the economy in general. But while we are on the subject,calling off the war on immigration would also be good for US consumers and the economy in general.Adriana Pena • 8 hours agoShoulda have voted for Hillary....Kent • 8 hours agoWow. This article is off-base on any number of levels.AllenQ • 5 hours ago"These increases will impact the prices of many consumer goods that Americans rely on,"
No, no they won't. Tariffs are paid for by the importer, not the consumer. If the importer could randomly increase prices, they would do so without tariffs. The market sets prices.
"America's interest is in out-competing Beijing, not hurting our own economy in an attempt to damage theirs."
If America could out-compete Beijing, American manufacturing would not have moved to China. It turns out, the American people simply don't want to live according to 3rd world standards. We want decent homes and stuff. We don't want to live in a cesspool of pollution. I'm sure the Chinese people have the same preferences, they just don't get a choice.
"Moreover, long-term trade attacks on China are unnecessary, because China already has more problems than America."
I agree with the author here, but not for the same reasons. Attacking China doesn't resolve anything. American companies will just move to a different 3rd world country with whom we can't complete. Why should I care if my clothes come from China or Vietnam?
I am 100% supportive of the trade war and building the wall and tariffs. I say zero immigration and make all Chinese Tariffs permanent. Negotiate a trade deal with the tariffs intact. Id rather have a trade war with China and permanent tariffs than a war with China.Mark B. • 5 hours agoChina has been stealing technology and has infiltrated media, government, defense, education, government officials (usually through bribes) from the US, Canada, Australia and Europe. China is proving itself to be a threat to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, India and South Asia.
Much of this "so called Russia Collusion" is actually a deflection of democratic politicians China is bribing to take down Trump in order to continue their military and technological theft, their existing preferential trade and their existing network. China is a serious danger to the US and the rest of the world. It is preferential to sacrifice a small amount of prosperity today for long term peace with China.
Bring a thousand trade wars to blossom to save the climate, planet, middle classes. dignity and to fight rising extreme inequality.kalendjay • 3 hours agoPropaganda. The aging of Chinese population? Not to worry, China has no real Social Security system, and so relies on massive surpluses of savings. The 300% consumer debt ratio? That would cripple any country with no help from trade. Should we let Wells Fargo and Goldman refinance them?Michael • 3 hours agoFarmers hit hard? As I recall we have had the worst corn harvest in decades, and shame on us for not growing more wheat, oats, and sugar cane. Our beef and poultry prices will be affected, not to mention our fast food industry, which has been whipsawed by political correctness. But China will effectively ration its pork, as it faces an even worse African Swine Flu crisis, and an additional one on grains from the Black Army Worm.
US decline in manufacturing? Look first at our glut of automobiles, and the self vetting of plant capacity by GM. Don't forget the crisis in car leases, which have made older cars worth less than their outstanding loans. And note, that the fall in lithium prices indicates that China's car electrification initiative is falling flat.
One thing left out of the equation is oil. And why should China live high on Iranian oil (mostly wastefully burned in power plants, mind you, and not cars) while we suffer attacks on Saudi oil from Iranian proxies (all on ChiRussia's dime)? Puts our trade negotiations in clear perspective, doesn't it?
Stopping the war will not bring back China as our major trading partner. China is not going to be in this vulnerable position with America again. She is going to develop other markets
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Jul 12, 2019 | www.unz.com
Well before Theodore Herzl founded political Zionism and published The Jewish State, Christian Zionists in the United States and England were already seeking to direct and influence the foreign policy of both nations in service to a religious obsession end times prophecy.
The largest pro-Israel organization in the United States is not composed of Jews, but of Christian evangelicals, with a total membership of 7 million, more than 2 million more members than the entirety of the American Jewish community.
Members of this organization, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), met in Washington on Monday, attracting thousands of attendees and featuring speeches from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Vice President Mike Pence, and National Security Advisor John Bolton. CUFI's leader, controversial evangelical preacher John Hagee, has met with President Donald Trump several times and was recently part of an exclusive White House meeting in March on the administration's upcoming "peace plan" for Israel and Palestine.
CUFI is but one of many organizations throughout American history that have promoted the state of Israel and Zionism on the grounds that a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine is a requirement for the fulfillment of end-times prophecy and necessary for Jesus Christ to return to Earth -- an event Christians often refer to as "the Second Coming."
While organizations like CUFI and its predecessors have long seen the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and the later Israeli victory and conquest of Jerusalem in 1967, as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, there is one prophecy that this sect of evangelical Christians believes is the only thing standing between them and the Second Coming. There are estimated to be more than 20 million of these Christians, often referred to as Christian Zionists, in the United States and they are a key voting bloc and source of political donations for the Republican Party.
As was explored in previous installments of this series, these Christian Zionists, much like religious Zionist extremists in Israel, believe that the Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock must be replaced with a Third Jewish Temple in order to usher in the end times.
These two groups of different faiths, since the 19th century, have repeatedly formed an opportunistic alliance in order to ensure the fulfillment of their respective prophecies, despite the fact that members of the other faith are rarely if ever on the same page in their interpretations of what occurs after the temple's construction.
This alliance, based on a mutual obsession with hastening the coming of the Apocalypse, continues to this day and now, more than at any other time in history, these groups have reached the heights of power in both Israel and the United States. Parts I and II of this exclusive series explored how this branch of religious Zionism has come to dominate the current right-wing government of Israel and has led Israel's current government to take definitive steps towards the destruction of the Al Aqsa mosque and the imminent construction of a Third Temple.
Now this installment (Part III) will show how this movement's Christian counterpart in the United States, Christian Zionism, has likewise become a dominant force in American politics, particularly following the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, where this apocalyptic vision is a major driver behind his administration's Middle East policy.
Yet, this fire-and-brimstone vision of the end times has long been a guide for prominent figures in American history and the American elite, even predating Zionism's founding as a political movement. Thus, Christian Zionism's influence on Trump administration policy is merely the latest of a long list of examples where prophecy and politics have mixed in American history, often with world-altering results.
Puritans, Prophecy and PalestineAccounts of the role of European and North American Christians in the creation of the state of Israel often begin with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, but the efforts of certain Christian groups in England and the United States to create a Jewish state in Palestine actually date back centuries earlier and significantly predate Zionism's official founding by Theodore Herzl.
Among the first advocates for the physical immigration of European Jews to Palestine were the Puritans, an offshoot of Christian Protestantism that emerged in the late 16th century and became influential in England and, later, in the American colonies. Influential Puritans devoted considerable interest to the role of Jews in eschatology, or end-times theology, with many -- such as John Owen , a 17th-century theologian, member of parliament, and administrator at Oxford -- believing that the physical return of Jews to Palestine was necessary for the fulfillment of end-time prophecy.
While the Puritan roots of what would later become known as Christian Zionism are often overlooked in modern accounts of where and why American evangelical support for Israel began, its adherents still clearly acknowledge its legacy. For instance, on Monday at the CUFI conference, Pompeo, himself a Christian Zionist known for his obsession with the end times, told the group the following:
Christian support in America for Zion -- for a Jewish homeland -- runs back to the early Puritan settlers, and it has endured for centuries. Indeed, our second president [John Adams], a couple years back, said 'I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.'
These Puritan beliefs, which persist today and have only grown in popularity, became more entrenched in England and colonial America with time, especially among the monied political class, and led to a variety of interpretations regarding exactly what the Bible says about the end times. Among the most influential was the development of Christian "dispensationalism," an interpretive framework that uses the Bible to divide history into different periods of "dispensations" and sees the Bible's prophetic references to "Israel" as signifying an ethnically Jewish nation established in Palestine.
Charles Russell's visual interpretation of Darby's 'dispensations' circa 1886
Dispensationalism was largely developed by English-Irish preacher John Nelson Darby, who believed that the God-ordained fates of Israel and the Christian church were completely separate, with the latter to be physically removed from the Earth by God prior to a foretold period of earthly suffering known as the Tribulation.
In Darby's view, the Tribulation would begin following the construction of a Third Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This belief in the physical removal of Christians from the Earth prior to the Tribulation, widely known as "the rapture," was invented by Darby in the 1820s and its lack of scriptural support has been widely noted by theologians of various denominations as well as biblical scholars. However, it is important to point that there are differences among dispensationalist Christians as to whether the rapture will occur before, during or after the Tribulation period.
Yet, despite its relatively short existence as an idea and lack of support in the Bible, the rapture was enthusiastically adopted by some churches in England and the United States, particularly the latter. This was largely thanks to the work of highly controversial theologian Cyrus Scofield.
Notably, Darby's brand of Christian eschatology coincides with similar developments in Jewish eschatology , namely the ideas of Rabbi Zvi Hirsh Kalisher and the creation of a new branch of Jewish messianism that believed that Jews must proactively work to hasten the coming of their messiah by immigrating to Israel and building a Third Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Darby's beliefs, and those he inspired promoted something similar in the sense that Christians could hasten the coming of the rapture and the Tribulation by promoting the immigration of Jews to Israel as well as the construction of a Third Jewish Temple.
Christian Zionists pave the way for Theodore HerzlDarby traveled to North America and several other countries to popularize his ideas, meeting several influential pastors throughout the English speaking world, including James Brookes, the future mentor of Cyrus Scofield. His travels and the spread of his written works popularized his eschatological views among certain circles of American and English Christians during the religious revival of the 19th century. Darby's beliefs were particularly attractive to the elite of both countries, with some English noblemen placing newspaper advertisements urging Jews to immigrate to Palestine as early as the 1840s.
Another prominent figure influenced by Darby's end-times doctrine was the American preacher Charles Taze Russell, whose church later gave rise to several different churches, including the Jehovah's Witnesses. Decades before the founding of modern political Zionism, Russell began preaching -- not just to Christians, but to Jews in the United States and elsewhere -- about the need for mass Jewish immigration to Palestine.
As Rabbi Kalisher had done a few decades prior , Russell penned a letter in 1891 to a wealthy member of the Rothschild banking family, Edmond de Rothschild, as well as Maurice von Hirsch, a wealthy German financier, about his plan for the Jewish settlement of Palestine. Russell described his plan as follows:
My suggestion is that the wealthy Hebrews purchase from Turkey, at a fair valuation, all of her property interest in these lands: i.e., all of the Government lands (lands not held by private owners), under the provision that Syria and Palestine shall be constituted a free state."
The same plan was to resurface a few years later in arguably the most influential Zionist book of all time, Theodore Herzl's The Jewish State , which was published in 1896.
Russell addresses an audience of American Jews in New York in 1910. Photo | Public Domain
It is unknown whether Rothschild or Hirsch was influenced at all by Russell's letter, though Russell's ideas did have a lasting impact on some prominent American Jews and American Christians with regard to his promotion of Jewish immigration to Palestine.
The same year that Russell wrote his letter to de Rothschild and von Hirsch, another influential dispensationalist preacher wrote another document that is often overlooked in exploring the role of American Christians in the development and popularization of Zionism. William E. Blackstone, an American preacher who was greatly influenced by Darby and other dispensationalists of the era, had spent decades promoting with great fervor the immigration of Jews to Palestine as a means of fulfilling Biblical prophecy.
The culmination of Blackstone's efforts came in the form of the Blackstone Memorial, a petition that pleaded that then-President of the United States Benjamin Harrison and his secretary of state, James Blaine, take action "in favor of the restoration of Palestine to the Jews." The largely forgotten petition asked Harrison and Blaine to use their influence to "secure the holding at an early date, of an international conference to consider the condition of the Israelites and their claims to Palestine as their ancient home, and to promote, in all other just and proper ways, the alleviation of their suffering condition."
As with Russell's letter to de Rothschild and von Hirsch, it is unknown exactly how influential the Blackstone Memorial was in influencing the views or policies of Harrison or Blaine. However, the Blackstone Memorial petition is highly significant because of its signatories, which included the most influential and wealthiest Americans of the era, the majority of whom were Christians.
Signatories of the Blackstone Memorial included J.D. Rockefeller, the country's first billionaire; J.P. Morgan, the wealthy banker; William McKinley, future president of the United States; Thomas Brackett Reed, then speaker of the House; Melville Fuller, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; the mayors of New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston and Chicago; the editors of the Boston Globe, New York Times, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune , among others; and numerous other members of Congress, as well as influential businessmen and clergymen. Though some rabbis were included as signatories, the petition's content was opposed by most American Jewish communities. In other words, the primary goal of Zionism, before it even became a movement, was widely supported by the American Christian elite, but opposed by American Jews.
The Blackstone Memorial would later attract the attention of Louis Brandeis, one of the most prominent American Jewish Zionists, who would later refer to Blackstone as the real "founding father of Zionism," according to Brandeis' close friend Nathan Straus. Brandeis would eventually succeed in convincing an elderly Blackstone to petition then-President Woodrow Wilson with a second Blackstone Memorial in 1916 that was presented in private to Wilson nearly a year later.
Instead of gathering signatures from prominent members of America's elite class, Blackstone this time focused on shoring up support from Protestant organizations, namely the Presbyterian Church, in keeping with Wilson's Presbyterian faith. According to historian Jerry Klinger, president of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, this change in focus had been Brandeis', not Blackstone's, idea.
Alison Weir, author of Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel , described Brandeis as "one of the most influential" American Zionists and a key figure in the efforts to push Wilson to support the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine, of which Blackstone's second petition was part. However, Weir asserted that Blackstone's second petition was secondary to a so-called "gentleman's agreement" whereby English officials promised to support a Jewish state in Palestine if American Zionists, led by Brandeis, were able to secure the United States' entry into World War I.
Wilson ultimately supported Blackstone's new document, which was never presented publicly to the president, but privately by Rabbi Stephen Wise. This second Blackstone Memorial was a key component of the Brandeis-led campaign that eventually guaranteed American support -- i.e., private support -- for the Balfour Declaration, which established British intentions to support a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine. Notably, the Balfour Declaration is named for the then-English Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, himself a Christian dispensationalist , though Weir told MintPress that Balfour was more likely influenced by political imperatives than religious motives. The only person in the British cabinet to oppose the Balfour Declaration was its only Jewish member, Edwin Montagu.
The Balfour Declaration was addressed to a member of the Rothschild banking family, Lionel Walter Rothschild, the last in a series of letters written to members of the Rothschild family urging them to use their wealth and political influence to favor the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine: from Rabbi Kalisher, who wrote to Baron Amschel Rothschild in 1836; to Charles Taze Russell, who wrote to Edmond de Rothschild in 1891; and finally to the Balfour Declaration, written to Lionel Walter Rothschild in 1917.
Weir told MintPress that the Rothschilds figure so prominently in these early efforts to establish a Jewish state in Palestine owing to "their wealth and the power that goes with it," making them very sought after by those who felt that a Jewish state could be formed in Palestine by the purchase of the territory by wealthy European Jews, as both Kalisher and Russell had proposed. However, the Balfour Declaration was addressed to the Rothschilds because, at that time, members of the Rothschild family, Edmond de Rothschild in particular, had become among the strongest supporters of the Zionist cause.
Though the declaration carries his name, it is unclear whether Balfour himself actually authored the document. Some historians -- such as Michael Rubinstein, former president of the Jewish Historical Society of England -- have made the case that the declaration itself was written by Leopold Amery, then-political secretary of England's War Cabinet and a Zionist who, despite his commitment to the Zionist cause, obfuscated his Jewish roots for much of his career for reasons that are still the source of speculation.
As shown by the Balfour Declaration and the lobbying efforts that led to its creation, support for what would soon become known as Zionism among the nobility of England and the United States was already formidable before Herzl even began work on The Jewish State. It is worth considering that the power and influence of this religiously-motivated class of Christian elites had an influence on Herzl and his ideas, particularly given the fact that dispensationalist Christians had been promoting a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine at a time when the idea was unpopular among many prominent Jews in Europe and the United States.
Furthermore, the role of Christian Zionists, as they would later become known, continued well after Herzl began his Zionist activities, and resulted in many of the most influential acts that led to the establishment of the State of Israel, including the Balfour Declaration.
Notably, Herzl's own success in promoting his views following the publication of The Jewish State was largely due to English dispensationalist pastor William Hechler. Hechler, while serving as chaplain at the British Embassy in Vienna, forged an alliance and later close friendship with Herzl and was critical to negotiating meetings between Herzl and prominent members of the German government, including Kaiser Wilhelm II, which lent necessary political legitimacy to Herzl's Zionist movement.
A largely overlooked figure in the rise of Zionism, Hechler is mentioned in Herzl's diary more than any other person and passionately felt that the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine would bring about the end times. Hechler is also known to have been extremely interested in the construction of a Third Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount, having devoted considerable time to creating models of that Temple, some of which he prominently displayed in his office and showed to Herzl with great enthusiasm during their first meeting.
Herzl gives Kaiser Wilhelm II a tour of an early Jewish settlement near Jaffa, Palestine in 1898. Photo | Israel GPO
The Hechler-Herzl alliance is one early example of how Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionists each used the motivations of the other for political gain despite the fact that Christian Zionists often hold anti-Semitic views and secular Zionists, as well as religious Zionists, do not hold Christianity in high regard. This opportunism on the parts of both Christian and Jewish Zionists has been a key feature in the rise of Zionism, particularly in the United States, and the case of Cyrus Scofield, the man more responsible than any for popularizing Christian Zionism among American evangelicals, offers another important example.
The surprising story of Cyrus ScofieldThere is perhaps no other book that has been more influential in the dissemination of Christian Zionism in the United States than the Scofield Reference Bible , a version of the King James Bible whose annotations were written by Cyrus Scofield. Scofield -- who had no formal theological training, though he later claimed to have a D.D. (doctor of divinity degree) -- originally worked as a lawyer and political operative in the state of Kansas and eventually became the district attorney of that state.
Soon after his appointment to the position, he was forced to resign as a result of numerous allegations of corruption, including bribery, forging signatures on banknotes and stealing political donations from then-Senator of Kansas James Ingalls. During this time, Scofield abandoned his wife and two daughters, an action since blamed on the burgeoning scandals he was facing as well as his self-admitted heavy drinking habits.
Amid this backdrop, Scofield is said to have become an evangelical around the year 1879 and soon became associated with prominent dispensationalist preachers of the era, including Dwight Moody and James Brookes. Local papers at the time, such as the Atchison Patriot , regarded Scofield's conversion and career change with great skepticism, referring to Scofield as the "late lawyer, politician and shyster generally" who had disgraced himself by committing "many malicious acts."
Scofield went on to pastor relatively small churches, moving from Kansas to Dallas, Texas, and later Massachusetts. Yet, despite his lack of renown and his troubled history, by 1901 Scofield had managed to gain entrance to an exclusive men's club in New York, the Lotos Club, whose members at the time included steel magnate and multi-millionaire Andrew Carnegie , members of the Vanderbilt family , and famous American writer Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name, Mark Twain.
Pastor Scofield, center, with the Deacons of the First Congregational Church of Dallas, circa 1880s
Scofield's membership in this exclusive club -- as well as the club's patronage of his activities, which granted him lodging and financing to produce what would become the Scofield Reference Bible -- has been the subject of considerable speculation. Indeed, many have noted that the presence of a fundamentalist, dispensationalist small-town preacher with a disgraced political past in a club stuffed with some of the country's most elite academics, writers and robber barons just doesn't add up.
Joseph M. Canfield, in his book The Incredible Scofield and his Book , asserted that "the admission of Scofield to the Lotus Club, which could not have been sought by Scofield, strengthens the suspicion that has cropped up before, that someone was directing the career of C.I. Scofield."
Canfield puts forth the theory in his book that the person "directing" Scofield's career was connected to New York lawyer and Zionist activist Samuel Untermeyer, who was on the club's executive committee and was a close associate of Louis Brandeis and influential in the administration of Woodrow Wilson. He then notes that Scofield's annotated bible was later "most helpful in getting Fundamentalist Christians to back the international interest in one of Untermeyer's pet projects -- the Zionist Movement."
Other scholars, such as David Lutz, have been more explicit than Canfield in linking Untermeyer's Zionist activism to his role in financially backing Scofield and his work on his annotated Bible. Ultimately, like the Blackstone Memorial before it, the Lotos Club's patronage of Scofield's work again reveals the interest of the American elite of the era, Christian and Jewish alike, in promoting Christian Zionism.
Untermeyer and the Lotos Club notably also funded Scofield's numerous travels to Europe, including one fateful trip to England where Scofield met with Henry Frowde, publisher of Oxford University Press. Frowde was taken with Scofield's work, largely owing to the fact that Frowde was a member of the "Exclusive Brethren," a religious group founded by John Nelson Darby, the father of dispensationalism. Oxford University Press subsequently published the Scofield Reference Bible in 1909. Twenty years after its publication, it became the first-ever Oxford publication to generate over a million dollars in sales.
Scofield's Bible became spectacularly popular among American fundamentalists soon after its publication, partly because it was the first annotated bible that sought to interpret the text for the reader as well as because it became the central text of several influential seminaries that were set up after its 1909 publication. Among Scofield's many annotations are claims that have since become central to Christian Zionism, such as Scofield's annotation of Genesis 12:3 that those who curse Israel (interpreted by Christian Zionists to mean the state of Israel since its founding in 1948) will be cursed by God and those that bless Israel will similarly be blessed.
Modern Christian Zionists, like Pastor John Hagee of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), have frequently cited this interpretation that originated with Scofield in defending extreme pro-Israel stances. For instance, Hagee made the following statement in 2014:
Falwell and Likud: a friendship or something else?You have to go back to basics, with the fact that in Genesis (chapter 1), God created the world and made a very solemn promise (brought in Gen. 12:3), 'I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse you.' From that moment on, every nation that ever blessed Israel has been blessed by God. And every nation that has ever persecuted the Jewish people, God crushed. And so He will continue."
Despite the widespread dissemination of the Scofield Reference Bible and its popularization among American evangelical churches and seminaries, the public influence of dispensationalist eschatology and Christian Zionism on American politics was relatively limited for much of the 20th century. However, the private influence of Christian dispensationalists was nonetheless present, as seen through the role of dispensationalist preacher and Third Temple advocate Billy Graham and his close relationships to several presidents including Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.
Then the political power of dispensationalist theology dramatically moved from the private quarters of the halls of power into the mainstream American political discourse with the founding of the Moral Majority by evangelical preacher Jerry Falwell in 1979.
In the early 1970s, Falwell's growing ministry was bringing in millions of dollars annually, especially his nationally broadcast program "The Old Time Gospel Hour," which ran on several major cable networks at the time. Despite -- or perhaps because of -- the spike in donations, Falwell was soon targeted by the federal government, specifically the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), for "fraud and deceit" and "gross insolvency" in the financial management of his ministry, particularly the ministry's sale of $6.6 million in church bonds. The SEC lawsuit was eventually settled when a group of businessmen in Lynchburg, Virginia -- where Falwell's ministry was based -- took over the ministry's finances for the next several years, until 1977. Falwell blamed his ministry's financial problems on his "financial ignorance."
Jerry Falwell travels with his son Jonathan, right, aboard his private jet in 2004. Todd Hunley | Thomas Road Baptist Church
One year after his ministry appeared to be on a better financial footing, Falwell received an invitation to visit the state of Israel and was personally invited on the all-expenses-paid trip by Menachem Begin, then the prime minister of Israel and leader of the Likud Party. The trip would mark the beginning of a long friendship and close relationship between Falwell and Begin and, more broadly, a relationship between American evangelical leaders and Israel's Likud Party. As Israeli historian Gershom Gorenberg notes in his book The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount , the Begin administration "was the first to tap evangelical enthusiasm for Israel and turn it into political and economic support."
Soon after returning from Israel, Falwell's finances again came under federal scrutiny after a federal investigation found that Falwell had transferred the health insurance policies of his employees to an unlicensed shell company with just $128 in assets and hundreds of thousands in dollars in unpaid claims. Just as Falwell's financial troubles began to mount yet again, he received a generous gift from none other than Begin in the form of a private Learjet valued at $4 million . Shortly thereafter, Falwell went on to found the Moral Majority organization, " after consultations with theologians and political strategists ."
The Moral Majority is widely credited with turning the Christian evangelical right into a major political force in the United States, promoting extremely pro-Israel policies, increased defense spending, a Reaganite approach to the challenges of the Cold War, as well as conservative domestic policies. Falwell frequently utilized his gift from Begin in traveling and promoting the new organization, as well as himself as a major public figure.
The Moral Majority marks a clear turning point in the Israel-U.S. evangelical relationship, as it made fervent support for Israel an area of major importance to evangelical voters and also led many evangelical voters to pay closer attention to events going on in the Middle East. Yet, given Falwell's strong promotion of Christian Zionism, many evangelicals who became increasingly politically active following the organization's founding not only supported Israel's policies of the era but also supported many of the future ambitions of Begin and the Likud Party. This support was solidified by the beginning of the Israeli Ministry of Tourism's ongoing practice of offering U.S. evangelical leaders free "familiarization" tours to Israel in the early 1980s.
Begin's vision of "Greater Israel" -- the complete annexation of Palestine as well as large parts of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Egypt by Israel -- was also shared and promoted by Falwell. In 1983, Falwell stated that "Begin will quickly tell you, 'We don't have all the land yet we're going to have,'" and further predicted that Israel would never relinquish control over the occupied West Bank because Begin was determined to keep the land "which has been delivered to them (the Israelis)."
Falwell framed Begin's expansionist ambitions as a religious belief in "the inerrancy of the Old Testament," a sentiment Falwell shared. Falwell also pushed for a U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and felt that construction of a Third Temple on the Temple Mount was necessary to usher in the end times and the second coming of Christ.
As Falwell helped turn Christian Zionism into a major political force in the United States, he also made himself a key political figure in the Reagan era and an important go-between for U.S.-Israel relations. In 1981 Begin informed Falwell of his plans to bomb an Iraqi nuclear facility before he informed the Reagan administration with the hopes that Falwell would "explain to the Christian public the reasons for the bombing." According to Canadian academic David S. New, Begin told Falwell during that phone call: "Get to work for me."
In addition, Falwell frequently met with Begin, whom he later called a personal friend, and these meetings often overlapped with Begin's official meetings with Reagan. A year later, Begin gave Falwell Israel's Jabotinsky award, making Falwell the first non-Jew to receive the honor for his advocacy on behalf of Israel and, more specifically, Likud policies and ambitions.
Though the Moral Majority officially shuttered its doors in 1989, its political legacy persisted long after, as did Falwell's political clout. Indeed, following Begin's model, Benjamin Netanyahu, during his first term as prime minister, also made a habit of visiting Falwell, meeting with the controversial pastor even before he met with political officials in his visits to Washington.
Netanyahu, left, meets Falwell at a hotel in Washington, Jan. 19, 1998. Greg Gibson | AP
During one trip to D.C. in 1998, Netanyahu's first visit was to an event co-hosted by Falwell, where the pastor praised Netanyahu as "the Ronald Reagan of Israel." The New York Times described the purpose of Netanyahu's U.S. visit not as a visit aimed at meeting with government officials, but rather one intended "to shore up his base of traditional support in the United States. Conservative Christian groups have long been ardent supporters of Israel because of its religious importance to Christianity."
However, this relationship between Christian Zionists like Falwell and prominent right-wing Israeli politicians has not been without its controversy, especially given that pro-Israel evangelicals like Falwell have a history of making anti-semitic statements.
For example, during a 1999 sermon, Falwell discussed his interpretation of end-times prophecy, widely shared by Christian Zionist evangelicals, that the Second Coming would follow not just the creation of the state of Israel but the construction of a Third Temple on the Temple Mount, from which a figure known to Christians as the "Antichrist" would reign. In responding to his own rhetorical question as to whether the Antichrist is "alive and well today," Falwell stated that "Probably because when he appears during the tribulation period he will be a full-grown counterfeit of Christ. Of course, he'll be Jewish."
Falwell's comments were immediately condemned by a variety of Jewish groups, including the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Rabbi Leon Klenicki, then-director of interfaith affairs for the ADL, noted that Falwell's view is a "common theological position" among American evangelicals and that Falwell was "an influential voice among evangelical and charismatic Christians" who "only supports Israel for his own Christological ends." "He sees us only as the ones who prepare the coming of Jesus," Klenicki stated at the time. "It is a great disappointment after more than 30 years of dialogue; he's still in the Middle Ages."
Another prominent dispensationalist with great political and literary influence is Hal Lindsey, the author and co-author of several books, including The Late Great Planet Earth . Lindsey's work greatly influenced many prominent U.S. politicians like Ronald Reagan, who was so moved by Lindsey's books that he invited Lindsey to address a National Security Council meeting on nuclear war plans and helped make Lindsey an influential consultant with several members of Congress and the Pentagon.
As noted by Israeli historian Gershom Gorenberg , Lindsey sees Jews as serving "two central roles" in Christian dispensationalist eschatology:
[T]he first -- despite his insistence of love for Jews -- is the classic one of Christian anti-Jewish polemic: They are 'the Jewish people who crucified Jesus' and the archetype of those who ignore the truth of prophecy. The second role is to fulfill prophecy despite themselves."
Gorenberg further notes that Lindsey believes that Jews have fulfilled two of the three crucial prophecies that will usher in the end times, with the first being the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the second being the Israeli conquest and occupation of Jerusalem after the Six Day War in 1967. According to Lindsey : "There remains but one more event to completely set the stage for Israel's part in the last great act of her historical drama. That is to rebuild the ancient Temple "
As Falwell's and Lindsey's comments reveal, the eschatological views of dispensationalism frequently perceive the Jewish people as little more than pawns that must fulfill certain requirements -- e.g., establishing the state of Israel, conquering Jerusalem, building a Third Temple -- in order to hasten the salvation and "rapture" of evangelical Christians. Meanwhile, Jews in Israel who do not convert to Christianity are expected to die horrible deaths, though some Christian Zionists in recent years, as will be seen shortly, have sought to adjust this still common theological position.
Despite the anti-semitic motivations underlying evangelical support for the state of Israel and the Likud-supported vision of "Greater Israel," the politically active Christian Zionist movement that Falwell helped create translated into a strong support base for Israel and right-wing Likud policy that has made it crucial to prominent Israeli politicians.
For instance, significantly more American Christians (55 percent) than American Jews (40 percent) believe that God gave Israel to the Jews while that sentiment is shared by only 19 percent of Israeli Christians. In addition, with regards to the Trump administration's pro-Israel policies, only 15 percent of evangelical Christians believe that President Trump favors Israel too strongly while 42 percent of American Jews hold the view that Trump is biased in favor of Israel.
In a video recorded in the early 2000s -- later broadcast on Israeli TV -- Netanyahu, speaking to a family of Jewish settlers, described the mass support among Americans, particularly evangelicals, for Israel as "absurd," saying:
America is something that can be easily moved. Moved in the right direction. They won't get in our way; 80 percent of the Americans supprt us. It's absurd."
In a 2017 speech to the Christian Zionist group CUFI, Netanyahu made it clear that much of this "absurd" support came from American evangelicals, stating that "America has no better friend than Israel and Israel has no better friend than America, and Israel has no better friend in America than you."
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Richard Silverstein -- an academic and journalist whose work has been published in Haaretz and MintPress, among other outlets -- has argued that Israeli politicians, particularly Netanyahu, have sought out support from evangelical groups despite their anti-Semitic undertones and the fact they the act out of self-interest in pursuing their political objectives.
In a 2017 article , Silverstein stated that for Israel's nationalist right-wing:
A "vital part of Israel's national security"Judaism is not a spiritual value, it is a physical manifestation of power in the world. These Israelis understand that not all Jews are their "brothers." Some Jews are too effete, too liberal, too humane, too universalist. These Jews are the detritus which will be washed away by the tide of history. Israeli nationalists need to replace these traditional Jewish allies and have done so by finding new ones: Christian evangelicals, African dictators, European neo-Nazis. Zionism as they define it is less a movement dedicated to ethics and more one dedicated to self-interest."
As Falwell began to fade from public view in the early 2000s, his legacy has largely fallen to a handful of preachers now at the forefront of Christian Zionism and Christian Zionist political activism, with Falwell's son, Jerry Falwell Jr., ranking prominently among them. However, of the preachers that followed in Falwell's footsteps, one stands out: John Hagee.
Hagee is the pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, which has an active membership of over 22,000. A charismatic Christian who believes in dispensationalist eschatology and thinks that Christians are biblically required to support Israel, Hagee has long been a major advocate for Israel within evangelical and charismatic Christianity circles and has raised over $80 million for Israel since he first began hosting "A Night to Honor Israel" events in the early 1980s.
In 2006, Hagee sought to create the "Christian AIPAC" and revived a then-defunct organization previously founded in 1975 known as Christians United for Israel, or CUFI, mentioned at the beginning of this installment. Since its re-founding, CUFI has grown exponentially, now counting 7 million members , a figure that exceeds the Jewish population of the United States, which stands at around 5.7 million. Hagee chairs its executive board, which included Jerry Falwell up until Falwell's death in 2007.
Vice President Pence, left, greets Hagee at CUFI's annual summit, July 8, 2019, in Washington. Patrick Semansky | AP
CUFI is exempt from paying U.S. taxes and from publicly disclosing its finances because it is officially registered as a church, though it is often likened to an arm of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States and actively promotes and funds illegal West Bank settlements. CUFI also advocates for Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount and the construction of a Third Temple.
Much has been written about CUFI's influence in the Republican Party, which began under the George W. Bush administration soon after its founding. As journalist Max Blumenthal noted in a 2006 article for The Nation: "Over the past months, the White House has convened a series of off-the-record meetings about its policies in the Middle East with leaders of Christians United for Israel (CUFI)."
As a result of these meetings, CUFI aligned itself tightly with the neoconservatives that were well represented in the Bush administration, even appointing neoconservative and Christian Zionist Gary Bauer to its board and naming Bauer the first director of its lobbying arm, the CUFI Action Fund. Bauer is a founding member of the highly controversial and now-defunct neoconservative group, Project for a New American Century (PNAC), and has also served on the executive board of the neoconservative group Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD).
CUFI has since won powerful allies and counts neoconservative Elliott Abrams; former CIA director James Woosley; neoconservative archon Bill Kristol; former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee; Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Ted Cruz (R-TX); Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence among its staunchest supporters. At a CUFI summit last year, Netanyahu described CUFI as a "vital part of Israel's national security."
In addition, CUFI has close ties to casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, the top donor to President Trump and the entire Republican Party. Adelson even received a special award from Hagee at a 2014 CUFI event. "I've never had a greater warm feeling than being honored by Pastor Hagee," said a beaming Sheldon Adelson at the time.
At the most recent CUFI summit, held on Monday, the Trump administration sent Pence, Pompeo, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Assistant to the President and Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt, and National Security Advisor John Bolton, all of whom spoke at the summit.
In addition to its own influence as an organization, the group has made Hagee himself a major political player. In 2007, then-Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) compared Hagee to Moses , stating:
I want to take to opportunity to describe Pastor Hagee in the terms the Torah used to describe Moses. He is an Ish Elohim. A man of God. And those words really do fit him. And I have something else. Like Moses, he's become the leader of a mighty multitude. Even greater than the multitude that Moses led from Egypt to the Promised Land."
Efforts by prominent politicians to court Hagee were once numerous, until evidence of Hagee making remarks about the Holocaust that were widely considered anti-semitic surfaced during the 2008 presidential campaign. In those remarks, Hagee asserted that Adolf Hitler had been sent by God to act as a "hunter," and force Jews by means of the Holocaust to resettle in Palestine as a means of fulfilling Biblical prophecy. Then-Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who had aggressively courted Hagee's endorsement, was forced to distance himself from Hagee after those comments resurfaced.
Yet, the stigma around Hagee has since worn off and his influence is again on the rise following Trump's election to the presidency, as evidenced by the attendance of numerous top Trump officials to the 2019 CUFI Washington Summit earlier this week.
Though he was not included on the official board of Trump's evangelical advisers early in Trump's presidency, several slightly less controversial allies and associates of Hagee were, including Tom Mullins, Jerry Falwell Jr., and Kenneth Copeland. Then, a few months after Trump's inauguration, Hagee "dropped by" the White House unannounced and met with Trump in the Oval Office to discuss U.S. support for Israel. He also met with Trump a few weeks before Trump announced plans to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a meeting at which Trump had reportedly promised Hagee that the embassy would soon be moved and told the pastor "I will not disappoint you." Hagee described Trump's announcement on Jerusalem as having "biblical timing of absolute precision."
More recently, Hagee was part of an exclusive group of evangelical leaders who met with White House officials this past March prior to the partial release of the so-called "Deal of the Century," aimed at bringing "peace" to the Israel-Palestine conflict, which is widely viewed as greatly favoring Israel and is expected to be rejected outright by Palestinian leadership.
After the meeting, Hagee issued an urgent prayer request. "Our topic of discussion was discussing the forthcoming peace plan concerning Israel. Israel and the Jewish people need our prayers and our advocacy like never before," Hagee said in a video posted to the CUFI Twitter page soon after the meeting. "The Bible gives the command, 'For Zion's sake, I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem's sake, I will not keep my peace.' I urge you tonight to pray for the peace of Jerusalem."
As the final installment of this series will show, the shared apocalyptic visions of extremist religious Zionists and Christian Zionists regarding a Third Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount is a major driver behind the Deal of the Century and was also a major factor in the Trump administration's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, despite Palestinian hopes that East Jerusalem would serve as the capital of their future state. Notably, Christian Zionists believe that Palestinians must be expelled from the state of Israel. In addition, these end-times beliefs are also a factor in the administration's push for war with Iran, which Christian Zionists like Hagee and Pompeo believe is also a requisite for the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.
While Hagee's influence and the influence of his organization CUFI are stronger than ever with Trump in the White House, his political clout with the Trump administration is, at least partially, due to the presence of staunch Christian Zionists in two of the top offices in the executive branch: vice president and secretary of state.
Pence and Pompeo push "holy war"Though several Trump officials spoke at the recent CUFI summit, two stand out -- not just for their high-ranking positions but also for their open admissions that their Christian Zionist beliefs guide their policies. These officials are Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo.
After Trump chose his running mate, Pence's religious fervor came under media scrutiny , with several outlets noting that he was known to be an ardent Christian Zionist. Pence's faith gained particular attention owing to his past statements on Israel, which he has often described in prophetic terms.
Though raised Catholic, Pence gradually transitioned to an "evangelical Catholic" and then to an evangelical Protestant and has since become a key political figure representing the fundamentalist Christian movement that promotes "dominionism," an ideology that varies in its interpretations but ultimately seeks to see the secular nature of the U.S. government shift towards one governed by "Biblical law." Pence's association with this movement has led prominent voices in the media to accuse him of supporting a theocratic form of government.
Though many of the initial concerns about Pence revolved around his likely effects on domestic policy, much of his influence has instead been seen in foreign policy, including the administration's Middle East policy . His public identification as a Christian Zionist and his speech to the 2017 CUFI summit, the first vice president to ever speak at the annual event, have led some to worry that the Christian Zionist view of prophecy is guiding Pence's political actions.
Pence visits the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site in Jerusalem's Old City, Jan. 23, 2018. Oded Balilty | AP
Following Pence's first speech at CUFI, Daniel Hummel, a scholar and fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School, told the Washington Post :
Christian Zionism has a long history in American politics, but it has never captured the bully pulpit of the White House. Past administrations often used general biblical language in reference to Israel, but never has the evangelical theology of Christian Zionism been so close to the policymaking apparatus of the executive branch.
By identifying with Christian Zionism while in office, Pence risks the Trump administration's ongoing search for an 'ultimate deal' to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and erodes the U.S.' claim that it can be an 'honest broker' in the Middle East."
Concerns that the U.S. is under the influence of extremist religious Zionism and Christian Zionism that would prevent the country from acting as an "honest broker" in the Israel-Palestine conflict have, unsurprisingly, been proven true . In fact, Pence's religious beliefs are believed to have been a major factor in Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to move the U.S. Embassy to the contested city.
Though Mike Pence is the highest-ranking member of the Trump administration who is openly a Christian Zionist, it is Pompeo that is the most overt and open about how his religious beliefs regarding the end times guide his decision-making as head of the U.S. State Department.
For much of his political career, Pompeo has framed U.S. counterterrorism policy as a " holy war " between Christianity and Islam, which he believes is the earthly equivalent of a cosmic battle between good and evil. In 2017, as CIA director, Pompeo claimed:
Radical Islamic terror [will] continue to press against us until we make sure that we pray and stand and fight and make sure that we know that Jesus Christ is our savior [and] truly the only solution for our world."
That same year, Pompeo created a new CIA "mission center" targeting Iran headed by Michael D'Andrea, whose CIA nickname is " The Prince of Darkness ." Pompeo, like many Christian Zionists, believes that war between the United States and Iran is part of the end times, a belief that is outright alarming given his prior control over CIA covert operations and his focus on Iran, as well as his current role as the U.S.' chief diplomat, in which he has also been laser-focused on promoting an aggressive policy towards Iran.
In addition to his views on "holy war," Pompeo also frequently discussed his views on the rapture while serving as CIA director. TYT reported last year that Pompeo had spoken about the rapture so frequently that it had reportedly frightened top CIA officials.
According to Michael Weinstein -- founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation , a watchdog group on issues of religious freedom in the military and intelligence community -- who was quoted in the TYT report:
He [Pompeo] is intolerant of anyone who isn't a fundamentalist Christian. The people that worked under him at the CIA that came to us were never confused -- they never had time to be confused. They were shocked and then they were scared shitless."
A 2015 video of Pompeo that surfaced while he was CIA director also shows the former congressman describing politics as "a never-ending struggle until the rapture."
More recently, a New York Times article published in March again brought Pompeo's obsession with the end times back into public view. Titled " The Rapture and the Real World: Mike Pompeo Blends Beliefs and Policy ," the article detailed how Pompeo has made it standard operating procedure to mix his Christian Zionist views with his approach to foreign policy. That article also referenced the statement Pompeo made earlier this year, in which he opined that it was "certainly possible" that President Trump had been sent by God to "save the Jewish people from the Iranian menace."
Pompeo made those statements during an official trip to Jerusalem that was also controversial for other reasons. Indeed, in a state department video shared on social media and meant to publicize Pompeo's trip, footage of a model of the Third Jewish Temple was included while footage of the Al Aqsa mosque was notably excluded, despite it being the most iconic building in Jerusalem.
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Given that Pompeo had also visited the tunnels that have worn away the historic mosque's foundations, many Palestinians took the video as a sign that the Trump administration was colluding with the Temple Activist movement in Israel, which was discussed in detail in Part II of this series.
Joining forces to target JerusalemWell before Theodore Herzl founded political Zionism and published The Jewish State , Christian Zionists in the United States and England were already seeking to direct and influence the foreign policy of both nations in service of a religious obsession with ushering in the end times. The historical record clearly shows how Christian Zionists have influenced events throughout history, particularly in regard to the founding of the state of Israel and subsequent developments in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
In the pursuit of these dispensationalist end-times prophecies, Christian Zionists have forged alliances with Jewish Zionists and each has opportunistically used the other in order to usher in the common events that are believed to facilitate the coming of their respective apocalypses or to aid more secular, political goals. From Hechler and Herzl, to Scofield and Untermeyer, to Begin and Falwell, these alliances have shaped the policy of Western governments, particularly the U.S. and England, for over a century.
Today, only one such prophecy has yet to be fulfilled, the construction of a Third Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount, which is currently occupied by the Al Aqsa mosque compound. Now, more than ever before, Israel's government, as shown in Part II, is filled with high-ranking officials who openly call for Al Aqsa's destruction and seek to hastily construct a Third Temple. Similarly, as this report has shown, the Trump administration is greatly influenced by Christian Zionists who also seek the mosque's destruction, in hopes that the Third Temple will soon be built.
Yet, the Trump administration's ties to this apocalyptic ideology go even deeper than has been discussed in this article, as many other influential members in the Trump administration -- especially top Trump advisers Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman -- also share and actively promote this extremist religious Zionist ideology that seeks to rebuild a Third Temple. As will be seen in the next installment of this series, this ideology is also a driving factor for top Trump and Republican Party donors such as Sheldon Adelson.
The end result is that the hold of this apocalyptic ideology on both the governments of Israel and the United States appears to be stronger now than ever, meaning that the danger currently facing Al Aqsa mosque, and with it world peace, looms large.
Correction | An earlier version of this article stated that Hal Lindsey was a co-author of the popular Left Behind book series. This was incorrect, as that series was co-written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, both of whom were influenced by Lindsey's earlier books including The Late Great Planet Earth .
Feature photo | Texas evangelist John Hagee of Christians United for Israel addresses a crowd of his followers and Israeli supporters at a rally at the Jerusalem convention center, April 6, 2008. Sebastian Scheiner | AP
Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.
Anthony Aaron , says: September 16, 2019 at 4:41 am GMT
I have told friends and others who would listen when we discussed these matters that the Old Testament is the biggest, most powerful and destructive post-hypnotic suggestion in all of human history used by the jews to simultaneously manipulate part of Christianity (the fundamentalist/pro-zionist part) to do the bidding of jews in general and israel in particular as well as the Epistles of St. Paul who corrupted the teachings of Christ in his personal crusade to turn those teachings into a proselytizing and missionary 'religion' for the good of its leadership.Reg Cæsar , says: September 16, 2019 at 4:50 am GMTWe've witnessed the fruits of those destructive elements for hundreds of years, but never to the extent of what has happened in the 20th and 21st Centuries.
Organized religion -- like organized politics, organized labor and organized crime -- cannot be trusted to have anyone's interests at heart but those of its leadership. Hell I'd personally trust organized crime (my family's Sicilian -- and all that implies) more than the other 3 I mentioned -- organized religion least of all.
I've never understood the degree of attachment that fundamentalist/pro-zionist Christians have towards the jews they never seem to really look at the reality of modern life and see just how detrimental -- if not downright destructive -- they have been of our nation and every other nation that's thrown them out.
Strangeness and it's destroying our modern world.
The best thing Christian Zionists could do is to perform their own aliyah and move en masse to the West Bank, specifically Bethlehem and other Christian spots. Learn some Aramaic or Samaritan. Breed like crazy.Christian truth Project , says: Website September 16, 2019 at 5:04 am GMTWe helped destroy Christianity in the Middle East, and we can help bring it back to life.
https://destinedtoberevealed.com/covenant-replacement-theology/Mark James , says: September 16, 2019 at 5:18 am GMTReplacement theology and dispensationalism
According to one of the most popular dispensationalism theories, God has a special and unique plan of redemption for an earthly people referred to as Israel, and a heaven-bound group of people known as His church. The prominent view is that there are two peoples of God, with Israel realizing special earthly promises during the millennium, and His church receiving heavenly treasures. However, regardless of what manmade term is utilized, this thinking represents a dual-covenant doctrine that is simply not Biblical.
The theological rhetoric in relation to replacement theology also includes covenant theology. This teaching separates Gods relationship with mankind by a multitude of covenants instead of unique dispensational ages. Again, these convoluted systems of belief represent the commandments and doctrines of men and are not at all Scriptural.
There are several prevalent schools of thought regarding replacement theology expressed within the teachings of Judeo-Christianity that paint a false picture concerning the truths of Judaism. This brief synopsis will examine some of these beliefs within the context of replacement theology.
[MORE]In this article, we will not be viewing Judaism through the narrow prism of propaganda that has captured the minds of those who have been infected with a Judeo-Christian ideology.
For those who are able to escape the false gospel programming, the reality with regards to replacement theology or the profound differences between the Old and New Covenants becomes strikingly apparent.
Judeo-Christianity and replacement theology
Although there are variances, the Judeo-Christian dual-covenant doctrine is not an actual replacement theology as such. It is more of a dualistic yet separate plan of redemption for both the Jewish people and the Christians. Many theologians teach that the New Testament church will be raptured before the commencement of the Great Tribulation. Apparently, at the end of this age, there is a period of seven years in which many Jews will come to know Christ as their Messiah.
Within Christian eschatology, it is almost exclusively taught that the Antichrist will confirm a covenant with the Jews for seven years. And in the middle of this week, he causes the sacrifices and offerings to cease. Then on a wing of the temple, he sets up the abomination of desolation.
The prominent view is that God has promised to save all of Israel. As the story goes, He will bless those who bless Israel, and His everlasting promise to them is unconditional. Unfortunately, most so-called scholars simply do not understand the identity of the true Israel of God.
Gal 3:29 And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
It is taught that we cannot exclude the Jewish people from their original and permanent covenant promises, as they represent the natural seed of Abraham.
If the covenant promise was made to Abraham and his seed, who does this seed refer to?
Gal 3:16 Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.Are the Jewish people synonymous with Spiritual Israel, or does this family consist of all who are in Christ?
Gal 3:26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Yahshua the MessiahIs it not clearly defined that the righteousness of God is only possible through faith in Yahshua the Messiah without the works of the Law (Rom 3:22, 28, Rom 9:32).
Romans 4:13 For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faithThe Judaizers would claim that we can never combine the Church with Israel, as the two are forever separated with unique identities and purposes.
Romans 4:14 For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect
How cynical is it for Likud to be taking advantage of these mentally slow Christians? It's pathetic. I would imagine Pence is a true believer. Pompeo may be just acting the part as I would guess many to be doing.Al Liguori , says: Website September 16, 2019 at 5:39 am GMTWe are going to be paying more for gas soon. Fifty percent of the Saudi refinery capacity is down. But has anybody been thinking what could happen if Iran were hit and taken off-line as well? Would there be US gas shortages and $5 per gallon fill up prices? Maybe this would focus the minds of the daft Christian Zionists.
The GOP needs to get real and stop treating Israel domestic and foreign policies with support at all costs zealotry, only because, it is backed by Christian fundamentalists in their party. It's time to just say no. Like to the nitwit talk about a mutual defense policy.
While convention finds these Zionists called "Christian," there is nothing Christian about Zionism.Wally , says: September 16, 2019 at 5:39 am GMTThe scriptural underpinnings are a complete fraud: http://judaism.is/assets/rapture.pdf
"Christian evangelicals, with a total membership of 7 million, more than 2 million more members than the entirety of the American Jewish community ."renfro , says: September 16, 2019 at 5:41 am GMTNo chance.
The alleged number of this "American Jewish community" is intentionally misleading nonsense. There are many, many more then they let on. Most Jews are not religious so they do not say they are "Jewish" in questions about religion. They consider themselves Jews nonetheless. They want you to think they are so few & helpless victims when in fact they create massive resentment towards themselves by their owns actions.
And they practically all heavily support "that shitty little country" and whatever is "good for Jews" at the expense of others.
see more at: Predators United : http://www.unz.com/gatzmon/predators-united/ – comment #77
Will the 'good' Christians care about Falwell and wife's life with a pool boy, a personal tennis trainer, a gay hostel in Miami , naked pictures, calling in Cohen for pictures retrieval, lol, probably not.turtle , says: September 16, 2019 at 5:53 am GMTDonald Trump Met The Miami Pool Attendant Whom Jerry Falwell Jr. Backed In A Business Venture
Michael Cohen, Trump's fixer and Falwell's friend, was also at Liberty University when Trump and the pool attendant met.
- Jerry Falwell Jr. confirmed that he loaned $1.8 million – with the help of President Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen – to a young pool attendant he and his wife had befriended. https://www.alternet.org/2018/12/evangelical-leader-jerry-falwell-jr-loaned-18-million-young-pool-attendant-michael-cohens/
- The Cohen–Falwell Connection, or Trumpland in a Nutshell http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/05/the-falwell-cohen-connection-or-trumpland-in-a-nutshell.html
- My Weekend at the Falwells' South Beach Flophouse .Liberty University presents itself as a temple of virtue. But its founding family's secret Miami hostel is a cesspool of vice. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/25/jerry-falwell-miami-hostel-liberty-university-trey-falwell-215528
- Jerry Falwell Jr. Funded Miami Pool Attendant Giancarlo Granda's https://www.miaminewtimes.com/ /jerry-falwell-jr-funded-miami-pool-attendants-alt… ;
- The Saga of Jerry Falwell Jr.'s Bizarre Relationship With a Miami Beach Pool Boy, Explained The Liberty University president who shepherded much of Trump's evangelical support is at the center of a controversy involving blackmail, a hostel, and Tom Arnold https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-jerry-falwell-jr-miami-beach-pool-boy-evangelical-explained-850380/
- 'Someone's Gotta Tell the Freakin' Truth': Jerry Falwell's Aides Break Their Silence More than two dozen current and former Liberty University officials describe a culture of fear and self-dealing at the largest Christian college in the world. By BRANDON AMBROSINO September 09, 2019 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/09/jerry-falwell-liberty-university-loans-227914#superComments
Why is it that so many of these so-called "Christian Zionists" are:Exile , says: September 16, 2019 at 5:54 am GMT
a) disgustingly obese, and
b) filthy rich?
A private jet? Really? Didn't Jesus say something about a rich man's chances of getting into Heaven being extremely poor? That's how I remember it, but, hey, that was a long time ago. Besides that:@Anthony Aaron It's ironic that Christian Zionism is often considered "fundamentalist" considering that outright hostility to Jews (see Luther) or at least supercessionism (Jews deicide = no longer Chosen, Christians now Chosen) was the theological norm in Christianity until WWII and the advent of Holocaustianity. Given the track record of atheist or "post-religious" society to date, I'd suggest you reconsider the blanket condemnation of all organized faith. Non-kosher, muscular, Germanized Christianity is the model for how to reform the modern church, or build something better in its stead. The Orthodox have their own strong tradition to build on. Both are syncretisms of some of the better elements of Christianity and pre-existing pagan and cultural elements from Europe, and both are proven to advance human happiness. "Judeo-Christianity" on the other hand is a Frankenstein theology that mocks and subverts transcendent and human values alike.EliteCommInc. , says: September 16, 2019 at 6:02 am GMTOy.Pierre Papier , says: September 16, 2019 at 7:28 am GMTThe restoration of the state of Israel or the Jews is neither a creation Quakers, Puritans, Baptists, Mennonites, Anglicans, Catholics, Church of Christ, Calvary Chapel, etc. The principle of restoration is not even an idea created by Jews.
One could start at Jer. 16:14-16.
Now there are lots of evangelicals that say the restoration has come and that it is through the saving grace of Jesus Christ.
https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/120-dispensationalism-and-zechariah-14
-- -- -- --
@Anthony Aaron It's not the Old Testament that's the problem, it's the Talmud. Jews hardly read the Old Testament. If they did, they would understand that God has punished them for their subversive behavior for centuries. The Christian religion is the reason the West elevated itself in the first place, which is why it is constantly attacked by the Jews.jack daniels , says: September 16, 2019 at 7:32 am GMTThis bit about Christian Zionism is just a distraction from the reality of Jewish power. When people raise the issue of Jewish control of congress, how convenient to have the Christian Zionists (7 million? 20 million?) to point to. But they have no real power at all.Pierre Papier , says: September 16, 2019 at 7:35 am GMTConsider: How much power do these pastors and their flocks have when they address any subject other than Israel? Christian Zionists are historically opposed to abortion rights, gay rights, pre-marital sex, sex education, and secularism generally. They come from a demographic that supported segregation in the 1950s and is opposed to affirmative action, immigration, gun-control, and other social policies that secular Jews overwhelmingly support. During the Cold War southern evangelicals were strongly anti-communist, leading to tension with a Jewish community where pro-Soviet sympathies were not uncommon. How much support have they gotten on any issue other than the need to serve Israel? How many evangelicals are on the Supreme Court?
None!
That the ADL would call Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell "Masters of Hate" on the cover of their newsletter shows just how much respect the evangelicals can count on when they aren't plugging Israel. And I refuse to believe Mike Pompeo gives a rat's ass what the bible says about anything. His flattery of Hagee and his followers is purest cynicism.
Note that the founders of Israel were NOT religious Jews but Bolsheviks. They created some of the most radical communes ever, with their collective child-rearing system, the kibbutz. Their leaders were happy to weaponize the 'God gave us Palestine' crowd for their purposes, but Israel has always been run mostly by secular Jews. Netanyahu is a good example. In his non-observant hands, orthodox Jewish theology becomes an excuse for simple ethnic chauvinism.
Jews are perfectly correct in thinking the southern Christian friends of Israel do not have Israel's true interests at heart. But it doesn't matter, since they are only fostered to camouflage the power of the secular Zionist lobby.
Again: On EVERY ISSUE OTHER THAN ISRAEL these voters and their pastors get their butts kicked. And even on Israel, if they ever push for something the secular Jewish lobby doesn't like they will get their butts kicked on that too.
Whoever promotes the myth of Christian Zionist power is playing into the hands of AIPAC in its effort to disguise the power of the Jewish lobbies.
It's not the Jews, goyim! It's the Evangelicals! Blame them, not us!G Lordon Giddy , says: September 16, 2019 at 9:40 am GMTJews love using Evangelicals as human shields. The author fails to mention that The Puritans, as well as all other Judaizing movements, were encouraged and propagated by Jews themselves.
The Jewish/Puritan alliance was born in a mutual rejection of the cross and all it stood for, and the substitution of King David or Simon bar Kokhba or Sabbetai Sevi or Oliver Cromwell or Napoleon Bonaparte as an alternative to the suffering Christ. The Jews were so enamored of Cromwell as a potential Messiah that they sent a delegation to examine his baptismal records in Huntington, to see if he were descended from the lineage of King David. Cromwell, as Graetz points out, was driven to consummate this revolutionary alliance between Jews and Puritans on both the theoretical and the practical level:
Dispensationalism is based on the misinterpretation of the New Testament references to Israel and the Jews. It's not the Apostle Paul's fault that his words are twisted and misinterpreted. The Christian Church is the new Israel and the new Jerusalem is that which is above and not below. And all who are of Israel are not Israel.Dennis Gannon , says: September 16, 2019 at 9:41 am GMT
Jesus was also very clear that He was the new temple and even if it was destroyed it would be raised up in three days.Christianity in the United States has been hijacked by judaizers now in some of the highest offices in our nation. It's very dangerous as we are seeing right now in our dealings with Iran.
I would not call them "Christians". Anyone who holds to the heresy of Premillennialism today is suspect. Most are them are deceived and are fake Christians. A few may be very new immature Christians and a few are backsliders. Today most churches are fake, and called Churchianity, not Christianity. One sign of that a church is fake, it takes the 501 C 3 tax exemption. They don't preach against sin or sinners for money. There are only shallow pep talks only from the pulpit. They entertain goats instead of feeding the sheep. Before the internet, more Christians were in ignorance because they did not have access to the right books or teachers. Now, since the internet, tons of books and teachers are available online for free, so there is no excuse to remain stupid and blind and hold to the heresy of dispensationalism or premillenialism, unless you are just spiritually deceived.A.R. , says: September 16, 2019 at 10:01 am GMTI was under the impression that the photo of Hertzl and Kaiser Wilhelm ll was a fake?Isabella , says: September 16, 2019 at 10:47 am GMTIf true and accurate this explanation could illuminate a long standing mystery to many of us: the source of the power that little, disliked, natural – resources poor "Israel" [better known as Occupied Palestine] has over vast, powerful America.Robjil , says: September 16, 2019 at 10:53 am GMTIt can't be "it buys Congressmen" because America has to fund Israel to the tune of billions of dollars. Israel may, indeed, just send the money around in some crazy carnival roundabout, whereby America is funding it's own slavery to a foreign power, but it seems not enough to explain the paradox.
I wondered if it had to do with America wanting a foothold in the Middle East in order to attack Russia from a strong local supply base. However, the largest US base in the ME is in Qatar, with a small local facility in Israel of a few hundred personnel opened in 2017 only. So -- no. this doesn't answer.
For a long time, it seemed that maybe Israel just found ways and means to own American rulers in order to have a strong backing for it's invasion and theft of land belonging largely to Arabic people located among Arab nations. But why they wanted to destroy what had been a peaceful co-existence between Muslims and Palestinian Jews for centuries was not explained. Again, neither did this explain why America would want to do it.
The Religious angle does seem to hold a rational answer – but for an irrational belief. That there could be so many people clinging to an ancient, unsubstantiated belief system as recorded in the Old Testament, and want to kill millions in order to see it re-enacted, seems to totally beggar belief. Is it possible there are so many adults who believe in fairy stories?
There is so much about America and its' people that is a mystery to the rest of the world. How can so many act so irrationally, and hold so many contradictory, irrational beliefs, like "American Exceptionalism".
If this [Christian Fundamentalism] is the answer, then it's horrifying and terrifying; because such people have no rationality with which to deal and understand; no ability to hold any understanding of different viewpoints; and no fear of totally destroying the world to gain their insane ends.
America has long been the land of Cults. This seems to be the worst. What the world will do about it remains to be seen – but if the writer here is correct, then the first step has been taken; to rip the veil of secrecy off and shout the truth to the world in the light of stopping that which we have finally realised exists.
@Pierre Papier Cromwell and his Judaziers were planning to genocide the Irish to create a new Israel in Ireland.Kolya Krassotkin , says: September 16, 2019 at 11:03 am GMThttps://www.youtube.com/embed/e4BVOKIOYJU?start=1085&feature=oembed
@Mark James Oh, but Gawd! gave John Hagee XXXL Italian silk suits, a nubile young secretary to bang and his own private jet. Surely he intended all these as clear signs of his blessing.lgordon25 , says: September 16, 2019 at 11:10 am GMTThe whole "rapture" thing is a homo-erotic fantasy. The normal man fights, works, suffers, and struggles in life, hoping that his strength dedication, sacrifice and meager accomplishments are worthy of God's acceptance, thus gaining admittance to paradise.OilcanFloyd , says: September 16, 2019 at 11:18 am GMTThese homo-erotics adopt an abduction-rape fantasy where the powerful man-god swoops down from the heavens, beats down all opponents, then grabs up the believers who are actually nothing more than cheerleaders laying on their backs with the legs in the air ready and willing to be "raptured" into paradise.
Christian zionists are crazy and numerous, but I don't believe that they are the driving force behind U.S. policy towards Israel. I can't believe that such a powerful group would lose on almost every other issue, but can control every branch of the government and media on the issue of Israel. That doesn't make sense to me.Pierre Papier , says: September 16, 2019 at 11:37 am GMT@Mark Jamesivan , says: Website September 16, 2019 at 11:39 am GMTThe GOP needs to get real and stop treating Israel domestic and foreign policies with support at all costs zealotry, only because, it is backed by Christian fundamentalists in their party.
The GOP supports Israel because of AIPAC and Jewish blackmail, not Evangelicals.
@Colin Wright Sir the so-called Temple Mount may not even the site of the original temple. If one needs a wall to piss against while in Israel, the Wailing Wall fits the bill. Considering that the Jewish hordes that came with the caliph would rather slaughter Jerusalem's Christians than build the so-called Temple, we know what the main priority of the Chosen was at that time.Pierre Papier , says: September 16, 2019 at 11:43 am GMT@Exileanon [683] Disclaimer , says: September 16, 2019 at 11:47 am GMTBoth are syncretisms of some of the better elements of Christianity and pre-existing pagan and cultural elements from Europe, and both are proven to advance human happiness.
Neither Orthodoxy nor Catholicism are syncronistic. The idea that they were was promoted by judaizing Protestants. In truth, Jews have been allies with Pagans since Julian the Apostate.
@TellTheTruth-2 Christian Zionism is an oxymoron -- to those who have never read the Jew Testament.ivan , says: September 16, 2019 at 11:49 am GMT• Matthew 21:5 "Say to Daughter Zion , 'See, your king comes to you." • John 12:15 "Daughter Zion , see, your king is coming." • Romans 9:33 "See, I lay in Zion a stone." • Romans 11:26 "The deliverer will come from Zion ." • Hebrews 12:22 "Mount Zion , to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem." • 1 Peter 2:6 "See, I lay a stone in Zion ." • Revelation 14:1 "Standing on Mount Zion ."
It's time to go medieval on the asses of anybody who reads, owns, prints, or otherwise bitterly clings to the Holy Hook . It's time True Christians once again burn at the stake Bible-thumpers like William Tyndale. It is well documented that Medieval Christendom banned that Jewish-authored book as brutally as any atheist Communist regime.
Decree of the Council of Toulouse (1229 C.E.): "We prohibit also that the laity should be permitted to have the books of the Old or New Testament; but we most strictly forbid their having any translation of these books."
Why Christians Were Denied Access to Their Bible for 1,000 Years
http://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-christians-were-denied-access-to-their-bible-for-1000-years_b_3303545The historical moment for rebuilding the so-called temple passed when the marauding Jews who accompanied the invading Arabs in 620 or thereabouts, made it clear that they would rather slaughter the Christians than waste their with the Temple stuff.Pierre Papier , says: September 16, 2019 at 11:54 am GMTThe author pulled a "Fred Reed" and found a way to pin all the awful things the Jewish lobby has done on Conservative Christians.ivan , says: September 16, 2019 at 11:55 am GMTSo called Christian Zionism is a kind of ersatz religion that is based not on the worship of God but rather the state of Israel. For all too many Americans, they could be addicted to opoids, two months away from payday loans, their daughters could be running riot, but as long as Holy Israel's interests are taken care of : God is in his high heaven and everything is all right with the world.anon [683] Disclaimer , says: September 16, 2019 at 12:02 pm GMT@Pierre Papier > other Judaizing movementsanon [683] Disclaimer , says: September 16, 2019 at 12:09 pm GMTOops, you forgot one. "To the Jews 'belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship '" ( Catechism of the Catholic Church ) Or just ask the Pope, who told an interviewer that "inside every Christian is a Jew."
@jack daniels Note that the founders of Christianity were also Bolsheviks, as recorded in Acts, "not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own but all things were common property to them." And Ludgwig von Mises wrote, "primitive Christianity is Bolshevism."Commentator Mike , says: September 16, 2019 at 12:36 pm GMTWhy no mention in the introduction of the influential 19th century Christian Zionist Henry Wentworth Monk "The Prophet"? He even sought an audience with President Lincoln to ask him to ship the Jews to Israel.England patriot , says: September 16, 2019 at 12:54 pm GMTA lot of Brexiteers think along those lines. They think America is still run by WASPs and that the Zionists are their allies.Anon [381] Disclaimer , says: September 16, 2019 at 12:56 pm GMTChristian Zionism is, at its core in the consciousness of the masses, redirected White ethnic nationalism without another permissible home. Harnessed to work for the nationalism of the primary enemy of White people in the West, the Jewish group, that is the primary bulwark against White nationalism.Johnny Walker Read , says: September 16, 2019 at 1:12 pm GMTWhen people are desperate to have their base political needs met, its seemingly simple to give them a poison pill as a surrogate political position.
Jews are quite good at psychologically replacing political positions of the goyim, which do not benefit the Jews, with positions that do benefit Jews and are fatal for non-Jews:
a. Jewish Christianity, mixed with some reworked older doctrines to coat the pill, for the original European religions.
b. Fraudulent economic nationalism (Marxism) for ethnic-cultural nationalism.
c. Christian Zionism (Jewish nationalism) for European (White) nationalism and European Zionism.
d. "Neoconservatism" (a mix of Marxist social doctrine for the non-Jews and Jewish Zionism) for Conservatism (White ethnic nationalism).
e. Americanism (reworked by Jews from Republicanism to mean Marxist social internationalism, in the modern age) for any type of nationalism.
Coming back from this will require a single, fast, and decisive rejection of all of it. It will not happen by debating the always-treacherous, deceitful, and ultimately murderous kikes in these comments sections.
There is literally nothing to lose by doing so. Without doing so, everything of any real worth is lost regardless.
@Anthony AaronBardon Kaldian , says: September 16, 2019 at 1:13 pm GMTAs one raised in a Christian Zionist church I can tell you the brain washing and mind control is very effective on young children and is quite difficult to free yourself from.
When you look back at the "teachings" in the Old Testament, and how it is presented in these churches, it is nothing more than trauma based mind control. Many will never see the absolute insanity of the teachings that Yahweh is a kind and loving God who, all the while, preaches death and destruction to all who fail to fall in line with his every wish. The Old Testament is one of the most violent and bloody text you will ever read.
When it comes to the New Testament, it is just a kinder, gentler version of the O.T. which still preaches tribe worship, but adds submission to the state as well (thanks Romans).
For those who want to break the spell of this evil force which is about to this nation into its third world war, I suggest the pod cast series by Charles Giuliani:
http://www.renegadebroadcasting.com/hosts/charles-giuliani/So, after having created all those multiverses, matter, anti-matter, galaxies, galactic clusters, stars, quasars, red dwarfs, black holes .. God turned His attention to a shitty planet of a shitty solar system in a shitty part of a shitty galaxy. And with His almighty wisdom, He then focused on a shitty strip of land on that planet & became increasingly worried about some two-legged groups of morons, actually evolved apes, who had been wandering around that shitty piece of land- and proclaimed He had a special interest in well-being & future of those evolved apes- who, by the way, constituted a negligible fraction of all evolved apes.DESERT FOX , says: September 16, 2019 at 1:25 pm GMTFrom Big Bang, multiverse, hyper-dimensional .. to a shitty strip of land. Not a progress for God, definitely not
Christian zionists are useful idiots for the zionist NWO and they are supporting a satanic zionist one world government agenda that if it comes into being will purge these useful idiots just as they did in the Soviet Union, for the fact is zionists hate Christians and will destroy them!Anon [121] Disclaimer , says: September 16, 2019 at 1:26 pm GMT@Pierre PapierAndrei Martyanov , says: Website September 16, 2019 at 1:28 pm GMTThe Puritans, as well as all other Judaizing movements,
The Congregationalists are the closest modern heirs of the original Puritan group. For entertainment, peruse any Congregationalist congregation on the web in any major city. Just don't have lunch first. In Dallas, for one example of any that you could use, I believe the major Congregationalist congregation is explicitly one for homosexuals if memory serves. It sees its primary role to be a promoter of all things LGBT. In any other random Congregationalist "church", a typical written expression of their "faith" will be a listing of social justice demands.
Though, I might recommend that if you wanted to observe Power you might also attend a Congregationalist Church. The essence of all things is found at their origin.
A Quaker meeting in a central meetinghouse in a major urban location would be second best. A similarly positioned Synagogue, of course, would be equal to or better than both.
Excellent piece. As per this:Anonymous [895] Disclaimer , says: September 16, 2019 at 1:30 pm GMTLocal papers at the time, such as the Atchison Patriot, regarded Scofield's conversion and career change with great skepticism, referring to Scofield as the "late lawyer, politician and shyster generally " who had disgraced himself by committing "many malicious acts."
This is basically also what WASP "political science" field is–a collection of shysters. In general, however, all this is a complete madness which passes under the nominal "Christianity" title, while being anything but.
@turtle Your points start to make sense when you recognize CUFI-ism as the continuation of Southern Freemasonry, now dispensing with the aprons and going directly for the kill with their floppy bibles to undermine Christendom, or what's left of it, from their Jewish-funded podiums on cable TV. As for Rev Hagee, with a wife and two little kids at home, this man was at the office laying more than the cornerstone of his church while singing his alleluias between the legs of the other woman he dumped his family for, like Scofield before him.Hans , says: September 16, 2019 at 1:35 pm GMTSpeaking of private jets, if you haven't seen it, I recommend watching the video of the late billionaire "Christian" minister Kenneth Copeland (with private runway, too) and the Rev Jesse Duplantis explain why the need private jets costing tens of millions. Altho it's a little bit of a spoiler, it's so they can talk directly to God without being trapped in "a tube with them demons," meaning the mostly Christian passengers they'd be flying with in an airliner. If there are in fact demons roaming this world. . .
CUFI-ism and the rest of these Masonic groups parading around in the trappings of Christianity are very much like Puritanism, as the author points out. They reject the New Testament and its unambiguous replacement covenant with mankind, relying on the Old Testament covenant to interpret the new using lumpish proof texting that's heretical by definition, ultimately waving away two millennia of the ascendency of Christendom with that verse from Genesis.
Less anyone miss the more general connection between CUFI-ism and evangelicalism as the American religion, I'd point out that in general their ersatz religion uses the trappings of Christianity to flaunt Christ's word. Their "churches" are really civic centers of statolatry, using rock, or the rhythms of sexual orgasm, to capture their highest aspirations. They believe material prosperity is a measure of God's blessing of their righteousness, as their real lives make clear. Instead of pictures reminding Christians theirs is a faith in another realm and do no harm, these temples feature Israeli flags and photos of the sons in uniform sent to die and be mailed if need be, ironically serving Israel-American globe-homo imperium over the world. If their deity provides a dispensation, it's revocation of the sixth and seventh commandments as a reward for CUFI's sanctioning the incineration and dismemberment of several hundred thousand Arabs annoyingly in the way of Eretz Israel.
Pence, Pompeo, Bolton and the CUFI's are the antithesis of what it means to be Christian. There is no possible justification for the incineration of God's innocent children on the grounds that -- as the CUFI's and Fox News like to brag -- we'll kill them over there before they kill us over here. When such ends justify the means, any evil is possible in the hands of such evil men. Right after 9/11 Wendell Berry wrote, Don't kill one Muslim child and dare say you did it to protect my children and grandchildren. This should have been the rallying cry of evangelicals if they believed in Christ's word, not singing alleluia as children's skin was burned off them alive, making those Arab children, as were the 3,000 Americans cremated alive on 9/11, burnt sacrifices to an empire of evil based on lies.
Search engines used to readily turn this up: Chaim Weizmann Tells Churchill to Arm the Jews in Palestine and the Jews Will See that America Enters WWII – http://www.fpp.co.uk/History/Churchill/Weizmann_Zionists/WSC_100941.htmltypeviic , says: September 16, 2019 at 1:35 pm GMT"I t has been repeatedly acknowledged by British Statesmen that it was the Jews who, in the last war (WWI), effectively helped to tip the scales in America in favor of Great Britain . They are keen to do it – and may do it – again . But you are dealing with human beings, with flesh and blood, and the most elementary feeling of self respect sets limits to service, however willing, if the response is nothing but rebuffs and humiliations. American Jewry waits for a word – a call – from His Majesty's Government. The formation of a Jewish fighting force would be that signal. Equipment cannot be the determining factor; there will always be some alternative use for whatever equipment is available; and fresh recruits are all the time being called up in the British Commonwealth by their hundreds of thousands, while we are being told to wait for one single division because of lack of equipment. If the spirit of American Jewry is roused, the influence which this will exercise on America's rather sluggish production will return to you that equipment with manifold gains." (minus the usual cut, graft, theft, and overcharges)
See David Irving's Churchill's War Vol. 1 – http://www.fpp.co.uk/books/Churchill/1/
A short and essential text is History of the Balfour Declaration – https://barnesreview.org/product/a-short-history-of-the-balfour-declaration/
Stay in Chile, Whitney. Also, dont board any Cessna planes. I can count on one hand, on how many investigative journalists that are worth their weight in gold. You are amazing.Hans , says: September 16, 2019 at 1:40 pm GMTMUST listen – Zionist Insider Benjamin Freedman's 1961 Willard Hotel Speech – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhFRGDyX48cJohnny Walker Read , says: September 16, 2019 at 1:44 pm GMTTruly smart men who helped found this country were well aware of tyranny caused not only by monarchies, but by the church as well. It is why many of them settled on a belief system(not a religion)called Deism.The words of Thomas Paine:
"The Calvinist, who damns children of a span long to hell to burn forever for the glory of God (and this is called Christianity), and the Universalist who preaches that all shall be saved and none shall be damned (and this also is called Christianity), boasts alike of their holy [revealed] religion and their Christian faith.
"Something more therefore is necessary than mere cry and wholesale assertion, and that something is TRUTH; and as inquiry is the road to truth, he that is opposed to inquiry is not a friend to truth. "The God of truth is not the God of fable; when, therefore, any book is introduced into the world as the Word of God, and made a groundwork for religion, it ought to be scrutinized more than other books to see if it bear evidence of being what it is called. Our reverence to God demands that we
