Boris Johnson sees himself as the heritor of a world bestriding Imperial mantle, but in truth he cannot bestride the Irish Sea. The overshadowing of the G7 summit by his peculiar concern that Irish sausages should not be eaten by those in Northern Ireland who do not believe in evolution, was a fascinating examplar of British impotence as he failed to persuade anybody else to support him. It looks like Danish bacon for the shops of Belfast and Derry will have to be imported through Dun Laoghaire and not through Larne. Ho hum.
The really interesting thing about the G7 summit is that it wasn’t interesting. Nobody expected it to change the world, and it won’t. John Pilger pointed out the key fact. Twenty years ago the G7 constituted two thirds of the world economy. Now they constitute one third. They don’t even represent most of the world’s billionaires any longer, though those billionaires they do represent – and indeed some of the billionaires they don’t represent – were naturally pulling the strings of these rather sluggish puppets.
It used to be that any important sporting event in any developing country would feature hoardings for western multinationals, such as Pepsi Cola and Nestle baby milk. Nowadays I am watching the Euros football pitches surrounded by electronic hoardings in Chinese. The thing about power is this; it shifts with time.
None of the commitments made on covid or climate change constituted any new money, any real transfer of wealth or technology. It was a non-event. Nobody will ever look back at anything beyond the personal as having started last weekend in Cornwall.
From there, pretty well the same people moved on to pretend to bestride the world militarily at NATO, where the first job was to pretend they had not lost the long Afghan war they have just, err, lost.
At NATO, they stuck out their tongues at China, which has upset them a lot by becoming the world’s most powerful nation. China was accused of an aggressive military posture, which is amusing in its utter lack of truth. Other than some construction of tiny artificial islands (which China is in fact wrong to claim can generate maritime claims according to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea), it is very difficult to understand on what this NATO accusation of aggression is based.
If China really is trying to outdo many centuries of western Imperial conquest – stretching up to the recent destructions of Libya and Syria – by building tiny artificial islands, it is a plan of extreme cunning and patience. NATO seem to have discovered their new enemy by reading Ian Fleming.
Let me tell you something that actually is true. I cannot think of any instance in world history of any power enjoying the level of economic dominance currently enjoyed by China, and yet showing such restraint and lack of interest in Imperial conquest. It is not China which is sailing aircraft carriers towards Boris Johnson, it is the other way round. In fact the restraint China shows in not carrying out the simple task of sinking Johnson’s silly aircraft carrier, undermines the propaganda of thousands of NATO press officers and social media operatives, including the UK’s very own 77th Brigade and Integrity Initiative.
It is even sillier to attempt to terrify us all with the thought that the Russians are coming. I know it upsets the Putin fans when I say it, but Russia’s share of the world economy has declined just as the G7 share has. As Russia was always, and still is, poorer than the poorest of the G7 nations, the NATO attempt to portray Russia as a great threat is really rather silly. If there is truth in the story of a couple of super military intelligence officers traveling widely but not killing many people, and of cunning Russian computer hackers engaging in cyber warfare while leaving cyrillic fingerprints behind, in a manner strangely identical to the CIA guidance on how to lay Russian false flags as shown in the Wikileaks vault 7 releases, then it is still difficult for me to understand why this would all require trillions of dollars in military hardware to stop it.
Interrupting hacking with Trident missiles seems neither cost effective nor proportionate. But then I am not an ace NATO military strategist.
Follow the money. Of course the NATO show is all about diverting simply incredible amounts of our money and resources into the military industrial complex, which is permanently profitable for politician backhanders; the arms industry remains the only “legitimate” industry more corrupt than banking, which is quite a feat.
I shall sleep safe in my bed at night knowing that the money NATO spends just this year to keep me safe from the Russian and Chinese tanks which are absolutely poised to roll up Princes Street, could have eliminated malaria forever. God bless our glorious leaders.
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“the arms industry remains the only “legitimate” industry more corrupt than banking, which is quite a feat.”
The Pharmaceutical industry : “hold my lo-alcohol beer drink.. . “
Corruption is corruption: as Dr Johnson remarked, “there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea”.
To my mind the worst of all is that of politics in Washington DC, which has been accurately described as the world’s biggest market. Absolutely everything is for sale – from government land and resources through invasions and assassinations to politicians. How else could it be, in a country where cash is the only remaining value?
Concur.
Big Pharma is certainly making a valiant bid for numero uno in the corruption stakes at the moment in trying to suppress the use of (off-patent) ivermectin – as well as vitamin D – in the treatment and prevention of Covid-19. Ivermectin is the main reason why cases and hospitalisations have plummeted in India, Mexico & South Africa to name but three. If it had been deployed widely from September 2020 when it was first shown to be effective beyond any reasonable doubt, my guess is that the pandemic would be all but over by now.
If you disregard the blood clots etc, the vaccines appear to be working reasonably well for now but, if trials on the Beta variant in South Africa are anything to go by, won’t be anywhere near as effective if and when the soaring Delta variant develops E484K (eek) & K417N mutations. We’ve found 36 cases of the latter in the UK already.
What can I say, spot on! – In fact China is probably the only power to rise without firing a shot – an amazing feet. Your article also clearly shows how polluted our MSM has become since none of the nonsense about Russia and China is ever challenged. As Noam Chomsky in conversation said to Andrew Marr – “How can you know that I’m self-censoring – how can you know -” “I’m not saying you’re self-censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is, if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.”
tell that to the people of Hong Kong. The reality is China is a totalitarian state that denies basic human rights. Whatever illusions the West portrays, it on the whole respects human rights it of its citizens
The adjective that most springs to mind about Britain’s colonial rule of Hong Kong is respect.
I am assuming this is sarcasm?
It started with violence and corruption and ended with same. Never in its 156 years of colonialistic rule did the British pursue universal suffrage and they left behind a closed oligarchic shop of property tycoons forcing feudal penury on most of its citizens. What is it that you don’t understand about it? Hong Kong is part of China not the City of London, one look at a map should tell you so.
What’s wrong with it being an autonomous nation? Why does it have to be occupied by a Colonial Superpower?
Only if you restrict your overview to the last years of the UK’s administration of the colony, and from the point where the return to China was inevitable. At which point we British introduced some representative measures, probably in an attempt to queer the pitch for the Chinese ?
Who gets to define what “basic human rights are”, though? If – as polls suggest – the Chinese people as a whole are far more satisfied with their government than those of any Western nation, they obviously don’t care about some of those precious human rights.
Moreover, what has happened to those “precious, inalienable” human rights since March 2020? Several of the most important have simply been taken away, without even parliamentary discussion – and people who show their dissatisfaction are arbitrarily arrested and threatened.
Whatever religious and philosophical people may say, I cannot see human rights as anything other than privileges negotiated (in theory) by people and their governments. How can the right to life be inalienable, when I can be shot dead by a sniper, blown up by a gas explosion, or killed by an “infallible, perfectly safe” “vaccine”? What becomes of my right to clean water if I am lost in a desert? A human right cannot be anything more than the agreement of other people to give me what I need or want, in return for my doing something similar for them.
The Chinese government is, on the whole, dedicated to the welfare of its citizens. It doesn’t promise more than it can deliver, and it avoids hypocrisy.
Whereas Western governments, not feeling bound by any obligation to be truthful, continually bloviate about ideal human rights – while being prepared at any moment to take away any of them that it suits them to.
“Who gets to define what “basic human rights are”, though? If – as polls suggest – the Chinese people as a whole are far more satisfied with their government than those of any Western nation, they obviously don’t care about some of those precious human rights.”
We, in the West, do, then force that concept on other nations who think differently, smug and secure in the knowledge that such concepts are fundamental to human thought, when they are actually simply a construct of a long history of Graeco-Christian philosophy.
Is that the Hong Kong the British state ruled with an iron fist?
«Is that the Hong Kong the British state ruled with an iron fist?»
It is the Hong Kong where mobs of violent insurrectionists in 2019 attacked and devastated their version of Capitol Hill, (and were celebrated by the USA Congress for doing so), look at the video:
https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2019/07/01/hong-kong-protesters-legislative-council-matt-rivers-vpx.cnn
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/stories-49157807
“On 1 July 2019, hundreds of protesters stormed Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, (Legco), spraying graffiti and defacing symbols of the Hong Kong law-making body. The ransacking of the government building marked a turning point in a protest movement against a now suspended extradition law.”
Many philosophers such as Hegel spent a lot of time defining what are basic human rights.
How can you trust a Chinese poll, in a totalitarian state that denies human rights, the right to speak out?
Surely the example you have just used about Covid proves that point – all truth in China was suppressed and only one narrative was allowed, even though all the evidence (that we can find as most of it has been deleted) contracts that. Even more, you resent (and me) the liberties that have been lost in the past year, liberties that the Chinese have never had with this regime. However sidelined Craig Murray has been over the past 20 years, he has still had a forum, a forum that would no doubt have resulted in a bullet in the head in China (pure speculation of course).
They are citing to Western conducted surveys.
There are plenty of living Chinese dissidents, many living very well on NED and other “open society” NGO grants. Others stopped being dissidents and went back to doing business in China. I’m not aware of any being persecuted for anything quite as absurd as a “jigsaw identification”. There are certainly plenty of politically motivated prosecutions in China and Russia, but usually for clearly stated illegal acts under their laws.
Also, it’s none of your business how countries that have never attacked you, never truncated your rights, never sanctioned you, what to do. Stick to righting injustices in your own neighborhood and stop giving “humanitarian interventionists” cover to USA’s evil empire.
“How can you trust a Chinese poll, in a totalitarian state that denies human rights, the right to speak out?”
You can’t, but on the plus side corrupt politicians and businessmen get executed.
You mean the NED backed xenophobic thugs who beat up women and the elderly for disagreeing with them or speaking Mandarin? The ones literally paid by Western research consortium to protest? The ones who smash up infrastructure and make civic life impossible for the rest of the populace? There’s a reason why coverage on Hong Kong protests died down and the Western MSM moved into the harder to cover, but even more false, Uyghur “genocide” narrative.
I worked in Hong Kong for a year, it was a great place and I still have a few friends there. The reason why it died down is that they arrested all the ‘trouble makers’. Funnily enough my friends don’t see it the same as what you have described.
Are the video footage of protesters destroying public property and attacking unarmed civilians all falsified. There’s lots of such footage around, so it doesn’t appear isolated to one or two overblown incidents.
Or do your great friends just think that’s acceptable collateral damage to rid Hong Kong of Mainland “locusts”? I’ve read anti-mainlanders sentiments even in mainstream papers sick as the SCMP for a long time, so I don’t think I’m misreading their opinions.
Have you been to Hong Kong? Seems pretty free to me. And a lot less likely to get shot by a cop there then in the US.
«Have you been to Hong Kong? Seems pretty free to me.»
One of the “funniest” things about Hong Kong is that it has had democratic political rights for a much longer period under China than under the English Empire:
The result is that today the PRC citizens of Hong Kong have much better and wider right than in the 150 years of colonial rule by a foreign power. For those 150 of no political rights in colonial Hong Kong the USA or the english governments never campaigned for democracy in Hong Kong.
” China is a totalitarian state that denies basic human rights.”
What do we now about China that doesn’t come from its enemies?
That is, clearly, not how many Chinese, including in Hong Kong, see things. We hear a lot from Western assets presuming to speak for 1.6 billion people of many different backgrounds and concerns, but our access to discussion within China itself is tailored to fit the narrative dictated by the West. Which achieves totalitarian rule by other means.
“Whatever illusions the West portrays, it on the whole respects human rights it of its citizens”
Have you heard about the case of Craig Murray? Look it up, it is quite sobering.
Or…Julian Assange…Witness K…Bernard Colliery….
China did invade Tibet
Over a million dead and 200,000 displaced.
Britain invaded everywhere and then slashed and burned it all to the ground when they’d ‘bit off more than they could chew’. The British rival anyone on the planet for number of genocides attempted and committed and sheer death toll, especially if you include the slave trade. The pompous farts in Whitehall haven’t a leg to stand on but it won’t stop their constant finger wagging and arrogant bloviation from their global backwater.
So did Britain.
In the Himalaya they killed 20 Indian soldiers by clubbing them and pushing them of a cliff in an icy river in 2020: not a single shot – because that is the agreed rule in that area. https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-international/a-year-on-unanswered-questions-on-galwan-clash/article34817237.ece
Sure, the US is a dozen times more imperialistic but China is copying those bad habits too.
That’s one, potentially partisan, version of the story.
Doesn’t it occur to you that the Indian account, as told in The Hindu, might be just a wee bit partial? China has its version, which we assume is not worth listening to.
I’ve not been able to establish just how ‘Indian’ these ‘Indian soldiers’ really are and who attacked whom first and who incited what by doing what to kick the showdown off.
The US and UK (political and media) are currently in full seduction mode with India, vs-a-vis China. I suspect that Priti Patel is kept in office to make the UK cabinet appear more favourable to India’s population, maybe also why Sunak is there and it may explain Kamala Harris in the US admin.
Tell it to the Tibetans.
Don’t forget sleepy Joe’s G7 alternative to the Belt and Road scheme, scribbled on the back of a pack of dementia pills.
Thanks for this and mostly I agree with you.
I don’t agree with you about Syria and never have – Assad is the one who is mainly responsible for its destruction. I don’t entirely agree with you about Russia either. What is going on there is incredibly nasty as far as I can see – see Catherine Felton’s book ‘Putin’s People’. However I agree it may be a few weeks before they roll up Princes St.
Thanks again, as ever.
Conjunction
If armed Chinese terrorists were evicting people from council houses in Glasgow and launching armed sorties against the civil infrastructure with the absolute approval of President Xi , I think we might expect some resistance from the SNP.
Assad is a USUKIS dictator who did our torture rendition for us in his prisons. He also did many other obscene crimes against humanity. But the problem does not come from Assad . It comes from USUKIS who decided to ignore international borders, international Law and international rules about funding terrorism.
After USUKIS has withdrawn completely from Syria and lifted its embargoes and sanctions against anybody apart from themselves reconstructing Syria, then they will be taken to The Hague for profiting from terrorism and they willow’s control of the Middle East for ever.
Let that be the lesson to all neo-imperialists, both the Chinese and USUKIS. You do not break international Law with impunity.
In Putin’s interview with the media (see RT), he states that he asked the US what the plan was for the future of Syria if they got rid of him. They didn’t have one. Just like Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan their only plan is to create chaos and instability and then profit from their destruction by stealing and oppression.
The main motivation for the attempted regime change in Syria was Hezbollah’s defeat of Israel in 2006.
Since then Israel cannot ‘mow the lawn’ in Lebanon. Hezbollah have since been able with the assistance of Iran to develop a missile capacity probably able to destroy at least an Israeli town: the firecracker missiles from Gaza exhausted the ‘Iron Dome’ in 2 weeks.As Hezbollah’s logisitics are over Syria, Syria had to be incapacitated.
But: it didn’t work. Apart from Grenada and maybe Panama it is hard to think of a US ‘intervention’ that actually worked out as desired: most – like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya – have been unmitigated disasters.
The US is like a rookie chess player, constantly deploying naive losing strategies, but not bothering to learn from the defeats.
Syria was always in the Israeli plan for destruction of Arab powers. It didn’t need the 2006 war to change things.
Actually it is Turkey that is responsible for the crisis in Syria by damming the Tigris, causing a drought in Syria, rural exodus, unemployment and discontent, which was brutally suppressed by Assad’s goons and led to the civil war, fueled of course by the Saudis.
Damming the Euphrates, you mean. I don’t agree it was the full reason though. Cultivation hasn’t stopped along the Euphrates. The Israeli-American desire to destabilise Syria was more important, with Britain joining in.
Some blame global warming, but whatever the reason for the Syrian drought was, couple of millions of refugees from Iraq certainly aggravated the problem. See, for example, Kelley C.P. et al, Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought, PNAS 112 (11), 3241-6 (2015).
«causing a drought in Syria, rural exodus, unemployment and discontent»
That is just one more step in the desertification of that area, where the Middle East was one covered by forests, and Mesopotamia, once known as the “Fertile Crescent”, had giant hordes of gazelles in the lush plains that are now deserts. BTW it was the Ottomans who cut down the last forests of the Middle East to build railways, accelerating desertification.
There have been several dry/wet cycles in that area:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4.2-kiloyear_event
“Archaeological evidence documents widespread abandonment of the agricultural plains of northern Mesopotamia and dramatic influxes of refugees into southern Mesopotamia, around 2170 BC.[29] A 180-km-long wall, the “Repeller of the Amorites,” was built across central Mesopotamia to stem nomadic incursions to the south. Around 2150 BC, the Gutian people, who originally inhabited the Zagros Mountains, defeated the demoralised Akkadian army, took Akkad and destroyed it around 2115 BC. Widespread agricultural change in the Near East is visible at the end of the 3rd millennium BC.”
If people think that what happened in Syria and Iraq is terrible, the really terrible things will happen when Saudi Arabia runs out of fuel to power the desalination plants, and 95% of their fanatical population have to conquer themselves a new place or die of thirst.
Assad is fighting the head chopping terrorists who are funded by the USA.
Donald J Trump, bless his orangeness, tried to remove US troops from Syria and prevent funding for ISIS and assorted cohorts. He was denounced as being in the pay of Putin and his own DoD hid the true extent of US involvement from him.
Take your propaganda elsewhere.
Trump didn’t remove the US troops from the oil-fields though.
Keep drinking the western media kool-aid
Excellently put.
China. Aggression. Tibet. Border with India. Spratly Islands. Republic of China. Read and learn.
“China. Aggression. Tibet. Border with India. Spratly Islands. Republic of China. Read and learn.”
to compare the above (yes, the only real occupation and aggression was against Tibet) with some border skirmishes who it is not clear that it was not the Indians with their proto fascist government who instigated those, and occupation or disputes over uninhabited Islands of also dubious status with that:
https://talk.politics.misc.narkive.com/Q7TyR3FP/from-wounded-knee-to-iraq-a-century-of-u-s-military-interventions
is rather nonsensical but may appeal to the sinophobic crowd.
So that invasion was what the. proto facist Nehru got for not accepting UN Security Council seat rather than the PRC and proclaiming India and China are brothers.
– read and learn.
Al Dente, some of us who earned history degrees very long ago, and have kept up our studies, have learned quite a lot – perhaps more than you, as your brief post seems dangerously unbalanced.
Have you been reading the newspapers or listening to the BBC?
“A little learning is a dangerous thing ;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring :
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts ;
While from the bounded level of our mind
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,
But, more advanced, behold with strange surprise
New distant scenes of endless science rise !
So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,
Mount o’er the vales, and seem to tread the sky ;
The eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last ;
But those attained, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthened way ;
The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,
Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!”
— Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Criticism” (1709)
I suggest you do what I did: live in China for 7 years.
So where did you live in China ?
Tibet. Border with India. Spratly Islands…..
What were you doing there ?
Do you speak the language ?
Should we just take your word for it ? Defend your argument, if you can.
Yes, evidently those 7 years have completely erased any native ability you might have previously possessed to discern the difference between securing a country’s domestic borders and territory, versus acting aggressively far from home and with a track record of utterly destroyed countries in its wake.
Tibet has been a Chinese colony for centuries
I understand that China has Japan rattled.
I understand that Japan is going to rearm.
Japan is no match for the People’s Army – no more easy Manchurian escapades possible this century.
It is very important for the peace of Asia and the world – and for the prosperity and safety of the Japanese people – that they should shake off the American imperial rule under which they have languished since 1945. Surely 75 years is long enough? (Although in fact the Japanese have been dancing to Washington’s tune since the hostile visit of Commodore Perry and his “black ships” in 1853-4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Expedition)
(Although in fact the Japanese have been dancing to Washington’s tune since the hostile visit of Commodore Perry and his “black ships” in 1853-4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Expedition)
I always thought that was what Pearl Harbour was about: an attempt by the Japanese at getting out from under that yoke. The US tries hard to make us forget that it was a C19th imperial power, too.
PS, I like the description of that piece of imperialism as an “expedition”.
Yes, Bayard; I agree. As I see it (having read “The Imperial Cruise” by James Bradley and some other books), the Japanese chose isolation and peace after the battler of Sekigahara (1600). They closed their country off, and admitted few foreigners and then only under tightly controlled conditions.
They were doing fine until 1853 when the black ships came calling. The Americans threatened openly to destroy the Imperial Palace unless Japan were opened up to Western trade.
The Japanese took about five minutes to decide: they changed their policy 180 degrees and became “more Western than the Westerners”. Soon they were dressing in those absurd morning dress suits with top hats and spats – so much less graceful and comfortable than their own beautiful clothes – and building some of the best warships and aircraft in the world.
About 1900 Teddy Roosevelt said publicly that he considered the Japanese to be “honorary Aryans”. Behaving as they understood “Aryans” should, the Japanese set out to carve themselves an empire, establishing dominion over “the lesser breeds without the law”.
But as soon as they trod on the toes of the USA, they were given a tremendous backhander in the teeth. FDR – who knew a good deal about Japan and was a great expert on naval matters – deliberately drove them into a corner where they could either surrender or fight. As he knew they would, they fought, even though they were bound to lose.
It’s high time the Japanese stopped trying to be ersatz Americans. Who knows? They might even find that they have a few things in common with the Chinese and the Koreans, and that they can, if not forget past horrors, at least agree to get along together for their common good.
And what did Japan do in Manchuria in the 1930s? They were a Feudal people with 20th Century Weapons.
China is displaying this trait now in the 21st Century
We have a government that is openly employing the military and the security services against its own people, that is openly curbing freedoms and the means to protest.
How are they getting away with this ?
What other countries have this level of oppression ?
The UK is without doubt a right wing, anti democratic, repressive regime.
“How are they getting away with this?”
Through their scrupulous and humane observance of human rights.
Sadly in a bid to ‘build momentum’ with President Putin tomorrow Wednesday 16th June, Biden made no mention of addressing homophobia in Russia and the question can a homosexual be considered a person fit to be a citizen of the Russian Federation.
Biden’s ‘what I want him to know’ should involve a compassionate ‘build better’ after Covid with silence on expose, oppose, counter, threats and shoot downs while allowing ethics, moral codes and natural law to develop an impetus to ongoing relations.
On Monday, Biden warned of the consequences should Navalny die in prison, saying it would show Moscow “has little or no intention of abiding by basic fundamental human rights.”
I remind Biden that Britain holds a journalist in a high security prison on U.S. bidding for revealing painful truths and war crimes who may also die; so let’s return therefore to ‘basic fundamental human rights’ and cast out hypocrisy, pretense and sham.
The whole PR show of a meeting between Putin and Biden is a sick joke. Even when Biden had his full facilities he was intellectually no match for Putin.
Say what you like against Putin, but he is without doubt one of the most capable and intelligent leaders on the planet. All the west’s leaders are intellectual pygmies by comparison. Putin wants to talk and reach meaningful agreements with the west, what does the west want ?
Let me educate you, Stevie Boy:
I lived in Shanghai for seven years, from 1979 to 1986. I speak both Mandarin and Cantonese, as I also lived in HK for six years, from 1986 to 1992. Now, please tell me your background that makes you an expert in all things Chinese.
This is even more pathetic than I could have imagined. So your knowledge is from when China just lost its war against Vietnam and was amongst the poorest countries in the world. Your knowledge of Hong Kong was from before the handover. And you’re pontificating about a country that you haven’t lived in 35 years?
Hint, starting around 1990, China started radically changing every 2-3 years, so much so that it’s like a brand new country. Even Chinese old hands who don’t regularly go back are stunned by the pace of change.
Someone who hasn’t been there in 35 years might as well base their knowledge on having once lived in East Bengal or Malawi. Vast majority of Tibetans prefer living under China to direct governance by the clique surrounding the Dalai Lama.
And again, confusing minor border disputes with what the US is doing in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Latin America is absurd.
Well roasted, Astrid.
Good try, Astrid, but obviously you can’t read (the terrible state of our education system is shining through). Except for the last two years, when they started their biological attack on the rest of the world), I have been to China at least twice a year. I wonder how much experience of China, in particular of Tibet, you have to tell us how the Tibetans feel about being colonized by the Hans.
“Except for the last two years, when they started their biological attack on the rest of the world”
You were doing so well up to that point,
Do you assume that when he left China he forgot the languages and the people? Sophistry!
Education starts with an open mind. Regurgitating the MSM outpourings doesn’t count. When has living somewhere ever made anyone an expert on that place ? Were you a spook ?
You follow this blog, as such I would expect better from you.
China is not perfect, but the majority of the stories put out by the west, primarily at the instigation of the US, are easily debunked.
As with Russia, most rational people would want real diplomacy to be used rather than war and sanctions. When governments stop talking then ordinary people start dying, who wants that ?.
There are already plenty of comments on this post, to add to the comments on the last one, that use the argument “How can you compare X favourably with Y, when X is not perfect in every way?”
It’s my poor education that prevents me from knowing information not written in your post?
I do know something about Tibetans in Tibet and Sichuan, but you’ve shown your cards with your COVID smear. No point further arguing with persons of bad faith.
“It’s my poor education that prevents me from knowing information not written in your post?”
Obviously! if you’d been properly educated, you’d have the second sight.
Just because I stated the periods of residence in the PRC and HK, you jumped to the conclusion that I had never set foot in the country again since then. Poor analytical thinking, but perhaps you went to a university that has lowered its standards to make it universally accessible. It’s often the stuff that’s not written that can make all the difference. Now, Astrid, please tell me all your first-hand experience in China that has provided you with your great knowledge. 等候.
Squeeth
Al’s anti-China talking points require no knowledge of Chinese language or people.
Mr. Poorly Cooked Noodle’s use of Chinese insults is pretty pathetic as well. Based on his timeline, as there are very few foreigners in Shanghai in 1979, I suspect he is your typical self loathing Western educated Chinese diaspora and spent 3 of those 7 years in Shanghai in diapers. Those people are not fun to be around at parties.
Anyhow, no point in engaging with someone who argues in such bad faith. The Chinese have plenty of problems and even a government that’s occasionally interested in solving some of their problems. But the likes of Signore Dente have no interest in helping the Chinese solve problems, they just want an outlet to vent their bottomless hatred against their likely countrymen, while not finding full acceptance in their adopted communities.
ADD, Another petty patel of Empire.
Also forgets the masse uplifting of the poorest in the highest population. Not many Chinese washing up on our shores looking to improve their lives here are there? Unless they got a British pass.
HK is NEVER going to return to its Opium running treasure island status.
A tribe of nurtured minions in awe of their monied and merciless masters.
For the record, I am not a Chinese cultural enthusiast. They have wrecked many a coral beach that I love with their mass tourism and inability to swim even with life jackets. The caterpillars of stomping feet are one of the worst manifests of their new middle class expensive holidays. Even if comical. Just like Dumb Yanks on vacation and Brits and Germans on the costas and yes even the Russians who joined the sun and sex hot spots a decade ago.
And don’t get me started on my neighbours or family…harrumph.
“Say what you like against Putin, but he is without doubt one of the most capable and intelligent leaders on the planet”
Possibly the only capable and intelligent leader on the planet. Mafia-like (within Russia, versus puppet Biden, mafia-like globally), but nonetheless capable and intelligent.
free Assange!
Homosexxuality has been legal in Russia since 1993. Mr Putin has repeatedly said that he will make no attempt to change this.
Well said Craig.
Thank you Craig, I love this, it is in perfect accord with my confirmation bias, although as a Putin fan I am naturally upset that you point out that Russia is not as wealthy as Germany.
“…Russia is not as wealthy as Germany”.
Only if you are obsessed by financial illusions. In reality, Russia has far more of everything that counts than Germany – not to mention a good deal less of some rather unpleasant things.
But Mr Murray’s point, if I am not mistaken, was that Russia is no threat to NATO. That is obvious, because Russia – like China – is not aggressive or imperialistic and seeks only to defend itself.
Of course, should NATO start a war against Russia, it would quickly find out (in a few hours at most) that a peaceful nation may have abundant means of self-defence (and retaliation). For the first time in history, even the US mainland is entirely at the mercy of Russian missiles. As for Europe…
Ah bliss – my favourite topics – the End Of The Western Anglo European Imperialism aping its millennia old precursor – The Dominate (the name sometimes given to the “despotic” later phase of imperial government, following the earlier period known as the “Principate”, in the ancient Roman Empire).
And BREXSHIT too!
The genuinely NEW new-world-order, arguably the reason that the great phoney War On a noun was undertaken 20 years ago to ruffle the path of that arising Eurasian Empire.as they slavered over finally landing their centuries old prize of Russia and its bountiful resources. Pushing it away from Europe into a common survival and security of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation a couple of years earlier. Whilst hoping that making China the industrial base for cheap goods would keep them apart.
Pisshead, hair ruffling, fat **** Billy Bunter, the pound shop Churchill, latest iteration of the U.K. CEO of the Pathocracy and Dementia Jo the equivalent in the US – just cheeks of the same City’s arse as they blunder for their Masters and Owners towards trying to belatedly stop their Great Game meeting its annihilation. Uttering a spell BBB, BBB… a meaningless – build back better!
The donkey’s arse murdering bastard Biden, busy filling pockets of that other super pork barrelling arm of the Wankers – Big Pharma with dodgy drugs; as the MIC having decided they can’t really take on the Russian utilitarianism that allows it to punch well beyond its weight, born out of centuries of survival against repeated attempts at its conquest.
The ‘western’ controlled academia and research and crap industry that makes useless aircraft carriers, crap planes that can’t function and shit missiles which are now easily shot down by Hypersonics. The assymetric warfare capabilities of the oppressed to strike back anywhere and not be lured into a killing field.
Yup they have even resorted to spending against little green men apparently travelling trillions of miles across space over many many years to find a little blue dot in a solar system that exists as a nothing special star to conquer!
Yup! having tried to con with a new Apollo program, Artemis, a return to the Moon and onwards to Mars bullshit. Now resting all their hopes on their latest CEOs Musk, Bezos and other such techno wizards exploring their centuries long hold on invention through patent capture…
These old slave holders desire to remain rich and powerful, kowtowing to the rising Empire by heavy investment and western markets as means of survival and further enrichment if not full control They have always played such duplicitous ‘contractual’ games which they call a legal deal when it suits them. The WTO, TTips secret courts – all such supposed implacable contracts by the cleverest lawyers – that allow only them to have exceptionality always hidden behind curtains, pulling the strings of the great Wizards and Clowns.
The new silk roads are not going to be controlled by these ancient traders, slavers and profiteers. They have well and truly fucked it for themselves and rely on gaslighting us, their original slaves and minions, to protect the ancient palaces, through xenophobic button pushing.
After The Dominate, with its perverse Caesar’s & Popes, the Dark Ages descended.
This time we are living through it all at the same time and will be saved by the actual Rules based NeoNWO – the twenty year last throw of the dice is over. The G7 should be the last. The NATO expansion from the Atlantic to the Pacific is doomed.
The Empire is Dead Dead Dead. Hurrah.
Long Live the New Empire – double Hurrah !
Do no injuries to your feelings by holding back….:-)
Russia’s proven development of Hypersonic missiles and China’s rumoured success is the real indicator here. On a per capita basis China has 1.8 STEM graduates per year for every one from America. American STEM graduates are absorbed by (follow the money) Silicon Valley to develop advertising and automated trading algorithms which add precisely nothing to the real economy (and arguably detract from it).
Meanwhile, American Universities churn out graduates in subjects with “studies” in the title. These people go onto sow social discord with their divisive identity politics.
It’s fascinating that Scramjet technology was always feasible once the material technology barriers were overcome. It seems that in America the more profitable economic model for the MIC was to fail to succeed and therefore accrue further research grants. What a magnificent grift.
“On a per capita basis China has 1.8 STEM graduates per year for every one from America”.
And over four times the population, which increases the ratio to over 7:1. And that’s before you even consider the vexed question of quality.
“…the pound shop Churchill…”
That is truly inspired! I am very much afraid that I am going to use it myself. (“You will, Oscar, you will”).
??????
I need no further comment to your post, Dungroanin.
Slainthe!
I tried Google Translate but this still didn’t convert into English.
Goonshite is not English.
«Billy Bunter, the pound shop Churchill»
The tragedy for England is that Winston Churchill was the original pound shop Churchill, deploying bluster and rhetoric to cover the fading and defeat and dismemberment of the English Empire:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/non_fictionreviews/3667997/How-victory-spelt-the-end-of-empire.html
«Churchill was reduced to a subordinate position in the Grand Alliance as early the Teheran Conference in 1943, when he “realised for the first time what a very small country this is”. By Yalta in February 1945, he was “weaker than ever before”. Roosevelt was concerned with Stalin – he “wasted little time on pandering to Churchill, a vaudeville act with which he was becoming bored”.»
China is also doing very well at suppressing covid. Just take a look at the graph; no major problem for a year and a quarter:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/#graph-cases-daily
China will vaccinate the RoW by the end of the year. As they said they would earlier in this year. once reaching 60% internal immunity. Fingers crossed. Our clown still being fully protected before activating his ejector seat -having piled the bodies high to build his statue on ! Won’t last a day, if I have my way.
Covid is fighting back at the moment. A concentration in Guangzhou and they locked down several areas. They tested 28 million people there in 12 days. Here in Shenzhen there are a few cases in the north and east, they tested I think the whole 17 million last week and I believe we are going to be tested again this week. A bit of a tightening up on temperature scanning entering buildings and urban villages and Guangdong is quarantined now, but no serious constraint, life has been normal for over a year because when something turns up they don’t muck around, they get on top of it quickly. Incidentally to someone up top going on about totalitarianism and human rights, when I tell my Chinese friends they just roll their eyes.
“Incidentally to someone up top going on about totalitarianism and human rights, when I tell my Chinese friends they just roll their eyes”.
Just as the Russian government has adopted a sophisticated and effective reaction toward Western propaganda. They simply allow it all to be published without let or hindrance. Russian TV hosts even base some of their shows around the imbecilic remarks of Western leaders and journalists. How the people laugh… It’s cheaper than writing one’s own satire.
Any English language links to these, Tom?
They sound rather entertaining.
Mostly just my memory of occasional articles on RT and Russia Insider, David. I don’t speak Russian (worse luck), so I usually just glance at them. This is the only thing that comes to hand right now:
“Not your average household cleaner: Russian town plans new ‘Novichok’ brand of products ”
https://www.rt.com/russia/425312-russian-town-novichok-patent/
In general though, instead of trying to block Western propaganda or even to refute it, the Russians just seem to enjoy it. They treat the BBC and the NYT as if they were The Onion.
I would be strongly tempted to send away for some of “Novichok” brand vodka, But the risk is too high that HMG and its employees would break into my house, seize the vodka, kill me, destroy my house and everything for quarter of a mile around, and claim the Russians poisoned me.
«the Russians just seem to enjoy it. They treat the BBC and the NYT as if they were The Onion.»
They have become entertainment brands like Netflix or indeed the The Onion. Tragically The Onion had been for a long time no longer satire. 🙂
As Matt Taibbi had argued in his book “Hate Inc.” the business model of most USA (and not just) media nowadays is to sell subscriptions to target marketing segments the entertainment that most titillates them, thinly disguised as “News”, and this is common to both Fox and NYT, only for different market segments. In decades past instead their business model was to sell eyeballs to classified and corporate advertisers, which required them to publish the blandest “american values” conventional wisdom to avoid offending most eyeball possessors and also attract the most readers.
“Incidentally to someone up top going on about totalitarianism and human rights, when I tell my Chinese friends they just roll their eyes.”
That’s probably that they can see that “democracy” (which is another Western philosophical concept forced by the West on other countries “for their own good”) does not deliver better outcomes, in fact probably worse ones, than their own form of government. If something doesn’t work well, there is always the option to make it work better, rather than to throw it out and start again with something new.
What democracy are you alluding to?
Western “democracy” of course, the one exemplified by the Mother of all Parliaments. The one where the people’s only input into the ruling of the country is to choose the people (from a list of candidates not chosen by them) who choose the people who, ostensibly, rule the country.
Doctor K, thank you for your first-hand report.
Readers, particularly scoffers, note well –
– “…no serious constrain, life has been normal for over a year because when something turns up they don’t muck around, they get on top of it quickly.”
Compare that with the UK’s repeated, three/four month, national lockdowns – all because our government insists upon a fortnight’s ritualised debate before even announcing a date when they’ll actually do anything, and even then it’s hopelessly inadequate.
Yes, the CCP is well known for publishing unbiased, reliable statistics on everything.
In the city of Wuhan (pop. about 12 M), the number of people collecting a pension increased every year from 2001-2019, then dropped by 150,000 in 2020. Of course this is just a coincidence.
Do you see anything slightly ironic about your comment, Minority of One?
Not slightly, very ironic.
There is an excellent China news channel on YT called ‘China In Focus’, usually 20-25 mins long.
Broadcast every Mon-Thurs, available on YT in the UK Tues-Fri.
Their main source of info is posts on the internet within China by so-called ‘netizens’, many of whom seem to end up either beaten up by the police or in jail. That is where I got the ‘150,000’ figure from, broadcast about a month ago. According to CiF, they got that figure from local govt statistics, publicly available if you understand Mandarin.
The figure may well be right; I have seen various other evidence that the infection and death figures from the initial outbreak in Wuhan were suppressed, detected cases being under-reported by a factor of between five and ten.
But China is successfully suppressing covid-19 now, and has been since around April / early May 2020. There are plenty of documentaries and webcams showing that in most places, for most of the time, people are not under social restrictions. There is confirmatory evidence from traffic cameras, and satellite data showing that pollution from vehicle emissions and industry have returned to pre-pandemic levels. And the unusually heavy organics from the crematoria spotted by satellite during the early 2020 lockdown also ceased and have not resumed.
Most countries would do much better to follow China’s example of how to suppress viral transmission – acting fast and hard slashes the duration of lockdown and social restrictions from months to days. Which is obvious if you think about a spreading infection and its nearly exponential growth – but most governments seem incapable of understanding.
«Most countries would do much better to follow China’s example of how to suppress viral transmission – acting fast and hard slashes the duration of lockdown and social restrictions from months to days.»
That is the test-trace-isolate strategy followed by many civilized countries, like India-Kerala, Korea-south, New Zealand, China-Taiwan, Japan.
But that strategy is incompatible with neoliberal (reaganista/thatherite) governments because:
* It requires for the state to fund and organize a mass public health project, and that is incompatible with “rugged individualism”; lock-downs are instead based on the idea that each individual must take care to avoid being infected and avoid infecting others, as clear from “Stay home, protect the NHS, save lives”.
* It makes vaccinations a less critical activity, therefore depriving “big pharma” corporates of the opportunity for a massive government led marketing campaign describing them as “saviors of humanity”, as well as of a lot of business.
“I cannot think of any instance in world history of any power enjoying the level of economic dominance currently enjoyed by China, and yet showing such restraint and lack of interest in Imperial conquest”.
Except, of course, China in previous centuries! Economic historians have shown that, for many centuries right up to about 1820, China and India were incomparably the dominant economic entities in the world.
At that point they were conquered by Western nations using brute force, and went into a decline that lasted for about 150 years. Now they are back in business – and adequately armed to discourage any future attacks by violent, rapacious psychopaths.
“In fact the restraint China shows in not carrying out the simple task of sinking Johnson’s silly aircraft carrier, undermines the propaganda of thousands of NATO press officers and social media operatives, including the UK’s very own 77th Brigade and Integrity Initiative”.
Expecting any aircraft carrier to serve a useful purpose in modern warfare is about as sensible as sending a fleet of Nelsonian three-deckers like HMS Victory to fight the Battle of Jutland. Already at Jutland the oil-fired steel battleship itself was obsolescent: Admiral Jellicoe declined to press his pursuit of the retreating High Seas Fleet precisely for fear of a trap involving minefields and submarines – weapons in whose use he had been trained.
I suspect that that particular aircraft carrier is in principle a devastating weapon.
But as far as I’m aware, it STILL doesn’t have its full complement of aircraft; and I believe it’s been sent off with a screen comprising two destroyers.
For an asset of that extraordinary value, you don’t send it to the other side of the world with just two destroyers in support. An aircraft carrier needs a screen 100 miles wide, and it needs to be dense enough to catch both aircraft and submarines. Nowadays a carrier can only operate effectively as the centre of a Carrier Group. The adventure that the HMS Elizabeth has been sent on seems to me utterly reckless, as well as being a pointless piece of theatre.
“a devastating weapon” ? According to the Russian Ministry of Defence, it is ” merely an oversized, convenient naval target”
“An aircraft carrier needs a screen 100 miles wide, and it needs to be dense enough to catch both aircraft and submarines”.
A Kinzhal missile has a range of over 1,200 miles and a top speed of over Mach 10 (about 7,000 mph). Two or three of them would suffice to sink a carrier, or at least reduce it to a helpless wreck.
The Chinese have this:
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2020/11/chinas-new-aircraft-carrier-killer-is-worlds-largest-air-launched-missile/
https://anti-empire.com/for-the-first-time-china-hits-moving-ships-with-ballistic-missiles/
There is no defence against submarines. They can launch missiles:
https://southfront.org/3m22-zircon-hypersonic-cruise-missile-infographics/
or they can just sidle up alongside and use old-fashioned torpedoes:
https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/when-french-sub-sank-us-carrier-story-couldnt-be-suppressed-quickly-enough/ri19760
(That was a French submarine, but a Russian one could probably do even better and the Chinese are improving fast).
To sum up,
https://exiledonline.com/the-war-nerd-this-is-how-the-carriers-will-die/all/1/
I don’t pay a lot of attention to press releases from the Russian Ministry of Defence.
The ship is obviously a white elephant (and a conspicuous target). If it were accompanied by a suitable carrier group, I imagine it could be protected.
“Two or three of them would suffice to sink a carrier, or at least reduce it to a helpless wreck.”
One would be quite enough; they can supposedly carry nuclear warheads.
“There is no defence against submarines.”
I don’t think that’s true. They can be detected from the air and from space. There’s an entire industry building hunter-killer submarines and anti-submarine destroyers. I think the notion that nuclear-missle subs are immune is foolish. I think the Navy knows this, and is bullshitting us.
The West’s decline is marked by increasing repression of it’s peoples.
And right on cue we have this:
“UK government’s little-known proposed reforms to Britain’s Official Secrets Acts pose far-reaching threats to the media and the public’s right to know. They could land journalists and others in jail for 14 years for publishing information the government claims damages national security.”
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-06-15-priti-patels-new-threat-to-british-journalists/
” It used to be that any important sporting event in any developing country would feature hoardings for western multinationals, such as Pepsi Cola and Nestle baby milk. Nowadays I am watching the Euros football pitches surrounded by electronic hoardings in Chinese.”
“The lateral flow COVID tests we have to do every day at the #G7 summit are “Made in China””
https://mobile.twitter.com/jackeparrock/status/1403283318318243843
Excellent article Craig, spot on.
China has no intention of dominating the world, despite the West’s fear mongering about this. However, China will also not allow itself to BE DOMINATED. Rest assured.
The West knows this and cannot find a way around this. China is too powerful economically. Its military and scientific prowess is growing by the day. Add to this the number of its population and its tendency to work for the greater good and country, and you have an unbeatable foe.
It is laughable and sad at the same time to see the West’s blatant hypocrisy and lies regarding China. It is on a par with Israeli Apartheid racist attitudes towards Palestinians.
Western power is in decline indeed. Morally it has already hit absolute rock bottom.
Absolutely right. The experience of people here is that government at every level is working genuinely hard to improve their lot, which is why an independent survey carried out by a US organisation recently found over 90% approval. I wonder what such a survey in the UK or US would find. But the volume of propaganda in western media has been turned up to 11 now, surely people in the west must smell a rat? And don’t get me started on the Uyghur genocide fabrication.
“The experience of people here is that government at every level is working genuinely hard to improve their lot, which is why an independent survey carried out by a US organisation recently found over 90% approval. I wonder what such a survey in the UK or US would find.”
I doubt they’d let the Chinese in to carry such a survey out, which, in itself, speaks volumes. Even if they did, they most certainly wouldn’t allow the results to be published. I wonder if the same organisation carried out a similar survey in Russia on Putin’s government and had similarly disappointing results.
“The West knows this and cannot find a way around this”.
Unless, perhaps, some convenient plague…?
China’s focus on building a great many new technologically advanced seaports, which is essential to facilitate trade development, was a good move.
Scotland could maybe learn something from the Chinese approach: http://reidfoundation.org/2016/01/sort-out-our-ports/
Aye Alf,
The fact that the SNP government has completely ignored your report on Scotlands crying need for functioning ports, operated by and for Scotland – and indeed any genuine economic preparations for independence – tells us all we need to know about how seriously they are pursuing that matter.
It comes way down the list of priorities for our “Notre Dame de Covid, the Saviour of the Nation from the Coronavirus” and the all-important issues of identity politics – and the creation of our much needed police state!
Thanks for this lovely piece of writing Craig, such a delight to see you’re still in top form in spite of all. Best Wishes
“It is not China which is sailing aircraft carriers towards Boris Johnson, it is the other way round”
A glaring fact you will never see mentioned anywhere in British media, whether of the right or so called centre.
Ever.
What does that say about our free liberal democracy?
To be fair, I think it was reported in the MSM, but in the form of: “our valiant lads and lasses sail out to China to teach those slitty eyed devils about true democracy”.
They forgot to mention that the carrier is loaded with US planes, ‘coz we don’t have any, and is supported by other nations’ ships, ‘coz we don’t have enough, and it will be based in Bahrain so that it can wave its undersized willy at all those other democracy hating w0gs.
No, I mean the fact China is not sending aircraft carriers to intimidate Britain.
China purchased a run down aircraft carrier from the Russians, Liaoning , it is a rusty old hulk.
They are starting to build a few of their own, now.
It will be decades before they can face down the Americans at sea.
Why would the Chinese bother with aircraft carriers in the age of the Hypersonic missile? Surely these vessels are merely artificial reefs in waiting.
The Chinese are smart, they have no use for aircraft carriers, the US only have them to satisfy the industrial military complex money exchange and for power projection against third world countries. In a modern conflict against sophisticated adversaries such as China or Russia the US carriers would be easy targets. The US have known the carriers were obsolete for decades. In a 1982 congressional hearing, legislators asked Admiral Hyman Rickover how long American carriers would survive in an actual war. Rickover’s response? “Forty-eight hours – perhaps a week if they are in port’ he said. But still they built them at $45b a pop, just to keep the defence contractors and their shareholders happy.
Vivian.
Yes that’s correct smaller more maneuverable ships seem to be the way forward Russian and Iran have taken this route, aircraft carriers are now just big sitting ducks, and are mainly used by aggressors as staging posts.
Following 15 min video by Caspian Report about Chines navy might be of you interest. PLN is rapidly closing the gap. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg2xmKNAZvM. I find him very informative and unbiased and not to long
The U.K.aircraft carrier fleet is always accompanied by a nuclear submarine, as well as Destroyers and Frigates
the nuclear submarine is partly to let the Chinese know – all or nothing.
“It will be decades before they can face down the Americans at sea”.
Unless the Americans come within 2,000 or so km of China. In which case they can’t just face them down – they can send them down to the bottom.
As long as they stay 2,000 km away from China, the Chinese will be happy to ignore them.
I think it’s jolly sporting of our hot shots in the Navy and MoD to base their new carrier in a spot in convenient range of Russian and Iranian anti-ship missiles.
Who cares where it’s based as long as the back handers are suitably distributed?
https://dxczjjuegupb.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/These_evilChinese.jpg
Boris has just been proclaiming the wonders of a trade deal with Australia, having cut this country loose from its nearest neighbour and biggest customer. The trouble is, the voters fell for it (Brexit). So we’ll have to live with it, until such time as the 55% Brexit majority in the provinces is turned into a minority again, and that will take conviction, organisation, time and lots of hard work. But in this way, a Rejoin movement may make progress.
“that will take conviction, organisation, time and lots of hard work”
You’re on your own. The Remain psyop served its purpose for those who organised it. They’ve moved on, job done.
So far as I know the Remain faction got complacent. In a certain city centre I visited, the Brexiters were active with tables, badges etc and most of the books in the local bookshop were pro-Brexit. The “psy op” was all on the Brexit side! No wonder they won, in the provinces anyway.
Good piece. Still surprises me that the “Irish Question” continues to trip Britian.
Just for your information, there is no longer any ferry from HolyHead to Dún Laoghaire Harbour. All shipping/ferries now go/goes to Dublin Port on the North Wall.
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/transport-and-tourism/stena-line-confirms-end-of-dun-laoghaire-to-holyhead-route-1.2090954
That’s really annoying. I like being more or less able to pronounce Dun Laoghaire, a skill now redundant.
It still exists as a nice seaside suburb (strictly speaking, it is not part of Dublin City) and the piers are still there to walk down so your prounciation will be appreciated still :D.
It’s probably a good thing that the ferry stopped. It used to be a traffic disaster with all the lorries and cars filtering through one traffic lighted lane coming out of the port and then going through Dublin via narrow single carriage way roundabout every 1/2 mile coast road. Now they can use the Port Tunnel coming from North Wall which leads directly to the M1 motorway going north or the Dublin orbital M50. It’s a lot quicker (in a car), especially if you are headed north as you skip out Dublin traffic entirely.
But it at least puts an end to those Brits who pronounce it Kingstown.
Wasn’t that the first railway laid down in Ireland, Dublin to Kin……, eh, Dún Laoghaire.
It’s kind of sad that route was closed, I have used it many a time. But, as I said above, it probably made sense.
I googled this out of curiosity. It sounds like “Dunn Leary”.
That’s correct M.J. Now try it in Irish gaelige 😀
https://forvo.com/word/d%C3%BAn_laoghaire/
That’s interesting, from native Irish gaelic speakers it sounds like “Dunn-Lair-uh”. What’s more the female seems to pronounce the first syllable the way a provincial in England might pronounce “done”, to rhyme with “sown” (but with a purer “o” vowel).
So what would “proper Irish” sound like?
Yes, the US has 16% of global GDP, the EU 15%. The G7 is no longer global, just a Western rump. In the 70s it ran the global economy. Now it lives in China’s shadow, be it Belt&Road or vaccines. China has exported over 300m doses to the developing countries, the US and UK zero.
The party’s over, but the fact the US is being surpassed is too painful to enter into public consciousness in the West and will not be accepted by DC and SW1 psychos. There is definitely a collision coming and it could be the end of everything.
But bear in mind that when a US credit card company imposes penalty charges on a customer, that is counted as a contribution to GDP.
The word “production” is completely out of place. “Gross Domestic Payments” would be closer to reality.
An unspoiled country where people don’t have to work unless they want to, where fruit and veg grows abundantly and is free for the picking, and the ocean swarms with fish and shellfish, where the weather is lovely and clothing optional – like the South Seas before the “Westerners” overran them – might have a GDP of zero while its people were far happier, healthier and more fulfilled than we are.
As Russia was always, and still is, poorer than the poorest of the G7 nations, the NATO attempt to portray Russia as a great threat is really rather silly.
This absolutely true statement provokes a moment of awkward silence when presented to Russia bashers, followed by a stream of “buts” that are not relevant to the issue.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
The measure of wealth/health has many faces. GDP includes ridiculous property value. In my eyes Russia has a very small population and huge resource rich land mass which Europeans have never managed to invade and rape as they did the other continents. Their people are very proud of that fact.
Invaded and raped repeatedly, by Sweden, France, Germany, USA. No country in history has lost more lives to foreign invasions.
Indeed. The Russia bashers might reflect from time to time that without the massive sacrifices made by the Russian people during the war WE WOULD INDEED HAVE BECOME PART OF A UNITED EUROPE
“…Russia has a very small population and huge resource rich land mass …”
Exactly! Which is why the Westerners keep trying to subvert and destroy its government, reduce it to chaos, and plunder it.
One of the most glaring problems of reckoning everything in dollars is that the USA spends ten times as much on “defence” as Russia; yet Russia could utterly destroy the USA, and would win any conventional war.
Those who aim for security get security; those who aim to get even richer get even richer. (Which is OK, as they know perfectly well that no one is going to attack them).
Lab-leak conspiracy theory was also pushed by the G7 in their attempted pathetic push back of China – calling for a “science-led” investigation into the origins of Sars-CoV-2 when the one already taking place and yet to complete its work in not producing the findings that it wanted to hear. With the euros starting I don’t think anyone really cared a toss about it anyway.
SARS-CoV-2 – commissioned and funded in the US, outsourced for development and production in China, and brought to you and your loved ones by globalisation – just like every other product of neoliberalism:
https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/
Peter Daszak had lab-leak branded a conspiracy theory – that being the same Peter Daszak who outsourced his viral research to Wuhan.
I believed what I was told about the Russian threat in the 60s and 70s but all that’s arrived are the Leningrad Cowboys….
Nato is now nothing more than a gang of well armed bullies throwing their weight around for the highest corporate bidder, if Nato ever had a legitimate remit the collapse of the Soviet Union put paid to that.
Of course in reality the USA couldn’t afford to see the Chinese economy collapse, China produces a whole host of good and medicines for the USA, and Apple relies heavily on Chinese labour, the big corporations have sway over Biden, and they’d be furious if he damaged their business interests with China.
Closer to home Johnson is grasping at any trade deal he can secure for the UK no matter how bad it is, the Australian tariff free and quota free deal is a prime example. Its a good deal for the Aussies but a terrible deal for the UK especially Scotland.
On Russia I’ve read that California’s economy way eclipses that of the whole country of Russia’s, and of course Nato is determined to surround Russia with its bases, China will surely be next for the Nato treatment. Bad guys (imaginary) are good for the arms business, and they also help to keep a countries citizens’ minds off of domestic failures and corruption, by pumping out propaganda that the Russians or the Chinese did it.
This cartoon expresses the situation very clearly, if harshly:
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q0tG_wu6Qms/VjFdZOG9r5I/AAAAAAAAB9g/y-9RGVxlh_0/s1600/1966863_601587536594463_1177965932_n.png
Excellent cartoon!
An excellent and timely article unfortunately followed by much predictable hypocrisy and humbug under the line.
Rather than offer my own comments, which would not do this piece justice, I reproduce below what the marvellous Chris Hedges has written recently about Western hypocrisy on China’s “Human Rights Record”:
https://scheerpost.com/2021/05/31/chris-hedges-dying-for-an-iphone/
‘Nancy Pelosi has called on global leaders not to attend the Winter Olympics, scheduled to be held in Beijing in February, because of what she called a “genocide” being carried out by the Chinese government against the Uyghur minority. New York Times columnist Nick Kristof in a column rattled off a list of human rights violations overseen by China’s leader Xi Jinping, writing “[Xi] eviscerates Hong Kong freedoms, jails lawyers and journalists, seizes Canadian hostages, threatens Taiwan and, most horrifying, presides over crimes against humanity in the far western region of Xinjiang that is home to several Muslim minorities.”
Not a word about the millions of workers in China who are treated little better than serfs. They live separated from their families, including their children, and housed in overcrowded company dormitories, which sees rent deducted from their paychecks, next to factories that have round-the-clock production, often making products for U.S. corporations. Workers are abused, underpaid and sickened from exposure to chemicals and toxins such as aluminum dust.
The suffering of the working class, within and outside the United States, is as ignored by our corporatized media as the suffering of the Palestinians. And yet, I would argue, it is one of the most important human rights issues of our era, since once workers are empowered, they can fend off other human rights violations. Unless workers can organize, here and in countries such as China, and achieve basic rights and living wages, it will cement into place a global serfdom that will leave workers trapped in the appalling conditions described by Friedrich Engels in his 1845 book “The Conditions of the Working Class in England” or Émile Zola‘s 1885 masterpiece “Germinal.” ‘
Hedges continues:
“The largest U.S. corporations are full partners in the exploitation of Chinese labor, and the abandonment and impoverishment of the American working class. U.S. corporations and Chinese manufacturers kept millions of Chinese workers crammed into factories at the height of a global pandemic. Their health was of no concern. Apple’s profits more than doubled to $23.6 billion in the most recent quarter. Its revenues rose by 54 percent to $89.6 billion, which meant Apple sold more than $1 billion on average each day. Until these corporations are held accountable, which the Biden administration will not do, nothing will change for workers here or in China. Economic justice is global or it does not exist.
Workers in Chinese industrial centers—self-contained company cities with up to a half million people—drive the huge profits of two of the world’s most powerful companies, Foxconn, the world’s largest provider of electronics manufacturing services, and Apple, with $ 2 trillion dollars in market value. Foxconn’s largest customer is Apple, but it also produces products for Alphabet (formerly Google), Amazon, which owns more than 400 private-label brands, BlackBerry, Cisco, Dell, Fujitsu, GE, HP, IBM, Intel, LG, Microsoft, Nintendo, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba, as well as leading Chinese firms including Lenovo, Huawei, ZTE, and Xiaomi. Foxconn assembles iPhones, iPads, iPods, Macs, TVs, Xboxes, PlayStations, Wii U’s, Kindles, printers, as well as numerous digital devices.”
I see your comment has preceded mine. I agree with everything you have written here. It is Craig that I begged to differ with, as regards China. We underestimate China at our peril. And we really ought to start improving our higher education skills base, and making more of our own tech infrastructure.
“U.S. corporations and Chinese manufacturers kept millions of Chinese workers crammed into factories at the height of a global pandemic.”
Yes a big problem, wasn’t it, almost entirely confined to Wuhan and Hubei where they locked it up and fixed it.
Deaths per million population:
UK approaching 2,000
China 3.
Is this the same Nancy Pelosi whose son, along with Hunter Biden and Christopher Heinz, John Kerry’s stepson, set up a company to trade the political decisions of their parents?
Richest woman in Congress, but has problems with denture fixative. 🙂
I live and work in China and can speak from first hand knowledge and experience.
People migrate willingly to work and send money home to their families. Of course they live in dormitories provided by employers, what’s the problem? As to the claim that starvation wages are being paid across China, I saw $2 per hour stated in a recent article in the UK media. In fact every legally contracted worker in every province is protected by a minimum wage law. The minimum wage varies across the country (you can find the data on the web) from 1550 to 2200RMB a month, that’s from about $2.5 in more impoverished regions, to $3.5/hour in Shenzhen and Beijing, but that tells only part of the story. My manufacturing partner in Shenzhen tells me that if she offers less than $8 they’ll go elsewhere. China is no longer a low wage economy and she and I are looking to take some production down to the Philippines. And as for being badly treated, the last time I went to Foxconn (subject to all sorts of lies such as those you repeat) there were crowds of young people outside trying to get in, and none inside trying to get out. There are too many people who know nothing about China prepared to regurgitate the misrepresentations, if you are so concerned then come here and find out the truth for yourself.
If they’d let you in….
“My manufacturing partner in Shenzhen tells me…..” Gives the game away.
If I am to choose between a truth-telling journalist of the calibre of Chris Hedges (the words are his not mine) and someone involved in the capitalist exploitation of workers in China, contemplating extending labour arbitrage to poverty-stricken Philippines to exploit the even poorer workers there, then I know whose words to choose.
I’m afraid vested interests are not to be trusted with the truth.
I beg to differ with regards to China. A spokesman from SOAS stated that China will invade Taiwan at a time of its choosing. He was then asked, ‘and Japan?’, as China is building islands near the Senkakus in the Sea of Japan, to place their military bases there, and they have declared that these islands belong to China. Japan asserts they have always been part of Japan. On another interview I watched a few years ago, on the Chinese news channel which used to be available on Sky freeview, they were debating the difficulty of enforcing contracts in South Africa setting up factories, as people signed and took money and then didn’t have ownership to sell or didn’t supply goods or staff as promised. Their belt and road initiative to feed and supply China throughout Africa is well advanced. And the patient commentator advised patience, saying Western democracies plan short term, maybe five years. China plan for a thousand years. Many years ago our local China representative told me ‘China is coming. Soon everyone must learn Mandarin’. Tibet did not want to end its traditional way of life and have to move to factories in China. Bhutan is facing increasing incursion and occupation. Thailand too. And in Burma the Chinese eat everything. Their diet includes everything with legs except the table. China has its answer to Bitcoin and this may challenge dollar hegemony. China also makes all our tech, controls the planned 5G, and has build our biggest UK nuclear power station. Do not underestimate China. It has many different skills to enmesh its agenda in all our systems. And it has built quite a lot on the dark side of the moon…..
” And it has built quite a lot on the dark side of the moon…..”
and you were doing so well up to that point.
https://www.wired.com/story/nasa-might-put-a-huge-telescope-on-the-far-side-of-the-moon/
bloody yanks!!
(i’ve often wondered what might be on THE FAR SIDE of the moon)
Interestingly, checking for more factual information on building on the moon, it would seem the agreement is between China and Russia to build there together. Fair enough
I suspect the reason China is grabbing uninhabited islands off its coast is to prevent the USA from doing so. The USA reportedly has 400 military bases off China’s southern and eastern flanks (and of course is trying to do the same in a certain north western province if it could detach it from Beijing with the help of the Islamic terrorists it used in Syria). Guess how many China has off the USA’s Pacific coast, I’ll give you a clue, it is a very round number. The Belt and Road was conceived to protect China’s interests should the USA blockade the Molucca Strait, look it up on the map, and understand why. China’s actions are predominantly protective while the west, driven by an increasingly frantic USA, is constantly issuing it with threats. You have a lot to learn, read more widely and give the echo chambers a rest.
The dark side of the moon is a worry though…..
Alyson agree wholly with that, I put my money in emerging markets there 20 years ago as part of my investments – with handsome returns to date.
The major investments with fiat monies there was an attempt to capture the Chinese hierarchy – not only for cheap skilled labour – the over fed and sick western fat fingered are not nimble enough to work with miniature electronics. It was planned by the Brezynski mobsters as a means of loosening the grip of the command economy of the Party (failed) in the hope that the populace would demand more ‘freedom’ (failed) and allow access for the global robbers to the massive resources (semi failed). Also as part of the gel-political Great Game of stopping a security cooperation with Russia (major fail) – these fiat currencies are being divested daily and will trigger the collapse of the dollar hagemony soon.
Bayard has no answer but picks up only on the reference to the Moon, without stating what he/she/it objects to?
There is no DARK side of the Moon – except as the Pink Floyd music.
It is correctly the FAR side of the Moon . The Moon spins just as the Earth does and so has equal night/day cycle. It just does so slowly having an effect of only one side facing the Earth. A consequence of synchronisation over its billion year dance with us. During its observed phases either side of a Full Moon – the Far side is in sun light.
The Longmarch rocket ships are cruicial in humanity’s progress into space as they also currently build the nextgen space station.