Category: Xi Jinping

The Chinese Communist Party Emperor’s New Clothes – Buck Naked and Waiting for the Truth from the World

Taiwan is completely independent, it is just mildly schizophrenic, because one very small side of it (the die-hards of the Chinese Nationalist Party (a/k/a KMT)) keeps mistaking itself for Communist China.

We are in fact stuck in the fairy tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, and in this tale, the entire world, fearful that the Chinese Communist Party will bar them from selling their goods at the Communist Party kasbah, is willing to tell the CCP that the “Emperor’s” new clothes are delightful, and anything else it wants to hear, including that they believe Taiwan is not independent and is a part of Communist China (nudge nudge, wink, wink). In fact, as we know, the Emperor is buck naked, and the Chinese Communist Party is simply delusional if it thinks Taiwan’s full-fledged democracy is going to go back to the stone age of tyranny (Japan for 50 years and the KMT for 50 years), except this time with Communist China’s communist dictatorship.

Oh. And no one believes Taiwan is actually part of Communist China. They just say that so they can sell their whatever to China, or buy China’s really cheap stuff, get Kommunist Kash from it, or avoid China squeezing off their oxygen because they made the mistake of telling the truth.

We are waiting for the day the rest of the world actually has the guts to tell the Emperor that he is naked, and Taiwan is a great independent democratic nation of 23 million fantastic people who are not communists. Only when the world has the courage of its convictions and stands up as one to tell this to the Emperor’s face will the world be free from Communist China’s blackmail, propaganda, prevarication, and bullying, and the people of China free from the Chinese Communist Party’s 70 years of suffocating tyranny.

North Korea Debacle – Another gift from Obama, with an assist from Bill Clinton

Appeasement does not work with men like Kim or Hitler or Castro or Putin or Mao, as history has shown.

President Trump is not facing a situation with North Korea created by anything he has said or done. He is dealing with a debacle clearly laid at his feet by a naive and starry eyed duo of Clinton and Obama, two moron bookkends of a tragedy written by the Kim family and published by Beijing.

An article appeared through Associated Press in the Taipei Times on September 8, 2017, p. 9 (“S. Korea and Japan feel the heat as the North aims nukes at the US” By Bradley Klapper, Robert Burns and Matthew Pennington/ AP, WASHINGTON http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2017/09/08/2003678017/1 ) basically arguing the US will back off because of North Korea’s capabilities.

This article says: “Twenty-six years ago this month, in the hopeful aftermath of the Cold War, then-US president George H.W. Bush announced the unilateral withdrawal of all land-based and sea-based tactical nuclear weapons, including from South Korea. * * * He then pulled all air-delivered nuclear bombs from the South, in part because officials believed they were no longer needed for an effective defense. That was years before the North demonstrated its nuclear prowess with a first explosion in 2006.”

The last sentence is patently false, and in fact points to one of the reasons for the North’s nuclear weapons journey. After the then recent fall of the USSR, George Bush, Sr. withdrew nuclear weapons abroad, as the article states. However, as the article neglects to mention, Clinton, as would Obama, had faith the North Koreans would abide by an agreement, and in 1994 entered into the Agreed Framework, which gave the North Koreans billions in exchange for empty promises to stop development of nuclear weapons, an agreement which was violated as the ink was drying on the toilet paper on which it was written (part of the negotiating team for that disaster was unbelievably used by Obama for the Iran deal).

The situation today is a direct result of that inane agreement (which, by the way, is the model for the equally suicidal Iran agreement, which Iran violated while the ink was drying, but before Obama delivered $1.50 billion in cash to Iran moments before he left office).

The article goes on to say: “Now that the US faces its own threat of North Korean retaliation, the most pressing security question of the next years could be: Would Washington risk San Francisco for Seoul? * * *“It’s the core dilemma of extended deterrence for allies in the nuclear era: Will the US actually risk one of their population centers for our defense?” said Sheila Smith of the Council on Foreign Relations think tank. “It’s hard to believe the answer is ‘yes.’”” This is the statement of a small child hoping that Daddy (Clinton or Obama) would do everything to protect them, not realizing “Daddy” in this case would sell his underwear and his child to avoid conflict, including creating a monster with a ravenous appetite.

And this is the reason we are in this situation – the Clinton-Obama deficit, an unwillingness to actually act on the US military dominance, and therefore the absence of deterrent effect. Words have meaning, but actions have impact. President Obama never actually provided any evidence he would act on anything at any time for any reason. He drew meaningless red lines and embraced America’s worst enemies, paid others billions, and agreed to anything to avoid a scuffle. Kumbaya, Barry. The effect was to remove any deterrent the US might have had. Russia, Iran, North Korea, China all put their ambitions in overdrive and sped right over Barry’s blinking weakness.

Looking at the nuclear impunity of North Korea, it began spiking in 2013, North Korea speeding up its development before Obama would leave office, because North Korea knew that it could act brazenly while Obama would do nothing concrete except take away Kim’s allowance (which he got right back from Beijing, his puppet master and masterful puppeteer, playing Barry like a five dollar fiddle). Sanctions did not have an effect on Kim because the castle always has running water, champagne and caviar, and the people have been taught to die for Kim, a deity of sorts.

The North Korean nuclear train was well on its way and speeding forward long before January, 2017. This was another gift (like DACA and Obamacare) that Barry left on the Resolute Desk when he left the Oval Office.

Weakness does not produce agreements with evil dictators. Neither Chamberlain with Hitler, nor Clinton with Kim Jong-il (Junior’s father) or Obama with Hu or Xi or Putin or the Ayatollah or Assad or Hamas, or Chavez or Maduro, or Fidel or Raul, or Osama, or ISIS (or ISIL as Obama found it necessary to say) produced peace, they produced a path to turmoil and even more dire situations just down the road.

Keep this in mind — Israel was prepared to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities before they were made invulnerable tucked away in bunkers under the ground, as it had destroyed Iraq’s and Syria’s…and Barry said no. Blinking Barry said no. He opted for the most insane agreement with an enemy who could never be trusted in order to create the identical debacle we have now with North Korea, ten years from now. Barry, like Bill, is an idiot, and this nuclear standoff is the child of Bill, George and Barry, the three blind mice.

Now that the situation is infinitely more complicated, Barry, retired but not silent, as his predecessors were, has suggested quiet and reassuring words. Of course he does. He emasculated the U.S. over 8 years of indecision and inaction, and his eunuch approach to diplomacy set us up for disaster after disaster.

Trump has his own blustery style (which makes most people alternately laugh and cringe), and it is hard to determine what will be effective. I am just reminded of the difference between Jimmy Carter, the spineless model for Blinking Barry, and President Reagan, whose reputation produced a reaction in Iran that released the hostages there right after he took office. The fact that Reagan never took overwhelming response off the table had its effect. But we were not dealing with someone like Junior back then, who is likely out of his mind most of the time, living in Korealand, a kind of magic kingdom where reality is what he says it is and his new toy produces pretty mushroom clouds.

Clearly the only way the situation is resolved is when Junior is no longer in power, accomplished in whatever way is most expedient with the least amount of loss of life. But as usual, it could be too little too late because Barry sat on his hands for 8 years using sanctions on a country that could care less and had a back door to essentials through China, another dire enemy masquerading as a “partner” and with a legendary skill at prevarication.

Good luck to President Trump being handed someone else’s disaster. Ignore anyone involved with Clinton or Obama before, they all failed. Don’t believe China. Get people familiar with the landscape and determined to resolve it one way or another (sort of like John Bolton). Nothing used before has worked. Think outside the box.

There are still “communist sympathizers” who believe China is their Eden…it is hard to believe, I know

I was reading posts regarding Communist China, and came across a post entitled “Is the People’s Republic of China a Force for Good?” https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/9954326/posts/12507, a post addressing an article discussing the People’s Republic of China’s influence in Australia.

The post is basically more than an apology for the People’s Republic of China, but actually a celebration of its communist roots and a system of government far “superior” to Western “bourgeois democracies”.  As soon as people start using “bourgeois”, I start getting nervous. I wrote a comment on the post, and you can read the original post yourself to see the depths to which an apologist for totalitarianism will go to justify it (even as against those evil human rights proponents such as Liu Xiaobo calling for democracy, because they are committing “treason”). As soon as people start saying it is treasonous to call for human rights, due process and democracy, you have reached that Twilight Zone called Communist China.

Here is my comment on the post in full. I am not sure it will be published there:

“I suppose it is ironic this was posted on June 4th, the day on which the rest of the world remembers Tienanmen Square’s massacre, another dark day in the totalitarian history of murder and oppression in The People’s Republic of China, which is basically the most horrendous “communist” dictatorship, in this case run by the Chinese Communist Party. The only tie remotely between communism and the People’s Republic of China is that it is both a totalitarian nightmare, like every communist regime in history, and the state owns and controls everything, including speech, thought and actions. To pretend, like some book group discussing the writings of Marx, that the PRC is some benign and beneficial nation of peace and harmony requires checking one’s brain and entire nervous center before waking. China is not “cooperating” with the West, it is co-opting the West with its basic capital, which is blackmail, propaganda and prevarication, undertaken under the guise of trade and economic development, using such projects as the One Belt One Road (One Noose One Way), which is a web of influence which will allow China to affect the thinking and policies of all the nations involved and affected. China has corrupted the United Nations into becoming a Communist China mouthpiece and automaton. If people with the principles discussed here reject Liu Xiaobo in favor of Xi Jinping, I really don’t know what to say, except trying having a discussion about Liu in a coffee shop in Beijing and see how long before you end up in jail. And that is free speech with Chinese characteristics. By the way, this website is not available in the PRC, and “Communist Heaven” is actually a room without light in a special corner of Hell.”

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness – Taiwan’s Democracy, the U.S. Pledge, and the Chinese Communist Party’s Constant Nightmare – “Freedom”

Regarding the editorial in the Sunday Taipei Times (“The Liberty Times Editorial: Opportunities and independence”, Jul 16, 2017 – Page 6), and speaking of the U.S. position on Taiwan’s independence, the paper notes “Therefore, arms sales to Taiwan, but failure to support its independence is a curious mix-and-match of action and rhetoric.”

Actually, if one thinks about it, this is not so curious. Failing to support independence out loud is not opposing it, even if those words come out of some official’s mouth at some point, because at its root, opposition to independence is not the policy of the U.S., it is merely a tool aimed at defusing a flash point with an arch enemy with nuclear weapons.

However….there is a time to every purpose, and war between the U.S. and China is the potential result of a declaration of independence by Taiwan unless it is the right time, so it is a matter of great importance that the time be right.

What does that mean? It is not so easy to define the right time, or pinpoint. It does depend on the steady progress of Taiwan towards being de facto recognized around the world out loud as a democratic nation on its own, and it could also depend on the resolve of the people of Taiwan. Few believe Taiwanese are willing to take up arms and fight Chinese soldiers in the streets of Taiwan. They say, this is 2017, who does such things, or would want to?

In history, including recent history, there have been very few declarations of independence not accompanied by bloodshed – no country’s overseer will so easily give up its captive.

The U.S. fought a long and very bloody Revolutionary War 241 years ago propelling the U.S. into history and George Washington into the Presidency. In the course of the 8 years of war against England, over 30,000 civilians lost their lives, and there were over 200,000 military casualties. The result was “We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” The bloodshed and resulting democracy has served as a beacon of freedom for billions in the centuries following. Are Taiwanese willing to shed their blood for this?

I think in civil society today, we do everything we can to avoid such conflict, though evil revels in blood and gore, as Tiananmen Square, the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap and so many other horrific events in Communist China have shown. It also revels in intimidation.

The result? The “One-China policy” that acknowledges that this is what Communist China says, and that the U.S. has its own idea about that. And the purpose of the ambiguity is to allow the U.S. to stand behind Taiwan, firmly, and between Taiwan and Communist China, firmly, and protect Taiwan with the full power and beauty of the U.S. Constitution and the principles of freedom and democracy now inherent in Taiwan’s system of government, and wait for the right time to help bring Taiwan into the family of recognized democratic nations, which it truly already de facto is.

All of the machinations dealing with Taiwan’s de facto independence are designed to avoid a war between two nuclear powers, especially with a North Korean powder-keg sitting just a few clicks away. We have seen how Communist China deals with resistance historically, by its brutality in Tibet and Hong Kong. The U.S. did not stand behind Tibet and wag its finger, having just completed the Korean War a few years earlier. Genocide through eugenics has ensued in Tibet. The U.K. does not have the muscle to stand behind Hong Kong even though Communist China recently stated that the 50-year agreement between the UK and Communist China no longer applies – in other words, England has no power to enforce it, so too bad, Hong Kong’s One Country-Two Systems system is now One Country-One System.

But the U.S., recognizing the tremendously important role that Taiwan plays in ensuring Asia’s democratic existence, and the beauty and grace in having its democracy flourish, and having the same freedoms as exist in the U.S. in Taiwan for its 23 million people, does stand behind Taiwan and wag its finger at Beijing and say “don’t even think of it, buddy”. It has not yet become “Make my day, punk,” but it is implicit in the military presence in China’s neighborhood, and projection of the U.S. military might around the world.

Despite the bellicosity of PLA (People’s Liberation Army) generals, China’s military is no match for the battle-hardened U.S. military might, and for all those nay-sayers in the U.S. who complain about its defense budget, it is like the defense budget for the entire free world (because as we know well, Europe is not going to mount a military that can fulfill that role) and that gives the U.S. power to keep democracy vital and dominant, protecting the freedoms of the people of the U.S., and its friends, despite the efforts of the world’s worst totalitarian regimes, from Communist China to Russia, to Iran to North Korea to Venezuela to Cuba to  those in the Middle East.

Were the U.S. to back off Taiwan, I don’t want to think of the consequences. Our law provides support for Taiwan, laws which always pass with overwhelming support in Congress. Presidents follow diplomatic niceties, but the U.S. Congress does not have to follow suit. Few in the U.S. speak glowingly of a unified Communist China and Taiwan. An overwhelming majority acknowledge that Taiwan is already a democratic nation whose own Constitution provides in Article One it is a nation with a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

That is the basic foundation of Taiwan today. And it is the basic foundation of Charter 08, offered in 2008 by Liu Xiaobo and his co-writers as the foundation for a future China. Imagine that. Taiwan is the example of what the people of Communist China can look forward to. No wonder the Chinese Communist Party is so damn afraid of tiny Taiwan. And no wonder the Chinese Communist Party is so damn afraid of India, a great U.S. ally and a democratic nation of more than one billion people – demonstrating that the Chinese Communist Party’s argument that China is too big for democracy is nonsense.

To answer the question inherent in the editorial, the democracy and independence dance is not only a dance between Communist China and Taiwan, truly of necessity for Taiwan’s benefit and survival. If it were, it would be a very short and painful dance. It is a very complicated dance and the dance floor is quite crowded, and Communist China is by far not the dancer with the biggest footprint and most destructive kick, and while the U.S. is dancing far from home, Communist China knows that doesn’t mean a thing after over 100 years of projecting power for good across the oceans and seas to stand behind freedom against oppression whenever and wherever it is found.

Also, while the dance is going, and it is going, Taiwan is evolving, and as the pro-Communist China KMT is in steep decline, Taiwan is edging closer and closer to fully realizing the power of those words above…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in a nation “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

Assimilate that, Chairman Xi and your Chinese Communist Party, anachronisms of despair from the 20th Century, and hollow wraiths in the shadow of Taiwan’s massively free and beautiful society.

Obamunism is a thing of the past – undiplomatic President Trump is hard to take, but putting the US back on the right track is necessary for the world to survive the likes of an impotent Europe, Communist China, Russia, Iran and North Korea

The temptation to compare President Trump with President Obama is rampant, especially in the press. However, President Obama was widely liked outside the United States because he followed an ideology which was markedly different from what the US had followed since the end of the Second World War, and his calculation that a kinder, gentler apologetic United States would create an atmosphere of peace and goodwill throughout the world instead created chaos and war, aggression by the world’s worst regimes, and mass migration and refugees fleeing the results of his utter failure to act. He completely eschewed the power of the United States in favor of weakness, totally miscalculating the extent to which the strength of the U.S. in fact is the peace.

Yes, the world believed Obama was “such a nice guy” (so much in fact he won a Nobel Prize even before he earned it). But in truth, that is not the role of the United States for the last 70 years, and far from ushering in an era of peace, Obama fomented divisions that will take decades to heal. So, while so many people are apt to say that Donald Trump is isolating the United States, he is doing that which Obama should have done, asserting the positions of the U.S. with determination and backing it up with action. Despite his having fallen into the old North Korea-Communist China chess game, President Trump has ruffled feathers because he has not followed Obama’s Oppeasement policy. It is not his role to be well-liked, only well-understood. Whether or not he can do that remains to be seen.

Irrespective of the arguments for and against the science of climate, the “Paris Climate Accord” was Obama’s gift to China and India, and to Europe, and over a hundred countries, giving away billions to those who should have taken the responsibility for their own climate policies, such as China, which keeps passing itself off as a developing nation despite it having the second largest economy in the world, and too much economic blackmail power as a result. As I mentioned before in prior posts, China in fact under the accord will actually keep increasing its emissions until 2030, and the U.S. is supposed to pay billions for it having gained that competitive advantage while the U.S. reduces its footprint by impossible degrees. I believe when negotiating the Paris Accord, President Obama through Kerry must have said “Wait, let me bend over for you first…”

Obama’s negotiating policy of “take me, take all of me” was naive and stupid (and Iran is another example of his asinine approach, as well as almost the entire Middle east). President Trump is not the brightest bulb in the marquee of life, but he is hopefully better at negotiating than Obama was. Of course, so far, President Trump’s tangles with Xi have not been stellar, as he appears to have been led down the garden path by Xi on North Korea, once again (as has every other president since Clinton was first bamboozled 25 years ago).

The press is fond of painting the U.S. as becoming isolationist under Trump, but in fact, the President is merely reversing Obama’s Oppeasement foreign policy, which at its core, involved making every single other country happy at the expense of the U.S., as though that was what was needed, as opposed to a firm and steady hand.

Having rejected the notion that the U.S. has a role to play as the leader of the free world, Obama just went about smiling, shaking hands, singing songs, and being a gentler, kinder America. Let’s see how that worked out. Russia (whom President Obama laughed about during his first campaign) goes crazy around the world, takes Crimea, invades Ukraine, teams up working with Iran and supporting Assad in Syria, and Obama did what? Wagged his finger? China builds artificial military islands in the South China sea, props up North Korea while promising assistance stopping its nuclear program, cracks down on human rights, oppresses Taiwan at every opportunity, and Obama did what? Wagged his finger (maybe he wagged it, but I am doubtful, since the alleged pivot was in fact a pirouette). Kerry goes on a hate fest directed at the greatest ally of the U.S. in the Middle East, Obama pushes Israel on every front and gives Abbas a free pass on every front, and this benefited the world how?

The US is not the timid mouse of the free world. When the U.S. is timid, bad people rape and pillage. When the U.S. is a tough son of a bitch, the bad people run and hide, as well they should. This has been the only policy in the last 70 years that has kept the world spinning, liberal ideology of peace and happiness notwithstanding. In fact, liberal ideology of peace and happiness does not exist without a strong United States. Peace and happiness is the end goal, but is not achievable against evil by the U.S. sitting on its hands singing Kumbaya (keep in mind that under the rules of engagement established by President Obama, the U.S. was in fact sitting on its hands time and again (even on the battlefield), creating the notion that in the pinch, the U.S. would not act, red lines notwithstanding). I can’t believe I am writing this again….”All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Doing nothing should not be an option.

Taiwan is free now because the US has not sat on its hands since the six assurances, though Obama did a pretty good job of doing just that. I don’t trust what President Trump will do, but I do trust the U.S. Congress which supports Taiwan against China nearly 100% (back in 2000, in the last year of Clinton’s administration, a bill to strengthen military ties with Taiwan passed by 370-60 – opposed by President Clinton and some of his Party, but not enough to kill the bill – Clinton and his supporters argued that “ambiguity” was useful, while the proponents of the bill argued they wanted no ambiguity about support for Taiwan by the United States). In December 2016, the defense budget, including references to enhancing military engagement with Taiwan (“Sense of the Congress on Military Exchanges between the United States and Taiwan), was passed 92-7 in the US Senate (only 6 senators and Bernie Sanders voting against it) and 375-34 in the House of Representatives). The Congress fully supports Taiwan. The President, constrained by diplomacy, often cannot be as direct as the Congress. But the will to protect Taiwan from Chinese aggression is quite clear.

I suspect the U.S. will continue to work towards cleaner energy, perhaps not with the complete abandon President Obama would have liked. But the Paris Accord was a hell of a haircut the U.S. took under Obama.

North Korean Nuclear Debacle is Iran’s Debacle in Waiting

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” – Edmund Burke.

President Clinton was so eager to resolve the Korean nuclear threat, I believe he was willing to sign an agreement with North Korea written in snow and accept mist in promises. It would seem the negotiating team (part of whom were also amazingly brought in by President Obama for the Iran negotiations) were outclassed, outsmarted and outwitted. To the extent any person outside China actually believed China had or has any interest whatsoever in ending North Korea’s program, they are sadly misinformed. Communist China has directly benefited from North Korea’s bad acts for twenty years, and has continued to expertly play US presidents like fiddles, including Clinton, Bush, Obama and now Trump.

If there is no diplomatic solution now outside Communist China, one can look to the previous administrations for blame, each having to some degree allowed Communist China to have its way with them instead of taking steps to actually put an end to Korea’s nuclear program. It is too late now. With an ICBM in the oven, and hardened facilities under mountains and underground, there is little that can be done short of decapitation or immediate regime change, and even in that case, there is no telling what would follow the end of the Kim dynasty.

North Korea violated its Agreement during negotiations, while it was being drafted, moments after it was signed, and every day since then.

The trouble is, at the beginning, there was far more of a chance to take military action to stop North Korea from actually developing nuclear weapons technology and the weapons themselves, and with each succeeding year it became more difficult. Nothing was accomplished during the Bush Administration, and the final nails in the nuclear coffin were put in place during President Obama’s Oppeasement foreign policy debacle, repeated in rushed negotiations in horrible detail with Iran before Obama left office, a gift so to speak that will keep on giving for decades, and the full effect of which has not yet been felt around the world when Iran becomes a nuclear power (as it will under the dubious agreement).

Communist China and North Korea have played this game well for such a long time. CCP leaders pretend to call out North Korea, even vote in favor or abstain from heavy sanctions, but secretly violate those sanctions almost immediately. They call for patience, negotiations, peace in the region (for instance calling for cessation to joint military exercises between the US and South Korea), all as part of this grand scheme and game. Whenever Communist China needs a threat, it just winks at North Korea, and missiles are aloft, and dire warnings come from Beijing (“Woe is us, woe is us, what are we to do? Peace, negotiate, leave it to us”). This is usually followed by laughter in the CCP’s lair.

China will continue to prop up North Korea, secretly or otherwise, because it is the most useful tool in keeping the US in check, achieving its goals regarding Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, the South China sea, human rights, and a host of other issues it wishes the US to stay away from.

The longer we play this game of loser’s chess, the worse the situation grows. Pretending to be the peacemaker (and the environmentalist and the voice of reason and the next great source of trade and money) is China’s long term strategy to relegate the US to a back seat to its hegemony and intentions to remake the world in its own totalitarian image. North Korea is simply a tool in that game.

Just as Clinton did 25 years ago, Obama began the game with Iran several years ago. It does not end well. It never does, particularly when it is played by the JV team (led by President Obama whistling Kumbaya, Kerry and his merry band of fools and appeasers) and the quintessential flim-flam men from Iran. There was no contest. And now, President Obama, having been intent on singing Kumbaya instead of ending Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons, and having prevented destruction of Iran’s facilities after developing the weapons to do so while it was actually possible, has ensured we are stuck with a nuclear Iran, something that can lead to disaster.

Good men doing nothing. This is the hallmark of diplomacy for the past twenty five years. When will anyone learn?

Project Syndicate still pushing for a Communist China led world.

Project Syndicate, the brainchild of George Soros has continued its love-in with China, promoting Communist China over and again as the new alternative to the United States as world leader. It is sickening, but Soros has shown his strong dislike for the United States, and his preference for totalitarian Communist China. So much for the preferences of billionaires.

In the Project Syndicate article “Multipolarity and the global order” (written by Javier Solana and published in the Taipei Times on June 28, 2017, page 8), Solana actually writes these words: “Rising powers such as China are equipped to act as responsible stakeholders.” What? In what possible world is that sentence true? Unless by “responsible” Solana means “brutal, totalitarian, ruthless, uncompromising, murderous, unfree, anti-human rights, bereft of due process, completely censored, and allies with the worst enemies of humanity on earth”.

Solana also said this: “The Belt and Road Initiative — which Xi has described as “the project of the century” — is a true reflection of China’s strategic choice to strengthen commercial links with the rest of Eurasia and Africa, taking advantage of the opportunity to accumulate “soft power.” What?!! Has Solana been drinking Beijing Koolaid? Taking advantage to accumulate soft power? Either Solana naively does not know that One Belt One Road is Communist China’s long-term strategy to infect Europe and Asia with Kommunist Kash and Kommunist Trade, Beijing’s Kommunist Party political philosophy and requirements (One China and other “core” issues) and its plan for a world of “democracy with Chinese characteristics”, which of course means “no democracy” under any circumstances, or he is so eager for Spain to benefit from Communist China’s “politiks 4 Kash” that he ignores it.

When he served as EU high representative for foreign and security policy, and as NATO secretary-general, Solana always impressed me as highly anti-American. His thesis in his article that the US has withdrawn from its traditional role as the only international superpower, appears to be based on the first 150 days of Donald Trump’s presidency. This thesis is faulty because if anything, Trump has done more in the first 150 days to assert the US footprint than Obama did in 8 years. All of the things Solana refers to as indicia of America’s withdrawal occurred on Obama’s watch, and that includes emasculating the US, singing Kumbaya with America’s worst enemies, and deferring to everyone else and his brother, including tragically Russia and Communist China.

There is no chance the EU will emerge as a prime actor on the international stage, except as a brake on getting things done. The EU members cannot agree among themselves what to call a bagel, much less decide on the burning issues of the day. And in fact, Solana, while mentioning the US in passing, really means that China can fill that role.

Does Solana not understand the UN has been paralyzed for decades because Russia and China have veto power? And that they always use that veto power to protect the evil flavor of the month?

There is an insidious propagada at play by those in countries where Kommunist Kash is most welcome to blithely promote China’s rise, and America’s demise. This should be troubling to any person supporting democracy, justice, and human rights.

A second Project Syndicate article “Looking for a candidate to fill the US’ shoes” by Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations published in the Taipei Times (June 28, 2017, Page 9) also discusses the alleged withdrawal of the U.S. from international leadership. Less ebullient about China, the article nevertheless assumes the US will not lead in the foreseeable future: “As a result, the US will no longer play the leading international role that has defined its foreign policy for three quarters of a century, under Democratic and Republican presidents alike.” Mr. Haass pulls no punches and makes this statement sound like a matter of fact. This is quite presumptuous, and betrays a disconnect caused by doubt in President Trump’s leadership, but actually missing historical rhythms which have been in place for decades.

Mr. Haass discusses how the US has abandoned its leadership with Trump’s America First policy, but truthfully the situations discussed are more the result of 8 years of President Obama’s international incompetence than Mr. Trump’s first 150 days.

And as Tony Giamporcaro correctly points out in his post at the Taipei Times regarding the article by Mr. Haass, pundits who keep promoting the notion the US is no longer the primary international force in the world, blaming it on President Trump, purportedly because of his non-traditional relations with allies and enemies, completely ignore the fact the US has been unable since World War II to really rely on its allies to actually pull their weight in facing real conflicts in the world, the EU and other allies more likely to act according their selfish or political economic interests than human rights or doing what is right. NATO is basically little without the participation of the United States.

And there is another point. Those same pundits seem also to ignore President Obama’s compete abandonement of all diplomatic precedent, booting allies and embracing enemies, his Kumbaya diplomacy and utter failure, leaving behind a world in flames and chaos.

But Mr. Haass does rightly conclude that the world’s wishful thinking that the US has withdrawn leaves a vaccum that cannot be filled by any other country in the world, nor by the EU collectively (“However, it is clear that there is no alternative great power willing and able to step in and assume what had been the US role.”) This has always been the case, and always will be the case. But Mr. Haass goes off on a tangent and imagines a combine of countries that together can fill the shoes of the US. but he concludes the world is more likely to regret the US is not back in that role.

I believe the US has gone it alone before and likely will continue to have to go it alone again to face sticky issues that no one else in the world has the wherewithal or courage to face. Responding to Syria’s chemical weapons attack is an example. And the irony is that whereas the red line was drawn by Obama, he was paralyzed to actually enforce it. Trump decisively enforced it within the first 100 days, and that sends a strong message to any country entertaining heinous actions.

I was somewhat heartened by Mr. Haass’s approach, though he arrived at his conclusion the world would miss an absent US in a somewhat fanciful and circuitous route.

We still need to be aware every time we read a Project Syndicate article just what Soros is selling us. There is a serious disconnect with the good the US does, and the outright evil inherent in strategies employed by Russia and China.

 

 

Despising the Chinese Communist Party and supporting Taiwan independence doesn’t bar affinity for the Chinese people

An editorial in the Taipei Times (“China to blame for cross-strait divide” June 13, 2017, Page 8) discusses recent comments made by Southern Taiwan’s Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) regarding his affinity for China, though it is widely known he supports Taiwan independence.  Taiwan’s Chinese Nationalist Party’s (“KMT”) inability to understand Mayor Lai’s comments, and the responses by KMT adherents and Ma’s acolytes proves the KMT is bereft of any sense any longer about the differences between China and Taiwan, or of the relationship between the two. Former President Ma Pantu (Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九)) for so long had his head inside China’s buttocks that he could no longer see Taiwan, and the KMT followed him in there, and has been rotting inside for years now. Former KMT Chairwoman Hung opened an office in there, and considers herself a KMT Chinese.

The trouble with the KMT, since it first invaded Taiwan, raped, pillaged and occupied it, is that it never left China, and never allowed any space in its heart for Taiwan, which it considered at best a temporary parking place to be left behind when it gained back its rule over China.

Taiwanese are not Chinese citizens. The KMT, like China, believes all people of Chinese race are citizens of China, which is completely wrong. People have traveled the earth for thousands of years, and have become citizens of the places they now inhabit, not just people of Chinese descent, but of all races. Communist China is too weak to understand or accept this. Race has been diluted a thousand thousand times throughout history in many cases by having mingled for thousands of years among the peoples of the world.

In my posts the past fifteen years I have made it clear I harbor no ill feelings towards the people of China, I respect their long history, and sympathize with their downtrodden plight, even if they do not understand the depths of iniquity to which the Communist Party have dragged them, through no fault of their own. That I despise the government over which they have no control has nothing to do with them.

It is reasonable for someone who supports Taiwan independence to speak of affinity for China. We would all love to see a world where neighbors work together for a better world, not where one huge neighbor seeks to convert all who fall under its spell to its evil brand of tyranny. The KMT cannot see this, it can only see its lost seat at the head of a long gone imperial table. It is blinded by greed, avarice, racism and corruption, and it is not fit to rule (just like the CCP is not fit to rule).

This attack on Lai by the KMT is not only unbecoming, it shows the KMT’s complete disconnect between being Taiwanese and having a relationship with China. I sympathize with the KMT minions, trying to judge the weather outside while having been locked inside the buttocks of a giant troll. I’m sure most Taiwanese agree with me on this.

New York Times Seems to Prefer China’s One Belt One Road One Noose One Way to the US ~ Has the Old Gray Lady Gone Mad?

The NY Times published an article out of Beijing by Jane Perlez and Keith Bradsher (also carried in the Taipei Times on May 18, 2017, p. 9 “Xi positions China at center of a new economic order”) which seems to speak of China President Xi Jinping’s One Belt One Road as an alternative to the “inward-looking” United States under President Trump. As I discuss below, when I read the opening I felt so much disappointment with the Old Grey Lady, which in its recent articles offering somewhat glowing reviews of Xi’s plan symbolizes the hypocrisy of leaning so far left that the extreme right seems only seconds away and fascism looks promising. How can the Times not recognize Xi’s true nature? Is it because he smiles as he threads the hook? Because he speaks lovingly of the poor and the disadvantaged as he weaves a web of deceit and oppression and has his security troops beat those poor and disadvantaged who complain at home into the ground?

Prattling on about the details of Xi’s plan, the article nowhere discusses the true nature of the plan, and does not mention the doublespeak and innuendos in the plan (see my earlier post One Belt One Road One Noose One Way). I understand writing from Beijing one is limited in what one can say negatively about China. For this reason, the Times should stop publishing puff pieces and innocuous analysis from Beijing of a plan which has as its central tenet garnering world influence, destroying democracy, and effecting China’s dream of changing the world so that its dictatorship is the norm, not the exception.

I feel betrayed by the New York Times, but that is nothing new apparently. The article contains so many holes, it is difficult to address them all. Suffice it to say that the article hardly addresses the insidious strategy of China’s so called One Belt One Road program (which in reality is China’s One Belt One Road One Noose One Way) to construct Trojan horses which can be inserted into any number of the participants in its ‘new economic order’ (a ridiculous way of describing Xi’s plan to corrupt as much of the world as possible) to bring about a situation where China holds all the cards, and countries participating must kneel to China or else risk ruin.

The “economic” plan is not economic at all except to the extent the Kommunist Kash involved while masked as generous loans for infrastructure, is used for blackmail and extracting political concessions to Beijing’s One China rule, its hegemony and its intention to impose its Socialism with Chinese Characteristics (which means “follow Beijing or else”) throughout the new One Road, which is basically merely One Noose.

I have written several times about this and about Project Syndicate’s articles promoting China as an alternative to the US recently in posts here and at the Taipei Times. If international news organizations keep leaving out the animus behind China’s proposal, we will have to keep calling them out on these incomplete analyses and provide our own more direct and clear analysis. China is not saving the world. It is planning to pound the world into China’s own shape.

I heard a song recently called “I’m Not Clay” by a young American singer (Grace VanderWaal). I thought of this song recently because it is a ballad to staying true to yourself.

There are countries along the proposed new silk road where China intends to implant its tentacles, squeezing until eventually they must all obey China’s “core interests”, allow China to continue to spread the influence of its tyranny, and to obligingly intone its mantras, fearful to say anything untoward about the Chinese Communist Party dictatorship, until they are remade into fawning followers of Beijing.

The NY Times article does not discuss the most important point about One Belt One Road One Noose One Way. China cannot remake democracy into dictatorship nor turn free people into supporters of its tyranny, no matter how widely Xi smiles and how hard China tries. Frankly, we are not clay.

China, the World’s Second Most Powerful Country, Operates in Secret

Doug Bandow wrote an excellent article regarding the need for transparency in China’s politics in Sunday’s newspaper (“China politics need transparency” P. 6, http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2017/05/14/2003670538). One cannot agree more.

However, while we may hope for such transparency, there is much to fear from China’s rise, which despite Xi Jinping’s smiling assurances, is anything but peaceful, and promises to be a full on attempt to create anti-US sentiment, sell China as a “peaceful” replacement superpower, increase China’s propaganda and blackmail, draw trade to China without offering equal opportunities to foreign business in China, and create more and more Chinese cultural, political, financial, technological and diplomatic viruses, insidious, long-term, subtle tentacles designed to slowly infect the world with China’s totalitarian form of existence, its intolerant view of the separation between government and the daily life and thoughts of common people, and its “everything with Chinese characteristics”.

As I wrote recently, the One Belt One Road project is nothing more than a Chinese noose designed to ensnare all who come to play on the new Silk Road and weave China into the fabric of every single country participating, essentially making trade (and hence diplomacy) seamless between them and one of the world’s worst serial violators of human rights, justice, and freedom, and friend to evil regimes around the world. But you will not hear much from these governments about that, because of the enormous trade potential China dangles before them, and its “conditions”, otherwise known as strings, for being allowed to feed at China’s trough. Those strings require obedience to China’s “core interests”, which mean respecting its hegemony and totalitarianism, and suppression of all freedom in China and following its instructions regarding Taiwan, Tibet and Hong Kong.

Mr. Bandow mentions the coming transfer of power in China and the re-election of Xi Jinping (習近平). However, it is the next transfer of power in 5 years that will be most telling. Xi is only 63 at present, which will make him 68 for the next transfer. One might ask, running the world’s second largest economy and military, why do we know the outcome of the election, even if secret? It would appear, following his consolidation of power, such that he now maintains the three most powerful positions in China, head of the Party, head of the government and head of the military, that Xi’s eye is on another 10 year term following the end of his first ten years. What happens in the next five years regarding Party high echelons will give a clue, not polls of voters or campaign speeches or promises. As Mr. Bandow notes, the process by which this would happen is completely hidden. It is the nature of Beijing’s survival all these years, squelching discussion of internal matters, and filtering discussion of external facts. Suppression is in the Chinese Communist Party’s DNA.

As Mr. Bandow observed regarding the opaqueness of this process, “It is a bad system for the PRC and the rest of the world.”

As for hoping for change, one need only look at the treatment by Beijing of Hong Kong and Taiwan to see the nature of the Chinese Communist Party’s dictatorial rule and utter refusal to allow even the slightest deviation from the CCP’s absolute power, though Taiwan, a completely independent democratic nation of 23 million requires continued support from the free world to keep out of reach of China’s claws.

China’s system of baiting foreign investors and companies to trade with China and do business there also involves unfairly treating them, targeting them, favoring local companies, watching over their theft of those foreign companies’ IP and assets, with the Party’s complete control of the outcome of any litigation, as the Courts are merely an extension of the Communist Party. The more trade with China, the more dangerous the outcome for any trade partner, as trade can be reduced as the Communist Party directs in order to squeeze any trading partner.  South Korea realized this when China cut tourism 40% when South Korea bought the THAAD system. Taiwan is also an example, where election of the opposition independence-minded DPP party resulted in China closing most avenues for benefit from doing business with China (e.g. tourism, trade, allowing Taiwan international space).

Clearly, as I have seen from watching China’s “rise”, it is willing only to imitate those foreign indicia of “freedom” without understanding them or meaning them, while quietly continuing its brutality, and making a show of liberalizing its economy and its government, while not effecting any real change at all, and having beguiled nations to try to make money from China’s trade, but forcing them to intone Beijing’s mantras, and look the other way as the price of getting their hands on Kommunist Kash. As China gets more and more international recognition as a major player in world affairs, it will become harder and harder to hold off its march against democracy and freedom.

Mr. Bandow has hit the nail on the head. China has great potential, but the lure of absolute power is very difficult to resist, and even more difficult to give up, especially for a government accustomed to simply getting and taking what it wants.