Tag: China

MIT Professor Noam Chomsky talks with Real News CEO Paul Jay about the history and current state of US foreign policy debunking various myths – including the myth that republicans are the warmongers and that democrats are more “peace” oriented, from FDR’s and Roosevelt’s vision for world domination by the U.S. after the second world war, through the current situation of U.S. toothless sanctions and delusional attempts at threats and references to a U.S led  “international community” that much of the rest of the world simply shrugs off and laughs at.

So by now, you know, the traditional backyard, the Western Hemisphere, a big piece of it, South America, it has become much more independent. They’re throwing out all US military bases. They’re moving towards some degree of integration. They’re not following the US orders. We just saw that when Brazil joined with Turkey to arrange for a mechanism for Iran to enrich substantial parts of its uranium outside of Iran.

[snip]

The issue of sanctions on Iran is a very striking illustration of the increasing limitations of US power. I mean, that’s kind of like-you read the foreign policy literature and, you know, government statements, this is the big problem. This is in fact called the year of Iran, and Iran is described as the greatest threat to world order. I’ll come back in a moment to what the threat is. But part of this is the US effort to try to get the world to accept the harsh US sanctions, not the UN sanctions. UN sanctions are pretty much toothless, so China and Russia and others go along with them willingly. The US sanctions are much harsher. They have no international legitimacy other than the force that lies behind them, and the US is getting desperate about the fact that the rest of the world isn’t following them.

So Brazil has-and Turkey, neighboring power and leading power in the Third World, have just essentially rejected them. Turkey’s announced it’s going to triple its growing trade with Iran, establish a new pipeline.

Brazil says, look, we go along with the Non-Aligned countries and most of the world in supporting Iran’s right to enrich uranium. But the big one is China. That they can’t push around, and they’re very upset about it. A couple of weeks ago, the State Department issued a warning to China and said that if you want to join the international community-meaning, what we run-you have to meet your international responsibilities, namely, follow US orders, follow our sanctions.

It probably elicited laughter in the Chinese foreign office. They cannot force them to do it. And this is indication of an erosion of the ability to coerce. You can have 800 military bases and spend as much as the rest of the world combined on the military, but you can’t force China, or even Turkey or even Brazil, to follow your orders.

 From Computer World…

A report submitted to Congress on Wednesday by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission expressed concerns over what the commission claims is China’s growing ability to control and manipulate Internet traffic.

The report points to two specific incidents earlier this year where actions taken inside China had a direct impact on Internet traffic in the U.S. and other regions of the world.

The traffic hijacking affected U.S. government and military networks, including those belonging to the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Department of Commerce, NASA and the U.S. Senate.

Commercial sites including those belonging to Microsoft, Dell and Yahoo were also affected.

It’s unclear if Chinese telecommunications firms did anything with the hijacked data, the commission said in its report. But the kind of access that Chinese authorities had to the data could enable surveillance of specific users or sites, disrupt transactions, prevent a user from establishing connections to specific sites or divert them to other spoofed sites, the report noted.

“Incidents of this nature could have a number of serious implications,” the report said.

“Incidents of this nature could have a number of serious implications.”

That’s sort of an understatement, isn’t it?

Nadav Kander is the darling of photo-editors at the New York Times, which is currently devoting a whole issue front-to-back of the New York Times Magazine to “Obama’s People,” a long, long, long series of trendy snapshots by the egregious Mr. Kander, and as usual his photos impart a sense of “formalness and unease,” because “formalness and unease” is Nadav Kander’s gimmick.  

For example, Kander has imbued his photo of Valerie Jarrett with the signature “formalness” of surrounding her with a big empty frame, and his signature “unease” is introduced by super-saturating her magenta suit and de-saturating her face.  

And so what? “Formalness and unease” would be a more appropriate attitude around the Obama White House than Obama’s repulsive self-righteousness, but in Kander’s snapshots it’s nothing but aesthetic posturing, and most of his subjects are perfectly relaxed and informal.

And so what again? As Jay Leno once said, politics is show-business for ugly people, and although the ultra-telegenic Mr. Obama has made a career out of contravening that principle, there probably isn’t much that anybody could show in posed portraits of “Obama’s people,” and…

This diary is just a pointless rant!

“an unusual gathering on a barrier island in Alaska. ”  They’d normally be out on the floating ice after foraging, but there is no ice this year near their feeding grounds.  Arctic sea ice is at the 3rd lowest point in recorded history.

Walruses Swarm Beaches as Ice Melts

National Geographic

http://news.nationalgeographic…

Biologists with the USGS say the situation can be very dangerous because walruses are easily startled, and can stampede. Some walruses, particularly calves and juveniles, can get crushed to death by larger walruses moving about.

I had a personal connection to the GOM, as I’ve posted here, but none to China. Today, though, my SO came and said that there’s this great job she could apply for in this beautiful part of China, one of the only places where the air and water is still more or less clean, where you can windsurf or play in the ocean, where there are still horse drawn carriages in the city, and some hint of traditional China– and so  I looked it up– not long ago that was all very true:

Dalian it turns out is a leader in alternative energy and windfarms.

And:

Dalian has won several awards from the United Nations for its environmental progress. The Chinese government has chosen to focus here as a starting place for instituting environmental regulations in China. The air quality is the best in all of China, and because of this and the multitude of parks and beaches, Dalian has become a popular vacation destination.

from- http://web2.clarkson.edu/proje…

On June 21st of course, that all changed:

http://www.boston.com/bigpictu…

This is heartbreaking.

And if you look at the caption you’ll see at least one of the workers in the photos died.  

The U.S. still wants to declare war on Iran, or short of that, exact barbaric and debilitating sanctions on its people in the hopes of causing unrest and ultimately regime change, but China has no interests in that game:

Clinton had warned China it would come under a “lot of pressure” to recognize the threat from Iran’s nuclear program and to join international calls for further sanctions. She said pressure would come as Washington and other powers “move away from the engagement track, which has not produced the results that some had hoped for, and move towards the pressure and sanctions track” to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions, which Tehran insists are for peaceful purposes.

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said of the US’s US$6.4 billion arms package for Taiwan that Washington should “truly respect China’s core interests and major concerns, and immediately rescind the mistaken decision to sell arms to Taiwan, and stop selling arms to Taiwan to avoid damaging broader China-US relations”.

According to the official China Daily:

“From now on, the US shall not expect cooperation from China on a wide range of major regional and international issues. If you don’t care about our interests, why should we care about yours?”

In other words, Smell the glove!

In the mockumentary, the original cover, according to recording company representative Bobbi Fleckmann, featured “a greased, naked woman on all fours with a dog collar around her neck and a leash, and a man’s arm extended out…holding on to the leash and pushing a black glove in her face to sniff it.” The production company, Polymer Records, ultimately refused to release the cover because of pressure from retailers such as Sears and Kmart and gave the album a solid black cover instead. Upon learning of the concerns of Polymer, David St. Hubbins said, “You know, if we were serious and we said, ‘Yes, she should be forced to smell the glove,’ then you’d have a point, but it’s all a joke.” Bandmate Nigel Tufnel replied, “It is and it isn’t. She should be made to smell it, but…” which David clarified with the statement, “But not, you know, over and over.”

So much for being Number One.

What an embarrassment.

Update via Pluto: Chinese military going worldwide.  Absolutely precious!  

Rather than post an intro that would nothing more than a repetitive summary, I’ll leave it to you to listen to how the MIC and the empire will end…

The end of an epoch in 2008-2009, and the beginnings of a new one in 2010:

Part one of this is here: Afghanist- yemen- omalia- bama, & Good Intelligence