John Chuckman

COMMENT TO AN ARTICLE BY MARTIN JACQUES IN CHECKPOINT ASIA

 

“This Decade Belonged to China. So Will the Next One

“The rise of China has provoked an existential crisis in the US and Europe that will last for the rest of this century”
 
https://www.anti-empire.com/this-decade-belonged-to-china-so-will-the-next-one/

 

A very good survey piece. Well written.

With the Belt and Road Initiative (the New Silk Road), China has established close relationships all over the world and has a galaxy of projects to support some economic growth for many years to come.

As well, it is as altering the world’s transportation network and economic geography in China’s favor.

The Chinese resemble skilful farmers sowing seed on many new fields, fields in some cases reclaimed from past abusive practices by the United States.

As that magnificent project proceeds, I believe the contrast between the new working-with-China experience and the former experience of working with an arrogant America in decline will become sharper and much to China’s advantage.

I’m just surprised it appeared in The Guardian, a paper for which I lost all respect with its various dishonest campaigns of disinformation and propaganda – eg, Corbyn as an anti-Semite, the Skripal Affair as something genuine, extreme Russo-phobia, anti-Iran prejudice, and general tight support for American and Israeli activities in the Middle East.

For some interesting insight, read the second part of the following with its eye-opening details about American treatment of the government of Iraq, a country that has signed big new infrastructure agreements with China. The kind of American behavior discussed just couldn’t provide a greater contrast with China.

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/01/08/john-chuckman-comment-almost-planned-the-interim-outcome-of-trumps-stupid-assassination-of-a-national-hero-and-irans-reprisal-missile-attack-although-it-aint-over-til-its-over-eye-openi/

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS

 

“Violence flares as thousands defy police ban to march in downtown Hong Kong

“Latest pro-democracy protest Sunday comes day after 12 arrested, 25 injured in mall clash”

 

These foolish demonstrators are going to “kill the goose that laid the golden egg.”

The kind of international business interests which make Hong Kong hum and thrive are completely averse to this kind of chaotic public behavior.

Of course, the demonstrators are being covertly encouraged and supplied by the American State Department as part of Trump’s war on China, but still, it is their home, and they foolishly work hard promoting its decline.

And, you know, a lot of what we call “democracy” in the “West” isn’t quite what it’s cracked up to be. The realities don’t come anywhere near the glib slogans.

Americans in 2016, had a choice in voting for President between two figures taken from Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. No matter which of them won the election, the Pentagon and CIA and NSA were the real winners. Average people had to lose.

The American Congress has been characterized, quite accurately, as “the best government money can buy.” It serves the interests of those who provide it with generous campaign funds, without exception.

Average Americans see their tax dollars spent on wars and killing and spying, themselves having no healthcare, often poor schools, and even contaminated drinking water in a number of cases.

America’s wonderful police forces kill an average of three Americans per day, every day, more than any terrorist could dream of. America’s prisons are packed. The country has the highest incarceration rate in the world.

______________________

Response to a comment saying, “What is happening to the people of Venezuela is shameful. What’s worse is Canada is involved due to Freeland.”

Thank you. A vital perspective.

What America has done in Venezuela is far more terrifying than what we see in Hong Kong.

The United States is denying millions of people food and necessities through embargo, and it has cut their ability to trade and earn a living.

It has turned off their entire electrical grid several times, hurting millions of ordinary people. It literally has stolen some of the country’s assets abroad to hand over to an unelected opposition.

There was an attempt on President Maduro’s life. And all kinds of serious threats and rumblings continue in an effort to intimidate and create fear.

China has been what can only be called genuinely restrained in the face of the demonstrations, and despite the annoying fact that they know the demonstrators are incited and financially supported by State Department representatives.

Also, compare the killing and maiming of the Les Gilets Jaunes by Macron in the streets of Paris. Eleven have been killed.

Or, even worse, the mass killing of more than two hundred unarmed demonstrators by Netanyahu in Gaza, territory over which he legally doesn’t even have any authority.

I regard Chrystia Freeland as a disgrace.

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

Mark Steel is just a second-rate propagandist.

Of course, China has its flaws, and some serious ones.

But perspective is everything.

After all, let’s not forget that Britain did help mightily in killing about a million people in Iraq, the creation of a couple of million miserable refugees, and the destruction of large parts of an advanced society for generations.

And Britain happily supports America’s horror in Syria, the letting-loose of tens of thousands of well-equipped cutthroats in an effort to destroy a beautiful land.

I haven’t heard any public cries from Downing Street over the Saudi terror campaign in Yemen, including the use of cluster bombs on civilians. Perhaps I missed something?

No, I don’t think I did. There was nothing either about all the Saudi beheadings and a sentence of crucifixion either. But there was a huge secret arms sale and a project for building prisons in one of the world’s great tyrannies.

Please, stuff like this of Mr. Steel’s is just clap-trap. I doubt very much he raised his voice on such other atrocities as Israel’s murderous abuse of several million Palestinians for half a century. This remains the world’s single greatest example of a complete squashing of human rights and decency: the Palestinians have no votes, no rights, no future, and they can’t even enjoy their homes and farms with any security. Again, that is a matter about which we never hear from good old David or Mr. Steel for that matter.

After all, for David to do so, even slightly, would seriously harm relations with Rupert Murdoch, a man, by the way, whose British publishing empire was built in part on hacking the intimate telephone conversations of hundreds of unfortunate people, including victims of violent crime. To say nothing of casting a pall over those delightful country weekends with Rupert’s designated creature in Britain, red-haired bombshell Rebekah Brooks

Interesting, despite China’s shortcomings in human rights, it has pretty well lived in peace with its neighbors for its entire modern existence.

That certainly cannot be said of the United States or its colony in the Middle East, the two most dangerous states in the modern world, both of whom get David’s unlimited support and affection.

______________________

America has given us nothing but wars and coups and “interventions” since the end of the Second World War. The toll of their attempts to control the planet, including such glorious episodes as the Vietnam War, has been literally as many people killed – mostly civilian, as is the case in all modern war – as were killed in the Holocaust.

Three million victims just in Vietnam, another million in Iraq, a million in Cambodia, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Chile, Guatemala, and on and on.

Israel, America’s colony in the Middle East, has behaved as a miniature replica of the mother country. It has done nothing but kill and suppress people for 65 years, having invaded every neighbor that it has, many of them two or three times.

I don’t see how anyone can write what Mark Steel writes without being entirely ignorant of modern history or deliberately ignoring it. In either case, the result is not worth publishing.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

For those who do not know, China’s military expenditures have run officially at about 10% those of the United States for years.

Even if you allow for some disguise in expenditures, it has not been more than 15% those of the United States.

In recent years the United States’ expenditures have increased at explosive rates, as the Pentagon quite literally aims to have the entire planet subject to its drones and spy satellites and new hypersonic killing machines.

The United States spends as much as the total of all the other world’s countries on the military.

The United States is the world’s greatest arms dealer, by a huge measure.

Only in recent weeks Obama – yes, Obama, that former sandal-wearing academic – announced new measures to keep America’s hold of the Eastern Pacific – a direct threat to China, courtesy of the Pentagon which now pretty much controls what an American president may or may not do.

And China sees America doing things like using its high-tech drones to assassinate people in half a dozen countries.

That is the context around China’s new expenditure, and I believe we should all be grateful that the world has a few states that will not allow America’s usurpation of authority around the globe to go unchallenged.

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO AN ARTICLE BY GIDEON RACHMAN IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

“Power does not need to be a zero-sum game and nations need not fear the success of each other.”

These words of Obama’s are true, and I wish they set the tone for relations between China and the United States.

But they are not the view of the American establishment, and they are extremely unlikely to set the tone.

People of power and privilege who think about power and privilege all the time do not regard such a parvenu with open arms.

We already have had a great deal of anecdotal evidence that insiders from the Pentagon to the State Department have not adopted Obama’s words as their slogan.

I believe that America’s reaction to the rise of China is one of the greatest dangers to world peace we will see over the coming decades.

After all, if you go back and study the rise of Japan, you will see a pattern.

The United States did everything it could think of to hinder the rise of Japan. Indeed, the Japanese felt such intense pressure they did something they had never planned on doing, attacking the United States.