2020 US Election - Let The Games Begin!

[flashgordonv]

...

By the way, how do you know that much of what you consider to be their own innovation isn't stolen? I mean, do you know that for a fact? Have you investigated why people have been citing intellectual property theft for DECADES when it comes to China?

Well, the answer to that is obvious. They have tech that other countries don't. If the innovation is stolen, then why doesn't the country from whom the theft occurred have the resulting products in play. Answer, because it wasn't stolen.

 

[Michael B-C]

Indeed, China's foreign policy has generally been to pursue mutual benefit via infrastructure projects and trade deals. A stark contrast to America's foreign policy, which has been to spread chaos and destruction everywhere they go.

One thing that is often brought up as a condemnation of China is the 'genocide' of the Uiger and Tibetan peoples, via a combination of replacement migration, inducements to interethnic marriage, and education seeking to weaken attachment to their cultures. I don't put 'genocide' in scare quotes because it isn't genocidal - it absolutely is, and is an evil act. However, as Chinese state media has occasionally pointed out, the hypocrisy from Western media outlets decrying these practices is simply breathtaking. Western countries almost without exception (e.g. Hungary, arguably not really Western though) pursue all of those policies, specifically with respect to their indigenous European or European-derived populations. The dissident right has been pointing this out for years, and much of it (e.g. critical race theory indoctrination in schools encouraging white children to see themselves as inherently evil, relentless propaganda depicting happy interracial marriages practically to the exclusion of any depiction of intraracial marriages) has become so obvious that ordinary, relatively politically unaware people have started remarking on it.

Once again the West tries to have it both ways: what China does to the Uigers and Tibetans is evil genocide; but precisely the same policies applied to the inhabitants of Western countries is, er, diversity and inclusion, or something. It doesn't work that way: either what China is doing is evil, and therefore what Western elites are doing is also evil ... or what China is doing isn't evil.

Yet another example of the doublethink we're expected to engage in here in Airstrip One.

I'm going to suggest a spoke in the wheel of the argument that unequivocally states that China's pursuit of perceived mutual benefit via infrastructure projects/trade deals is always way better than west approach which is to blow you away if you don't do it our way. Two different negatives don't make one of them necessarily more positive... certainly not in the long run. There is a growing insidious element to China's free lunch offer that is going under the radar which is that they are linking many of their biggest trade deals and investments to the simultaneous instillation of mass surveillance technology along the way that is installed locally but run via Chinese systems/companies that root back to the centralized control grid being built at exponential rate in China.

In South Asia, the Chinese government has supplied surveillance equipment to Sri Lanka. On the old Silk Road, the Chinese company Dahua is lining the streets of Mongolia’s capital with AI-assisted surveillance cameras. Farther west, in Serbia, Huawei is helping set up a “safe-city system,” complete with facial-recognition cameras and joint patrols conducted by Serbian and Chinese police aimed at helping Chinese tourists to feel safe.

In the early aughts, the Chinese telecom titan ZTE sold Ethiopia a wireless network with built-in backdoor access for the government. In a later crackdown, dissidents were rounded up for brutal interrogations, during which they were played audio from recent phone calls they’d made. Today, Kenya, Uganda, and Mauritius are outfitting major cities with Chinese-made surveillance networks.

In Egypt, Chinese developers are looking to finance the construction of a new capital. It’s slated to run on a “smart city” platform similar to City Brain, although a vendor has not yet been named. In southern Africa, Zambia has agreed to buy more than $1 billion in telecom equipment from China, including internet-monitoring technology. China’s Hikvision, the world’s largest manufacturer of AI-enabled surveillance cameras, has an office in Johannesburg.

It seems to me this is but a logical extension of the undoubted lead China has taken on the direct and overt mass surveillance and control of movement etc of its citizenry back home; the further from centralized authority the Chinese economic net/silk road spreads the more they will be forced to control the flow of information down that road - for it has the potential to travel both ways and that is dangerous for the hold the CCP has over the Chinese people.

Beware Greeks baring gifts should be noted as a time old warning born of hard learning.

I think humanity is at war with a pathological fascistic-communist technocracy and all roads lead to and back to the same underlying agenda; total control by whatever means, irrespective of the flag, ideology or business model.

 

[Ursus Minor]

The small and very subtle difference: It works ONLY for the Chinese.

Although it is totalitarian, but if the "contract" is completely transparent, no one can say that free will has been violated, beyond a few dissidents.

Of course, we cannot generalize and settle for adding that there are some who do not accept the contract, because we know that China, its population, has undergone brutal indoctrination. And that is another vital difference. This indoctrination in China has been going on for decades, while in the Western world it has only been enhanced in the last twenty years. It is the pressure that makes injecting this program (no pun intended) many people resist it.

I'm actually stunned that in this thread totalitarianism seems to become secondary as long as it's practiced by China.
So if you're fledgling free will has been suppressed since early childhood it must be considered violated, if not suffocated...

 

[BHelmet]

Yes, that guy is a nut, and so is anyone who goes on his show. I was shocked by the large number of views his videos get.

I think the allure is that he seems so reassuring and calm and quietly confident.

"Anyone who doubts this car is good for another 100,000km is quite frankly mistaken and has lost faith in Parkes Motors. That sound you hear coming from the crankcase is totally normal and to be expected. Your new car will be ready in a just a few short weeks if only you have patience. Rest assured our mechanics are working day and night along with our expert Excuses Dept. Remember, we specialize in telling you what you wish was true in a believable manner. Tomorrow morning, a service Rep will post a list of all repairs to be made and your 1971 Vauxhall* will be better than new!"

(*My guess is that this was a bad car. US audience substitute Chevy Vega)

 

[Heather]

Here's my take on the China question.

Is China totalitarian? Yes.

Is America totalitarian? Also yes.

Is China involved in influence-peddling in American politics? Almost certainly. So are lots of countries. Buying corrupt politicians in order to gain advantage in the rotting heart of a collapsing empire is a time-honoured tradition. It is however extremely notable that both of the major sides seem to want to focus on either Russia or China, both of which are pikers in comparison to the one country neither side ever wants to mention - Israel. Funny how that works.

Back to the totalitarianism issue. From what I can see, the Chinese government is absolutely intolerant of opposition to the Chinese government. At the same time, Chinese citizens are free to say whatever else they like on any other topic. Compare that to the US, or to any other country in the so-called free world, where in general you can say whatever you want about the government ... but heaven help you if you should venture to say anything at all outside the accepted and narrow bounds of discourse governing sex, gender, race, vaccines, lockdowns, climate change, or any of an ever-expanding list of topics on which any thought outside the permissible is strictly verboten.

That's one important difference, and on balance I'd have to say the advantage goes to China in terms of being an overall freer society. Another key difference is that in China, things are top-down - the government is quite clear about what is not allowed, so everyone knows the rules. Western totalitarianism is informal: only infrequently does the government impose specific laws against e.g. "hate speech", and enforcement is instead carried out by a loose network of private corporations and social pressure. Say the wrong thing and face a letter-writing campaign from angry SJWs trying to get you fired. Making it worse, the rules in the West are not clearly defined: at any given time, something you said which might have been fine, or even mandatory, just last week, can suddenly become a thought crime, and you have no way of knowing how that line will shift. In China things seem to be rather more clear-cut. So again, advantage: China.

People love to rag on China's social credit system, and indeed it is highly dystopian. Then again, because it is formalized, the rules are at least clear. Further, at least part of the intent seems to be to compensate for the social decay induced by modernity, e.g. by encouraging people to call their mothers, clean up trash, or do volunteer work; it isn't all about inhibiting criticism of the communist party (although that assuredly is one of the motivations). As ham-handed and probably counter-productive as that may be, it is still way better than the informal social credit system we have in the West, which is purely focused on enforcing conformity to a deliberately bewildering and psychotic set of mutually contradictory ideological precepts that fly in the face of observable reality, and which moreover - precisely because it is informal - lacks any real sense of proportionality between the "offense" and the punishment. So yet a third time, advantage: China.

Finally, as Sottreader pointed out, the living standard of the average Chinese citizen (at least the Han supermajority) has continuously and dramatically improved over the past few decades. Say what you will about the Chinese government, but looking out for the people they rule over is at least somewhere on their priority list, if only to avoid one of the peasant uprisings that has drowned that country in blood several times throughout its very long history (a possibility they are certainly keenly aware of). By contrast, living standards in Western countries in general, and the US in particular, have plummeted over the last few decades, to the point where life expectancies are starting to drop for the first time in over a century. And thus, a fourth time, advantage: China.

Putting it all together, Joe's overall take - that the relentless focus of the Republican media on China's dastardly deeds is nothing but an effort to distract attention from the malign incompetence and relentless cupidity of Western elites - is spot on.

I think the problem here is that you are talking about the United States as if it was always like this. This "cabal," let's call it, has been steadily inserting itself over many decades, yes. But it's only been showing its true colors fairly recently. There were signs, of course, starting in academia.

The U.S. Constitution, although it was obviously not well safe-guarded, is not something to sneeze at. My God. I'm really surprised at the love of China I'm hearing at this forum. It's all rather quaint. It confirms my own view that we have a great deal more to worry about concerning China than I had previously believed. Why just look at the glowing review it's receiving at this forum! Not a word for what the United States was set up to do. I'd say we'd be better served learning more about the history of the United States, and what has been put in place for all of our protections in the constitution -- since even now it is the last bastion of strength we have to turn to. Those that are calling themselves patriots are not wrong about that. Even if it's too late, I would gladly take up that gamble rather than sit here and write poems of praise for a totalitarian state like China. Oh, so now the CCP wants its citizens to call their mothers? Do any of you recall something called the Cultural Revolution? The destruction of history -- that we're seeing right now on the left -- the destruction of family, tradition, philosophy, etc. Call your mother? How 'bout kill your mother. Please! How soon people forget. And yet it's a history worth remembering. Oh, but that's all over now and everything is just dandy -- oh, except for that itty bitty matter of challenging the government. But, I mean, what of it? What of it? It's foundational! That's all. It's what prompted men to write the U.S. Constitution in the first place.

Please let's take a step back and review. The picture people are painting here of China is selective and skewed.

Time to read Solzhenitsyn. It may be Russia, but it's a good refresher course.

Meantime, Trump is putting in place some protections concerning China:

Trump Signs Memo to Secure Government-Backed Research and Development Against Foreign Interference

www.theepochtimes.com

Excerpt:

“To succeed in this 21st century geopolitical competition, America must lead in research, technology, and innovation,” the White House said in a statement in December 2017. “We will protect our national security innovation base from those who steal our intellectual property and unfairly exploit the innovation of free societies.” [from Trump's memorandum]

Trump signed the new memorandum strengthening R&D protections on the same day that a senior NASA scientist pleaded guilty to lying about his ties to a Chinese-backed program designed to harvest talent from the West and transfer intellectual property to China, according to the Justice Department.

 

[psychegram]

I'm going to suggest a spoke in the wheel of the argument that unequivocally states that China's pursuit of perceived mutual benefit via infrastructure projects/trade deals is always way better than west approach which is to blow you away if you don't do it our way. Two different negatives don't make one of them necessarily more positive... certainly not in the long run. There is a growing insidious element to China's free lunch offer that is going under the radar which is that they are linking many of their biggest trade deals and investments to the simultaneous instillation of mass surveillance technology along the way that is installed locally but run via Chinese systems/companies that root back to the centralized control grid being built at exponential rate in China.

Absolutely. The Chinese are engaging in world conquest using a very clever, subversive methodology.

But the whining about it from Western elites strikes me more as, at best, sour grapes rather than authentic outrage over the subversion, considering that their strategy has largely been a mixture of financial slavery (leaving nothing behind but debt), simply wrecking things with the military, and - let's not forget - cultural subversion, spreading the corrosive poison cultural Marxism via Hollywood (which again, leaves nothing at all in its wake).

I'm actually stunned that in this thread totalitarianism seems to become secondary as long as it's practiced by China.
So if you're fledgling free will has been suppressed since early childhood it must be considered violated, if not suffocated...

Well that wasn't really my point, at least. My intention was to emphasize the massive hypocrisy of Western elites, in condemning China as a totalitarian country (which is true, and which is bad ... obviously!), while at the same time the activities they foster at home are at least as bad, and in many ways much worse.

 

[Michael B-C]

BREAKING: President Trump Declassifies Russia Collusion Documents — Coming as Soon as Friday​

BREAKING: President Trump Declassifies Russia Collusion Documents — Coming as Soon as Friday -

On Tuesday The Gateway Pundit got word that President Trump was going to declassify all of the Russian hoax investigation

americanconservatives.today

View attachment 41727

On Tuesday The Gateway Pundit got word that President Trump was going to declassify all of the Russian hoax investigation documents.

We reported previously that Deep State operatives, including people inside the White House and ostensibly on “his” side, were urging the president to keep the information from the public.

In fact, President Trump promised several times that he would release everything on the Russian hoax before he left office.

On Thursday night Lou Dobbs reported that President Trump ordered the release of the Obamagate intelligence documents.

Lou Dobbs: President Trump is declassifying top-secret documents all related to Obamagate. That is the coordinated and years-long spying against a presidential candidate and ultimately the President of the United States and his administration, that of Donald J. Trump.

The documents will reportedly show the involvement in the United States and overseas to set up Donald Trump in the Russia lie.

The Trump administration must now make sure these documents are released to the public.

Ocean, I'd be interested to know why you think that somewhere such as 'The Gateway Pundit' would be given inside word of such a planned release in advance? To what end? To ensure this earth shaking event is widely publicized pre the event happening just so the PTB can preempt the move and use its total control over the bureaucracy that would have to execute such a move so as to block it? I'm just asking - who in the WH do you think benefits by such a tip off? Unless of course you think its comes via Trump's own staff acting in a treacherous way to further undermine his attempts at unleashing the 'Kraken'? etc, etc.

Is it not more likely that this is just more click bate... to add to the other 100,000 such events that never, ever materialized in the end... so as to feed on the never ending belief that the cavalry are about to make it to the crest of the hill... sometime soon... if we only just give them another minute (sorry, credits rolling)...

Just wondering how you see this.

 

[psychegram]

I think the problem here is that you are talking about the United States as if it was always like this. This "cabal," let's call it, has been steadily inserting itself over many decades, yes. But it's only been showing its true colors fairly recently. There were signs, of course, starting in academia.

The U.S. Constitution, although it was obviously not well safe-guarded, is not something to sneeze at.

Given the choice between a republic based on the US Constitution and a totalitarian technocracy a la the Chinese communist party, there's no choice at all. Obviously.

But that's not what we have now. The Constitution is barely operative at this point - in fact following the events of 6/1 we can probably assume it's a dead letter. The US is no longer a constitutional republic, but a totalitarian technocracy in its own right.

The main point is that the media's criticism of China isn't honest. It isn't truth-tellers bravely calling out the abuses of the bad guys, it's one group of lying assholes trying to direct anger at another group of lying assholes. It's MiniTru telling us all about the atrocities committed by our eternal enemy Eastasia (or is that Eurasia...? I always forget which we've always been at war with). They're both evil, but there's one really important difference, at least for those of us in the US: Chinese totalitarianism does not directly affect us, while that of the American regime does.

If I get fired for crimethink, it won't be because of the CCP.

 

[Heather]

Well, the answer to that is obvious. They have tech that other countries don't. If the innovation is stolen, then why doesn't the country from whom the theft occurred have the resulting products in play. Answer, because it wasn't stolen.

This is all very selective stuff we're talking about here. I'm talking about DECADES of theft, which no doubt has a lot do with Bill Clinton's trade agreements, and God knows what else. I do think that's an area we'd have to look into more thoroughly to understand things now. What we do know is the sublime criminality of the Clintons, Obama, Biden, etc. To think that that doesn't concern China is problematic, to say the least. Just look at Fauci's connection to the Wuhan lab. This is dirty dirty stuff we're talking about. Utterly criminal. No good guys or bad guys here -- it's just a stew of mutual criminality.

I can't speak to the details of China's technological innovation. But no one has offered any evidence that the decades of theft would not have contributed to it. I'll bet if you set out to research that premise in detail you'd come up with some pretty interesting material.

 

[Heather]

Given the choice between a republic based on the US Constitution and a totalitarian technocracy a la the Chinese communist party, there's no choice at all. Obviously.

But that's not what we have now. The Constitution is barely operative at this point - in fact following the events of 6/1 we can probably assume it's a dead letter. The US is no longer a constitutional republic, but a totalitarian technocracy in its own right.

The main point is that the media's criticism of China isn't honest. It isn't truth-tellers bravely calling out the abuses of the bad guys, it's one group of lying assholes trying to direct anger at another group of lying assholes. It's MiniTru telling us all about the atrocities committed by our eternal enemy Eastasia (or is that Eurasia...? I always forget which we've always been at war with). They're both evil, but there's one really important difference, at least for those of us in the US: Chinese totalitarianism does not directly affect us, while that of the American regime does.

If I get fired for crimethink, it won't be because of the CCP.

Yes, but let's not start writing love sonnets to China, that's all I'm saying!

 

[Heather]

Given the choice between a republic based on the US Constitution and a totalitarian technocracy a la the Chinese communist party, there's no choice at all. Obviously.

But that's not what we have now. The Constitution is barely operative at this point - in fact following the events of 6/1 we can probably assume it's a dead letter. The US is no longer a constitutional republic, but a totalitarian technocracy in its own right.

The main point is that the media's criticism of China isn't honest. It isn't truth-tellers bravely calling out the abuses of the bad guys, it's one group of lying assholes trying to direct anger at another group of lying assholes. It's MiniTru telling us all about the atrocities committed by our eternal enemy Eastasia (or is that Eurasia...? I always forget which we've always been at war with). They're both evil, but there's one really important difference, at least for those of us in the US: Chinese totalitarianism does not directly affect us, while that of the American regime does.

If I get fired for crimethink, it won't be because of the CCP.

Another thing is: it seems China has been making substantial investments here in the United States, in all areas -- including farms now.

So, it's hard to say just how we will feel if/when this becomes more obvious. But I can imagine it won't be pleasant.

 

[flashgordonv]

I can't speak to the details of China's technological innovation. But no one has offered any evidence that the decades of theft would not have contributed to it. I'll bet if you set out to research that premise in detail you'd come up with some pretty interesting material.

Interesting that you hold such a strong opinion about the innovation when you admit you actually haven't researched it. It just "must be" because of your clear and obvious anti-Chinese bias. You appear to be trying to counter what you see as a big pro Chinese bias here, when you can't actually see your won huge anti-Chinese bias. A lot of the commentary in response to your posts seems to be people trying to inject an element of balance to the commentary. Is Chinese style government the way we want to go forward? Clearly, no. But we shouldn't lose our ability to look dispassionately at what is going on and to try to see objective reality in the midst of this barrage of propaganda. The Epoch Time as you admit is a relentlessly anti-Chinese propaganda arm. Yet you still want to quote it as a reliable source. It is not, in the same way that the official Chines media is not. Balance, discernment and detachment are our friends here, not passionately defending one side or the other as if one side holds truth and justice and the other is entirely lacking.

And lets briefly address tech theft in general. Technology theft has always gone on. People have been stealing tech and being accused of stealing tech since the tech revolution started. Look at Israel as a great example. I spent 30+ years working for various IT companies, in the latter years many of them start-ups. Companies suing each other for theft are an every day common event. Big companies use this as a technique to crush their smaller innovative competitors, to distract them, to try to bankrupt them. And if that fails, they just buy them.

 

[PopHistorian]

No! Please, not the old halo trick again. Remember GW Bush?

 

[rs]

Ha Ha. Notice the horns on Biden's head on the top right...

 

[Jasophoria]

Here we go. . .

https://clthb.co/4P1jDLNewU9YnTmYA

This is so obvious a deepfake, at 1.53 m the woman is talking, even reading from her paper, while we hear the guy. Its just a old video, and put another text in it. Its a bad deepfake even.