Something else to be suspicious about

Does anybody other than me think that its weird that the Olympics are being held in China?

I know that the International Olympic Committee is an "international" body and therefore doesn't give a rat's ass about China's wretched human rights record. I know that they could care less that China is a communist* nation. They are unconcerned with the brutal occupation of Tibet and the oppression of religious persons.

None of this surprises me in the least. As I said the IOC is an international body which in today's world means that they are, at least for the most part, moral lepers.

But what does surprise me is that they would chose to hold an athletic competition in a city whose air quality can be life threatening.

Just what kind of bribes did the Chinese have to pay to get the Olympics?


*China was once a communist nation but they have allowed their citizens a great deal more economic freedom and even a certain measure of personal liberty greatly in excess of what you would normally see in a communist country. This brings them far closer to being a fascist nation like Hitler's Germany or Mussolini's Italy. However they still call themselves communist and it usually takes too much time to explain to people who have been educated in public schools and only knows what Hollywood and the MSM tell them that while fascism and communism both are evil and suck big time that fascism is actually less evil and sucks less.

China

Reader SharkGirl responded to this post with this question:

Is it true our IRS rebates came from money borrowed from China?

The answer is yes and no.

It is true that the government had to borrow the money for the economic stimulus payments that were sent out earlier this year. And it is also true that China is a major holder of US debt. The last time I looked they were holding over three quarters of a trillion dollars of US government debt.

However the government did not go to China with its hat in its hand and ask for a loan to finance the stimulus package. They simply wrote the checks and issued securities to cover the cost and let anyone who wished to purchase them.

Other holders of US debt are insurance companies, mutual funds and various pension plans. Individual investors also purchase US government debt because it is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America it is considered a good investment.

Different people look at the vast amount of US debt being held by the Chinese in different ways. Liberal Democrats view the matter differently depending upon who is in the White House. If the president is a Democrat their attitude is:

"China's decision to invest in the US economy is based upon the confidence they have in the wise and visionary leadership of [insert the name of the Democrat president]. This does not represent a problem but rather is a strategic partnership which will bind our two nations closer in ties of friendship and economic cooperation"

If the president is a Republican their attitude will more than likely be:

"Our children's future is being sold to a foreign power by the incompetent policies of [insert the name of the Republican president and append the word "Hitler" to it for good measure]. This catastrophe only proves the need for massive tax increases and a radical diminution of the American citizenry's liberty"

The attitude of Libertarians is going to be:

All US dollars spent overseas will eventually come back to the United States, even those used to purchase oil (which is traded in dollars) will eventually find their way back to the US because that is where things are sold for dollars. We are sending large amounts of dollars to China in order to purchase their low price consumer goods and they need something to do with those dollars (other than making the oil purchases which are fueling their economy) so of course they are sending those dollars back to America.

In addition to buying up US debt they are also buying some American products, for example American SUV's are all the rage in China. The Chinese believe that America will honor its debts and so they see US debt as a good investment.

No American should worry about this because this massive investment means that China has a very large stake in the United State's economic health. After all they don't want to lose that 3/4 trillion dollars - do they? This makes it much less likely that China will do anything to damage the US and certainly they will not risk actual hostilities with the US. Libertarians have always believed that borders which are crossed by trade with never be crossed by soldiers so we should keep doing exactly what we have been doing with regard to China."

Conservatives see thing this way:

Our current relationship with China has undoubtedly brought benefits to both nations. American money has allowed China to expand its economy and bring a level of prosperity to its citizens which they have never known is all the history of the world. Along with that new economic freedom has come some measure of additional personal liberty and as long as China continues on its present course that trend is likely to continue.

America has benefited by the cheap Chinese products in that its lower economic classes are able to have a higher standard of living than they would otherwise enjoy. The Chinese practice of buying up US debt has allowed the US government to do things like fight the war in the Middle East and mail everyone an economic stimulus check without raising taxes and that has also benefited the American people, at least in the short term.

However there is also a great deal to worry about here. China thinks of America as its primary adversary upon the world stage. Their short and medium term plans call for the creation of what Japan once termed the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" - with China rather than Imperial Japan in the driver's seat. The Chinese clearly intend to exert hegemony over all of Asia, including Japan, and they clearly intend to turn the South Pacific into an Chinese lake.

The American government sees Chinese attempts to penetrate our electronic security coming with increasing frequency and Chinese espionage against the US is approaching the levels previously seen from the KGB before the downfall of the USSR.

The Chinese are actively attempting to steal every political, military and industrial secret they can from the US and they are developing the ability to launch a cyber attack on the US which would take down our power grid, crash our banking and financial systems, take our land line and cell phone networks off line, crash the Internet, take down the air traffic control network, make the routing of trains impossible and disrupt military communications.

The Chinese are building a blue water navy to challenge the US Navy and deny the US any ability to support Taiwan in the event that the Chinese government decides to retake the island by force. They also intend to be able to place enough force on the table to deter the US from aiding the Philippines when China annexes the Spratley Islands - and their oil and gas reserves.

The Chinese are also building an ICBM force which can deliver a nuclear payload to any point in US territory (thank you Bill Clinton).

While the Chinese do regard US debt as a good investment they also see it as a potent weapon. Should the Chinese desire to do so they could inflict serious damage to the American economy by dumping that debt onto the world's financial markets. This would cause a major devaluation of that debt and of the US dollar. It would trigger a major loss of confidence in the US economy and lead to other nations pulling their investments out of the US. Oil would begin to be traded in Euros rather than dollars which would lead to further devaluations of the dollar.

This could very well send the US economy into a depression like the one we suffered through in the 1930's. Of course the Chinese would lose their 750 plus billion dollars, but might they not consider that price to win a world war to be well worth paying?

Clearly China represents a difficult problem for the US. America must get its fiscal house in order and the first step in that process is balancing the budget. Along with that we must once again tie our currency to gold so that it can not be inflated to anything like the degree we see now. America must pay down its debt so that it cannot be used as a weapon against us. We must improve our electronic security so that our critical systems are no longer vulnerable to hostile hackers and we must step up our counterespionage efforts in order to protect our secrets.

We must also evaluate the Chinese military, especially naval, buildup and maintain not just superior but overwhelmingly superior forces. The Chinese must not be tempted to think, even for one second, that they can move against the Spratleys, Japan or Taiwan without triggering an utterly crushing response from the United States.

Riding heavenward on a pillar of fire, and stolen technology

HONG KONG, Oct. 23 (AP) - (Kyodo)—A Chinese submarine will send test signals that could change the course of a satellite when China launches its first moon orbiter, as part of the country's effort to develop space war technology, a human rights watchdog said Tuesday.
The Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said two survey ships are deployed in the South Pacific Ocean and South Atlantic Ocean to send signals to maneuver the lunar exploration satellite, expected to be launched Wednesday. At the same time, a nuclear-powered submarine will send simulated signals to the satellite as a test, it said in a statement.

Once the satellite-maneuvering technology matures, the group said, China would have the know-how to destroy other satellites in space in wartime. China could launch cheaply-made weapon-carrying objects into space and change their courses to destroy or damage satellites of other countries by sending signals from submarines, the center said.

China shocked the world in January by firing a missile at an old weather satellite without notifying anyone in advance, showing off its anti-satellite weaponry and its ability to shoot down satellites without being immediately noticed.

[. . .]

China plans to launch the satellite around 6 p.m. Wednesday, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Monday, quoting a spokesman of the China National Space Administration. The satellite is named Chang'e I after the legendary Chinese goddess who, according to legend, flew to the moon.

Originally the satellite was to be named Clinton I after the legendary president who arranged for the Chinese to steal the technology to build and launch the satellite in exchange for illegal campaign contributions, however the name was changed at the last minute after Hillary Clinton complained to the Beijing government's liaison officer assigned to her campaign staff.

Mrs. Clinton's press spokesman did not return phone calls, however a campaign worker speaking on condition of anonymity said, ". . .it was just too obvious. I mean we're trying to fool brain-dead soccer moms into thinking that we care about their children more than their own husbands do and the ChiComs want to remind them that there are nuclear ICBMs pointed at their kid's schools because of what Hillary and her husband did a few years ago. Come on, it's a non starter. If the Chinese want to show their gratitude they can do it with a few more bundled contributions from Chinatown".

Clinton Co. a wholly owned subsidiary of the PRC

From The Los Angeles Times:

NEW YORK -- Something remarkable happened at 44 Henry St., a grimy Chinatown tenement with peeling walls. It also happened nearby at a dimly lighted apartment building with trash bins clustered by the front door.

And again not too far away, at 88 E. Broadway beneath the Manhattan bridge, where vendors chatter in Mandarin and Fujianese as they hawk rubber sandals and bargain-basement clothes.

All three locations, along with scores of others scattered throughout some of the poorest Chinese neighborhoods in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, have been swept by an extraordinary impulse to shower money on one particular presidential candidate -- Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Dishwashers, waiters and others whose jobs and dilapidated home addresses seem to make them unpromising targets for political fundraisers are pouring $1,000 and $2,000 contributions into Clinton's campaign treasury. In April, a single fundraiser in an area long known for its gritty urban poverty yielded a whopping $380,000. When Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) ran for president in 2004, he received $24,000 from Chinatown.

At this point in the presidential campaign cycle, Clinton has raised more money than any candidate in history. Those dishwashers, waiters and street stall hawkers are part of the reason. And Clinton's success in gathering money from Chinatown's least-affluent residents stems from a two-pronged strategy: mutually beneficial alliances with powerful groups, and appeals to the hopes and dreams of people now consigned to the margins.

Clinton has enlisted the aid of Chinese neighborhood associations, especially those representing recent immigrants from Fujian province. The organizations, at least one of which is a descendant of Chinatown criminal enterprises that engaged in gambling and human trafficking, exert enormous influence over immigrants. The associations help them with everything from protection against crime to obtaining green cards.

Many of Clinton's Chinatown donors said they had contributed because leaders in neighborhood associations told them to. In some cases, donors said they felt pressure to give.

The other piece of the strategy involves holding out hope that, if Clinton becomes president, she will move quickly to reunite families and help illegal residents move toward citizenship. As New York's junior senator, Clinton has expressed support for immigrants and greater family reunification. She is also benefiting from Chinese donors' naive notions of what she could do in the White House.

Campaign concerns

As with other campaigns looking for dollars in unpromising places, the Clinton operation also has accepted what it later conceded were improper donations. At least one reported donor denies making a contribution. Another admitted to lacking the legal-resident status required for giving campaign money.

Clinton aides said they were concerned about some of the Chinatown contributions.

"We have hundreds of thousands of donors. We are proud to have support from across New York and the country from many different communities," campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson said. "In this instance, our own compliance process flagged a number of questionable donations and took the appropriate steps to be sure they were legally given. In cases where we couldn't confirm that, the money was returned."

The Times examined the cases of more than 150 donors who provided checks to Clinton after fundraising events geared to the Chinese community. One-third of those donors could not be found using property, telephone or business records. Most have not registered to vote, according to public records.

And several dozen were described in financial reports as holding jobs -- including dishwasher, server or chef -- that would normally make it difficult to donate amounts ranging from $500 to the legal maximum of $2,300 per election.

Of 74 residents of New York's Chinatown, Flushing, the Bronx or Brooklyn that The Times called or visited, only 24 could be reached for comment.

Many said they gave to Clinton because they were instructed to do so by local association leaders. . .

And in a RELATED STORY:

After five years in power, President Hu Jintao has finally gained unquestioned control of China's massive military while transforming it into wealthy, high-tech fighting force, analysts said.

[. . .]

"It looks like he has full control over personnel now. He has continued to raise the military budget and will continue that. He's well established in power now," said Arthur Ding, a Chinese military expert at Singapore's Nanyang Technology University.

Hu's military priorities were shown in the selection of General Chen Bingde as general chief of staff, observers said.

Chen previously directed the unit that controlled the country's fast-developing space programme, and was a top commander of eastern China forces viewed as crucial to a potential conflict with Taiwan. [And we know where they got the technology to do all that modernizing, don't we]

"(Chen's selection) was a tough signal to Taiwan and it emphasises the military's modernisation in the high-tech era," said Cheng Li, a scholar with the US Brookings Institution.

Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin, upped spending to lift the PLA from a backward, bloated force to a modern military, and Hu has taken the baton with gusto.

The armed forces received 45 billion dollars in funding this year, an annual 17.8 percent increase and Hu has promised more in future years.

The spending [spending like on contributions to the Clinton Library and Massage Parlor] has opened new high-tech vistas for the former peasant force.

Last year it unveiled an advanced new homegrown fighter and in January made China only the third country to successfully test a satellite-killer missile, among other new high-tech toys. [Thank you Billy Blowjob]

"China's technology level is still below that of the United States and Europe [But not for long, if they can just get Hillary elected], but they are making steady progress," said Kevin Pollpeter, a China military expert at the US-based Centre for Intelligence Research and Analysis.

We really want Mrs. Bill Clinton in the White House come next year.

And the award for most craven goes to . . .

MATTEL !

Mattel was forced to deliver a humiliating public apology to ‘the Chinese people’ on Friday over the damaging succession of product recalls of China-made toys that the US toymaker has announced in recent months.

In a carefully stage-managed meeting in Beijing with a senior Chinese official, which, unusually, was open to the media, Thomas Debrowski, Mattel’s executive vice-president for worldwide operations, read out a prepared text that played down the role of Chinese factories in the recalls.

Usually it is the customer who is always right.

HWT, feared by tyrants

I saw this over on Shooting the Messenger and decided to give it a try. I am blocked as well. I would be deeply ashamed if the slavemasters of Red China were to consider it safe and approate for their oppressed subjects to have access to HWT.

Here is the link if you want to try it out yourself.

The dragon roars

BEIJING (Reuters) - Mattel has only itself to blame for a huge toy recall that has stoked global alarm about Chinese-made goods, state media said on Thursday, charging that a slew of foreign safety scares had exposed a protectionist agenda.

Mattel Inc, the world's largest toymaker, recalled over 18 million Chinese-made toys this month because of risks from small magnets that can injure children if swallowed, just two weeks after it recalled 1.5 million toys due to fears over lead paint.

Coming in the wake of warnings over Chinese-made toothpaste, pet food, tires, eels and seafood, and lethal chemicals that had found their way into medicine, the toy recall has magnified calls in Washington for much tougher scrutiny of such imports.

I expect more information this afternoon when a spokesman for China's Ministry of Unconvincing Denials holds a press conference in Beijing at the Pavillion of Eternal Mendacity.

Cartoon from Cox & Forkum

Economic warfare

From The Telegraph:

Two officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning - for the first time - that Beijing may use its $1.33 trillion (£658bn) of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress.

Shifts in Chinese policy are often announced through key think tanks and academies.

Described as China's "nuclear option" in the state media, such action could trigger a dollar crash at a time when the US currency is already breaking down through historic support levels.

It would also cause a spike in US bond yields, hammering the US housing market and perhaps tipping the economy into recession. It is estimated that China holds over $900bn in a mix of US bonds.

Xia Bin, finance chief at the Development Research Centre (which has cabinet rank), kicked off what now appears to be government policy with a comment last week that Beijing's foreign reserves should be used as a "bargaining chip" in talks with the US.

"Of course, China doesn't want any undesirable phenomenon in the global financial order," he added.

He Fan, an official at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, went even further today, letting it be known that Beijing had the power to set off a dollar collapse if it choose to do so.

"China has accumulated a large sum of US dollars. Such a big sum, of which a considerable portion is in US treasury bonds, contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the dollar as a reserve currency. Russia, Switzerland, and several other countries have reduced the their dollar holdings.

"China is unlikely to follow suit as long as the yuan's exchange rate is stable against the dollar. The Chinese central bank will be forced to sell dollars once the yuan appreciated dramatically, which might lead to a mass depreciation of the dollar," he told China Daily.

It is an article of faith among libertarians that economic ties between nations make conflict between them far less likely, even impossible. The old saying is that borders which are crossed by commerce will not be crossed by soldiers. This would lead a libertarian economist to declare that China's threat is empty because China would lose the majority of the value of its investment in US dollars if it triggered a collapse of the dollar.

However the libertarian economists forget that a nation which is fighting a war makes very large investments into things which might very well be destroyed. Aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines are things which can and will be expended in the event of war.

Economists make the assumption that on one will waste a trillion dollar investment, but what if you have invested in a trillion dollar weapon?

More dangerous consumer goods from China

WASHINGTON (AP) - Toy-maker Fisher-Price is recalling 83 types of toys—including the popular Big Bird, Elmo, Dora and Diego characters—because their paint contains excessive amounts of lead.

The worldwide recall being announced Thursday involves 967,000 plastic preschool toys made by a Chinese vendor and sold in the United States between May and August. It is the latest in a wave of recalls that has heightened global concern about the safety of Chinese-made products.

The recall is the first for Fisher-Price Inc. and parent company Mattel Inc. involving lead paint. It is the largest for Mattel since 1998 when Fisher-Price had to yank about 10 million Power Wheels from toy stores.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, David Allmark, general manager of Fisher-Price, said the problem was detected by an internal probe and reported to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Fisher-Price and the commission issued statements saying parents should keep suspect toys away from children and contact the company.

The reason that this kind of thing keeps happening with Chinese goods is that for decades China has been a communist totalitarian state. In such states the lie becomes utterly normal. One must giver assent to, repeat and give the outward appearance of believing all manner of lies as an everyday occurrence.

When a society destroys the value of truthfulness this is what inevitably happens. Especially when for most of China's history as a communist country its manufactured goods were mostly distributed within China and things like this would be covered up to prevent the state from suffering embarrassment.

See, I told you so

It's nice when the national press comes along an confirms one of my points so quickly. Remember how yesterday I posted about how tainted products from China were nothing new?

The Washington Post has more:

Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical.

Frozen catfish laden with banned antibiotics.

Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria.

Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.

These were among the 107 food imports from China that the Food and Drug Administration detained at U.S. ports just last month, agency documents reveal, along with more than 1,000 shipments of tainted Chinese dietary supplements, toxic Chinese cosmetics and counterfeit Chinese medicines.

For years, U.S. inspection records show, China has flooded the United States with foods unfit for human consumption. And for years, FDA inspectors have simply returned to Chinese importers the small portion of those products they caught -- many of which turned up at U.S. borders again, making a second or third attempt at entry.

Now the confluence of two events -- the highly publicized contamination of U.S. chicken, pork and fish with tainted Chinese pet food ingredients and this week's resumption of high-level economic and trade talks with China -- has activists and members of Congress demanding that the United States tell China it is fed up.

Like I said, China is not to be trusted as a trading partner. If the Chinese government owned businesses in China provide these kinds of products for consumption by the Chinese people (they do) then how can we expect them to care about the quality of what they provide Americans (who they consider to be the enemy)?

As far as I'm concerned this is the ONLY reason to have any qualms about Wal Mart whatsoever. They do pump billions of dollars into the PRC every year in order to keep their stores stocked with the least expensive merchandise possible.

If Wal Mart could be persuaded to begin using India as its supplier a great many evils could be avoided and a great deal of good could be accomplished.

The finest in oral hygiene that makes you blind

From The New York Times:

Diethylene glycol, a poisonous ingredient in some antifreeze, has been found in 6,000 tubes of toothpaste in Panama, and customs officials there said yesterday that the product appeared to have originated in China.

“Our preliminary information is that it came from China, but we don’t know that with certainty yet,” said Daniel Delgado Diamante, Panama’s director of customs. “We are still checking all the possible imports to see if there could be other shipments.”

Some of the toothpaste, which arrived several months ago in the free trade zone next to the Panama Canal, was re-exported to the Dominican Republic in seven shipments, customs officials said. A newspaper in Australia reported yesterday that one brand of the toothpaste had been found on supermarket shelves there and had been recalled.

Diethylene glycol is the same poison that the Panamanian government inadvertently mixed into cold medicine last year, killing at least 100 people. Records show that in that episode the poison, falsely labeled as glycerin, a harmless syrup, also originated in China.

There is no evidence that the tainted toothpaste is in the United States, according to American government officials.

This is not the first time that fraudulently labeled product from China has caused trouble. In addition to the tainted cough syrup mentioned in the Times article the tainted pet food which killed a good many animals because it was contaminated by the industrial chemical melamine originated in China.

The Chinese added the melamine to the vegetable products which are used in the production of the pet food in order to make it appear to have a higher protein content, giving it a higher sale price.

There are no private companies in China. Every business concern is either wholly owned by the Chinese government or has the government as a partner. These "anything we think we can get away with" business practices indicate that China is not a reliable trading partner.

I realize that the importation of inexpensive consumer products from China makes the average American's life better. However as long as the Chinese government engages in actions like these that we should deny them Most Favored Nation trading status (or normal trade relations as it is now called) and impose an extra tariff on Chinese imports in order to finance the extra inspections which are obviously necessary to ensure that Chinese goods are safe for American consumers.

Red China wants to play in the big leagues

China has been pushing ahead with construction of a mega-sized nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to be completed in 2020, according to a Chinese Communist Party's dossier.

A source close to Chinese military affairs said on March 27 that China has been promoting the construction of a 93,000-ton atomic-powered carrier under a plan titled the "085 Project." The nation also has a plan to build a 48,000-ton non-nuclear-powered carrier under the so-called "089 Project," added the source.

The source made such remarks based on government a dossier that reveals that China’s Central Military Commision recently approved the two projects. The dossier also contained specifications of the aircraft carriers.

[. . .]

Once the proposed Chinese carriers are deployed, the radius of the Chinese Navy’s range is expected to reach Guam, where a U.S. base is located. Thus, military experts are worried about China’s moves prompting an arms race in Northeast Asia.

The dossier said the construction of the nuclear-powered carrier will be completed in 2020. China State Shipbuiling Corp’s Jiangnan shipyard located on Changxing Island near Shanghai, will be responsible for its design and construction. The size is similar to former Soviet’s unfinished atomic-powered carrier Ulyanovsk, the dossier states. China reportedly secretly purchased the design of Ulyanovsk from Russia. When the nuclear-powered carrier is finished, China will own an aircraft carrier which is on par with the U.S.’s newest of such vessels, the 97,000-ton atomic-powered USS Ronald Reagan, which recently docked at Busan Port to participate in a joint exercise between the South Korean and U.S. militaries.

The Chinese may build a carrier which is "on par" with the Ronald Reagan and her sisters as far as size, but it will definitely not be their equivalent in capability, either the ship or the aircraft it will carry.

And when you factor in the soon to be deployed new generation of carriers (starting with the USS Gerald Ford) and the F-35 Lightening II fighters which it will carry the gap will open even more.

I'm afraid that the Chinese are just going to spend several tens of billions of dollars building great big floating targets for our gunners and naval aviators.

I can hardly wait for the show.

Doomed to fail

From NRO:

Even as Europe seems to slip further from its religious moorings, Christianity is growing rapidly elsewhere in the world, including in the PRC. The Chinese State Administration for Religious Affairs estimates that there now are 130 million Christians in China, roughly 10 percent of the population.

The number of Christians in China is increasing despite sustained state repression. Bob Fu, president of the China Aid Association (CAA), notes that “the unprecedented growth of the Chinese church has happened under ceaseless persecution.”

When Fu speaks of persecution, he is not referring to something mild. Some American Christians use the word to mean cultural hostility. Nasty as Hollywood can be, it cannot arrest and jail. Beijing can.

The CAA reports that, in 2006, “the Chinese government continued its general crackdown on unregistered house churches.” What is notable is Beijing’s change in strategy:

Although Public Security Officials still held church leaders detained in the raids for extended periods, church members were released after short interrogations on the spot. This strategy effectively decreased the number of arrests, but had the effect of transferring the pressure onto the church leaders, who were sometimes held for weeks or months. There is clear evidence that a number of these leaders were tortured and physically abused during the time they were held.

The CAA estimates that more than 600 Christians were detained in 2006, down from about 2,000 the year before. But most of those arrested last year were church leaders. Moreover, “local officials closed and demolished more house churches in 2006 than 2005.” China also targeted congregations as cults. “After being classified as a cult, House churches in Langzhong city, Sichun province were severely persecuted in 2006.”

Local authorities have raided meetings between Chinese Christians and overseas believers. CAA goes on to list episodes of arrests, detentions, and imprisonments of Christians, as well as church closings and building demolitions. Nor is that all. In addition, “homes of Chinese Christians have been searched, crowds of peaceful protestors have been charged with electric shock batons, and access to Bibles and teaching has been restricted.”

This will not work. You cannot kill Christianity by persecution you can only make it stronger. If the PRC wants to destroy the Church in China they should make it the state church. Give it plenty of money and big beautiful buildings. Pay the pastors large salaries dress them in fine cloths and give them big luxury cars to drive.

Then after 10 years of their getting used to all of this start telling them what to preach.

It is easy to hold on to your faith when you don't have anything else. It is somewhat more difficult to hold onto your faith when your hands are full of other things.

Hillary's skeletons

From Front Page Magazine:

It was an explosion nobody heard. And at more than 500 miles above the earth's surface, nobody could. But that January 11 outer-space collision -- a People's Republic of China medium-range, surface-to-air ballistic missile destroying one of its aging weather satellites -- ought to be a reminder of that country's military prowess, and how to some extent it obtained it, especially during the Nineties.

The Chinese government at first denied any intention to flex military muscle. Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao assured the press that his country "opposes the weaponization of space and any arms race." Yet several days later, Yao Yunzhu, a Chinese one-star general, speaking in flawless English at a World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, revealed different intentions. "Outer space is going to be weaponized in our lifetime," she said. If there's going to be a space superpower, "It will have company -- China."

Meanwhile, halfway around the world Senator Hillary Clinton announced on January 20 that she would be a candidate for president in 2008. The two events seemed unrelated -- on the surface. In fact, the evidence is persuasive that Mrs. Clinton, during her years as First Lady, knowingly facilitated the transfer of top U.S. military secrets by way of Chinese spies their network of military and financial influence-peddlers. What China got was technology. What she, her husband and their party got in return were campaign contributions and reignited political careers. Reporters ought to remind Hillary Clinton of three names above all others -- Charlie Trie, Johnny Huang and James Riady. Mrs. Clinton makes no mention of them in her post-White House memoir, Living History, nor does Bill Clinton cite them in his own memoir, My Life. There are, as one soon shall see, good reasons for their omissions.

Go read the rest and remember it when you vote.

China continues to arm

From The Washington Post:

BEIJING, March 5 -- China announced Sunday that it will increase military spending at a sharply higher rate this year, budgeting a rise of nearly 18 percent, and a senior U.S. official immediately called for clarity on the planned expenditures.

Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte said at a news conference at the end of his maiden visit to Beijing in his new post that the Bush administration is dissatisfied with China's unwillingness to share such information. "We think it's important in our dialogue that we understand what China's plans and intentions are," he said.

Did FDR share that kind of information with Germany and Japan? I didn't think so.

The sooner Washington wakes up and realizes that as far as China is conserned the US is enemy number one the better. China has already internalized the fact that they will one day engage in a military conflict with the US. That is unless we grow so weak that we will not dare challenge them.

Either way they intend to be the world's premier superpower and they will do anything they must do to achieve that goal.

Is anyone in Washington paying attention?

From The Washington Times:

China's military is engaged in a major buildup of submarines that includes five new strategic nuclear-missile boats and several advanced nuclear-powered attack submarines, according to the Office of Naval Intelligence.

The new nuclear-powered missile submarines (SSBNs), identified as Type 094s, will be outfitted with new 5,000-mile range JL-2 missiles that "will provide China with a modern and robust sea-based nuclear deterrent force," the ONI stated in report made up of written answers to questions on the Chinese submarine buildup.

[. . .]

The buildup is raising new concerns among senior Pentagon planners already worried by Beijing's broader strategic nuclear-forces buildup, which also includes several new long-range land-based nuclear missiles and a land-attack cruise missile similar to the Tomahawk.

"This is a troubling development," Richard Fisher, a specialist on the Chinese military with the private International Assessment and Strategy Center, said of the submarine buildup.

The five missile submarines, each equipped with 12 JL-2 missiles, shows that China is working to achieve a force of 120 long-range nuclear missiles over the next decade, about half of them to be carried on the submarines, Mr. Fisher said. The other half would be the 60 land-based DF-31 missiles that current deployment rates will give China by then, he said.

The 120 missiles also could have multiple-warheads, since China is known to have acquired all the needed technology from the U.S. during the 1990s. [Thank you Bill fraking Clinton - LC]

[. . .]

Chinese Gen. Zhu Chenghu told reporters in 2005 that China would attack U.S. cities with nuclear weapons in response to any conventionally armed U.S. missile strikes against China during a conflict over Taiwan. Years earlier, Gen. Xiong Guangkai threatened to use nuclear weapons against Los Angeles if the U.S. helped Taiwan defend against a Chinese invasion of the island.

[. . .]

The new advances are part of China's efforts to bolster its anti-ship weapons to permit strikes at greater ranges from the Chinese coast than its current diesel-powered submarine force offers, the ONI said. China currently is upgrading its current force of about 55 attack submarines -- most of them easy-to-track diesel boats -- with more-advanced and harder-to-track vessels, including Russian-made Kilos, and its own Song- and Yuan-class submarines.

The Kilos are the quietest submarines in the world. They will make it very difficult for our aircraft carriers to operate in the waters around Taiwan.

A Song-class submarine surfaced undetected within five miles, well within firing range, of the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk in October.

And if that didn't sound warning bells in the Pentagon then we need new admirals.

ONI also said that in addition to new destroyers, "by 2020, China is likely to operate an aircraft carrier, the initial unit of which may be the refurbished ex-Varyag, acquired from Ukraine in 2000, to further support SLOC protection."

Listen closely. China is the enemy. I know that the economic relationship we have with them is beneficial to US consumers and that the standard of living of the average Chinese citizen has gone up dramatically in recent years. However the behavior of the Chinese government indicates that their abandonment of economic Marxism did not come from any desire to liberalize their regime. It was, rather, a calculated decision geared toward bringing in as much hard currency as possible in order to purchase a dramatically expanded military capability.

A military capability which they intend to use to first establish hegemony in Asia then to challenge the US for dominance in the rest of the world.

The Chinese are building to a point where feel that they can engage in and win a war with the United States. This war will be fought on the sea and air with their new Navy, in cyberspace with attacks on the computer networks which everything from our banking system to our electrical power grid depend upon and on the economic front. The Chinese are holding nearly a trillion dollars of US debt which they believe could be used to crash the Western stock markets and destroy the value of the US dollar. They miscalculate in this as the debt would be repudiated in the event of war - you cannot expect folks who were communists up till a few years ago to get all the in and outs of capatalist economics, after all. But over all they have what appears to be an excellent plan.

I just hope we are comming up with an excellent counter plan.

Sombody blinked, Kim or US?

From The Washington Post:

BEIJING, Feb. 13 -- Envoys from six nations reached a tentative agreement early Tuesday on the first steps toward North Korea's nuclear disarmament, a potential breakthrough in talks that have faltered repeatedly since 2003.

The chief U.S. negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, qualified the draft accord as "excellent" but declined to provide details. He said it was being submitted to all six governments and, pending their formal approval, would be ratified at a meeting scheduled later Tuesday in Beijing.

"We would like to think that we can all agree on this," Hill said at a briefing for reporters. "We feel it is an excellent draft, so I don't think we would be the problem."

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, also suggested the tentative agreement was likely to gain formal approval by the six governments, including North Korea. He cited "extraordinarily strenuous efforts" in negotiations that lasted through the night, and said the delegates would gather again later Tuesday "to confirm the progress we have made."

[. . .]

The tentative agreement lays out the first concrete steps that would put into practice an accord reached in September 2005, in which the Pyongyang government pledged to dismantle its entire nuclear program. According to diplomats involved in five days of arduous talks here, the opening move would be for North Korea to close down its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and readmit international nuclear inspectors in exchange for energy aid.

In that regard, Tuesday's accord is expected to resemble an earlier bargain with North Korea, the Agreed Framework reached in 1994 during the Clinton administration but renounced eight years later during the Bush administration. Under that deal, North Korea pledged to freeze and eventually dismantle its reactor in return for 500,000 tons a year of heavy fuel oil.

If this is for real and by that I mean that the North Koreans abide by it then it is as significant victory for President Bush. It was Mr. Bush, you will remember, who steadfastly insisted on the six-party talks and refused to negotiate one-on-one with the North Koreans. The President realized that there is no nation on earth with more influence with the North Korean regime than China and that their participation would be key to forging any agreement which North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il would honor.

Of course the Post has to go on to point out that the deal is similar to the agreement reached during the Clinton administration:

In that regard, Tuesday's accord is expected to resemble an earlier bargain with North Korea, the Agreed Framework reached in 1994 during the Clinton administration but renounced eight years later during the Bush administration. Under that deal, North Korea pledged to freeze and eventually dismantle its reactor in return for 500,000 tons a year of heavy fuel oil.

The 1994 deal was the one negotiated behind the scenes by Jimmy Carter and dropped into the Clinton administration's lap. The Post seems to be implying that the agreement was "renounced" by the Bush administration. It was not. The North Koreans never honored the agreement. To them it was nothing more than a ruse to gain time and milk the West for some much needed supplies.

Carter may well have been stupid enough to believe that Kim would keep his word, or maybe not. I doubt that he cares how many people have to die to put another Nobel Peace Prize in his pocket, but either way I'm sure that Bill Clinton was not fooled.

As far as Bubba was concerned it simply took a thorny problem and pushed it onto the next administration. This was all a part of his master plan to coast through his term in office with high approval numbers. Anything difficult was to be avoided so as to keep the public blissfully asleep, mesmerized by the climbing values (on paper) of their portfolios.

It worked. Bill's numbers never went below 60% even during his impeachment trial and he never had to miss even one pole polishing session in the Oval Office. But it did leave a rather large and dangerous problem for the grownups to solve when he got through splashing around in the shallow end of the pool.

Of course not everyone is happy:

Despite a sense of achievement in Beijing, the deal was expected to face criticism in Washington, with Democrats charging the administration allowed North Korea to gain nuclear weapons through poor diplomacy in recent years and conservatives saying it shows weakness at a critical moment.

How Mr. Bush could be blamed for the inevitable and easily foreseen results of an agreement which was made six years before he even took office is not explained. The Democrat leadership has to try to pour cold water on this because it is a problem caused by a Democrat administration and she who was "co-president" during the years when North Korea was allowed to begin its Nuclear program is seeking the White House next year. In the left's minds the American public most definitely does not need to be reminded that all Clintons are good for is making dangerous messed which adults have to follow them around cleaning up.

One caveat in this is that John Bolton is also criticising the agreement and that is potentially a bad sign. However Mr. Bolton is no longer part of the administration and is not privy to any understanding which might exist between the United States and China regarding exactly how short a leash that the Chinese will allow Kim. After all the US has a very large bargaining chip which it can use in back-channel negotiations in that we have the ability to create a nuclear armed Japan overnight.

The exact nature of the six-party agreement will emerge over the next few days or weeks and I do not imagine that Kim will be allowed to skate on his compliance this time so I am tentively happy.

More on the High Frontier

The Economist comments on China's recent test of its anti-satellite weapon:

An arms race in space would leave everyone, including its “winner”, worse off. Likewise, insisting on a treaty or nothing, with interminable debates over the legal definition of what is a space weapon—just something that can be fired or also the sophisticated bits and pieces that help find and track targets too?—won't stop the emerging space competition turning ugly. Better to try something more modest: a code of responsible conduct between existing space powers that emerging ones could also sign up to.

No evidence is given to support their conclusion that in a space arms race even the "winner" (not the scare quotes) would be worse off. It is simply presented as though it were self evident, an axiom of the post-modern intelligentsia.

But let's look more closely at their thesis. In a space-based arms race could there be a winner and would the winner be worse off, or perhaps better off?

In the post WWII nuclear arms race between the US and the USSR it was not just possible but logical to maintain that a nuclear war would have no winner. Even if one side had been able to come through the conflict with a functioning government and manage to send an army of occupation to stand in the rubble of the "losing" side's cities what would its "victory" really have been worth?

However the prospect of a conflict over control of orbital space presents a different picture. In the first place the winner of this arms race will receive more than radioactive ash as a prize. The nation which secures dominance of orbital space will be immune from conventional or nuclear attack from land, sea, air or space. The only vulnerability the master of space will have is to terrorism, just as any nation can be attacked in that fashion today.

Along with mastery of orbital space comes the ability to play gatekeeper for the rest of the Solar system. Aside from Earth there are seven other planets, dozens of moons, a million asteroids and more than a billion comets and planetoids. Also virtually limitless free energy from the sun.

It is very difficult to see how The Economist can envision a "winnerless" outcome to any serious competition to rule the high frontier. Unless what is driving their evaluation of the situation is not rational thought, but a knee-jerk pacifism left over from the Cold War.

Either that or the Euroelite's Pavlovian reaction of disdain for anything the United States is able to do better than Europe.

It is now head out of sand time

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 21 — Bush administration officials said that they had been unable to get even the most basic diplomatic response from China after their detection of a successful test to destroy a satellite 10 days ago, and that they were uncertain whether China’s top leaders, including President Hu Jintao, were fully aware of the test or the reaction it would engender.

In interviews over the past two days, American officials with access to the intelligence on the test said the United States kept mum about it in hopes that China would come forth with an explanation.

It was more than a week before the intelligence leaked out: a Chinese missile had been launched and an aging weather satellite in its path, more than 500 miles above the earth, had been reduced to rubble. But protests filed by the United States, Japan, Canada and Australia, among others, were met with silence — and quizzical looks from officials in The Chinese Foreign Ministry, who seemed to be caught unaware.

How about this for an explanation; the Chinese don't care what we think and are letting us stew for a bit before they come forward with platitudes designed to soothe diplomats and imbeciles (OK, redundant).

The Chinese have proven that they can blind our intelligence gathering satellites, which would certainly be the first step in a planned conquest of Taiwan. This knowledge is intended to make us timid and accommodating. Especially with a congress which will be extremely reluctant to spend money defending the nation, rather than buying votes with social programs. After all to liberals appeasement is always more preferable than confrontation.

America needs to get off the stick and start taking the Chinese threat seriously. Otherwise we will wake up one morning and find that the power grid has crashed and is offline. The Internet is down along with our telecommunications network. The financial information in our banks and brokerage houses will be corrupted, wiping out pension funds and the bank accounts of the bulk of the population. Government operations will be compromised meaning federal employees will not be paid and the Social Security, VA and welfare checks will not be mailed or direct deposited.

Pipelines which carry oil and gas will be shut down and the nation's railroads will grind to a halt. The nation's industry which depends on electric power and "just in time" delivery of supplies, which in turn depends upon the telecommunications network and the Internet will have no choice but to shut down.

As the nation shivers in the cold (this will most likely come in winter) and floods the supermarkets attempting to barter jewelry and family heirlooms for food when cash is no longer enough (and in some areas people will fight to the death over cans of pork and beans) reports will trickle into the Pentagon about massive troop movements in China and massive amounts of shipping moving across the straits of Formosa toward Taiwan.

The American carrier battle group in the area may survive if it is in deep water where the Chinese diesel-electric submarines (almost perfectly silent) can't get to it, but it will be unable to effectively support the Taiwanese and lacking satellite communications be unable to even report its situation and request orders.

Of course scrambled computer data and crashed networks will be restored when technicians load backup copies of programs and files, but the costs will still be counted in the hundreds of billions. The damage to America's reputation as a superpower will be irreparable.

As sure as night follows day the world will begin realigning itself around a Chinese axis.

Everything I've said here can and will happen, but only if we allow it.