Restricting Space Travel

For John, BLUF:  This is over a month old, but the story has not gotten better with time and now SpaceX has sued the California Coastal Commission over obstruction based on Mr Musk's political views.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Biden Admin to SpaceX:  Drop Dead!

From Vodka Pundit, by Stephen Green, September 11, 2024, 10:00 AM.

Here is the lede plus three:

It isn't a joke whenever I say that the new space race is Elon Musk versus the rest of the world, and I'm not joking now when I tell you that his company's biggest competitor isn't China — and it certainly isn't Russia — but the Biden-Harris FAA.

SpaceX's Starship promises to revolutionize spaceflight by reducing launch costs by two orders of magnitude — that's a 99% savings — and vastly expanding current limits on the size and mass of what can be lifted into orbit and deep space.

If SpaceX can get permission to perform the necessary flight tests, that is — and the FAA is dragging its feet.

"Starships are meant to fly," the company reminded the Biden administration in a lengthy statement released on Tuesday. "We recently received a launch license date estimate of late November from the FAA, the government agency responsible for licensing Starship flight tests. This is a more than two-month delay to the previously communicated date of mid-September. This delay was not based on a new safety concern, but instead driven by superfluous environmental analysis."

"Starships are meant to fly."  That is correct.  There is, however, an apparent tension between our free enterpise approach of exploring space and the desire of progressives to protect the environment by constraining free lance exploration that damages our enviroment and could damage enviornments on other worlds.

My sense is that a cheap trick now will cost us later.  We need to let ingenuity roam free and count on self interest to ensure we do not act, in the long run, in stupid ways.  Early constraints on such exploration is reminiscent of China in 1405 to 1433, which had conducted seven voages by its treasure fleet, only to back away from it all and eventually fall into a period of decline, finally pulling out recently.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

China's Economy

For John, BLUF:  The economy in China is being kept moving by stimulations.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Did Democrats Take Control of China?

From VodkaPundit, by Blogger Stephen Green, 8:45 AM on 8 October 2024.

Here is the lede plus four:

Obamanomics — borrowed from FDR and since resurrected as Bidenomics — was the fine art of taking an economy that had been knocked on its back, firmly stepping on its throat with the jackboot of regulation, and bashing it repeatedly on the head with a giant sackful of money while shouting, "WHY WON'T YOU DO ANYTHING?"

While we're just four weeks out from learning whether Obamanomics will be rebranded once more as Kamalanomics, our friends in Communist China are learning the hard way what it's like to be ruled by truly ambitious Democrats. Or Communists. It's all so confusing sometimes.

The point is that China's massive economy has been flat on its back for a while now, thanks in no small part to strongman Xi Jinping's determination to restore Communist control. His severe COVID lockdowns only made things worse, convincing consumers that they'd better stuff all their money under the proverbial mattress.

This is where classic New Deal/Obamanomics comes in.

The New York Times breathlessly reported Monday that "China’s Policy Reversal Sparks ‘Mind Boggling’ Stock Rally." The report opened with, "Just a few weeks ago, many investors in China’s stock markets were ready to give up and eager to sell. Then late last month, traders rushed in to make bullish bets after the government’s leaders announced a series of steps to stimulate China’s faltering economy."

Then it fell and more stimulation is needed.

Is it possible that the economy in China is like the economy under Bidenomics?  At many levels no, but at some yes.  China is caught in an effort to be a capitalist society with Communist characteristics.  Perhaps the question is, how much freedom do people need to make a capitalist systaem work?

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Happy Leif Erikson Day

For John, BLUF:  Yes, there really is a Leif Erikson Day, here in the United States.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Anglosphere: Celebrating Wrong Italian? (Columbus vs. Cabot)

From Free Republic, by Tancred, 10/13/2002, 1:02:58 PM.

Here is the lede plus three:

A few years ago I chanced to be in Buenos Aires on Columbus Day. It is a major holiday there, during which no business is transacted. I spent the day wandering about town enjoying the celebrations. One plaza held a Columbus Day festival in which passersby could enjoy demonstrations and samples of music, dance, crafts and foods of all the various Latin American nations, and of many of the source-nations of Argentina's immigration.

The interesting thing to me was the complete absence of anything representing the United States. This was not a coincidence. Columbus, and the holiday celebrating his landing in the New World, are seen throughout the Spanish-speaking world as having to do primarily with the extension of Spanish-speaking, Catholic civilization to the New World and the creation, through a conflicted encounter, of a new culture. It is, to coin a phrase, the creation of the Hispanosphere that is commemorated.

Traditionally, the role played by the United States in this narrative is not one of a joint participant, but rather an antagonist. In the narrative of Hispanosphere nationalists, Latin America is Shakespeare's Ariel, the graceful and sensitive artistic spirit. The United States, or "Gringolandia" as it is sometimes called, is Caliban, the powerful but ugly monster that dominates tragic Ariel.

Columbus Day in the United States carries an entirely different set of connotations. During the 19th century, Columbus was reinvented by Washington Irving and his successors as a sort of Yankee visionary entrepreneur before his time. His specific roots in time, space, and culture as a Genoese in the service of Spanish monarchs was downplayed; what was celebrated was his seeming prescience and capacity for self-reinvention.

Why do I say Leif Erikson Day?  Supposedly he led the first European Expedition to the Western Hemisphere.  On the other hand, there are myths of Irish sailors coming to the New World.  There is also evidence of early exploration from Europe, as presented in Across Atlantic Ice: The Origin of America's Clovis Culture, by Archaeologists Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley.  They argue that Solutrean groups from southern France and the Iberian Peninsula crossed the North Atlantic and into North America during the Last Glacial Maximum.  That was a long time ago.

But, Joohn Cabot should be celebrated also.  I think he got short shrift when I was in school.  A round of applause for John.

To mention this is not to take away from Indigenous Peoples' Day.  We should not avoiod the reality and history of those who were on the land before Admiral Columbus arrived.

However, first contact was inevitable, if it had not happened thousands of years earlier.  For example, the Chinese could have been first, with bigger boats but they chose to sail toward Africa, then shut it down in 1433, and then close their shipyards.  If Admiral Zheng He had elected to sail East, rather than West, then we could have blamed him.  Id the Polynesians could find and settle Hawaii, in the middle of the Pacific OOcean, why could China not find what is now Mexico.

Instead of whinging about the past, we should celebrate what we have.  Change was always inevitable.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Free Passage for International Trade

For John, BLUF:  China is trying to expand its maritime frontiers and this has resulted in confrontations with a number of nearby states.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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China's attempt to seize another island in the South China Sea failed (for now)

From Hot Air, by Reporter John Sexton, 26 August 2023, 5:30 PM.

Here is the lede plus two:

There has been a strategic battle taking place in the South China Sea this year between China and the Philippines.  As you probably know, China has laid claim to most of the South China Sea and over the past decade has been using a strategy called the cabbage strategy to gradually claim individual islands.

The cabbage strategy involves surrounding islands with Chinese boats like the leaves of a cabbage.  China starts with fishing vessels, dozens of which anchor around an island or shoal making it difficult for any other vessels to approach.  Once that’s done, Chinese Coast Guard vessels move in to surround the fishing boats and formally prevent other boats from coming close.  Having established control, the fishing boats go away and sends in construction equipment to militarize the island.

One of the islands China has its eyes on is called Ayungin Shoal or, to foreigners, Second Thomas Shoal. Ayungin Shoal is only a few miles east of Mischief Reef, an area that China has already claimed and heavily militarized.  Both islands are well within the Philippines exclusive economic zone which stretches 200 miles to sea from the coast.

China relies on The Nine Dash Line as its legal authority to claim the whole of the Suoth China Sea as its own.  If China was able to claim at the waters encmpassed by The Nine Dash Line it would put a severe crimp in international ocean, and aviation, traffic.  On the other hand. resisting Chinese expansiono includes military confrontation.

Per Wikipedia, in January 2013, the Philippines initiated arbitration proceedings under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) over a range of issues, including China's historic rights claims inside the nine-dash line.  On 12 July 2016, the tribunal ruled in favor of the Philippines on most of its submissions.

The United States should support other nations in their assertions of their rights in the Suoth China Sea.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

The Joke

For John, BLUF:  .  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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China has fallen into a psycho-political funk

Here is the sub-headline:

Fragile consumer confidence is just one sign of a malaise that is not merely economic

From The Financial Times, by Reporter James Kynge, 11 August 2023.

Here is the lede plus three:

Sly, Soviet-style jokes are enjoying a subtle revival on Chinese social media platforms.  Their art resides in being too obscure for censors to understand yet clear enough for cynics to chuckle at their mockery.

Some are so esoteric that their satire is confirmed only by the censors’ decision to delete them — echoing the cat-and-mouse dynamic that distinguished dissident humour in the former Soviet Union.  One joke this week monitored by the China Digital Times, a US-based site that covers Chinese affairs, belonged to this genre.

It read:

While out and about on vacation, I stubbed my toe on something. Upon closer inspection, I saw it was a bronze lamp.  It was smudged, so I picked it up and gave it a good wipe — and out popped a genie!  The genie said it could grant me any wish. ‘Is that so?’ I said.  ‘Well then, could you make you-know-who you-know-what?’  No sooner had the words escaped my lips than the genie rushed over, clamped my mouth shut, and asked:  ‘Are we even allowed to say that?’

The author’s account appears to have been shut down after the joke was deleted.

I hope we are not headed down the path of a humorless social credit society.  That would be the end of open capitalism and the economic growth we need to give everyone a chance to achieve their best.  It likely would be the end of open worship of one's God.

Let us, as a society, accept that some people will be wrong, but the advantage to society of free inquiry requires we accept such people as our brothers and sisiters, even if they reject us.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Our Lost Hope For a Western Oriented Russia

For John, BLUF:  We sent some talented people to help in the transition from the Soviet system, but they failed.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Russia’s Great Transformational Failure

Here is the sub-headline:

Hopes that post-Soviet Russia would join the ranks of prosperous liberal democracies have proven to be a chimera

From Tablet Magazine, by Postdoctoral Fellow Ms Maria Snegovaya, 28 September 2022.

Here is the lede plus one:

The collapse of the Soviet system led to a period of hope in Russia.  Throughout the 2000s, it was popular to describe Russia as a “normal country.”  The changes it went through during its transition from Soviet communism to a Westernized, market-based economy and parliamentary system were agreed to be irreversible, setting the stage for the country to eventually join the club of liberal democracies.

Thirty years later, however, it seems clear that Russia’s much-heralded modernization effort was a failure.

In the early 1990s, the political scientist Claus Offe explained the nature of the unique challenges faced by countries across the post-communist region, which he called the triple transformation:  the political transition from autocracy to democracy; the economic transition from planned to market economy; and a national transition from empire to nation-building.  While post-communist countries saw varying degrees of success, it is the failure to modernize along all three dimensions that distinguishes Russia.

As we look across the Globe we see Democracy, in various forms, the Communist Chinese approach of Social Credit and the Russian approach of authoritarianism.  To my surprise, and disappointment, the Russian model is gaining support in some areas.  However, notwithstanding the bleating from some in the US, authoritarianism does not appear to have a foothold here.

This is where a good foreign information program might be of value.  While I doubt such a program could overthrow the Social Credit syetem (it will have to undo itself by thwarting all aspects of freedom) it can help other nations cope with authoritarian aspects of thei government.  We have Madison Avenue.  We should be able to sell democracy and the freedom aspects of capitalism.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

The Eye for the Long Term

For John, BLUF:  A lot of us go for the quip that captures the moment, but ignores the long run.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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It’s time to admit it:  Mitt Romney was right about Russia

From CNN, by Editor-at-large Chris Cillizza, 22 February 2022, 3:42 PM EST.

Here is the lede plus three:

A decade ago, Mitt Romney went on CNN and made a statement that was widely perceived as a major mistake.

“Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe,” Romney, who would be the Republican presidential nominee in the 2012 race against President Barack Obama, told Wolf Blitzer in March of that year.  “They — they fight every cause for the world’s worst actors.”

Obama and his team pounced on the comment, insisting that it showed Romney was hopelessly out of touch when it came to the threats facing the US.

In the third presidential debate between the two candidates in October 2012, Obama went directly after Romney for that remark.  “When you were asked, ‘What’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America,’ you said ‘Russia.’  Not al Qaeda; you said Russia,” Obama said.  “And, the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”

That is the way it is with National Security, with Foreign Affairs.  There are the immediate threats and there are the long term threats, the threats that existed decades ago and will still exist decades from now.  We should remember that 400 years ago China was the world's largest economy and 500 and some years ago China had the biggist "Truasure Fleet", in numbers and in size of ships.  China dismantled that fleet and it is taking a long time to recover.

It is nice to see CNN admit this error of the moment, back a decade ago.

Regards  —  Cliff

Academia Takes Another Hit, And Doesn't Notice

For John, BLUF:  Wokeness is destroying the institutions of higher learning.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Jordan Peterson resigns from his tenured position at University of Toronto

From The National Post by Mr John Sexton, 20 January 2022, 7:20 PM ET.

Here is the lede plus one:

Yesterday, Jordan Peterson announced he had recently become a professor emeritus a bit sooner than he’d planned.  His explanation for the decision was published by the National Post:

I had envisioned teaching and researching at the U of T, full time, until they had to haul my skeleton out of my office.  I loved my job.  And my students, undergraduates and graduates alike, were positively predisposed toward me.  But that career path was not meant to be…

First, my qualified and supremely trained heterosexual white male graduate students (and I’ve had many others, by the way) face a negligible chance of being offered university research positions, despite stellar scientific dossiers.  This is partly because of Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity mandates (my preferred acronym: DIE).  These have been imposed universally in academia, despite the fact that university hiring committees had already done everything reasonable for all the years of my career, and then some, to ensure that no qualified “minority” candidates were ever overlooked.  My students are also partly unacceptable precisely because they are my students.  I am academic persona non grata, because of my unacceptable philosophical positions.

Professor Jordan B Peterson is the author of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, a valuable read.  He has be cited several times in this blog.

It is embarrasing, and alarming, that China is sending its second tier students to US, and I assume Canadian, institutions of higher learning.  Why?  Because our schools are focused on woke issues, and not excellence in academic pursuits.

We need to admit the sins of the past, and that some in the present have not lived up to our national ideals, both here and in Canada, and then move on, together.  We are not doing that and it is impeding progress on all fronts, to our detriment.  If we wish our future to be dictated to by the CCP, to do it the way the CCP thinks it should be done, all we have to do is keep doing what we are doing.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Vaccine Mandates

For John, BLUF:  President Biden seems to have little tolerence for pushback  If people won't do it his way, he doubles down, the Constitution be damned.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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The Horrific Outcomes of the Jacobson Case You’re Using to Justify Biden’s Vaccine Mandates

Here is the sub-headline:

Biden is about to find out that he’ll have as hard of a time eradicating freedom and personal choice in this country as trying to eradicate the coronavirus.

From The Hannah H Cox Blog, by Ms Hanna Cox, 10 September 2021.

Here is the lede plus three:

It’s been a hell of a news cycle for bodily autonomy.

The left is in histrionics over the new Texas abortion law that bans the procedure after six weeks, and the rest of us are aghast at Biden’s new executive order forcing private companies to mandate COVID vaccines for their employees.

You’ll find few people in both camps, however, a testament to just how partisan and unprincipled our country has truly become.  That’s a tangent for another time, though.  Right now, I want to talk about the legality of Biden’s mandate.

Even before the ink dried one could hear the lawsuits being filed.

The legality of mandating vaccines is based on the 1905 case, Jacobson v. Massachusetts.  This originated in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and made its way to the US Supreme Court.

Then there is the 1927 case, Buck v. Bell.  At the height of the Eugenics movement.  This ruling, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., of Massachusetts, said it was legal to sterilize those who were "feebleminded."

On the other hand, we have Roe v Wade, which legalized abortion.♠  How does "Our Bodies! Our Choice!" fit into this?

If the Courts empower and encourage President Biden in this area we will see a further erosion of our civil rights in the United States and we will become a little more like the People's Republic of China.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  There was no abortion and the name of the child, a daughter was recently revealed.

Is Social Credit Coming?

For John, BLUF:  Social Credit, as understood here is the Chinese Communist Party System, calling "for the establishments of unified record system for individuals, businesses and the government to be tracked and evaluated for trustworthiness."  If you don't have credit, you can't do business.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Democrats Move to Take Over Your Credit Score and Go Full 'Woke' – Just Like Communist China

from PJ Media, by Reporter Victoria Taft, 11 July 2021, 3:21 PM ET.

Here is the lede plus three:

That was fast.  Here come the Chinese-like social credit scores.

Leftist Democrats, but I repeat myself, are making no secret of their plans to become more like their comrades in China.  They support vaccine passports for COVID mRNA shots in order for people to receive certain social rewards such as going to school or attending a Major League Baseball game, just like the social credit score system in the People’s Republic.  Now, Democrats and Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, want your FICO score to go full “woke.”

They’re not even trying to hide it.

USA Today reports that in testimony before Waters’s committee on June 29, the counsel for a group called the National Consumer Law Center, Chi Chi Wu, a product of Harvard and Johns Hopkins, gave away the game on how her law-fare grifting group and people like them want to change FICO credit scores.  Wu and her fellow travelers got a warm reception at the three-hour-plus hearing.

Plainly, social credit, as understood in this context, is anathma to democracy.  When the Government and industry tracks your life based on their perception of your trustworthiness, then you are not free, but are a puppet.  The social credit score determines you educational opportunities, your job progression, your standing in your society.

It is all bad.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Saving the Humans

For John, BLUF:  For the Progressives in the United States there seems to be a sense that the Uyghurs are small potatos and their fate is not worth upsetting the climate apple card over.  How utilitarian of them.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Biden’s new Cold War with China will result in climate collapse, progressives warn

Here is the sub-headline:

A political fight is brewing among wings of the Democratic Party over Beijing’s help in curbing climate change versus curbing its human rights abuses.

From Politico, by Mr Alexander Ward, 7 July 2021, 05:05 PM EDT.

Here is the lede plus three:

As a new Cold War takes shape between the U.S. and China, progressives fear the result will be a dramatically warming planet.

Over 40 progressive groups sent a letter to President Joe Biden and lawmakers on Wednesday urging them to prioritize cooperation with China on climate change and curb its confrontational approach over issues like Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong and forced detention of Uyghur Muslims.

It's the latest salvo in the months-long drama between progressive Democrats who say cooperation on climate change should take precedence over competition with China, and moderates who think the administration can do both things at once.  As the Biden administration solidifies its China strategy, and as anti-China legislation moves through Congress, this intra-Democratic tussle could define the U.S.-China relationship for years to come.

The progressive organizations, including the Sunrise Movement and the Union of Concerned Scientists, “call on the Biden administration and all members of Congress to eschew the dominant antagonistic approach to U.S.-China relations and instead prioritize multilateralism, diplomacy, and cooperation with China to address the existential threat that is the climate crisis,” their letter reads.  “Nothing less than the future of our planet depends on ending the new Cold War between the United States and China.”

Frankly, there is not much we can o to save the Uygurs from their fate.  We can't effectively intervene to protect them.  If they leave China we can offer them refuge, but what are the odds that they can escape?  Unlike Cubans trying to escape to Florida, the Uygurs are landlocked, in the Western part of China.

On the other hand, should we just roll over on the issue of human rights?  Which leads to a deeper question.  Are human rights universal, as the Declaration of Independence states, or are they a construct given us by the state?  There are implications with the second option, including that our effort to provide equal rights to all is unique to us and some other nations who trace their governmental system back to 1215 AD an the meeting of the Barons with King John.♠ 

I think the Progressives petitioning the Biden Administration, and protesting at the White House, blocking entrances, have this stick by the wrong end.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  The implication is that if you think your freedom is limited here, it could be much worse in other places, even places your ancestors left hundreds of years ago.

Save The Uyghurs

For John, BLUF:  While some are calling for saving the environment, others are trying to save ethnic minorities, caught up in larger social movements.  Some ethnic minorities are not making the progressive cut.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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'Climate Change' vs. the Uyghurs

From The Pipeline, by Mr Tom Finnerty, 08 July 2021.

Here is the lede plus one:

Pretty shocking -- Politico reports on growing tensions within the Democratic coalition, with the environmental activist faction of the party objecting to even the mildest attempts by the Biden administration to confront China over its human rights violations and international aggression.

As a new Cold War takes shape between the U.S. and China, progressives fear the result will be a dramatically warming planet.  Over 40 progressive groups sent a letter to President Joe Biden and lawmakers on Wednesday urging them to prioritize cooperation with China on climate change and curb its confrontational approach over issues like Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong and forced detention of Uyghur Muslims.

The problem for the Biden administration is that American public opinion has shifted significantly against China in recent years, such that according to a recent Pew survey, 89 percent of Americans "consider China a competitor or enemy, rather than a partner."  This move began with Donald Trump calling out China's predatory trade policy and intellectual property violations before he was even president and continued through then-President Trump and Chairman Xi's trade war.  It was cemented, however, by the CCP's handling of the Covid-19 outbreak last year, which, if the no-longer-a-conspiracy-theory lab leak hypothesis turns out to be true, would mean that China is responsible for the most significant man-made disaster in human history.

The pronunciation of the ethnic group, the Uyghurs, is WEE-goorz.

The Uyghurs are an Islamic ethnic group, which has resisted assimilation into the larger Han population.  They have been sent to re-education camps, their reproductive freedom restricted, their women violated and their organs harvested.  Bad as all this is, there is little we can do about it, ecept scold and impose economic sanctions.  The Author notes that the Progressive Environmentalists want us to do nothing, for the sake of their ideology.

But for the environmentalists, none of this really matters.  They've convinced themselves that climate is the preeminent political issue, and no other consideration comes close.  Many of them would even argue that American capitalism and climate change are inseparable -- even indistinguishable -- political problems, never mind the fact that, while the U.S. has led the world in total carbon emissions decline since 2000, China's new coal-fired energy capacity alone outstripped the rest of the world by 300 percent in 2020.

When you think it is the end of the world in just a few years then your survival instincts kick in and all else falls away, including moral clarity.  Avoiding the Apocolypse becomes the focus.  I can understand it, and yet still I believe these are misguided thoughts.  We are not facing an existential climate disaster.  Is action required to secure our future?  Yes.  However, it should be doable within the larger context of our society.  We can think and engineer our way out of climate change issues, and in doing so guard against the consequences of the iron law:  "Every solution contains the seeds of a new problem."

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

The Source

For John, BLUF:  Why did it all of a sudden become acceptable to question the origin of COVID-19?  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Sudden Shift in COVID-19 Lab Leak Narrative ‘Mysterious’:  Evolutionary Biologist

From The Epoch Times, by Reporters Isabel van Brugen and Jan Jekielek, 2 July 2021.

Here is the lede plus one:

The sudden shift in narrative over the possibility that COVID-19 could have emerged from a lab in Wuhan, China, is mysterious and contingent to “just how corrupt our system has become,” according to evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein.

Weinstein, biologist and co-host of the DarkHorse Podcast, has since last year explored the possibility that COVID-19 could have emerged from a laboratory.  He told Epoch TV’s “American Thought Leaders” program (episode premiering on Sat. July 3) that the fact that the hypothesis is now receiving widespread recognition from the international community is “completely mysterious.”

How much of this is really about the media, including the technocrat managers of socoal media, trying to curate the story?.

Knowing, if we can, does not mean that justice will be done.  But, it will allow for a democratic process to sort through the the proper actions, within the law.

Regards  —  Cliff

Self-Hating West

For John, BLUF:  As the Chinese Communist Party celebrates its 100th Anniversary, and is pushing its own form of toltalitarianism, it seems the United States no longer has an attractive model for its own citizens and for those abroad, except for illegal immigrants.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Marketing optimistic Chinese self confidence vs Western managed decline

From The Belmont Club, by Mr Richard Fernandez, 1 July 2021.

Here is the lede:

Xi Jinping has projected himself as the ‘Strong Horse’ and painted China as an attractive future in contrast to Joe Biden and the self-hating West which cannot even find something good to say about itself.

"The self-hating West.  That sums up a serious problem.

Chinese Citizens, Uyighers and Tibetins aside, have a common narrative, and rhe Chinese Communist Party pushes that narrative on those who are Chinese descendents in other nations.  What do we have to offer on the 4th of July 2021?  Apparently no longer the Magna Carta and the Rights of Englishmen.

What is it that unites us in the United Statees this 4th of July?  Is it only our belief tht Caucasians are a special form of evil, as expressed in Critical Race Theory.  I understand the desire for revenge, but when revenge becomes self-defeating it is time to move on to forgiveness and a quest for unification.  Are we there yet?

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

A Peaceful Spring in the Western Pacific?

For John, BLUF:  Once upon a time Formosa was independent, and then it wasn't and then Chiang Kai-Shek fled Mainland China with his Koumingtang Government and forces and declared he was still the head of China, in the face of control of the Mainland by Mao Zedong, and now, 72 years later, China wants Formosa (Taiwan) "back".  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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China Fighter Jets Will Fly Over Taiwan to Declare Sovereignty, State Media Says

From MSN (Newsweek), John Feng, 13 April 2021.

Here is the lede plus three:

Chinese fighter jets will fly over Taiwan to "declare sovereignty" if relations between Washington and Taipei continue to improve, a prominent state media figure said after Beijing sent 25 warplanes toward the island on Monday.

Hu Xijin, chief editor of China's nationalistic Communist Party newspaper the Global Times, fired back at recent comments by Secretary Antony Blinken and said the military operation was a response to the State Department's loosening of interaction guidelines between officials from the U.S. and Taiwan.

The People's Liberation Army would "step up military pressure" in the event of a further warming of U.S.-Taiwan ties, he said.  "If Taiwan forces open fire, that will be the moment of all-out war across the Taiwan Strait," he added.

The People's Republic of China claims ownership of democratic Taiwan despite having never governed it in the seven decades since its founding after the Chinese Civil War.  The Chinese government has never renounced the use of force in its ultimate goal of "reunifying" the island, while Taiwan continues to be run as a de facto state and maintains several unofficial, yet crucial, global partners in an ambiguous existence known as the status quo.

This is definitely a place where open conflict could erupt.  Not a guarantee, but we have seen shelling before.  On the other hand, if the US becomes embroiled in warfare in Ukraine it might be considered by China as being distracted and an ideal time to move on Taiwan.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

The Right to be Wrong

For John, BLUF:  We are facing a crackdown on dissident views the Victorians or the Puritans would be proud of.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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YouTube pulls Spectator editor interview with Trump lawyer John Eastman

Here is the sub-headline:

Big Tech threatens to ban nonprofit for discussing alleged election fraud

From The Spectator US, by "Cockburn", 5 April 2021, 9:54 am.

Here is the lede plus one:

Over three-quarters of Republicans believe that there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election and about a third of all Americans believe that President Biden’s win was illegitimate.  When tens of millions of Americans lose faith in the system, that spells serious trouble for democracy.  A normal and healthy country would allow a fair and open debate about whether or not fraud occurred, and, if so, how much fraud and what evidence exists to back up these claims.  Instead, Big Tech platforms have repeatedly censored any mention of voter fraud at all.

Such was the case late last week when YouTube and Vimeo pulled a video interview with Trump lawyer John Eastman.  Cockburn’s colleague and The Spectator‘s Washington editor, Amber Athey, is a fellow at the Steamboat Institute and was invited to conduct the interview with Eastman at an event in Colorado.  The event was called, ‘What Really Happened?  An Insider’s Perspective on Representing the President and Claims of Election Fraud.’

Information does want to be free, but Big Tech is going to try to stifle it.  Thus the old fashioned sin of gossip will still flourish in the age of electronics.  Unless we go to a totalitarian regime, where all fear being reported to "the authorities" by friends and relatives, people will exchange information on the side.  It is slower that the Main Stream Media, but works as well.  It is what fueled the exchange of ideas in pre-Revolutionary War America.  Even in the Soviet Union there was the Samizdat Press.

However, today we do face the practice of Social Credit, as practiced in China.  To quote Wikipedia,

The social credit initiative calls for the establishments of unified record system for individuals, businesses and the government to be tracked and evaluated for trustworthiness.  Initial reports suggested that the system utilized numerical score as the reward and punishment mechanism; recent reports suggest there are in fact multiple, different forms of the social credit system being experimented with.  Numerical system has been implemented only in several regional pilot programs, while the nationwide regulatory method has been based primarily on blacklisting and whitelisting.  The credit system is closely related to China's mass surveillance systems such as Skynet, which incorporates facial recognition system, big data analysis technology, AI and Project Maven.

But, back in the United States, we are doing a cancel culture thing, where one is considered PNG (persona non grata) for holding the wrong views.  Thus Big Tech censoring certain produced materials.  Until we rebuild a concensus that information needs to be free, so that approaches to problems can be democratically determined, we will have censorship,  Until we learn to tolerate the views of others we will not be a Democracy in the best sense of the world.  We need to learn that people have the right to be wrong.  They don't have the right to impose their wrong thinking on others, but they have the right to hold wrong views.

Hat tip to my Wife.

Regards  —  Cliff

Narrow Minds

For John, BLUF:  Those pushing "White Supremacy" as the key to unlocking the secrets of society have a narrow view of society and of history.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Ideology Destroys Sanity, Scholarship

From The American Conservative, by Commentator Rod Dreher, 8 April 2021, 7:51 PM.

Here is the lede plus one:

Writing at Yahoo! News, Prof. Jennifer Ho, president of the Association of Asian American Studies and a faculty member at the University of Colorado Boulder, would like you to know that when black people attack Asians, it’s really white people’s fault:

The point I’ve made through all of those experiences is that anti-Asian racism has the same source as anti-Black racism: white supremacy.  So when a Black person attacks an Asian person, the encounter is fueled perhaps by racism, but very specifically by white supremacy.  White supremacy does not require a white person to perpetuate it.

This makes everything the fault of Caucasian males of European origin.  That they represent a culture is not relevant.  It is the wrong culture.  However, it is a serious question to ask, if Admiral Zheng He had sailed East, rather than West, in 1405, would the West still be the wrong culture, or would it be an oppressed minority under the colonial thumb of another culture?

Later in the article is this summation of the state of academia.

This is what totalitarians do: they destroy the cultural memories of a people in order to make them easier to control.  It is gobsmacking that the gatekeepers and guardians of educational institutions are capitulating in the destruction of the institutions they have been charged with defending.

Why would anyone want to go into academics today?  Serious question.  I keep saying it over and over, and maybe somebody will believe me and act:  all those who want to save the humanities in this Dark Age had better stop trying to shore up this rotten imperium, and instead start building the equivalent of early medieval monasteries:  communities within which knowledge and traditional academic practices can survive this barbarian epoch.  I’m not exaggerating.  It’s that serious.

Perhaps, as we broaden our knowledge of other cultures, and of world history, we will come to appreciate what contributions Western Cukture has made.

Perhaps we will come to realize the Declaration of independence promised more than mere mortals could deliver all at once, but that it was a framework for overcoming our own narrow views and for making it a better world.

Regards  —  Cliff

Our Changing Culture

For John, BLUF:  We look back at the Victorian Era and think how quaint their ideas were.  I wonder if those who follow us will look back on us and think the same way.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Radical New Rules for Post-America

Here is the sub-headline:

Americans privately fear these rules, while publicly appearing to accept them.

From American Greatness, by Historian Victor Davis Hanson, 31 March 2021.

Here is the lede plus one:

There are 10 new ideas that are changing America, maybe permanently.

. . .

Americans privately fear these rules, while publicly appearing to accept them.

Professor Hanson lists ten items, and they all reflect how we are evolving.  And not in a good way.

I am optomistic.  As a Republic we had a glaring defect early on, which gave us a Civil War.  Then we had segregation, which limited life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but we mostly made it go away.  We do need a “spiritual” revival that revives the belief in hard work and personal trust that elevates all.  I think of our Nation's Capitol's Quadrants and the contrast I remember from 25 years ago between NE and SE.  If SE can be more like NE and we can avoid a major nuclear blowup with a resurgent (after 500 years) China, or an all out war in the Ukraine, things are going to be peachy. Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

China Going Bust Long Term

For John, BLUF:  Demographics is destiny.  Right now China is the world's most populous nation, with India in a close second.  However, 43 years ago China did something about its population growth.  Now they are seeing the consequences.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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The Coming Demographic Collapse of China

Here is the sub-headline:

China this century is on track to experience history’s most dramatic demographic collapse in the absence of war or disease.

From The National Interest, by Analyst adn Author Gordon G. Chang, March 23, 2021.

Here is the lede plus three:

China this century is on track to experience history’s most dramatic demographic collapse in the absence of war or disease.

Today, the country has a population more than four times larger than America’s. By 2100, the U.S. will probably have more people than China.

China’s National Bureau of Statistics typically releases population data for the preceding year in early March. This year, NBS delayed its announcement because the central government is scheduled next month to announce preliminary results of the 7th national census, conducted in November and December.

The image of Chinese economic and geopolitical dominance will be severely dented when Beijing releases census data. Xi Jinping may believe “the East is rising and the West is declining”—the money line from one of his speeches late last year—but that view will be exceedingly hard to maintain.

It appears that China is continuing to suffer from it's "one child" policy of 1978.  It appears that when a nation changes a social policy unintended consequences follow and reversal of the change is not easy.  It is possible that the head of the Chinese Communist Party, General Secretary Xi Jinping, is whistling through the graveyard.

in order to understand the underlying structure you have to deal in TFR, or Total
Fertility rate.  That is how many children a woman produces in a lifetime, on average.  The usual number is 2.1.  Nine out ten women have two and the tenth has three.  This allows for child deaths at birth or in childhood.  Mr Gordon Chang goes on:

Beijing has not announced births for last year, but early numbers indicate they plummeted from 2019.  Births in the household registration—hukou—system plunged 14.9% to 10,035,000 last year.  Because births so registered constitute about 80% of total births, He Yafu, a demographer, estimates total births for the country last year came in at 12,540,000.

Yi [Yi Fuxian of the University of Wisconsin-Madison] told me that the number of births for the country was in reality about 8 million and could not have exceeded 10 million.

Again, Yi looks correct.  Provinces and other governmental units have reported data ahead of the census, and births were down more than 30% in some locations.

The big issue is China’s trajectory.  Official media is cagey about a critical figure, the country’s total fertility rate, generally the number of children per female reaching child-bearing age.  The official China Daily reports that Lu Jiehua of Peking University believes the country’s TFR, as the rate is known, “has fallen below 1.7.”

In any event, China’s population will shrink fast. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences projects China’s population will halve by 2100 if the TFR drops from 1.6 to 1.3.

China’s TFR, however, is far lower than 1.3.  If its TFR stabilizes at 1.2—1.2 [it] would represent a big increase—China will have a population of only 480 million by the end of the century.

In the US we are handling this with immigration.  A map shows Massachusetts at 1.7, below replacement level.  Since I moved here in 1994 we have gone from ten US Representatives to nine.  That is because we lost population compared with the rest of the nation.  The same thing will be happening to China, slowly at first and then in a rush.  The way Author Ernest Hemingway described Bankruptcy in The Sun Also Rises, "Gradually and Then Suddenly."

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Vaccine Diplomacy

For John, BLUF:  Once upon a time, and for Centuries, China was the most powerful nation on the planet.  Then they pulled into themselves and fell behind.  Now they are pushing back out, to regain what they see as their rightful place.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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China Declares a Vaccine War on the World

From PJ Media, by Writer Rick Moran, 20 March 2021, 1:58 PM ET.

Here is the lede plus four:

China will allow foreigners to enter the country, but it has directed embassies around the world to only issue a visa if the traveler has gotten a COVID-19 vaccine that was made in China.

“It’s very much at the sharp end of vaccine diplomacy,” Nicholas Thomas, an associate professor in health security at the City University of Hong Kong, told CNN.  “(It’s) essentially saying if you want to visit us, you need to take our vaccine.”

There has been no Chinese-made vaccine approved for human use in America, nor is there likely to be one anytime soon.  China has created 5 different vaccines but none have been approved by the WHO.  This is probably due to the fact that the Chinese government refuses to release the results of Stage 3 trials — a crucial requirement for vaccine approval in the U.S. and other western countries.

China’s main entry in the vaccine race — Sinovac — has an announced effectiveness of 78 percent against COVID.  But Brazil actually conducted a Stage 3 trial and found it only 50.38 percent effective — far less effective than any other vaccine on the market.

Where does that leave the U.S., the UK, and other nations that have not approved a Chinese vaccine for use?

This seems rather cheeky on the part of China.  Not withstanding the Woke scolds in our midst, China, and in particular, Wuhan, does seem to be the source of this pandemic  Now they are playing the offended party, asking the rest of us to dance to their tune.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff