No, Trump didn't "cave" on tariffs — and Xi won't either

To update what I posted on Substack yesterday? (Where we know Trump's list of 50 or 75 or 247 countries that want to talk turkey is a lie?)

Trump did not remove his pre-April tariffs in general.

And, he didn't remove ANY of his tariffs on China.

And, he made clear Thursday morning that the tariff rate on China is now at 145 percent. China, as of yesterday, had fired back up to 84 percent plus blacklisting a number of US companies. And today, Friday? It's gone up to 125 percent. And now, Vietnam is trying to cordon itself off from China. Still won't help the American shoe industry as Vietnam got socked with its own tariffs, though that's among those that have been suspended, for now.

It's why the Dow went back in the tank yesterday morning.

Ergo, contra Mark Ames, who claimed on Shitter Wednesday evening that Trump got rolled, no such thing has happened. Wishing that Schopenhauer's "The World as Will and Idea" were true, as I noted over there with Trump (and Hitler and Stalin) t'aint so means it's not so for Ames, or others thinking along this line.

Add in the fact that House GOP wingnuts squared caved to Trump yesterday only underscores this. 

The likes of Ames should know better on this, too.

Besides, according to his own staff, if he was "semi-rolled," it was the bond market, not the stock market. 

Friday's stock market whipsawed, but many experts said, don't get in if you don't have to.

It will plunge again as Trump'x belief that Chinese president Xi Jinping needs to cave to him by picking up the phone ain't happening. Here's that Dum Fuq saying that "You are proud, but you need to be less proud than me," to read between the lines.

“China wants to make a deal. They just don’t know how quite to go about it,” Trump said on Wednesday during an event at the White House. “You know, it’s one of those things they don’t know quite – They’re proud people.”

To quote Poppy Bush?

Not.Gonna.Happen.

I may owe Sam Husseini an apology over WIV and the possible bioweoponization of COVID

Nearly two full years ago, Husseini raised the possibility of not just a coronavirus lab leak happening at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and not just the idea that gain of function research led to this particular virus that we know today as COVID-19, but that there was bioweaponization research behind this.

To say that I was skeptical is putting it mildly. Based on the USSR's biological weapons program, I was skeptical that the Chinese military would do such work at a lab that was nominally for civilian purposes, built in part with Western help, and in a crowded metropolitan area.

Well, in the past couple of days, multiple media reports said "think again." The Daily Mail, as reprinted in Perth, Australia, claimed that Zhou Yusen was "thrown to his death," rather than just "died under mysterious circumstances." It adds, on its first reference to him, "Chinese military scientist." Lest Blue Anon types in Merikkka say "Oh, it's the Daily Mail," Pro Publica also identifies him as such, and did so in its extensive piece about last year's Senate investigative committee report led by ranking member, ie, top minority party member, Richard Burr, which I blogged about in detail, and then followed up with blogging about Pro Publica largely refuting its critics.

Who is Zhou? Per Pro Publica:

(D)irector of the State Key Laboratory of Pathogen and Biosecurity at the Academy of Military Medical Sciences Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology, in Beijing.

There you go, BlueMAGA.

Then, the NY Post talks more about details of the bioengineering, whether just "gain of function" or "bioweaponization" was behind it. It, in turn, references a Times of London piece which says this before you hit the paywall:

The US investigators say one of the reasons there is no published information on the work is because it was done in collaboration with researchers from the Chinese military, which was funding it and which, they say, was pursuing bioweapons.

There you go.

If this is all true, per my three objections to Husseini?

Actually, first, going beyond my three objections?

Did Chinese president for life or so Xi Jinping know about this in advance or was he kept in the dark? It's a question that shouldn't be idly dismissed, and I'm sure US nat-sec nutsacks inside and outside official government positions are pondering and perusing it. If not, they should be.

Now, the three objections.

First, I guess a nominally civilian lab was believed to offer better cover. Obviously, that belief was wrong and has been shown wrong, at least indirectly, for years.

Second, I guess the fact that the French helped build it might be thought of as a way of throwing Western intelligence off the trail. Well, that might have worked until you caused a global outbreak that probably killed at least 15 million, with 1 million plus in the US, 1.5 million in Europe, at least 2.5 million in China, contra its lies, based on my old estimates, surely at least 5 million in India, and 5 million in the rest of the world getting us to 15 million.

Third, although no racism was involved, the overall callousness at least approaches, if not exceeds, that of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study "experiment" here in the US. Of course, in non-racial callousness or stupidity, Fort Detrick was and is not THAT far from DC and Baltimore.

But, that all said, I go back to Jeff St. Clair's "more credulous precincts of the left," a mot juste that he used about people who believed the Seth Rich conspiracy theory.

If, like Green Party thought leaders Howie Hawkins, you think the Chinese government's cultural genocide and slave-ish labor of Uyghurs should be treated "in Chinese terms," do you say the same to this?

And, I can double down on continuing to call Dr. Peter Hotez a grifter and gaslighter — at minimum. Since St. Anthony of Fauci is out of government, he's currently less of one. And, although Joe Rogan is a multi-theory conspiracy theorist, it would be "fun" seeing him and Hotez square off.

Coronavirus Week 125: The lab-leak theory gets validation

People like pseudoskeptic and tribalist deluxe Dr. David Gorski have LONG laughed and sneered at people like me who have said, citing people like Bill Clinton National Security Agency advisor Jaime Metzl and Dr. Scott Gottlieb, that the idea of COVID 19 originating from a lab leak in Wuhan, was a realistic possibility. Or well known public health and data analyst Zeynep Tufekci, who called out the Lancet letter saying it couldn't have been a lab leak.

Instead, Gorski et al called it a conspiracy theory, and conflated it, presumably deliberately, with the idea that COVID-19 was actually created in such a lab, and did so as an apparent smear.

The likes of him were abetted, albeit without smears, by the likes of David Dayen. (Unfortunately, the usually grounded leftist Sam Husseini DID conflate "lab leak" and "bioweaponizing.")

Well, they can now officially shut the fuck up, per Pro Publica. In conjunction with Vanity Fair (an interesting editorial partner for a story like this, but I digress), it has a story on a report by the minority membership of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. That report:

concludes that the COVID-19 pandemic was “more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident.”

There's your nut graf.

I'm sure the likes of Orac will, "more likely than not," respond with something like "minority report = Republicans."

My whole set of responses?

Toy Reid is clearly not a GOP operative;

Richard Burr isn't a total wingnut;

Pro Publica is reporting.

Pro Publica begins by establishing Reid's knowledge of, nay, fluency in, Mandarin, coupled with his knowledge of and appreciation for East Asian culture. It then notes his skill in translating "Party speak" by the Communist Party of China.

Reid says he was able to look at a variety of information already online from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and "translate" the "party speak" for new insights.

Party speak in a science lab? Yes:

Like many scientific institutes in China, the WIV is state-run and funded. The research carried out there must advance the goals of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). As one way to ensure compliance, the CCP operates 16 party branches inside of the WIV, where members including scientists meet regularly and demonstrate their loyalty.

PP offers more details in the next graf of its story. Well, there's that. This also kneecaps the Rainier Sheas and Margaret Flowers of the more loony precincts of the left.

Reid says that WIV staff were scrambling to prove their scientific bona fides and value to party hacks and apparatchiks. This rings true per a site like Retraction Watch, where a large percentage of people with scientific research studies that don't pan out (or are fraudulent in some cases) are Chinese nationals.

AND, an apparent biosecurity breach Nov. 12, 2019.

Now, back up to refuting Orac and loony leftists:

Given advance access to hundreds of pages of the Senate researchers’ findings and analysis, Vanity Fair, in partnership with ProPublica, spent five months investigating their underlying evidence

So, they're not taking anybody's word on credit.

And, they're going beyond it, in fact:

Taken together, our reporting provides critical context that is not included in the pared-down 35-page interim report. It offers the most detailed picture to date of the months leading up to the COVID-19 outbreak, including new details on the intense pressure the lab faced to produce breakthrough research, its struggles to grapple with mounting safety issues and a previously unreported series of references to a mysterious incident shortly before the virus began infecting its first victims.

That's that.

That additional reporting includes getting other China experts to separately look at documents that Reid did. And, they signed off on his interpretation.

That includes that China apparently already started work on a vaccine in November 2019.

Read that again.

That includes that China apparently already started work on a vaccine in November 2019.

In other words, Xi Jinping has blood on his hands. (Some lab-leak denialists will point to Moderna working on a coronavirus vaccine even earlier. Yes, but it wasn't specific to COVID-19. And, it didn't work. And, AFAIK, China wasn't even working on a generic coronavirus vax before this time.)

Further confirming that this reporting is legit? Burr got the help of Dr. Robert Kadlec, an HHS careerist who, per what I've read on COVID, knew his shit on a variety of emergency preparedness issues. Kadlec also played a role in debunking the claim that trailers in Iraq in 2003 were mobile bioweapons labs, this story notes.

OK, back to the narrative.

Next tick in the timeline.

Nov. 19, 2019, seven days after the possible biosecurity breach, Dr. Ji Changzheng, tech safety and security director for the Chinese Academy of Sciences (parallel to the US NAS) came to WIV. He said he was bringing words of Xi Jinping about "a complex and grave situation."

From there, we get more on sloppy research and security practices, not just at WIV but elsewhere in China.

The story also reminds us that WIV had TWO labs. One is biosecurity level 4; the other is only BSL-2, but nonetheless had research being done there way above its biosecurity pay level.

The story then moves to discussing the tribalism over the lab-leak theory I talk about at top. 

And, the interim report's conclusion?

(T)he interim Senate report concludes that “the hypothesis of a natural zoonotic origin no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt, or the presumption of accuracy.”

I agree.

And, speaking of tribalism, I don't like Michael Worobey's claim that he had been given insufficient time to respond. As in, I don't think Pro Publica shortchanged him re any followup to his piece this summer.

Anyway, that's just the iceberg. READ THE FULL THING. "Familiar names" like Ralph Baric, Peter Daszak and Shi Zhengli all appear. As for odds? Even before this new Pro Publica piece, Metzl put the lab leak origin odds at 85 percent.

==

An addendum: Contra some wingnuts, this should not be used as a crude tool to kick China (though the re-election of Xi to a third term has left China under his leadership fully open to that) but as a warning about security and safety levels at biological research labs around the world, including here in the US.

It should also lead to new clampdowns on gain-of-function research, including getting Fauci, Collins and others to stop misdefining (or lying by redefining) about just what constitutes that. 

==

Update, Nov. 1: There's a big push-back on Twitter, claiming that Reid got some tenses wrong on some of his translation and other things, and now, some push-back against the push-back, with me contributing my part. Part of the original push-back (not saying all) appears to be #BlueAnon. Part may be  (not saying is) Chinese agents. As far as journalism, a leader in the push-back is Semafor, which has multiple good-for-it reasons to be leading the push-back.

I'll see how Pro Publica updates the piece. Until then, not writing further. (As of Nov. 3, nothing on its website.)

Update to Update 1, Nov. 26: One month on, neither Pro Publica nor Vanity Fair has seen any reason to update, append an editor's note, or anything else.

Update 2, Nov. 29: Pro Publica HAS COMPLETED a review of its initial reporting, and generally stands by it, and specifically totally stands by it on anything of consequence, including Toy Reid's translation work.

Since that was the No. 1 criticism from the tribalists (and others), this:

We commissioned three Chinese language experts with impeccable credentials who were not involved in the original story to review Reid’s translation. They all agreed that his version was a plausible way to represent the passage, though two also said they would have translated the words to refer to the dangers of day-to-day lab operations. The third produced a translation that was in line with Reid’s. All agreed the passage was ambiguous. We have updated the story to underscore the complexity of interpreting that dispatch.

Sounds pretty straightforward.

Bigger issue No. 2:

We continue to see our story as a measured exploration of the array of questions raised about the WIV’s laboratories. The possibility that a biosecurity breach at the WIV occurred, and sparked the pandemic, remains plausible.

Indeed it is. And, with St. Anthony of Fauci's retirement and the air-kisses he's getting, this is important.

And sorry, tribalists, Pro Publica's not going away on the issue, either:

We plan to keep reporting on this issue and expect new evidence to emerge. It is our view that both the natural-spillover and laboratory-accident hypotheses for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic merit continued investigation. Given the human toll, which continues to mount, it is imperative that we continue this work.

Deal with it.

Coronavirus week 118: The nuttery of China's zero-COVID lockdowns

Between the mix of population density, sucky vaccines, and the resulting deaths of more than 2 million people, Xi Jinping seems stuck on total lockdowns when coronavirus "surges" or even "mini-surges" happen.

Because a close contact of a COVID case was traced to a Shanghai IKEA, Chinese officials decided to lock the place down — while people were shopping. That, in turn led to a mad scramble to flee the lockdown. And, why wouldn't there be? 

Shanghai residents saw all of their entire city locked down late this spring, then an ongoing lockdown for selected portions of the city after that, even as this wreaks havoc on the Chinese economy. As I have blogged before, these lockdowns are pretty draconian. Imagine being stuck inside Ikea for an entire week, dependent on something like the Chinese equivalent of fast food being thrust through a door, and hoping you might get a blanket and a pillow by the second or third day in.

But, once again, per Howie Hawkins, Margaret Flowers and the late Kevin Zeese, we should judge China in Chinese terms. Or per Rainier Shea at the People's Republic of Humboldt Bay, this is surely actually a sign of deeper Chinese brilliance.

==

Non-COVID sidebar: Alleged Great Corruption Fighter Xi Jinping has started the process of getting a first round of Chinese companies delisted from the New York Stock Exchange because he doesn't want possible corruption investigated.

Coronavirus Week 112A: Blame Xi Jinping for 2 million dead

If American companies didn't hand trade and manufacturing secrets to China like blank checks — another part of America's general craptacular kowtowing to China, including trade relations favorability in the past given to them before Russia — it would still be a backwater, the way it manages COVID.

I'm sure that NONE of the Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers, whether fake leftist and neoliberal grifter Max Blumenthal, alleged leftist but not really Adam Tooze, Green Party twosiders Margaret Flowers and Howie Hawkins, People's Republic of Humboldt County leader Rainier Shea, or Margaret Kimberly and Danny Haiphong of the useful gang of idiots that's left at Black Agenda Report, can explain why, supposedly after China had originally crushed COVID, then a humongous Shanghai lockdown crushed COVID, can explain why China has ANOTHER Shanghai lockdown. Contra Tooze and his kiss-ass book on COVID, China's vaccines suck. Contra the story, Xi is so untrustworthy that I totally do not believe Johns Hopkins numbers of 15K Chinese COVID deaths. (Worldometers, which is good inside democratic and transparent countries, is even worse on this issue, claiming jut 5K deaths.)

The reality? As of January, Forbes, channeling a piece from the Economist that had COVID undercounting rates around the world, said China's real death rate was probably 1.7 million. That was January. (Fortunately, the Economist piece isn't paywalled; the Forbes pieces are straightforward, but their author is a full-on wingnut, going by his Twitter.)

Even worse, when China was actually counting deaths (it stopped, in Ground Zero Wuhan itself after March 31, 2020) it was undercounting. And, in a country with extensive social media and general internet monitoring and able to dragoon foreign nationals into quarantine is surely gathering PLENTY of COVID data — they're just not reporting any of it.

That said, this is more a problem than sucky vaccines. ONLY FIFTY PERCENT of Chinese over 80 are vaccinated, per the first link. Shit, that's worse than red-state antivaxxer America.

Failing lockdowns in the face of a country that still has only gotten half of its age 80-plus population vaccinated, means its surely around 2 million now, per my header.

In addition, Mr. Calhoun, in a second Forbes piece, notes that (like in places like Vietnam, also wrongly touted as "crushing" COVID) rural people, aged or not, are far less vaccinated that rural red state wingnuts, and health care available to them is slim.

So, there's your reality. It would still be half the COVID death rate, per population, of the US, but China likely has 2 million COVID deaths — and still counting.

And, while half the death rate of the US, at 1,400 per 1 million, that's still higher than The Netherlands, Hong Kong (OOOPS), Denmark, Canada, Finland, Norway, South Korea (nearly 3x lower), New Zealand (almost 5x lower), Japan (almost 6x lower) and Taiwan (almost 7x lower), among "advanced" nations with trustworthy stats.

Will Xi get a third term and become China's first "maximum leader" since Deng?

==

Side note: There's good reason to believe, from the Economist estimates and data modeling, that Russia is lying a fair amount but not ridiculously, while India is the second-biggest liar in the world outside China (Pakistan is the biggest, and per the Economist link, I think Bangladesh is more "challenged" thal "liar"), with possibly 7 million or more deaths on a high-side estimate. (But, just as Xi has Uyghurs to scapegoat, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has Muslims.)

Update: At Unherd, Ashley Rindsberg has a good take on US media gullibility, as well as WHO enabling that.

Update, July 27, 2023: Per this Foreign Poicy piece, via a CFR piece, it's possible China had as many as another 1 million deaths in the nine months after I wrote this.

Texas Progressives look at national and global nuttery

This corner of Texas Progressives saw so much nuttery outside the Pointy Abandoned Object State™ that he broke out a separate national and global roundup this week.

National

Mondoweiss notes that long-time Democratic House veteran James McGovern has explicitly called on Biden's Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, to "unambiguously denounce" Israel calling six Palestinian human rights and social groups terrorists. McGovern explicitly said "expressing concern" is not enough.

Stop buying so much shit. No, really. Even I had no idea American consumerism had gotten that bad. And, some liberals and some leftists may accuse me of guilting the poor, but if you live in a household with total income of under $40K and have more than 1 TV? The reasons you're poor or near-poor are partly your own.

I forgot that Ammon Bundy as well as Idaho's Lite Guv is primarying Gov. Brad Little, who hasn't formally announced yet but presumably is running. Bundy's now gotten Ron Paul's endorsement. Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachen's already gotten the Trump endorsement, so getcha popcorn.

Okie pot growing, which is essentially recreational-legal in all but name, is now a big fat legal mess.

The Flint water crisis legal settlement is indeed bullshit, both on lack of money and on lack of criminal sanctions for flunkies of former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder.

Judge orders city of Portland to reveal secret, taped-on police ID numbers.

Global

The Atlantic reports on the latest mind and society control efforts of Xi Jinping Thought. No, really; kids get monitored for how many hours of online video games they play, for starters in the story. Michael Schuman notes not only the background picture of Mao's shadow and the longer-term attempt to make sure Chinese businesses, especially in the tech world, don't get too uppity, but the Communist Party Congress a year from now when Xi will stand for a third term, unprecedented in terms of either formal or informal power since the death of Deng Xiaoping. Schuman adds that some of this comes from a puritanical streak toward the excesses of capitalism that Xi reportedly has. In all of this, asterisks must be appended, started with the magazine this appears in, then going to Schuman being a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. Sidebar off Atlantic's rail: the reality of cause, effects and fallouts of the one-child policy.

China-stanners' lies, including those by Green Party thought leaders

The detention camps for Uyghurs (and Kazakhs and other largely Muslim, and Turkic ethnicity) minorities, have been built. Documented, with more new ones being built.

The Chinese plan to do all this was leaked. Documented.

Yet, China-stanners, from Rainier Shea of the People's Republic of Humboldt Bay, and I presume, the likes of World Socialists, on one "side," to the allegedly outside-the-box stenos (Blumenthal, Taibbi, Maté, Chariton, Ames, Levine, etc.) on a second "side," continue to lie. As did the late Kevin Zeese and partner Margaret Flowers. (Things like this are part of why I once removed Counterpunch from my blogroll.) Danny Haiphong, the worst thing to happen to Black Agenda Report in the past five years outside of Bruce Dixon's death, is another of the China-stanners. And, I've not forgotten he drinks the Tulsi Kool-Aid.

And, stanners? You might get away with claiming that ButtFeet, ie BuzzFeed, is part of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment? Cory Doctorow? Not so much. International Consortium of Investigative Journalists? Not so much. More from them.

Patrick Cockburn at Counterpunch? CERTAINLY not part of the MSM, but he can note Chinese repression while also noting it's "interesting" that they've suddenly gotten US attention. And, re Tulsi-stanner Haiphong, he can ALSO note it's interesting that Modi's lockdown of Kashmir has gotten about zero attention from Trump. (It's also gotten very little attention from the leftists above, whether they're actually Tulsi-stanners or not.)

And, speaking of media, more reminders that China is not tussling with just the US. Australia, after new rows with Beijing, now has no media there. And, an Aussie journo shoved out two years ago is now telling his, and his family's, story. Shades of Ed Snowden warning Glenn Greenwald et al to have all phones and computers Internet-disconnected, Matthew Carney says that people in Beijing were at one point remotely controlling his phone.

Speaking of Australians? A Down Under think tank now has an interactive map of all the reported sites. On the other hand? ASPI gets US government money, even as NR tries to downplay that.

This is a piece that will likely have occasional follow-ups. And, yes, the "thought leaders" is deliberate.

Are there radical Muslims in Xinjiang? Yes. Might China be worried about them? Yes. Does it need this degree of repression? No. Might the US and the rest of the West be using real claims, as well as claims it may have stirred up, as a wedge issue? Yes. 

Can China easily address this? Yes. Has it? No.

To me, one factor that points to this being genuine is former detainees talking about a "points system" for re-education. We already know Xi Jinping is working on doing this with ethnic Han on social media; it only seems rational to assume that he started this, in spades, with the Uyghurs (and Kazakhs and others) detained in Xinjiang.

Per this Atlantic piece, let me ask a rhetorical question: If the U.S. government were doing these things to American Indians (as it DID do in Indian boarding schools a century ago) your response would be?

As for Zeese and Flowers? They have been key advisors to Green Party presidential nominee Howie Hawkins, who has taken huge heat from some Greens and an even bigger number of pseudo-Greens over his comments about Russian interference in the 2016 election. And, sadly, Howie has done a fundraiser with Haiphong's fellow China-stanner at Black Agenda Report, Margaret Kimberly.

Update, Feb. 6, 2021: Flowers has responded to a call-out on Twitter over the latest revelations, contained in this new blog post calling out Max Blumenthal, and I have responded.

https://t.co/ws59vqrUAg

"While we recognize that there are aspects of PRC policy in Xinjiang to critique, these critiques should be debated and resolved on Chinese terms and in Chinese dialogues, and not be used as crude ammunition in the U.S.-led geopolitical assault on China."

— Dr. Margaret Flowers (@DrMFlowers) February 6, 2021

My first response in a two-parter:

There are plenty of people not part of the *bipartisan foreign policy establishment* who do NOT use the Chinese policy toward Xinjiang as "as crude ammunition in the U.S.-led geopolitical assault on China." That includes leftists like me. This isn't "zero-sum." (sigh)

— Your Glenn Greenwald pouty tomato face 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) February 6, 2021

And my second.

And, since this is not a zero sum game, I can avoid drinking Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid AND avoid drinking US bipartisan foreign policy establishment Kool-Aid. I don't have to discuss Xinjiang and Uyghurs on "Chinese terms," Dr. Margaret Flowers.

— Your Glenn Greenwald pouty tomato face 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) February 7, 2021

Flowers didn't want to stop digging, and offered this:

What's your point then? My sources are people who have been there and know the situation. https://t.co/QoYkEZONQT

— Dr. Margaret Flowers (@DrMFlowers) February 7, 2021

To which I offered the first of a three part thread response:

Well, the leaks of data came from people who "have been there." Patrick Cockburn is among those in Merika who doesn't totally buy the two-siderism angle, either. And, the ICIJ, which includes many non-American journos, has written about it., too.
AND? The Uyghurs ARE THERE! 1/x

— Your Glenn Greenwald pouty tomato face 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) February 7, 2021

The "Uyghurs were there" response should nail it.

If it doesn't? Since the Stalinist USSR, or before that, Russian Potemkin villages, authoritarian and totalitarian governments that have wanted to deceive those who are ready to be hoodwinked have easily done so.

And, if that's not enough, via the app Clubhouse, which recently briefly broke through the "great firewall of China," I can now tell Flowers the petards are also hoisting on her "Chinese terms" in another way. Diaspora Chinese, and also Taiwanese Chinese, told mainland Chinese that they needed to learn some things about Xinjiang.  

(Update, March 12, 2021: I suppose we should discuss freedom of the press in "Chinese terms" as well, if we're going to be all bent over backward?)

What's a mix of funny, sad, ironic and hypocritical is that Flowers, one of the leaders of a third party, is engaging in two-siderism.

What's also a mix of funny, sad, ironic and hypocritical? Flowers' saying we should let Xi Jinping Thought go unchallenged is exactly the type of argument that could be used by the U.S. bipartisan foreign policy establishment.

It's also not the first time Flowers (and partner Kevin Zeese, when still alive) have peddled the Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid.

Richard Wolff, to the degree he touches on the issue, also seems to be a Xi-stanner.

What's also disgusting is the attempt of many of these people to both have their cake and eat it, too. They'll first deny that Uyghur camps exist, claiming it's all American propaganda. BUT, many then go on to say that the presence of radical Islamists means that China has to take actions like this — while still not expressly acknowledging China IS taking actions like this.

This is a classic Idries Shah issue of more than two sides. The camps exist. They're not vocational camps. But they may not be as bad as US claims. And US claims are being made in the light of geopolitics. But, that doesn't mean the claims are totally wrong. And, I wrote that all in 30 seconds. Wasn't hard, was it? More than two sides, folks.

While we're here? Let's add lies by omission by the China-stanners.

That would include ignoring Xi Jinping upping tensions with India to the point of warmongering.

Then, there's the ignoring the complaints many developing nations have had over Chinese economic exploitation in Belt and Road Initiative projects. What's the Mandarian equivalent of "Coca-Colonialism"?

Flowers' response confirms why I made the right decision in not voting for president last year. And, should the Georgia GP be "de-accredited," that will confirm I have made the right decision in no longer identifying as a Green.

Ugly Chinese nationalism over coronavirus, part 3

Following on part 1 and part 2, of course.

The German government says Chinese diplomats tried to get it to spin-doctor Beijing's handling of the coronavirus.

Meanwhile, in part in an attempt to cover its own country's coronavirus failures, Chinese social media — which must, of course, be considered semi-official, is having fun attacking the U.S. over its own COVID problems. This only illustrates again what I said in Round 1 — Xi Jinping and Donald Trump play Brer Rabbit and Tar Baby to each other. Or, per some unofficial Chinese social media, and kicking both Xi and Trump pretty good, that might be Pooh and Eeyore.

In our reality, not the Disney cartoon world, the Pooh of Beijing is strangling, not hugging, the Eeyore of Washington, D.C.

Between parts 1 and 2 of this series, I had a supplement that first looked at the Trumpian response to all this.

It's not just Trump, and not just Americans, though. Sub-Saharan African states were already aware of anti-black racism from Chinese. But, as long as the countries were getting money for Belt and Road projects, and leaders were getting palms greased as needed, it was ignored. But as more and more of it, as part of general (and historic) Chinese xenophobia, pops up, it can't be ignored.

Per that link, it's facing backlash among countries that can do something. The Japanese government is raising money for any companies who want to re-homeland their manufacturing. Problem? Japan, with an aging population, doesn't have the workforce for this. The U.S. does, but likes the cheap Chinese labor and is too shortsided to give full attention to Chinese industrial technology extortion and sometimes outright theft. American greed and Chinese xenophobia are their own Brer Rabbit and Tar Baby: what do American companies do when top management, from the U.S., face that xenophobia when visiting their Chinese plants?

That xenophobia is not reflected by reality. The Guardian, in a piece similar to the above, notes China has the lowest immigration rate in the world. As in lower than Japan's. OTOH, that said, minuscule immigration rates, to reverse the Guardian, are often reflections of already-existing xenophobia. As in Japan.

To riff on Samuel Johnson: Nationalism, even more than patriotism, can often be the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Finally, let's not forget that China's continued bigfooting of Taiwan at WHO, trying to minimize even its observer status, is also problematic. Historical note: At times, the Ming Dynasty had a loose quasi-protectorate relationship to the island. The Qing were the first Chinese mainland dynasty to actually possess the island.

Sidebar: Chinese political leadership is no more meritocratic than in "the west."

Sidebar 2: Despite the self-allegedly outside-the-box left-liberal political pundit stenos (Ames, Levine, Maté, Taibbi, Blumenthal etc.) Han Chinese repression of minorities is not that new, either.

Coronavirus and a likely new Cold War (longer read)

Atlantic Monthly had a good speculative piece on likely fallouts from COVID. Neocons and many centrists wanted a new Cold War after 1989. Thanks to the toxic mix of the Brer Rabbit and Tar Baby of Xi Jinping Thought (a good read is here from the Beeb) and Donald Trump Mouth (evident to any non-MAGA American), they likely have gotten it. This is not to exonorate China in general or Xi in particular for technology theft far beyond the old USSR or modern Russia (or democracies like France, or like the US, for that matter) nor its forcing companies to surrender trade and business secrets (which they always could have resisted).

Some specific factors in both Xi's and Trump's makeups, while not making a new Cold War inevitable, at least made it more likely. Hubris, a certain amount of which is necessary to becoming a leader, is one that is toxic in too high of amounts, per the biblical statement that "pride goes before a fall." It's one that both of them have in excess. The photo at left underscores how much disdain they have for each other at bottom line, though Xi better masks his.

Let's start with Xi.

I'm not such a close China-watcher that I know that he had an excess of hubris early in his his first term. But, asking for, and being granted, the possibility of being president for life rather than being restricted to the two terms that had been on the books since Deng Xiaping's time, put it on full display. It's clear, by the CCP's rubber-stamping of the idea, that Xi had been wanting this for what, a a full year in advance? (He publicly broached the idea six months before his second-term election by not providing an apparent successor. And clearly, that also had been planned.)

That said, whether directly connected to imperial hubris or not, Xi's actions during his first term had helped grease the skids. His anti-corruption campaign surely not only eliminated actual corruption, but per Franz Joseph's old bon mot, "Is he a patriot for ME?" eliminated people who refused to be corrupt directly for and to Xi and Xi alone.

And then, just 18 months later, Xi became the first of two people to learn that you can't bully a pandemic.

And, it's "interesting," or "ironic," while ultimately tragic and worse that his mindset and Trump's on the coronavirus appeared to mirror each other. Both essentially, in their own ways, tried to pretend it away.

Xi had the advantage, or disadvantage, of being able to use brute force. Telling government agencies to destroy records, for example. Oh, wait, Trump told the CDC to scrub its website. Actual records are still available, but trying to hide stuff from the public? That said, the good side of American federalism meant that Trump couldn't get state health departments to outrightly lie, like we know Xi did with Chinese national stats and continues to do so. See here for more.

Pre-coronavirus, Trump wasn't totally wrong about China. It was all of the above, and given the growth of its economy, also arguably a currency manipulator and more.

But, he was totally wrong on how he handled this.

First, while globalization is not all good, it's not all bad, either.

Second, his America Firsterism cut out potential allies in battling China, namely Canada and the EU.

Third, his record of semi-failures in the business world, with something that looks like long-term success being achieved only through six US bankruptcy filings, a likely infusion or three of Mafia money (beyond what we know of his willingness to do business with mob-controlled companies in his early days), some known infusions of Russian money (but no, Putin didn't collude to elect him president, and doubly no, he hasn't been a Russian asset since the 1980s), and the Deutsche Bank ongoing lending to him that has raised eyebrows as to possible ultimate reasons, fueled an already high level of hubris. Well, international affairs isn't like one-off business deals, first. Second, the only ultimate results to bailing out a country are the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and given that both are ultimately based on the dollar, that would have meant harikiri for them.

Fourth, per my post on how Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational" has insight for human reactions to the coronavirus, Trump is a poster child for human nature's general willingness to throw good money after bad, plus the human, and definitely not-Asia specific, worry about losing face.

So, in international affairs, he had a history of wreckage, carnage and more before this. Specific to Xi, he had a history of insults, some of them at least marginally racist in nature long before his description of the coronavirus, and a refusal to really negotiate with Xi on any terms other than at least a partial surrender in advance by Xi.

Then this. We know Trump had some national-intelligence knowledge of the severity of COVID even while Xi was trying to cover it up, before that failed. And Trump? Like the stereotypical Nero fiddling while Rome burned, Denialism Don entered his usual mode when there's bad news he can't fully control.

The US will have more total cases and deaths than China by the time this is done, even with the most liberal allowance for Xi's lies. For US, and global by country, deaths and cases, click those links. (With notes that China's, especially is of course inaccurate.)

The fallout of all of this will be, as Atlantic notes, an increase in lack of cooperation between the US and China. Whether China's supply of help to EU nations can buy off knowledge of its lies remains to be seen. So, too, does the issue of other EU countries largely leaving Italy adrift in its early days.

Given that the EU doesn't border China, or Chinese satellites, and neither does NATO, of course, assuming we're already in the start of a new Cold War, this one will be different from the last. If COVID drives more austerity, it's likely that more European nations that are NATO members will look at further military budget-cutting.

As for the EU? Union-wide bonds for its short-term post-COVID future sound great. Germany continuing to keep a budget surplus sounds great to Chancellor Angela Merkel, I'm sure. It probably sounds even better to the AfD. The next six months are going to determine if she'll go down in history as the first leader of 21st-century Europe or "just" as a great chancellor of Germany.

Odds? 50-50, in my opinion.  Yes, as head of a parliamentary-based government, she has more restrictions than a President Macron. But, she's not running for re-election, and she still has some wiggle room outside the Bundestag. The 50-50 includes a guess on how much she'll try to use that wiggle room, or not.

Some of the Cold War 2.0 picture will depend on the US presidential election.

If Trump does get re-elected (shut up, Dems, it's a real possibility, and your claiming it isn't just makes it more real) of course, Trump's personality and everything driving the Cold War from his side just gets worse, and per my "Tar Baby," it just gets worse on Xi's side as well.

If Biden is elected (shut up, Berners, he's not getting the nomination, and that's in part due to him being a bad candidate, not your conspiracy theories), he'll do his best to undo the worst of Trump's damage. Unfortunately, it will be on the path of pursuing the bipartisan foreign policy establishment's idea of "engagement" with Beijing, which Xi will see as weakness.

Xi will also have no problem smiling when the allegedly outside the box stenos, the cadre within leftist American journalists who think America is almost always wrong on foreign policy, keep that up, as well as folks like the People's Republic of Humboldt Bay.

 Russia's own president for life, Vladimir Putin, remains a wild card. The median age of the Russian population as a whole isn't much higher than the US, and is well below, say Italy (and Germany). BUT? The median age of ethnic Russians, plus Belorussians and Ukrainians inside its borders, is higher than the various minorities, like those at the edge of Russia's Central Asian neighbors or those in the Caucuses. On the other hand, it's relatively non-dense, even in the European side; Moscow and Petersburg are the only metro areas of more than 5 million in Russia.

On the other hand, Putin's already treating this just like Xi did, to the point of arresting one doctor. And, Dr. Anastasia Vasilieva had been challenging Putin's official numbers.

So, it could survive COVID fairly well. It could survive the oil price wars fairly well. Climate change could improve its agricultural situation. If farm mechanization increases, Russia could be the next US.

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Update, April 28: For purely domestic political reasons, Mitch McDonnell's senatorial campaign committee wants to push a new Cold War.

Coronavirus: Chinese nationalist lies face off against Trumpian Deep State hypocrisy lies, coming red state woes

I blogged more than two weeks ago (seems like an eternity in the new normal), about how China had lied about coronavirus statistics in the country, and many other problems with China's early handling. I added that some of these problems, evidenced by its attempt to create a new alternative to the World Health Organization that was in its back pocket, showed that it may still be lying.

But, none of that gives any room to President Trump to politicize the US intelligence world.

Remember all his Deep State bullshit? Well, he's now decided that if he can use the alleged Deep State as a tool of his propaganda, he will.

As for the details of the Bloomberg story? The US is also excluding asymptomatic people right now because it doesn't have the means of testing them.

That said, per other things recently, this has devolved into a trans-Pacific shouting match between Xi Jinping Thought and Donald Trump Thought. Unlike the alleged outside-the-box stenos of a fair chunk of lefty journalism (Maté, Blumenthal, Ames, Taibbi, Consortium News, etc.) I assume that BOTH Trump AND Xi are lying, or spinning hard enough to be almost lying.

It is harder for Trump to outrightly lie about death stats. And, it's clear he's accepted that, even as he keeps spinning for his stanners. That said, it continues to work ONLY for his stanners. The latest AP poll says any "mini-surge" of a week ago has faded away again.

Dead antlers in Alaska may be joined by dead people soon.

And, Trump will face a bigger problem in weeks ahead, in all likelihood. Rural areas that think they're safe will likely find out in a week or two that that's not true. Kansas and Oklahoma, for example, will likely be in trouble in two weeks. (Some rural touristy areas in the West are already hot spots.)

Alaska, even, could face problems. And, people who are familiar with the playout of the Spanish flu know that it decimated, or worse than decimated, to use the word correctly, even tiny villages on Alaska's Yukon River.

Anyway, back to the main point. The hypocrisy level of Trump never ceases to amaze me. The stenos and others, though they know better, probably in general won't call him out for politicizing the intelligence world.

Coronavirus and ugly Chinese nationalism

It's not just Donald Trump acting like an idiotic, petulant barbarian over COVID-19.

Flying under the radar of many Americans, both Trumpian and other wingnuts on the right, and liberals and leftists on the left encouraging Merika to not be racist about Chinese restaurants, etc., not to mention so-called leftists like the People's Republic of Humboldt Bay or the alleged outside the box stenos in left-liberal and leftist media who claim the West is lying about Hong Kong protests, Uyghur detention camps and more ....

Chinese president Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party are actually engaging in ugly nationalism.

Let's start with the main point, and that is that China, for more than 10 days now, per Foreign Policy, has been blaming the US for the virus. Yep, the man and the party who have been bloodily squelching Hong Kong protests that originated outside of Western control, and who have put Uyghurs in re-education camps (given the history of Communist China, that is the best phrase for it!), and may be putting them to forced labor now ...

Is blaming the US for the coronavirus.

Beijing has also — shades of wingers only, on this one — been pushing various conspiracy theories over the virus. And, promoting other angles of ugly nationalism. Per that link, Beijing has been open about wanting to fund an alternative to the World Health Organization. WHO has halfway kowtowed to Beijing on COVID stats, but not fully, and less so as time went on. But, that hasn't been enough for Xi and the CCP.

Also per the second link, the first piece in the previous paragraph, and contra some US health experts praising China? South Korea, the country most hit outside of China, has used largely voluntary methods, with largely very good results, to contain viral spread. So, if an Anthony Fauci or anybody else says we should imitate China? Fuck 'em.

Actually, Fauci has gone BEYOND that. He's said he's OK with a national 14-day lockdown if needed. Even China didn't do anything like a full lockdown outside Hubei province.

Related to that? Speaking of China vs South Korea? Many of the new controls on social media use, internet use, and general societal control, are likely to stay in place, at least in modified form, after the coronavirus threat is gone.

Next? The world of economic reality, Beijing style Chinese provincial officials have apparently been the key drivers behind reopening factories, and running largely zombie machines with just a minimum of workers to oversee them, to fake the appearance of a return to near-normalcy.

Now, the People's Republic of Humboldt Bay (that comes from someone I followed on Twitter last year, who lives there, and given stereotypes about it, is almost certainly a student at Humboldt State, wasting parental tuition assistance) and the OTB stenos, will say "But this is all from Foreign Policy."

Well, Americans of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment who claim American foreign policy is almost always right? They're really not much worse than or different from the Humboldt Bay stanners or the anti-nationalism left who claim America is almost always wrong and are willing to promote Chinese propaganda as part of that.

Beyond that, Nautilus, which covers science and philosophy issues, notes that Chinese doctors lied to the government from the early days of the virus. Also per that piece, as more Chinese have more money, you're going to see urban-wildland interface crowding far beyond, say, California.

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Update: Per a Facebook discussion which I just exited, this is part of why it's not totally fair to compare "the West" to "Asia." The person is, for now, still a FB friend but he's been moved to "acquaintances."

As far as Asian countries controlling it well? China's been lying since the start and I wouldn't trust its numbers. Singapore and Hong Kong are city states, one still semi-authoritarian and the other under the thumb of Beijing. South Korea is, it seems, doing a good job, but it's the size of Indiana with 50 million people. Taiwan is the size of Maryland. So, that alone isn't fair. (Said person also ignored the Chinese lies; this blog post was put as a link in one of my comments.)

Nor is looking at only the US and Italy and saying that's "the West." As I told said person before exiting the conversation, that ignores countries like Germany that are handling it well.

And, an additional note to this person. In the past, with less in the way of any country being proactive? As the "Spanish" American flu of a century ago shows, it's often pure dumb luck in part on death rates.

So, if you really believe the above is a bunch of lies?

Go fuck yourselves with a boatload of Xi Jinping Thought.

Newer updates: Xi lies are squaring off against Trump lies. Does this portend a new Cold War?

And, the ugly nationalism now has spread to China attacking Taiwan, including with fake Twitter bot statements, it seems.