SI
SI
discoversearch

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor.  We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community.  If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.
Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: ggersh who wrote (173071)6/14/2021 5:37:26 AM
From: TobagoJack2 Recommendations

Recommended By
ggersh
marcher

  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 217755
 
It is so difficult to figure out what is what these days, per CNN we get one story

edition.cnn.com
Biden is about to confront two relentless forces that could seriously hamper his presidency

sort of confirmed by zerohedge zerohedge.com
As G7 Communique Waters Down China Abuses, White House Preempts With Separate Statement

It seems that the issue re Xinjiang, the place where the EU parliamentarians refused to visit, likely for fear of what they would not find, and than can no longer talk about, is based on one fellow's research and take, and his bonafide is problematic, to the extent that the EU folks matter do not want to base their policy-making on, having been led up the primrose path perhaps one time to many in mountains, jungles, desert, and mountains

Zenz lives off of grants.

dailytimes.com.pk
Zenz is a born-again Christian, and has stated that he feels “led by God” in his research on Chinese minority groups. He is a German anthropologist known for his studies of the so called Xinjiang internment camps and alleged Uighur genocide. He is a lecturer in social research methodology at the Evangelical theological institution Akademie für Weltmission [de] associated with the distance learning focused bible college Columbia International University where Zenz also serves as a lecturer. He is also a senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC), which is a non-profit ant-communist organization in the United States, authorized by a unanimous Act of Congress in 1993 for the purpose of “educating Americans about the ideology, history and legacy of communism.”


laprogressive.com
This month, CNN published a report from the Newslines Institutethat claims to independently verify “genocide” in Xinjiang for the first time. The report offered no revelations beyond claims that have already been regurgitated for several years by dubious sources such as Radio Free Asia and Adrian Zenz , a far-right Christian fundamentalist who believes it is his God-given mission to take down the Communist Party of China.
The Newsline Instituteis itself a dubious source of information. The head of the Washington-based think tank, Ahmed Alwani , is a former advisor to the U.S. African Command. It should be noted that the U.S. African Command was a leading force in the U.S.-NATO overthrow of Libya in 2011—an intervention which relied upon the same Muslim Brotherhood-backed proxies linked to Alwani . Managing Editor Robin Blackburn is a former editor for Stratfor, a private intelligence firm known as the “Shadow CIA.”


global.chinadaily.com.cn
However, according to the 2019 China Health Statistics Yearbook published by China's National Health Commission-which was the source of Zenz's claims-the number of new IUD insertion procedures in Xinjiang in 2018 accounted for 8.7 percent of China's total, not 80 percent as claimed by Zenz.
"A more glaring error by Zenz is his assertion that China's government inserted between 800 and 1,400 IUDs per person each year in Xinjiang. This would mean that each woman in Xinjiang would have to have undergone between four and eight IUD surgeries every day," Perry wrote.
... He added that online video footage showed former US government officials had publicly said that the US has contingency plans to stir the pot and take advantage of turbulence in Xinjiang for the purpose of clipping China's power.
"The West is taking a lot of time to try to build up a case against China. That's why a lot of people writing about what's going on in Xinjiang do so with a prejudice against China," he said. "The attempt by Western media to misrepresent China is not an accident."
He also warned that East Turkestan Islamic State, or ETIM, used to be classified by the US as a terrorist organization, but Washington has recently taken ETIM off its terrorist list. That is triggering speculation that it may be planning to send the former terrorists back into Xinjiang as "freedom fighters" to "liberate the Uygurs from Chinese oppression", he said.


scoop.co.nz

Who To Believe?
Tuesday, 30 March 2021, 11:17 am
Article: Lois Griffiths
On 19 January 2021, as the Trump administration was coming to an end , the US State Department accused the Chinese regime of genocide and crimes against humanity through its wide-scale repression of Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities in its northwestern region of Xinjiang.

“I believe this genocide is ongoing, and that we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy Uyghurs by the Chinese party-state,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated, adding that Chinese officials were “engaged in the forced assimilation and eventual erasure of a vulnerable ethnic and religious minority group.”

Both President Joe Biden and his Secretary of State Anthony Blinken have endorsed former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s last-minute genocide accusation.

A difficulty for someone who cares about justice issues everywhere is knowing what to believe, who to believe, particularly, if the atrocities being cited are being committed in countries the West declares as enemies , and the accusations come from the West.

We, the public, have been lied to, so many times....lies that have led to massive bombing campaigns and massive losses of life.

Operation Northwoods was a proposed false flag operation, in 1962, against the Cuban government, that originated within the US Department of Defense. The plan was for the CIA to stage and actually commit acts of terrorism aganst American miltary and civilian targets. The terrorism would be blamed on the Cuban government, giving the US a justification to go to war against Cuba. Kennedy stopped Operation Northwoods from happening.

The Tonkin Gulf of August 04 1964 incident, led to the US engaging in war on North Vietnam. But the Pentagon Papers and the memoirs of Robert McNamara revealed that the 'incident' didn't happen.

Have we forgotten about the lies told about Saddam Hussein's Iraq, about the 'weapons of mass destruction' , 'excusing' an illegal attack on Iraq that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Remember the 1990 accusation that Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait removed babies from incubators and left them to die?

What is really happening in remote western China? Where is information coming from? We have no Robert Fisk who lives there and dares to see for himself.

A journalist I highly respect is Max Blumenthal. He writes on the website thegrayzone.com, about an anti-Chinese right-wing Christian evangelist, Adrian Zenz whom the West's media consult as an expert. An article by Max Blumenthal

and another journalist, Ajit Singh.

thegrayzone.com

begins with“Claims that China has detained millions of Uyghur Muslims are based largely on two studies. A closer look at these papers reveals US government backing, absurdly shoddy methodologies, and a rapture-ready evangelical researcher named Adrian Zenz.”

You can read more about Zenz at

consortiumnews.com

and at

consortiumnews.com

That's really all I can add.

I make no claim to knowing much about China.

Yet, considering what the West has done to the people of Afghanistan, of Iraq, of Libya of the entire Middle East really, it is hard to believe the sudden compassion for Muslims in western China.

The lost skill of diplomacy is to try to imagine what the situation might look like through the other's eyes. China is surrounded by hostile military bases.

Other countries in the Pacific region are willing military allies of the US. That includes NZ with its Rocket Lab launch pad. The US has an enormous bloated military arsenal, including an expanding nuclear arsenal. The US is the only country to have dropped a nuclear bomb, on another country..an Asian country at that!

There is a positive role New Zealand could, if it dared, to play. New Zealand could

dialogue with the Chinese, could express very strong concerns about reports in the western media about the situation in western China. But only if New Zealand transforms itself into an independent, non-aligned country.

Our top priority should be not just to avoid being caught up in a nuclear war, but to vigorously challenge all nuclear nations to dismantle their nuclear arsenals. Humanity is on borrowed time really. The doomsday clock is very close to midnight.

© Scoop Media

Join the Scoop Citizen Community20 years of independent publishing is a milestone, but your support is essential to keep Scoop thriving. We are building on our offering with thedig.nz our new In-depth Engaged Journalism platform. Now, more than ever sustainable financial support of the Scoop Foundation for Public Interest Journalism will help to keep these vital and participatory media services running.
Find out more and join us:

Become a member Find out more

Find more from Lois Griffiths on InfoPages.











To: ggersh who wrote (173071)6/14/2021 5:39:26 AM
From: TobagoJack2 Recommendations

Recommended By
ggersh
marcher

  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 217755
 
Let us see how the democracy of corporates go as they shall have to cast ballot just as the G7 had to and didn't rt.com

Western governments & businesses are about to feel the heat of Chinese countermeasures against sanctions... and they won’t like it

Tom Fowdy

is a British writer and analyst of politics and international relations with a primary focus on East Asia.



10 Jun, 2021 14:10



The days when the US and its allies could sanction those they dislike with impunity are over. A new “counter-sanctions” bill from Beijing sets the legal framework to hit them back hard where it hurts, financially and commercially.

On Thursday afternoon the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress passed its new counter-sanctions bill, a piece of legislation which, as the name suggests, aims to codify China’s own countermeasures to Western-induced sanctions against its officials and companies, which have been growing in scope.

Also on rt.com US ban on investing in Chinese companies has the opposite effect, it strengthens China & diverts money from Wall StreetAlthough the specific details of the bill are yet to be released, it is known that impacted parties will be able to legally seek compensation. The legislation was originally prepared last year but put on hold in anticipation of what the Biden administration would do; it is now proceeding, as the new president has only served to continue with and expand on Trump’s tough stance against China.

China has, of course, already began to utilize its own measures in response to actions from the West, having responded to coordinated sanctions over Xinjiang in March by blacklisting a number of UK and EU institutions and representatives, as well as also having sanctioned swathes of former Trump administration officials, including Mike Pompeo, Matthew Pottinger, and Peter Navarro, days after they left office.

As described by experts, the new counter-sanctions bill is designed to attempt to legally codify China’s sanctions and to create a toolbox that will allow it to respond to the West in a defensive but more direct manner – yet what it will wholly consist of otherwise remains unclear.

What are sanctions? And how does one make them effective? In their raw form, sanctions are diplomatic measures taken by one country or a group of countries to impose their will on another, with a view towards a given goal or objective. Sanctions can be driven by self-interest, or as a form of punishment or leverage in order to make a given state comply with the ‘rules’ of the international order. As international attitudes towards war changed in the 20th century, sanctions became the ‘first resort’, the most acceptable tactic in international disputes.

In any context, the world knows the United States to be the world’s most industrial purveyor and distributor of international sanctions, utilizing its unrivalled dominance over the global financial system through the dollar to exclude countries and individuals who contravene its interests from worldwide banking.

In this case, sanctions are effective only to the scale of power and leverage which a country has to damage the interests of its target. If an American official was sanctioned tomorrow by, let’s say, a tiny country with no economic relevance whatsoever like San Marino, would it mean anything? Yet Washington has the power to deprive Chinese officials of bank accounts even in their own country.

Also on rt.com The US’ push for allied sanctions on China edges us closer to a new Cold War, but Biden mustn’t bank on long-term European supportThis weakness is one reason Beijing has pushed through the counter-sanctions law. China may boast the world’s second-largest economy, but it has not accumulated the leverage to make its counter-sanctions felt beyond its own borders. Pompeo, for example, is banned from entering China, and he is banned from doing business with China, but this measure does not establish reciprocity to push back against America as a whole from placing more measures on Beijing, or make Washington ‘pay a price’. The bill endeavours to change that by legally codifying a process where its own economic strengths can indeed potentially cause damage to offending countries as a retaliation, aiming to weaponize China’s own enormous market as an instrument.

Despite geopolitical frictions, China’s own domestic market remains an immeasurable and essential avenue for global business. This is only accelerating, with a recent report finding (despite all the controversy over the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, or CAI) that European firms are only set on expanding their presence in China, and not ‘decoupling’, as had been assumed.

It has subsequently been raised as a concern that the new ‘compensation’ dynamic of the counter-sanctions law will allow impacted Chinese parties to seek reparation from damages facilitated by Western sanctions. But the question is, compensation from who? We don’t know the answer yet, but it is to be assumed based on existing precedent that the countries and organisations involved may be targeted.

As a potential foreshadowing of this, earlier this year Chinese courts accepted lawsuits from Xinjiang companies against German scholar Adrian Zenz for fabricating ‘forced labour’ rumours, resulting in divestment from the cotton supply chain there.

The case has not yet concluded, but if the court subsequently rules a certain sum to be paid in damages, then one wonders where that is going to come from (given that Zenz has no assets there). This means any company or organisation affiliated with Zenz could become legally liable to paying the money if they have a presence in China, which thus adds ‘extra-territorial’ reciprocity to such sanctions.

As an additional example, the Western clothing chain H&M received a furious backlash in China for complying with the Xinjiang sanctions, and under the new law it could be forced to pay compensation. In that case, China’s own market power is transformed into a more ready sanctions tool which allows it to hit back against Western sanctions.

This is precisely what it is designed to be: a means of deterrence to make offending countries think twice and to reform the mindset that China can be punished akin to a smaller, subordinate country and somehow forced to comply. The West fiercely decries Chinese counter-sanctions, believing that its ‘right’ to impose them on Beijing works only one way, but international relations as a whole are about the dynamic of power, as opposed to an ideological question of right or wrong.

Like this story? Share it with a friend!

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.