Slow-walking to Poland 1939

China and Russia are having naval drills in the China sea...

...North Korea is setting off nuclear bombs...

...and now this.

Good thing we have a Nobel peace-prize winning, certified smartest man with the very best diplomatic instincts rather than that fargin cowboy.

Yeah....

....this is going to end well.

//Japan is fortifying its far-flung island chain in the East China Sea under an evolving strategy that aims to turn the tables on China’s navy and keep it from ever dominating the Western Pacific Ocean, Japanese military and government sources said.

The United States, believing its Asian allies — and Japan in particular — must help contain growing Chinese military power, has pushed Japan to abandon its decades-old bare-bones home island defense in favor of exerting its military power in Asia.

Tokyo is responding by stringing a line of anti-ship, anti-aircraft missile batteries along 200 islands in the East China Sea stretching 1,400 km from the country’s mainland toward Taiwan.

Interviews with a dozen military planners and government policymakers reveal that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s broader goal to beef up the military has evolved to include a strategy to dominate the sea and air surrounding the remote islands.

While the installations are not secret, it is the first time such officials have spelled out that the deployment will help keep China at bay in the Western Pacific and amounts to a Japanese version of the “anti-access, area denial” doctrine, known as A2/AD in military jargon, that China is using to try to push the United States and its allies out of the region.

Chinese ships sailing from their eastern seaboard must pass through this seamless barrier of Japanese missile batteries to reach the Western Pacific, access to which is vital to Beijing both as a supply line to the rest of the world’s oceans and for the projection of its naval power

Leftist support for tyranny...

...and China's One Child Policy.

But I repeat myself.

This is from the New York Times circa 2014.  Read this and not the amazing thing about the explanation provided for why forced abortions/sterilization is a "touchy" policy does NOT include the fact that controlling human beings' decisions about their families is absolute totalitarian tyranny.

//In the 1970s and 1980s, rich nations’ support for population control in poor countries smacked of just another form of colonialism. Coercive population control — like India’s forced sterilizations, which were abandoned after they led to the collapse of Indira Gandhi’s government in 1977, or China’s one-child policy, which remains in place — is now widely considered a blatant violation of human rights.

Even China’s one-child policy is undergoing re-examination in Beijing because of the skewing of the country’s sex ratio — countless pregnancies have been aborted and millions of girls have been killed or left to die by parents who had hoped for a boy — and the tearing of the traditional safety net from so many elderly Chinese being forced to rely on only one child for support. Economists at the International Monetary Fund have even welcomed Africa’s fast-rising population as an opportunity to increase its pace of economic growth.//

The Left has been holding up China's one-child policy as a reasonable effort at responsible population control, while ignoring the forced abortions and the sheer inhumanness of the policy.

What will they say now?

Crickets is my guess.

//China’s recent announcement that it will end its one-child policy is unlikely to halt a demographic decline that could lead to more social and political instability in the coming decades, analysts say.

China’s Communist Party said on Thursday that it would now permit couples to have two children to help counteract an aging population, though the change must still be approved by the national legislature. Authorities had eased the policy in recent years by allowing parents who were only children to have two children themselves.

However, any boost to China’s population would not materialize for at least a few decades, experts say, a vexing reality for Party officials concerned about a shrinking labor force and slower economic growth. Additionally, Chinese families’ preference for boys has resulted in millions more men than women in the country, a gender imbalance that has exacerbated abuses such as the trafficking of rural women.//

There can be good socialists and bad socialists, but it takes atheism to make socialism  truly evil.

Atheists like to claim that atheism is not responsible for atheist atrocities because "atheism is a lack of belief" and "a lack of belief has never caused anyone to do anything."

As if ignorance has never been the cause of a mistake, bad judgment or injury.

In this case, perhaps, the ignorance lies in the failure to perceive the victims of Communism as beings made in the image of God rather than mere commodities?

//China harvested livers, kidneys, corneas and even hearts from tens of thousands religious prisoners while they were still alive and the world is paying no attention, according to a new documentary.

Rumours of the live organ trade in China first surfaced in 2006, and have been supported by human rights lawyers, witnesses and even surgeons who admit having performed the operations.
But claims that supporters of the Falun Gong faith are having their organs sold to wealthy transplant tourists from all over the world are still not taken seriously.

The documentary, Hard to Believe, offers the first sustained examination into why the world is so willing to turn a blind eye to 'one of the most catastrophic human rights violations in our time'.//

Is this a result of China's official atheism?

Why drivers in China intentional kill the pedestrians after they hit them.

In April a BMW racing through a fruit market in Foshan in China’s Guangdong province knocked down a 2-year-old girl and rolled over her head. As the girl’s grandmother shouted, “Stop! You’ve hit a child!” the BMW’s driver paused, then switched into reverse and backed up over the girl. The woman at the wheel drove forward once more, crushing the girl for a third time. When she finally got out from the BMW, the unlicensed driver immediately offered the horrified family a deal: “Don’t say that I was driving the car,” she said. “Say it was my husband. We can give you money.”

It seems like a crazy urban legend: In China, drivers who have injured pedestrians will sometimes then try to kill them. And yet not only is it true, it’s fairly common; securitycameras have regularly captured drivers driving back and forth on top of victims to make sure that they are dead. The Chinese language even has an adage for the phenomenon: “It is better to hit to kill than to hit and injure.”

This 2008 television report features security camera footage of a dusty white Passat reversing at high speed and smashing into a 64-year-old grandmother. The Passat’s back wheels bounce up over her head and body. The driver, Zhao Xiao Cheng, stops the car for a moment then hits the gas, causing his front wheels to roll over the woman. Then Zhao shifts into drive, wheels grinding the woman into the pavement. Zhao is not done. Twice more he shifts back and forth between drive and reverse, each time thudding over the grandmother’s body. He then speeds away from her corpse.

Incredibly, Zhao was found not guilty of intentional homicide. Accepting Zhao’s claim that he thought he was driving over a trash bag, the court of Taizhou in Zhejiang province sentenced him to just three years in prison for “negligence.” Zhao’s case was unusual only in that it was caught on video. As the television anchor noted, “You can see online an endless stream of stories talking about cases similar to this one.”

“Double-hit cases” have been around for decades. I first heard of the “hit-to-kill” phenomenon in Taiwan in the mid-1990s when I was working there as an English teacher. A fellow teacher would drive us to classes. After one near-miss of a motorcyclist, he said, “If I hit someone, I’ll hit him again and make sure he’s dead.” Enjoying my shock, he explained that in Taiwan, if you cripple a man, you pay for the injured person’s care for a lifetime. But if you kill the person, you “only have to pay once, like a burial fee.” He insisted he was serious—and that this was common.

No big deal.

China

So while every international affairs pundit and their mother are focused on the travails of an economy the size of Louisiana, the second-largest economy is experiencing a teeny-weentsy stock market meltdown. 

In other news, not so good...

China's stock market down by 30%.

Because Commies always get a pass.

Next question.

Why is the international environmental movement silent about China's Nicaraguan canal?

Why isn't this bigger news?

Oh...right...President Obama...

Chinese-Backed Canal Gets Underway in Nicaragua

What the Hell?

The Chinese plan on building a second canal through Nicaragua.

This sounds like a geopolitically big deal.

Why aren't we hearing about it?

America - Now with more Hope and Change...

...China v. Japan inevitable with America weakened.

/

America - Now with even more hope and change - 

Thank you, President Obama!

// More relevant is the fact that Russia’s nuclear arsenal is significantly greater than our own and that, within six years, China will have more ships in its navy than we do. China already has more service members.//

Barrack Obama wishes he could be this direct.

China to Pope Francis: Don't interfere with religion.

PSA - Paranoia Service Announcement - of the day.

One part of the world wants to behead us individually, while the other part...

...hopes to enslave us.

The method forms a logical sequence:

Stage One: start by conceding all that must be conceded to the superior power including tribute, in order to avoid damage and obtain whatever forbearance is offered. But this in itself entangles the ruling class of the still-superior power in webs of material dependence that reduce its independent vitality and strength.

Stage Two: offer equality in a privileged bipolarity that excludes all lesser powers, or “G-2” in current parlance. That neutralizes the still powerful Other party, and isolates the manipulated soon-to-be former equal from all its potential allies, preventing from balancing China with a coalition.

Stage Three: finally, when the formerly superior power has been weakened enough, withdraw all tokens of equality and impose subordination.

Until the Chinese government decided—very prematurely I believe—to awaken the world to its classically imperial territorial ambitions by demanding the cession of lands, reefs, rocks, and sea waters from India, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam (demands that disturb and damage the concurrent Tianxia narrative of an alternative and more harmonious state system, disseminated even within the confines of Stanford University 5), it was making much progress towards Stage Two, the stage of equality preparatory to the final stage of subordination.

Of this progress—now interrupted, one may hope—one example suffices, though Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert Zoellick among many others have expressed similar notions: at the end Dr. Henry Kissinger’s very widely read On China, after 526 pages of historical retrospectives and personal reminiscences, definite prescriptions are offered, summarized in the heading “Toward a Pacific Community,” i.e. a harmonious US-Chinese “G-2” that logically proceed from his relentlessly benign assessment of Chinese intentions. Dr. Kissinger’s G-2 is identical to that relationship very persistently advocated by Chinese officials high and low, and by senior advisors such as Zhen Bijian (郑必坚) of “Peaceful Rise” fame.

That Stage Two could be achieved only by persuading the still-powerful Other party to accept equality and its limitations, most notably the isolation of the soon-to-be former equal from all its potential allies, preventing it from balancing China with a coalition. Indeed, Dr. Kissinger calls for the creation of a Chinese-American “commonwealth”: one “which would enable [sic] other major countries such as Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, India and Australia to participate in the construction of a system perceived as joint rather than polarized between ‘Chinese’ and ‘American’ blocs.” But Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, and Australia are hardly likely to share Dr. Kissinger's optimism. Deprived of American support in facing Chinese demands, forced to become the objects of a Chinese-American entente, today’s actual and potential allies would have to make their own accommodations, eliminating the one and only potential long-term counterweight to China, the coalescence of all lesser powers menaced by its expansionism. As the man said, history need not be remembered but must still be lived.//

Building code violations" are a major problem in China...

...particularly if they involve Christian Buildings.

//For Mgr Vincent Zhu Weifang, from the official Church, the campaign of destruction is increasing social instability. It is real persecution against the Christian faith. The bishop apologises for failing to intervene sooner. He was hoping that the campaign would end quickly. Catholics and Protestants suffer injuries as they attempt to defend their sacred buildings. For priests in Wenzhou, the campaign is unfair and touches buildings that have all the right papers. Such "stupid acts" by the government are undermining social harmony.

Wenzhou (AsiaNews) - Bishop Zhu Weifang of Wenzhou (Zhejiang) and his priests in the open Church side have openly denounced the Zhejiang government's brutal acts of forced demolitions of churches and stripping off crosses from Catholic and Protestant churches in the province.

Bishop Zhu, who has papal mandate and works openly, issued a pastoral letter on July 30 calling his faithful "not to fear but have faith". On the following day, July 31, his priests urged the Zhejiang provincial government to stop the campaign of forcibly knocking knock down crosses on church roofs.

The wave of destructions of churches and crosses in Zhejiang province, especially against Christian Churches in Wenzhou, has been going on for months. Protestants and Catholics were injured while fending off police to tear down churches and crosses.

America withdraws from the world, and Japan starts to form an anti-China encirclement alliance....

...Yeah, that's going to work out well.

Japan gives China six navy ships among international tensions.

More people united only by their lack of belief not attacking Christians because of their lack of belief.

Commies are evil

Members of the Xiaying Holy Love congregation in Ningbo, a port city 170 miles north of Wenzhou, said they held their last service on May 11 after Religious Affairs officials decided their place of worship was an eyesore that needed destroying.

"They told us the cross was too shiny, too tall and too big," said one worshipper.

Last week, a coalition of underground church leaders, activists, academics and lawyers urged Beijing to guarantee its citizens’ rights to freedom of religious belief and expression.

More here. 

Holy Frickin' Moly.

China and Japan are still at war?????

During the dinner, the hosts passed a microphone around the table and asked guests to speak briefly about something that they thought would interest the group.

One of the guests, an influential Chinese professional, talked about the simmering conflict between China and Japan over a group of tiny islands in the Pacific.

China and Japan, you may recall, each claim ownership of these islands, which are little more than a handful of uninhabited rocks between Japan and Taiwan. Recently, the Japan-China tension around the islands has increased, and has led many analysts, including Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group, to worry aloud about the potential for a military conflict.

The Chinese professional at dinner last night did not seem so much worried about a military conflict as convinced that one was inevitable. And not because of any strategic value of the islands themselves (they're basically worthless), but because China and Japan increasingly hate each other.

The Chinese professional mentioned the islands in the context of the recent visit by Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. The Yasukuni Shrine is a Shinto shrine where Japanese killed in Japan's many military conflicts over the centuries are memorialized — including the Japanese leaders responsible for the attacks and atrocities Japan perpetrated in World War 2. A modern-day Japanese leader visiting the Yasukuni Shrine is highly controversial, because it is viewed by Japan's former (and current) enemies as an act of honoring war criminals.

That's certainly the way the Chinese professional at the dinner viewed it.

He used the words "honoring war criminals," to describe Abe's visit to the shrine. And, with contained but obvious anger, he declared this decision "crazy."

He then explained that the general sense in China is that China and Japan have never really settled their World War 2 conflict. Japan and America settled their conflict, he explained, and as a result, the fighting stopped. But China and Japan have never really put the war behind them.

The Chinese professional acknowledged that if China asserted control over the disputed islands by attacking Japan, America would have to stand with Japan. And he acknowledged that China did not want to provoke America.

But then he said that many in China believe that China can accomplish its goals — smacking down Japan, demonstrating its military superiority in the region, and establishing full control over the symbolic islands — with a surgical invasion.

In other words, by sending troops onto the islands and planting the flag.

Fortunately, we have a Nobel Peace Prize winner on the job.

The China Syndrome

China is more dysfunctional than we can imagine.

The fact that the mechanics of a crisis are hard to sketch out doesn’t mean that the system works well. You know those Chinese ghost cities, the eerie forests of apartment buildings and commercial complexes equipped with everything except people? Those homes are a major store of value for Chinese families. With bank account interest rates fixed, a fledgling stock market full of speculative issues, and few financial connections to the outside world, the Chinese have been forced to look into nonfinancial stores of value for their massive savings rate. Like us, they often choose real estate. But not to rent, because that would devalue the property; the Chinese place a high value on new. No, they buy the houses and keep them empty, as stores of value rather than places to live.